Consider where ethics/morality (dunno the difference) come from. Either we have a higher power of some kind dictating the rules - fine, but haven’t seen the evidence yet - or the rules have to be developed by humans.
Taking the latter as the likely position, there’s not any particular reason why any of the rules have to be set in stone. One man’s sin is another man’s righteousness, and what not.
It is absolutely obvious that they have a different set of beliefs regarding morality over there. They need to be judged in that context.
Yeah. People “over there” just rape and murder and don’t really care.
What the fuck? What happened to you? You used to be somewhat reasonable when you were Angry Lurker, and now it’s like you’re the poster child for hatred of women and other cultures.
Could you please refrain from running around every thread I post in to claim I hate women, it’s ridiculous and it doesn’t make you look good.
There isn’t an established right or wrong here. It’s perfectly reasonable to take the opposing viewpoint to me and consider a crime is just as evil no matter what the context. I don’t think philosophers have resolved this one yet. Kant’s probably on your side, Bentham’s probably on mine, and I haven’t a fucking clue what Wittgenstein was going on about.
The reason I disagree with the concept of universal rights is that it just doesn’t seem to fit in with the way the world works, or ever has worked. By all means we can work towards a system where there are universal rights, and I happen to favour that, but I don’t see any justification for proclaiming that they already exist.
Cultural relativism is all very well, but murder is kind of one of those absolutes. You’re either alive, or you’re dead. One presumes that most live people are in favor of not being dead, regardless of culture. Murder is severe, no matter where you are. Your overall premise seems to be that ‘other cultures are different, so we can’t say anything about them’, maybe they don’t mind being murdered like us.
There’s a weird colonial smell about your posts. It’s very curious.
Is there ever a context where it’s OK to paint all women as snakes because one women committed an objectionable act? If someone starts a thread about an annoying person who happens to be black, would you think it’s OK to call the obnoxious guy a black bastard?
And this whole moral relativism thing reads to me like someone who’s read an article (by an Evil Librul, natch) about cultural relativism and is deciding to parody it by taking it its “logical” conclusion. “If there’s different cultures that we have to respect…and other cultures have murder and rape…WE HAVE TO RESPECT MURDER AND RAPE!”
There’s nothing colonial about it, although I can see how it could be interpreted as a belief that an African life is worth less - but that would not be understanding my point. I would feel similarly about, say, foreign journalists that were there. Reasonably in the context their lives would be cheaper too, although not quite so much as they were not fully immersed in the culture.
You can declare murder an absolute if you like, but you must understand that there is no objective reason for doing so - the finality is irrelevant.
I don’t accept that we can’t say anything about their culture (and again I emphasise it isn’t just culture, but the entire context) - we can attack it as much as we like. But I don’t see that we have any objective basis for saying that we’re definitely right.
This isn’t cultural relativism, this is moral/ethical relativism.
I am always happy to be proven wrong, but no one has yet convinced me that there is an objective moral or ethical system. The only ones that even make a lick of scientific sense are semi-Darwinist ones and they would not have an absolute viewpoint on murder or rape. But then again there is no point in making Darwinism an ethicical system, as it becomes a tautology and completely meaningless.
The originator of this thread, Lumpy, is located in Minnesota. Based on that, could we agree to limit our discussion to the prevalence of exploitation among sex workers in the US? If yes, is there some argument that trafficked sex workers in the US are somehow not being exploited?
Well what’s there to discuss? Trafficked sex workers (in the sense that you and I would understand trafficked, which probably isn’t the same as the government definition) are obviously being exploited. No one disagrees with that.
Although it’s been kind of mentioned, I don’t see that anyone has stated this explicitly: Even in Amsterdam, where prostitution is legal and open, the vast majority of Dutch women are not prostitutes. So there must be a downside to prostitution you’re not considering.
If you count the US as part of the developed world, and you count trafficked sex workers in the US as being exploited, by what measures and logic do you come to the position that it is extremely unlikely that a sex worker in the US is being exploited?
Could you quantify that for me? What number of sex workers in the US do you think have been trafficked, and how many sex workers do you think there are in the US?