BEST TO PLAY IT SAFE AND DO NOTHING
Libertarian intellectual Jason Soon denies the notion of culpability through inaction:
Update: Unable to win the argument, the real Soon comes to the fore:
Libertarian intellectual Jason Soon denies the notion of culpability through inaction:
People are not responsible for causing a bad thing to happen just because they do nothing to stop it - contrary to the claims of idealists through the ages.If he saw an old woman about to be mugged he'd look the other way. That's just the sort of public behaviour criminals hope for.
Update: Unable to win the argument, the real Soon comes to the fore:
You truly are a despicable intellectually incoherent piece of trash CL.Hell, he even brags about name-calling:
I don’t particularly like JF Beck. That’s on the public record. I’ve called him all sorts of names and made my dislike of him clear. He’s a prat, but he’s a shit stirrer and sometimes his participation adds tabliodish human drama.Calling me a prat is much easier than telling me where I've gotten it wrong.
posted by Anonymous at 10:17 PM |
5 Comments:
What Soon says is perfectly true; "People are not responsible for causing a bad thing to happen just because they do nothing to stop it". Ie. inaction is not causation. This does not mean there's no moral culpability for failing to intervene - it's a different issue.
What Soon said had nothing to do with the discussion. Nobody had argued that anyone had CAUSED anything. Far from being "perfectly true", it was perfectly tendentious.
The action/inaction diversion was introduced by John to provide cover for Jason who suggested that not donating to charity could be considered (by someone - him?, somebody else? - who knows?) MURDER!! As old thread debaters know, when you're losing, choose an irrelevant question, demand that it be answered and keep saying it hasn't been so newcomers think you're "winning". Action and inaction - not that this has anything to do with the debate - can indeed be morally comparable, as the Nuremberg judges believed. John sides against those men. He is now implying there would be nothing morally problematic about watching a baby drown, provided you didn't it hold its head under yourself. This gives an insight into why libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul polls about 1 or 2 per cent in the US. Libertarians are considered morally strange. John believes "Jesus" may have been hundreds of Jesus and may not have existed as the vast majority of scholars believe he did. When I've asked him if he also believes in UFOs, John refuses to answer.
The action/inaction equivalence was introduced by CL, and this has been what we've been debating for the past few days. Now CL tries to pretend it's a diversion.
Jason's analogy was introduced to show that action & inaction are not morally equivalent. CL still doesn't understand the analogy. It's sad really.
The Nuremberg judges did not say that action and inaction are morally equivalent.
I didn't say that there is nothing wrong with watching a baby drown. That is a blatent lie. What is wrong with you CL?
Strangely, you keep bringing up religion. But if I bring up your religion you start to get touchy and break down. For the record, I'm sure there were hundreds of people called Jesus, but I doubt that the biblical record of Jesus life is based on fact. This is not a strange position.
In contrast, CL believes that a guy walked on water and changed water to wine and brought people back from the dead. Most scholars (despite CLs fantasy) disagree. All very strange. He still hasn't said whether he believes in UFOs too, to match his walk-on-water sky-fairies fantasy.
Jason's analogy was introduced to show that action & inaction are not morally equivalent.
Nobody implied they always were. They may be comparable, though, in many circumstances. John denies this with botched analogies that display a woeful ignorance of law, history and even contemporary events. Note that I didn't argue that John said it was "good" to watch babies drown. What I said was that doing so may indeed be morally comparable to murdering a baby. (As per John's analogy, in which the baby is murdered).
John is a liar and his own libertarian pillow-fighters have now abandnoned him at Catallaxy. This is a major humiliation. And the more humiliating it becomes the more Jason and John pile on the personal abuse.
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