Subject:
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Re: Essay on Emerson vs. Thoreau; civil disobedience
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 31 Jan 2001 23:36:44 GMT
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Viewed:
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442 times
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Snipped a lot of head twisting stuff to just answer two questions, then I
HAVE to get back to writing docs... more later, maybe.
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
> Ah, ok. So what you're objecting to is specifically my method of moral
> judgement, instead proposing that some unspecified (at least at present) yet
> universal code is a better tool for judging morality, and that you have at
> least some inkling as to what that code is, and that it necessarily involves
> not enslaving others. Did I get that right?
Yes.
> If so we can throw out the 'might makes right' issue, I think, only because
> it's simply further derived from relative morality. In essence, I have to
> ask, if you DID accept relative morality, would you STILL disagree with a
> government's decision to choose slavery as valid when 99% of its members
> thought it was moral (not simply not immoral, but moral)?
I can't accurately answer that hypothetical. It's indeterminate since I
don't accept the premise and have so much trouble trying to hypothetically
accept it that it clouds any possible analysis I could do. I would tend to
say no, the 1%stops it (but I am measuring against a non relative standard
there, and further, if you turn the example around a bit you get an outcome
where you can't stop bank robbery because 1% of the population finds it
acceptable, which is a screwy outcome). Some hypotheticals are fundamentally
flawed??
> Anyway, suffice to say that my interpretation of your moral judgement with
> repsect to a universal standard has the potential to be wrong. More of a
> minor clarification in case of misunderstanding-- I don't mean to say that
> you are MORALLY wrong to place moral judgement on people according to a
> universal standard, but that I'll think that your judgement has the ability
> to be incorrect. But I'm saying that just so you don't think I was calling
> you immoral for judging people that way-- I'm just saying you're wrong :)
Well that certainly helps a lot :-). Since I'm never wrong, there's
something wrong with your premise that I'm wrong, and we can move on. :-)
++Lar
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