Then you have to agree with me in that lying to save the family in tbe basement is a good thing to do. And lying is not necessarily a bad thing.Freddy:
So here is an example where there is a failure to agree the meaning of morality, or at the very least to demote it in a manner that strips away the real meaning. What is that “recognized code” (you mentioned) about, if not a guide to “the right thing to do”?
To save a family. If you think that’s a selfish motive then again, this conversation is going nowhere.
It would not really be a lie if you used mental reservation.
This is a description of a narrow mental reservation. Broad mental reservations are distinct. So… not quite a solution. Unless you can describe the same spoken words as a broad mental reservation, which could be possible.
I think what you mean is that the Foreseeable consequences (well, hoped for consequences) of the act of lying are better than the (feared) consequences of providing a truthful answer!
There are many meta-ethical systems, Why do think that virtue ethics - where “virtue” is subjectively defined and there is no such thing as natural moral law should be followed as the basis for all moral problems?
Not necessarily. The moral act always engages both reason and will. So the “end” is more correctly called the proximate (not chronological but moral) “end(s) in view” of any knowing and willing actor.
I am not “poisoning the well”. I am looking for a common platform we both accept, and then we can conduct a conversation. It is a fact that there are many ethical systems. It is also a fact that there is no epistemological method to find out if one is better than the other. Therefore it is a fact that selecting an ethical system is subjective.
And I reject that. So we can simply agree to disagree. But I am not stubborn. If you can provide actual, physical evidence for the Christian God as the first cause, then I will accept it. Or even some evidence (not necessarily physical) for a faceless, deistic creator (who has no specific attributes) we can use it as the foundation of a conversation.
Well, yes… and no. To be fair, the moniker “good Samaritan” never occurs in the text itself, AFAIK. It was inserted later as a section heading that was never part of the Scriptural text. So, we want to question what it means, in the non-inerrant context in which it was inserted. (It would seem that a more appropriate informal title might be “the merciful Samaritan” or “the good-neighborly Samaritan”!)
Notice that this isn’t the point of the parable. The other two were too busy to bother, or not even willing to notice that he was still alive and needed help. That’s not really the context here, right?
Not what I’m trying to get at. We could debate what actually happened – whether God commanded it in a literal way, or whether it was merely their understanding that this was the will of God, and whether they actually did it or not – but the only point I’m trying to make is that, when we evaluate the moral standing of the people who committed the acts, we must understand them in their time and place. The acts are just as objectively wrong then as now; but if we’re evaluating culpability (which is what the whole question is, no?), then we have to understand them in their situation. We have to know the object of the act and the intent of the actor in order to understand the moral content, and we must evaluate the circumstances in order to determine how they intensify the moral content. That’s far from “relative thinking”, which would provide distinct decisions to identical situations.
I thought he was quoting the catechism? That’s a horse of a different color, no?
Okay. Why don’t you give me, as you say it, physical evidence that this is the case? What other kind of evidence would you even accept? (As for the existence of God, it’s “right there”: cause, effect, it cannot recede infinitely or else there is either no knowledge to be obtained about anything, so there is a First Cause, which we name God. Is this “not physical enough,” or what?)
The person was tortured by the Inquisition. Was that moral because of the
?
Not so. Torture is immoral as the object and yet because of the intent and circumstances of the Inquisition, torture was approved.
Your reasoning is fallacious. Although the object, torture itself is morally wrong, the intent and circumstances can make the whole act to be moral. This is an ethical point, not a historical one.
Irrelevant to the ethical principles involved. Why not admit your reasoning is wrong instead of arguing backwards or going backwards? Going backwards, forwards, or sideways, left or right or at an angle is irrelevant to the fact that your reasoning does not add up when you consider the question of torture as an object and the attendant circumstances and intent which can make this acceptable.
Only metaphysical propositions need to be substantiated.
You confuse the God of the Philosophers with the Biblical God of Christianity. They have nothing to do with each other.