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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Principle of Non-interference
Message-ID: <168@l5.uucp>
Date: Sat, 28-Sep-85 17:56:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.168
Posted: Sat Sep 28 17:56:19 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 08:15:11 EDT
References: <1732@pyuxd.UUCP> <1652@umcp-cs.UUCP> <749@psivax.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 37

In article <749@psivax.UUCP> friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>>
>	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?

Ah, I don't know how Rich is going to answer this one, but I know how I do.
Not-interference is a right which I ascribe to (for want of a better word)
citizens. Children are not citizens under this model.  This means that they
do not have the rights or the responsibilities of citizens. (They would, of
course, have the rights of living things, and the rights of human beings,
though.)  Please don't construe this to mean that I condone any amount of
interference with  children or that I condone any sort of interference to
other sorts of non-citizens (for instance, tourists).  

If you like this model, I suggest that you do not try to select for
citizenship on the basis of having someone else decide that this person is
competant to be a citizen.  Included are such arbitrary rules as ``you must
be over 18 to be a citizen'' or other such.  Since citizenship will entail
responsibilities I believe that it is better to let people demonstrate that
they can fulfil those responsibilities and then confer citizenship upon them.
If this means that some 15 year olds are citizens and some 45 year olds who
do not want the responsibilities of citizenship are not, then this outcome is
fair to me.

I think that to use this model we will need a lot more categories than citizen.


-- 
Laura Creighton		(note new address!)
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa


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