Yep, I was hoping to clear that up with my follow-up question. I interpreted his statement, perhaps incorrectly, to mean that whether or not the toddler created any injury, risk or imposition was a matter of complete indifference to him. He needn’t keep the toddler alive even if there were no consequences other than the grave offence of the kid having blue eyes.
So if the answer to the lawn question is, “I wouldn’t kill him because I could show him the gate just as easily,” that suggests some inconsistencies, I think. The kid has rights to be respected, or at least considered, or he doesn’t.
Then you doubly don’t get it, so I’ll reiterate - my reason for spacing the kid may be good or it may be crummy but it’s not a reason I feel compelled to run past you or anyone else first. If the spaceship is metaphor for uterus (personally, I prefer the less far-fetched metaphor of a trespasser/burglar in one’s home, but the spaceship idea, not started by me incidentally, was amusing), the assumption is that the unwanted intrusion is potentially such a hassle that the person seeking to eliminate this hassle need not wait until it gets further along (and reaches its full hassle potential), nor be compelled to justify the decision before or afterward. Do you want to have to submit reasons to some authority figure before dealing with a significant personal problem (with the risk of said authority figure flatly saying “no, you’ll just have to suffer”) or do you reserve some right of self-determination? If you want control of your own destiny, you should be prepared to tolerate others taking control of theirs, even if it’s in a direction you personally don’t care for.
Then your explanation was still glib to the point of being unclear. If you meant that you felt justification, but didn’t feel the need to explain yourself, that seems different to me than saying you’d get rid of the kid if he had blue eyes or your Alpha-Bits strongly suggested it.
Obviously you won’t agree with this, but my response would be, yes, it’s possible I’d see that authority as reasonable if exercising my right to self determination intrudes on another’s greater right. That includes sparing blue-eyed toddlers and innocent unborn children. Again, explaining my position, not misunderstanding yours.
Well, that’s rather like saying “if a mouse was an elephant, could you still fit him in your pocket?” To make the kid on the lawn as potentially dangerous as the kid on the spaceship, I guess he’d have to waving a machine-gun around or something. He may not be intending to shoot anyone, but the longer he plays with the gun, the higher the chances of injury to someone else, like a nearby lawn-owner. On a spaceship, and even without a weapon, the stowaway kid by his very presence is consuming valuable resources intended for someone else. Less metaphorically, a fetus in gestation is not only consuming resources, but growing in size to the point where it (even with no intention to do so) imposes considerable discomfort on the uterus-owner. I don’t see any case in any of these hypotheticals where the other party has to tolerate the situation. I have too much respect for the rights of that other party (because I can imagine analogous situations where that party is me) to tell him or her to just shut up and take it.
I don’t actually see that as a problem, but I’ll go with it for the moment.
I have to add a wrinkle, though, to make the analogy even better - the kid is a mutant, having been exposed to the radiation of the ship’s reactor and is growing. He’s growing a lot. By the latter stages of the voyage, he’ll be so big that his body will fill a good 25% of the ship’s volume and every ship’s function will have to be modified (and some outright cancelled) to accomodate the kid. There were promising follow-up missions the ship could have done after this trip, but those may have to be put on hold indefinitely. Heck, with a few modifications and upgrades, the ship might easily accomodate more mutant kids down the road, but getting those mods is going to be far more difficult if this current situation is allowed to continue.
If pregnancy was a mere “one-percent” hassle, you might have a point. As it stands, it isn’t, and you don’t. The criteria is not risk of death or injury, but acknowledgement of personal determination. Respecting such determination only when you’re comfortable with it calls into question whether you respect it at all.
As for my race and the kid’s… sure, why, not? Let it be a factor. Let the fact that this is a month with an “R” in it be a factor. I don’t care. If someone asks me for my reasons, I’ll either refuse to answer (it being none of their business) or I’ll lie just to get rid of them. I see no obligation.
Always? If a 250-lb drunken burglar walks into your house late one night, puts you in a headlock and won’t let go, do you have the right to use force to get him to release you? Do you have to right to call the cops and have them force the burglar to release you? If you don’t have that right, doesn’t that mean he can hold on as long as he likes? If you do break the headlock, can you demand the burglar leave your property? If you don’t have that right, doesn’t that mean he can stay as long as he likes?
If you do have the right to demand the police make the burglar release you and get off your property, what if the burglar dies after he resists and the cops use tasers? Is that your fault? Can his relatives sue you because his right to life trumped your right to property? It’s easy enough to justify breaking the headlock - that’s a clear case of assault. If you can’t recognize the validity of the property issue as well, then I invite every homeless person in your neighborhood to crash at your place. You can’t make them leave - you apparantly don’t have that right.
Frankly, I strongly suspect the spaceship issue wouldn’t be nearly as contentious if the stowaway, instead of being two, was thirty-two. Laws based on who is more sympathetic are a very bad idea.
Is it? I have a justification that’s sufficiently compelling to me. Do I have to run it by some kind of merit scale?
Then, yes, we do disagree on whose right is greater. The rights of toddlers are pretty well-set, unless they’re in some unlikely hypothetical where others are at risk (for that matter, that’s true of adults, too). When it comes to fetuses, I’ll side with the woman in the here-and-now over some potential future. Innocence doesn’t impress me, nor am I going to side with who is “cuter”.
What it sounded like was you had no justification at all. You specifically set aside the fact that the space mission would be at risk at all, just to clarify how much latitude you felt entitled to in making your decision. I interpreted that to mean that even in the absence of any risk or of any material inconvenience, you could flush young Timmy out the air lock based on any whim or inclination you might pull of of thin air. Was there another way to intepret your words?
Again, I’ll take your word for it that you mean this, but it rings of a strenuous but unconvincing attempt to show how consistent your beliefs are. It’s hard to believe any reasonable person would hold this, that a toddler could be jettisoned, in the absence of any real risk posed, because he has blue eyes. If you actually mean that you can address any perceived risk, in the name of self-determination, as you see fit, then you’re changing the words I reacted to–the risk was specifically disregarded.
Cute isn’t the issue. Fetuses before a certain point aren’t terribly attractive. Not to me, anyway.
No, that’s bang on. I decided to space Timmy/Billy/whatever because I didn’t want him around and that’s sufficient justification in itself, as far as I’m concerned.
If I decide I have complete autonomy over who gets to ride my spaceship, then I can kick off anybody I want, for any reason I want. The point is, I don’t recognize your right (or anyone else’s) to choose which criteria I have to satisfy. My position is consistent, but it’s not for shock value or anything - it’s to clearly demonstrate that I am unswayed by pro-lifers who, in an appeal to emotion, like to describe their poster-mother as Look, she’s getting rid of her baby because she just bought ten new pairs of skin-tight pants. I’m not impressed nor swayed by the attempt to make her decision look trivial and selfish and thus her right to choose is not worth defending, so when I get a chance to discuss what I would do in a similar hypothetical, I make a point of saying that I’m not going to subject my decisions to the approval of anyone else, even if they feel my decision is trivial and selfish. In fact, because I don’t want to waste time answering a whole bunch of “What if?” questions where a pro-lifer tries vainly to find some kind of “gotcha!” flaw in my beliefs, I jump straight to the end and offer up the most trivial selfish reasons I can think of, as well as my disinterest in having to justify any of them.
Similarly, I think it’s a huge mistake and waste of time for pro-choicers to play definition games over what is and is not “life”, is or is not "human, is or is not “a person” etc. I don’t care. I defend the woman’s right to choose because she’s the one who, if denied that choice, is forced to suffer the intrusion while a simple quick remedy exists. I find it barbaric and misogynistic in the extreme that this remedy is denied to her so that people who are not involved won’t feel bad about the poor little innocent aborted fetuses. If the technology existed to instantly and painlessly transplant the fetus from a woman who didn’t want it into a woman who does, great. Until that wondrous day, we use the tools we have.
If you’re still not convinced I’m dead serious, then I don’t know what more I could possibly do, short of building a spaceship and posting a sign that stowaways are subject to airlock-tossing without notice or appeal.
Is innocence a factor? Does the person who is more innocent have more rights than someone less so?
Seems to me you’re making my point. You’re answering the hypothetical to make a point about abortion, not to answer the hypothetical. And I’ll flat out say it–I don’t believe you’d do it, even if you’ve convinced yourself otherwise. I don’t believe an extremely large percentage of people would, pro-choicers included.
“If I decide I have complete autonomy over who gets to ride my spaceship” is a given that leads to your conclusion–if it were a given. Not to re-open old wounds, but you could replace the latter part of the phrase with “…who gets to walk on my lawn” and my original question would still stand. Why is one logical and the other not, casting all concerns about risk and inconvenience aside?
That’s dangerously close to saying “no woman would abort her fetus if she could avoid it, therefore she’s being pressured into it.” If pretending that I wouldn’t casually space a toddler and a woman wouldn’t casually abort a pregnancy makes you feel better, go ahead.
It was never a wound - it was a complete irrelevancy (a clean miss, as it were). Putting aside all whacky hypotheticals and possible but unlikely ways the situation could spin out of control (i.e. I tell a kid to get off my lawn - he replies he’ll torch the place if I don’t let him stay), if my goal is to get a kid off my lawn, I have numerous options to accomplish this that put neither myself nor the kid at risk. I have considerably fewer non-lethal options to get someone off my spaceship, and so far a pregnant woman (as far as I know) has no non-lethal options to remove a fetus from her uterus, especially an early-term fetus, when the removal procedure is easy and poses the lowest risk to her.
That said, just because I recognize that things might get extreme, and I’m not going to rule out the possibility that I might have to take extreme action (it’s not enough that some third party says I should never do this; if I feel I have to, I will), this doesn’t mean the extreme response is my first and only response.
I recognize the possibility that a situation might lead to me using lethal force. Some people never want to admit that, especially if the target of that force is sympathetic. I’m not going to let their reluctance to face reality deny me a right I hold dear. So, yes, I might space the kid or I might not. I might shoot an underage trespasser or I might not. These are hard decisions, but I’ll make them and deal with the aftermath. I want that right, so I’ll accept that responsibility.
So if a 250-lb man with the mind of a six year-old walks into your house and is determined to play “Hulk Hogan” with you and your possessions, is he deserving of more, less, or equal protection than a vandal who performs the same action knowingly?
The former I commented on with regard to casual disregard, not the latter.
You could ignore the blue-eyed kid who poses no risk or inconvenience to you, right? You could lock him in his room, you could put him in a closet, right? Why toss him into the great black yonder, except for the effect you were trying to create?
Well, this clarifies a good bit. I’d still suggest that flushing Timmy when there is no threat or risk is indefensible, however sacred that “right” seems to you. And, of course, it’s the essence of our disagreement on abortion (though a risk is present, the risk is generally not sufficient to intrude on the unborn’s right to live, is my position).
You’re assuming this spaceship has a spare room or a closet. That’s fine if we envision the luxurious and fictional starship Enterprise, but more problematic if we use the real and cramped Apollo 11. A spaceship with comfortably large resources defeats the purpose of the analogy, just as speculating on a fetus that stays the size of a grain of sand through its entire gestation (and thus presents little if any of the discomfort and hardship of a real pregnancy - essentially one of those “one percent” deals mentioned earlier) would.
The “effect” is that I’m claiming a right for myself while simultaneously defending a similar right for women. I consider this of some importance.
Hey, give the fetus all the rights you want, but there are numerous situations where one individual’s rights (accepting with a shrug for the purpose of this statement that a fetus qualifies as an individual) yield to another’s. I gather we agree this is one such situation, though with different ideas of who has priority.
Well, that’s very non-commital of you. If I may be more direct, what “more” rights does the child-man possibly have over the vandal, though each are performing the same damage to you and your possessions?
Now you’re changing the hypothetical you modified into one where there is a risk and an inconvenience.
Yes. I would argue that the most fundamental right is to live. Without that right, no other right has meaning.
It’s as much as I could commit, given how specifically you described the hypothetical for me. Shall I finish the scenario for you, with enough specifics to make a firmer statement? If I believe the vandal may pose a threat to my life, and I have no such belief regarding the child-man, the vandal may well have forfeited his right to live by his actions. The man-child has not. If the man-child threatens my life unintentionally, I grant him greater latitude in subduing him. It’s axiomatic for me that we are all collectively responsible for the well-being of innocents, up to some line that is difficult to draw.
If they’re both just tearing up my shit, I’ll call the cops.
What and when was this modification I supposedly changed? Right up until you started talking about rooms and closets, “the spaceship” was a pretty vaguely-defined concept. I thought it was supposed to suggest isolation and the need for hard decisions about resources. If resources are available to the degree that a stowaway can simply be parked in a room for months on end with no effect on the mission, then what’s the point of the analogy?
Now, before that triggers the next round of how I’m demanding the right to be frivolous, I’ll just reiterate… yes, I do demand that right.
Then there exists no right to use deadly force in one’s self-defense? There is no right (or if you prefer, duty) of a police sniper to take out a person who has taken hostages? If a child is determinedly playing with a loaded gun, pointing it at people, and the only way to stop him is to shoot him, that’s off the table?
Take a wild guess - how much personal injury is tolerable before the man-child expends his latitude? Can he give you a black eye? Can he break your arm?
Can the cops use deadly force to remove them if they violently resist? Does the man-child still get more latitude? When the tasers come out, what if someone dies? Is it murder? Is it murder if the cops kill the man-child or the vandal because they believe your life in danger? Is it only murder if the man-child dies, but the vandal is fair game? Does the man-child have to be run though an innocence scan before it can be decided if he still has rights? What if the vandal doesn’t threaten you personally but the man-child says “I’m gonna kill you” repeatedly? At what point do you start taking him seriously? When he’s got his hands around your neck?
Let me answer this, and all your other hypotheticals, by emphasizing the clause in what you quoted that applies:
Given that this is not merely a conflict between my right to property and the burglar’s right to life, your questions do nothing to challenge my assertion.
Classy–and similarly missing the point. If those homeless people don’t leave when I ask them to, then I may use nonlethal force to get them out of my house. Sure, they may die through the use of that force, but that’s a pretty miniscule possibility, and I cannot be responsible for the unforeseeable consequences of my actions.
This is why argument by analogy is so irritating, incidentally. So often, the analogies suck ass.
You can choose to isolate those two if you wish, and it’s very easy and clear cut if someone is misusing your property when you’re not around (and thus there is no immediate or likely thread to your safety, by virtue of your absence) but what if someone comes into your home when you are there? There’s an implied threat to your property and your person.
Well, if they die, it’s by definition not nonlethal force. In any case, you’ve now expressed the right to defend your home. What about your body? If one of these homeless people grabs you and is determined to not let go, do you have the right to use your potentially lethal “nonlethal” force? If not, why not? You’ve accepted that you might kill to remove someone from your home (minuscule though the chances may be), would you do the same to remove someone from your body? If not, why not?