Hi adigitallife,

Forcing someone to do something doesn't necessarily harm them

only ethical people should be allowed to define harm.

Your example was of a baby. I usually confine my discussions to sane adults, then if we have agreement there, we can try to talk about kids. The two quotes here pertain to a philosophical concept that is important to discuss if there is to be any chance of having constructive dialog among political parties... so I would say that our discussion here has implications far beyond this post.

Behind the two quotes seems to be a belief that some people are morally superior to others in this regard: (a) the superior people actually know and understand the "correct" ethics, morality, or utilitarian calculus, and (b) it is appropriate/morally acceptable/justified for morally superior people to force other people to do (certain kinds of...) things against their will. Please modify my wording if you have something more accurate to describe your position.

I oppose the idea that one person (or group of people) can be morally superior to another in a way that allows one group to control another group against their will (I am talking exclusively about sane adults). My argument is a scientific one in which we start with a null hypothesis (meaning that there is no difference between two groups of people) and then we see if there is objective evidence that allows us to reject the null hypothesis and determine that we have high confidence that there is a moral distinction between two people (or groups of people) that allows one to dominate the other legitimately.

There is a lack of evidence to suggest that there is such a difference between groups. I say this because there is a lack of evidence to suggest that moral perceptions can be quantified objectively on a scale that mixes unlike things (such as measuring some kind of moral good against loss of liberty). Without an objective measurement scale, there can not be an objective way to measure the moral superiority of one group over another... we would be left with the null hypothesis that all sane adults are on the same moral plane.

Keep in mind, I spent years developing a measure of moral perception, but it is objective only in the sense that it measures one construct along a very specific scale that I defined. I can not objectively "weigh" the moral value of that type of things versus a dissimilar moral construct.

That's a lot of words, but can you tell me in your own words how you might determine who the "ethical people" are or what kind of things they can or can not (justifiably) do to the unwilling masses?

thx