Interesting that you say "super consequentialist thinking". What proportion of your views (if any) are consequentialist? Do you think it's consistent for one to have a general consequentialist outlook while also having overriding principles (such as sanctity of life, consent etc)? — Down The Rabbit Hole
The fact a person deserves something can, sometimes, generate an obligation to provide it. And sometimes it won't. — Bartricks
For someone to deserve something means (in the context it's used here) there is a duty of moral agents to provide them it. — Isaac
For someone to deserve something means (in the context it's used here) there is a duty of moral agents to provide them it. For someone to not deserve something does not impose a similar duty on moral agents to prevent them from having it. It may be that they obtain it by chance, and no moral approbation comes along with that.
So the argument that we have a duty to avoid harm befalling innocents cannot be derived from the intuition that innocents do not deserve harm. They don't deserve harm, but they don't deserve non-harm either. — Isaac
To deserve something does not mean others are obliged to give it to you, as I have explained numerous times. — Bartricks
To deserve something does not mean others are obliged to give it to you — Bartricks
So the argument that we have a duty to avoid harm befalling innocents cannot be derived from the intuition that innocents do not deserve harm. They don't deserve harm, but they don't deserve non-harm either. — Isaac
o deserve something does not mean others are obliged to give it to you — Bartricks
So again I repeat the question above in a rephrased way: Why should *I* believe (or "think" or "conclude") that life should be completely and totally absent from harm? And why is harm the focus? — Xtrix
o deserve something does not mean others are obliged to give it to you
— Bartricks
Ok. But who decides what's deserved? That doesn't fall from the sky, I assume. It's not God-given. So who decides? Who decides what is deserved? You? — Xtrix
I would further argue that they don't deserve anything -- beyond what human beings think they deserve (or don't deserve). And the answer to that question (What do human beings deserve?) is so personal that to try to find a general, abstract principle about it -- that is, one that applies in all or even most situations -- is a fool's errand. — Xtrix
The interesting question for me is why they have that belief to begin with. Why is the expectation an unobtainable one? It's like asking for a square with three sides. If living a pain-free existence is the only just existence, then sure: existence is unjust. But that's a rigged game, so to speak -- rigged to draw the same conclusion over and over again. Why? Because life includes pain -- it's part of the phenomenon of being alive. — Xtrix
how do we know anything? — Bartricks
and language. What does 'desert' mean anyway? — Bartricks
Something's turning out to be as I expected it to be using some theory and others in my community seeming to have the same experience is a pretty good measure of my knowing that theory. — Isaac
In my community desert means ice cream. — Bartricks
Yes, I think ↪Bartricks pretty much sums up that state of the arguments. He's resorted to talking about pixies. — Isaac
A person who hasn't done anything doesn't deserve to come to harm.
That's not controversial. You think it is. — Bartricks
If someone deserves something but doesn't get it, that's bad. It's called an 'injustice'. Them's bad.
Other things being equal, we have moral reason not to perform acts that will create injustices. — Bartricks
Acts of procreation create such injustices. — Bartricks
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