Peterkin

It is where the OP question asked us to fill in the blank. Is it ever right? No. Would you do it? I don't know. Maybe, if I were desperate. But it would still be just as wrong if I did it as if anyone else did. That's not an interpretation of you. That's a statement about my recollection the Spock quote. I recall it being said a couple of times, but nothing about innocence. That's another opinion on the subject. https://theobjectivestandard.com/2013/09/spocks-illogic-the-needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few/ As many times as it takes to convince the unconvinced that it is our philosophy that's a "fairy tale", not your unshakeable belief in reasonable people and guilt beyond reasonable doubt and protocols, in any world outside the scripted thought-experiment. https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-droit-penal-2007-1-page-209.htm

No, I have not, regardless how many times you repeat this misrepresentation. I have admitted to considering the commission of what I know is a wrong act, if I felt compelled by circumstances that I believed to be even worse, but I have never acceded to calling that wrong right. I consider Spock only slightly more credible as an arbiter of morality than Judge Posner. (PS. I don't believe Spock pronounced on the guilt and innocence of individuals in question, nor what specific needs the many may have that requires torturing a few, or how that specific need manifests in a decision between actions. Also, I'm not all sure he would be convinced by the 100% guilty/no other option scenario.)

There wouldn't be much point in an ideology that one abandons whenever it's inconvenient. It's true that ethical systems don't last long in the "real world" - a world ruled by fear. But there is no point in calling situational pragmatism ethical... except as a fairy tale to persuade oneself that only the scum who deserve no better are ever on the receiving end of situational pragmatism.

Go back to sleep - I'm fine, too.

You're the only one who can find out your answer, or even ask your question. I'm not asking you to answer mine.

Tend to your own soul and don't worry: he'll be fine. The righteous and self-certain are always fine. It is only those who question and consider unplanned consequences whose sleep is disturbed by too much thinking.

Exactly the doctrine of all evil dictator: the more people you kill, torture, imprison and terrorize, the better your odds of staying in power - until one of the thousands of monsters those methods inevitably create sneaks up behind you and takes over. My notion is to organize society in such a way as to minimize the monsterizing of the population and then deal with the rare monsters as they emerge, one at a time, as seems appropriate at that time. I realize that's an unworkable philosophy, but so long as Beecee can live with it, I am at peace.

So am I. Thanks, that means a lot.

Of course not. Those who have believed that in the past tortured people. Those who believe that in the present torture people. Reasonable doubt was, is, and will be subjective. So, people will go on torturing other people as long as they think it will get them the results they consider important. Ethics simply don't come into this.

Are you aware that it's so called only by you? Exactly! That's a pretty big crowd of aristocrats, jurists and prelates throughout the history of civilization. However, it remains the opinion of persons with some stake in the practice, rather than of disinterested arbiters of ethical behaviour. Or judge, or archbishop or spymaster. Just as Herod imagined: if you kill all the baby boys, none of them can grow into the monster you fear.

I don't see how early intervention in the lives of other people will forward the individual lawsuits of people in mid-career who missed out. Each case would still be difficult to prove and near impossible to win - given that the vast majority of currently serving jurists are from the same class as the defendants. However, a strong enough government could make legislative changes right across the board, through social programs and commercial regulation. No, not piecemeal, complaining about each hire of each company, but through GBI, UI, adult education and retraining, class action and collective bargaining rights and oversight. Don't rescue the victims of discrimination one at a time; empower them to change their own condition. The problem with a multi-faceted approach is the same as the problem with fighting a war on multiple fronts: your forces are fragmented and your resources are wasted. IMO, a single, concerted, focused campaign with one clear objective; a central strategy directing all the tactical moves would be more effective.

Genesis, St. Paul and the Venerable Descartes tell me so. I don't believe we have, but if I did, I would hold with the First Nations who believed that all Earthly things, including the wind, the land and the river have souls. The animating spirit; life force; a share in the universe. PS - 4. It was a throw-away line, not a debate point.

That would depend on what it's protecting them from. Discrimination in housing? Yes, that would be useful and helpful, but I believe the problem is better addressed by good public housing than court proceedings against slumlords. Bullying by police and unequal sentencing in criminal court? Maybe, but if the enforcement agencies are part of the problem, they're unlikely to enforce the solution. Coercion by employers? Again, yes, but that problem was so much more effectively addressed by the trade union movement that the working class developed sufficient political and economic clout to alter the balance of power, so it had to be scuttled. Lack of educational opportunity? Fortify public education, from daycare to PhD programs. I doubt that would make an appreciable difference. Imagine the difficulty of bringing charges and providing proof, plus the length of time such civil actions would take to settle. Seems wasteful. Seems to me, a government that has the ability to pass legislation that effective protects the underclasses could more easily change the tax structure to fund the programs that address all of these class problems at once, rather than slog through reform case by local case.

Of course it should not. To enact a law that "protects" poverty is to establish poverty as an inherent characteristic of a designated group of people, and thereore enshrine poverty as a necessary and inevitable feature of human society. Poverty needs to be eradicated, not legally perpetuated.

You can be damn sure that's a human, not a horse or a cow. We light candles and ring bells only for those who have souls and that's an exclusively human property. (more restrictions may apply) Except that some humans don't think heaven would be worthwhile without their canine or feline companions, which is going to complicate the admissions procedure at the Pearly Gate.

Well, all right then. I'm out of arguments to support a casual comment that I made without realizing how much people have invested in modernity. Yes, I concede and agree that the present is unlike the past in many ways. But at least, now, there has been a little more talk about medicine and herbs, if not mushrooms.

The study of cells, and before that, microbes. before the microscope, they were invisible. Once they became visible, questions were asked, guesses were made, hypotheses were put forward, experiments were conducted. most of them produced nothing but a little more knowledge, a little more understanding and better questions. Some yielded fruitful avenues of research, which mostly failed and occasionally succeeded. There were formulas, but the significance to medicine of those formulas to medicine were not yet known; all the dots had not yet been connected. (PS - they still haven't. modern medicine is still a work in progress, building new knowledge on old.) Okay, so what medical knowledge did every western industrial nation eradicate between 1760 and 1840? Did Dalton ignore all of the research into heredity that had gone before? Did he dismiss all of the earlier researches into light and optics? Did he consider all foregoing studies of anatomy as too primitive to bother with? Of course not. Knowledge about COVID descended from the plagues, smallpox, typhoid, leprosy and TB; quarantine practice --- the various other influenzas and childhood diseases to which people build natural immunity --- immunity ---- optics --- microorganisms --- heredity --- genetics --- vaccination ---- mechanics of delivering immunity. It doesn't start or end anywhere: new knowledge emerges from old knowledge and it keeps growing. Sure, as long there is crossover between disciplines. Otherwise, whatever doesn't fit the agenda of a researcher in one field - however valuable it might be in another field - is discarded. In ancient times, there was no wall between disciplines, and therefore probably less wasted knowledge. Of course, we have such a wealth and plethora of knowledge now that we can afford profligacy. You're really stuck on that phrase. Okay. What if I concede that a lot of the chemistry of 'modern' medicine was unknown to the makers of ancient medicine, and that not all recent synthetic drugs are analogous to those found in nature? Would you come half way and admit that the chemistry of the human body and the chemical ingredients of drugs that affect the human body have not changed in the past 5000 years? The evolution of laser treatments? Sorry. I guess I didn't understand what the real subject was.

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines https://the-dna-universe.com/2021/04/15/the-history-of-mrna-applications/ One things leads to another, as long as somebody keeps asking questions. Nothing comes out of the blue.

Previous medical practice will do. (Beware, there is an awful lot of it!)

There is no key, just as there is no magic bullet, just as there no great big tall stone walls between scientific disciplines or around any specialized areas of human knowledge. To learn a language you didn't know before, you use your understanding of a language you already know. To invent a new language, you use what you know about the language(s) you already speak. Yes. To get new knowledge about something else you didn't know, you use language to read or listen to people who knew something before you did, and then maybe you can add to it. To get new experience, you may not need language, but in that case, it remains subjective and nobody will ever know what you alone experienced: it does not add to the sum of human knowledge. Show me an example of a synthetic medication that has no counterpart or predecessor in nature.

Unlikely, but not impossible. What would you fit the new datum borrowed from astronomy into, if not an existing matrix of medical knowledge? Show me one example of an innovation in medicine that has no connection to previously existing medicine.

By overturning an old theory on the basis of new data. When you're overturning a theory, you don't throw away all of previous knowledge and start from scratch. You apply information from a parallel investigation, a paper that was published more recently or another discipline; you repeat the experiment with a recently invented measuring device or with a variable that had not been used before. You still apply the currently accepted methods (previous knowledge), in the existing laboratories (previous knowledge) with the existing tools (previous knowledge), according to the same principles (previous knowledge) and using the same formulas (previous knowledge): you join up two dots that already exist, but have not yet been connected. (Eureka! New knowledge that will become current knowledge as soon as it's published and previous knowledge as soon as soon as someone else, with a new insight, a new observation or a new tool challenges it.) The same way deliberate ones do. Nobody just walks down the street and has an electromagnet or a hypo of penicillin fall on him out of the sky. It's a very limited kind of accident that can only happen in a particular environment. Somebody doing science (not necessarily an accredited professional scientist) is trying to figure something out. They set up the experiment (according to existing standards) with the (previously invented) equipment and apply the accepted (previously known) methods. But the result - through oversight, miscalculation or a chance occurrence - is unexpected. So the researcher - or somebody else, if the original researcher writes the accident off as a failure - investigates that unforeseen result and arrives at a new invention. https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/top-5-accidental-inventions-discoveries What is the starting date of modern medicine? Were all the chemicals thrown away and all the formulas burned? That's why I don't use the word 'traditional'. A tradition may go back seven years or seven thousand. There is no brand new beginning in the substitution of one kind of treatment for another: each kind has its roots in previous knowledge; each kinds contributes to future knowledge. Doctors are all time improving therapies and switching remedies when a better one comes along or the old one doesn't work (and sometimes even when it does, because the new thing is trendy). Heliotherapy is probably as old as aspirin, but lasers are kind of traditional by now, too: But he wouldn't have been able to do it if Campbell had not already used it on a malignant tumour, and he could not have done it without Townes, who could not have got very far without Einstein, who owed it to Planck....

None at all. New knowledge is always growing out of previous knowledge, building on, challenging, replacing, correcting, altering as it evolves. The word "traditional" doesn't mean anything in science, though people often interpret it as "primitive, ineffective, ignorant". Chinese tradition doesn't mean anything in Cherokee; Italian tradition has no significance in Bali - it only has meaning in a cultural context - and even there, it's unclear, subject to interpretation. My remarks about the words used in advertising medications regard the perception. It follows fashion. The manufacturers do the research they do and make the drugs them make, by the processes that insure the best result for themselves. But they adjust the language of marketing to public demand: they create whatever perception is trendy at the moment.

I looked at it and even started to fill it out. But then I realized it's not really about species identification, but resource allocation. However, as a Canadian, I can't relate to the subject in the way that's being asked; I'm not even familiar with those organizations. I suppose it's more relevant to residents of the UK. I agree with TheVat in that the questionnaire could be streamlined and still produce meaningful results - from a larger sample, if you include people like me who opted out because of the format.

That's right. You're using the same medicines in new forms and combinations, or else their synthetic counterparts. In the 20th century, they were usually advertised as medical breakthroughs and scientific discoveries. I was never attached to the word 'traditional'; don't see why it should figure so largely. However, as some people are partial to the word, as well some of the other words with which it's associated - natural, herbal, organic - the pharmaceutical corporations that manufacture OTC remedies, vitamins and supplements obligingly put those words in their advertising of products that contain those same ingredients in a new, industrial form.