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That Passage from Thought Control, Part III

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That is just advocating the legal enforcement of social norm. Your argument supports muslim countries legally forbidding women from showing their faces as much as it supports banning of nudity in shopping centers.

More importantly, the fundamental point has not been adequately addressed: why do your expectations create an obligation form me? Is the definition of fraud not providing that which is promised, or is it not providing that which is expected? Should a guy be able to sue the cute girl who he bought a drink for at the bar because she didn't sleep with him afterwards?

By making "what is expected" the standard, justice is rendered non-objective.

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I think I get you David (sorry, just been lurking and reading), I just want to ask, is 'a social fact' - as you describe here, where it is up to the owner of a mall to decide what is reasonable to allow on display, and where it is up the patrons to decide what is reasonable to expect - tied to the idea of reasonable doubt? That the legal foundations of this principle lie in what it is reasonable to expect, with all the facts given?

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I think I get you David (sorry, just been lurking and reading), I just want to ask, is 'a social fact' - as you describe here, where it is up to the owner of a mall to decide what is reasonable to allow on display, and where it is up the patrons to decide what is reasonable to expect - tied to the idea of reasonable doubt? That the legal foundations of this principle lie in what it is reasonable to expect, with all the facts given?
Yes, that is really what this boils down to. To be more explicit, it's not up to the mall owner to decide "I think it's reasonable to think that all of my customers are porn-hounds so they would welcome public debasement of the highest of values between two people". It's up to the mall owner to decide whether he will agree with the existing social fact about sex, or disagree. But as a reasonable man he can't decide "Nobody would object" when he knows very well that most people object. Then if he doesn't care about other people, he simply needs to give advance warning, as a way of saying "I'm electing to violate ordinary standards of decency on my property, enter in full knowledge of that fact".

A reasonable man integrates his knowledge noncontradictorily -- and, I should add, non-evasively -- to arrive at a conclusion. There is a reason why Tara Smith's new book presents rationality as the master virtue followed almost inseparably by honesty. So you know that people do not ordinarily tolerate the debasement of their highest values, and rationalizing by saying "I don't know what people think, for all I know, everybody that wants to come into my mall is actively seeking the Porn-of-the-month Outlet". Nonsense! You know very well that that is simply false, and to pretend that "It doesn't matter" is dishonest. Only an unreasonable man, a reason-denying man, an evader, a dishonest person could hold that public porn doesn't matter to anyone.

In terms of criminal burden of proof, the distinction is on the other side of the proof scale. (There was a brilliant explanation of the civil / criminal BOP issue by a guy from Sri Lanka here, some years ago, and I don't remember who or when). The evidence for a criminal conviction must be very strong -- so strong that it would be irrational to say that the defendent is innocent. And it would be irrational to say that nobody cares if there are sex acts being performed in the window next to the Toys R Us.

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Why share your emotions with all of us? It's irrelevant to the discussion.

When I make it a point to express an emotion, I do it to communicate a premise that gives rise to the emotion. And in this case, the premise is one that all participants in the discussion might do well to take note of.

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