Even when the Constitution flatly forbids doing something – for example, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging freedom of speech or press – courts often weigh competing considerations to decide whether the “something” may be done, pleading that the meaning of the prohibition isn’t clear.
The same people often assert both of the following propositions:
#1: I may have intercourse with anyone at any time whenever I feel desire, because I am only a body.
#2: It doesn’t matter whether I am having intercourse with the opposite sex, the same sex, or Martians, because I am not defined by my body.
We don’t often stop believing in God, then start looking for new sins to commit. We become attached to sins we don’t want to give up, then start looking for reasons not to believe in God.
Most Americans say that “private” moral character doesn’t affect fitness for public office. Yet though many will vote for an adulterer, far fewer will vote for a wife-beater.
What this shows is that they do think moral character affects fitness for public office. They merely don’t consider marriage vows important enough.
Rules are necessarily biased; bias is in the nature of a rule. The rules of baseball are tilted in favor of skill, because skillful competition is what baseball is about; the rules of education, in favor of knowledge, because the extension of knowledge is what education is about. Rules can and should be fair. But the notion that fairness means neutrality is a fallacy.
Pauline doubt, which tests everything in order to hold fast to what is good, is hard work. But it does not doubt that there is a good to be found, and does not doubt the standards for the test.
Cartesian doubt, which doubts everything except what literally cannot be doubted, is not honest. If it were, it would admit that there is nothing which cannot be doubted, not even the famous cogito, ergo sum. So it could never even begin to advance toward the truth.
Have you noticed? Those who imagine virtual-reality utopias inhabited by “uploaded” human beings repeat the mistakes of those who used to imagine actual-reality utopias inhabited by flesh and blood. To think all problems will be solved by “consensual” virtual reality is like thinking that in the real world all problems will be solved by “consensual” government. If virtual reality could be anything that was desired, then it would be anything that someone desired.
