The state shows no disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. They tend to only punish those who threaten their monopoly. — NOS4A2

As evidenced by what? Do small time drug dealers threaten the state's monopoly? I think not.

According to anarchism crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Unfortunately the state sustains itself through these activities. That’s why I can see no way to differentiate state agents from any criminal class. — NOS4A2

And according to me they're not. Claims without arguments don't get us anywhere.

Another way to formulate it is that the government has the monopoly on crime. It can do and get away with theft, murder, kidnapping, for example, which are incidences of violence and coercion. — NOS4A2

But obviously the government does not actually have this monopoly, because other people commit plenty of crimes.

More to the point, this kind of argument just sidesteps the question of whether the state is moral by positing "crimes". But what's the moral significance of a "crime" here and how is it established?

It also might be recalled that Trump’s Republican Party is a completely different party to any other Republican President’s party. Many of his policies (or rather impulses) are diametrically opposite what previous Republican Party leaders have stood for. And also note that almost all the principled Republicans who tried to stand up for principles have been essentially expelled from the Party for insufficient loyalty to Dear Leader. — Wayfarer

Interestingly this would serve as an argument that Trump is one of the most transformational presidents in recent history.

Given the number of kids identifying as LGBT and choosing to sterilize themselves and undergo surgeries I wouldn't say they're too far off. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't know the number. I have always assumed though that it's not a relevant amount of people.

Public trust in higher education has plummeted and anti-semitism has risen. We live in scary times where very basic questions like "what gender am I?" are now suddenly up for question. Not a good sign. — BitconnectCarlos

And do you think we're looking at the cause here or the symptoms?

My personal explanation, which admittedly is typically pretentious armchair philosophy, is that what we're seeing is the result of a lack of avenues for (systemic) progress.

We've lived through the "end of history", but now on the other side we realise we're facing all the same problems, plus a couple of new ones. But at the same time we've lost all faith in utopia. There's no longer anything out there we can strive for without reservation.

One thing that strikes me in conversations is that everyone is pessimistic. Whether it's the climate or islam, the looming disaster is a common thread.

I think all forms of government are unjust. Governments claim a monopoly on certain uses of violence and threats. I take that to be definitive. — Clearbury

This seems to imply that what makes governments unjust is primarily the monopoly on violence. However, the monopoly is not constitutive. In and of itself, the monopoly on violence does not grant government any permission to use violence, rather it limits the violence of all others.

Government policies are backed by the threat of prison. — Clearbury

Some of them are, not all of them. And mostly the threat of prison isn't really what motivates people, though ultimately it can come down to that.

I take it to be morally self-evident that might does not make right. If I am more powerful than you, that doesn't mean I'm entitled to trample on your rights. I am simply more able to do so, but not more entitled to do so. So if it would be wrong for me to use force against you, then it is also wrong for a person with more power than I have to use force against you. And that now applies to the state and politicians. They have more power than the rest of us, but they are not more entitled to force us to do things than the rest of us.

If that is correct, then one can use what we are entitled to do to one another as a guide to what the government is justified in doing. If it would be wrong for me to make you do something, then it is wrong for the government to as well (other things being equal). — Clearbury

The devil though will be in the details of the "other things being equal".

But though it is correct that the state is entitled to protect our basic rights, it is not entitled to force us to pay it to do so. If, for example, someone is attacking you, then I am entitled to help you out and even to use violence against your attacker if need be. But I am not then entitled to bill you for my efforts and use violence against you if you refuse to pay. I can ask you to pay - and it may be that you ought to pay me something for my efforts - but I cannot extract payment with menaces. That would be immoral.

Yet that is what the state does. So yes, the state can protect our basic rights, but it cannot use force and the threat of force to fund such an enterprise. — Clearbury

Is that what the state does? I don't receive an invoice from the police if they stop someone from attacking me. The attacker might be billed, but the protected person is not.

I pay the government for clean water I receive (something you presumably don't object to). I don't pay directly for the more abstract work that goes into ensuring a stable supply of drinking water.

So I think your metaphor here is not quite apt. Obligations to the state are not obligations to a single individual and are not contractual in nature. You need a concept of a communal obligation for the state to make sense.

Assuming you woke up one day in some unknown community, would you be obligated to follow their rules about, for example, producing and distributing food? Or could you just refuse to help, taking what you needed without contributing?

If the government stopped doing both of these things, then it would - to all intents and purposes - cease to be a government at all. It would just be another business competing in an open market. And that's anarchy. — Clearbury

I don't think an open market could be described as anarchic. International relations are mostly anarchic. Do international relations follow a market model?

Are we entitled to force them to keep doing their jobs in order to avert the mayhem that would otherwise (temporarily) result? I don't think so. — Clearbury

Why not? "You can force others to avoid causing overwhelmingly harmful results" seems like a pretty convincing moral rule.

"Incumbency" seems to increasingly be defined not as any specific government, but as the entire socio-political (though curiously not the economic) status quo.

Reading what people say in right-wing spaces, they're mostly convinced that they're facing an ideologigally motivated group across politics, the media and civil society which will destroy western society unless they're stopped by an overwhelming counter-movement.

Trump was elected by those very multi-cultural young voters whom the Democrats had assumed they could count on. — Wayfarer

That's not just an US phenomenon either. Young male voters are making a sharp turn to the right in the west.

But that would be insane. Trump voters are mostly not insane. Therefore that explanation is false. It seems to me more credible that Trump won more on policy and not personality. Did the republicans simply make up democrat policies as strawmen, and then carpet bomb the media with it, resulting in a vote against the democrats (rather than for an odious criminal)? I don't know. — bert1

Not policy in the strict sense. More like meta-policy. Specifically the idea that the institutions are corrupt, society is falling apart and thus some kind of radical change is necessary.

But there's no specific policy for how this change is supposed to look. Hence the vote was more anti-democrat, in the sense that it was against the existing political and media elite.

Well, Germany seems to have decided that what it should do is chuck the current coalition and aim for new elections in the spring. So both the US and one of the EU's central countries will simultaneously be in a transition period this winter.

What a day.

does anything for them. — Manuel

He'll burn down the system. That's what people want. They're tired of politics, tired of being responsible for the world's ills, tired of worrying about climate change or foreign policy, tired of the current state of capitalism (though the latter they don't identify as the problem).

The solution is to burn it all down. Elect someone obviously hated by politicians and the media. Someone who is "unfit for office", which to their ears means he's a danger to the status quo. He's a danger to "democracy"? Great that means he'll change the system which doesn't work for ordinary Americans.

This is not meant as an indictment. There's stupidity and cultish behaviour around Trump, but their feeling that something is deeply wrong is understandable. It's not limited to the US either. I see a lot of the same sentiment in Europe now.

So Trump would like some nazi generals. They did have pretty stylish uniforms. It's not like Trump has any use for unquestioning loyalists who would follow his orders even if it leads to catastrophe, right?

Though honestly I kinda doubt Trump even knows enough about the nazi generals to appreciate their warped sense of military duty. He's probably thinking more on the level of "they did win a lot and winning good".

What I find weird is that looking from the outside, Harris seems to be doing well while Trump seems to get less coherent every day, while waxing poetically about nazi generals and using the military against the enemy within.

Yet the voters don't seem to care. It's confusing, and that means some part of my model of the world is faulty.

Is all of this not about Trump after all? Everyone talks about the cultishness but maybe that's just a front that hides the real desire to just burn it all down.

I have no issue with legal immigration, and I would be surprised if anyone on this forum does. England thrives on legal immigration. For example, according to NHS Workforce statistics published by NHS Digital, 265,000 out of 1.5 million NHS staff are of non-British nationality, making it 1 in 5. Immigrants contribute significantly to our society, and to disagree is, in my eyes, is regressive. — Samlw

In general, I would agree. However, I do think that it's going to be hard to address the topic of illegal immigration without some preliminaries on how and under which circumstances migration is morally good.

It's easy to agree that people should, in general, have the freedom to move, settle and work where they want to. Yet the social state, still the current iteration of our socio-political system, is arguably not build with this freedom in mind. It's supposed to be an inter-generational contract. The global economy is build on the free movement of goods and services but notably not of people.

Now of course we can argue that these are all arbitrary states of affairs that ought to be simply changed. But how? States are geographical entities, and people moving impacts both sides of the movement. If the smart and capable people leave, that leaves as state of origin worse off. Yet siphoning off the smart and capable is the explicit purpose of most immigration strategies.

Which begs the question, should our goal actually be that people stay put?

My question is this: How do you decide who to let in and who to deny entry? — Samlw

I think our primary issue currently is a procedural one. The western immigration systems are badly broken, and they're not being fixed because the topic has become entirely politically toxic.

Deciding who to let in would be a problem one could approach by degrees, adjusting the criteria based on what the capabilities and needs of the people and societies involved is.

The problem is, whatever rules we come up with we'd need a system to enforce them. And that's where the issue currently lies. And I don't mean physical barriers here. We've created a system of controls that is insufficient to actually control immigration, but does provide a lot of motivation to subvert the rules and a lot of opportunity for organised smuggling to make money. We've got complex an bureacratic asylum and immigration proceedings that tend to punish those who actually attempt to follow the rules while providing ample opportunity to stall or otherwise sidetrack the process.

Nor is there really any simple solution. All solutions seem unpalatable in some respect or others. Holding camps are essentially indefinite detention for at most an administrative crime. Out-of-country immigration procedures have obvious issues with due process. Deportation to unstable or destitute targets seems cruel. Yet it seems to me that if you want some kind of immigration regulation, you need to have somewhat consistent outcomes. A lack of residency permit must lead to some predictable and clear consequences.

And I think this is true even if the goals of your immigration criteria are purely humanitarian. Arguably, if that's the case, you have the most motivation to make sure only the most deserving benefit from your resources, which will always be limited.

So, to reiterate, I think the big challenge right now is to find a set of procedural rules that is sufficiently humane but also sufficiently predictable and efficient to actually make immigration cirteria meaningful.

An interesting article that appeared in the Guardian (of all places) written by historian and writer Adam Tooze, echoing a sentiment that I have expressed in this thread pertaining to the nature of US actions in the current crises. — Tzeentch

I wouldn't say that. Tooze does not claim that the entire sequence of events is part of an elaborate long term US strategy. He acknowledges that in Ukraine and Israel, the US reacted to aggression. He also explicitly says that Russia miscalculated over Ukraine, assuming that the invasion would not cause the kind of reaction it did.

What he does argue is that the US is shaping it's response to these events deliberately and in concert with each other. This is a general assumption of competence with which it is hard to argue. The article is somewhat light on substance though. It offers few specific explanations for actions and no predictions.

If the US is revisionist, what can we expect the revised world order to look like? The article does not say unfortunately. Iran and Russia weakened seems like a safe assumption. But what's the significance for China, for example?

My further response applies to everything you've just said. I think it's possible you're not getting me:
That you claim to be a person begs the question, but even if it didn't, it provides absolutely nothing as to a 'necessary or sufficient' set of criteria. You're just saying 'look at me!!'. I could make the same claim about being black. But, as you know, I'd be either laughed at or charged with racism. Fair enough, too. My point is you have to have a set of criteria, prior to your claim to fit them, and then assess whether you fit them (I imagine this can be easily done, it's just not happening here). I'm wanting your criteria. If that is just 'what I, in fact, am' I'll leave it there and just say I'm not convinced. — AmadeusD

I see where you're coming from. I think that fundamentally, my personhood in at of itself must be considered an a-priori conclusion. I experience myself as a continuous and monolithic actor interacting with a world that is outside of me. I experience self-awareness in the sense that I'm aware of my own awareness. I call this personhood.

We could go back to Descartes with this, you probably get the idea. So I think it's less that there are some criteria and then I decide whether I fit them. I look at myself and decide what the necessary and sufficient criteria are to be like that.

I've been reticent to enumerate exact criteria because if I did, I'd certainly make mistakes. But I think the rough outlines aren't that controversial if we're talking about adults. Thinking, awareness, empathy.

Which ones? And are they derived from your conviction that you're a person? Seems to remain somewhat circular, if inter-personal. — AmadeusD

I see what you mean by circular, but the addition of other potential subjects that you interact with is a relevant addition. If there were no others, there'd be no need for the concept of personhood.

I wouldn't disagree, and we're getting somewhere now - but following from the previous comments about consciousness, We would want to know at what level does the consciousness reach the level of a 'personal' consciousness - in the sense that an alien species could have cognitive abilities the same as humans, and not be humans. Are they persons, nonetheless? Yes or no is fine, I'm just curious as to where these ideas go... Not sure where i'd land. — AmadeusD

I would say they're persons. Personally I also consider some primate and whale species at least close to persons based on the complexity of their behaviour.

Since we don't have inside views of others, human or not, I think we need to rely on signs of complex cognition that can be observed. Like recognising yourself in the mirror, displaying empathy and complex social relations, having significant discretion in how to react to stimuli.

I think this is likely part of the answer(given we need to assess personhood, and identity, it's a doozy so I'm loathe to think there's anything but a very complex answer). I don't think there's anything mystical, but I do think there might be a moveable moment. This might be the moment hte heart beats for the first time, as a trivial example, which would be different for different fetuses. I don't think it's hard to offer several possibilities for hard-and-fast rules. Just, i don't see anyone agreeing given either (meaning, depending on your view) a life is being ended, or prevented. — AmadeusD

I don't really have a strong attachment to any particular line. I think if you want to be more cautious and choose an earlier moment, that's an understandable approach, but we'd need to balance our caution with having a practical solution that doesn't put all the burden of uncertainty on the women.

VERY fun!! I like these lines. I think if a fetus looked like a dog, and lost its hair, drew in its mandible and slowly became bi-pedal over the first six months, we definitely have to make an arbitrary call as to when it 'morally' becomes 'human'. What would you want to say there? — AmadeusD

In a way that's what happens, a fetus looks very alien during some of its development. But I think in this scenario, we'd have a whole lot less concerns about abortion. We'd maybe not treat children as human until they actually looked human. I think that in terms of evidence about cognitive ability, we don't have much to go on for newborns. Children don't recognise themselves in the mirror during roughly the first year. In that sense, one could argue that a dolphin is more of a person.

That's of course a one-dimensional view and human children do have abilities in other areas. But if you wanted to establish a set of criteria for personhood that didn't take into account species (directly or indirectly) it seems to me you'd have trouble coming up with a catalogue that included newborn human children without also including a diverse set of non-human animals.

What you are describing is a capacity to deploy a mind, and not having a mind. Therefore, you must agree that a knocked out human being technically isn’t a person when they are knocked out; and re-gain personhood when they re-gain consciousness.

This is not a minor point: your whole argument relied on personhood grounding rights, not the capacity to acquire personhood (because they have a fully developed brain). You are starting to morph into my view: the nature of that being sets them out as a person, because they can and will, if everything goes according to the proper biological development, develop personhood. — Bob Ross

I'm not sure that I "must" agree. I can see your point, but it's based on the assumption that a mind is not a continuous entity but a series of unrelated instances. In your view, the mind that go to sleep and the mind that wakes up are different minds. That runs directly counter to the self-awareness of the mind as a continuous entity. And this also matches up with the fact that the physical representation of the mind - the neuronal activity - does not stop while unconscious. In addition, you are not necessarily conscious at any given moment of all your mind. Thoughts and impressions often "pop into" your mind, but since they don't spring up ex-nihilo they're probably really parts of your mind that just weren't in focus.

So why can't I just conclude that "consciousness" is merely an attribute of a mind? In that case there are conscious minds and unconscious minds, that does not seem like a logical impossibility.

Also, if you go the capacity route; then you end up with the absurdity that dead human beings have no rights...just food for thought. — Bob Ross

Uh, what is absurd about that? Why would dead human beings have rights?

I am talking about how a healthy member of a species is supposed to develop and become. People think of “teleoglogy” as a dirty word these days, or a vacuous concept, but we use it implicitly all the time in the medical industry.

When you go into the doctor’s office and complain about your hand not acting properly, or when a child is born without an arm and you take pity on them, you are talking necessarily in teleological terms: your hand, e.g., was supposed to, according to what a healthy human hand normally does, behave such-and-such instead of so-and-so.

You have a nature which is set out by your biology which is set out by the species which you are a member of. Zebras are supposed to have stripes: a zebra which doesn’t have stripes is an abnormality—a defect. — Bob Ross

This is fine if we're talking about subjects where there's no disconnect between what the teleology says it's natural and what individuals usually want. A kind of instrumental theology. People usually want two functioning arms so you can generally assume their interest is to have functioning arms. Such presumed interests are also applied in a legal context when you need to decide on surgery on someone who is e.g. unconscious.

You run into a problem though once you move away from the presumed interests of the person. At that point the teleology would have to be justified against the interests of the person affected and I don't think it can. We have plenty of historical examples about the tyranny of normality.

On the subject of abortion, that brings us back to the familiar question: does a fetus have a presumed interest to become a person? You'd probably say yes, just like an unconscious person has an interest in continuing to live. But to me this comes down to the fundamental notion of logical prerequisites. You have to exist before you can have rights or interests.

There’s a huge consensus in biology that life begins at conception; so it’s, quite frankly, not worth my time to argue about it. Here’s a good article on it: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3211703 . — Bob Ross

But what do the biologists mean when they say life? Since obviously all parts of the reproductive mechanism are already alive, they don't mean abiogenesis. But if they don't mean life as opposed to non-living chemical and physical processes, what do they mean?

That’s not how it works...at all. A ball doesn’t know what a ball is. — Bob Ross

Yeah but balls aren't self-aware. I am though.

My point was that just because neurons are firing in a brain, that does not necessitate there is a person.

Personhood is mindhood: it is having a mind, not having a brain that could produce a mind or “house” a mind.

You are conflating a capacity for personhood with personhood. — Bob Ross

Yes fair enough, but I would still argue that even an unconscious mind is a mind. The neuron firings of an unconscious person don't turn into a random jumble and then spontaneously reassemble into a mind when that person wakes up. There is continuity.

But perhaps on a more fundamental level I'll have to take "capacity for personhood" as evidence for actual personhood. I don't usually have access to brain scans of people I meet.

Nature is defined by evolutionary biology — Bob Ross

Ok, then what part of that biology are you calling nature

Thereby creating a new life, which thereby begins its continual-development process until death. — Bob Ross

That's interpretation, not fact. I've already pointed out that there's nothing "new" about the life, all of its components are already alive, there's no abiogenesis going on (and even if there was, that would not answer the question of moral relevance anyways).

This is just an elaborate restatement of the initial, incoherent claim, though. So, my response would be the same. It's circular and gives no argument. Just you believe that being a person entitles you to define a person. Which begs the question. *matt walsh voice* "Ok, but what is a person?" — AmadeusD

Yes, being a person entitles me to define a person. How else would it work? It's neither incoherent or circular. The argument is quite simply that since I'm the one that needs to decide on a moral framework, I need to figure out how to judge who is a person and who isn't. Since the only fixed point I start out with is that I am a person, I need to proceed from that.

This can't possibly be the case. It is , in fact, a fetus. It isn't some future person. — AmadeusD

I agree.

What evidence? That's the point I'm trying to get across - no level of 'evidence' would satisfy a conflict of conceptual analysis (though, i recognise this lends itself to idiots simply moving hte goalposts, so maybe im being a bit too analytical here). — AmadeusD

I think I see what you mean, but then I'm not trying to establish some specific test. I'm merely arguing for my take on the conceptual analysis. Which is that, if we're being honest, we determine personhood based on certain cognitive similarities and their expressions in behaviour.

We could hypothesize whether rocks have some mystical thinking power and are actually fully conscious, self aware beings. But doing so is clearly pointless. All we can do is work with what criteria we can come up with by self-reflexion.

By doing that it seems pretty obvious that a person needs some kind of thinking apparatus. Rocks don't have that (as far as we can tell), so rocks probably aren't persons. Zygotes don't have it either, I'm merely drawing the obvious conclusion.

I'm commenting only on your comportment, not hte discussion. That said, I do have the relevant context in mind. My comments aren't (well, not significantly) askance from the discussion. Though, treat it is a new one if you want to. It would work as such. — AmadeusD

I just don't really think that works because I'm not necessarily arguing my own position in those comments.

Sorry, 'relation R' is psychological continuity, in Parfitean terms. A child of three weeks does not have this relation in either direction, it seems. And so, could not be considered a personality. Not a personality=not a person? That's hte corner I'm trying to canvas. — AmadeusD

Oh, right, I wasn't aware of that terminology.

But yes that's a conclusion you could draw. It's obviously a pretty controversial conclusion to draw. Someone might say that even considering the possibility serves as a reductio ad absurdum for my argument. I think it's useful though to consider the possibility that there's no mystical essence to the human form that somehow turns it into its own category.

Now to be clear I'm not saying we should conclude, at this point, that children under the age of 2 aren't people. But if we're not going to invoke some kind of permanent soul or some other special pleading that makes humans special cases, we'll have to approach a human like we would any other lifeform. And would we consider the equivalent of a three week old human child a person if it happened to not look like a human? You did ask for a fun discussion, did you not?

That gives you no authority to that claim. Dogs don't know what Dogs are. — AmadeusD

But I'm not a dog. I do know what I am. That's one of the things that makes me a person.

There is no settle consensus on this. — AmadeusD

Indeed there's not. But in that particular conversation, we had already arrived at the conclusion that a fetus is relevant because it's a future person.

Such as here - personhood isn't a fact. — AmadeusD

I did not mean to claim that personhood is a fact. I'm arguing in favour of an evidence-based judgement of personhood.

He believes otherwise. You would need to fully ignore this to make a claim, as if it were an objection to his position. If personhood starts at conception (a fully acceptable formulation, just not one I personally think helpful, even if true) then the position is fine. Silly, imo, but fine. He's asking you to consider his position that personhood starts at conception. These are just competing theories of personhood. Should be fun to discuss LOL. — AmadeusD

You're commenting on this discussion without the relevant context of the previous posts/replies.

Which brings in the much much more interesting question: If personal identity doens't obtain other than through relation R, how is it possible that a child of three weeks could be considered 'a person' and be afforded the rights of a person? Hehehe. — AmadeusD

Presumably because "relation R", whatever that is, obtains at that time.

Are you asking me what the evidence is that a newborn is a person?

Do you know what personhood is? — Bob Ross

Yes, because I am a person.

Just because a brain is firing neurons doesn’t mean that that being, which has that brain, is a person. E.g., a dog is not a person (traditionally). — Bob Ross

And? I didn't claim any brain makes a person. Some brains do though.

Evolution is not arbitrary: that is a myth invented by some evangelical religious people. — Bob Ross

I did not claim evolution is arbitrary. The concept of "nature" is arbitrary.

It is an undisputed scientific fact that life begins at conception: it is the clear beginning mark of the ever-continual development cycle of an individual human being (until death). — Bob Ross

It's a scientific fact that, at conception, two cells fuse to become one, combining their genetic material. That is the description, which is all that science provides. The rest is the addition of categories, which can be useful but aren't scientific facts.

Fetuses do not exist in a void. Fetuses can be interacted with. If they couldn't, they wouldn't be killed. — NOS4A2

They aren't person though. You want us to consider them based on their future personhood, not the current one.

It depends upon what you mean by "resemblance." At first glance sure, but after a while I start to notice differences between a dead guy and and an alive guy. — Hanover

I don't know, that doesn't strike me as a particularly honest response.

Regardless, we can clearly conceive of things that don't physically look human but should be considered persons, be them actual animals or hypothetical aliens.

The most cautious approach is to afford rights at conception. That would be a really safe approach, but if you think women have rights worth protecting, then the safest approach for them would be to protect the right to abortion up until the moment of birth. Then you have to balance the interests, and once you do that, you're not talking about science, but you're talking about public policy that satisifies the most people.

But the problem is that the ideologues control the debate, not the pragmatists, which is why the respective sides spend the better part of their arguing screaming "misogynist" and "murderer" at each other. — Hanover

That tracks with my position fairly well. I'm not really unsure about whether a bunch of cells with no nervous system is a person. But things get less sure as pregnancy progresses. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there seems little practical benefit to restricting abortion regardless.

Correct. As I noted in my last response, personhood does not begin at conception; and the best way to ground rights in the nature of the being in question—specifically whether or not its nature sets it out as a person. This is not the same thing as saying that a living being is currently a person.

E.g., a human being that is knocked out on the floor does not have personhood; has the capacity for personhood; and has a nature such that it sets it out as a species which are persons. — Bob Ross

This seems silly. An unconscious person isn't brain-dead. There's an obvious and measurable activity still going on. This seems like intentional ignorance to force the conclusion that somehow we can't make an evidence-based determination and must instead rely on arbitrary "nature".

The blastocyst is an alive human being: it is a scientific fact that life begins at conception. I am not sure why you would argue the contrary. — Bob Ross

Obviously "life" does not begin at conception, since all the cells involved are already alive before they fuse.

It’s wrong to kill a fetus for the same reason it is wrong to murder a 40 year old. Both are deprived of a future against their will. Both have their bodies destroyed against their will. The world and the community are deprived of their presence against their will. In any case, any evidence or reasoning to support the claim that it is wrong to kill a 40 year old can be applied to any other human being in any other stage of its life, including early development. — NOS4A2

I think that's not quite true because as Kant pointed out, the idea of some society where you exist together with others is at the basis of moral philosophy. Future people cannot be interacted with even theoretically. Their interests have no bearing on any current situation - they can't affect anyone nor can their interests be affected.

But there are organisms, unambiguously people, who lack these attributes as well.

I don't afford embryos the rights of a person because they don't look like people. They look like a dividing cell under a microscope. I could pretend it's more than that, but it's not. An unconscious amnesiac is a person if he resembles those I know to be people. — Hanover

A good point, but then resemblance is not a sufficient criterion either, since a dead human body still resembles a person pretty exactly but isn't a person.

We could add biological details like brain function but we don't have access to those most of the time. So it's about a kind of resemblance but more a resemblance in behaviour.

Beyond that we do afford rights to human beings whose ability to behave as a person has been temporarily or permanently damaged to some extent. I think this can be easily accommodated as being out of an abundance of caution, which seems a reasonable strategy to adopt.

At what point can we distill with more certainty cultural factors from others (geographic, socio-economic, individual psychological, etc.)? — schopenhauer1

One way of looking at this is that "culture" is simply what remains of a statistical difference between two groups once you have eliminated anything more specific than that.

The other approach is to conclude based on the behaviour of some sample. If you can distill a cultural practice from the sample, and that practice provides an explanation for the difference you're seeing, then that's evidence that culture is causing the difference.

Others would say that it derives from socio-economic circumstances of simply being poor. If you are poor, and discriminated, these are the activities that a subgroup might tend towards.. — schopenhauer1

That really is a separate question though, isn't it? One would be whether there's causal connection between some cultural practice and a statistically significant deviation in outcomes.

The other is whether you can then clearly trace back the origins of the culture. The latter will often be immensely difficult, but is not necessary required to solve a problem.

I understand, and have no problem with either term in common usage, but if I were to ask you to point to whatever it is you're referring to you would invariably point to your body, which has existed and grown since conception. That's what I'm hung up on. — NOS4A2

And? Once again you leave things hanging by suggesting you have an argument but not making it.

So yes I would point to my body and yes there's a causal chain that point from my current state back to conception. It also points further backwards and forwards indefinitely. But you're not telling my why you think the two are connected.

True, it is very uncomfortable for me to watch people make these distinctions. This is because they are not based on much, are often arbitrary, differ across individuals and cultures, yet can justify the worst in human behavior. So, for me, it is no longer about what these distinctions are (for there appear to be none), but why they are being made. My theory as to the "why" in regards to abortion is dehumanization. — NOS4A2

But how are we better off by ignoring the question? If we're not even willing to talk about what makes a person, then how are we going to expose those bad human behaviours?

I can't see it from your position because there is no evidence for it. It cannot be shown that personhood or soul or "I" enter or leave the body at any point, and this includes during prenatal development. — NOS4A2

Is this supposed to mean that there's no evidence for personhood? Or are you just hung up on the word "soul"? I've already said I'm not using it to refer to anything esoteric or mystical. You can just use another word like "mind" or "self".

As I have argued, making such distinctions is utilized as a process of dehumanization. It couldn't be otherwise. Clearly you require it so as to avoid an uncomfortable truth. The idea that someone becomes a non-person upon injury to the brain, or that a fetus is merely parasite or cyst, are efforts to eschew the conscience so as to make their killing palatable. I don't think turning off life-support is to intentionally kill a person because the doctors were in fact keeping him alive, but to eviscerate a fetus is. These acts are not to be taken lightly. But wherever they are, even celebrated, is barbarism. — NOS4A2

This is an ad-hominem argument. You're only questioning my moral integrity, but you're not actually making any arguments, moral or otherwise.

From my perspective, you're the one avoiding an uncomfortable truth, that being that we draw lines between what is and is not a person, and these lines are not handed down to us by divine decree.

I think that if you conclude that a body without a working brain is a person, you should examine your premises.

All those doctors doing organ transplants or shutting off life saving machines in case of irrecoverable brain damage are killing a person, in your framework.

A relevant change would be a hole in your head and damage to very important parts of your body. It's much different than a broken arm in that it's a different location on the body and involves different anatomy. No, your biology would not be perfectly fine. — NOS4A2

But it would still be me right? You haven't answered the question clearly and I would really like a direct answer.

If a cell without a brain is me, then so is my body with some damage to the head, right?

So if I'm shot in the head, nothing relevant changes right? It's still me. No different than a broken arm. The DNA of my cells would be the same, most of the biology would still be perfectly fine.

It all seems very arbitrary. It’s not unlike the soul concept. — NOS4A2

It's arbitrary that communication is part of what makes a person? Hardly.

You could ask your mother. You could watch any human birth. Look at sonograms and infer from there. But the fact is all homo sapiens were fetuses. You are a homo sapien. Therefor you were a fetus. — NOS4A2

Yeah yeah, no-one is in doubt about the biology. But "I" wasn't around, was I? The thinking process that experiences itself as a continuously existing actor. The "I think, therefore I am" of Descartes. That "I".

How could that have been around at conception?

Are those who do not respond not persons? — NOS4A2

If they don't respond, you need some kind of other evidence that they're thinking.

Are persons and subjects living human beings or are they not? — NOS4A2

I think at least some other species need to be considered. Some primate and whale species, for example.

Point proven. I’ll put you down as the first person I’ve ever met who believes they were never a fetus. Unfortunately the reasoning fully contradicts the evidence. — NOS4A2

What evidence? You never gave me any.

It is very complicated because you have no thing nor structure nor any formation to point to that can proven to be connected to your body, and that can be labelled with such a pronoun, other than the things, structures, and formations already in there. — NOS4A2

I don't really understand what you're talking about here. "Such a pronoun"? Which one? Is the question whether my mind is connected to my body?

I don’t know what an “actual person” is. What I do know is that a human being forms, and that morality ought to concern human beings. — NOS4A2

An actual person is an actual person. Someone you can meet and talk to, and who responds.

Morality ought to concern persons, subjects. I don't see how their species would be relevant.

Biology and anthropology. What is your basis? — NOS4A2

Both biology and anthropology are descriptive. How do you get from that to a moral judgement?

And I already gave you my basis:

Why do we respect people's rights to life and liberty? Because we recognise ourselves in them. We recognise that every individual is valuable in themselves and we can never replace one with another, so the only reasonable rule is to protect all as much as possible. — Echarmion

Everyone knows, actually. It is an irrefutable fact that you were a fetus. — NOS4A2

"Everyone knows" is not an argument. I gave you the reasoning, I trust you're capable of understanding it.

But there you have it. You are not your cells nor your DNA. Then what are you? A soul? — NOS4A2

That's one way of putting it. Though I'm an embodied soul, whose existence is measurable. "Soul" often implies something esoteric, but I don't mean to imply that anything mystic is going on. Merely that "I" am formed from a connection of a body, some kind of cognitive process and memories.

A clump of cells would not be me even if it shared my DNA. If you made an exact copy of me, that copy would cease to be me the moment it added it's own experiences.

I don't think any of this is very complicated in principle.

It refers to the earliest stages of every human being that ever existed. There is no biological evidence that a soul or “actual person” forms at any point during the lifecycle. That’s your assumption. — NOS4A2

So, if no actual person forms, then how does morality come into it at all?

Not a coin flip. I pointed out that most parents feel the force of this principle, and the evidence is that an unfathomable amount of parents do indeed carry and care for human beings in the earliest stages of development, up until and including incubating them in their own bodies. — NOS4A2

So, argumentum ad populum?

You do recognize that you were once a fetus, I assume. At no point in your life were you theoretical after conception. That’s utter nonsense, I’m afraid. — NOS4A2

I don't know whether I was ever a fetus. I have no memories of existing prior to birth (as I understand most people do not), and I don't know any other way to establish whether I existed at some point.

"I" am neither my cells nor my DNA. Nor am I a causal chain.

That is to say, one must be willing to 'deal with' a possible pregnancy in a moral way if one engages in sexual activity. — Chet Hawkins

I agree with her that there is clearly an immoral pattern of irresponsible behavior there. So, liars and the uncaring need to be called to task for such things. — Chet Hawkins

I'm missing a step in your argument here. I can agree with the first statement, but to get to the second you'd have to establish a duty, in principle, to carry a pregnancy to term.

Using birth is arbitrary in the sense that it doesn't really match up to the moral situation precisely. There are arguments to be made for using this particular point (I made some in this thread), but you could make other arguments for e.g. some percentage likelihood of survival in case of a premature birth.

The point I wanted to make was that we should be honest about how we know something is a someone, a person. It's by comparison with ourselves. By trying to figure out whether they think in a way we recognise as intelligence.

There's going to be a point after conception when we can recognise a child as an intelligent being. Beyond that, we don't really have any reason to give a collection of biochemical processes special standing because they involve human DNA, do we?

But one of the challenges the pro-choice advocate faces is explaining the dividing line between killable and not-killable. When and how does that transition take place? — frank

I mean everyone recognises a dividing line between subjects, which have moral standing and objects, which do not.

There is not strictly any empirical basis for even differentiating between living organisms and "dead" matter. Biology is just a specific kind of chemistry.

The simple fact is that we judge the moral value of beings - their value in and of themselves - based on their similarity to ourselves. What else could we do? We only have access to our own consciousness, we are only aware of ourselves as an actor. So that's the starting point we have. We could ruminate on the possible consicousness of blades of grass or even rocks but we'd not get anywhere.

Why is a fetus not a person? Well it cannot walk, it cannot talk, it does not recognise itself in a mirror, it does not display many behaviours in which we recognise ourselves. We know it could become a person in the future, which is the reason we are concerned. But saying it has a right to live because it has human DNA isn't really any less arbirtray than saying a child has a right to live after birth, but not before.

Why would anyone need to assume that? — NOS4A2

What else would a "human being in it's earlierst development" refer to?

It cannot refer to the actual person that eventually forms after birth, as that person doesn't exist. So it could only refer to their "soul", which somehow already represents the person.

I start at the principle “a human being in its earliest development deserves a chance to live”. Given the helplessness of a human being in his early development, such a principle seems to me imperative. Any subsequent moral judgements proceed from this one. — NOS4A2

In which case your entire argument is begging the question. Why would "a human being in it's earlierst development" deserve the chance to live? It's not at all trivial that future people somehow have the right to exist. Where does their moral standing come from?

Exactly. Why do you care or not? You either believe human beings in their earliest development deserves a chance to live, to be protected, or you do not. — NOS4A2

Really? That is how your morality works? Just a coinflip where you either happen to believe something or don't?

Again your non-religious morality sounds awfully like a religion. Why do we respect people's rights to life and liberty? Because we recognise ourselves in them. We recognise that every individual is valuable in themselves and we can never replace one with another, so the only reasonable rule is to protect all as much as possible.

The problem is, this reasoning doesn't apply to "theoretical people". Individuals are valuable for what they are, not what they might be.

Abortion rights is often posited as a mark of an enlightened society, when in fact infanticide, child sacrifice, and acts of these sorts is a stone age and barbaric practice. — NOS4A2

This is just more poisoning of the well.

right-to-life principles, for instance that a human being in its earliest development deserves a chance to live. — NOS4A2

That's begging the question though. The whole problem is that you have to assume that human beings are around as disembodied souls waiting to exist for that argument to make sense.

And that is definitely a religious position.

We know that an individual human lifecycle begins at conception, since it cannot begin anywhere else, and any scalpel through the spine or intentional deprivation of essential nutrients after this point is to kill an individual human being. — NOS4A2

This is a kind of intellectual sleight of hand. You're starting with a biological description (using descriptive concepts such as "lifecycle") and you want us to conclude from your phrasing ("to kill an individual human being") a moral judgement. But you haven't justified the judgement on it's own terms.

That’s why the evasions about whether the fetus has feelings or if it is biologically inhuman serve only to cast doubt on the humanity of this being in its earliest stages, to dehumanize it, making the abnegation of any right-to-life principle an easier pill to swallow for those who wish to see it eviscerated with sheers. If you extend this depravity to a different point along the human life continuum, you can see the same arguments used to justify genocide and murder. — NOS4A2

So if it's not about feelings or anything else biological, what is it about? Why do we care? What's the humanist principle for?

I don’t think any of this means we should prohibit abortion. Infanticide is a historical fact. Females often kill or abandon their offspring throughout the animal kingdom. Perhaps we should make humane options available. But it is surely nothing to be proud of. — NOS4A2

That's poisoning the well. You're falsely insinuating that your opposition is "proud of" abortion.

Because you were unable to deal with the obvious fact that Russia was extremely very likely to prevail in Ukraine if there was an escalation — boethius

Why would I be unable to deal with that? Yes most everyone assumed that Russia would easily prevail over Ukraine if it committed serious resources (at least initially). But it turned out that Ukraine had more teeth than most anyone assumed.

Your first bad faith propaganda strategy was to just keep denying that the US did anything escalatory between the paper being written and the larger war in 2022 — boethius

That's a strawman. I asked you specifically how the US escalated in Ukraine. You never were able to answer those questions.

as the authors make clear that Russian may escalate anyways — boethius

No they don't.

Now, I understand that your aim was to engage in stupid quibbling that the US didn't arm Ukraine "even more" between 2019 and 2022, and simply ignore the US being more vocal about Ukraine joining NATO (one other major escalatory action the authors describe) — boethius

I pointed out the facts to you already, you ignored them. At this point I'm just going to call this an intentional lie.

Rest assured it is quite easy to demonstrate that the US policy decisions between 2019 and 2022 are exactly the kind of escalatory action the authors describe — boethius

Of course, you're just not going to do this very easy demonstration. Because you're lying.

Therefore, the purpose of provoking the war — boethius

Russia invaded.

Why would this happen? How exactly would Russian troops be flattened in Ukraine? — boethius

The two biggest airforces on the planet, plus the European air forces?

Even if we ignore the fact that nuclear use would make NATO conventional war on Ukraine less, rather than more, likely — boethius

That's the thing you don't get about nuclear deterrence. Once you actually use a nuclear weapon, you've shot your bolt. There's no escalation ladder from there. Either you'll immediately cause a general nuclear exchange or you're going to cause a situation where any additional threats you make will cause a nuclear attack on your country.

The reason is that once you use one nuke, you're announcing to the entire world that nuclear weapons are now fair game. At that point noone can afford to allow you to get off a second shot.

That's why there was never a limited nuclear war during the cold war. There's just no way to control the situation if you press the button once.

NATO would have the exact same problem, just a lot worse, that the Russian airforce had in 2022 and 2023 (and still has in 2024, just less) in that surface to air missiles (A2/AD bubbles in the modern parlance) are highly effective against airplanes and not many are needed to deny access to an airspace.

Stealth is not some magical invisible technology and Russians have had decades to develop systems to defeat US stealth systems. — boethius

I think that the airforces which have been designed to penetrate such defensive systems will not be quite so easy to shrug off.

Then there's the problem that the Russians in Ukraine are in basements and bunkers and dugouts and spread out and you still need to actually find them to be able to drop bombs on.

In other words, even if we pretended Russian anti-air assets had zero effectiveness (which would not be the case), air supremacy doesn't win wars anyways: right now Israel can drop US bombs at will on Lebanon and Gaza and that has not delivered victory. — boethius

In this case though, there would already be an army on the ground.

If your response to a NATO base getting nuked is conventional, Russia can just nuke more things. — boethius

That'd be suicide, as I pointed out above.

And in all of these strikes and counter-strikes a general nuclear exchange would be on a knifes edge as each side would be paranoid of the other side launching first. Planes and missiles flying everywhere are not going to reduce tensions.

At the end of the day, Europe, and the US for that matter, knows that the US is less committed to the conflict than is Russia and that the US has no interest in even a major risk of a general nuclear exchange with Russia. Even if European leaders were willing to have nuclear strikes on their territory for the sake of defending "Ukrainian sovereignty", which honestly many Europeans seems dumb enough to actually want, they know that the US doesn't actually want that: that Ukraine as a useful proxy force to accomplish some objectives for a time and at no point is the US going to "risk anything" for Ukraine.

Therefore, if the US did escalate to the point of Russia using a nuclear weapon to reestablish deterrence both the US and the Europeans know that the US has no rational response. — boethius

You've got this backwards though. It is precisely because the US and the west are less committed to the conflict that no rational Russian government would ever use nuclear weapons in this conflict.

You keep saying that the west is content to see Ukraine lose. And although you keep stretching the evidence far beyond what it actually supports, there is an element of truth in this. The west faces no existential risk over the outcome of the Ukraine war and so it's determination to support Ukraine remains limited.

If Russia were to use a nuclear weapon, especially if they were to use it directly against NATO, it would create an existential risk. At that point the West would be forced to strain every sinew to eliminate the government responsible for the attack.

It is a very, very bad idea.

In this scenario, the situation, at the end of the day, would be US and NATO (mostly the UK) firing missiles at Russian critical infrastructure, an attack Russia needs to respond to, with nuclear weapons if that is the only option. Therefore, the solution would be for the US and NATO to stop attacking Russia to end the nuclear war. The only other option would be to simply continue the nuclear war; Russia would be in the same position of needing to resort to nuclear weapons to reestablish deterrence and therefore the only actual alternative to the US stopping the cycle of escalation would be to simply escalate to a nuclear war.

Actually attacking Russia is no longer deterrence it is simply straight-up attacking Russia resulting in Russia needing to respond to reestablish deterrence. — boethius

But you run into the classic problem: both sides understand the logic of the situation. Both sides know that whoever stops the cycle of escalation loses. And whoever escalates into a general nuclear exchange also loses. The only winning move is not to play.

Which is why at the end of the day US elites do follow the RAND paper basic framework of "calibrating" the intensity of the conflict to avoid unwanted escalation; the intensity of violence needing to calibration to achieve that is Russia prevailing in Ukraine without systemic risk to Russian critical infrastructure.

The Russians can tolerate NATO weapons being used in Ukraine because at the end of the day they choose to be there, Russian critical infrastructure is not impacted, and defeating those weapons and prevailing in Ukraine has some advantages (from the Russian imperial perspective). — boethius

The point though is that Russia is already achieving that effect with just threats. No-one is even considering a large scale strike at russian critical infrastructure using western weapons. It is the strange logic of deterrence that using a weapon is less effective than threatening it's use.

As mentioned above, if you are attacking the other sides critical infrastructure (what the Ukrainians want permission to do with NATO missiles) — boethius

No, Ukraine wants permission to attack specific military targets (airbases, air defences, supply dumps).

The difference in the situation being that Iran has no nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis the US. — boethius

That's one difference. There are many others as well. It's not just that Iran has no nukes. It doesn't have all that much economic or political capital to throw around either. Plus Iran's main ally is Russia while China has other priorities.

The conversation is just dumb — boethius

Oh I agree wholeheartedly.

To take the Paris example — boethius

From my perspective what's happening here is that you're showing me a guide to the city of Bordeaux and telling me it's a guide to the city of Paris. When I point out that the guide is about Bordeaux and not Paris, you keep pointing out all the places where the guide talks about how to get to Bordeaux from Paris, or where it compares locations in the two cities.

That's the end of that discussion as far as I'm concerned.

1. Ukraine is in the collapse phase on the losing end of a war of attrition, which was entirely foreseeable. — boethius

Sure, the collapse phase that's been going on for months now. One wonders why the Russians don't just take over all of Ukraine.

2. Striking infrastructure and civilian populations deep inside Russia is essentially the only military move or point of leverage Ukraine has left. — boethius

No it's not, but since you don't actually know anything about the military situation it's not surprising that you're just making stuff up.

Notice how at no point does the West have any problem with Israel "escalating" with Western weapons to the point of levelling entire apartment blocks filled with civilians.

Why? Because the West wants Israel to "win" and therefore do whatever is necessary to "win" (I put win in quotes as Western leaders may not have a clear idea of what a winning end-state would be, but whatever seems like winning and Israel wants to do is fully supported). — boethius

You have the start of an interesting discussion here, but rather than actually engaging with the different strategic and political contexts of the conflicts, you're content to just assume it must somehow be "what the west wants".

Why maintain the asymmetry that Russia can disable Ukrainian infrastructure across the entire country but Ukraine can't do likewise to Russia is to "calibrate" the conflict at a "somewhat higher level of intensity" without escalating too far (i.e. escalating to a point where Ukraine maybe winning on the battlefield).

As I've pointed out since the beginning of the conflict, the reason the West does not "escalate" to actually threatening Russia (in terms of battlefield loss in Ukraine or damaging Russian infrastructure on a mass scale) is nuclear weapons. — boethius

But, according to you, Ukraine cannot possibly win. So what you actually mean is that western leaders don't declare war on Russia and destroy it's military capacity.

And of course you know full well the reason they're unlikely to do that.

There's many problems with your conception of the conflict but perhaps the most important one is that you've never seriously considered what "winning" means for either side.

You've constructed for yourself a framework where the only way for Ukraine to win is an impossible scenario, yet you also consistently treat the western powers' unwillingness to pursue this impossible scenario as evidence of their duplicity.

It may surprise you but at the start of the war many here, and elsewhere, argued that Russian nuclear weapons were of essentially no meaning in the conflict and did not shape Western policy and shouldn't shape Western policy: i.e. I argued that Russian nuclear weapons does and obviously should deter Western escalation, while others argued it doesn't and it shouldn't ("we cannot let them get away with nuclear blackmail!" was the battle cry of this camp).

Nearly 2 years later and this is not the common sense position even in the Western mainstream media that nuclear weapons are indeed a significant deterrent to "winning". — boethius

The general views on russian nuclear threats has not changed. Most analysts and military professionals don't credit them, but popular opinion remains scared of them.

The reason western politicians don't ignore the popular worries even if they're not supported by professional analysts should be obvious.

Anyways my previous point about you not properly considering what "winning" could mean also applies here.

First, you literally just made the point that "It also demonstrates the bargaining power Russia's nuclear capabilities still represent" so obviously they are useful as leverage, and they are useful as leverage because they can be practically used in response to different actions (such as a large attack on Russian infrastructure). — boethius

They're useful for scaring people.

Russia is therefore making it clear that if the West were to organize such a major missile strike, intended to cause systemic damage to Russian infrastructure, that Russia will start nuking the NATO infrastructure that supports such missile supply and operation. — boethius

The idea of an infrastructure campaign against Russia in the same vein of Russia's attacks against Ukraine is not credible. The debate is not about weapons that can hit factories near Moscow or in the Urals but about weapons which can hit russian supply dumps.

And "Russia will start nuking NATO infrastructure" means global nuclear war and the destruction of Russia.

The basic problem, as I've elaborated on many times since the first phases of the war, is that the West would be unable to strike Russia with nuclear weapons in-kind without that escalating to a general nuclear exchange. — boethius

This is silly. If Russia starts attacking NATO bases with nukes that is the start of a general nuclear exchange. This is exactly how nuclear deterrent works: Both sides making clear that they'll respond to a nuclear attack in kind.

So, it is a lose-lose situation. If they organize a large scale missile strike on Russia and Russia then nukes a NATO base and the US does not respond with nuclear weapons, that would be definitely losing the exchange, and if the US does respond with nuclear weapons that would very likely lead to a general nuclear exchange which isn't exactly good for the US just right now. — boethius

If Russia nukes a NATO base Russia is at war with NATO. Even if a general nuclear exchange is somehow averted, at the very least any russian troops in Ukraine would be flattened by the combined NATO airforces and the russian leaders responsible would shortly after drop from a window.

Do you think that if Russia uses a nuke on NATO territory everyone will just shrug and do nothing?

Therefore, the threat of nuclear weapons effectively deters the West from causing any significant harm, or even risk of significant harm, to Russian state power in Ukraine or indeed in Russia. — boethius

You don't need a successful first strike scenario for nuclear weapons to be a threat. During the cold war, one of the pillars of nuclear deterrence was that no side could develop an effective missile defense system.

The deterrent effect from nuclear weapons isn't based on the fact that they make you win the war. It's based on the fact that they'll make your enemy lose.

And this is also the reason why the west doesn't "want Ukraine to win" as you understand it.

The US does not face similar escalation risks in the middle-east and therefore it is not effectively deterred and so places similar constraints on the use of Western arms by Israel. — boethius

Oh? Didn't you write earlier:

Why? Because the West wants Israel to "win" and therefore do whatever is necessary to "win" — boethius

Sure, fathers should have a say. There just isn't much room to include them in any legal frameworks.

A note more relevant to the actual situation:

Apparently Putin announced a few days ago that Russia is planning to change it's nuclear doctrine:
AP News: Putin lowers threshold of nuclear response

As various commentators have pointed out, the change is clearly intended to make the doctrine more vague. It's also pretty much a direct warning to not allow Ukraine to strike targets on Russian territory using western weapons.

This seems a fairly big step for Russia, which seems to indicate that they're really concerned about possible long range strikes. It also demonstrates the bargaining power Russia's nuclear capabilities still represent.

Ultimately I agree with the view that, no matter what Russia says their nuclear doctrine is, there is just nothing to be gained from using nuclear weapons over Ukraine. Nuclear weapons are a powerful threat to a country's population and infrastructure, but their direct military use is limited unless you intend to absolutely obliterate an area. Using nuclear weapons directly against Ukraine would create more problems than it solves. Using them against anyone else would just be plain stupid and amount to suicide.