Are you for or against capital punishment?

[FlameFlash]

Thanks for the encouragement, loinburger... I just wish I had the time to hang out here and easily clarify what I said, though it looks like you did catch what I was saying, so hopefully we'll see what happens from there. (At least the main point... sometimes since it takes a day for me to get back and respond you guys have gotten so far ahead of me that I have no clue what's going on... happened today.)

[Dinner]

Originally posted by loinburger
Don't back down from a good point. I mean, heck, you pointed out about the biggest criticism of cultural relativism, namely "which culture's justice system is the best?" Like you said, the world community that the US is supposedly a part of by and large is against CP, which would either mean that the US has a better justice system than every other like-minded culture or that the US has a justice system that is fifty to a hundred years behind those of like-minded cultures (and, this being a good instance in which the majority rules, the latter is the more likely scenario). If a nation is going to spread its culture around the place, it first had better make damn sure that it's a culture worth spreading.

LB, read some of my previous posts and maybe you will understand why the EU's stance on this subject carries very little weight in the U.S.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Oerdin
LB, read some of my previous posts and maybe you will understand why the EU's stance on this subject carries very little weight in the U.S.

I assume that Oerdin is referring to this one in particular:
As for DP being canceled from the consciousness of humanity... well, here you are confusing modern liberal European views as being the consciousness of humanity. The US is not connected to the EU and has every right to carry on it's own discusion and to reach its own conclusion about whither capital punishment is effective and justified.

I wouldn't say that modern liberal European views are the consciousness of humanity by any means, but they are a major part of the consciousness of western democracies (the other major part being modern American views). The US has the right to come to its own decision on matters such as the DP, but it would be foolish for the US to completely dismiss modern liberal European views in coming to said decision. (Note that this exchange ought to go both ways, though.)

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by FlameFlash
Let me guess, che... you did ethical debate?

Actually, I was poking fun at myself. Remove the syllable "de" from my sentence.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Actually, I was poking fun at myself. Remove the syllable "de" from my sentence.

You're a cunning-linguist, that's for sure.

[Dinner]

Your right LB; both sides need to take into account how the other feels. The question is what happens even if each party takes into account the other's feelings but they still disagree. I guess at that point you have to agree to disagree and simply wait for new evidience to change peoples' view points.

The problem is such words as "justified" are fairly elastic and can mean a broad range of things. So two reasonable people can come to dramatically different conclusions based upon such a word.

[Tuberski]

185 posts in and nobody has changed anybody else's mind?


Amazing!

[Dinner]

186!

[Kramerman]

You wrote no such thing. You wrote:

No, I wrote this in my original post, tough It is admittedly not very clear

Therefore, we can, and do make laws based on what is needed to protect society

By protecting society I mean protecting those within society. I wrote my original post quickly, without much thought, and without expectation of what i wrote as to shift the arguement of debate from DP to what I wrote. After sleeping on it and then rereading what I said, it was understandablely quite alien to somebody who doesnt know what I was talking about. To clearly explain my ideas of societal laws being justified through none cultural reasons for a multicultural society such as America would take volumes. If on my posts from the last page in their entirety dont show you what i mean, I am sorry, because I will not have the time to write it out clearly and precisely.

A society's general view of betterment could very easily incorporate the repression or even extermination of a minority. There was nothing about protecting everyone who lives in the society from harm that I saw (unless you contradicted yourself somewhere, because "general view of betterment" does not automatically mean "everyone who lives in the society is protected from harm").

I did not mean to contridict myself, but when I said a society's view of betterment, I did mean the betterment of the peoplpe in that society. My original post, again was poorly written. I have obtained these beliefs over a few years now and am sorry that I represented them so poorly in that original post. I hope in my susequent posts I have cleared up what I meant, such as 'protecting those that within society from harm'. If you read my original post with this in mind, you would see I meant this when I used my examples of why there are laws against murder and theft and stuff.

What if the majority of the society's members think that slaves are property and may be treated as any other property? Why would their "general view of betterment" be incorrect?

If people thought that slaves were property, instead of human beings living within a society, then that just goes to show the gross ingnorance of psuedo science that many used to show that African-Americans were inferior to whites ontop of the prevelant irational racism. Indeed, a society with this irational racism and psuedo-science could hold slavery while 'protecting all those in the society from harm'. It is very unfortunate but true. But could not a Christian society of 'love thy neighbor' hold slavery too? Could not a society based on 'all men are created equal' hold slavery too? But as ignorance gave way to enlightenment, especially in the less racist north, resistance to slavery grew for both political and individual belief reasons. This too would happen in a society using laws for the protection of the people in that society. In the modern day of that society, the people would look back in shame on how they mistreated their fellow man, much like most Americans do today toward our time of hippocrasy.

Nope, you've got to remain internally consistent with your definitions, and your definitions also have to adhere to the objective definitions within language. If I were to pick up a rotten orange and say "This orange is good for sating one's hunger because it is rotten and will cause whoever eats it to get sick and possibly die," then I will have misapplied the term "good" in that sentence.

ok, of course you have to stay internally consistant with your definitions when using the words good or evil (maybe i am misunderstanding you?). But what I am saying is basically that you can arbitrarily change your own definition of good and evil. in other words, if i were to become a Satanist tomarrow, I would call murder and such good, and everything i formerly called good, like giving, sharing, helping, and stuff like that I would call evil. By using the english language, I just redefined good and evil to suit my point of view. Good which formerly meant doing one type of stuff, now means doing the opposite.

They're not changing the definition of the word, they're merely applying the word to things that we would not. This hypothetical alien race feels that murder, theft, and lying are desirable and righteous, therefore they can apply the term "good" to them.

By applying the word to things we would not, is in essence changing the definition. By simply reapplying the word apple to an orange, you are saying that the definition of an apple is a fruit that is orange, citrus, and grows best in subtropical climates. the same goes for good and evil.

Kman

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Tuberski
185 posts in and nobody has changed anybody else's mind?


Amazing!

I would expect as much on as controversial a topic as capital punishment. Anyless, then the topic would not be worth me posting fro debate, now would it?

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by FlameFlash


*sighs*

You guys are all talking over my head now, actually... I probably misread your post, however a majority of the "civilized" countries don't support it... that's the community of the world that the US is supposed to be a part of, I'd thought.

I'll try and continue to follow this, because I do find it interesting, but you guys are most certainly my better on debating this kind of stuff.

My head hurts now...

Let me guess, che... you did ethical debate?

<-- Policy debater here... probably why I'm sucking it up in getting a grasp on what's going on.

But then you get into questions of how you define 'civilized' amd such. It is by all means an interesting topic and an interesting point you make however.

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by loinburger


Don't back down from a good point. I mean, heck, you pointed out about the biggest criticism of cultural relativism, namely "which culture's justice system is the best?" Like you said, the world community that the US is supposedly a part of by and large is against CP, which would either mean that the US has a better justice system than every other like-minded culture or that the US has a justice system that is fifty to a hundred years behind those of like-minded cultures (and, this being a good instance in which the majority rules, the latter is the more likely scenario). If a nation is going to spread its culture around the place, it first had better make damn sure that it's a culture worth spreading.

But how do you find which cultures justice systme is the best? Every culture is going to thgink its justice system is the best, and likely they do have the best for their culture. Thats when you have to try and find an objective way to make laws and such that can be fairly objective on different cultures. The US, being a multi cultural nation of various ethnic and religious groups is doing an ok job at it, though I think it could be better...

Also, culture can spread without having to spread a justice system. The US's melting pot of a culture can be, and is spread throughout the world without spreading or justice system. Or ideas of democracy however are very much being pushed onto the world among other things, with little success if not much harm in nations whos traditional culture is that of a tribal society. Factionalism in those democracies (do to tribal ties and such) cause revolution, coup d'etat, and what not on a wide scale to the point that either democracy or tribalism of their trditional culture has got to go. Now I got to go, but Ill return to finsh giving my two cents.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Kramerman
By protecting society I mean protecting those within society.
...
If you read my original post with this in mind, you would see I meant this when I used my examples of why there are laws against murder and theft and stuff.

Okay, but I don't see where you're deriving these absolutes from. It obviously isn't God, since you're an atheist...

ok, of course you have to stay internally consistant with your definitions when using the words good or evil (maybe i am misunderstanding you?).

You can't arbitrarily apply the term "good" to subject A and then arbitrarily apply the term "bad" or "evil" to substantively equivalent subject B, otherwise you're being inconsistent. F'rinstance, you can't say "Stealing is good when I do it but it is bad when you do it" unless you can somehow justify why you have the right to steal while others do not, i.e. unless you can demonstrate that you (subject A) are not substantively equivalent to everybody else (subject B).

...in other words, if i were to become a Satanist tomarrow, I would call murder and such good, and everything i formerly called good, like giving, sharing, helping, and stuff like that I would call evil.

You could only do this if you remained internally consistent. You can't call murder "good" unless you consider it to be righteous and desireable, in which case you would think that it was righteous and desireable for somebody to murder you. Typically, only somebody who is ass-backwards irrational would desire to have their life unjustly taken from them, so by arbitrarily redefining murder to be "good" you'd either break internal consistency or join the ranks of the ass-backwards irrational.

By applying the word to things we would not, is in essence changing the definition.

If an alien race thinks that murder is rightous and desireable, then they can call it "good" without changing the definition of what it is to be "good." The fact that you don't think that murder is good doesn't change the fact that they think that it is good; you're both correctly applying the term.

By simply reapplying the word apple to an orange, you are saying that the definition of an apple is a fruit that is orange, citrus, and grows best in subtropical climates. the same goes for good and evil.

Calling an apple an "orange" and calling an orange an "apple" doesn't change the substance of the fruit. If we suddenly decided that "good" means "undesireable and wicked" and "evil" means "desireable and righteous," then we're not changing the substance of the definitions, we're just changing the wording. There is still such a thing as "good" and "evil," it's just that we'd call them different names.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Kramerman
But how do you find which cultures justice systme is the best?

It's not a simple matter, but a good rule of thumb is a test of internal consistency. If a given justice system is internally inconsistent and/or irrational, then it is flawed.

[Kramerman]

Okay, but I don't see where you're deriving these absolutes from. It obviously isn't God, since you're an atheist...

exactly. It is an attempt to being somewhat objective to religion when running a society. But I am still admittedly influenced bt the Judea-Christian ethics by which I was brought up with (I wasnt always atheist ).

Calling an apple an "orange" and calling an orange an "apple" doesn't change the substance of the fruit. If we suddenly decided that "good" means "undesireable and wicked" and "evil" means "desireable and righteous," then we're not changing the substance of the definitions, we're just changing the wording. There is still such a thing as "good" and "evil," it's just that we'd call them different names.

Is it that we are calling them diffrent names, or is it that the names have different definitions .
It doesnt really matter. I dont really care anymore....