#72788
06/18/2002 2:45 AM
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Perhaps this is an ethics discussion after all....? I guess maybe that was what I was hinting at.
An example: We know it is wrong to hit someone else. How do we know it is wrong to hit someone else?
Then: Someone does something foolish or inconsiderate or downright nasty; someone affected by this action, hits the first someone. Is the second someone still wrong, given the provocation? (sometimes hitting someone is almost a reflex reaction, or appears to be with some people - I have never done it, but) What about the first someone? Surely he wasn't right to do what he did? but would it make him less wrong if he were being unintentionally provoking?
and two wrongs don't make a right, so perhaps both are out to lunch - the provoker and the provokee.
But how do we know, for example, when we read a newspaper article about something, that a certain action was "wrong" as opposed to "right"? Kingston, where I live, is somewhat known as a prison town - there being something like seven or so penitentiaries and correctional facilities in the area. There has been a lot of hullabaloo recently about corruption among the guards at one of the institutions (or maybe all of them - one wearies of keeping track of this kind o' thing). One story I heard recently was that one guard made a homemade weapon by sharpening the end of a broomstick and wrapping duct tape around the other end; he then hid this in a convict's cell, ordered a search, "found" the weapon and had the convict put in solitary confinement.
How do we know this action of the guard's wasn't right? What tells us it wasn't?
Similarly, what tells us it wasn't right that the guard who saw this happen, didn't report it at the time?
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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#72789
06/18/2002 5:27 AM
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Hi, Someone does something foolish or inconsiderate or downright nasty; someone affected by this action, hits the first someone. Is the second someone still wrong, given the provocation? If there were a general answer to this question, the whole population of lawyers would be out of a job. Can you imagine such a world  ? On a more serious note: whether we like it or not, ethics has always been dependent on time and place. Without some consensus of a local majority, there is no "right" or "wrong". Even then, law is made to facilitate living together, not to do away with individuals' moral dilemmas.
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#72790
06/19/2002 2:19 AM
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ethics has always been dependent on time and placeI guess that's what I'm getting at: how do we know what is right, even dependent on the time and place? where does our sense of what is right come from? how does it develop? I suspect whoever it was above (sorry, can't remember and if I go to look it up I'll lose this!) who suggested that a sense of right develops through a learning process, is right (about that, anyway  ). Perhaps we do learn by watching what others do and their general - and specific - behaviour. I often feel I have an over-developed sense of justice, that comes, perhaps, from reading too many idealistic novels for "young adults"! But how do we know WE are right, when we say of something, "That's just not right."?? Perhaps the only possible answer is that it's all relative/subjective. But that doesn't seem right, either.... Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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#72791
06/19/2002 9:38 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
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Pooh-Bah
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<<I often feel I have an over-developed sense of justice...>>
Or perhaps only an over-developed sense of expectation that justice will be done.
<<But how do we know WE are right, when we say of something, "That's just not right.."?>>
When you pose the question abstractly that way, you are moralizing. I don't mean that perjoratively, only that, in the absence of a concrete instance, the question will yield a general answer that will tend -- to appear, at least -- to be absolute. I think, when speaking of ethics, it may be helpful to ask about particular instances of perceived rights and wrongs and see what general rules or observations might develop from that.
Ultimately, I think, almost any sense of what is right will devolve [upon?] power.
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#72792
06/20/2002 3:45 AM
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Okay, inselpeter, you make a good point. I will do my best - how's this: How do we know it is NOT RIGHT to drink and drive? or How do we know it is NOT RIGHT to smoke? (perhaps a trickier one) For the latter example, you can pull out medical proof, of course. But that only proves that smoking is bad for you and those around you. Some would argue that it is NOT WRONG to smoke; some would say it definitely IS WRONG. Perhaps this is a poor example....The drunk driving one is better, maybe? Or perhaps both are too tricky, too grey, too much of an opportunity for moralising. Perceived right and wrong, though: It is legal to smoke in the street, yet second-hand smoke kills; it is illegal to drink in the street, yet no one has yet adversely affected some stranger's health by the mere act of drinking in the street (leaving out, for the moment, the obvious comment that if the drunken person picks a brawl with a stranger, that affects the stranger's wellbeing - that is not a direct result of the drunk swilling booze on the street, but rather an indirect result). So people might decide, for themselves, that what is illegal is RIGHT and what is legal is WRONG. I wouldn't drink on the street, but not because it's illegal; I despite the habit of smoking and loathe it when people on the street subject me to their second-hand cancer fumes, therefore I deem it WRONG. Damn, these really are poor examples, aren't they? Will someone else please come up with something that is a particular instance of a perceived right/wrong? please?!  Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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#72793
06/20/2002 5:39 AM
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where does our sense of what is right come from?
One powerful factor is our need for approval from our fellow human beings. The small child starts by trying out all sorts of behavior, and those which earn him approval (in the widest sense - it can even be that he is given the "privilege of illness") will be re-inforced.
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#72794
06/20/2002 2:54 PM
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Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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MG,
Among the many things I am not is ethicist. However...
wsieber has proposed as one ethical principle the need for approval. By grounding our ethical sense in a specifically (lit erally) infantile need for approval, he suggests a behavioralist theory of ethics, an ethical sense established throught positive and negative reinforcement. I agree (without promising to supply others) that this is probably one component of a theory of ethics.
Your examples seem to reflect an interest in what is legal, but law is not necessarilly analogous with ethics. In fact, as the *your statement* of you examples suggest, law is subject to examination on ethical principles.
It might be useful, then, to distinguish between right as in "good," and right as in entitlement. One might argue, on moral grounds, that it is wrong to smoke. But this must be distinguished from the legal right to do so. The limit of the legal entitlement *may* be determined where there is a conflict of rights, or entitlements: my right to smoke vs. your right not to be subjected the harmful by-product of my activity. While we may argue about the limitation imposed on one or the other of us in terms of ethical principles (e.g., the increase of the Good), the determination of the legal right either occupies a special part of ethics, or may be determined without reference to the general good. It may be determined by the much more limited good of profit to a small minority of individuals.
It seems to me that the distinction between law and ethics is central to the constitutional project of the United States, both reflecting its idealism and delimiting the conflicts of the citizens of this country: communities with different ethical systems (which, broadly speaking, are systems of social organization around (a) common good(s)) are both force to respect the right of each to exist, and to contend with each other under a single *legal* system, which forms an more general (and generalizing) ethical or constitutional system. Law, then, is gradually elevated to the level of an ethical system and replaces it. But law cannot satisfy the needs of people for sustenance, gratification, and pleasure.
So we've got a problem.
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#72795
06/20/2002 5:26 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
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veteran
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Nearly two decades ago a friend of mine told me about a theory of moral development espoused by a guy named Lawrence Kohlberg. The idea is that people progress through stages of morality. I'm not sure of all the details, but the gist is that there is an orderly progression to things.
stage 1: I value only myself and what I want. I'm the only thing that's important. Infants are in this stage. Whatever I want is right.
stage 2: I value myself, and I value others to the extent they give me what I want or need. Whatever I want is right, and whatever my assistants want is right infosar as it doesn't interfere with what I want.
stage 3: I value the group. The group's opinion is paramount. They decide right and wrong. Adolescents (and a great many adults) are in this group.
stage 4: The law is everything. The law decides what is right and wrong and there is no arguing with the law.
stage 5: Constitution. The law is important, but if enough of us get together, we can change the law.
stage 6: Personal Ethics. I decide what's right and wrong based on some internal sense that I have of rightness.
Given a particular situation and a response to that situation, and people in various stages asked to evaluate the response to the situation, you can find that people in, say, stages 1,2,5,6 might all agree that X was wrong, while those in 4 would say it was right, and 5 would say it could be right or wrong depending. That is, the outcomes of the evaluations can produce some strange agreements, but agreements based on different reasons.
Kohlberg is not talking about what is right and wrong, but about how people develop their ideas about what is right and wrong and how they progress from one view of morality to another.
k
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#72796
06/20/2002 5:44 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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There are things that people may have a "right" to do, that can cost the government huge sums of money to take care of them, that the government ought be entitled to take such right away from them.
For instance very few smokers can pay the huge costs of their care as they slowly die of lung cancer
Few motorcyclists can pay for long term care if they get very badly hurt.
Few alcoholics can pay for long hospitalization when they get brain damage.
The rest of us ought not have to pay for their folly.
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#72797
06/20/2002 8:44 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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<<kohlberg>>
Interesting. Thanks.
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#72798
06/20/2002 8:52 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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<<...that can cost the government huge sums...>>
People have the right to smoke. In fact, I would make the libertarian argument that they have the right to use any drug they wish, privately. That the government places itself in a co-dependent relationship with smokers is another matter. Who, if anyone, should bear the cost of their damaged health is a complex question of responsibility, especially since tobacco is addictive and especially since the government more or less sanctions its marketing to those immortals otherwise known as teenagers.
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#72799
06/20/2002 9:17 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear IP: if people have the right to smoke, the rest of us ought to have the right to
refuse to pay for their medical expenses. I have had to take care of some smokers
dying horribly with lung cancer. The TV should show some of them every day.
It would be genuinely educational.
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#72800
06/20/2002 11:03 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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<<if people have the right to smoke, the rest of us ought to have the right to refuse to pay for their medical expenses. >>
Essentially, I agree with you. I just think the web of responsibility is a little bit complicated.
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#72801
06/20/2002 11:22 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Responsibility aside, don't you think it might be a kindness to prevent
high probability of a very long, very painful death? Even if it meant
taking away a "right"?
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#72802
06/21/2002 1:01 AM
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a theory of moral development espoused by a guy named Lawrence Kohlberg
Wow, thanks - that was fascinating. I knew the first stage would be an infant but it was interesting to see the rest of the progression.
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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#72803
06/21/2002 1:17 AM
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Okay, I have another suggestion for trying to determine how we decide what is "right" - or at least, a couple of situations to offer up that I would be interested to see people discuss.
A friend told me that when she goes shopping, she always takes a few chocolate-covered almonds out of the bulk bin to eat on her way around. She told me this a propos her boyfriend being shocked by this behaviour. What she then said to me: "I mean, come on, if that's the worst thing I do in my life....what's the harm?"
I have to confess I was shocked too - but then I got to thinking how almost everyone "steals" during his/her life. Which of us has never made a personal photocopy at work, for example? I know I've done that, and of course rationalised it away somehow.
At one place I used to work, a theatre, I was told that the janitorial staff didn't put spare rolls of TP in the loo because...believe it or not...people STOLE them. I am wondering who on earth can justify to herself (this happened in the ladies', not the gents') stealing a whole roll of loo paper, while attending a theatre production? I mean really. Gimme a break.
Yet how is that different from the illicit photocopy or handful of choccie almonds? which were both justified away by the respective perpetrators.
Wow....I just picked up Gail Godwin's The Good Husband, hoping to find the bit about stealing, and the book fell open at it. Curious synchronicity....(maybe synchronicity is always curious!):
"...unless you checked the answers you did because you felt those were the right ones, the ones I would expect you to check."
"No, I just checked the ones that were the truth."
"Ah, the truth," he said, putting a mysterious spin on the word...."Look, why don't we take a look at a specific question and I'll show you what I'm getting at."
The question was, "Have you ever stolen anything?" Alice had checked the box marked "no," without hesitation.
"Almost everyone, at some time in their lives, has taken something that wasn't theirs...some little thing...maybe just someone else's pencil. Something that hardly seems worth remembering."
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"No, I'm sorry, but I haven't. I'm sure I would remember it if I did. It would bother me."
(p284 in the Ballantyne Books paperback ed., 1994)
Perhaps that's really what it boils down to? that how we know what is right, is by how our conscience nags at us when we have done something wrong. But then that poses the question: what is a conscience and how is it formed? which is perhaps the same question as "how do we know what is right?"
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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#72804
06/21/2002 2:39 AM
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Pooh-Bah
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<<...a kindness to prevent...>>
Yes, I suppose. But I'm not in favor or prohibition. The nice thing about Tobacco is there's really not much apart from immaturity to induce one to pick up the habit. So it may not be a question of abridging a right to smoke as putting an end to the criminal deception of the purveyors of smokes. But that's since we're talking about rights. The one thing I couldn't keep myself from lecturing my goddaughter about was her taking up smoking a couple of years ago. I agree, cancer isn't pretty.
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#72805
06/21/2002 3:13 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Stealing is wrong. Period. The fact that it's wrong doesn't keep those who steal from stealing, whether it's making personal copies at the office or taking a sample (uninvited) from a chocolate bin.
If something doesn't belong to you, you shouldn't take it. You've assumed the position of ownership when that position wasn't warranted.
If you're bound and determined to take something (anything) that doesn't belong to you, then the least you can do is ask for permission. I have no idea what the chocolate bin owner (or supervisor) would say to your request. I'd expect that most owners or supervisors could care less if you asked permission to make some personal copies from the copier. The most interesting thing, in asking, would be to judge our individual reactions in receiving a refusal. Most people (I'll bet!) are afraid to ask in the first place, and that's the point that those rationalizations come marching in.
I used to be acquainted with a multi-millionaire (honest to goodness) who took a pocketful of paper napkins whenever he went out to lunch. I thought it was wrong and certainly unnecessary given his financial means, but I never said anything since part of my personal ethics is to avoid commenting on negative behaviors of others. I've got enough in this boat of mine to keep me busy correcting myself.
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#72806
06/21/2002 12:44 PM
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Nothing to do with words or with right and wrong.
Merely an observation.
A friend of mine, interesting fellow with whom I've lost contact for some years now, introduced me to a friend of his. We showed up at the third party's house and there was a General Lee looking car parked out front (not *that* uncommon) back in Louisville. We knock on the door and a man answers. We're about early twentyish and this man is in his fourties or perhaps fifties, so I assume (an assumption later confirmed) that he is the father of the person we are to meet. He's wearing a housecoat, which seems odd to me as it's only 6:30 and as he walks us downstairs to his son's room in the basement, he asks us both, "Do you boys smoke?" "Uh, no sir," we each respond. "Well, that's good, very good. Don't start! Don't ever start!" his smile seems not forced, but weary. "No, sir. We really don't like it at all." And then out of the blue "You know, I smoked for years and years and I lost one of my lungs to it." I don't recall our response to that, as I think we were both stunned that someone we had not known 60 seconds should give us this bit of unsolicited personal information.
As the basement door opens, the reek of cigarettes is overpowering and a fog of smoke is everywhere. We see the source of the smoke, a young man seemingly close to our age. This was the person we came to see, the one-lunged man's son. He had a cigarette in his mouth. His fingers were stained. There was a fog in the air. Very shortly, he lit another cigarette, without putting the other out - in fact, he left the last half inch burning. I looked around and I noticed there were at least two or three other butts still smoldering.
We went out to a bar that night, which I don't like anyway because I can never hear what people say (maybe that's part of why I didn't like Ulysses - too much like being in a noisy bar). But I was bothered that whole evening, not just by the thought of the one-lunged man, but the fact that his son was heading down the same path. He must have felt horrible guilt about his son's addiction. But not for long. He died within a few weeks.
k
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#72807
06/26/2002 1:25 AM
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If something doesn't belong to you, you shouldn't take it. You've assumed the position of ownership when that position wasn't warranted.
But what about those who believe that "property is theft"? How do we know who is right - those who think as you do, WW, and those who believe in the communality of all things?
[devil's advocate-e]
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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#72808
06/26/2002 1:40 AM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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If something doesn't belong to you, you shouldn't take it. You've assumed the position of ownership when that position wasn't warranted.
But what about those who believe that "property is theft"? How do we know who is right - those who think as you do, WW, and those who believe in the communality of all things?
[devil's advocate-e]
the trouble is, the person who feels justified taking the candy is insensed when their car is stolen, or there house is broken into. (other's things are communal, my things are mine!)
anyone remember the Diggers? on of the radical 60's groups? (mostly in NY, but also out west..) they believed property was theft, and own almost nothing except communally, and gave all the rest away. One the the "leaders" was emmett grogin.. but it was very hard to keep up communal living in our society.. old values die hard.
(PS in grocery store lingo, the act of eating candy or fruit while shopping is called grazing. and it is a form of shoplifting.)
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