FoodBanter.com - View Single Post

George Plimpton

On 4/21/2012 7:28 AM, Zerkon wrote:
> In article<WbidnSHeZv0jBgzSnZ2dnUVZ5vudnZ2d@giganews. com>,
> says...
>>
>> It has degrees; it isn't absolute. If I see my neighbor Smith's dog get
>> loose and attack my neighbor Jones's cat, I'll try to stop the attack
>> and save Jones's cat. If I see Smith's dog attack a squirrel in the
>> front yard, I probably won't try to save the squirrel; if I do try to
>> stop the attack, it will be more out of consideration for Smith and how
>> he wants his dog to behave. If I see a coyote come down the street and
>> attack the squirrel, for certain I won't do anything to try to save the
>> squirrel.
>>
>> The squirrel simply doesn't enter into my imprecise calculus of moral
>> consideration in the same way that Jones's cat does, and to the extent
>> it enters into it at all, it's highly context-dependent. No one gives
>> equal moral consideration to the interests of all beings capable of
>> suffering, nor should we be expected to do so. We may not be able to
>> say exactly where we draw lines, but that doesn't mean it's arbitrary.
>> In any case, the "ar" radicals tell us that arbitrariness sometimes
>> doesn't matter, or sometimes it does, so they are being arbitrary.
>>
>> For example, I am told that it is permissible for me to take my kinship
>> with my child into account in deciding whether to rescue him or some
>> other child from an impending catastrophe where I have time to rescue
>> only one of them. However, the same source would tell me that if
>> neither of the two children were my known relatives, but if one were of
>> my race and the other were of a different race, I would not be able to
>> use race - also an indication of kinship, even if much more remotely so
>> than family - in deciding which one to rescue.
>>
>> The sophists are trying somehow, any way they can, to find a means to
>> salvage something they intuitively like. There is no rigor to it at all.
>
> Ok in the "Jones' cat" case you present the decisions as being your's
> alone then forcing the position of "no one gives equal moral.. etc" from
> what you gave or not. This does not ground your argument simply because
> there very well might be people who, in degrees, do attempt to give
> equal moral consideration, so what you do becomes only what you do not a
> given of what everyone does.

I observe that no one gives equal moral consideration, including those
who say we ought to do so.

>
> In your "kinship" example you now are being dedicated to or told by
> 'sources' without explanation of why these sources matter to you.

If you had been following along here a little more attentively, you'd
know who the source is to whom I referred.

> Bringing in the issue of race into a child rescue situation is blatant
> sophistry.

How is it? What if in fact there are two children of different races?
If that's the case, then what's "sophistry" about it?

> Here again you are being victimized by people telling you
> things you can or can not do. Sort of like people on radio talk shows.
> You are forcing a conclusion via a 'straw sophist argument'

I'm not.

>
> As another moral excercise place yourself in the catastrophy but in a
> far off land alone among people of your own race in a small tight
> community suspcious of all outsiders and who spoke a language you did
> not understand. A person of another race but from your home towm shows
> up. What sense of kinship do you have now?
>
> What comes out of all this is the question of how are you hearing these
> really bossy sources and how do each of you, you and your sophist
> sources, know so very much what the other is thinking?
>