Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> writes: > And "right" and "wrong", do they have well-defined semantics? No, > they don't, and yet you used them freely to make your point. How's > that for consistency?
Since I assumed they have no well-defined meanings, I used them such that what I mean with them would have hopefully been clear enough. (Which was the human well-being thing.) > Use the words I suggested, and this problem disappears, even if others > remain. Well, that's false. Many people think it's amoral to be homosexual. And many countries' laws forbid it, too. That's why I think right/moral and wrong/amoral are more or less synonyms, and laws are just their concrete codification. (And again, I was going on the assumption of an agreement on that human-rights based morals are the "correct" morals.) >> (Except for laws, though I'm confused on how they're relevant at >> all.) > > Perhaps you don't understand why we have laws, then. I said that because laws are just the written down form of what a group of people think is right. They are the end product of a discussion on what is and isn't right; using them to decide that would be circular logic, so they have no place in that discussion. (Or maybe just as reference on what people previously decided, to use some possibly acceptable form of appeal to authority or popular opinion; but you get what I mean.) > Tell me: when someone shoots a burglar who broke into their house and > threatened them with a weapon, what exactly happens to the "human > well-being" of the burglar? It's traded off for the well-being of the home owner, and probably for the well-being of future possible victims. "Ethics calculus." ;-) Anyway, I now suspect that the discussion might go on for dozens of mails if we don't just abruptly stop; I had previously hoped that we would instead quickly either agree or agree to disagree on clear points. Or maybe we can just agree to disagree on the meaning and importance of laws? The other points seem cleared up, I think. I'm desperately looking for a way to end the discussion without requiring either side to accept giving the other the "last word," so help me a little... Taylan
