Dan Rowden wrote:Steven wrote:To Beingof1 and others who find the premise of this thread disturbing, let me ask you this: let's say, hypothetically, we were to discover that last stage Alzheimer's patients, for whatever reason (brain viruses or something) represented a clear and present danger to Humanity's survival. Do you euthanasie them or not?
Hypothetically speaking, the rest of humanity would choose for him.
Hypothetically it might; hypothetically he might be the world leader making the choice. Either way I want to know what each person thinks is ethically appropriate and tease out the implications of that. Deferring judgement to the mob doesn't negate one's own stance.
The point is that I do not live a world that is devoid of other people and it is the evolution of groups that creates such decision making processes. Deferring to the mob judgement is not the negation of a stance, it the inevitable stance all of us must face whether that mob is democratic or dogmatic.
If one wishes to decide they have an ethically valid viewpoint, and go on through politics to exercise that on the world stage then so be it. The only validation is their own and that of their peers. The individual ethical perspective, no matter how rational or logical or based upon truth is ultimately irrelevant if it is ignored and denied and rejected or is unable to affect its judgement upon the issue. Likewise the most fallacious and irrational judgement will be deemed ethically pure if the mob says so, and its judgement will be carried out.
There is no basis upon which those of us that are not "enlightened" can know for a fact that their ethical judgement is right. Thus the very basis of forming an ethical judgement from this position is unethical for you know you may be carrying out what is ethically wrong due to your dellusion of what is right.
There is no such thing as the right decision, the ethical decision. There are decisions with outcomes you desire and prefer and those you dont. There are decisions that are acted upon and achieve a change, and those that don't.
The closest a human being can come to ethical objectivity is to understand their lack of absolute perfection, understand that they cannot see every consequence, and understand that their decisions may well be fundamentally flawed, and thus to conclude not to interfere with lives of others, or if this proves impossible to act in such a way as to minimise what they think are the negative influences they have on others.
Ryan Rudolph wrote:Steven,
What about this judgment? "I should kill my child."
It depends on the circumstances - If your child was born with some sort of terminal illness that would result in his life being short and horrid, then the only moral choice would be to take its life at the beginning, and not wait for the extended suffering….
Death is a favor for some. It is an act of kindness…compassion.
And if a cure is discovered days after your child dies, or the parents are imprisoned and become involved in drug abuse and subsequently are in and out of jail having wrecked their lives and the lives of many others through their shattered emotional existence?
Ifs and buts are easy. Knowing every factual consequence of your actions is not.
Is it ethical for the parents to put the suffering of their Child above the Law?
Ryan Rudolph wrote:so you deny that human beings lack the intelligence to make moral judgments at all? Seriously. It is precisely the fact of subjective experience and suffering that entitles each man to making moral judgments, and entitles each man to share his values as wisdom. However, most humans lack the intelligence to fully explore how deep that reality goes....
Then by your own standards most humans lack the intelligence to make moral judgements.
Ryan Rudolph wrote:If your above statement were true than any criminal in a court of law could use it to get off scott free of their offense. Our entire society is build the agreement that there are moral judgments that are universally true. Much of our legal system has been refined based on the justification of ethical judgments and action. Any law is based on an ethical argument or justification for action of an ethical nature.
Should we abandon our entire legal system, and follow your "All judgments are bad" philosophy?
I am unlikely to commit any law determined crimes upon anyone else in the rest of my lifetime, barring some unforseeable change.
There is no reason to state that you should do what I see, or that others will think how I think. What the laws state and humanity thinks on ethics is different to what I think, but that does not mean I will avoid punishment should I break those laws.
And you are getting into some fairly dubious territory on the whole civil legal system. One could argue that laws exist because the crimes against those laws are unethical, but the truth is that laws exist to prevent large groups of people from descending into chaos and upsetting social existence.
Is it unethical for Lions to have multiple female mates and to mount them when they desire? Is evolution unethical?
Further I have never claimed that all judgements are bad, but that all ethical judgements are invalid. There is no right or wrong, only action and reaction, fact and fallacy.