-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > consolidate its hegemony or extend its empire. Each expert must make a > moral choice on this issue and it might be useful to develop consensus > based guidelines on this issue (without any evident or smelly > flatulence!). As climate change and global warming create urban > migration, these problems will become more pressing than ever.
I think it's important to avoid consensus on moral issues like this. It's important to maintain a diversity of moral choices and resulting actions. Any consensus, including seemingly innocuous ones, will allow the individual moral decision-maker to become lazy and avoid thinking for themselves. If a set of tools really are considered neutral (to be used by good or evil), then the experts in the application of the tools will also be neutral. And one can make a good argument that experts in neutral tools _should_ be, themselves, neutral, lest they lose their expertise. My only guideline would be: Leave morality to the priests and do your job. Before anyone accuses me of abdicating my moral responsibility, I can say that I'm not an expert in everything! (or anything [grin]) So, for those neutral domains in which I claim expertise, I am neutral. But, in those domains where I claim no expertise, I make moral choices all the time. And, of course, in non-neutral domains where I claim expertise, I make every attempt to adhere to the good- or evil-ness of the particular domain. And before anyone points out that the above seems turned on its head (where one can only make moral choices in domains of which they're ignorant), I have to say that _morality_ is a heuristic method in itself. The only reason we have words like "good" and "evil" is because we need some big, vague catch-all so we can talk about things in spite of our ignorance, much the same way emotions are a culmination of physiological processes. If we had access to perfect information, there'd be no need for morality. Hence, experts, by definition, are neutral (or as close to neutral as any finite being can be). - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced. -- Frank Zappa -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGu66EZeB+vOTnLkoRAmeyAKC4MuCd9HE/H3WCdqFqmOiTlsRlAQCghKiW v3r5E+jK+6nVDSTej+gmVVQ= =KscB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
