----- Original Message ----- From: "Warren Ockrassa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 6:39 PM Subject: Re: Fascist Censorship Spreads: Vichy Style
> On Aug 25, 2004, at 4:30 PM, Dan Minette wrote: > > >> I don't make moral choices either, just ethical ones, and both good > >> and > >> evil are human-defined terms that refer to things which do not > >> objectively exist. > > > > So, an ethics in which it is immoral to allow a Jew to exist is just as > > valid as one in which genocide is wrong? > > I'm not sure how you arrived at that finding; would you care to trace > your path of reasoning to that conclusion? Certainly. In one ethical system (Nazi Germany's), it was a moral imperative to kill the evil Jews. In another, say the one described by "We hold these truths to be self-evident...", it is wrong to kill other people in cold blood. >Certainly you could not have > derived it from anything I've said on either the topics of Jewish > people or of genocide. (Or are you just jumping past several stages of > net debate deterioration and laying the groundwork early for declaring > me a Nazi bastard? ;) No; I would guess that you would argue that, in your ethical system, genocide is wrong. But, is the Nazi system just different from yours? Is the idea that it is wrong to kill in cold blood aribtrary. Is a discussion of what is right and wrong akin to a discussion of where is left and right held by two people facing each other? > > You don't believe in human rights, I take it. > I think it's a lovely idea but it doesn't actually exist outside of the > ethical systems that construct it. Put another way I do believe in it, > because I have to -- it doesn't exist unless I believe it does. So, if there are many different self consistent ethical systems, is there any way to choose one as better than another? From your premises, it appears that the answer must be no. > As an example, if you're in the middle of Faulkner's markless trackless > unaxed wild and a puma finds and eats you, whither your human right to > life? Since pumas do not have free will, they are not acting immorally. A human who does the same would be. > > How about free will? Responsibility? Reflective self-awareness? > > How about them? I'm not sure why or how these things must have ideas > such as "morality" (or "good" or "evil") to exist, which is what you > seem to be implying. Does free will exist? Does responsibility exist? Do reflective self-awarenesses exist? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
