From: draughn@iitmax.iit.edu (Mark Draughn)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: (In)sanity arrives to this group! Welcome back Susan!
Date: 16 Apr 92 22:43:34 GMT
Article-I.D.: iitmax.1992Apr16.224334.20155
Organization: Illinois Institute of Technology

In article <susan.703389520@coombs> susan@coombs.anu.edu.au (Susan McDonald)
writes:
>rlt@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (R.L.Taylor KB2OOA) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Apr11.014355.18095@matilda.vut.edu.au> db@matilda.vut.edu.au
>>(David Bowman ) writes:
>
>>>Yes.... always the non-violent ways are dismissed. You live
>>>in a violent society. You know no better.
>
>>Always?  Come now, Davie, that's an extreme statement, even for you.  Note
>>my exact wording:  "inadequate for the particular situation."  Those
>>situations where peaceful resolution is adequate are not really appropriate
>>for talk.politics.GUNS.  
>
>	What I believe Dave is getting at, and what I'm saying is that you
>are making an assumption that the alternative solution has failed.  We don't.
>We want to examine it more closely, to see if indeed you had made every
>available choice available to you.

Curiously, this argument parallels an experiment done a few years ago.

A bunch of young children were given a hypothetical situation such as
this: "Someone you know needs a very special medication or else he or
she will die.  Neither of you can afford to buy the medicine.  Would
you steal it to save a life?"

Answers from the children fell into two groups, highly correlated with
sex.  Little boys tended to answer either "yes" or "no."  Little
girls, however, tended to want to explore other options such as "try
to borrow the money" or "get a job."  At the time, there were
conflicting interpretations of these results.

Both sides agreed that the boys were thinking about the problem more
narrow-mindedly than the girls.  One interpretation held that the boys
were just stuck with a false dichotomy and were unwilling to consider
alternatives.  The girls, however, seemed more mature and more willing
explore a wider range of options.

The other interpretation was that boys understood that the
hypothetical situation was constructed to explore a question of ethics
and morality: to introduce other possible solutions does not address
the central ethical question of whether it is okay to steal to save a
life.  The girls, on the other hand, failed to grasp the concept of a
hypothetical question of ethics and kept wanting to introduce
irrelevant arguments.

As the above quote illustrates, these same arguments are present in
the current long-running thread about the proper response to threats
of violence.  The sex-linked separation isn't as evident, however,
because of David and Roberta.

[In theory, I should cross-post something like this to soc.women, but
 I could never forgive myself if it got out of hand.]


By the way, are any of the other long-time members of this group
beginning to look back on the days of Ed Nilges with a kind of warm
nostalgia?
-- 

Mark Draughn    | <draughn@iitmax.iit.edu> or <SYSMARK@IITVAX> on BITNET
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