This is an answer in itself. This answers my basic question about why you think children do not have any rights to act against rape and slavery just because they are a certain number of minutes old… just because.
I’m going to kill my 8 yr. + 364 days old son… just because. But I can’t do anything against the will of my 8 yr. + 365 days old son. And where is this coming from? Where exactly is this coming from? That, for right now, is ALL I want to know.
Why would you do that?
Just because.
You’re a rather loathsome individual.
Immaterial.
That’s true.
… of your view on whether fathers should be allowed to rape their 8 year old sons or not.
Who (you still haven’t answered me) decides that children do not have rights?
Rights-providers.
What the hell is a right-provider?
Why not?
Spidey and Stranger: I don’t know that it’s ever been answered, but it has been asked numerous times. If a child must demonstrate reason to be afforded rights? What is the burden of proof? You ask us to prove it, but have yet to ever tell us what constitutes proof. Do you even have a metric by which to gauge a person has reached the ability to reason and who decides? The pediatrician’s?
It has been answered numerous time. You are just oblivious to the answer.
I guess this settles it then.
Not true, you have asserted that before one can have rights they must prove reason. The premise is also in dispute, no one has agreed to that. So as such your argument is circular.
There answer is. “When they can prove that they can reason”. Or “When they can present their case”.
One is a form of circular arguing, the other is a whole other can of works they are incapable of adequately addressing.
I have. Have you? There is no such thing as a negative proof fallacy. I can prove many negatives. My car is not red. I did not kill JFK. These are easily provable. My car is black. Black is not red. Therefore my car is not red. JFK was killed more than a decade before I was born. Therefore I did not kill JFK.
When one refers to a negative proof fallacy, one is normally either misnaming argument from ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam) or making a sweeping generalization (dicto simpliciter).
Simply put, argument from ignorance is a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false, or is false only because it has not been proven true. I even posted a link to a greater explanation of the fallacy in an earlier reply.
Your attempt to disprove a unicorn’s existence is impossible, I’ll give you that. It in no way proves the non-existence. It merely proves its uncertainty. It also has nothing to do with the statement being negative. Disproving the positive statement, “Unicorns are imaginary,” would be equally impossible, while proving the negative statement, “Unicorns are not imaginary,” would be equally as easy as proving your positive example, “Unicorns exist.”
I never claimed it did. But at least you seem to finally understand. And just like you cannot prove a unicorn does not exist, I cannot prove children cannot reason.
But you have to either assume unicorns exist or you have to assume they do not. So, maybe you will actually answer my questions now?
That is still saying unicorns do not exist, which would be a negative proof. You are just playing semantics.
I don’t know why everyone keeps asking this same lame question. How do you know when someone is old enough to “murder” someone else? Or steal? Or commit fraud? Do you think babies can murder, steal, and commit fraud? How about 5 year olds? 10 year olds? 12 year olds? When? Whatever the age is, would be the age that someone has reached the age of consent or age of reason. I am not an expert in the field. But I do live in reality and know that this question is always in dispute. Some state courts will try someone for murder as an adult at age 12 I think. Some 14. Some not until 18. It’s a tough question to answer, and I am sure there are plenty of theories out there for you to study. But it is not relevant to this discussion.
What is relevant is the fact that we all agree that before a certain age, children are unable to commit crimes. Why? Because they cannot reason. Maybe you can go ask your local courts to verify this for you. So it is a fact of reality that children cannot reason (everyone in the world assumes this to be true except apparently a few people on this forum). Since they cannot reason, they have no rights, because they cannot make a case for their rights.
But the problem is we don’t all agree. Those and a few of you only come to that conclusion on your own. You say it’s because they cannot reason. Others, think differently. It’s non-sequitur as I have stated several times to assume that all of this hinges on reason in the first place.
Still my interest is peaked by something else. What exactly is your definition of rights?
Once again, there is no such thing as a negative proof fallacy, because the notion of “negative” is just “semantics”. “One cannot prove a negative,” is itself a negative statement, and were it true, would disprove itself. Further, all statements can be displayed as a negative. If negatives cannot be proven, all statements cannot be proven.
I’m not sure which questions I haven’t answered. I’ve tried to be diligent in responding to all of your replies to me. If I’ve missed one, I apologize. I’ll look back through the thread and try and find any I’ve missed.