Satyricon331 wrote...
All right. Let me have a go at this again.
You understood it well enough there as per that quote (whatever your motivation and whatever semantic quibble you have about "use"), and you understood it well enough to say you disagree with it, and yet (despite its simplicity) you claim not to understand it. It is reasonable to wonder about your sincerity there, which is why I won't indulge your fishing expeditions. If you understand it well enough to disagree with it then evidently the points you're asking about aren't relevant to its correctness in your view.
You're just assuming that "I understood it well enough." Which may not even be the case. I think accusations of lack of sincerity should have a more solid basis than the one you're using (what you're using are assumptions about my degree of understanding), if your true purpose is not to evoke an antagonistic response or even to have a fruitful debate. And I'd have appreciated more of a stance like, "if you didn't understand it, let me clarify it," instead of a stance like, "really? you don't understand even such a simple analogy?" I think it's more of a question of attitude, which made you evaluate my attempts to understand you differently than I ever intended. Not that my attitude has been something to write home about, but well such is how things went earlier.
Not that I'm suggesting you change your attitude, but since your attempt to be understood seems somewhat genuine, I percieve you might be willing if I am.
I really don't have to play your game.
No, you don't. Assuming there is a game that I intend you to play.
Whatever you're trying to get at, offer it as a counterargument if you disagree with my argument.
This I can do because you're giving me a chance again to re-raise the questions I raised earlier. And I shall try to do it in a manner that would not put doubt upon my intentions, hopefully. And why would I do it even after I said I'd not partake in this discussion again? For selfish reasons of my own, because I see an opportunity to learn something from this.
That said, I'll requote what you wrote
here, becuase this is what lies at the heart of our debate, I think:
"Consider a disease that is very quickly fatal for nearly all infectees -in fact it kills them off so quickly those people can't infect others, as the virus is too fragile to survive the death of the host. The virus persists in the population because some people are carriers, having the virus incubate in them. While the virus incubates, it is noninfectious, but sometimes the person can (for whatever reason) become a transmitter, infecting everyone around them (killing the non-carrier people off altogether, or at least risking it). (To complete the analogy to mages, the carriers transmit the disease to their carrier children, but not to their non-carrier children.) You can tweak the analogy as needed for templars, combat magic, etc.
I think there are reasonable arguments for quarantining the carriers, and if the carriers have to do something volitionally to become a transmitter (as a mage who chooses to become an abomination and endangers everyone around them), I think there are reasonable arguments not to quarantine the carriers if other disincentives to that choice exist. But the disease analogy does not fail - although I agree I don't see an argument here for killing off all carriers in a quarantine zone. The US and most other countries have laws for involuntary quarantines, but not culling the entire quarantine zone."Here's what I said and eventually agreed with. I agree to the somewhat vague analogy between when a mage comes under the influence of a demon and becomes an abomination, which would make him/her kill off bystanders; and the abomination would try to replicate itself, as someone here already quoted. There are reasonable ways to compare what happens here to what happens with a contagious disease.
But, to carry it further, and state that all mages carry some kind of a "dormant virus" in him/her (and transmit it to his/her progeny), which activates at some point in the future (if at all) fails in being analogous to how a disease might work, because to me what appears to be more of an analogy is that mages carry a pre-disposition to attracting a virus (a demon), and thus contracting the disease. The "disease" does not exist in the mages, only a pre-disposition to contract it, when they come in contact with the pathogen (the demon). Hopefully I've made my question clear; and my position is that your disease analogy to magic fails in this regard.
And, well, you did bring up the aspect of quarantine based on this analogy. So, well, I'll correct my earlier correction. And I'll do more. Now the burden is on you to show an analogous situation in real life, where people are quarantined for their predisposition to contract a disease. Is a predisposition to contract a disease and harm others a good enough moral ground for containing people in real life? Has it ever been?
If you think my position's wrong then the burden is on you to show that all moral theories would treat DA-magic and any possible disease differently for all possible moral questions pertaining to the two.
Eh, no. We could make the argument/analogy rather absurd by carrying it out to the level of atoms and molecules. What we need is something on more tangible terms. I've attempted to do so.
And even though I dislike sharing my ethical viewpoint on the BSN (since, beside the risk of tangents, look at what happens even for a statement of readily verifiable, objective fact, much less ethics),
That is a pessimistic point of view, if I can say so. The fact that people engage in these such debates nonetheless, even with no possibility of concessions on either side, itself should make one to pause and wonder about it. Their goal may not even be to reach agreements.
perhaps it'll help that I'll come out and say I too am a consequentialist, and while I'm not with your position on magic fully, mine is fairly similar. It has no bearing on my ability to recognize the logically separate question of whether an analogy between disease and magic can be viable for some moral theories, even though I disagree with those deontologies.
Are you saying that an inquiry into analogies might itself be to answer moral questions?
In any case, to be very clear about what we're tyring to do here: We do similarity analysis on very many things, comparisons, or inquiring about something, or memory, or any kind of object association, and so on and so forth, none of which might entail questions about right or wrong. I think the question of whether two things are analogous or not is more of a structural/factual thing than a moral one. The usage of an analogy, might be for moral advancing moral arguments. For instance, this thing A is analogous to that thing B, and since C is what we practice with A, it also ought to be done with B.
I might be wrong of course, but this is how I think about it. I hope I was clear about why I said the above; otherwise, do let me know.
I think rights are helpful constructs but they aren't what morality fundamentally amounts to in my view, even though I think people can reasonably disagree. If the analogy doesn't work for your moral viewpoint, then, again, that's fine, but it has nothing to do with the narrow logical point I was defending.
Well, in my own experience, I've found it more fruitful to argue consequences rather than argue rights/wrongs.
You said you're a consequentialist. You're now saying the analogy holds for consequentialism? Not even I think so;
Actually I did not follow. What claim did I make that would lead you to believe I endorsed the analogy (and you can also mention which analogy), and that too for consequentialism?
consequentialisms care about very fine factual particulars. Disease and magic each have features salient for consequentialism that the other lacks for nearly any moral question that might come up. It doesn't follow that they do for all moral theories.
I said that I (vaguely) regard myself as a consequentialist. Now, study of the various aspects (or schools of study) of morality isn't my profession or my hobby. I subscribe to the term, consequentialism, because that is something I chanced upon on a casual reading one day. I do not know academically what all being a consequentialist even entails, and I don't much care, either. All I said was that I think that regarding consequences rather than questions about right/wrong is what I've come to think of a more fruitful way of looking at things, and arguing about things.
That said, I'd qualify your first statement with "relevant factual particulars," the ones that might render them for comparison.
EDIT: Fixing some formatting...
Modifié par MichaelFinnegan, 03 octobre 2011 - 05:45 .
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But yes, I find the debates entertaining. I just dislike getting dragged in; there are other places online where it's more possible to have constructive engagement. Look back in this very thread - there are at least two posters who seem to be reacting (acerbically) to what I wrote (they didn't name me) but clearly didn't bother reading much anything I said.
