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Comment Re:There are no Facts (Score 1) 1469

Oh, I thought I was talking to someone smart, not someone who would make such a reflexive and unthinking statement like:

Ethics are meaningless because there is no way of establishing that one ethical system is better than another.

Because a smart person would realize that the most important discussions are those which may not result in simple "establishment" of the superiority of one claim, concept or valuation over another.

Also, Heidegger's viewpoint isn't an "opinion." There are more categories of utterance than just "fact" and "opinion," by a multitude. And clearly, if I refer to Heidegger, it implies that I find his viewpoint compelling.

But I'm sorry for wasting our time. Please, go back to your world of simple formulaic thinking.

Comment Re:There are no Facts (Score 1) 1469

A "human being" - hate to say this, but read Heidegger's "Being and Time" for an understanding of what the human mode of "being" is. (There are also definitions of "child" that distinguish them from "infant," and definitions of "infant" which distinguish them from neonates. We're talking about neonates here.)

The point is that a two-month old baby is more like an eight-month old fetus that it is like a four-month old baby. There is a sense of human self-hood in the latter; there is inter-relationality and inter-subjectivity, there is communication, there is an awareness of social contingencies.

Philosophical, rather than biological, definitions of humanity are necessary here, because we're talking ultimately about ethics.

Comment Re:There are no Facts (Score 1) 1469

It's clearly an organism, and alive, and I loved mine very much when he was newborn. But it wasn't a "child," it wasn't anymore aware and learning than most lower-order mammals, and it didn't demonstrate anything of a sense of self. The difference between a 4 month old and a newborn is an immense gap of development.

Comment Re:First my beloved Viper fighter, now this (Score 1) 820

I think in the net scheme of things, it is less of an infringement on human freedom to regulate what can be sold as a toy than it is to set up an apparatus that intervenes when parents don't distinguish which things marketed as toys really are toys for kids and which ones aren't, and then removes children from the families that don't, and then raises those children elsewhere under government oversight.

Comment Re:First my beloved Viper fighter, now this (Score 2) 820

A lot of kids don't have a stay-at-home parent, and are stuck in crappy day-cares run by people who don't care, but are that can be afforded on the low wages that are available for them.

I hear a lot of sanctimonious claims about "lazy parents" and "bad parents" from people who either aren't parents, or who have a partner acting as a stay-at-home parent (the stay-at-home parents themselves don't make these claims too often.) Which are you?

Comment Re:No thanks. I'd like to stay alive (Score 1) 602

I think the real solution is going to be through Google+ - you already have the option to share a video on Google+, but the next step is that, by default, the comments you make on a video will only be seen by those in the Circle you shared it to, and the author of the video. "Public" comments would be invisible by default.

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