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To: thinktwice
I've asked the question, and sought the answer -- from young children. Phrase it like this: "Do you know right from wrong?" You will learn from it.

Yes -- but will you learn from it?

The fact is that kids learn the difference between right and wrong from others, and not by exercise of their abstract reasoning powers (which are extremely limited).

If you're going to claim, however, that they "just know" what's right or wrong, then you are required to tell us precisely how they know it -- seeing as how they've generally got neither the intellect nor experience to come up with that stuff by their own feats of reasoning. (I think at that point you're left with some form of "mysticism," or an argument from genetics -- neither of which supports Rand's claims.)

84 posted on 12/18/2003 7:45:37 PM PST by r9etb
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To: r9etb
The fact is that kids learn the difference between right and wrong from others, and not by exercise of their abstract reasoning powers

Dogs learn the difference between right and wrong from others; but human children have a blossoming ability to "know" things on their own -- all sorts of things, including knowing right from wrong.

Take Muslim kids, for instance. Do you really think that ALL (ALL is what you've implied) nine year old Muslims kids -- in contrast to what their insidious elders teach them -- can't use abstract reasoning to KNOW that suicide bombings are evil?

88 posted on 12/18/2003 8:21:24 PM PST by thinktwice (America is truly blessed ... with George W. Bush as President..)
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