I would still love to see exactly how one possibly arrives at the conclusion that the woman and children's situation is voluntary.

This bears repeating as well. It is straight from Spider's source regarding biblical slavery.



1. The most frequent method of enslavement was the sale of children by their parents
2. Voluntary entering into slavery requires one make that choice for themself
3. If the most frequent method of enslavement was the sale of children by their parents, then it was not voluntary for the child(from 1+2)
4. Most slavery was not voluntary(from 2+3)

i think its time for a group hug

I feel ya dude,,,lol

seriously dude,,,


this was YOUR claim

'What is moral is what is good. One ought to always do what is good. Therefore, one ought to act morally. What is good has nothing to do with practicality, and therefore it is incorrect to define moral reasoning as practical reasoning, if that means that what is to be considered as good is contingent upon how practical it's implementation may or may not seem to be. '



now you say 'amoral does not deal with right and wrong or good and bad '



you reference me to the Stanford Encyslopedia of Psychology as a source for what is 'good'

but I used a definition DIRECTLY from the source about moral reasoning and you post that 'is incorrect to define moral reasoning as practical reasoning'

you also post that
'Slavery cannot escape the fact that humans are bought and sold. It is never moral to use a person solely as a means to an end. The well being of humans must be an end in itself'

seriously? how is an exchange of money for service 'using' anyone,, isnt that what employment is? How can you determine that merely because there is an exchange of money that someone must be being 'USED'? seems to me there is compensation involved, in the forms of payment(initial lump sum), food and board



,,,you are seriously backing up your opinions with opinions, perhaps I am too, but this discussion is going nowhere and it feels as if your responses are either all over the place or totally missing my point,,,

Ahhhhh swing anda misssssss



Steeeeerike 324!!!

Now???

I've never said otherwise. The term "amoral" does not have anything to do with right and wrong - by definition. That is what makes something amoral. What does that have to do with what you've quoted above, from me? I am simply asking you if you're exchanging immoral with "amoral", so that I can understand what it is you're talking about.

Many of the questions that you've asked are incoherent. They do not make any sense, if I apply the conventional meaning of the terms to your use of them. It's not as if all terms have contentious meaning. Some are quite uncontentious. Amoral being one of those.

Do you take offense at my asking you to restate some of your questions?



Actually I referenced The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I referenced the SEP in response to your asking me for a source which showed how morality/good and bad have long since been categorized. What is 'good' and 'bad' in a moral sense is not necessarily what is good and bad in a personal preference sense. How we are to determine what constitutes those things are what moral discourse is all about. There are several different ways to approach morality.



If you quoted from a psychology source, that may explain the problem. If you quoted from the SEP(philosophy) you most likely sourced an article on consequentialism or some form of utilitarianism. Both of those schools of thought hold moral acts to be contingent upon their practical application. I disagree with those approaches, as do many others.



Do you understand the difference between using a person solely as a means to an end, and the overall well-being of humanity being an end in itself? We can focus upon that point, and may need to in order to avoid any more misunderstandings.



An exchange of money does not necessarily indicate that a person is being used solely as a means to an end. The exchange of money most certainly does not make the situation immune to moral concerns, or moral in and of itself. There are plenty of monetary exchanges that are clearly immoral.

There are numerous ways to determine whether or not a person is using another solely as a means to an end.



Do you place any value in logical reasoning, and critical thinking skills being put to use? Are all opinions equal on your view? Do you understand/agree with the following logical truth?

It does not follow from the fact that all things come through a subject that all things coming through are equally subjective.

I get it now!


creative, do you think that your oppinion is less subjective than everyone elses?



If so, which external sources agree with you. Cite references pls.



Must a person go to a psycologist and obtain a "sane" certificate before their oppinion is considered less subjective? (I'm sure the answer is "no")

great,, replace AMORAL with IMMORAL and my point is the same

my quotes were from the SEP, the source YOU pointed me to
so there is no problem there

all opinions ARE equal in significance but not equal in their ability to be validated by FACT



your post

'There are numerous ways to determine whether or not a person is using another solely as a means to an end.'


with this I agree, and this is exactly why slavery in and of itself does not have an INHERENT value of being good or bad, because the only distinction(that money is being exchanged), is not in itself good or bad

which leaves the BEHAVIOR of those involved in slavery subject to have their specific behaviors judged as good or bad but not SLAVERY itself

it is an endless philisophical debate, Id equate it with debating whether 'prostitution' is BAD and therefore having to discuss all the different FORMS of prostitution(ranging from consentual and purely sexual to consentual and abusive or non consentual and abusive)

that would have to be compared to the BADNESS of sex itself to be expounded upon

in other words if SEX is not bad, than how can consenting to sex ever be bad, and if consenting to sex is not bad, how can consenting to receive money in return for sex be bad



likewise with slavery, there are many different forms, that to compare we would have to start with evaluating the 'good' or 'bad' involved in labor

from there, if we determine that labor is not bad, than consenting to labor would necessarily not be 'bad' either, and if consenting to labor is not 'bad', it would mean that CONSENTUAL slave 'status' would not be 'bad' either, although forced slave status would involve a different range of 'moral' implications

Good.



This claim seems self-contradictory. I must wonder exactly wnat you mean by "significance". Let's see if I can put this clearly enough.

Going by what you've said here, if someone offers the opinion that the moon is made of cheese, then because all opinions are equal in significance, that opinion holds equal significant value to an opposing opinion that the moon is not made of cheese. This does not seem correct.

Let me put the basis of my inquiry in different terms...

If there are two differing opinions, the first of which can be logically supported by/derived from known fact, and the second cannot, that and that alone automatically makes the first hold more significant weight than the second.



What is this 'distinction' that you're talking about? A distinction requires the identification of a difference between two distinctly independent things. What and what are you distinguishing between here?

The fact that there is an exchange of money taking place when a slave is sold/bought does not allow us to conclude that that slave is not being used solely as a means to end.



I disagree here completely, and I'll tell you why...

It does not follow from the fact that there is a monetary exchange taking place, that the institution of slavery is immune to moral consideration; that it cannot be morally judged. I could pay someone to kill an innocent man, that monetary exchange, that voluntarily entered into 'contract' does not make the situation amoral(immune to/from moral judgment). The same is true for slavery.

Slavery is put into practice by moral agents(humans). That fact cannot go on being neglected. Slavery cannot stand alone as a 'contract', for absent of moral agents, contracts cannot even exist, and that necessarily includes your conception of slavery. Therefore, an exhaustive examination of slavery cannot come as a result of simply saying "money is exchanged" and leaving it at that. Rather, in order to examine slavery, we must look much further. Doing that requires an examination of the human behaviors, the motivations behind those, and the necessary and logical consequences, all of which - when combined - will produce a much more complete account.



You're claiming that it is an endless philosophical debate does not make it so, or does that deny the importance of it. On the contrary, there are great strides being made concerning morality.



Some sex is bad. Rape being one example. An adult brainwashing a young child into thinking that s/he is loved and that that love is shown by their having sex and keeping it their little 'secret', being yet another.

Your premise fails. It logically leads to clearly immoral behavior. Just because one expresses 'consent' does not necessarily mean that what is being consented to is understood.



This is suggesting that we start out with the premise that "labor" is not bad. Then you conflate labor and slavery. Slavery and labor are not one in the same. It certainly does not follow that consenting to labor and consenting to slavery are the same.

I don't know everyone else's. Therefore, I cannot possibly conclude such a thing.



Being sane does not preclude subjectivity, so this question doesn't even make sense to me.

This bears repeating Msharmony..

Do you understand the difference between using a person solely as a means to an end, and the overall well-being of humanity being an end in itself? We can focus upon that point, and may need to in order to avoid any more misunderstandings.

creative, I do not think you see what's happening here.

You are still arguing "slavery" when in fact, the same word which was used for an Israelite "slave" was translated as "servant".

It was voluntary! Check for yourself, I know any link I post will be dismissed as "biased", so go find your own.


http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm
(you might not want to use this, it has the Bible there...)

Apparently even the fact that Moses' wife was a Midianite couldn't deter God and Moses trumped up justification for killing innocent children.

So, let me get this straight-- "Look at what you made ME do!" is grounds for justifiable homicide/genocide?"

"It takes two to tango."


-Kerry O.

I am looking deeper than the label, Pan. I don't think that you understand that.

I've already read Spider's link and have determined that the kind of slavery being talked about was clearly not all voluntary. The logical argument has already been given. The texts, and there were many of them referenced, all show that most cases of voluntary slavery, servants if you must, were children being sold by their parents.

Even in many, if not nearly all, of the cases where an adult volunteered themselves, they did so under clear conditions of duress.



Why do you hold onto this notion that I have not already done so, and how does this post relate to the words of mine which you're responding to?

Arguing for that kind of semantic interpretation makes no sense in the context of those stories.

Clearly you don't FREE a voluntary employee. You FIRE them.

You also don't keep their wife and kids when they leave.

Nope, these Hebrew stories were indeed speaking about true slavery. You're not going to get around that with a some superficial semantic hand-waving.

lol, ok , lets keep it simple

I do understand using a person solely as a means to an ends, it means that the situation is entered into with only ONE person having a benefit from it


as in, someone having consentual/free sex with another under the GUISE of loving them when they dont

that would be USING someone, having an affect that only services the needs of one



I do not understand what , objectively,

' the overall well-being of humanity being an end in itself? ' means as it seems as if well being is a pretty subjective term



however , if adults consent to do something together, unless they happen to have some deficit of the mind, noone is being USED provided they both receive what they wanted

In the case of CONSENTUAL sex under the guise of love, one got the sex they wanted but the other didnt get the love

so even though it was CONSENTUAL , it ended with only one achieving the 'ends' they intended

on the other had, in the case of sex for hire, noone is USED because one gets the sex they wanted and the other gets the money they wanted

I feel we are speaking two different languages here, seriously

1. The distinction I referred to was between SLAVERY (uninterrupted service for a contracted, or socially regulated, period of time in return for room and board and an initial payment), and labor (regularly scheduled service for a contracted, or legally documented, period of time in return for money that can be used for room and board)

2. The fact that there is an exchange of money taking place when a slave is sold/bought does not allow us to conclude that that slave is not being used solely as a means to end, NOR does it allow the conclusion that they ARE

3. Some sex is bad. Rape being one example. An adult brainwashing a young child into thinking that s/he is loved and that that love is shown by their having sex and keeping it their little 'secret', being yet another


NO KIDDING , which is my point, the fact that SOME sex is bad does not support a broad general statement that SEX is bad

or that someone or something supporting SEX is by association doing something 'bad' or necessarily supporting ANY AND ALL types of sex

similar to how the fact that SOME forms of slavery were 'bad', does not support a broad general statement that SLAVERY/SERVANTRY is bad

or that someone or something supporting SLAVERY is by association doing something 'bad' or necessarily supporting ANY AND ALL types of slavery

I disagree.

Slavery by definition means without a choice for the slave. All bad.

If there is a choice then it becomes a job even if you are only paid room and board.

not so if you look up what INDENTURED SERVITUDE/ INDENTURED SLAVES were



or if you check Miriam Webster

or if you review a bible concordance to find out the different forms of 'slavery' which were enacted during biblical times

or if you review a history source outlining SLAVERY throughout the history of mankind


slavery can be merely submission , and people do often choose to SUBMIT (to other people and other things) in return for some need of theirs being fulfilled(either emotionally or financially)