Pug wrote:
There's plenty of situations when people act on what they believe to be the truth, but are in fact totally in error. At the exact moment when they decide to act upon that truth, it becomes the justification for their actions. Now, afterwards, people might say you made the wrong decision because your judgement was incorrect...but you decide a course of action based on the information available, you ARE justified at the time you make your decision. Armchair quarterbacking afterwards is bullshit. Why? Because more information is available, including the outcome of an incorrect action. It doesn't mean at the time you made the decision it wasn't justified. It just wasn't the correct choice.
What makes it correct? Well depends on several factors, including want factors need to be fulfilled to be correct. Meaning, everything within the process as well as the result will be tainted by differing opinions.
Yes, I know. I offered several justifications, many of which I strongly disagree with and could probably do a solid job of refuting. They are all justifications, I want people to pick one (or some) so we can talk about them. But I do need you to pick a
justification, not a point of view, else we can't talk about the implications of the justification.
Pug wrote:
Well, you answered that within your own point. IF we justify the right to life by the sanctity of the species, we have to include the entire species. Meaning every individual's contribution is weighed, not just those who don't have a genetic "aberration".
You are implying that mutants are not part of society. Stephen Hawking contributed a little, no? So wouldn't that increase the chances of folks protecting the mutants?
"Sanctity of the species" meant essentially a clear gene pool. I used sanctity to an almost religious reverence to the human race, which would put a high value on ideal specimens. That is to say the right to life is justified by the maintenance of the human race - taken to it's extreme but logical conclusion, that includes making the
best humans possible. No one person can contribute enough to outweigh their insidious genetic faults, considering the current size of the population.
Really considering the size of the population it seems a bit ridiculous to say the right to life is currently justified by the necessity of every person to our overall existence. Perhaps at some point in time that might have been an extremely valid justification, but not at this point in time. Our numbers make us very expendable in this sense.
Pug wrote:
Mario did give a reason - pleasing himself. I'm not sure how it pleases him, but it does... You want him to be more specific. Like the thrill, the power or whatever, again Master Yoda, I don't need to dig further than that. You do.
You are arguing there is nothing that goes into deciding a course of action, well more specifically, you are saying actions themselves cannot be justified. I find most actions come about because of logically choosing between alternatives. Most specifically, inferring options from earlier experiences. So when the decision is made, the PERSON feels they are justified in their action. It doesn't matter AT THAT MOMENT whether it's correct or not, it's they've justified their own decision.
You act as though people are approaching every decision without any sort of clue what they've done in the past.
I'll give you a basic example: every day I wake up and I feel my stomach hurting. I know it's because I'm hungry, because every day I've had that feeling. I decide to get a biscuit.
Your logic is such that I would never recognize that I was hungry, like prior experience would have no bearing on how I would solve the problem of my stomach hurting. But randomly I choose a biscuit and...holy shit what just happened...my stomach doesn't hurt anymore. Well, until lunch...then I'll randomly select a hamburger.
It's not random, it's ingrained. Why is it ingrained? Because it's a learned behavior.
Same goes with your examples. There's a "justification" for everything.
This is not at all what I'm saying...there is a justification for everything but it is often not stated and very rarely obvious except in the most trivial of cases.
Obviously instinct directs most of our decision making, and the justification for our most basic natural actions are clear. I take a piss because my bladder is full, if I don't piss when my bladder is full then it bursts and I die. That is what your hunger example resembles.
To justify a more complex decision however requires a
defense of the reason. People do stupid things all the time with no justification. For a complex action to have a justification it must be preceded by
rational thought, not any random string of mental images strung together. Our animal mind justifies all the easy stuff for us. It is very easy to make simple decisions in abstract situations that have no justification.
Ask the four year old what 206/8 is. He'll probably pick 6, because that's his favorite number. He picked a number, but there was no reason for picking that number. Saying that because 6 is his favorite number is a
reason is ridiculous.
Pug wrote:
Flaming_Maniac wrote:
Yet many people are still willing to die in war?
I don't see how you can really say that people value society over themselves, but still maintain that there is really a "right" to life. Not only in the sense that society may dictate that someone should be killed for the overall good as in capital punishment.
It seems to me the right only holds so long as one serves the best interests of society. A very one-sided contract.
Because what is implied but not stated, is that if your society does not exist, then you will not exist either.
Aka, if you do not defend, your society will be no more.
Therefore, it is self preservation.
Not true. Society crumbling means the death of society, not of self. Anarchy is a valid state of being, particularly considering that essentially all other societies would crumble for the same reason yours did. If for whatever reason right to life was deemed obsolete, either there was a very stupid generation or there was some revelation that should be equally applicable across all societies, as we are not all that different. Self-preservation is not the only and really not even the main reason for social contract, that's why posing the question about right to life and social contract in the first place is (I think) interesting.
The purpose of social contract is to defend your possessions. It's not hard to subsist in anarchy, but it is difficult to build wealth. If you band together to protect wealth then of course involved in that is the protection of life - it makes no sense to say you can't take someone's stuff unless you kill him, then you can loot his house. Perhaps that is the root cause for the right to life - protection of private property. Of course that is irrelevant in political theories that hold no private property, and certainly turns a lot of anti-materialism thinking on its head. Your life is valuable because you own objects of value.
