Politics-Ethics Question

[ShakeZula06]

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If a person commits an inaction,

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How the hell do you commit an inaction?

[fretelöo]

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I'm not going to buy some guy's book just because he has an opinion that you happen to believe in. You're the one who brought up this 'action and lack of action are the same thing' argument, so it's up to you to substantiate it when it comes under scrutiny.

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I guess I have a differing definition of what "scrutiny" is. You certainly don't qualify ... yet. You still seem not have grasped the point I was trying to make. Whether or not refraining from acting (I note that despite three attempts or so you still seem to be unable to realize the difference between "lack of action" and "refraining from acting") is the same commiting some obviously criminal act depends on your notion of what distinguishes an action.
If you're unwilling to put forth the effort to come to some educated opinion about the things in question here - so sorry. It's not up to me to force feed you 3 years worth of propaedeutic courses on philosophical ethics, action theory and theory of mind.

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Saying 'some guy who is obviously smarter than you said it, so it must be true' is not an agument I'm afraid.

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I'm afraid you misunderstood yet again. What I was saying is that his theory of action wouldn't have been one of the most influential over the past 50 years or so had it been so easily discountable by arguments as you put forth. It's not an argument about authorities but a generic one, calling upon the combined intelligence of the philosophic discourse of the last half century ("if it withstood that, it can't be too idiotic"). But, I must agree, it was a sarcastical remark to some extend.

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You are just hiding behind a book when you get a question you don't want to answer.

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No. I've just learned over many similar discussions that it's plainly a waste of time trying to establish all the neccessary preliminaries to be able to answer that question in a non-trivial way. It's not imposible, it just takes 10 pages double spaced. And, to be honest, someone somewhere who I met in a POKER forum who doesn'T exactly seem to be the most eager to put in some effort himself (how riddiculous your words about Davidson sound you would have realized had you just read half that wikipedia article I linked here) isn't the first that comes to my mind that I would happily devote a few hours of writing about.
Just for the record:
If we
- established what D.'s theory of action is about
- established that this account is part of practical philosophy
- established how practical philo relates to ethics
- established how your Africa-question is at core an ethical problem
- established why that is so
- established how the action theoretic account and the ethical evaluation interrelate on that particular problem
- we would be able to come up with an intelligent answer.

But, again, as of now you haven'T left the impression that you care too much about the fine print. So I just leave it out.

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'Free' western societies have all kinds of laws that are either immoral, intrusive or illogical. Germany also has a law that it s illegal to publish the image of a swastica (or something like that).

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Yeah, well, get your facts straight, will ya? We have laws that forbid the public display of 3rd Reich imagery of any kind. Given our history, that doesn't seem entirely "illogical" to me. Swastika and Hakenkreuz are two different things, as I hope you realize.

[Mickey Brausch]

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If a person commits an inaction...

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How the hell do you commit an inaction?

[/ QUOTE ]By omitting action.

(And how do you omit inaction? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

[fretelöo]

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If, as is the case with babies, that not-helping implies certain death, yes, I have to confess that the difference between the two escapes me.

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The most obvious difference is one requires action and one doesn't. I notice later you make the extension that it makes one a murderer not to help another survive. Are private ciizens murdering people in the third world by not donating all the disposable income to those with no food? Under this defintion, I could think of dozens of ways that you, me, and everyone on this board is a murderer. I find this to be absurd. Murder to me requires action or intervention.

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Let's just say, that that 3rd World argument mixes ethics and action theory. It's two different things to analyze something as an action of yours (even if that action simply consists of willingly/knowingly refraining from helping) and the moral evaluation of that action, taking into account possible alternatives blablabla.
I was/am too lazy to really get into the mud and try to get those two different, but in this particular Africa-Problem intererelated, parts of the problem together.

Also, on a more general note, inconvenient results aren't in themselves good arguments. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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...rinse yourself from any guilt and responsibility.

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What 'responsibility' do I have in the first place?

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The responsibility of looking after a fellow human being.

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But in this scenario 'good reason' is subjective. What may be a good reason to one is not a good reason to another. I don't feel comfortable forcing my subjective values of what is good on others, and I don't feel comfortable having others force them on me.

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Good reason is ALWAYS subjective. That's why it's "merely" good reason and not strict anayltical necessity.
"Not feeling comfortable imposing my subjecitve values" and therefore refraining from doing it is just an easy way out. You are morally obliged to do so anyway regardless of what you feel easy about or not - says Kant, say most ethicists that endorse some sort of objective moral values.

[Al68]

I think you're missing an obvious point here. You argue that inaction can be just as immoral and unethical as an action. I am familiar with some of the writings you referenced, and I agree that inaction can be just as immoral and unethical as an action.

But I don't think anyone has stated that a lack of action could not be immoral or ethical.

The issue is whether or not the gov't should force someone to take an action because that action is ethically or morally right. Or punish inaction because that inaction is ethically or morally wrong.

I say NO. But not because I disagree that inaction can be immoral and unethical.

And while helping another person may be someone's moral and ethical responsibility, forcing them to do it is also immoral and unethical.

[fretelöo]

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The issue is whether or not the gov't should force someone to take an action because that action is ethically or morally right. Or punish inaction because that inaction is ethically or morally wrong.

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OP raised a different question, I'm afraid:

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Assuming the US has a population of 300 million and the wealth it now owns, should a baby born with no arms and no legs, (with no chance of being fixed), but otherwise healthy, be kept alive and healthy by the government if no one else will do it?

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It's not about the govt. forcing me to take up one of those babies myself. It's just whether help should be granted at all. And I think the answer is a very obvious "YES!".

Whether it's morally right to force someone to do something morally right is a different question. Gov't can never do such things as it's bound by codes of law; governmental action, therefore, is always legally right/wrong (by that I mean that the primary way of judging gov'tal action is by means of "according to the law - against the law". Of course "according to the law" might still be "morally wrong" , but from that it doesn't follow that it's permissible in such a case to just not follow the law. They just have to execute what's the law. So, morally right/wrong isn't the "correct" way of evaluating governmental actions). If government would start refraining from doing something because it feels it's morally obliged to do so DESPITE the law stating otherwise, this would probably be the end of said state/government.
Whether it is right for the govt to enforce the law is a big, resounding "Yes!" again.

Whether the law in itself is just, is an alltoghether different question, and, what seems to be the main intuition of many here: Govt. forces me to do something that is/might be morally right, but that process of enforcement is in itself injust.

But that's besides the point. Gov't enforces the law. Period. The question of morality of that enforcement doesn't even arise. The G. just does what it's supposed to do.

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And while helping another person may be someone's moral and ethical responsibility, forcing them to do it is also immoral and unethical.

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I guess that's true. But it wasn't the point of debate - at least not of what I was arguing for and against.

EDIT: On a completely unrelated note and not referring to this particular discussion: Would it also be morally wrong to force someone to do something that HE HIMSELF deems morally right also? Forcing someone to live up to his own moral standards (which you share) - is that still morally wrong?

[Al68]

Well now, we were talking about whether or not a large number of babies should be cared for if noone would do it voluntarily.

It's not like the government could have it's OWN resources to care for these babies. It would have to either use force to make someone do it, or use force to obtain the resources to pay someone to do it, which amounts to the same thing.

So, if there were not enough voluntarily support to care for these babies, would the government have the right to use force against anyone in order to ensure the care of these babies?

[Al68]

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EDIT: On a completely unrelated note and not referring to this particular discussion: Would it also be morally wrong to force someone to do something that HE HIMSELF deems morally right also? Forcing someone to live up to his own moral standards (which you share) - is that still morally wrong?

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I believe the morality of the actions of the person the force is being used against is irrelevent. So the answer to your question is yes, unless there is another, good reason to use force, like self defense for example.

[fretelöo]

Of course does the govt. have recources of its own. That those resources originate from me is irrelevant.

Tax money is not money that is my property and then stripped by some legal trick. It's an obligation I have to pay, just as it's an obligation to join the draft (over here, at least), pay for your own health care or whatever. If you don't like it, leave the country. But as long as you stay, live by the rules, which state that so-and-so much of your income belongs to the govt. to enable that government to do what it was installed for to be doing. Among which it is, to care for disabled people.

[Ace of Knaves]

The first question asks a core belief about ourselves. Once the first question is answered to our satisfaction the second becomes easy.

The first question really asks "Should WE (those who can contribute or have the potential to contribute) provide for the wellbeing of those who cannot contribute back to us?"

A core principle of a SOCIETY is that, together, we can live better lives than we could if we were not together. This statement presupposes that all have the capacity to help each other in some fashion.

Very dangerous consequences can (and have) develop when we attempt to draw a line on who we believe can contribute and who cannot.

Nazi Germany is but one example.

Limbless infants may appear helpless and unable to contribute. So does World Renowned Physicist Professor Stephen Hawking. Even though limbless infants may not contribute to society directly, they may contribute indirectly. I will leave examples to your imagination.

At some point in our lives, we all will be helpless. At birth we may have potential, but nothing is guaranteed. At the end of our lives, we may again become helpless, REGARDLESS of the life we may have led or the contributions we may have made.

It may be hard for us to realize this simple truth: when we help others we are actually helpng ourselves.