This discussion is quite interesting. I am assuming that you mean that the example of lying to the Nazis is something that we all hope won’t come up in our lifetimes.
To go to the opposite extreme, here’s another scenario.
Your cousin, who lives out of town, has told you she is pregnant. She is coming into town next week, to surprise your grandmother with the news. She is going to make the big announcement at a dinner party, with everyone from the family present.
You run into your grandmother and her neighbor at the store. Your grandmother mentions how excited she will be to see your cousin next week. The nosy neighbor (aren’t all neighbors nosy for the purpose of these anecdotes?) turns to you and says “She’s been married a year! Has she told you when she’s planning to settle down and have a baby?”
Do you say “I don’t know,” which is a lie, because you very well do know the answer to that question. Do you say “yes, she told me, but I can’t tell you” which almost begs for the assumption that there’s some news on that front, and will send your grandmother racing for the phone to call your cousin and demand some information. Or do you say the absolute truth “she told me she’s planning on having a baby in exactly six months, which is her doctor’s best estimate” thus completely ruining the surprise.
Maybe you are crafty, and try to change the subject without answering the question. But the neighbor is pushy as well as nosy, and continues asking you direct questions.
I guess what I’m interested in are those situations where saying “I can’t tell you” is, in our culture, essentially the same as revealing the information. Is it better to say “I don’t know” to keep a lie off your conscience, even though it might lead to disappointment or downright unhappiness for someone else? What if the news wasn’t the happy occasion of a baby, but sad news about a terminal illness?
Should someone who successfully chooses the lesser of two evils nevertheless feel some regret?
If they are in the habit of acting morally, they are likely to feel at least a twinge of guilt (although perhaps some are better at dismissing their gut instincts than others). Is this appropriate? To the extent that an aversion to wrongdoing is a virtue, I would argue that it is.
In utilitarian terms, the unhappiness associated with their guilt-twinge is probably outweighed by the benefits of having our agent repulsed by certain forms of conduct. (Best not to overdue it though.)
Does it make sense to label a lie, “an evil”, if in the great majority of circumstances it is? I think so, to the extent that a certain level of regret in such circumstances is morally appropriate. (Note that I am using my restrictive definition here: a lie is a knowingly false statement made with intent to deceive.)
Question to Catholic theologians: if somebody successfully chooses the lesser of two evils, must they repent for the sin that they committed anyway? I say yes, but that’s just MHO.
Apropos nothing: What I heard over the radio from a sociologist/expert on lying
Sorry, can’t offer a cite.
According to the fellow, one should ask oneself 2 questions before one lies:
Do you care about having a continued relationship with the person in question? For example, you may tell a homeless person that you don’t have any change in your pocket, when in fact you do. (I don’t do that in fact, but that’s another matter).
Is the person hearing the lie likely to be angry if they found out the truth? This covers humor, fiction and I should add a considerably wider territory.
If the answer to both questions is yes, the radio expert advised extreme caution: these are the sorts of lies that are often considered to be a form of betrayal.
I hasten to add that I think our expert was setting the ethical bar rather low. I suspect that he was suggesting a minimum standard, though I did not hear him say that explicitly. Feel free to be somewhat appalled.
SM
Spiritus, why should I create a system of ethics that aims to decieve myself? There are sometimes situations where there is more than one thing to do, all of which are good. There are sometimes situations where there is more than one thing to do, all of which are bad. I will not pat myself on the back for doing something bad.
I’m not sure that I would feel extra guilty (or really that guilty at all) if I were faced with a situation leaving me no ethical way out. What is there to feel guilty about? That I got screwed by the situation?
And you’ve improved on this by merely saying that everyone can be good always if they want to. Most of the time I would agree, there is an ethical way out. I am not suprised, however, if I find that I’ve no good choice available to me in a given situation. That’s life.
Good is an attainable result in most cases.
delphica
Correct; I do not expect myself to be personally involved with (or have there be on a large enough scale) some sort of Nazi-esque movement. (Though I do carry my papers around with me, sir! :D)
In the situation you offer, I would simply say, “I’m sorry, but it isn’t my place to talk about other people’s personal life in such a way,” persistent or not. Because it isn’t my place, at least not in the situation you describe. “Wouldn’t you think they’d tell you if anything was going on?”
Basically, we have a labeling disagreement. To me, “good” and “evil” as ethical labels make sense only under the contect of guides from which to make ethical decision. Therefore, labeling the best available ethical decision as “evil” is contradictory.
You like the idea of “good” and “evil” as absolute terms, divorced from any context of guiding human actions/decisions/feelings.
We disagree. Must you categorize my position with loaded terms in order to defend your own?
I think it is more than just a labeling issue. As well, I would like to believe in an absolute system of ethics, declaring good good and bad bad for all time. I am now certain that such a system is not appropriate.
But, this isn’t to say that the opposite is true, either. If we are to have any meaningful conversation on good and bad the systems under comparison must be able to be discussed in some objective manner.
That isn’t to say your system is arbitrary; that is to say that I feel you are using an ethical system as a way of rationalization. Possibly. I do not, from what little I know of you, feel you are one to rationalize and so things are a bit strange here.
I can say that lying is always bad. I cannot, conceptually, see that lying could ever be good. It is the willing release of faulty information with intent that that faulty information be perceived as true. Certainly, given appropriate contexts, I can admit that there are circumstances which would give rise to the telling of a lie as a viable option. I do not think it could ever be ethical. It could be the better choice by virtue of being less damaging (for utilitarian purposes, ie-the Nazi example), harmless (white lies about appearance or so forth), and I’m sure that, given a few more minutes, I could come up with some other qualifications as to why someone would want to lie.
But the question was honest, the interest genuine, and to lie in the face of that is bad. It could be, practically speaking, that the good that comes from the lie far outweighs the bad of the lie itself. I’m not prepared to make such a claim as a general case, nor do I see how that has any effect on lying itself. Is it bad to lie in this case? Yes. Well, how about this case? Yes!
Life, to me, is muddled enough without having to willingly supply others with false information and say that I did a good thing.
[sub]If you recall our previous morality disussion, you might remember that I focus on desires as the appropriate target for moral proclamations. Thus, the desire to willingly give false information is what I have a problem with. The ends do not justify the means, though they may be used for purposes of rationalization outside of the ethical system itself. Such as: “It wasn’t good OR bad, it simply had to be done because…”[/sub]
And yet you declare such a position every time you say that a lie is always evil/bad/wrong. That position is justifiable only from an absolute system of ethics.
I cannot for the life of me figure out where you see rationalization in the application of ethics to human conduct/decisions/motivations. Perhaps you can point it out specifically.
I do recall our earlier discussion, and I still think you use “desire” in too broad a sense for me to find it useful. But I think that is a separate discussion. I see no difference in the context of this discussion with assigning the judgment to the act of lying, the decision to lie, or the desire to lie.
Wait a minute…you think my entire ethical system is absolutist just because I can’t conceive of calling a specific thing, a lie, good?
In re to rationalization:
You are declaring that, due to the relative nature of all contexts one can be in, that there should be and there is an ethical way out of every situation, which we call good. There is nothing we may declare wrong without context. My ethical system tells me what to do in a given situation. I always do good things this way.
It isn’t that I feel that a person can’t be good, SM. I just feel that an entire ethical system isn’t situational. Parts are, and parts aren’t.
No. I am saying that you have an absolutist component to your ethical system (or perhaps two separate ethical systems, one with absolute values and one with contextual values.) Unless you tell me how you decide when each system/component should be relied upon, it is difficult to know whether you have integrated components of one system or two independent systems without overlapping responsibilities.
Rationalization is usually used to describe the after-the-fact attempt to justify a decision/action with reason(s) that were not used to determine the decision/action.
Your summary of my position is a bit simpliied, but rather than quibble with the elements let me just say that I find it insulting that you would equate a contextual ethos with rationalization for no reason other than it is a contextual ethos. I assume that is another one of your absolute values with which I disagree.
Brian
I am not a great fan of Kant’s categorical imperative. I find that to be useful in general application it must assume a homogeneity of context which makes it inalid. It is also subject, as are utilitarian ethical systems, to the fallacy of infinite foresight.
Exclusively Contextual Ethics
Where is the reference frame with which to guide a decision based on a context? This isn’t in them moral system itself, I wouldn’t think, though I suppose it could be. Unless we argue that all contexts are equally valid and must be judged on their own standards in which case I still wonder, in reference to what?
If all judgements are situational, when presented with a situation I see a few distinct possibilities for action. One, act on impulse, disregarding the ethical system’s guidance, except perhaps to judge things after the fact and see whether they are good or bad. Two, use the ethical system to evaluate choices and come up with the good decision. Three, use the ethical system to come up with what one thinks is good choices, but because the situation itself is ambiguous, what we think is good about the situation is possibly in error. We act anyway, presumably not fitting our wnats into the context to get the “right” answer (renormalization? heh).
All three of these, of course, can be applied to any particular system of ethics. What bothers me is that, without some absolute referents at all, all contexts’ ambiguity factor is much higher than normal. Because of that, it seems, rationalization (which could be choice one[sub]or three[/sub]) is built into the more contextual systems.
I like the balance between context and absolutism, as a trade off between the strengths and weaknesses each have.
Contextual reference frames are defined by the participants. How else?
Contextual ethics recognize the ambiguity of human relations; it does not create it. Since you recognize that in some cases you wiill have to “do evil” (under your labels) you suffer from the same ambiguity of evaluation. {You still have not told me how you decide when to use absolute ethics and when to use contextual ethics under your system(s).}
None of the above really makes any difference to the charge of rationalization. You recognize that in one sentence, then backtrack in the next. I see little difference between this and statements such as: of course anyone can be amoral, but I think atheists are more likely to be amoral because they lack an absolute standard of morality. It is poor reason. It is also poor ethics.
If all factors in the situation must be evaluated by the person looking for the ethical solution, the possibility of rationalization (even unintentional rationalization) is very large.
If there are always some factors of a situation which are absolutely wrong/right, the ambiguity–and hence the possibility of rationalization–decreases.
In a completely absolute system, one would require the infinite foresight you mention. I don’t think that is the right idea.
Is it wrong to lie? Always. Are there times when one must do it anyway? Certainly. Is it wrong to kill? Always. Are there times when one must do it anyway? Certainly. Is it wrong to vocally attack other people? Depends on the situation.
I see what you mean about two non-overlapping systems, but both systems, I’d like to think, are sourced from the same set of ideals-about-interaction, and so are one and the same. Some lines are never crossed, some lines are contextual, some lines are never drawn.
I’m sorry we can’t see eye-to-eye on this. I don’t mean to attack you.
Let’s examine this issue, because I believe that an action is simply an action. Unless the action is viewed against the background of a contextual situation it cannot be determined if it is “good” or “evil”. Certainly there are some things that are “typically” good, and some things that are “typically” evil, however this does not mean all such occurences are therefore evil.
Starting off with a simple example: Driving on the left side of the rode. Which side of the rode you drive on, by itself has no inherent moral properties, it is simply an action. Now, put that action into a context, driving on the left side of the road in the U.S. I think we could all agree that “typically” this an evil action. Again, let’s define the context further, perhaps there is a child that just rushed into the road from the right side, and you swerved to the empty left side of the road in order to avoid striking and killing the child. In this circumstance, I cannot see how you can label the act of driving on the left side of the road an “evil” act. Many of the moralities / generalizations about good and evil that we have are in place to preserve the order and peace in society. Driving on the right side of the road in the U.S. is one example, we by convention drive on that side of the road so that we have an agreed upon system to preserve the order and avoid collisions with other vehicles.
How about a different example, something with is typically regarded as “good”. Performing CPR or other life saving measures on someone having a heart attack, or some other form of life threatening danger. This is usually a good thing, but can you always say it’s good? What if that person had a DNR? What if that person was ready to die? What if they had been laboring under cancer for the past 18 months? Would it be a good thing at that point to do everything in our power to preserve their life? Specifically under the condition that they wished to die, I would say no, it’s not a good thing, it’s an evil thing.
What about killing an animal, say a deer? This particular action is more debatable in terms of where you start (ie what your views on killing animals are in the first place). To examine the case, if a man with a starving family kills the deer to put meat on the table and to save the lives of his starving family this is a good thing. What about two teenage boys who just want to go out and have fun by killing things? Suppose that these boys in the course of their “fun” kill two dozen deer? What if to further complicate the matter, they kill and scare off the deer from the area where the starving man was going to hunt and his family as a result all starve to death?
Another example, also somewhat relative to your religious preconceptions, but what about having sex? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Doesn’t it depend on whether or not you are married? So if you are married, then sex is good right ( I am of couse speaking about a moral perspective )? What if you aren’t having sex with the person that you are married to? Then its even a worse thing in my view than two unmarried people have sex with each other.
I can give you examples all day, but what I haven’t been able to do is take an act, any act and strip it of all context and reference, and then define it as good or evil. Actions are actions, IMHO, they do not take on a moral significance until there is a context associated with them.
Before someone posts with an argument like “Murder is always bad”, please realize that Murder is not a simple action, it is a contextual situation. As defined by webster Murder is: “1 : the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought”, as you can plainly see the act of murder comes with context. Firing a gun for instance is simply an act, when you add the context of another person being in front of that gun it becomes (potentially) killing, when you add the context of the person in front of that gun being killed “unlawfully” or undeservedly it becomes murder. However if you were defending your life or the life of your family it is self-defense.
So what I am interested in is, how does an act, any act obtain a moral designation such as good or evil without a context? To me, lying is no different than anything else, it is the simple act of telling something to someone that you “know” to be untrue. However this does not give it a moral designation of evil, nor does it designate it as good.
ARL, you claimed that with a contextual system we:
IMO, a contextual system is better than an absolute system in terms of freeing people to act. In an absolute system (going back to the Nazi example) when they knock on your door and ask if you have any jews inside, you would have to decide what to do, should you be evil and lie, or should you be evil and let innocent people be killed. To me there is absolutely no contest in that decision, in that situation lying wouldn’t be evil or even bad to me. I wouldn’t hesitate for even a split second to decide, as with only those two alternatives protecting the lives of the innocents is the only ethical or good choice available to me.
The only answers that I have seen from the absolutists have been Staw Men, saying that you will not ever be in that situation doesn’t answer the argument. The situation existed in very recent history, and is a valid example of an ethical situation that people have been faced with. If you believe that lying is always bad, driving on the right side of the road is always bad, having sex is always bad, or killing animals is always bad, then at least have the courage of your convictions and address the arguments above.
In order to determine if something is a lie, first we must know what is truth. Perhaps the ethics of lies should be revisited after the nature of truth has been established to the satisfaction of all participants.
Geisler characterizes this stance as Conflicting Absolutism. When confronted with a moral dilemma or conflict, one should do the lesser evil, which is nevertheless wrong “even though one may be doing what is ‘humanly’ right”. Tragic moral choices exist. The utilitarian argument for regret that I outlined earlier appears consistent with this view.
Unqualified Absolutism, in contrast, holds that moral conflicts are only apparent and that it is always possible to do what is right. Kant provides an example of this stance.
Hierarchicalism holds that following the highest moral rule in a given situation defines what is right: the notion of a lesser of two evils is a bit of a misnomer. This appears similar to Spiritus’ POV.
Up to several hours ago, I was siding with Conflicting Absolutism: I felt regret (not guilt, per se) was appropriate in cases when the lesser of two evils was chosen. But working through the following example has led me to some qualifications.
Say we had a air force bomber, part of the allies in WWII to make the example cleaner. Say that WWII was a “just war”, from the allied perspective, so that killing was considered morally justified. (Insert justifications here: self-defense, securing freedom and prosperity in Western Europe for many years, opposing a morally repulsive state, etc.). Our pilot drops bombs, resulting in the deaths of many.
How are we to evaluate such acts? If the pilot participates in the lesser of two evils does that mean he should feel guilty? Regretful?
Within a context where righteous killing is highly unlikely, I would have no problem with regret or even guilt. But within the context of warfare (a situation that is unfortunately not exceptional), I’m not sure I’d want to morally burden our soldier in proportion to the very real harm that he inflicted. Rather, the attitude that I would want to encourage would be not so much regret but something like enhanced sobriety. Our virtuous soldier is aware of the moral consequences of his actions, but allows his knowledge of the larger picture to over-ride them.
This seems more consistent with Hierarchicalism than with Conflicting Absolutism. And, yes, Hierarchicalism does carry the risk of sliding into situation ethics which in turn can lead to inappropriate rationalizations. But none of these 3 stances are immune from possible misapplication.
OTOH, construct a more banal example from civilian life where lying is the lesser of two evils and I find myself leaning towards Conflicting Absolutism. Arg. Philosophy is confusing.
Well, I’m not judging the actions per se. This is a whole other debate, but I will only say that I place my moral judgements on the wants of the person. I can see pragmatic reasons why one person would want to lie but my problem isn’t with the justification, its with the desire to lie itself.
Your road example loses me. If driving on either side of the road has no moral value to it, then why are you trying to put one there by tossing a child in from of the car?
Is sex a good or bad thing? Sex is very contextual; is it rape, which is a sexual act (yeah, I know, it’s really a power act but whatever), or is it consetual sex? What is the context? Are both people satisfied with the situation, comfortable with their desires, not conflicting wants etc?
Because acts are secondary to many things. Decision, intention, desire… if all I think about all day is killing children, could I be youtr babysitter? Of course not. Action is not the appropriate place to hold moral judgement.
Beat you to this one. And it wasn’t murder, but killing, when I said
It was in reference to people, though I didn’t make that explicit here. Life is precious, to me. To remove that life is not a good thing, though I admit there are times when we may rationalize it after the fact, before the fact, whatever, to support practiciality of coexistence.
Here’s a context. Human life is a universal anomoly, and as such, it is precious and rare. Removing that life is not good, in any context. What may be worthwhile are the practical ends we achieve from the taking of this life, but that, to me, will not change the fact that we snuffed out something valuable.
Truth in the face of, as Douglas Adams called it, an epistemologically ambiguous universe is hard enough as it is. Lying further compromises the integrity of clear communication ond understanding in all contexts.
Because you are using the ends to justify the means. “I can protect this Jew by lying; protecting Jews from death is good; therefore I must be good.” Even then, though, you are still making an absolute judgement, namely that saving the Jew from death is good. Under what context? UInder the context that a nazi is banging on the door asking me where he is… wow, did we just go in a circle?
Protecting the lives is an ethical decision. Deciding to lie is not (to me). I don’t just add it all up and see which one came up more positive to declare the entire situation good.
I hope I have addressed your agruments accordingly.
I don’t know, flowbark, I wouldn’t want the soldier to take the moral high ground and go crusading, if you know what I mean.
I think it is normal to regret killing someone, regardless of context. It can also be justified. I wouldn’t feel sorry for the dead (in a situation where I had to kill for whatever reason) but I wouldn’t commend myself for it either.
I think our boys from WW2 felt completely righteuous in killing the Nazis, especially any who saw the concentration camps. Think that, years later, they still felt so righteous, or sick that they had to kill people to stop THEM from killing?
tris
Th equestion of lying is actually independent of any absolute epistemology, though it is dependent upon individual (contextual) epistemologies. The intent to deceive does presuppose that I have formed a conclusion about the true situation. It does not require that my conclusion be valid across all frames.
In a way, though, this question nicely points out why I feel that ethical decisions are most aptly applied within the same contextual understanding. flowbark
I can accept your taxonomy.
Regarding guilt/regret, though. I do not equate the two. I feel regret is often an appropriate response to a situation in which ethical options are limited by extreme circumstances. I do not feel guilt is an appropriate response to choosing the most ethically correct path.
In your example, I would regret the circumstances which forced me into an ethical decision to kill. I would feel guilty to whatever extent my ethical choices had contributed to creating those extreme circumstances, but I would not feel guilty about the ethical decision to fight in a war I considered just. arl
Unless you have a predefined mechanism for deciding when, how, and under what circumstances one must “choose the lessser of two evils” then your bifurcated system almost guarantees either rationalization after the fact or “ends justifying the means”. You say repeatedly that you agree that such choices must be made, but you offer no ethical system under which to decide that “this evil is the correct path”.
Significaantly? I do not see why. You seem to be assuming that each contextual evaluation is performed in a vaccuum, uninformed by past experience or earlier ethical evaluations. It is not necessary, for instance, for me to examine in detail whether killing you is an ethical response to an electronically expressed disagreement. Frankly, since you are arguing that at some point a deision between “the lesser of two evils” must be made, I have a hard time identifying any areas of evaluation that I must take and you must not except for the decision to label a path “evil”.
The distinction between lying and verbal assault seems pretty arbitrary. I ask again how you decide where to apply absolute ethics and where to apply contextual. I also ask how you determine the contexts under which the acknowledgement of a path being “evil” is overridden to the extent that said path might be ethically followed.
I cannot say whether I agree, since you have yet to tell me how that “single system” deifferentiates between absolute, contextual, and absolute-but-not-absolutely-prohibitted.
“Rationalize before the fact”??
Do you apply that label to all ethical examinations with which you disagree? rationalize
That argument applies equally well to any other form of life. Is it evil to eat? How about to allow your immune system to destroy bacteriological infections? Is it also evil to not create the “universal anomoly” of human life at every opportunity, or does the moral absolute hold only in destruction? Do the wishes of the huma involved have any effect upon the moral valuation, or does the “value” exist independent of individual desires?
You may go in a circle, but since your argument miscast (horribly) a contextual ethos, I feel no obligation to follow you.
I might, in the given situation, consider the expressed desires of all participants (Nazi==kill jews, Jews==live, me==not participate in a genocidal policy + not piss off armed Nazis @ door). In this case, the desires of two participants directly contradict. Since I personally use empathy as a guiding ethical principle, I would prefer not ever reducing another human being to a “means to my end”. However, in this case I have no choice. Inaction will result in a search==complicity, since that consequence is readily forseeable. Thus, I must choose either to support the Jew or the Nazi in their direct conflict. (This simplification assumes that other options, lecturing the Nazis on ethics for instance, will not be successful at avoiding the dilemna.)
In this context, I must decide whether emmpathy leads me to preserve the life of the Jew or to further the pogrom of the Nazis. I do not find that choice particularly difficult. It does not require the ends to justify that means. The ends, like the means, are a product of the empathic evaluation and the contextual understanding. Given a diffeent context, different means might be available through which to express the same ethical path.
)? What if you aren’t having sex with the person that you are married to? Then its even a worse thing in my view than two unmarried people have sex with each other.