I didn’t, and I officially inform you of my intention to pout about it. 
I see this as the free parking fallacy. If there is slavery and it is legal, people will have to use it, evil or not. I may not like it, but if everyone else has free labour how am I suppose to compete, this cotton isn’t going to pick itself. I’m not a hypocrite if I’m simply playing by the rules establish.
Said another way, why was murder made a crime? And when did a reasonable person decide it was evil?
It’s interesting you mention Brazil. I was in Australia a few weeks ago and stopped by a coffee farm. Australia used to be a huge producer of coffee until progressive liberalization of society increased the cost of labour. Meanwhile, places like Brazil and South America could produce extremely cheap coffee by using cheap labour (slaves). Australia couldn’t possibly compete and basically stopped producing coffee until a mechanical harvester was developed.
Says you. I could just as easily dehumanize black folks or women and truncate their rights (or even enslave them) just by saying “well they’re not really people”
That’s just an argument that they weren’t reasonable; not that a reasonable person wouldn’t have known better.
If that was true, then they wouldn’t have done so; but they did.
Only really if we’re talking about slavery in the American south. Slavery wasn’t usually hereditary, so the son or daughter of a slave wouldn’t normally have been considered a de facto slave in most circumstances.
Sometimes it was hereditary, though, for example the Spartans tried to maintain a hereditary under class that most would view as a slave-class.
In medieval Europe it wasn’t unheard of for a seigneur to have a bastard with a serf. Often times the bastard child would be raised in the same manner as the seigneurs own legitimate children. The bastard sons of European nobles were almost universally better off than normal serfs, they sometimes even managed to legitimize themselves, they usually were able to have some sort of leadership position in the local ruling structure.
So in the case of medieval serfdom the hereditary nature of serfs didn’t always apply when the child was the offspring of the seigneur.
Yeah, I think you’ve got it backwards. The very concept of ‘the other’ in basic language implies inferiority. If I recall correctly, the greek root of ‘barbarian’ comes from some vague concept of ‘those losers who can’t even speak properly’. That implies strongly that those not a part of ones ‘tribe, city, family’ or whatever are NOT as valuable as those who are and could therefore be inferior and then could be enslaved downstream.
There’s no justification needed if the basic concepts in ones head spell out the other’s inferiority.
Irrelevant, since I think we both have established most people weren’t reasonable until every recently.
First, cite? People who bothered to explain the morality of their actions were the exception, not the rule. If you can prove otherwise I’ll be very enlightened.
The difference is, I am objectively right, and you are objectively wrong. No amount of insistence that an embryo is a person will make it one; and no amount of instance that black people aren’t people will make them subhuman.
The concept of the “barbarian” has been known since antiquity. It has been used by various “civilized” Empires or powers to essentially refer to the rest of the world. The upper class that marched with Alexander genuinely viewed the entire world as barbaric and open for conquest. Likewise, Romans considered everyone barbarians, even the Carthaginians, who were as civilized and advanced as the Romans themselves.
I think this is a fascinating debate, and hope to take part in it later when I have more time. I just want to chime and say that I tend to think of these things as pre-Darwin and post-Darwin. I believe his ideas turned conventional thinking about humans upside down, and set the stage for a scientific understanding that we are all “equal”.
It’s not irrelevant since that’s the question in the OP. Not “when would people as they actually were” have disapproved of slavery; but reasonable ones.
I already mentioned the example of declaring local people to be cannibals to justify enslaving them. Really; when haven’t people made up stories demonizing other people in order to justify their actions against them?
I agree.
And I agree.
But it seems as though you’re arguing my thesis.
Newborn babies do not have any more of a sense of self than an 8 month fetus.
Isn’t that what I said, Martin? And the concept that ‘the other’ isn’t worth thinking about is still with us in many forms. Even such things as sports team allegiance has a great deal of that in it!
That’s very deterministic and I find I disagree. You’re positing here that one has to play within the rules of one’s society and I agree. But making something legal and accepted doesn’t mean that it is required. I would be deeply surprised if any society had a majority of households with slaves. With no data (forgive me) I would see Ashoka’s decree as really only impacting the classes with the wherewithal to own and maintain slaves. To the hoi polloi I can’t see them doing more than shrugging and getting on with their lives.
Also, your assumption that slaves are ‘free labor’ is a fallacy, I think. Even if one thinks of slaves as livestock they are expensive, as with horses and such, to maintain. Feed, housing, land for housing, health care, supervision and so forth don’t come cheaply or freely. And not providing such only means that to maintain your ‘herd’ (God help me) will be even more costly.
I still think that if we’re going to look back through history for a point in time, we should at least establish that exists currently.
As an example, think about the evolution (or creation) of a bat. We could have a debate about when in history a bird became a bat, and go on and on about wings and abortion. But a bat isn’t a bird, so that point in time is a stupid thing to look for.
The question is DOES a reasonable person know slavery is evil? Is this even true today? If we can’t establish it as current, there is not point looking at people in the 18th century.
Oh, and fuck off with the abortion non-human bullshit, not even remotely constructive.
Whoops.
Er… the sun got in my eyes. Yeah, that’s it. The sun.
Sorry. Right you are – your post, too, did not fall into that category. My bad.
You seem to use the term “red herring” an awful lot to dismiss argument taht you don’t want to deal with.
As I said before, stop getting side tracked with abortion nonsense. We all know where it leads.
That’s what you think, and there is nothing that will ever change your mind so I’ll apologize for mentioning abortion and we can stop derailing this thread.
If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate!