How appalling.
How Smapti managed to transform himself from Lawful Stupid poster boy to respected anti-Trumper is one of this board’s enduring mysteries.
This is a good point to revisit Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, which was also relevant in re Smapti.
- The lowest stage is “I don’t want to get punished.”
- Then “I want to be rewarded.”
- Then “I want a good reputation.”
Stage 4 is Law and order: law is identified with morality itself.
Some minds get stuck at this stage and don’t develop further to stage 5, the social contract, and stage 6, universal ethical principles.
Are there actually people out there who genuinely think that “legal” = “moral”? Perhaps a small child, or an actual moron, but other than that?
Everyone who believes that they are the ones who will always make the laws, probably.
It’s been a while and I have absolutely no interest in slogging back through it, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s that “breaking any law, even unjust or evil ones = immoral.”
Which is even worse, truth be told.
There are people who legitimately believe that if slavery were legal, owning slaves would be perfectly moral for a variety of ultimately self-serving but at least outwardly altruistic-sounding reasons. They’re not even hard to find. I grew up surrounded by such.
They likely do not extend that same reasoning to laws they disagree with, but there are certainly people who do justify (to others and to themselves) their own terrible actions and positions are moral with the defense that they are within the bounds of the law.
It’s also ignoring the fact that one of the ways to get laws changed in the United States is by breaking the law, and ultimately having a state or the federal top court decide the law is unconstituitonal. Max is supposed to be a lawyer, right? How come he doesn’t know this?
No, he’s not. He works in a doctors office. He’s in his early 20’s.
Thanks. I guess I confused him with a certain other poster here. So, he works in a doctor’s office? Let’s hope it’s not as a nurse or physician’s assistant. I shudder to think of what his reaction would be to the doctor going off label.
No, something administrative.
Or breaking a law and showing the public how draconian the law is and get them to vote accordingly.
Nowadays I’m in my mid-20’s and I’m back in school. We’ll see if it does me any good.
There are circumstances where I would condone breaking the law as a morally neutral or even positive act. Such circumstances include actual ignorance of law, reasonable belief that a law is invalid, or reasonable belief that a law violates a social contract. That is not to say any of these on their own make lawbreaking moral. I do not think the federal government has the authority to prohibit outright racial discrimination in the workplace, and if I were the ultimate arbiter of law I would strike down Title VII. I do not have that power and Title VII carries force of law, yet I would not condone a violation: racial discrimination is an affront to the principles of fairness and personal responsibility, and in a relative sense, it is independently and inherently immoral.
I do, however, deny the existence of “universal ethics”. Specifically I believe in relative ethics, in two senses of the word.
First, I believe ethics are relative to each situation. I reject moral absolutism; stealing is not always wrong, neither is breaking the law. Acts of charity aren’t always morally upright. The runaway slave is probably not immoral for breaking his bonds, and depending on context, may or may not be morally justified in the use of violence to escape.
Second, I believe ethics is subjective rather than universal (I am a moral relativist, not a moral realist). I reject the word of God as an unimpeachable moral authority, even putting aside the question of God’s existence. I rely on my conscience for some ethical boundaries and I do not believe another person should necessarily share the same boundaries. For a concrete example, I think it is unconscionable for me to commit suicide. I do not necessarily extend this judgement to other individuals, even though if I was in their exact situation it would be unethical for me to do the same. (Part of this has to do with my assumptions, in ethics, of mind-body dualism and non-determinism. Even if imagine myself in the exact same situation as another person, my mind and my conscience are always distinct from someone else’s and I can always act differently.) Similarily there are things that are moral for me to do, but not for someone else, due to desires I might have that another person wouldn’t. And vice versa. I might place higher moral value on the choice to play classical music than you might if you were in my place, if I enjoy classical music more than you do. It is generally immoral for me to take recreational drugs because I personally dislike and fear the loss of mental acuity; the same does not necessarily hold for someone else who enjoys the same.
~Max
Just want to say, not everyone is considerate enough to throw extra wood chips on their BBQ Pitting, kudos Max!
In principle I would support a Constitutional Amendment that gives the federal government that power. I just don’t think it’s there now.
~Max
Bolding mine. Wow.
You can do anything the wrong way, for the wrong reasons.
~Max
Yeah. It’s like that saying, “You can be quiet and merely thought of as a fool”. But I see you’ve gone with option 2.
I wouldn’t call you decision not to take drugs because you don’t like the way they make you feel a moral decision, just as a decision not to eat broccoli because you don’t like the taste isn’t a moral decision.
It is possible to make a moral decision regarding drugs. If you decided not to take drugs because you believe you have a societal responsibility to not to engage in activities that don’t increase the productivity of or otherwise enrich your society, that would be a moral decision, but if that’s your reasoning it would follow that it is immoral for any member of your society to take drugs.
Now this decision might not be absolute. You might feel that in a society as rich as complex as ours that the loss of productivity related to your personal drug abuse is so negligible as to be non-existent, and therefore your pot-smoking is not immoral. But if the apocalypse comes tomorrow, and you and your neighbors must band together to eke out a hardscrabble survival, and if even one neighbor fails to contribute fully then you’ll all die….then slacking off to smoke weed might become an immoral decision. So it isn’t absolute, but it still isn’t a case of “this behavior is immoral for thee but not for me”.
Those certainly aren’t grave moral decisions, but they are decisions and all decisions have moral value. One of the moral duties I recognize is to satisfy my personal desires. This isn’t an overwhelming moral duty - I’m not a hedonist. It wouldn’t be moral to steal simply because I want something but don’t want to pay for it. But all other things equal (and that is important!), given a choice between broccoli and cauliflower, I should choose the vegetable I like more.
~Max