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inocente
Guest
You can’t run the world on good intentions, you’ll get suckered every time. I’d recommend instead Machiavelli’s The Prince and Hobbes’ Leviathan. Your opponents will have read them, so should you.
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I
inocente
Guest
An absolutist would hold that if torture is wrong in any circumstance, it must be categorically wrong in all circumstances.
Instead you are, by definition, a moral consequentialist, since your action will vary according to what you perceive to be the consequences.
However, your torture to stop violent crime scenario is morally no different from Truman using the Bomb to save lives, so how do you explain the inconsistency?
(It’s OK, most people are inconsistent in applying morality so you’re not alone)
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
All humans are equally valuable in the eyes of God and should be treated as such.
Utilitarianism, however, inevitably will be nationalistic. The greater good for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was not motivation to save Japanes lives, but to save American lives. Moreover, the atomic bombs were dropped largely on a civilian population. The only way you could say Utilitarianism was not discriminatory in that case is to say it was dropped on soldiers and civilians alike.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
I think maybe you forgot something I pointed out earlier?
Truman was not in a “necessary choice between two evils” situation, so the comparison is not valid. For Truman it was not a matter of dropping the bombs or losing the war. Whereas torture of the terrorist is a choice made necessary by the belief that you either torture him and get the information you need, or there will be terrible consequences.
By the way, being forced to choose the lesser of two evils evil is not always wrapped up in accomplishing the greater good for the greater number. There are possible and no doubt actual scenarios where one might be forced to choose the lesser evil without reference to a greater or lesser number of people. Which again is why I think Utilitarianism is a moral theory for the collective, rather than for the individual.
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Oreoracle
Guest
No, that doesn’t make any sense. Nationalism, by definition, means giving priority to the culture and citizens of a particular nation. No formulation of utilitarianism assigns priority that way.
I know you desperately want it to be a terrible philosophy, but you’re simply making things up here.
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edwest2
Guest
There is no reason to believe that. Nothing in history would lead to that conclusion. It was an unnecessary action.
Peace,
Ed
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Tomdstone
Guest
So the end justifies the means? Is it all right to murder thousands of innocent children in order to stop a war?
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Tomdstone
Guest
Yes. Racist is more like it.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, even if you’re wrong.
In the case of Germany, the nationalism of the 1930s was based on the assumption that the Jews were not Germanic by blood, and that for the greater good of the greater number of Germans it would be necessary to purge the country of Jews.
Utilitariansim is not a terrible philosophy in itself, but rather in the way that it can be misused or misapplied.
What I’ve been saying right along is that it it’s inadequate to deal will certain moral questions. This is not a rare assessment of Utilitarianism. As I’ve said earlier, Utilitarianism has a useful role to play in application to group behavior, especially of a political or economic type. Did you miss that in my previous posts?
But as a general principle for individual moral behavior, it is in many instances woefully inadequate where better moral axioms might apply, such as “Inflict no needless pain on anyone” or “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
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Tomdstone
Guest
I don’t think that this moral axiom is absolute or applies in all cases. If you are a soldier in trench warfare, I am sure that you would want the enemy soldier to stop shooting at you. But as a soldier you would not stop shooting at the enemy. So this is a case where you would not do to the enemy as you would want the enemy to do unto you. I.e., it is not an absolute moral axiom.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Different moral axioms exist for different occasions. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” refers to the normal intercourse of human beings during which, if you want them to treat you with friendship and justice, you ought to treat them with friendship and justice first. This is an absolute axiom within that kind of relationship.The violation of it may result in fist fights or law suits.
Within the relationship of two soldiers on the battlefield, obviously there is a different moral axiom at work: “You ought to shoot or be shot.” We do have the right to self defense. And the lesser evil (unless you are a pacifist) is to shoot rather than be shot.
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Oreoracle
Guest
Is there a moral code somewhere that can’t be misused or misapplied?
Tomdstone already addressed the second of those morals. As for your response to him, you said that certain morals are appropriate in certain situations. This isn’t much clarification. Who gets to decide when morals are applicable or not?
As for the moral about not inflicting needless suffering, who gets to judge when it’s needless? If someone spanks a misbehaving child, is that needless suffering or not? In some cultures, the majority of parents don’t spank their children and they often turn out fine. Who gets to judge when it’s needless?
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Any moral action can be erroneous depending on the situation and the inclination of the person to make erroneous judgments. There’s the classic perversion of the Golden Rule: “Let’s do unto them what we’d rather they didn’t to unto us.”Is there a moral code somewhere that can’t be misused or misapplied?
Tomdstone already addressed the second of those morals. As for your response to him, you said that certain morals are appropriate in certain situations. This isn’t much clarification. Who gets to decide when morals are applicable or not?
As for the moral about not inflicting needless suffering, who gets to judge when it’s needless? If someone spanks a misbehaving child, is that needless suffering or not? In some cultures, the majority of parents don’t spank their children and they often turn out fine. Who gets to judge when it’s needless?
Who gets to decide? All moral actions are decided by the person who decides them. Who else would?
Well, if spanking is needless in some cultures, I would expect that is because the parents have found some other way to make it uncomfortable for their children to disobey. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to inflict needed pain on a child at some point or another. If that is not experienced growing up, you might get a wild child!
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Tomdstone
Guest
The normal intercourse of human beings involves dealing with criminal actions. I don’t see how you can say that this moral axiom “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” has universal assent. There are many cases when people see it as their moral obligation to do things that they would not want done to themselves. Take for example, the judge who sentences someone to death by hanging. I doubt that he would want that done to himself, yet he believes that it is his moral obligation to do so. Similarly, in dealing with convicted criminals which turns up in the normal intercourse of human beings, at least in many areas of the USA, the prison guard locks the prisoner in a prison cage of solitary confinement. I don’t think that he wants the criminal to do the same to him.
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Oreoracle
Guest
Right, but I’m asking who has the “ultimate authority” regarding the applicability of morals in your system? Take your moral that we shouldn’t inflict needless suffering for example. If you give each person license to interpret what “needless” means, any amount of suffering could be justified.Who gets to decide? All moral actions are decided by the person who decides them. Who else would?
Giving someone the ability to freely interpret a statement is just as bad as letting them make the statement themselves. For someone who was so hard on utilitarianism for its supposed vagueness and misuses just a few posts ago, you seem awfully reluctant to define your terms, and this negligence would lead to just as many abuses of your own system.
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Tomdstone
Guest
Some people say waterboarding is suffering and it is needless since you cannot trust confessions under torture. Others will say that waterboarding is needed as a tool against terrorism and further they claim that it is not torture but they describe it as an enhanced interrogation technique. So this “moral axiom” is very subjective in its application.
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inocente
Guest
Yes, the immediate surrender confirmed the decision to use the Bomb.
With all the knowledge of the effects of carpet bombing on England and Germany, and the experience of D-Day, I think estimates of deaths resulting from an invasion would have been reasonably accurate.
Estimates for Japanese deaths would have had to be ridiculously optimistic to be less than caused by the Bomb.
Didn’t Vietnam subsequently confirm that Americans who fondly imagine invaded peoples will just acquiesce are being wildly optimistic?
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inocente
Guest
Yes, utilitarianism is a social theory.
Sorry but the Truman and torture scenarios are morally equivalent.
Truman has the unenviable choice between the body count if the war drags to an invasion, compared with using the Bomb to try to induce immediate surrender.
Your guy has a less difficult but still unenviable choice between torturing one person or there being unspecified terrible consequences.
In neither case is anyone worrying about losing a war, in both they have to choose between two evils.
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inocente
Guest
As I said, I’m no expert, but no one here has provided any evidence that some other decision would have resulted in fewer Japanese deaths. No one has even said what the alternative might have been.
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