4 ms·

all people involved want the event to happen Obviously false. The people cleaning up after an overdose don't want it to happen. The family watching a member

all people involved want the event to happen Obviously false. The people cleaning up after an overdose don't want it to happen. The family watching a member trash a career don't want it to happen. "Involved" doesn't begin to capture the number of people dealing with the event if you just consider the direct participants.

CryptoPunk 9y ago
That is true, but not really relevant to the issue of consent. Those people choose to be involved. Their decision to be involved in a drug user's life doesn't give them the right to dictate the life choices of the drug user.
- fatbird 9y ago
  It's not an issue of consent when you're describing it as "victimless". The victims, those who suffer from it, are far more widely spread than just those who can directly consent to the act.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    Victimhood is all about consent. A victim is someone who had their rights violated, which is conventionally understood as having their person or property transgressed without their consent. Creating a moral framework that gives those who consented to involvement in a third party's life a right to determine how the person and property of that third party is utilized necessarily creates tension with the individual rights of the third party, and conflicts with a moral framework based on both consent and self-ownership.
    - fatbird 9y ago
      Your definition of victimhood is idiosyncratic, and apparently quite specific to your moral framework, which seems to have an obvious problem in that it declares all externalities to be moot (i.e., no involuntarily affected party has moral standing because it creates tension and conflict with the moral standing of the directly consenting participants). That's fine if that's how you want to resolve the problem--just declare that no indirect participants matter--but insofar as it fails to appreciate their experience, I think you're going to have trouble selling your moral framework as anything but a Randian fantasy of callous self-determination.
      - CryptoPunk 9y ago
        My definition of victimhood is the conventional one, and how it is used in a formal context. It also addresses externalities, by distinguishing nonconsensual acts from consensual ones. If a person deliberately over-eats, and dies from obesity related illness, they are not a victim, and their family's loss is not an externality, as the term is defined in economics. If a person is shot and killed by an armed robber, they are a victim, and their family's pain and suffering is an externality. The reason the former is not an externality is that the 'asset' which the third parties lose, which, let's say, is the love and care the individual would have given their family if they had stayed alive, was destroyed by the wilful acts of that individual. Since the love and care is the individual's to give, it is also the individual's to choose to not give. Their decision to not give it is therefore not an externality. In the case of the latter, the victim had every intention of giving their love and care to their family for many years to come, and would have done so, if their individual rights had not been violated in the act of murder that they were the victim of. This is a coherent moral framework that is consistent with the definition of both 'victim' and 'externality', and exactly how the justice system sees victimhood and damages. >>I think you're going to have trouble selling your moral framework as anything but a Randian fantasy of callous self-determination. Comments like this don't really add anything to the discussion, except perhaps revealing your own presuppositions and ideological biases.

CryptoPunk 9y ago

That is true, but not really relevant to the issue of consent. Those people choose to be involved. Their decision to be involved in a drug user's life doesn't give them the right to dictate the life choices of the drug user.

fatbird 9y ago
It's not an issue of consent when you're describing it as "victimless". The victims, those who suffer from it, are far more widely spread than just those who can directly consent to the act.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  Victimhood is all about consent. A victim is someone who had their rights violated, which is conventionally understood as having their person or property transgressed without their consent. Creating a moral framework that gives those who consented to involvement in a third party's life a right to determine how the person and property of that third party is utilized necessarily creates tension with the individual rights of the third party, and conflicts with a moral framework based on both consent and self-ownership.
  - fatbird 9y ago
    Your definition of victimhood is idiosyncratic, and apparently quite specific to your moral framework, which seems to have an obvious problem in that it declares all externalities to be moot (i.e., no involuntarily affected party has moral standing because it creates tension and conflict with the moral standing of the directly consenting participants). That's fine if that's how you want to resolve the problem--just declare that no indirect participants matter--but insofar as it fails to appreciate their experience, I think you're going to have trouble selling your moral framework as anything but a Randian fantasy of callous self-determination.
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      My definition of victimhood is the conventional one, and how it is used in a formal context. It also addresses externalities, by distinguishing nonconsensual acts from consensual ones. If a person deliberately over-eats, and dies from obesity related illness, they are not a victim, and their family's loss is not an externality, as the term is defined in economics. If a person is shot and killed by an armed robber, they are a victim, and their family's pain and suffering is an externality. The reason the former is not an externality is that the 'asset' which the third parties lose, which, let's say, is the love and care the individual would have given their family if they had stayed alive, was destroyed by the wilful acts of that individual. Since the love and care is the individual's to give, it is also the individual's to choose to not give. Their decision to not give it is therefore not an externality. In the case of the latter, the victim had every intention of giving their love and care to their family for many years to come, and would have done so, if their individual rights had not been violated in the act of murder that they were the victim of. This is a coherent moral framework that is consistent with the definition of both 'victim' and 'externality', and exactly how the justice system sees victimhood and damages. >>I think you're going to have trouble selling your moral framework as anything but a Randian fantasy of callous self-determination. Comments like this don't really add anything to the discussion, except perhaps revealing your own presuppositions and ideological biases.