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[Criptfeind]

It's a fair assessment. Just not right.

[Phmcw]

If by ridiculous you mean "why are we still arguing with him?", I can understand.

Hell if we want to point out thing that should make progressive cringe, I think we'll loose a lot of time if we try to convince ultra religious southern "conservative" to cringe with us.

At any rate. To further explain my view, I believe that all rights should be equal, but if some movie producer wants an all white male cast that is not anyone but his issue. Economic pressure should be the only thing that stops it.

Topical economic nonsense. If the guys is rich, or enough rich guys have an agenda, they could use it as Racist propaganda.
I'd rather not have to burn movies theaters, please keep the law that way.

[Grek]

A quick point to make: As someone who has played D&D and several forum games on the same team as Criptfeind, I would like to testify that he has an acerbic personality. Even if it seems like what he says is intended to offend you, it probably isn't. He always talks like that, even when he's just kidding around.


@Vector, in relation to Reply 16:
If this where my thread (which it obviously isn't), I would put the following quote from Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

...in big bold red letters in the OP, followed by an explaination of how it applies to EP and ethics.

Specifically, even if you did have unimpeachable scientific evidence to support a proposition like "man is naturally inclined towards rape" and could proove it to us without a shadow of a doubt and simultainously avoid turning the thread into an epic shitstorm the likes of which this forum has never seen (something that I highly doubt anyone who is reading this can do), you would be no closer to proving the conclusion "and therefore men ought not be held accountable for doing so" than when you started. You would further have to proove something along the lines of "Something being the case now makes it morally justified to support it in the future; it is a moral wrong to try to change the status quo in any way."

So, if you're using that sort of justification for supporting a morally untenable position, you're either ignorant, but making a bad argument in good faith (in which case you should go and read the OP) or a terrible human being who realizses that their argument is invalid but doesn't care as long as they can use it to get away with doing terrible things (in which case you should be beaten with a golf club).

[Vector]

Well, I've had a couple hours of much-needed sleep, and now I can reply:

Cryptfeind, hun, no matter how much I believe and hope that people here will back me up, there's something about saying--openly--just what you are that will always be terrifying.  It isn't that I'm a victim.  I am a minority here, and the thing about being a minority is that you don't have the privilege of stepping back and looking at things from afar.

I don't think that I have a minority of opinion, no, but I have a far bigger stake in this than most people do.  It makes me more frightened, nervous, and volatile than I'd like to be.  Casual comments can cut to the quick.


As far as your thing about minorities in media, we already had a thread on that and I sure as hell don't want to have to argue through my position again.  The statement that all people in narratives are cardboard cutouts--geez, I sure hope you pay more attention to the main-character demographics sometime, because in general you tend to get lots of interesting dudely characters and not that many interesting chickly characters.

Again, I don't want to entertain this argument here.  We've already gone over it extremely thoroughly in the old thread, and at this point, if you've read the whole thing and are still not swayed--and have no new points to put forward--I'm just going to call it a difference of opinion, and let it rest.


@Grek:

Wow, I'm glad to see such a polite and well-educated person attracted to this little thread!  You're right about the Hume and related musings, of course--I can't believe I missed that...

I'll have to simplify it in the OP for sake of readability, but I'll go back and change it in a while.  Thank you very much for the help.

[Leafsnail]

First, I was making fun of conservatives on this post.

The next time was when This guy GOt so angry that he said I was an arrogant ass, and started attacking my moral character. After that, it went down hill from there.

So basically you were trolling and... got annoyed that I said your supposedly joking position was arrogant?  Why would you get annoyed by someone saying that your parody of an arrogant religious fundamentalist was arrogant?  Eh.  I will say that there was no anger involved, though.  Just cold disgust.

At any rate, on the 'finding some one passed out and raping them is not rape' thing. I do believe it is counted under 'incapacitate rape' in one of the studies that wiki linked too from the page Vector linked too.

Hm... is it?  I'd assume incapacitate rape would be a variant of rape, not a separate charge, but I guess it's possible.

[Virex]

So, if you're using that sort of justification for supporting a morally untenable position, you're either ignorant, but making a bad argument in good faith (in which case you should go and read the OP) or a terrible human being who realizses that their argument is invalid but doesn't care as long as they can use it to get away with doing terrible things (in which case you should be beaten with a golf club).

I don't think I like the prospect of getting an acute case of cranial dislocation for disagreeing with you on what is morally untenable, scientifically proven or common knowledge, especialy considering I already have a hard enough time not getting kicked off the forum without disclaimers like this.

[Leafsnail]

Well, that refers to cases where you know your argument is invalid but you make it anyway so you can justify actions you know are wrong.  Although if you followed that principle you'd probably end up beating everyone to death if you ever went to a debating society.

[scriver]

and the thing about being a minority is that you don't have the privilege of stepping back and looking at things from afar.

I don't like nitpicking words like this, but could you please explain further what you mean by this?

[Vector]

and the thing about being a minority is that you don't have the privilege of stepping back and looking at things from afar.

I don't like nitpicking words like this, but could you please explain further what you mean by this?

Legislation related to things like access and services for people with wheelchairs is important to me, but it isn't my life.

However, should I be raped in Louisiana, it's me who's going to have to try to get abortion services, because I happen to have a woman-body and not a dude-body.  My existence, not some other group's, to whom I can say "weeeeeeell, I'm not sure we have the money for that right now.  Maybe later."

I can still be affected by the wheelchair legislation, of course.  Maybe I have a friend in a wheelchair or something.  I, personally, am the sort of person who occasionally gets paranoid about ending up in one.  But I am not a wheelchair-bound person.  It is not my mobility rights we are talking about.

Make sense?

[scriver]

Makes total sense, I think. I might've misunderstood the context, though, but I think I get it now.

[Grek]

I don't think I like the prospect of getting an acute case of cranial dislocation for disagreeing with you on what is morally untenable, scientifically proven or common knowledge, especialy considering I already have a hard enough time not getting kicked off the forum without disclaimers like this.

I feel that I may have been misunderstood. Here's an attempt to clarify, using the following intentionally terrible sample argument:

"Premise A: Grapes are yellow. Premise B: It is ok to eat things if and only if they are yellow. Conclusion: From A and B, we know that it bad to eat grapes."

The following counters to that argument are OK in my book:

-Disagreements about scientific fact: "I disagree with premise A; I believe that grapes are purple, not yellow."
-Disagreements about ethical priors: "I disagree with premise B; I do not believe that yellowness is the factor that makes it morally acceptable to eat something."
-Disagreements about validity: "I disagree with the conclusion; I do not believe that your conclusion that grapes are bad follows from your premises."

This argument, however, I am not OK with:

"Humans have a natural inclination towards eating grapes. Therefore, it is ok to eat grapes, regardless of other considerations."

Not only is that line of argument invalid (since it doesn't ever attempt to justify the claim that humans having a natural inclination towards doing something makes it ok), but it is also a line of reasoning that is perversely popular in justifying things like rape, racism, sexism, genocide and eugenics via forced sterilizations. The sooner we can get people to accept that this line of argument is invalid, the sooner it stops being a tool to justify those things.

[Virex]

But you don't have the same reaction when someone claims that some humans have a natural tendency to be gay and therefor it is immoral to try and change them. That's why I'm a bit leery of handing you a hockey stick.

[Leafsnail]

If accompanied by "And you can't easily change it", then actually that would be a valid argument for not trying to change them (on the grounds of practicality rather than morality - even if it is wrong to be gay, trying to change them would be useless).  You could expand it to a moral argument by pointing out that it usually also causes distress to those involved.

Although I do think the argument should be more "There's nothing wrong with it" than "They can't help it", to be honest.  You're free to arbitrarily believe that it is wrong nevertheless, but you can't force that belief on others.

[Phmcw]

The thing is : wtf is wrong with being gay. There is no reason to oppose them, except a small passage in a weird part of the bible (part who ban such things as wearing mixed fabrics, sex before marriage, eating things that lives in the water and have no scales and shaving). Most usual argument makes no senses : natural order of things (our closest cousins, the bonobos are gays as hell, there has always been gays in recorded history and males can actually climax from anal penetration), extinction of human race (are you fucking kidding me? it would takes 100% of peoples being 100% gays and not wanting children)...
You can't change people is the worst argument in favor of gays rights, IMO.

[Grek]

If you look at the relevant premises and conclusions involved in a logically valid* argument against homosexuality:

A] Premise: Some fraction of the human population has a natural tendency to be homosexual.
B] Premise: Being homosexual is a moral wrong.
C] Conclusion: From A and B, we know that we should attempt to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.

then it should be fairly clear where my objection lies. I disagree with the second premise, "Being homosexual is a moral wrong." This argument is valid, as C logically follows if you accept A and B as true, but it is not sound to me, as I do not accept B as being true. If I were later convinced that B was true and that homosexuality was wrong, then I would have to accept the perscriptive statements in C as being true and sound as well.

If we take a look at an invalid argument in favour of permitting homosexuality:

F] Premise: Some fraction of the human population has a natural tendency to be homosexual.
G] Conclusion: It is wrong to try to change people who are homosexual into being heterosexual.

then your disagreement would be valid. Or, at least it would, if I were making this argument, instead of disagreeing with the validity of premise B in the first argument. My line of argument is roughly as follows:

X] Premise: Homosexuality is NOT a moral wrong.
Y] Premise: It acceptable to forbid an action if and only if it is a moral wrong to do so.
Z] Conclusion: From X and Y, we know that it is NOT acceptable to forbid homosexuality.

which, as you can see, contains no claims about if it is natural or not to be homosexual. That fact is irrelevant to the question of if it is acceptable to be homosexual or not.

E:
If we take Leafsnail's additional premise "And you can't easily change it", formalize it and add it to the first argument, we get the following:

A] Premise: Some fraction of the human population has a natural tendency to be homosexual.
B] Premise: Being homosexual is a moral wrong.
C] Conclusion: From A and B, we know that we should attempt to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.
D] Premise: It is difficult to attempt to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.
E] Conclusion: From C and D, we know that it is acceptable not to attempt to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.

Which obviously falls appart unless you assume an additional premise of "It is acceptable to fail to do things that are proscribed morality if they are difficult to do." which, I rather doubt that many people would be willing to accept as a formal premise in their ethical system.

*Valid =/= True =/= Sound. See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SoundValidTrue for definitions.