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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Principle of Non-interference
Message-ID: <749@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 16:23:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: psivax.749
Posted: Tue Sep 24 16:23:36 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 05:52:31 EDT
References: <1732@pyuxd.UUCP> <1652@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 28

In article <1652@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes:
>
>Well, in many cases this is quite obviously not true.  People typically
>operate under some delusions about their state of well-being.  Were there no
>such delusions, I could agree whole-heartedly with Rich's system.  But in
>fact there are.  To take an extreme case, consider a man, a farmer, who
>suffers a massive heart attack.  Awakening in the hospital, he struggles to
>leave.  Can it really be argued that he is competent to judge his condition?
>Are not the doctors justified in restraining him from killing himself as he
>acts out the delusion that he is well?  Certainly, this example is extreme.
>The problem I see is that there is no clear-cut dividing line; situations
>run from this all the way down to where things are better let to go wrong,
>to where the good or badness of the situation is quite unclear.
>
	Or there is my prefered class of examples. What if your 2-3 yr
old child starts to run out into a busy street? Are you going to
ignore it("don't interfere with him - it is bad to assume what is best
for someone else"), try to *talk* him into coming back and hope you
succedd in time, or physically grab the kid and forcibly place him
back in the yard? I maintain that the last is the *only* reasonble
course under the circumstances, but it is *clearly* a violation of non-
interference! How is *this* justified in the non-interference morality?
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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