Great. You may have noticed that no one is disagreeing with you about the certain knowledge part. But then, we can’t really have certain knowledge that we aren’t all just brains in a giant alien vat either. I, for one, am going to live my life as if I’m not a brain in a vat. And if my neighbor decides that his wife is just a hallucination and he can beat her, I will stop him. You?
You’re missing the point here, but since we’re no longer debating moral relativity, I’ll let it go.
Nope, you just implied it. I’m glad you disagree with it.
I agree that certain moral guidlines are better than others. Mine is certainly better than yours unless you happen to agree with mine, or course. It is just a matter of convincing you of my ‘rightness’ . It seems to me, though, that the victor is usually the one who determines what, ultimately, is the difference between right and wrong.
The discussion is about an unjust war. I have to use Iraq as an example here. It seems to be assumed that the US is involved in Iraq unjustly (a point I don’t necessarily agree with). How about the people that are being fought in Iraq at this point? Are they on the ‘just’ side of this war? Are they justified to deliberately target civillians? Are they justified in not wearing identifiable uniforms so that the coalition can target them directly instead of taking a chance on killing innocent civillians? If you are involved in trying to stop them from doing this does that turn your ‘unjust’ war into a ‘just’ war? Can an unjust war turn into a just war? And if the soldier on the ground is doing his best to stop the killing by fighting an enemy who uses far less moral tactics than he does, is he not then doing a good thing?
Well, I’d probably give it a little more thought than “I will stop him.” Not exactly a considered approach, is it? I’d definitely call the cops.
A.) We were never debating moral relativity.
B.) Your point was “I’ll stop those barbarians who dare have a skewed moral system, while an apathist would just sit back and let them do evil.” Well, that’s wonderful, but some really nasty wars get started by people with that attitude, and sometimes their ‘humanitarian’ reason was, essentially, shoving a religious or political philosophy down the opposition’s throat. Now if there’s a genocide going on, then it needs to be stopped, and if the evidence is good, no doubt the UN would approve. There’s appropriate intervention, and then there’s zealotry.
No, you somehow inferred it. Don’t put the onus on me.
Oh, you’d call the cops, eh? Well, I’d call them and tell them what was happening next door! I mean, geez, if you don’t tell them what’s wrong, how will they know how to help?
(or maybe I shouldn’t read “call the cops” as a specific and exhaustive statement of exactly what you’d do).
I wasn’t going to point out your shifting of the debate, I was just gonna go along with whatever your present position was. But since you’re just willfully ignoring how this little tangent started, I’ll replay the history for you:
I make a statement not directed at you.
You disagree with my statement about moral relativism.
I tell you that you’re wrong, that moral relativism really is corrupt.
And here’s your response. :dubious:
The point you missed was that because moral relativity cannot contain the absolute tenet that one ought not impose his/her moral system on another, there are still the kinds of wars you’re talking about–even if everyone believed in moral relativity, there will still be fanatics (if not more of them). But the more moral relativists there are, the fewer the people to stop the fanatics.
Ok…so you don’t really disagree with anything Daniel or I have said? Why are you here?
Hey, I’ll take your statement about not believing religion is the only source of absolutes at face value. I just took your reference to the Ten Commmandments as a religious reference.
Your demonstratedly gung-ho attitude from p revious posts in this thread colored my perception of your statement.
Which would be easier to ascertain if you’d bothered to quote someone…
I disagreed with what I perceived as you characterizing my statement as an argument for moral relativism.
Which completely missed the point, since I wasn’t debating moral relativism…
Wherein I tell you I wasn’t advocating moral relativism. Ta-dah.
Actually, no, if everyone on the planet believed in not imposing one’s own ideals on another through coercion, that pretty much eliminates all belief-oriented war. “Live and let live” is not a philosophy that easily leads to war under any circumstances, and it would never do so if everyone had the same philosophy.
Oh, but you’re still talking about “moral relativity”, not what I actually presented. Well, get back to me when you catch up.
I perceived certain attitudes in LHoD’s posts that I actively oppose. I’m not sure if I can enumerate them outside of the Pit.
Again, this is having more to do with making a joke referencing LHoD’s perceived attitude than with making a literal request for a sandwich the next time LHoD finds himself Quantum-Leaping into Moses’s body. Didn’t realize that was unclear.
Because I mentioned using physical force to stop something evil? Uhh…what do you think the cops do, anyway?
Sorry it wasn’t clear to you. But if you disagreed with my characterizing your statement as moral relativism, why not just come out and say that *before *you lost the argument about the coherence of the position? That part is what makes it look like you’re being disingenuous. You didn’t say, “That doesn’t apply to my position.” You said moral relativism may or may not be coherent, depending how how one split’s hairs. I just wanted to make it clear that you are wrong about that. If we agree on that, no need to continue this hijack.
But I will respond to this last bit of snark:
Umm…so you were implying that LHoD could only find absolute morals by seeing the mind of god? Isn’t that what you just said you weren’t doing?
They use measured force to stop something unlawful.
How can I lose an argument I wasn’t in? I did not say moral relativism may or may not be coherent, and I defy you to quote where I did. I read your post as a response to my previous post - since there was no quote - and realized, “Hey, this guy’s not seeing the somewhat semantic distinction between my POV and actual moral relativism.” So, I replied, taking your quote in that context. It is quite clear from the paragraph including the split-hairs sentence that I am clarifying my position for your benefit.
Re-read it. I don’t know where you’re pulling this ‘mind of God’ baloney, but now I really do want a sandwich.
Well, since this thread is probably beyond redemption, I’ll keep playing…
[Bolding Mine]
When you say “Depends,” what could be the subject of that predicate? The only grammatical answer is that the subject is my conclusion–that moral relativism isn’t coherent. Hence, you are saying that the incoherence of moral relativism depends on something.
Now I would have ignored that apparent mistake in language, and judged your meaning by the context of your next sentence, except that your next sentence is incoherent. You claim not to reject moral absolutism, but then say that it is inherently flawed. It is also incoherent because of the very point I was making before your response: you are telling others to believe that they shouldn’t impose their moral systems on others while simultaneously stating that you “wouldn’t try to argue to tell someone they should believe…”
To be fair, I see exactly where you’re coming from. You meant to differentiate your position from moral relativism. Unfortunately, “there are moral absolutes, but we can’t know them, so I won’t act on them” is more or less indistinguishable from “there are no moral asbolutes, so I won’t act on my own beliefs.”
Of course, you later say that you would, in fact, act on your moral beliefs. So you’ve come around.
But I’m not trying to rub your nose in it; this is GD, where the goal is to debate ideas, not debate mistakes in language and logic that are meaningless in the big picture of the topic at hand.
I don’t believe that a war necessarily has a just side. Although I’d prefer not to get bogged down in discussing the Iraq War, I will say that I do not consider the insurgents to be on the right side of the issue. I do not believe that any participating military or quasimilitary force in Iraq is currently on the right side of the issue.
I believe that answers all of your questions; let me know if it does not.
The validity of your sentence as a whole. Since it was addressed to a semantically similar but different position than mine, I wanted to point that out.
I do not reject moral absolutism. However, from a practical perspective - it IS flawed. You can have faith in a morally absolute set of beliefs, but not true certitude.
As for your next comment, italicized and all fancy-like, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I am not telling anyone “You should believe X.” I am stating “I believe X and this is why.”
You falsely summarize my position, and draw an incorrect conclusion. Of course one acts on one’s moral code. I never said I didn’t. Everything I do is in accordance with my own moral code. Let me rephrase for you.
A) “There may be moral absolutes. If there are, we cannot know them with sufficient certainty to warrant coercing others to follow them.” This is my position. It does assume that one should know something (though one’s threshold of certainty may differ) before “sharing” it - which is more of a practical issue than a moral one. I can go spout stock tips at random on Wall Street, but all it will achieve is chaos, disruption, and anger. It’s impractical, and inefficient. Not that even if one takes the second sentence as a declaration of a moral absolute, it is not self-contradictory.
B) “There are no moral absolutes. Therefore it is wrong to coerce people to follow any particular moral code.” This is not my position, and is self-contradictory. Even assuming one modified it to say that the only moral absolute is not to coerce others, it would still not be the same as my position.
However. In the outward practical application, they look like my position. Whether one believes A or B, one has the “Live and Let Live” attitude. Which is why I made my statement to help you distinguish between the two.
I never said that I wouldn’t. Are you imagining some side of this thread that the rest of us can’t see?
Are you disappointed when the Yankees lose the Super Bowl every year?
Which is fortunate, given the ways you’ve blatantly misinterpreted what I’ve said.
To be clear, your position is that, “we cannot know [moral absolutes] with sufficient certainty to warrant coercing others to follow them” but we are free to act on our own perceptions of right and wrong by intervening in others’ affairs (say, to stop genocide)?
I’ll leave it to the viewing audience to decide whether that is a consistent, coherent position. But since, despite all this arguing, we apparently agree on the practical matter of acting on what we believe to be true, what is your view of the subject at hand?
The missing piece there is that one can act with measured force to prevent oneself (or another) from being coerced. And there’s your impetus to intervene in certain situations. Ideally, though, if you’re going to intervene to help someone else, you do it with their permission and with a minimum of force possible. Liberal explains the whole coercion thing much better than I do.
In my personal view, the soldier is “responsible” for all his actions, to a degree. When you join an army, you agree to a certain set of conditions, and abide by them. Refuse unlawful orders, carry out the rest, if your POV changes, follow whatever proper procedure there is to be taken out of the service as soon as possible.
Once you’re in, though, even if you decide you object to killing ten enemy combatants one day, you’re obligated to follow the order to do so, because that might mean saving the lives of twenty innocent civilians or of your own comrades. Should’ve considered the scenario before signing up.
Personally, though, I would never sign up for the military because it does create the possibility of those kind of ethical dilemmas where your best option - stay out of it - is denied you.
Now when it comes to an international court scenario trying the losers for war crimes, it’s foolish to pursue charges against the rank and file except in the most egregious circumstances.
I agree with the above, but I don’t think it is consistent with what you’ve said about morality-based coercion. You invoke a number of moral principles with regard to personal liberty, justice, etc. Any intervention involves coercing other individuals to follow a certain set of values, so unless you reject all intervention, you must believe that it is sometimes OK to coerce others based on your moral system.
To put it another way, if your point is merely that we should be reluctant to intervene, and we do so only when it is absolutely clear that we need to and we do it as minimally as possible, then you have my full support. But you can’t fairly characterize that position as not coercing others based on insufficient knowledge of ethical truths.
FWIW, we agree fully on the matter of soldier’s responsibility.
It is consistent. One could look at a UN intervention in a genocide as coercion - “We don’t like you killing these people, we think it’s wrong, and will prevent you from doing so.” - but it’s a matter of POV and defining coercion. Using force to resist coercion - while it does prevent someone from the free exercise of their will and moral code - that’s incidental. It is primarily a matter of self-protection and is justified to defend one’s own free exercise. You’re not imposing your will on them, you’re merely resisting the imposition of their will on you. That their will happens to be foiled in the process is immaterial. That wasn’t your motive. Look at some of Liberal’s posts explaining Libertarianism for much more clear, concise discussions on the subject.
You’re right, in some sense it does depend on the definition of coercion–if you define it to mean something other than forcing your will on another. I’m not sure how libertarianism argues that incidental coercion is not still coercion. But in any case, libertarianism definitely embraces the notion that one ought to try and convince others to believe in certain ethical principles–among those principles are personal liberty, limited or non-existent government, sanctity of property, etc. So your position is inconsistent with libertarianism.
No, evangelism isn’t intrinsic to libertarianism - I’m afraid you’re wrong in that regard. There are evangelistic libertarians, of course. But it’s not intrinsic to the philosophy. Hell, evangelism isn’t even really intrinsic to Christianity, depending on how one interprets some of the passages in the Bible.
The point you seem to be missing is this:
Let us say that my mother wishes me to become a doctor.
I choose to become an engineer.
I have, in a manner of speaking, forced my will upon her, by exercising my right to self-determination. I have foiled her will. From a ridiculously skewed perspective, one might call that coercion. But it’s not. It’s exercising freedom of choice over the path of my life.
Similarly, Saddam may want all Kurds dead. The Kurds are not coercing Saddam by resisting his efforts to kill them. The United States wouldn’t be coercing Saddam by helping the Kurds resist those efforts either.
My system’s based on the belief in a probable ‘right to free will’ - meaning one can make decisions for oneself. But person A’s right doesn’t extend so far as to cut into person B’s right to choose.
This is similar only if you resist your mother’s efforts to make you into a doctor by killing her. That is, after all, how the Kurds resist Saddam’s efforts, and that’s the element that turns what they’re doing into a form of coercion, even if it’s a justifiable form of coercion.
. It seems to me, though, that the victor is usually the one who determines what, ultimately, is the difference between right and wrong.
