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Trump Pays Porn Stars Hush Money

Cultural fabrications are, well, quite natural.

I don’t have time now to engage much. Just wanted to say I don’t think the question of what is “natural” is particularly helpful in this consideration. We simply decide as individuals and as a society how to balance competing/conflicting values. It’s our nature to do so.
 
Junebug said:
Why can’t it be the case that there is an objective answer and we humans are progressing toward getting it right?

On a separate note, I’m no cultural historian, but my understanding is that pretty much every culture has had rules prohibiting murder. The exact parameters of the definition of what constitutes murder have changed from culture to culture, but, for the most part, some core prohibition on killing other people has always been there. Assuming that’s true, isn’t that evidence that there is something baked into the human condition that makes killing another person wrong?

In any event, isn’t your argument conflating illegality with immorality? I get that, at some level, a culture that glorifies human sacrifice, for example, isn’t going to believe it is immoral, but, today, our laws don’t purport to set forth moral edicts. Instead, they are just rules that we have deemed are the best way to govern societal behavior. Again, there is probably some core we wouldn’t do away with based on basic instincts about morality, but, it seems to me anyway, arguing about the elements of self-defense under New York law, for example, isn’t really arguing about morality. Those are just rules that may or may not bear any relation to morality.

Finally, and related to my first question, how does your discription of changing cultural approaches to murder differ from scientific observation? Our scientific theories of today are much different from those 100 years ago, etc. Does that means there is no objective scientific truth? Or does it mean our theories are changing to more accurately grasp the objective reality out there? If the latter, why the different conclusions with respect to science and morality?

By the way, I recognize this is a long post with a lot of questions and I won’t be offended if you don’t answer all or any of them. I have insomnia and your post grabbed my attention in my somnambulant state.
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Addressing your last paragraph, Science is a structured process for the accumulation of knowledge. It is directional, in that new science builds upon the old, and it is repeatable, in that observations and conclusions drawn in one place are the same everywhere. The first part is only partially true for cultural evolution and the second part is not. I can’t say for certain that rules surrounding murder aren’t moving towards some objective truth about murder but they aren’t moving there in a linear fashion and I have no confidence that if society collapsed tomorrow that people would still abide by the established murder rules. If society collapsed tomorrow there would be some murder going on, but the laws of thermodynamics would stay very much the same.

This is moving pretty far from the abortion discussion. My premise is that abortions and miscarriages are essentially the same thing except that the first one involves a conscious decision. We stigmatize one outcome and not the other even though they are similar. The vast majority of decisions to have an abortion are made because the mother perceives some inability to effectively care for the fetus and baby, things like being too young, too poor, too old, on their own, etc. In the conscious and unconscious abortions the outcomes are typically result of assessments about the welfare of the fetus and of the mother that has to care for the offspring.
 
MichDeac25 said:
Getting back on topic. NYT article this morning that Cohen and Trump had discussed a deal with Pecker to buy years of scandalous stories he had collected but not run. This stuff would have impacted the election.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/nyregion/trump-cohen-national-enquirer-american-media-recording.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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[Trumper] That was decades ago. He's changed now that he's in office. How can you hate on a guy that is doing so many great things? Fake News. [/Trumper]
 
birdman said:
To elaborate, it has to be a cultural fabrication because some types of murder are deemed ok and some are not and which types of murder are deemed acceptable have changed over time and space. We have a whole thread on the sports board where posters are taking turns justifying and condemning our assistant basketball coach for killing a guy in NYC. Self defense murders are usually ok, soldiers killing each other on the battle is ok but the acceptable methods of battle field killing has changed over time. In some cultures honor killing a slutty disobedient daughter is ok in other cultures that is consider acceptable justification for murder, in some societies honor killing was fine 100 years ago and now the practice is looked upon as barbaric. It varies in space and time among and within societies which makes it a cultural fabrication.
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Murder is a specific legal term meaning the intentional killing of another person with malice aforethought. Murder is a subset of homicides, as is manslaughter, as is a justifiable self defense or defense of other homicide. Wars have their own sets of rules or mores. Murders have pretty much always been frowned upon, well unless you're in a caste or socio-economic class far above the person you just murdered and can get away with it.
 
cville deac said:
Murder is a specific legal term meaning the intentional killing of another person with malice aforethought. Murder is a subset of homicides, as is manslaughter, as is a justifiable self defense or defense of other homicide. Wars have their own sets of rules or mores. Murders have pretty much always been frowned upon, well unless you're in a caste or socio-economic class far above the person you just murdered and can get away with it.
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I don’t think junebug’s question was intended in the strict legal sense of murder. I think he just meant killing someone. But, maybe I misunderstood.
 
I love that no matter what happens with Mueller, New York is ready to pounce on this crooked fuck.
 
Don't forget the State of NY can prosecute all the Trumps and there is nothing Senior can do about it.
 
Not if they are not being tried for the same crime. You can be sued for tax problems with the IRS and with your state. You can be charged with money laundering in the state rather than by the feds.
 
Junebug said:
You are talking about whether the cause is just. That’s a fine discussion to have, but I am simply trying to ascertain whether you think a fetus is something whose existence has some sort of value that should be weighed against the mother’s interest, whatever that may be.

It sounds like you think a bird’s life has that value. Does a human fetus?
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No. A fetus has no value worth weighing against the mother’s life, choice, or mere whims until very late in development, and even then the weighing always goes in the mother’s favor.
 
 
Decades of Clinton hate have completely broken the Republican Party.
 
I think it’s more an intransigent and almost completely emotional reaction against relativism, the ‘60’s, science, and nuance.
 
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