JS actually decides to give reason a whirl:
You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. All this talk of ‘reason’ and ‘moral choices’ makes me want to puke. These are not your strong points. But instead of yelling obscenities at you I’ll try and be reasonable, even though I can tell I’m wasting my time. These are not your strong points. But instead of yelling obscenities at you I’ll try and be reasonable, even though I can tell I’m wasting my time.
1. Your statement that all victims of crimes bear responsibility for their victimhood is clearly wrong. Does the victim of a serial killer bear responsibility for his crime? Should he have stayed at home behind locked doors in case a serial killer tried to kill him? Was a slave captured in Africa responsible for her capture because she didn’t run away fast enough?
Strike one. I never made any statement about all victims of crimes bearing responsibility for their victimhood. I stated that victims of crimes can bear partial responsibility for their victimhood. Is it an individual’s fault if his house is destroyed by a hurricane? If you say no, then how about those people who are rebuilding their homes below sea level in New Orleans? Are they more or less responsible for future hurricane damage than someone building a home in Iowa? (Hint: check their insurance premiums.) If you wish to argue that no victim can ever bear any responsibility for their victimhood, then please do so, as ascribing things I have not said to me and then attacking them only makes one look like an intellectually dishonest fool. My actual words are right here on this site.
2. You say that “he said-she said is no basis for a system of justice”. This is why, you argue, date-rape does not exist. Because the justice system cannot tell if the woman consented to sex or not, the rape did not happen. You argue this either a) because the woman, in agreeing to a date with a man, thus consents to have sex with him or b) no rape occurs without written proof of consent. I hope you discard a), because it is nonsense. By discarding it, you are also forced to discard your argument that date-rape is not rape. If you believe b) (which you seem implicitly to disagree with) then no sex is rape, unless a consent form has been signed. By arguing that disagreement over whether a rape took place, without concrete evidence of consent, meant that there was no rape, you are arguing that disagreement proves that events did not take place. This is clearly untrue: there is disagreement over whether the Holocaust took place, but those that deny it wilfully ignore clear evidence. They are hardly advocates of the “reason” you so admire.
Strike Two. JS conflates two different aspects of the topic and manages to thoroughly confuse himself. Neither (a) nor (b) apply because you incorrectly describe my argument. You should have written: “Because the justice system cannot tell if the woman consented to sex or not, there is no possibility of a just conviction of a crime”. His confusion becomes evident when he talks about the Holocaust; my entire point depends on there being no evidence other than sexual contact taking place. If there is sufficient evidence of force or violence, then obviously the justice system CAN tell that a crime took place.
3. Moral relativists do not necessarily reject the notion of private property. This is in fact an anarchist and Marxist idea. Moral relativists deny the existence of clear hierarchies of moral values. Do not mix terms.
Strike Three. Again, JS demonstrates an inability to describe accurately what I have written. First, I wrote “those moral relativists who reject the notion of private property”, thereby indicating a subset of all moral relativists. Second, the thief does not require an adherence to an economic ideology in order to violate the moral precept against stealing, indeed, most thieves who by definition of their profession obviously reject the concept of private property – what is mine is not yours – have likely never heard of Marx. They steal due to their denial of a specific moral value, not on behalf of the proletariat.
4. Most people do not use strict logic. Your argument that “responsibility is not a zero sum game” is not how most people think; blame is shifted implicitly in you argument from the rapist to his victim. By arguing this, you mirror the moral relativists you claim to despise. In your rationale all crimes are the products of unstoppable social or organic urges. A man rapes because he is lustful; therefore a woman who gives him the opportunity to rape her is culpable for that rape. Leave your keys in the car; it’ll get stolen. Blaming the perpetrator is mitigated, because everything is pre-determined. Blaming the rapist is relative to the opportunity given to him – if the woman is wearing a miniskirt, he is relatively less to blame for his rape.
Strike Four – and it’s a complete whiff! What does the failure of others to use strict logic have to do with me and my use of it? Here JS demonstrates that he can’t even follow the point well enough to mischaracterize it. Since responsibility is not a zero sum game, blame does not shift at all from anyone to anyone. The rapist is still 100 percent a rapist regardless of whether the woman is 0, 10 or 20 percent responsible. That’s precisely what NOT ZERO-SUM means! The bits about social urges, organic urges and pre-determination are simply debris left over from his failure to understand the point.
5. A fundamentally idealistic argument to counter your depressing determinism; we should all try collectively to create a society where a woman can walk down a street naked and not be raped. By arguing that a woman is “responsible” and “stupid” for being raped, you accede to the view that rape is inevitable.
Rape is inevitable. It has occurred in every human society, regardless of class and culture. It even occurs among animals. It occurs in free societies and rigidly totalitarian societies alike. It requires either complete innocence or willful ignorance to even attempt to argue otherwise. The fact that a woman is not necessarily responsible or stupid for being raped does not mean that a woman can never be responsible or never be stupid.
I don’t know why talk of reason would make JS want to puke. He doesn’t seem to have much experience with it, one way or the other.