And you guys thought *I* was nuts.

[williatw]

You are right we don't trust our politicians/gov as much as you brits/europeans seem to.

Difficult to say which is the least trustworthy: a Daily Mail article, or a politician.

However, in this case the politician makes a reasonable point (it's difficult to compare violent crime rates from one country to another due to differences in the way they are recorded), so solving that tricky little dilemma.

By the way, outside of their swivel-eyed readership, The Daily Mail is widely regarded as a joke - see here, and here, not to say its support for Hitler in the 30's.

More from the unreliable not to be trusted rag: Gun crime soars by 35%
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1WOAuOIpn
The Government's latest crime figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.
Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.
Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362.
It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.
Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871. Home Office statistics showed gun crime has soared by nearly 600% since 1978 - when there were 1,437 firearms offences.
Gun crime has also increased by 65% since 1996, the year before Labour came to power
Yeah I can see gun control is working great in England

From the British home office: http://www.dvc.org.uk/dunblane/greenwood.html

Home Office Research Study 298 of 2006.
Gun Crime: The market in and use of illegal firearms. Gavin Hales, Chris Lewis and Daniel Silverstone
18.The 1997 legislation deprived 57,000 people of their property, removed 160,000 handguns from circulation and cost many millions of pounds in compensation. If the effects of that legislation can not be evaluated, then the whole discipline of criminology is a waste of time. If the ban on handguns had any effect in protecting the public, the date on which it came into effect must be reflected in figures for homicide and robbery involving a pistol. The figures for England and Wales for six years before and after 1997 are shown below.
19.The pattern of pistol use in homicide is progressively upwards whilst the pattern in robbery shows that the numbers were falling but then rose sharply, only to fall back again. The only conclusion is that the ban imposed by the 1997 Act was simply an irrelevance.
Homicides, England and Wales

21.It might be possible to conclude that the law has an immediate effect on the law abiding, but that criminals, by definition, do not obey the law.

[KitemanSA]

What is our statement of MORALITY? (right vs. wrong)? What makes something "right" as distinct from "good"?

This is your distinction.

Ethics is moral philosophy. It involves discussions about how we ought to act, what is right and wrong behaviour, as well as the nature of the good and the good life.

Nope. They are fundamentally different things. Related, but different. When you want to know more, ask.

[KitemanSA]

Approach morality as a scientist might. Look thru all the various attempts thru the ages to describe what people call "right" as opposed to "good".

This is an objective method. But you can't demonstrate that it is a method that will give you access to some kind of objective moral truth.

Except that whenever I apply it in life, it works. To me that is objective evidence. If you want to know how (it is easy) PM me.

[CKay]

Congratulations Kite on solving one of the oldest problems of philosophy - a problem that great minds have pondered over for at least two and half thousand years!

Who'd a thunk it'd be so simple?

[Skipjack]

But the "real world " law does.

Only in theory and even then there are variations and stages and then laws are not the same everywhere.

[Teahive]

We are discussing legally defined dividing lines, and it is contingent upon you to provide a scientific explanation for your position, not to prattle on some nonsense about it being one big shade of grey. At some point, a decision has to be made, and you ought explain why it should be one place and not another.

I think my perspective is perfectly consistent from a scientific basis. Yours is just an effort to try and force your subjective personal preferences into a costume of objectivity.

Science does not support your position. It supports mine quite well.

Science only gives you a line. It doesn't make a moral statement about the position of that line. You can define other clear and consistent lines as well.

Some lives are unnecessary as far as you are concerned. Got it.

I do not care about all life on earth equally, and neither do you. But I defend every person's right to life. Obviously our definitions of personhood disagree, but I see no reason to adopt yours.

The issue here is causality. If you don't do anything, you have no responsibility for the consequences.

If a mother doesn't do anything, the child dies.

After it's born this may be true. Prior to that, she cannot kill it by doing nothing, unless she starves herself to death as well.

Then it would seem that this is a clear distinction between egg laying and a child in a mother's womb. An egg would die without brooding while with mammals mother and child are linked.

Though the child would probably die before the mother if she starved herself.

Abandoning the child after birth has a set of legal penalties to go with it.

And yet you say "if one does not interfere, then one cannot be responsible for the outcome." So why should the mother be legally responsible?

My answer to that question would be: because she voluntarily and consciously made a pledge to the rest of society to take care of her child. But that obviously requires such a pledge to actually be made – conception is not sufficient.

[Diogenes]

I can't understand your position here. Your "zygotes are human" position
is because you can't find a clear dividing line other than zygot/pre-zygote.

And apparently, neither can you.

It is patent, explicitly stated by me, not apparent.

You assert this on the one hand, yet you defend a practice that accepts the premise as a basis. You cannot have it both ways. If you cannot demonstrate WHY the legal transition period should be 3 months after conception, you cannot with intellectual honesty, support this false doctrine.

You adopt this because you don't allow the reasonable position that there is a continuous progression from not-human to human. Thus, most people think that aborting a 1 month foetus is much less harmful to mother, and less morally objectionable, than aborting a 5 month old foetus.

When actual facts are decided by consensus, do let me know. At that point I will vote to eliminate hunger and world wide evil.

Having a moral framework that differs from the rest of society in extreme cases is called psychosis. In yours not, just slight idiosyncracy. I've nothing against that, as long a syou don's start telling other people what they should or should not do.

It is my opinion that something is not true simply because a large quantity of people declare it so. There was once a large group of people that thought slavery was acceptable. Despite constituting a majority, they were wrong. The people who were right ended up telling them what to do.

You further misunderstand me: I have been arguing consistently against clear dividing lines. But I don't have your cognitive inability to imagine shades of grey. All courts do this, if allowed by legal system, even in cases of murder.

So someone gets a "grey" verdict? Or a "grey" sentence? Funny, I thought they were either acquitted or convicted.

Well no. A wide variety of sentences are possib;e for a given crime.

????????? What does that even mean? WHAT the sentence is, is irrelevant. One is either Sentenced or not. There is nothing in between the one condition or the other.

It must be a fascinating world in which you live. I suppose someone has to paint the shades between quanta.

White and black is simple, but loses information. It is not as realistic.

We are discussing legally defined dividing lines, and it is contingent upon you to provide a scientific explanation for your position, not to prattle on some nonsense about it being one big shade of grey. At some point, a decision has to be made, and you ought explain why it should be one place and not another.

Legally defined lines are a matter for law-makers. They are often arbitrary but sensible, as with statutory rape. Similarly with abortion.

Not your department eh? Then why defend it? Saying it is not up to you is just a dodge. The question is, were it up to you, how would you define it?

I think my perspective is perfectly consistent from a scientific basis. Yours is just an effort to try and force your subjective personal preferences into a costume of objectivity.

Science does not support your position. It supports mine quite well.

Science says nothing about arbitrary moral dividing lines, and in this case nothing about morality.

Science says there are no dividing lines of any sort, except that obvious one which I have already identified. The morality is irrelevant. The point of invoking science is to demonstrate that there is no logical or factual support for any other position.

[Diogenes]

But the "real world " law does.

Only in theory and even then there are variations and stages and then laws are not the same everywhere.

No, not in theory, but in actual practice. That different places have different laws is irrelevant to the point. Whatever their different laws, they all have some point at which they recognize a child may no longer be killed.

It is Black and White at that point.

[Diogenes]

We are discussing legally defined dividing lines, and it is contingent upon you to provide a scientific explanation for your position, not to prattle on some nonsense about it being one big shade of grey. At some point, a decision has to be made, and you ought explain why it should be one place and not another.

I think my perspective is perfectly consistent from a scientific basis. Yours is just an effort to try and force your subjective personal preferences into a costume of objectivity.

Science does not support your position. It supports mine quite well.

Science only gives you a line. It doesn't make a moral statement about the position of that line. You can define other clear and consistent lines as well.

Please do. Define the line between life and death. Show us the science that supports your clearly defined line.

Some lives are unnecessary as far as you are concerned. Got it.

I do not care about all life on earth equally, and neither do you. But I defend every person's right to life. Obviously our definitions of personhood disagree, but I see no reason to adopt yours.

You see no reason to adopt your own. If you did, you would show it to me. You have adopted your own because it fit's your convenience, not because it is based on any other consideration. (such as biology.)

If a mother doesn't do anything, the child dies.

After it's born this may be true. Prior to that, she cannot kill it by doing nothing, unless she starves herself to death as well.

Then it would seem that this is a clear distinction between egg laying and a child in a mother's womb. An egg would die without brooding while with mammals mother and child are linked.

Any mother can brood an egg. It need not be a particular mother. Interestingly enough though, the hatched chick will carry the DNA of the mother and father that created it, not the mother that brooded it.

We humans have managed to accomplish something similar. We've put fertilized eggs into surrogate mothers, and still the child ends up with the original mother and father's DNA. Funny that. It's like it's an independent life form or something.

Abandoning the child after birth has a set of legal penalties to go with it.

And yet you say "if one does not interfere, then one cannot be responsible for the outcome." So why should the mother be legally responsible?

She took the responsibility when she participated in the creation of it. It is too late for her to avoid a causality chain. The question being discussed is WHEN that legal responsibility should begin. You support an arbitrary point not demonstrated by science or any other logical methodology, while I support the obvious biological position.

My answer to that question would be: because she voluntarily and consciously made a pledge to the rest of society to take care of her child. But that obviously requires such a pledge to actually be made – conception is not sufficient.

If it did not occur voluntarily, you have a point. If it did occur voluntarily, then you do not.

If a woman takes drugs during pregnancy, she can be held accountable for the damage caused to her child. This included damage which occurred before the law recognized the child as a person.

It appears this thinking produces a paradox where it is legally permissible to do ultimate harm, but it is forbidden to do lesser harm. Such are the nonsensical conundrums that are inherent with a doctrine based on subjective whim.

[KitemanSA]

Congratulations Kite on solving one of the oldest problems of philosophy - a problem that great minds have pondered over for at least two and half thousand years!

Who'd a thunk it'd be so simple?

Actually, someone describe it in parable form several thousand years ago. Unfortunately, most everybody has misunderstood it since then. And it is that simple, really.

[CKay]

it is that simple, really

In your opinion.

And that's all it is, an opinion, the truth of which you cannot prove.

[KitemanSA]

it is that simple, really

In your opinion.

And that's all it is, an opinion, the truth of which you cannot prove.

True. When I apply it, it works. That is my observation. It is true. That is my conclusion. You seem to be anally retentive. That is my opinion!

But then my "conclusion" is about the universe and the way it works, you know, science; not about some individual I appear to hate, you know, libel.

[Betruger]

The only definitive system of the universe isn't right or wrong or respect or justice, but causality. Physics. As far as humans go, the only thing you ought to bank on is more or less parallel intentions. Ethics/morality/what have you, is only as solid a ground as the people involved are reasonable.

[KitemanSA]

That is what I just implied. There seems to be a causality regarding application of the "right to voluntary action" statement of morality. When applied, it works, at least it always has for me.

[Betruger]

You're being too subtle for me. What I was getting at is that too often people forget their human biases. They anthropomorphize the 'system of the world'. We can't get off this planet soon enough.