On Aug 25, 2004, at 5:46 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.
Granted. But I don't understand how you go from these historical facts to the conclusion that "an ethics in which it is immoral to allow a Jew to exist is just as valid as one in which genocide is wrong".
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?
No; it's faulty and arguably inferior. There are two proofs of that, one historical fact and the other a bit more feel-goodish but still valid (IMO). One, the Nazis lost the war. That happened at least in part because of their arrogance and belligerence, but possibly too because of the sense of outrage that formed when it was realized what was really going on over there. Unfortunately that didn't seem to really gather steam until after the war, but it's also possible that the Nazis themselves were demoralized by what was going on, and a demoralized army doesn't fight very well. Not all who sieg heiled were bad people.
Two, any social system that attempts to quell diversity will suffer and probably fail when it is forced to compete with another, more cosmopolitan social system. For instance the collapse of Communism in Russia was more or less preordained; as soon as it became a thought-control, monotonous experiment, all original thinking -- which is crucial to keep a society going artistically, technologically and so on -- was crushed. (The ridiculous attempts to force Lysenkoism into agriculture are an extreme example of how backwards such systems can become.)
Hence genocide is less ethically supportable than promotion of freedom to live, even if one does not necessarily approve of what "others" might be doing.
Is the idea that it is wrong to kill in cold blood aribtrary.
Yes. Cold-blooded killings happen all the time in Texas, as an example, under edict of law.
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?
No, but it's harder to nail down the particulars because there are so many situations in which different conclusions can be reached to the same dilemmas (well, superficially the same anyway).
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?
Yes; I intimated one way above.
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.
That doesn't affect the fact that your right to life doesn't exist as anything but a human-defined idea, not a law of nature.
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?
Ah, I see what you were asking, sorry. Free will -- good question. I honestly don't know, though it sure seems like it exists.
Responsibility -- if there is no free will, then naturally no. Otherwise, yes.
Reflective self-awareness -- since I use that to arrive at my ethical decisions, I'm inclined to think it exists as well.
-- WthmO
There is no such thing as "mad vegetable disease." --
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