RE: Do you support the legalisation of polyagmy and polyandry
November 13, 2012 at 11:52 am
(This post was last modified: November 13, 2012 at 11:52 am by Vincenzo Vinny G..)
(November 12, 2012 at 10:36 pm)Rhythm Wrote:(November 12, 2012 at 8:55 pm)Vincenzo "Vinny" G. Wrote: Law must be governed by science and rationality, don't you think?
What else do we appeal to when we make our laws? Religious values?
Sometimes we do yeah, and that's pretty transparent I would imagine. I don't personally think that that's a very good way to go about it, but clearly many folks would disagree with me. Other times we appeal to a concept of "fairness" or "justice" -show me some science for either of those? IMO science would be a poor tool for the actual drafting of a law. Sure, we might use it to inform our decisions, project the outcome of a specific ruling, or (as is routinely the case in courtrooms) provide the evidence,.....but.....law is an evolving discussion on our value judgements and somewhere along the chain, after all the science was in and all the arguments heard...there would be a value assigned to any given thing by a human being. We might hope that the process was thoroughly rational, or well grounded in science, but other times we may not. We may wish to assign an irrational and positively magical value to something. We do this with alot of things, like life, for example. You're equally as guilty of homicide for taking a full life or an empty one. No distinctions are made, and I don't imagine that many will be entertained in the near future.
But why justice and fairness?
And why not other values, like force or authoritarianism or survival of the least fit?
Just because we get good feelings when we think about justice and fairness? Is it ultimately about the dopamine kicks in our brain?
We need to have some rational basis for these positions. If not, we are no different than the religious, and the religious have equal right and are afforded equal sway in our society.
