So why is this an empirical question? Why isn't our determination about what's best for someone a largely ethical question?
>
> > And while you are
> > right about children, we were not talking about children. Most of us
>would
> > agree that competent adults are the best judges of their own best
>interests,
>
>Sure. But the qualifier "competent" seems to turn your argument into a
>tautology unless you mean competent in some sense other than "able to judge
>their own interests."
Not at all. By "competent," I mean in part having the kind of judgment, training, and self control we expect of other adults. That does go along with the moral judgment taht competent persons are more or less responsible for their choicesa nd know their own interests, but if that's a tautology, it's not a "mere" one. It's part of a huge set of quasi-a priori assumptions about what a person is, what's a moral judgment, etc. And this goes to why the supposedly uninteresting and supposedly empiriacl statement we are discussing is neither.
>
> > and, moreover, that even when they're wrong they have the right to make
> > their own mistakes.
>
>That's only because it's far too costly (in several different ways) to
>prevent people from making their own mistakes in many cases.
Sez you. I sez, even if it wewre cheap to fix, people have the right to make their own mistakes. Incidentally this goes for kids too, up to a point.
>
> > Tie this more tightly to a real case. Were you talking
> > about women in Afghanistan who prefer to wear burkhas, or what?
>
>Daredevils who don't wear seatbelts.
What??
>
> > > Without the war they wouldn't have dared to go anywhere near this far,
>
>Maybe.
>
> > and you know it.
>
>No, I don't.
Being young gives you licence to be dumb, but this is over the line. Your boring and false ethical theory pushes all the questions to the empirical side, so you have an obligation to get them right. Explain why you think there is any chance whatsoever taht the govtw ould have suspended civil liberties within 40 miles of where it has without the excuse of a war.
>> > In reasonably wealthy societies where, if things were arranged
>>properly,
> > people could be brought up to abide by principles of justice, freedom
>comes
> > first.
>
>Of what sort? Freedom of the pocketbook takes precedence in the US, and
>the
>best way to argue against it is to point out that it's diametrically
>opposed
>to the majority's welfare.
Luke, you gotta read your Rawls. This one isn't hard, should take you about five minutes. Go find a statement of the 2 principles of justice, and you explain to be why what you said is wrong.
>
> > I note that your low evaluation of freedom is not shared by many
>ordinary
> > people throughout history, who have struggled and died to win the
>freedoms
> > we have.
>
>I'll grant you that many ordinary people have struggled and died for more
>misguided and destructive causes (religion quickly comes to mind).
Freedom is a misguided and destructive cause?
My
>evaluation of freedom is actually loftier than you take it to be, despite
>the fact that I refuse to extol its virtues ueber alles.
Nothing you have said indicates that you have any regard for it whatsoever.
>Go reread On Liberty, which cam be
>taken
> > as a consequentialist defense of the priority of liberty.
>
>Mill was a classical liberal. Some consequentialists defend conservatism
>and libertarianism. That doesn't suffice to show that a consequentialist
>is
>committed to any of those sets of political principles.
>
You must have been bitten by the tupid bug today, it happens to me sometimes too. Luke, I am not saying taht consequentialism requires taht you adopt Mill's views. (In fact I think that taken seriously, Mills views are inconsistent with consequentialsim, but that is another story.) I am saying that you should reaquiant yourself with the specific arguments in On Liberty, which are still the most powerful challenge to your glib paternalism.
jks
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp