How can they intentionally harm humans if they don't know humans exist?
Not knowing something exists does not negate the intent to harm
In order to decide, you have to have options. A virus is acting chemically - it cannot just choose not to replicate, etc.
Who’s saying the virus does not have options?
A virus does not foresee its death.
Sure it is. It foresees that not replicating properly results in death
A) malice aforethought is more than 'the most basic level of thought'.
Yet these viruses still have the most basic level of thought
B) no, a virus - which has no brain - does not have any thoughts at all
Sure it does. As mentioned earlier, these thoughts just so happen to be the most basic level
ok - looks like we are at an impasse. You are stuck confusing mindless action with intentional action.
OK. Maybe next time you’ll be reasonable and have a logically defensible argument
You should do yourself a favor, ask someone whose opinion you trust: "Does a virus have malice aforethought?"
How about this. Try telling someone outside of the Internet that abortion is a viable means of self-defense. They’ll know as well as I do it’s childish and foolish to say that it is
wrong. they don't conceive of humans, much less that their actions will harm humans.
Whether or not they conceive of humans is completely irrelevant. The fact that they can recognize that they need to infect a host in order to survive shows a level of comprehension that you’re not willing to recognize.
not desire - instinct/genetics/chemistry/physics. those that don't act this way die off.
Yeah those that don’t act on the desire to survive die off
not plans - instinct/genetics/chemistry/physics. those that don't act this way die off.
Those that don’t plan on acting that way die off
not decisions - instinct/genetics/chemistry/physics. those that don't act this way die off.
Those that make the decision to not act that way die off
not foresight - instinct/genetics/chemistry/physics. those that don't act this way die off.
Those that foresee their death should they not act die off
acting in a way the preserves itself does not constitute foresight about harm to others.
Sure it does. Not realizing that it does is foolish
all do.
If some humans can lack the legally requisite level of thought, how would these be considered to have it?
You mean like those people that think that parasites aren’t capable of the most basic level of thought? You’ve proven time and again that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how intent actually works
"A person intends a consequence when they 1) foresee that it will happen if their given series of acts or omissions continue, and 2) desire it to happen."
Yeah and at the most basic level, a parasite recognizes the consequences of their actions should they continue or not and they also desire it to happen. No complex thought required
Desire, planning, decision making, foreseeing consequences, etc. requires thought!!!
Yeah and a parasite operates on the base desire to survive, plans on making more of itself, makes the decision to infect a host, and foresees that not doing these things will results in its own elimination, none of which requires thought
A virus does not foresee the consequence of its actions.
It infects hosts specifically because of the fact that it foresees consequences
No one is saying that complex thought doesn't require a brain. For whatever reason, you've made the connection between intent and complex thought and refuse to acknowledge the truth that it doesn't. That connection just isn't there no matter how much you want it to be. The sole intent of a parasite is to cause harm if not kill its host due to an ingrained need and desire to survive. How does that show a connection to complex thought?
1) I have already posted references (A, B, C) - you have posted none.
I've already shown that you're first reference proves direct and maybe even specific intent to harm on the part of the bacteria, viruses, tapeworms, and insane people. Your second reference confirms what I said earlier that not shooting a person and simply shooting at a person is only what is necessary to stop someone. Your third reference fails to provide how a disorder removes the intent to harm or even kill. In fact, it shows how this one particular disorder increases their intent to harm or kill
2) I shouldn't have to post references to the basic definition of words...
Sounds like you're just now learning what the definitions are
malice: desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another.
This desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another is ingrained in these parasites that we keep bringing up as well as the insane people
aforethought: a thinking of something beforehand;
Like I have said before, just because parasites can't think at the level we can, that doesn't mean they aren't capable of it
mens rea, malice aforethought, scienter, etc. require complex thought
All the evidence you brought forth disproves this. The fact that viruses, bacteria, and tapeworms intend to harm or even kill shows that you are wrong
viruses, bacterium, and tapeworms don't have brains...
That doesn't take away from their intent to harm or kill.
They definitely do not.
Don’t just make a blind assertion and bring up evidence and I’ll believe you
They have no idea that you exist, or what a person even is, or that their biological interaction will harm a person that they can't even conceive of. They act to benefit themselves - not to harm you.
They don’t know who we are. That doesn’t make them any less of an active aggressor intent on our destruction. If you’re that hell bent on killing a baby in the mother’s womb then don’t have sex that creates the baby
the question is:
If the only means to prevent a rape is to shoot (including the possibility of killing) the perpetrator, should it be legal to shoot?
Only if we are not killing passive bystanders who have nothing to do with the situation
100% wrong. Read it again until you understand it.
mens rea, malice aforethought, scienter, etc. - these require complex thought (which requires a brain)
You do realize that viruses, tapeworms, and most bacteria have malice aforethought right? That they operate purely off their intent to harm us so they can survive? Using you're wikipedia article, the viruses, tapeworms, most of the bacteria, and the insane people are operating off of malice aforethought based off of a direct intent, arguably specific intent, to harm and possibly kill.
Your first answer seemed to indicate that since rape was non-legal, you had to respond in a non-lethal way.
Me:"If you have the right to shoot, this would include some potential of death."
You:"Key word being potential. You could still just shoot a part of the body that would keep the person from doing what they are doing"
Presuming we agree that you can shoot (which is defined as using deadly force), then the only disagreement we have left is the definition of intent.
You do remember that you're comparing an active aggressor to a passive bystander right?
This is where your main error lies. Viruses, bacterium, tape-worms, etc. definitely do not have the capacity to plan, decide, and understand the consequences of their actions.
Maybe not to the level we do, but yes they do. Given that for the most part their sole purpose is to survive at the expense of the host, its reasonable to say that they intend to harm us
Thinking people can lack the sufficient intent, so belief that a virus has this intent is beyond credulity.
This is where you're wrong. Intent has nothing to do with mental capacity. All it is is simply the desire to do something. In the case of the virus, bacteria, and tapeworm, its intent is to survive and will harm or kill me to make sure it does. The same kind of thing can be said about the insane person
Examples of people with Capgras Delusion being found not guilty due to mental deficiency:
"Mr. A was found not guilty by reason of insanity for one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder."
"In both these cases, not guilty by reason of insanity verdicts were adjudicated with subsequent inpatient psychiatric commitment."
The only thing these examples prove is that these people didn't have the mental capacity to understand what they were doing. As stated earlier, intent has nothing to do with mental capacity, its just the desire to do something. In these cases, the peoples intent was to either kill or try to kill someone
Then, your answer to my original question - 'Do you think it[rape] should be prevented if the only possible means to prevent it is to shoot the perpetrator?' - would be yes, correct?
Shooting at the perpetrator would be an option like I said it was
My point is precisely that intent does require cognitive ability.
And the examples that you brought up of bacteria and insanity would show that you are wrong
No, they definitely don't. Intent requires planning, decision, understanding the consequences, etc.
And in both cases, they planned that they would harm someone else, would decide to act on it when given the opportunity to do so, and understand the consequences of what they are doing
Again, wrong. Wikipedia spells out for you that murder requires mens rea/malice aforethought.
So now that you agree with me we can move on
Trying to hit the person takes less precision than trying to be sure to hit a person in a non-fatal way:
luckin: "You could still just shoot a part of the body that would keep the person from doing what they are doing"
I did say that. We have the option to hit the person and we also have the option not to. However, you're assuming that we will be so far away from the person that we just won't be able to no matter what we do. Regardless of whether or not we hit him, shooting at him is still an option
of course something went wrong - the officer wouldn't be shooting them otherwise. Something going wrong is just as likely, if not more, to happen in the rape scenario.
Or you can just read the part of the article you put up that mentions how someone simply moving makes it a whole lot harder to hit someone and requires the marksmanship skills that you expect at the distances you expect
What makes you think saying "just a theory" is worth anything when your beliefs are based on faith?
You mean like theories? Both theories and faith require evidence. Unfortunately, a lot of Christians don't bother with the hard evidence and I used to be like that
Faith is inferior to theory, because having faith requires nothing but belief, you can have faith in anything.
You're right. People can have faith in anything, including a theory. The only problem though is that it sounds like you've met a lot of Christians who don't give you evidence
But to have a theory there must be evidence for that theory.
You mean just like faith in God?
Intelligent people do not simply choose to believe in things, they try to figure out the actual truth, this is why very little in science is considered a fact.
You seem like an intelligent person yet you not only chose to believe that faith is nothing more than belief that can't be backed by evidence, you also believe
A theory is not a belief, a theory is an explanation based on evidence, it does not demand that you believe in it, a theory is simply a hypothesis which has been found to conform with observable evidence.
You mean just like a belief in God? Who's demanding that you believe in God?
A theory is for this reason, more compatible with open and critical thought, whereas faith is absolutely useless when it comes to learning the actual truth.
If Christianity were true, would you believe it?
Faith is a blind assertion based on nothing,
You mean like this blind assertion?
A hypothesis is speculation, A theory is what you get when a hypothesis has been shown to explain a phenomena.
Have you read the bible honestly and formed your own theories based off what it said?
Faith= this is true because I want it to be and Theory= this is probably true because that's what the evidence suggests.
These definitions sound like your faith in your own beliefs without any credible theories to back them up
That is how intent works.
The fact that you originally brought up bacteria and insanity shows that you know as well as I do that intent isn't based off cognitive ability. Based off your wikipedia article, the bacteria and and the insane person directly intended the harm of another. In the case of the bacteria, it can jus be a range of things from just a minor inconvenience that can be seen as harm and can also go up to death of the host. In the case of the insane person, it went to actual murder which even your wikipedia article agrees with is intentional
Meaning that (as I keep saying) intent of the perpetrator is irrelevant - it is now down to a matter of the level of harm posed.
Intent is only irrelevant if you want to ignore the fact that, as I have said before, it is the difference between murder and involuntary manslaughter. Like I said earlier, even your wikipedia article requires intent on the part of the perpetrator. Intent is what distinguishes between murder and recklessness as your Wikipedia article puts it
Baloney. If police shooting at someone closer than 6 feet miss the entire person most of the time, an average person is supposed to aim for shooting a leg??
You're the only one suggesting that we actually try and hit the person. Also, you're assuming that nothing went wrong when the officer or person tried to shoot the perpetrator. Seems like you missed that part of the article
Me describing the implication of your argument, and then saying "I'll leave to the reader to judge whether to give more weight to those millions of women, or you, who has never been pregnant" - is not me agreeing with you.
Despite the fact that you essentially said what I said
And hopefully you're smart enough to read my argument and see that's not what is being asked.
I never said you have to accept everything. If you accept that anything on the list is harmful, then you accept that there is harm - it is pretty straight-forward.
Based off that logic, the fact that I can get any one of a number of cancers or diseases, however minor, means I should just kill myself now so I don't have to go through the inconvenience of having to deal with it
The deliberate intent I am describing involves a cognitive thought process beyond the capability of bacteria.
How capable the bacteria is of cognitive thought doesn't matter. The fact that there are still bacteria that are bent on my harm, and in some cases death, in order to survive shows a deliberate intent to harm
If the deluded person killed someone, they would be found not guilty by reason of insanity, not murder/manslaughter, etc. because they lacked the cognitive intent to harm the person.
Insanity or not, there's still a dead person because of the crazy persons deliberate intent to harm
Isn't doing what?
You: The person acting in self-defense would try to defend them self from someone who is about to kill them whether the killer is doing it intentionally or not...
Me: True, and was my whole point.
You: It's a good thing the baby isn't trying to do that though
- not sure how that response makes any sense.
I was trying to say that the baby isn't trying to kill anyone whether intentionally or otherwise
Do you agree that the person acting in self-defense is allowed to defend their self regardless of whether the perpetrator is acting intentionally or not?
Only if the person acting in self-defense has an actual threat on their life at that moment
Yes, it is - see the list again.
See my response to that list being there
They are trained to stop because training to kill or not kill is not practical.
Sure it is. It may not always be reasonable to try and kill someone though
I didn't. Since your argument was a matter of opinion, I left it to future readers to decide.
Sure you agreed with me. You said, "That would be an example of everyone who gets one making it worse than it is."
You either believe nothing on the list of common effects of pregnancy are harmful, or you believe the common pregnancy poses harm.
I'm sure you're smart enough to know that an approach where you either accept everything or nothing doesn't work here. As I said earlier, you were making most of these things out to be worse than they actually are
They don't have a deliberate intent - they didn't decide to harm the person before acting.
Viruses, tapeworms, and most bacteria do deliberately intend to harm you, especially when they're parasitic. The crazy person you mentioned does intentionally mean to harm you regardless of what he thinks you are
Same as above - it does not decide to commit harm.
Then it's a good thing the baby being there isn't harmful in any way either
No, they intend to harm the alien that they think killed/replaced the person.
Like I said earlier, he does intend to harm you regardless of what he thinks you are
True, and was my whole point.
It's a good thing the baby isn't trying to do that though
This is the part that seems disconnected from the first part - who is being tried for murder or manslaughter in the scenario you gave in the first part of the sentence??
The only reason it's disconnected is because you disconnected it manually to try and make it seem like I agree with you. The reason I mention murder and manslaughter is because you make a huge deal out of intent and the difference between the two is intent
Perhaps you didn't read the article: "New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate (182 out of 540), and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away."
Most shots miss even from less than 6 feet away - and these are highly trained police officers.
Then it's a good thing they're trained specifically not to kill and just stop the threat, just like the article said
That would be an example of everyone who gets one making it worse than it is. I'll leave to the reader to judge whether to give more weight to those millions of women, or you, who has never been pregnant.
Now that you agree with me, we can actually make some progress
Even you can't bring yourself to say none of them are harmful, so, you agree, there is harm.
So you're saying that I either have to say that everything on there is harmful or nothing is?
I think you mean equivalence rather than equivocation, but I did neither. I gave examples of unintended harm.
So a virus and a crazy person whose sole purpose is to cause harm aren't intended to cause harm?
I already said how they are alike - they lack intent.
Why does a baby lack intent?
They do not intend to harm any person - they think they have been replaced by an alien.
Delusional or not, they still intend to harm the person
This is more relevant to the intent of the person acting in self-defense rather than the intent of the source of harm.
Thats just patently false. The person acting in self-defense would try to defend them self from someone who is about to kill them whether the killer is doing it intentionally or not which is why someone is tried differently in court if they murdered someone as opposed to just involuntary manslaughter
If you think someone in a rape in progress scenario is just going to aim to shoot someone in the leg, you've seen too many Hollywood movies.
I never denied the difficulty of trying to shoot someone in the leg from say 50 yards away. Thats why I challenged the argument because theres no reason to be that far away from the person in order to shoot them
The amount of mental anguish will depend on the person, not your or their definition. This is another one I'll just leave to the reader to decide.
It depends exactly on what their definition is. Whether the person has verbalized it or not, they still act it out
I imagine some people make it out to be worse and some sugar coat it. In the opinion of the woman that gets the abortion, they have concluded that the harms of continuing the pregnancy are more than the harms of the abortion.
And that would be an example of someone making pregnancy out to be worse than it actually is
To show harm, you don't have to consider everything on that list to be harmful, only anything on that list.
And you have to paint with a wide brush in order to consider most of them if not more to be harmful
It is an analogy to show that the harm posed to someone does not have to be intended for someone to take action. Any further conflation is done by you, not me.
I'm just showing you the fault in your analogy which is a false equivocation of a baby with a virus and a crazy person
Sure. In that case, it was you that truncated my argument - not the other way around. I said that a baby not intending to harm the mother has no impact on whether the mother can act in self-defense. I then gave examples of other instances of self-defense regardless of intent - viruses, bacteria, tapeworms, and delusional people. You dropped my comparison to other people and intimated that I was saying the baby is the same as a virus in ways other than absence of intent.
Thats not what happened at all. I agreed with you that we have the right to fend off bacteria, viruses, and tapeworms and then asked if you considered the baby to be like them. Most of these cause harm, especially if they are parasitic which tapeworms are. There was nothing that would indicate that what you are saying is correct. Delusional people, particularly of the kind that you mentioned earlier do intend to cause harm and like I said earlier, intent is the difference between murder and involuntary manslaughter
People aren't sharp-shooting marksmen with rifle and scope and tons of time in these situations.
No one said any of that was necessary
If you have the right to shoot, this would include some potential of death.
Key word being potential. You could still just shoot a part of the body that would keep the person from doing what they are doing
If mental anguish looses its harmfulness, then the difference you gave between the harms of rape and pregnancy evaporates.
If people have a reasonable definition of what mental anguish actually is, people would be able to recognize what actually is and isn't harmful and wouldn't be making the case that abortion is self defense
