I'm not sure what these words even mean in the context of a fight. "Restrain" and "incapacitate" could literally mean anything. You can restrain someone by holding them down, and you can incapacitate someone by KOing them with a swift right hook.

Either you're just trying to pussyfoot around our rights as individuals to defend ourselves, or you genuinely don't think we should have that right at all. Would love a clarification.

I am saying there's a clear distinction between using necessary force to defend yourself, and proceeding to beat someone up just because they came at you first.

I don't see how rights factor into this.

Quote from: Pendulate on June 07, 2015, 09:12:36 PM

Defending yourself and fighting back are not the same thing.

If some nut is throwing haymakers at you, you should have the right to restrain them. That doesn't make it justified to beat them up in return.

Exactly what someone who's never been in a fight before would say.

Well, I'd agree with them.

I'd say it does keep a lot of people off the roads, because they know they're on thin ice.

People are a lot more careful when they've only got one strike left.

Quote from: Pendulate on June 07, 2015, 07:55:31 AM

Quote from: ZweiLuis on June 07, 2015, 07:04:26 AM

Quote from: Pendulate on June 07, 2015, 04:41:25 AM

As a child I had a huge crush on Eliza Thornberry.

just why

I wanted the approval of her dad.

You can't prove I said that.

Quote from: Mad Max on June 07, 2015, 04:18:25 AM

How the shit can you have infinite something when its source is finite? I can't have an infinite amount of paper with a finite number of trees.

Renewable resources.
Reusing/repurposing resources.

Trees can be replanted. Water evaporates and rains back down, can be filtered, processed, etc. You know, stuff like that.

We have many non-renewable resources too, such as oil, coal, and helium.

As a child I had a huge crush on Eliza Thornberry.

You've seen Star Trek: The Next Generation?

@% $!

The manchild is a societal burden and should have his condition rectified if possible.

That's true, I should have specified that this is primarily about whether it harms him, as an individual.

I'm just saying, it doesn't quite work as a functional definition of harm, because harm tends to be one of those things that everyone should universally agree on. What pain is is really NOT up for interpretation.

Yeah, the functional definition is where the problem lies. But most functional definitions break down pretty quickly when you start looking at them closely. Take the thought experiment: most people would agree with your functional definition of harm, but that would mean that denying the man-baby a cure couldn't be a harm. Most people wouldn't agree with that. They also wouldn't agree with that regarding death. So I think suspending the functional definition isn't completely pointless.
 

I've never been to Disney World. I'm sure it's a great time, but I don't really feel any inner turmoil for never having been there.

Right, but does that actually mean that missing out on a trip to Disney World isn't harmful? Just because you don't let it get to you? I mean, there's the following options:

1 - Going to Disney World and having a great time
2 - Not going to Disney World and not letting it get to you
3 - Not going to Disney World and being depressed about it

I've listed them in descending order from best state of experience to worst (for me, at least). So if going to Disney World guarantees a better experience than not going, isn't it kind of fair to say that not going is a harm? As in, it's an inferior state of experience?

Obviously I don't think you're being harmed in any significant sense by missing out on Disney World, but as the thought experiment indicates, our intuitions on this change depending on the gravity of what we're missing -- even if we are none the wiser. So I don't really know where to draw the line, if one should be drawn at all. And I'm particularly concerned about how this relates to death, because I've been under the impression that it isn't a harm (still am btw).

I think I kind of figured it out in my above response to Meta, but I'm still not certain.

I wouldn't leave him mentally impaired, but not restoring his faculties wouldn't be harming him.

I think I've figured it out, actually. I think you would be harming them in the sense that you are denying them a superior state of being, therefore making their state of being inferior by default. (Assuming that the superior state has richer, better experiences).

So, it would still be harmful compared to the alternative. I mean, why is being aware that you're missing out on something a harm, but simply missing out on it isn't? It's not that the mere realization is bad in itself, but that realizing it generally causes harm. So if your state of being is still inferior to an alternative, I don't see how it can't be harmful.

But it's incompatible with death, because it's measuring different states against each other to determine their value, and death isn't a state.  So you can't measure anything against it.

Shit, I don't know. Does that even make sense?

Those are really good.

Yeah I would feel obligated to give it to him because I have to assume anyone would prefer to be back to normal as well as the friends and family of the individual.

For sake of the experiment, remove the wishes of the family. The man-baby is perfectly content being a man-baby. Is there any real obligation to give him something for which he has no desire?

Also note that those restored mental faculties would also enable him to suffer in more ways as well.

Somewhat long but worthwhile wall ahead.

Okay, so I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around a thought experiment. It's a follow-on from the thought experiment posed by Thomas Nagel on death. The original is pretty straightforward, and goes something like this:

Imagine an intelligent man who receives a brain injury that reduces his mental abilities to that of an infant. He's unaware  of his impairment and is a perfectly happy man-child.

The implication being that this impairment constitutes a severe harm to the man by depriving him of a range of experiences, like reading poetry and listening to music etc. I think this is a deeply flawed argument, but there you have it.

Okay, so here's the follow-up:

Imagine you develop a cure for this man's mental impairment. Imagine it is cheap to make and easy to administer. Restoring this man's mental faculties would be as simple as putting a vitamin tablet in his food. Would you then be morally obligated to give it to him? And would refusing to do so be harming him?

So the difference here being the prevention of experiences, rather than the mere deprivation of them (although I don't think Nagel's exercise actually illustrated a deprivation). I'm inclined to think that there's no real difference, assuming you aren't aware of what you're missing in either case. So it can't be harmful. But on the other hand, I dunno, it just doesn't sit right. I mean, you are missing out on a better experience than you're having, and obviously being aware of that makes it worse, but is that really all you need to be harmed? Isn't ignorantly missing out on a good still worse than getting it?

Someone throw me a bone here. Feel free to give your own opinion on the thought experiment, too.

Probably Fincher's best film