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#72788 06/18/02 02:45 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.

#72789 06/18/02 05:27 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.


#72790 06/19/02 02:19 AM
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ethics has always been dependent on time and place

I 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.

#72791 06/19/02 09:38 AM
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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.


#72792 06/20/02 03:45 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.

#72793 06/20/02 05:39 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.


#72794 06/20/02 02:54 PM
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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.


#72795 06/20/02 05:26 PM
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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



#72796 06/20/02 05:44 PM
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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.


#72797 06/20/02 08:44 PM
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<<kohlberg>>

Interesting. Thanks.


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