If you're pro-life, how far do you take that?

[vulcanlogician]

We do actually license things to prevent harm, or make us better able to punish those who commit it.

What do you think the purpose of ID and licenses are? Why do I need a lice to fish? To prevent over fishing and therefore harm. To drive? To make sure you are able to operate a vehicle as safely as possible, and track you down if you hurt someone.

I'm sure there are some examples of laws not protecting society and those living in it from harm, at least in intent, but mostly that is the very point.

Also, I never said laws are based on morals. I said morals are based on harm, as are laws. All oif which we are constantly reevaluating and updating... Hopefully.

I think we are getting tripped up on semantics. Some laws are based on "harm"... sure... by why? Because harm is generally regarded as "bad." As I see it, actions that cause harm to persons or the environment are morally wrong. Therefore, laws which aim to prevent those particular actions are based in morality... according to my way of seeing things.

But I suppose one could simply remove the whole step of attributing moral intention to laws which seek to reduce harm, which is what you have done. That doesn't work for me personally, because I ask myself the question "why is it wrong to cause harm?" Ultimately, that is an ethical question for which I have fashioned an answer by contemplating moral philosophy. A person need not go that route in their reasoning to end up at the same place I have, so that's why I say we are getting tripped up in semantics.

***

As for reevaluating and updating morality... absolutely. That must be done. The more information we have, the better moral decisions we can make. One of my biggest problems with religion is that it chains moral reasoning to a collection of edicts penned in the stone/bronze ages.

I see morality like any other thing in nature. Let's look at the solar system. We used to have the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic model with the earth in the center and the sun just beyond the moon, Mercury, and Venus. The model was wrong, but that's because those who constructed them didn't know a great many facts about the universe. However, we needed that wrong model to get to the right one, and (in fairness) that model--wrong as it was--established many principles that pointed us in the right direction (the general idea of circular orbits, that Venus and Mercury are between us and the sun, etc). Wrong as it was, it was the best model we could put together with the facts that were available.

Likewise, we once considered slavery permissible. We were wrong, but as we developed morally, we were able to arrive at a sort "Copernican revolution" in ethics and realize our mistake. Just like facts about celestial bodies and laws of physics made us batter able to construct accurate models of the cosmos, so too will better knowledge of psychology, sociology, economics, etc. enable us to make more accurate moral models.

***

In response to the other detail, I would reassert that there is nothing inherently harmful about fishing without a license. Overfishing is harmful. A system of licensure seeks to minimize the amount of this harmful behavior. But there is nothing inherently harmful about fishing without a license.