Philosophy Now Forum

To add my own personal experience to this topic: my wife had cancer 7 years ago. The projected 5-year survival rate was 30% probability. She recovered and is doing fine now, but at the time she was very sick. She went through radiation, surgery, chemo-therapy -- the works. We had our exit strategy: ...

I don't think that the narrow and speculative scenario you focused on went - or could go, anywhere near arriving at a consensus on what we owe others, which was the main topic of the thread. To discount or dismiss my sentence did not indicate that you were concerned with this broader picture....How...

I think if this extremely delicate topic is to be discussed then an important distinction must first be made between euthanasia and assisted suicide. Although they are often conflated they are quite different questions and must be regarded as such. For instance I am morally repelled by the former y...

Each society/individual has a different view of what it is to be 'poor'. Or 'one of the poor'. We can ask what is the 'poverty line' in your country? A yearly income? What criteria are being used? If you have a house, a business, land - can you be described as 'one of the poor'? It's all relative. ...

Replying to one of gary's comments in the "do we have the right to tax..." thread. I did not want to derail that thread in this direction, so I started this thread to discuss this side issue. As for the term "welfare for the rich," it is interesting to note that lately, taxpayer ...

Again. Good point about 'compassion'. I tried to address this in Ned's 'other' thread about what we owe others. http://forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15581 However, Ned seems not to want to address this. He snipped this sentence out: 'What use compassion, if there is not forethough...

I agree that legislation and governance is relevant to this topic. As usual, the issue has complexities whose relevance might not seem to be...er... relevant... or pertinent at first sight. I agree. Of course, it is relevant to this topic, but from a different angle than what I had in mind. I was t...

I would like to ask a question as a follow-up to the original question: Does a citizen have an obligation to not be a burden on society? For example, a mother and father that have 12 children they can't take care of financially... and yet they are pregnant once again. If we as individuals in societ...

I believe that Canada is still the closest existing country where that principle is embraced by the majority of the population (Harper notwithstanding)!

It's the Screwdriver Brigade. There is a type of mind, though it may belong to a decent, well-meaning person, that longs for simplicity. Show the people with that kind of mind a solution that requires one single principle, one simple operation, one all-purpose tool, and they'll go for it. Guilty as...

Takes me a while to get to my point, but I get there eventually lol! I do find your Socratic method of asking questions helps tease it out of me. I appreciate your patience. It didn't take you that long Dalek, and you knew it all along! Of course if the word 'communist' wasn't a forbidden word in t...

It is my view that a society should behave as its smallest unit, a family. A family cares and nurtures its members, as it strengthens the family unit, benefitting all. And if the weakest member flounders, we don't just turn him to the streets. If a society does not behave that way, what is the poin...

This was you Ned? Amazing. I doubt any argument back then would have moved you. You either change yourself, or you remain as you are. Actually, it was my second wife (the one I have been in love with during the last 35 years) that took my 'education' in hand. She guided me to books and thoughts I h...

There has never been a society that didn't put the collective interest above individual self-interest. Had there been one, it wouldn't have lasted two generations. In every society, there is a large measure of willing participation, voluntary curbing of short-term gain for long-term security and mu...

I'd ask him if he has a problem paying for things like roads and education. I don't, and don't use it like others. So he should support me and everyone else who is forced to, though he may use it. He can't have it both ways. If you take, you give back. And if you don't, get of our roads. Suppose he...