Abaddon:
You are twisting words again. When I said that " I have never made the claim that the law is based on emotions!" - this is completely correct. Law is, and never was based on emotions, but I have made the claim that emotions are part of the Law, because they are, especially in legislation which deal with penalty for those that break the law, such as when I wrote:
And you know this very well, and because you know this very well, this makes you intelectually dishonest. You have, by all this, compromised your intelectual integrity, and you are therefore not considered a worthy debattatant, at least not in my book. I know that it must be tempting for you to resort to such tactics when you are on the brink of loosing a discussion, but personally, I find that to be less than honorable.
however, as you responded directly to my request that you prove emotions are part of law (with quotations which proved MY point),
Ridicolous. From where did that conclusion come from? From this?
Richard Posner is very critical to how much emotions should be reflected in Law. In “The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory”,he says: ”:
Our discussions, and the issue we were discussing, was "are emotions part of the Law, or are they not?" I claimed that they are. We were discussing whether or not this descriptive claim of mine was true or not, we were not discussing the normative part of it (we were not discussing whether or not emotions should be part of the Law), something which I made very, very clear in my post (and of course, you know this, but you try to twist it around, becasue of your lack of intelectual integrity). This quotation doesn`t support your view, on the contrary. The fact that R.Posner feels that emotions should not be part of the Law (he made a normative judgement on it), rather supports my (descriptive) statement about the law, than the contrary (you should start of with learning this, by the way, the difference between descriptive and normative arguments).
Also, this is getting more and absurd. When I wrote "I have never made the claim that Law is based on emotions", I realize now that as you are unable to see distinctions, unable to relate to different parts of the argument at once, I must watch what I say constantly. The really bizzare part of this is, of course, that in some parts of the Law, on some levels of the Law, emotions do play a part, such as in penalty legislation (how long a person must be incarcarated for the various crimes). I showed this in:
-If law is completely devoid of ethics and morality, how can anything be considered wrong, and why should anything then be punishable? The fact is, that when a person commits a crime, society demands punishment! Not just protection of society, not just rehabilitation. Of course, you can argue that the law should be devoid of societys thirst for revenge (as many has done), which truly is an emotive motif, but as it is, this is simply not the case. In the U.S., they even have the death penalty. If the law was just about rehabilitation and protection of society (as in, keeping a harmful individual away from society, for the benefit of society as a whole) – then the death peanlty should not exist, because it is unnecessary and an unecessesarily cruel form of punishment. The death penalty is all about revenge (an emotional motive). Prison sentence is both about protection of society, rehabilitation (although it can be argued whether or not most correctional facilities are that concerned with rehabilitation) and, yes, revenge! Now, perhaps it shouldn`t be this way. (That would, of course, present us with some peculiar problems: If a pedophile rapes little children, and rehabilitation has been tried on this pedophile, without effect, then the logical solution would be, not to incarsarate him for his crimes, but move him into a community existing only of adults, lets, for arguments say, and enclosed town where only adults live. Now, would you agree that this would be the appropriate way to deal with someone that has raped children? Or...would you want...punishment!?). The fact is, ethics and emotions are an inseperable part of law. In fact, most universities and law schools have, as a part of their legal department, a sub-department called “department og law and ethichs”...
This does not invalidate my "I have never made the claim that the Law is based on emotions". The key word here is "based"! Even in penalty legislation, the law is not based on emotions, such as the desire for revenge (but it is part of the legislation on punishment) - it is based on ethics. It is unethical to murder, hence, it is against the law. If someone is guilty, then they should be punished (and on this, the emotions starts playing a role in the law). Now, when I wrote "I have never made the claim that the Law is based on emotions", I was referring to how you have continously dealt with my ethical arguments thruout the entire thread! You have, in almost every instance where I have brought up ethical considerations, dismissed this as simple emotions. Fortunately, your posts are there, so I can easily prove this. In one post, I wrote:
A featus does have a chance not only "coming to life", it also has the potential to become an extremely intelligent person. This difference that I am highlighting here, is a the difference of potential, which is an important (ethical - and this is what it`s all about) factor in the minds of the doctors, when they have to make the ethical choice on whether or not to switch of the life-sustaining machine.
So, I made an ethical consideration, but you, in your response, completely ignored this, and just waved it off like "emotional bs", when you wrote:
You are yet to explain to me using secular facts why the law is wrong. You repeat yourself, but provide facts? No.
You are using the 'potential' argument; I have already said I will consider that worth responding to when you can demonstrate we extract the maximum potential possible from those that are already born. To say 'don't abort the fetus, think of its potential' and not to say 'let's eliminate child poverty and social disadvantage, think of the potential' is to use the argument of potential only when it suits you. Inconsistent arguments are not logical. Logic and consistency make laws.
I find it to be very interesting that you here show your complete ignorance on ethical considerations. Abruptly, you just burst out with your usual "logic and consistency make laws", in an effort to dismiss my ethical considerations as just emotional bs (yeah yeah, you didn`t use that word, but it is definitely implied. Now, I expect you to make a big deal of this, like I kid going "noooo, I didn`t sayyyy that!") . And in another post I wrote:
On the contrary. After twenty weeks, "nothing significant happens", other than a doubling of the weight. Hence, there is nothing more unethical (within your view) about aborting a featus in week...35 than in week 20. If you want to allow abortion up until week 16 (or 20?) - I see no reason why week 35 should not be allowed. There is no significant difference in the featus at week 35, other than that it`s bigger.
Again, I made an ethical and logical consideration. I made the claim that if you think it is ethical (although you have never used this word, simply because you don`t know what the word means, and because you are unaware of your own ethical considerations, this is what you meant) to allow abortions up until week 16, then it is not unethical (again, an ethical consideration on my part) to allow them thruout the entire pregnancy, because, as you said, "nothing significant happens in the development of the fetus after week 20, other than growth". My argument here was clearly based on ethical considerations and logic, the way a debate should be done. In your response, again, you simply ignore my ethical and logical considerations as "emotional bs":
I didn't say this, and this shows you have some semi-magical basis for your opposition. You claim you have a secular argument, but it is an emotional one. My choice of twenty weeks as a hard limit for social abortions is precisely due to the completion of some parts of brain growth that mean abortion does become an ethical issue at this point. You feel, quite why you've not explained (although it looking like an ickle baby is obviously one factor) that ANY abortion is bad at any point (apart from rape or incest where suddenly the fetus can be aborted through no fault of its own). It's a feeling. Since when are feelings the basis of secular (as we are having a secular discussion) law?
So, again, you did your best to confuse this discussion of ours by trying to mix the terms "ethics" and "emotions" together. And now you are trying to use this confusion, that you are responsible for, against me?!
This is called intellectual dishonesty.
There are countless other examples, but frankly, I am getting bored. I think much of the confusion here lies in the fact that you know so little about ethics and law. You have just made a google-search and found some piece of amateurish BS that gives a medical support for abortion, and voilà, case colsed (you think). This is a bit to simplified for me. Also, the fact that I thruout the entire thread am forced to teach you about Law, the ethical considerations that are the basis of Law, and the both ethical and emotional elements that parttake in constituing penalty legislation for those that trespass the Law, has made this into a very difficult (and frankly, boring) debate for me.
;... as I like to think you are prehaps a little muddle-headed in discussions and maybe at a disadvantage due to English not being your native language.
Any confusion over this issue Hellrider seems entirely due to your debating abilities and/or how closely you read the responses, plus possibly your English. I've even questioned whether 'ethics' and emotions' are synomynous in Norwegian as I have seen how confused an argument you've been making, and hoped by doing so it would make the thread less oppositional, but you ignored this in your eagerness to attack me for things you have done.
Actually, I am quite competent in debating in the english language. And no,
ethics (etikk, norwegian) and
emotions (følelser, norwegian) are of course not synonymious in the norwegian language. I am starting to think they might be synonymious in dutch, as you have, thruout the entire thread, believed that whenever I was referring ethics, I was just referring to emotions. I am not sure though, whether this was a deliberat ploy on your part, or whether it was just due to ignorance. I believe it was a deliberate ploy (and of course, this means you are intellectually dishonest).
