Politics-Ethics Question

[ShakeZula06]

Also for the guys saying yes remember the second part of the question DS gave-
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If you answered yes to that question, my second question postulates that ten percent of all children are all of a sudden born that way. Same answer? If so what would the percentage have to be for you to change your answer?


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[DougShrapnel]

As an ethics question the answer seems to be that we should design society in a fashion that we would had we not know if we would be born limbless or the privilaged limbed. As far as the political aspects, I have no idea.

[Al68]

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As an ethics question the answer seems to be that we should design society in a fashion that we would had we not know if we would be born limbless or the privilaged limbed. As far as the political aspects, I have no idea.

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We should "design society"? Wow! Whose job is it to "design society"?

[DougShrapnel]

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As an ethics question the answer seems to be that we should design society in a fashion that we would had we not know if we would be born limbless or the privilaged limbed. As far as the political aspects, I have no idea.

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We should "design society"? Wow! Whose job is it to "design society"?

[/ QUOTE ]If you are an ACist please let me know so I won't waste my time. I made if perfectly clear that I was speaking from an ethical perspective and not a political one.

[Al68]

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As an ethics question the answer seems to be that we should design society in a fashion that we would had we not know if we would be born limbless or the privilaged limbed. As far as the political aspects, I have no idea.

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We should "design society"? Wow! Whose job is it to "design society"?

[/ QUOTE ]If you are an ACist please let me know so I won't waste my time. I made if perfectly clear that I was speaking from an ethical perspective and not a political one.

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I assume you didn't really mean that society should be "designed". And I was being a smarta$$.

I'm not an ACist. I'm a Libertarian. I beleive it is the function of gov't to protect its citizens from coersion and fraud, but not to use offensive force against people for the purpose of improving society.

[ShakeZula06]

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If you are an ACist please let me know so I won't waste my time.

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In other words you want to label him rather then put forth an argument.

[DougShrapnel]

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I assume you did't really mean that society should be "designed". And I was being a smarta$$.

[/ QUOTE ] Your right, I should be more discerning at times. I'm not going to get into the policy aspects of this question.

[fretelöo]

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What if the girlfriend jumps off a cliff? The boyfriend's refraining from action caused the girlfriend's death. I agree that the boyfriend's lack of action was immoral. But it's not a crime.

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Over here, it is, I was told. Pretty counter intuitive and you're certainly not charged with murder, but you go to court with that, pretty sure. (usual explaination is that you can't assume someone who wants to jump off a cliff to be sane in that very moment. So you're protecting a "temporarily" insane person from an action that is "detrimental to her own health". Pretty phony explanation, I agree, but that's how it's handled over here)

The reason why I bring that up is simply as kind of a empirical arguement: There are differing intuitions about what your inaction in this instance constitutes: Honor for her own free will and the choice she voluntarily made, or disrespect to the fact that a human being in obvious need of help (why would she try to kill herself?) is being denied that. The latter _is_ a crime, imo.

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Again there is a difference between what society should view as "immoral", and what society has the right to use force to protect itself from. Society does not have the right to use force to protect itself from a lack of action. Not because the inaction isn't immoral, but because the use of force by society would be immoral.

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Again, I respectfully disagree. I see your point and can very clearly see your reasons for endorsing that view, but I can't agree to it. I think that society does and should have the right to protect itself from inaction of its members, if that inaction is against the interest of society, thus, in some broader sense against the interest of the inactive citizens as well ESPECIALLY if the life of other human beings is at stake. I don't care much about whether someone should be fined because he didn't alarm the firefighters when he saw the public library in flames. I guess he can and will, but I'm relativly unemphatic. Not so when human life is at stake.
Whether protecting limbless babies from death of starvation is in the general interst of society is a question dependent on your concept of human dignity etc, a different question which I'd rather not get into... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[fretelöo]

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There is no ethical distinction between a problem staring you in the face and another far away problem that is difficult to grasp.

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From a practical point of view, there is (btw. that's why I said: in one sense yes, in many others, no. - I agree that philosophically, the two kids demand the very same ethical response from you.)
One resaon is, that you have a life of your own and a right to that life. Also, you probably have people around you, wife, kids, friends etc. Those (at least your kids and wife) have some sort of right to your existence as well.
If you now very nobly sell all your ownings and donate it to food for the world and silently die naked in the next forrest, you help them, but at the cost of your life, which is one thing. Just very, very rarely can you form a coherent argument that morally obliges you to give your life for others. But more, you also ruin the life of your wife and kids. So helping those African kids in this extreme way is out very easily.
Helping them in another way, IS indeed your moral obligation. But that no longer can be formed in a counter argument againt my holding that society is obliged to care for those limbless babies because as soon as you no longer hope to help ALL of those 3rd world babies (or at least as many as you possibly can), it becomes rather uninteresting. OF course are you morally obliged to donate a certain amout of your earnings to help ease the misery in the 3rd world.

What makes this 3rd world argument a bad one is that it doesn't, at the surface of it, takes into account the shere size of the numbers. You humanly can't help all of them. So whatever you do, you can only do a limited piece of good. But with that acknowleged, the whole argumentation changes considerably with regards to that one limbless child that we were originally talking about.


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No human is obligated to help any other human. It might be better for society if we do...

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Disagree, disagree, disagree. You are, and not because it's beneficial for society. You are because you're a human being and see some other human being in need. Simple as that. I assume we won't reach agreement on this point, so we might simply let it rest.

[fretelöo]

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As an ethics question the answer seems to be that we should design society in a fashion that we would had we not know if we would be born limbless or the privilaged limbed. As far as the political aspects, I have no idea.

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Rawls, is that you there? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]