What is tedious is that you somehow think that your assertion of rights (that you don’t actually mean as rights as generally conceived) — Ennui Elucidator
I don't see how your intuitions prove something to be morally correct or incorrect. You can't just say intuitions prove morality, without giving reasoning for this. — Down The Rabbit Hole
What would be arbitrary would be to ignore that counter evidence. — Bartricks
the trolley cases provide yet further evidence of — Bartricks
widely shared intuitions about Thomson's violinist case tell us something important, — Bartricks
So they're a good, calm, well trod place to go for insight. And what do they tell us? — Bartricks
And overlapping rational intuitions that Xing is wrong constitutes excellent evidence that Xing is wrong, — Bartricks
I haven’t asked you a single epistemology question, I’ve asked you about community interests vs. individual interests and why anyone should be swayed by your continued claim that moral intuition in thought experiments should control governments policy. — Ennui Elucidator
My argument does not depend upon the truth of any substantial normative theory about rights and their distribution. I am appealing to intuitions about cases.
What you're doing is focusing on the probative force of rational intuitions - which is to miss the point. — Bartricks
Let’s try this again. In what circumstance can a community assert an interest against an individual interest? — Ennui Elucidator
What I am opposed to - and I think careful ethical reflation vindicates my position - is forcing those who do not have a virus, or who reasonably believe themselves not to have it, to lock down — Bartricks
Anyway, here's why I think these lockdowns are unjust. — Bartricks
Virtually everyone's intuitions deliver the same verdict: of course you can. — Bartricks
you're within your rights to leave. — Bartricks
And so it seems that we can reasonably take the judgement about the violinist case and apply it to this one: you are obviously entitled to abort. — Bartricks
What's the moral of these cases? Well, that a person's right to life does not amount to a right to restrict the freedom of another person — Bartricks
Apply that to lockdowns. There's a virus on the loose. And it kills some of those who get it. Well, do we have to give up 9 months freedom in order to prevent those people from being killed? Is that what having a right to life amounts to? No, that's what we just learned from Judith Jarvis Thomson's thought experiments. — Bartricks
so she is not saying that the right to life of another doesn't place any restrictions on our freedom. The point is that there are limits — Bartricks
The vulnerability to illness that some have is not your doing either, which is what makes the analogy work. — AJJ
That's why I asked us to imagine that pregnancies could be caught, just as one can catch a virus. Does that change anything? Would our reason now tell us that women ought to lockthemselves down or else accept that they must endure the inconvenience and pain of childbirth? — Bartricks
That's condoning and even sanctioning killing, some might take that as murder. — TheMadFool
So is leaving the violinist to their fate. So is allowing the abortion to take place. Some might take *those* as murder. — AJJ
Sure, and we should give the violist our kidneys for 9 months and the woman should under those circumstances *not* abort the baby. — AJJ
Moral epistemology. Focus on what the thread is about, and not on the 'how do we know anything is right or wrong?" question. — Bartricks
Consequentialism about ethics is silly. We can argue over that and how I know it and how you know otherwise somewhere else. But even if it is true, consequentialism would deliver an anti-lockdown verdict for the reasons I have explained. It's the actual consequences that determine the morality of a policy; and it is obvious - obvious - that any sober assessment of the aggregate gains and losses would deliver the verdict that lockdowns to deal with a virus are utterly stupid, consequentially. — Bartricks
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.