Hi Ron, SA, David, Marsha --
Whenever we try to apply morality to value, we run into problems. This is because morality (normative ethics) is based on the 'summum bonum' principle of virtue as conceived by the early Greeks. It is an attempt to quantify value in order to achieve what utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham called "the greatest good for the greatest number of people." Here is what Wikipedia says about utilitarian morality: "Since utilitarians judge all actions by their ability to maximize good consequences, any harm to one individual can often be justified by a greater gain to other individuals. This is true even if the loss for the one individual is large and the gain for the others is marginal, as long as enough individuals receive the small benefit. Thus, utilitarians deny that individuals have inviolable moral rights. As explained above, utilitarians may support legal rights or rights as rules of thumb, but they are not considered inherent to morality. This seems problematic to many critics of utilitarianism, one of whom notes that according to utilitarianism there is "nothing intrinsically wrong with sacrificing an important individual interest to a greater sum of lesser interests. That assumption is retained in the foundations of the theory, and it remains a source of moral concern." Notice the quantitative connotation of this philosophy -- "as long as enough individuals...", "...a greater sum of lesser interests...", etc. Clearly, by striving to make our decisions and actions conform to a collective majority, we impugn the meaning of value as proprietary sensibility. Since all behavioral values are represented in Nature, I find SA's moral imperative "being one with nature" somewhat ambiguous. I maintain that existence is an anthropocentric reality, that value realization is primarily a human function. Like experience itself, all value is proprietary to the individual. Your likes and interests are self-serving, and no amount of persuasion by other individuals, no matter how many or how powerful, can change your values without violating your freedom to choose. Apart from the blind obedience demanded of monarchs and priests, values come into being by the psycho-emotional realization of the individual. Social values change only when individuals change their valuistic perspective of reality. I am an advocate of rational self-interest, and by "rational" I mean the ability to discern the value (positive or negative) in applying my chosen course of action to mankind at large. This has nothing to do with numbers or quantities of human beings. Generally it can be described in terms of the Golden Rule: Do unto others what you would want them to do to you, or as Kant expressed it in his Categorical Imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Underlying this principle is the value rational people innately sense toward their fellow man. The reality we have to deal with here is that not all people are rational; therefore laws must be established whereby the society may legally punish, incarcerate or rehabilitate those who behave in an inhumane, criminal, or malevolent manner. This rule applies as well to the sovereign interests and behaviors of nations in the world community. If this interpretation of moral values doesn't make sense, kindly tell me why. Regards, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
