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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 10, 2011 10:30 AM |
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Fauch:
There's no difference between "There's no way for me to get the medicine" because it doesn't exist and "There's no way for me to get the medicine" because no one will give it to me. In both cases you have no way of getting the medicine, therefore you are unaffected by the fact that it exists, and therefore anyone who chooses to withhold it from you is not harming you.
JJ:
No, it wouldn't make us robots, it would make us consistent - we would practice what we preach. As for changing the law, it would change both as it (hopefully) approaches moral law and as new things are invented for which current law is insufficient.
del_diablo:
Quote:
The person HAS a right to temporally enslave others
I strongly disagree, but I'm glad you admit that slavery is okay under certain circumstances. At least you're intellectually honest. But you saying this is inconsistent withQuote:
However, you never approved in the first place, meaning that the other person don't really have any rights compared to you.
Why is it that a person in a car accident has rights against passerby (who didn't "approve" the car accident), but the person attached to you doesn't have rights against you?
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Eccentric Opinion
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 10, 2011 10:47 AM |
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Not true, Mvass.
Think about medicine. It was forbidden to work with dead people. Only breaking the law allowed medical progress at all, and only medical progress (the actual proof that this would gain) allowed laws to change.
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted November 10, 2011 10:47 AM |
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2 scenarios:
-he dies because you are the only option
-He can still be saved if a replacement is found
My freedom trumps his, because his enslavement of me is permanent. If is is perhaps 2-3 weeks, thats my personal limit for accepting such things. If I didn't approve, I didn't, and we are talking a permanet robbing of rights.
Its not really a contradiction, but rather a alien thought for you.
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Fauch
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 10, 2011 10:59 AM |
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Edited by Fauch at 11:00, 10 Nov 2011.
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Quote:
Fauch:
There's no difference between "There's no way for me to get the medicine" because it doesn't exist and "There's no way for me to get the medicine" because no one will give it to me. In both cases you have no way of getting the medicine, therefore you are unaffected by the fact that it exists, and therefore anyone who chooses to withhold it from you is not harming you.
maybe from an external point of view, it doesn't make any difference.
if something doesn't exist, of course, you aren't going to worry about it. well more exactly what's important is not whether that thing exists or not, but whether you believe that it exists or not.
so if you believe that it doesn't, there is no reason to worry about it. but if you believe it does, but it is denied to you, well, there must still be at least one snowing way you can get it. and you will torture your mind to find out how.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 10, 2011 11:06 AM |
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Okay, here's
Dilemma 13.1
for you.
Dr. No finds the definite cure against cancer. He tests it on a couple of subjects and everything works fine.
After the news leaked and are published worldwide, Dr. No calls in a press conference and declares, that he's sorry the news leaked, but for reasons he won't explain to the public he won't share his findings with the world. He will destroy his research and keep the magic cancer cure to himself.
Let's assume, no big corp has funded his research, so it's indeed HIS.
How would you judge his behaviour, morally?
Does he have the right to act like he does. SHOULD he act so?
Should society become active in any way?
Could society shange the laws and declare it rightful to try and force the man to divulge his secrets?
SHOULD soeciety do so?
Are there really absolute answers to all of this?
After you've made up your mind, the story goes on.
While the world is still debating if to do omething and what, Dr. No gives another PC. He declares, he's considered everything and has come to the decision to still keep the magic formula, but open his house for treatment. Everyone can visit him and apply for treatment. He'll listen to their story, decide whether to help and if so, whether to charge a fee or a service which the applicants can accept (for treatment) or deny (no treatment).
Comments?
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted November 10, 2011 11:31 AM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 11:44, 10 Nov 2011.
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Quote:
It's true that the pharmacist's inaction is increasing the chances of her death, but that doesn't mean he's harming her. You can't harm someone unless you do something to them (or fail to do something you've agreed to do). Imagine the pharmacist and cure didn't exist. The wife would still die. If introducing an unhelpful pharmacist into the scenario doesn't change her circumstances in any way, then he can't be said to be harming her.
We are not playing with "ifs" here, this could go on ad infinitum just by adding more and more presumptions. A chance to save the woman does exist. This chance is not used because of the conscious unwillingness of the pharmacist - which is very different from saying that the pharmacist does not exist in which case there would be no dilemma. The pharmacist himself however does exist and does live in a social environment which is governed by various laws, the judicial system being only a small fraction of the latter. He is consciously condemning another person to death with his inaction and even if the law of the given country protect him against the eventual indictments of the husband, he'll most likely be considered guilty by most of the other systems that govern the social behaviour of the people in the given society.
You seem to think that the pharmacist invents the drug all on his own and owes nothing to the society. That would be so if the pharmacist has grown up in a cave, raised by wolves and had no contact with human beings at all but suddenly God Almighty inspired him and he invented the drug, using field materials - and that seems to be the problem with everyone who's protecting the so called "unlimited freedom" of the individuals in the society. Sadly though, this is not how it works. The pharmacist was raised by humans, in the midst of a civilization which keeps evolving since the Neolithic period not thanks to pharmacists raised by feral animals, he received education using the knowledge that other people gathered through the millenia, he was provided with the means to do his research - probably by some university or company - and finally invested his bit of talent to invent the drug. So his contribution is solely the last part but he's in debt to the society for everything else because he couldn't have achieved anything without the base provided by it. So, in the case with the dying wife he's not threatened in any way if he gives the society - represented by the husband - the drug and receive a good payment of this but he refuses, led only by his selfish understanding that he's entitled to every price that he may demand for the drug - which is apparently not true. So he's behaving in an anti-social way and thus can be condemned by every system that protects the social integrity, including (although not necessarily) the judicial one.
Quote:
You also didn't answer my questions. Do you think the husband would be justified in robbing the pharmacist and even beating him badly and killing him? Do you think it's acceptable for a private citizen to use violence against people who do you no harm but simply don't do what you want them to?
I have but maybe you have to read between the lines. The pharmacist does harm - whether the law of the given country recognizes this as "harm" or not. From the husband's perspective he's taking away the best (and maybe the only) chance to save his wife in time without explaining his motives in a way that he (the husband) or any other decent "private citizen" would respect. The greed is condemnable in all societies even if it is not threatening someone's life directly and in this case it's even worse. So in essence the husband has no real reasons to respect the property and eventually even the life of the pharmacist who in turn does not respect the wife's right to live. Moreover, the pharmacist - if he has the slightest idea how the humans think or stop to think - should have thought that his refusal made in such a blatant way is very likely to provoke something unpleasant for him. So whether the husband's actions are justified is purely subjective (justified from what perspective?) but they are completely natural.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted November 10, 2011 11:52 AM |
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baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted November 10, 2011 12:49 PM |
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Edited by baklava at 12:52, 10 Nov 2011.
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This looks like a good time to sneak away from this subject, so I'll just answer those MVass' few comments, and be on my way.
The poor don't deserve my money more, it was never about that. It's simply about them being in a crappy situation and me wanting to make it a bit easier for them. Most of them doesn't deserve to be in that situation, and since the system doesn't help them enough (and it ought to be the main source of help), then the few able individuals are the only ones who can - though they're never enough, either. And it's, like Zeno said, about the current economic system failing every few years, leaving me incapable of making such major donations as, for example, selling one of my two apartments and donating the money because I might lose my job tomorrow.
I think you can't see the forest from the trees here, the trees in this case being terms like "deserve", "efficient" or "better off".
I agree about the pharmacist having no physical obligation to help. That's why I would opt to reform the market (or even limit it, as much as I hate limiting anything that has "free" in its name) in cases of medicine, pharmacology, and similar, like that primitive example about compensation that I mentioned. Because we can't allow the only entity able to save a life to be able to say "I don't feel like it", if you can't pay their arbitrarily set price that can be a hundredfold higher than the production costs.
And the right to live is not just about the right to not get killed by someone, it's about the right to be protected from dying if possible, including illnesses, hunger, lions, zombies etc. The reason people came up with the state apparatus is that it's supposed to protect and help them.
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted November 10, 2011 09:22 PM |
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JollyJoker: Cancer is a very large group of extremely lethal diseases, if we could cure it, we have basically aquired the key to solve aging and cure it. Its not "a disease", its "the damn disease".
Curing "them" means a leap of 150-300 years of medical techology.
Altruism might be evil, but I don't want cancer and neither do you.
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Duke_Falcon
Disgraceful
Supreme Hero
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posted November 10, 2011 09:51 PM |
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Quote:
1 How would you judge his behaviour, morally?
2 Does he have the right to act like he does?
3 SHOULD he act so?
4 Should society become active in any way?
5 Could society shange the laws and declare it rightful to try and force the man to divulge his secrets?
6 SHOULD soeciety do so?
7 Are there really absolute answers to all of this?
1 Mostly with suspicious. Maybe think he has something to hide or threated by someone (big-corps) to do so?
2 He certainly has, since he is the inventor.
3 Yes but it trigger suspicion and dozens of questions...
4 Depends on certain cultural bases I think (maybe I'm wrong though)...
5 Could but it will lead to chaos. Basic rights are cemented because of good reasons.
6 Hard matter. Look answer 5...
7 No. It's just can't be from so few datas you give...
Quote:
While the world is still debating if to do omething and what, Dr. No gives another PC. He declares, he's considered everything and has come to the decision to still keep the magic formula, but open his house for treatment. Everyone can visit him and apply for treatment. He'll listen to their story, decide whether to help and if so, whether to charge a fee or a service which the applicants can accept (for treatment) or deny (no treatment).
He has the right to do so. Morally and\or etically questionable? Yes. But currently he has the right.
But someone may say that only God has the right to choose whom live and whom die...
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Duke_Falcon
Disgraceful
Supreme Hero
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posted November 10, 2011 09:53 PM |
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Quote:
JollyJoker: Cancer is a very large group of extremely lethal diseases, if we could cure it, we have basically aquired the key to solve aging and cure it. Its not "a disease", its "the damn disease".
So true... I could tell it with experience...
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 11, 2011 12:20 AM |
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JJ:
Quote:
Only breaking the law allowed medical progress at all, and only medical progress (the actual proof that this would gain) allowed laws to change.
That doesn't address what I said at all.
As for your dilemma, he has the right to do so, but he shouldn't, and he should be encouraged to release the cure, but, again, should not be forced to do so. That's an absolute answer. Opening his house for treatment is better, but is still not as good as releasing the formula to the general public.
del_diablo:
Why is the length of time of enslavement a factor? If slavery is bad, then even a little temporary slavery is wrong.
Fauch:
Undoubtedly, but the key part is that "you'll torture your mind", not the pharmacist.  He's not doing anything to you. Objectively, you aren't affected by it in any way.
Zeno:
"Ifs" are the key determinant here. Whether he is harming someone can only be determined by comparison to a counterfactual possibility. For the wife to be harmed, it first must be shown that she is affected by the unhelpful pharmacist's existence. If he and his medicine didn't exist, the wife would still die the same way as if he existed but refused to give her the medicine. In short, that means she is unaffected by his existence. And if she is unaffected by his existence, it is contradictory to say that he harms her.
As for your other point - the pharmacist didn't grow up in a cave but he still doesn't owe society anything, because no such entity as society exists. The pharmacist was raised by his parents, who voluntarily supplied him with much of what he has - so he doesn't owe them anything. He was fed by food bought from stores, which he paid for and acquired through voluntary exchange - she he doesn't owe anything there. He is kept safe by police and military paid for with his taxpayer dollars - so he doesn't owe the government anything more. He can only owe something if he agrees to receive X in exchange for him doing Y, and he received X but hasn't done Y yet. But everything was either given to him voluntarily (so he doesn't have to do Y) or he already paid for it.
And how does the husband represent society, anyway? He hasn't done anything for the pharmacist.
Bak:
Thank you for taking the controversial and "antisocial" position against slavery. 
But there seems to be an inconsistency in your view. You say the pharmacist doesn't have to help, but then you say that the "right to live" means the right to be protected from dying. Someone has to act to protect someone from dying. When (as in cases like this) they don't act voluntarily, you're implying that someone should be forced to act to protect this right.
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Eccentric Opinion
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 11, 2011 07:48 AM |
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Quote:
JollyJoker: Cancer is a very large group of extremely lethal diseases, if we could cure it, we have basically aquired the key to solve aging and cure it. Its not "a disease", its "the damn disease".
Curing "them" means a leap of 150-300 years of medical techology.
Altruism might be evil, but I don't want cancer and neither do you.
Not true. Heart diseases are THE disease. Most people die from that, and if all diseases were cured, people would still die from heart attacks and strokes.
Just for information.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 11, 2011 08:35 AM |
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Quote:
JJ:
Quote:
Only breaking the law allowed medical progress at all, and only medical progress (the actual proof that this would gain) allowed laws to change.
That doesn't address what I said at all.
Sorry, it does.
Development of laws is possible only, if there is open dissens. If everyone follows the laws - why change it? Progress isn't automatic. We live in the world we live in, because people didn't follow the law - just think about the forming of the US. Or Adama & Eve, for that matter. 
It's like, you SHOULD follow the law, unless you have a really good, non-base reason NOT to. Because in the end, your obligations are not EXCLUSIVELY to the society you actually live in.
It's important to note that you should be prepared to pay the price for not following the law, that is, you should stand up for what you did - after all, you had a very good non-base reason. Still, breaking the law may earn you a penalty, either because your reasons don't stand up at court, or simply for the simple fact of breaking the law, as an example to not encourage people to break the law.
Law-breakers for base reasons usually spend a lot of time and effort to avoid being caught and punished. They dismiss the law as such.
The thing we are talking about, however, is something else, because standing up for your deed means, that you DO accept the law (and the necessity for punishment), but STILL broke it.
An easy example is the mentioned traffic-sinning: you have an acute heart-failure in your car and speed the hell to the next hospital. You'll have to face examination there, and you'll probably be punished, but you had good reason for doing what you did.
I think, that's different.
Let's take another example that's not so easy.
Let's say, someone kills the proven cold-blooded, confessing murderer of his/her child or spouse. Marching out of court, in cold blood he/she kills him. That's a crime, a serious break of law, and it's not even a crime that you could describe as non-base, not knowing the actual motives. The avenger, of course, stands up to it, and as defence he just says, my wife and me wouldn't have been able to live with this animal breathing the same air than us. I HAD to kill him, or I could just have killed my wife and me.
Now, the question isn't whether the guy will go to prison for murder in one or another degree with or without mitigating circumstances. The question is, whether it was MORALLY WRONG for him to act that way (we don't have that law because it's morally wrong [has been different in other times and still is in other places], we have it to avoid people running around and shoot each other), whether he goes to prison or not.
MORALLY, in my opinion only God - if he exists - can judge that. LEGALLY, however, we can, but I think for many people, ultimately judgement in such a case will depend on their idea of how the laws SHOULD be.
Now think about this: If there were enough cases of relatives of murder victims killing the offender, and if a sufficient number of mild verdicts were there, someone MIGHT suggest a change of law, that in case of violent crimes punishable with the highest possible sentence, THE RELATIVES may opt for the death penalty, provided THEY enforce it as well.
See, Mvass, a law, that is never broken, MUST be a good law. Or an unnecessary one. So why would anyone change it?
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted November 11, 2011 10:18 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
JollyJoker: Cancer is a very large group of extremely lethal diseases, if we could cure it, we have basically aquired the key to solve aging and cure it. Its not "a disease", its "the damn disease".
Curing "them" means a leap of 150-300 years of medical techology.
Altruism might be evil, but I don't want cancer and neither do you.
Not true. Heart diseases are THE disease. Most people die from that, and if all diseases were cured, people would still die from heart attacks and strokes.
Just for information.
"No".
Lets see:
-Regerating tumors
-Tumors disabeling their "death date"
-And thats just a few spesific points. Somebody with a better knowledge of cancer will be able to pick spesific subnames to prove this point
For the most, hearth attacks is not a disease, but rather the hearth reaching its breaking point, along with general decay in the body.
If you stopped aging at a age of 20, then frankly a lot of this would be "a non-problem" wouldn't it?
Cancer is after all nothing but cells developing a extremely unbeneficial code of operation, which is usually looked upon when it causes harm. That also involves a lot of large genetic problems too, which is itself a really large blackbox we won't crack for a while at the current medical pace.
Now, we would still not have cured broken spines and a lot of other large problems. The human mind might also have a built inn expiration date too, we might have a too small memory storage, but we have not had the chance to find this yet due our roughly 100 year limitation.
So I repeat: Cancer is THE disease, but not in total deaths.
mvassilev: Because time is a unit of time. I would even defend parts of slavery in the correct threads, but it would just be a lot of people jumping my posts instead of reading them.
"Our problem" here is that we merely disagree over how holy and sacred a specific moral is.
So you crash with a car, so if nobody is forced to stop, set out a sign, and call the police, who would save you?
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baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted November 11, 2011 10:57 AM |
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Edited by baklava at 11:05, 11 Nov 2011.
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@MVass
Is your ordinary guy next door, or some random man from Chicago or whatever, forced to protect any of your rights? No. They may, if they feel like it and are able to, and it's commendable if they do. But you can't count on it. The only thing with an obligation to do so would be the state apparatus. That was its bloody original purpose, wasn't it. Providing vital medicine to those who cannot afford it would seem like a pretty solid way of protecting your citizens and maintaining a respectable reputation anywhere except in America where cold war paranoia's still running rampant.
Seems to me you can do that in three ways.
First, let the pharmacological industry remain as it is now, buy medicine according to the price set by its producers, and give it to those who can't afford it.
Second, just like the first, except you give the medicine to anyone who needs it, using up more tax money but resulting in a, probably, fairer system.
And third, reform the industry in such a way that you, as a country, may produce and provide that medicine indefinitely at the lowest possible cost, including all the benefits and incentives you gave the original researchers of said medicine.
I mean, by the logic of complete pharmacological privatization, you may as well do it to your army as well. And then, in case of war, the military corporations would defend you, if you can afford it, and if your bloodthirsty Canadian enemies don't pay them more. In a nutshell, some things shouldn't be privatized, or at least can't function the same as the production and sales of mp3 players, and I believe one of those things to be the pharmaceutic industry.
____________
"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 11, 2011 12:39 PM |
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Quote:
For the most, hearth attacks is not a disease, but rather the hearth reaching its breaking point, along with general decay in the body.
No, that's not right. Coronary diseases are coronary diseases. There are those cases when the heart reaches breaking point "along with general decay of the body", but that's too for a couple of cancer diseases as well.
Also, I don't see why this point is relevant at all. In your post before that you wrote:
Quote:
JollyJoker: Cancer is a very large group of extremely lethal diseases, if we could cure it, we have basically aquired the key to solve aging and cure it. Its not "a disease", its "the damn disease".
Curing "them" means a leap of 150-300 years of medical techology.
Altruism might be evil, but I don't want cancer and neither do you.
You are claiming a couple of things here, things one might agree with or not - I don't -, but what have they to do with the actual dilemma?
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted November 11, 2011 01:20 PM |
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JollyJoker: Every human has a price, and 150-300 years of medical advancement in half a year is far beyond what price I might demand in the first place.
I am sure there are more people like me out there, so "his research" is not holy, we want to make sure "We" profit.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 11, 2011 01:35 PM |
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So you mean, take the guy, grab him and torture him until he spills everything out?
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted November 11, 2011 02:43 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 14:48, 11 Nov 2011.
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Quote:
"Ifs" are the key determinant here. Whether he is harming someone can only be determined by comparison to a counterfactual possibility. For the wife to be harmed, it first must be shown that she is affected by the unhelpful pharmacist's existence. If he and his medicine didn't exist, the wife would still die the same way as if he existed but refused to give her the medicine. In short, that means she is unaffected by his existence. And if she is unaffected by his existence, it is contradictory to say that he harms her.
And if the law system didn't exist, the husband would have been able to rob, beat and eventually kill the pharmacist with little to no consequences because most of the other social systems would justify his behaviour at least to an extent (the important part is that there would have been no law-enforced penalty and respectively fear of such). But what do you know, it exists. If the radium didn't exist, the drug would have never been created - yet it exists and the drug is a fact. And if the dying woman didn't exist, there wouldn't be any infuriated husband of a dying wife to steal drugs from the greedy pharmacist's house - somehow however this is not the case. And so on to the end of the world. See how the change of the "ifs" could change the entire situation or make it non-existent altogether? That is why what could have happened is irrelevant - what is relevant is the existing status quo where the drug exists and the pharmacist suffers the predictable consequences of being a scumbag.
Quote:
As for your other point - the pharmacist didn't grow up in a cave but he still doesn't owe society anything, because no such entity as society exists.
Sorry, what?
Quote:
The pharmacist was raised by his parents, who voluntarily supplied him with much of what he has - so he doesn't owe them anything. He was fed by food bought from stores, which he paid for and acquired through voluntary exchange - she he doesn't owe anything there. He is kept safe by police and military paid for with his taxpayer dollars - so he doesn't owe the government anything more. He can only owe something if he agrees to receive X in exchange for him doing Y, and he received X but hasn't done Y yet. But everything was either given to him voluntarily (so he doesn't have to do Y) or he already paid for it.
So the parents were raised in a cave then and the pharmacist is within his right to be perfectly ungrateful for the fact that they raised him? OK, sure, but what do you think is the base of the exchange system? Why do people pay each other for the goods they receive instead of breaking their heads and stealing? Following your logic, the only reason for the economy's existence is that there is a law which forces the people to remunerate the others for the goods and services they receive from them under the threat of penalty - which is just laughable.
As for what he or his parents have paid (obviously under the barrel of a gun or something) for his life, upbringing and education, it could get interesting. I don't know do you think that the several millenia of knowledge-gathering that resulted in the pharmacist eventual education as such cost the taxes that he or his parents have paid but let's skip that. Let's follow your logic. The pharmacist and his parents have spent X on his life as a whole, including the means to make him what he is, i.e. a pharmacist. Then he invents the drug and decides to sell it. So in order to owe nothing to the society, the pharmacist will have to sell the drug for a price that will never allow him to get more than X (not necessarily in one transaction of course). So he can't arbitrarily decide what will be the price, otherwise he's... hm, requesting more than he has received, possibly much more? Yet his (and your) logic is that he's entirely within his right to make such an arbitrary decision and enforce it on the others while the others can not enforce on him, for example, to get the drug for less than he finds appropriate no matter the circumstances. So care to explain why one of these arbitrary decisions would be "right" while the other would be "wrong"?
Quote:
And how does the husband represent society, anyway? He hasn't done anything for the pharmacist.
The husband is the pharmacist's eventual client so the fact that he has a dying wife changes little. The pharmacist could decide sell the drug for the same price to anyone in his community or on the planet. So the husband is in the same situation as the rest of the society is and just happens to be the individual that the pharmacist currently deals with. That's how.
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This thread is pages long: 
