Okay, I'm going to start this thread off with a question.
Do you agree with the following statement?
It is absurd to say that one has a right to do something immoral.
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Okay, I'm going to start this thread off with a question.
Do you agree with the following statement?
It is absurd to say that one has a right to do something immoral.
"Rights" and "morality" are both subjective social constructs, not objective absolutes. So is "absurdity", for that matter.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
:colbert:
Hahah.
Uh-huh, but given those things... answer the question.
But, "given those things", isn't the question meaningless? Or are you just curious about all the different opinions that people will have on the basis of how they've been socialized?Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
Pretty much!
Syme raises a good point; an operalisation of "right" and "morality" would be nice.
Are we talking about a man breaching his own moral code, or his society's? Or a code which seems to apply to most societies (i.e. Murder, incest)? Are we talking about political right? Philosophical right?
I'd assume that we're talking about philosophical right, and society's moral code; in which case, I'd say yes, but equally the society has the right to try to stop and punish him. (i.e. Everyone has rights to do everything they can practically do, but conflicts with the rights of others (which are equally vast) ultimately lead to society and law (agreed neutering of parts of our liberty in return for the same from others))
Yeah, I suppose it is absurd taken at face value
But I assume you're driving at some other point
While it is true that cultural and religious morality is subjective, I would argue that ethics are not subjective, as only objective statements can enter into logical relations.Quote:
Originally Posted by Syme
Sorry, you're going to have to elaborate on this for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by ephekt
By the way, I agree, but it's going to be too hard for me to go into that debate, so I didn't. You're welcome to, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by ephekt
In the United States, I have the right to be seen in public with a woman who is not my relative.
The Taliban has killed woman for doing this, saying that it's immoral.
Therefore, I have the right to do something immoral.
Well if we're going to operate within meaningful confines, you're going to have to answer THIS question:
Do you think it's absurd to say that you have a right to do anything that you consider immoral?
As I said, I don't believe morality is subjective like that (in other words, it is simply NOT immoral for you to be seen with an unrelated woman, no matter what anyone of any religion thinks), but for the thread to get anywhere we're just going to have to be sensible.
What kind of right? Natural right? Legal right? Physical right?
The question is too poorly defined to give it a proper answer. I know what you are looking to do gwahir, but I think you expected us to be a little less thorough in our analysis of your question, lol.
I'd agree that in an absolute sense, it's "not immoral" to be seen with an unrelated woman. It's not "moral" either. It's neither. The act has no intrinsic moral quality at all. Just like all other acts.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
Yeah, set out your argument or don't. I don't want to be trapped in some kind of logical contradiction because you worded your question badly :P
Moral and immoral are illusions based on the standards in the society in which we live.
lets say I have a girlfriend, I have the legal right to cheat on her, or rather, a lack of a law that prohibits it. I personally think it is immoral to cheat in a relationship, and would not do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
Well, I can't argue against the existence of legal rights, because they clearly exist. I don't know WHAT a physical right is. So what I'm talking about is "natural right", I suppose -- I haven't studied this. Things like a "right to life". In any case, since I'm out of my depth with the question, I'll skip that bit.Quote:
Originally Posted by benzss
Say you have a sandwich. You are quite satisfied by your lunch but it's just sitting there. Along comes a starving man who, if he does not get that sandwich, will probably die. It's yours in every possible way -- you bought or grew the components and compiled it yourself. According to every conception of property right I can think of, you have every right to do as you please with it, even throw it away. Furthermore, he has absolutely no right to your sandwich. However I suggest it is immoral to do anything other than give him the sandwich, and you therefore have no right to do anything else with it.
This depends on each persons personality. My mind is wired to treat issues of "ownership" and what to do with it on a case by case scenario. In this case I would give him the sandwich, I am more than well-fed and I would feel bad the I let a man die, even though it is not my fault he has no regular access to food. I wouldn't say I have no right to do anything else with it, I have the right to do whatever the hell I want with it, but my conscience would not allow me to do it, I would give him the food. But I would also have to know that he hasn't eaten in so long that if he doesn't get this sandwich he would die. Even after the I gave him the sandwich I would consider that I gave him the sandwich even though I owned it, and I had every right to do whatever I pleased with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
I pass homeless people all the time when I am downtown, and if I gave money to every single person I saw, I would be broke myself, and of no use to anyone. If he wasn't going to die from not eating that day, and would just eat out of the trash later or something, I might not give him the sandwich depending on the exact circumstances and what I knew.
I imagine there are people despicable enough (based on my view of morality) to let the man die even IF they knew he would die if he did not get that particular sandwich right away.
That's why I made the example the way I did. There's a difference between a sandwich you don't even need to eat (I said you were "satisfied") and money which you need to survive and build a life.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrTroy
How can you be despicable for exercising rights? You have a right to be despicable?Quote:
Originally Posted by MrTroy
I'll bite.
One has a right to chose and personally decide what is moral or immoral. While some would believe stealing is immoral, a homeless or starving child would see it as a means to an end. Even if someone disagrees over morals, you do not have a right to force those morals onto someone else.
That's the best I can answer with the vague OP.
Well that's just nonsense. I can justifiably force my non-baby-torturing agenda on any society or person who wants to torture babies.Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
I don't know if I can add anything to this, but I will try. There are no natural rights, the world does not entitle us to anything, that is why it is a struggle. Rights are a human construct designed to help people live together in a society. Since society is fairly diverse, I think he often try to build rights into something as objective as possible, so they can be generalised.
Morality however is very subjective and means different things to different people. There is some black and white on the issue, somethings we can agree upon and upon this agreement form the concept of a law, allowing and forbidding certain actions, such as rape, because it is always horrific and can never be justified.
Aside from the few grounds we can usually all agree upon, there is a lot of grey. What is immoral to some, is perfectly ok to others. Take homosexuality, alot of people think it is immoral, however not all of us do. Because there can be no solid agreement, we can be sure that it would be unwise to make a ruling either way, so I think it is fair to have the right to induldge in homosexual activities.
I make a distinction here between actions which are moral/immoral and actions which are moral/immoral and illegal. Actions for which we cannot agree should be illegal, we should have the right too, regardless of how people see it morally. However, views change over time. Laws change, we are becoming more liberal. This doesn't really do much to adress the change in opinions.
So to answer your question, I think it isn't absurd, because morality isn't set in stone.
What's funny is that I was thinking the same thing before even seeing this post. I remember the last time I tried to dispatch the constant stream of post-modernist hokum. It wasn't pretty.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
So, um, I digress I guess.
I, for one, am interested to hear what you have to say about objectivity. Don't digress!Quote:
Originally Posted by ephekt
Fine, then, I'll bite.
You could tackle this waaay too open ended question from two fronts:
1) Should the law make illegal every immoral action?
2) Conversely, should what we consider immoral be simply circumscribed by the law?
So, I'll first address the second question. In my opinion, the law's primary purpose is to make society orderly and to restrict the liberty of some parties to commit certain actions in order to ensure that the greater liberty or more fundamental right of another party is secure. So, my liberty to kill another person is curtailed in order to assure other people's right to life. However, in my opinion, the set of actions which should be illegalized is smaller than (and possibly even not completely contained in) the set of actions which I deem immoral. For example, I don't think it should be illegal to cheat on your girlfriend, but it could possibly be immoral. So, to answer question 1, no, I don't believe that the set of laws needed to maintain an orderly society would render illegal every immoral action.
The second question tackles it from the other side, looking at the laws on the books and asking if any action not prohibitted by them is immoral. It could also consider the more fundamental question asking if, in human socities in general, are codes of laws equivalent to codes of morals, and if morality should extend beyond these codes of laws. Of course, I believe that our law's primary purpose is to ensure social order and not to ensure that an individual is moral, so the response to the first version of this question is no. In general, it seems clear that most societies' codes of morals exceed and even do not completely contain their codes of laws.
So, in conclusion, in every possible logical permutation of the question in the original post that I can conceive of, the answer is "no."
There, how's that?
EDIT: I just realized that I more or less answered a question that was not asked in the original post. I fail.
I said they have a right to personally chose what is immoral and moral, not practice said beliefs. If I believe torture is moral, that doesn't mean I have the right/ability to take away your belief that is wrong by force or otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
What if your beliefs say that it's moral to take away his beliefs and/or force your own upon him?Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
Given that that is a tenet of a goodly portion of the world major belief systems...
MrShrike, that is usually phrased in the form of "I'm right and I'm correcting his mistakes," which some (idiots) see as a carte blanche for forcing their belief system on you. This doesn't justify their actions, but it does mollify my anger towards proselytizers. At least they are, in their own way, trying to help you and it's from the best of intentions that they do what they do, in spite of whatever it is that the road to Hell is paved with.
Yes but we're talking about rights. What I'm trying to say (poorly I admit), is that you have a right to believe anything. However there is a fine line between where your beliefs begin to effect others' rights. In the USA you can believe anything and we tolerate nearly everything as long as you do not oppose on other peoples rights, not beliefs.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrShrike
That's why the neo-Nazi's get a parade. That's why you see anti-white rallies. They are expressing their beliefs, but as long as they don't tread on your individual rights it's okay.
Sure, that's standard liberal philosophy, but I think gwahir wants to connect morality to rights. So perhaps you should consider why you reached this conclusion about individual rights, and what it's based on.Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
You seem to be talking about natural rights. You seem to be arguing that you have a natural right to your beliefs (and furthermore a natural right to express them).Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
Absolutely and categorically not.
One is born with a right to freedom, this freedom is, among other things, to make choices.
Choices as in this or that, wendys or burger king, left or right, good or evil, moral or immoral.
Furthermore, immoral is just a point of view. I can do many immoral things (according to my society), which, while taboo, are not neccesarily illegal. I absolutely have the right to do so.
We are accustomed to what our culture generally views are right and wrong, and that we are born with certain rights. Undoubtedly there are obvious legal rights that we all have, but disbarring any government, I'd say that all "natural rights" are a myth that we have created. There are no rights of any kind in nature, we just adapted with our civilizations that certain things are considered wrong.
You used at least two different definitions of what a 'right' is in here. What you say makes sense until the last sentence. How did you change your definition of what a 'right' is in your last sentence compared to previous ones?Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
I'm saying:
THIS IS COMMONLY ACCEPTED AS BEING TRUE: According to every conception of property right I can think of, you have every right to do as you please with it, even throw it away. Furthermore, he has absolutely no right to your sandwich.
THIS IS MY POSITION: It is immoral to do anything other than give him the sandwich, and you therefore have no right to do anything else with it.
We're pretty much done with my petty sandwich example, though, so I'm not even sure it's still relevant. I mean, clearly I didn't put enough thought into this thread before I made it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
Yeah I suppose. Are you able to start over and give a clear definition of what you consider to be a right then? Also I really like examples like this, so if you'd like to give a different one to more accurately describe your meaning I think this would be a great discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
In my mind, the only sensible definition of "right" is "something which I am ethically permitted to do". That varies from case to case, so actually thinking of any "rights" is near to impossible. Therefore, it is my position that we should abandon thinking of rights, instead thinking about responsibilities (i.e. the responsibility held by all to act for the best consequences, or something).
I used the sandwich example to illustrate why I think the widely held rights definition is unviable. If I am acting within my rights, what I'm doing should not be considered unethical. But it is unethical to let a person starve because you simply want to throw a sandwich at a wall, or eat it yourself when you are already satisfied. Therefore, by doing anything other than giving the staving person my sandwich, I'm acting unethically, but I'm acting within my rights, so it's ethical. Ditching the idea of rights allows us to more easily get to the bottom of the ethical permissability of taking lives, using other people's property, etc.
Ok well that makes sense. I certainly agree that it's ethical to give a starving person your sandwich assuming there aren't any other factors that would make such a choice possibly not the best one (like ten other starving children you could help instead or whatever). Though, while it may be the best ethical choice in that situation, I would argue that it is unethical for someone else to force that man to give his sandwich to the starving man.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
I don't see why, personally.
I disagree that just because a choice is immoral than you have no right to do it, or rather, the only choice you have the right to make is the moral one. I still have every single right to not give the man the sandwich, despite it being immoral. So yes, you have the right to do immoral things, yet most people are conditioned in a way that they would give the man the sandwich given the situation you gave is as simple and factual as presented.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
You just keep saying that without actually giving me a reason why. Why do you have a right to do that which is immoral? How does your having that right make the world better?
I didn't say anything about it making the world better, in my opinion in nature, there are no rights of any kind, we as human beings made up "rights". Why wouldn't I have the right to that which is immoral?
The right thing to do and what I have the right to do are two very different things. In my mind, moral/ethical "rights" are as far away as possible from what people have the "legal right" to do, black and white. Now when it comes to legal man-made law, if doing the ethical or moral "right" thing were a part of every single law, where it is illegal to do anything rather than moral choices, we get into a situation where we ask "who decides what is moral?", what if someone viewed it as immoral not to donate every dollar of free money that you had to charity, it is immoral not to donate to charity, therefore the only right you have is to donate to charity?
In the middle east it is perfectly fine to cut off someones hands for stealing, I view that as far too harsh a punishment, morality is a sliding scale. So my position is on natural rights: We have none, human morality that has developed with our cognitive abilities doesn't mean there are any rights present of any kind. And on legal rights: Clearly there are laws based on what the majority view as immoral (theft, murder etc...), which allow us to live in a relatively civilized manner.
Well, I think it's generally agreed that ethics is about what the world should be, as opposed to what it is. Given that, why shouldn't we talk about the best of all possible shoulds? And if we're going to do that, we should endeavour to come up with principles of behaviour that make the world a better place.
If you think the world is a better place if people have "rights" -- and, more specifically, rights which enable them to act immorally -- that's one thing, but you're going to have to back it up somehow.
EDIT: And I'm not even going to address your relativistic claims because I've already made my feelings clear on the matter. It is NOT right, despite being considered to be in some cultures, to cut off a hand as punishment for shoplifting. It is NOT right to enforce sexual repression and make women wrap themselves in burkas, even if some cultures think it is. It is NOT right to act cruelly towards animals, despite the ways in which certain ritualistic cultures would have you behave.
So I guess what I'm asking is: do you have the right to wrap women in burkas against their will, and slowly and painfully bleed cows so they are to a standard of kosher, and lop off people's hands because they touched your stuff?
Natural rights (not legal) are a relative thing despite you saying they are not. You need to back up your claim that people DON'T have the right to cut off others hands just as much as you say I need to back up my claim that people have the right to do immoral things. Just because you say "It is NOT right, despite being considered to be in some cultures, to cut off a hand as punishment for shoplifting. It is NOT right to enforce sexual repression and make women wrap themselves in burkas, even if some cultures think it is." doesn't make it so. I would agree that we view these things as "not right" but that is because of how we were raised and the culture we are in.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
They would view allowing women to have the rights they have over here as an absurd abomination, and may say something like "It is NOT right to allow women to expose herself, it is NOT right to allow a woman to speak" and would say it with just as much certainty as you do. Why is your version of morality any more valid than other culture or any other person's view, as if there were some written in stone code of morality that sets the standard?
So yes, we have the natural right (or rather, lack of any definition of "rights") to wrap women in burkas, bleed cows, and lop off peoples hands. In our cultures though, we were raised that these types of things are inappropriate and view them as immoral. They view wrapping women in burkas perfectly moral. So your standard would pass, they would view what they are doing as perfectly moral, not immoral, so they would have the right to do it.
hah, the irony is, mrtroy, that the relativism that you're so vigorously defending, supports, in my interpretation, precisely Gwahir's viewpoint. IF all ethics and rights are relativistic constructs, then why retain the rights that liberal society currently allows us? To elucidate, if you say that morals and rights are equal, simply culture-dependent, then they become arbitrary. There is no way of saying that the US has an inherently better system than the Middle East. In the absence of this, you can only measure the value of cultural norms on the basis of ethical and philosophical frameworks, i.e. utilitarianism or the categorical imperative. From this position, gwahir's stance is clearly favourable; by reflecting a philosophy of maximising the quality of life of a society in our views of rights, we inevitably lead to a more harmonious, contented and kind society (i.e. the greatest happiness for the most), we also fulfill the categorical imperative to a tee.
What I'm saying is that in this case your argument must by definition be rooted in anti-relativism. You need to prove that the system of western countries is inherently better than gwahir's alternative, regardless of whether gwahir's alternative has a higher ethical value.
There's a precise and important reason that the US Constitution requires that "we hold these Truths to be self evident"; if they're not, if the ideology is not inherently valuable, the paper can't justify itself against any other, save on ethical grounds (and like I said, gwahir wins there, I fail to see how he could not).
gwahir, I think the main argument you have to deal with is that of whether morality has any depth or meaning to it if it is a foregone conclusion (the clockwork orange argument...). Is morality about the individual making a choice (often when they needn't and it is to their detriment to do so), or can you successfully claim that morality IS utilitarianism, and so personal choice a moot issue?
Exactly, we can't say that the US has an inherently better system because morality and ethics are relative to culture and beliefs. We like to say that our culture is better, but vice versa, they believe their set of morals and ethics are better, which one is better? Well, if you ask an American, ours is better, if you ask someone from Saudi Arabia, theirs is better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Think
Now, back to original argument, the way America is set up, our legal rights allow us to not give a damn and do what most of western culture considered "immoral" (I.E, not giving your sandwich to the homeless guy), it is my legal right to perform or not perform that action. We would have to throw the constitution out the window if we wanted to maximize harmony. Freedom allows divergence from harmony, if everyone did what was good for the whole instead of themselves, then most freedom would have to be taken away, maybe the government could divvy up your income to people who need it. Maybe you wouldn't have the right to write a opinionated or slanderous book or article, because it would only cause waves in the pool and disrupt harmony.
In my opinion we have no legal or moral right to interfere or judge with other cultures (again, that is based in MY standard of morality and legality), if the middle eastern folk think that it is a good idea to beat women, I wholeheartedly disagree, but it is not my problem, and there is no real way for me to make a difference on that issue anyway. Throughout history right and wrong have been defined by the culture. Who's to say that our more liberal culture is better than a fascist culture? It is all in how we were conditioned. Stoning a woman to death for having pre-martial sex would be horrendous according to the western civilization's view on ethics and morality. It was perfectly moral to do so at one time.
As liberal as the USA is, what about sex and prostitution, in other nations they show full frontal nudity on regular network stations (not just HBO or anything of the sort), and much more racy and graphic content, I would estimate that the majority of American's would view it as immoral to show nude women on FOX or NBC, yet, these countries that are conditioned to this as a normality, view us as prudes... who is right? It depends on who you ask.
Gwahir, my only real concern with this idea of having legally enforced morality is - who chooses the morals that get upheld? It's pretty much the same stance that people will have on censorship - it needs to be done, because there is a line, but who determines where that line is, and what the punishment is for crossing it?
This is my problem with legally enforced morality. I remember having a discussion with you and Syme in the censorship thread, where I concluded that censorship derived from laws protecting victims is the only really legitimate use of censorship even if the acts contained therein are 'immoral'.Quote:
Originally Posted by coqauvin
The rights issue I have trouble with because, in my mind, rights - positive freedoms - are only formalised negative freedoms, usually within a legal framework but sometimes within a religious framework. That is to say I reject the idea of positive rights given by nature. My belief is that freedom is inherent to each individual in nature, and he would defend those freedoms to the death if needs be; this is the basis for community and society and the creation of laws to protect those freedoms. At this point, there are one of two paths: do you legislate based on arbitrary moral codes - yes, moral codes are arbitrary - or do you protect the freedoms of individuals to choose their own moral paths. If the people are oppressed or coerced in any way, there is no room for morality since you follow the morals the state proscribes. Thus, in my mind, telling people that they have a positive right to another person's sandwich is the same as telling women they must all wear burkas; you are arbitrarily legally endorsing one person's right to another person's freedom, which therefore leaves no room for morality.