Reply #57: More please. [View All]

[QuestioningStudent]

I'm going to keep at this for a moment, if you'll be kind enough to bear with me.

What should the limits of a NEED be defined as? You've shown that an immediately life-threatening injury/condition would count, that at least some minimal level of sustenance to keep someone alive would count, OK. At what point would we say, 'you have enough food, and you have had sufficient medical care, and you're warm/cold enough, etc.?' Subsistence levels of food? Adequate nutrition? Emergency medical care? Regular doctor's checkups? What about dental? Is there a minimal level of information one requires to survive in this society, or perhaps to survive well?

I'm not sure how one would draw the lines in these questions, and I'm not terribly good at reasoning from the analogies you were kind enough to provide to these cases. I'm worried that there might be a bit of a slippery slope type problem in the argument you presented--am I missing something that would prevent me from thinking that?