The Torture Report

[Trinidad]

To be 100 % clear:

I think that the Declaration of Independence is a great document, drafted by people with vision, integrity and high moral standards. But to the moral standards of those days. I sincerely believe that they would have written it entirely differently had they lived now and drafted it today. Because people with vision, integrity and high moral standards know better now.

 

And it is also good to realize that ìf we will write something like that in another 200 years, it will again be quite different. (I can only hope that it won't say that all humanoids and robots are created equal ;) ). They will know better then and will condemn our morals as silly, outdated and perhaps even horrible. But we are not to blame since we can only work with the knowledge, culture and morals of today. They are all we have. But we are to blame if we use the morals of yesterday (no matter how good they were then) to justify our actions of today.

 

Rik

[blackshoe]

The problem with some people is that they know so much that ain't so.

[blackshoe]

Morality is relative?

[Trinidad]

Morality is relative?

Absolutely!

 

;)

 

Rik

[mikeh]

Morality is relative?

you think it isn't? Read some history

[blackshoe]

you think it isn't? Read some history

Go insult somebody else.

[mikeh]

Go insult somebody else.

Seriously? On what basis do you assert that morality isn't relative?

 

In every century....arguably every generation...of which we have a record, societies exhibited beliefs and practices that we today, at least in the West, generally find to be repugnant, yet these beliefs and practices were viewed as not merely morally correct but as self-evidently correct.

 

Whether we are speaking of public hangings, ownership of slaves, child labour in mines and mills, bear baitings, burning alive of cats, floggings, slaughter of heretics, forced emigration, residential schooling for children of aboriginal peoples, forced imprisonment of unwed mothers, and so on, we can see that these and many other now-unacceptable practices were found to be perfectly proper.

 

What the Spanish did in Central and South America was endorsed by the Popes of that time...and today many millions see the current pope as an arbiter of the moral, as did most of 'Christendom' for the past 1,500 years. Forced conversion to Xianity was common for many years, just as forced conversion to islam is practiced by some islamists today...see ISIS

 

Residential schools in Australia and Canada inflicted their abuses within living memory...almost all run by religious organizations. Look at Ireland for the treatment of unwed mothers until recently. Those who set up and administered these institutions did so secure in the knowledge that they were doing god's work.

 

Look at the Founding Fathers....was Jefferson immoral for his abuse of his negro mistress, and his keeping of slaves? Not by the standards of his day.

 

How is it that you can claim that today your moral values are absolute? Why would Jefferson be wrong were he to have said the same in his day? Or do you think that slave ownership is morally correct?

 

Can you really assert that those who 100 years from now both disagree with your view today of morality and claim that they are right have to be wrong? And you right?

 

Do you have any idea of the arrogance required to claim both that one is morally a good person AND that morality is absolute? Billions of humans over all of history and probably pre-history had different morals than you, and yet you and only those who think as you do are and have ever been 'right'?

 

That isn't to say that morality is non-existent, nor is it to say that we cannot consensually agree on goals to which we as societies should strive. I know a lot of religious believers argue that morality has to be absolute and that a denial of that reality equates to amorality. I am sure it warms the cockles of such believers smug hearts to think that, but they are profoundly mistaken.

 

On that note, a recent survey of Americans about whether waterboarding and rectal feeding, and the other abuses documented in the report on terror constituted 'torture' or was 'justified' found that on balance those who believe in god felt the practices were not torture but that if they were, then they were justified, while the majority of those who disclaimed religious belief felt that the abuses were torture and were unjustified. Since generally speaking it is the religious who claim that there is an absolute morality, this makes for interesting reading.

[PassedOut]

Morality is relative?

If you don't agree that it is, why not explain how you came to the opposite conclusion?

[Trinidad]

Go insult somebody else.

No need to be offended.

 

Do you think that the morals of the Romans, with slaves, gladiator fights and pedophilia were the same as ours? Or that the morals of Papuas are the same as those of New Yorkers? Or that your morality now is the same as when you were a teenager or that of MikeH?

 

I don't.

 

Now, of course, the discussion is a bit semantic. One could believe that there is absolute morality, but that we just can't agree what it should be (well, mine, of course). But in that case the probability that my morality is the correct one is tiny, given that today there are already 7 billion different opinions on that. If we include all people that have been or will be walking this planet then that number is immense and a little modesty seems appropriate.

 

Now, I fundamentally don't believe there is an absolute morality. But I think morality is not merely relative. It is variable, which is one of the reasons why I consider Liberty valuable: It makes it possible for you and me to live according to our own morality and to continuously improve on it.

 

Rik

[Trinidad]

My post crossed MikeH's (I am typing in bed in the middle of the night, which I shouldn't be doing, so I am a little slow). I find them remarkably similar for such long posts.

 

Maybe there is absolute morality and it is ours! ;)

 

Rik

[blackshoe]

I suppose a lot depends on how you define "morality".

 

I will grant that societies' professed morality differs, both across current societies and across time.

 

Is there an absolute moral code. If there is, it must be based on what Man is, and not what we would like him to be, or what somebody said 2000 (or 4000, or two) years ago. And if there is an absolute moral code, then none of the professed moralities of the past or present are likely to be it. As for the future, who knows? Not me.

[mikeh]

I suppose a lot depends on how you define "morality".

 

I will grant that societies' professed morality differs, both across current societies and across time.

 

Is there an absolute moral code. If there is, it must be based on what Man is, and not what we would like him to be, or what somebody said 2000 (or 4000, or two) years ago. And if there is an absolute moral code, then none of the professed moralities of the past or present are likely to be it. As for the future, who knows? Not me.

did that absolute morality exist for the precursors of homo sapiens? If not, why not? Does it exist only for humans and on this planet only? If so, why so?

 

Proponents of an absolute morality rarely have answers for these questions, and when they do, they are in my experience so far, always evasive. I would be interested in your take.

 

You're the one suggesting morality isn't relative. Do you have actual arguments in favour of that position?

[Trinidad]

Is there an absolute moral code. If there is, it must be based on what Man is, and not what we would like him to be, or what somebody said 2000 (or 4000, or two) years ago. And if there is an absolute moral code, then none of the professed moralities of the past or present are likely to be it. As for the future, who knows? Not me.

My take is a little different from MikeH's:

 

Suppose that there is an absolute moral code, based on, as you say, what Man is, but we don't know what this absolute moral code is. Then how does it help us to have it? After all, we defined the term "absolute moral code", so we are allowed to throw the concept out of the window. What are we going to miss out on if we do that? I would say nothing, which leaves us with our own, individual morality and nothing more.

 

An absolute moral code that we can't know is just ballast to carry around and should be shaved off by Ockham's Razor.

 

Rik

[blackshoe]

Suppose someone's individual moral code tells him it's okay to take other people's property by stealth or by force. Suppose he does so. Should he then be free of prosecution because he did nothing immoral by his personal code?

[cherdano]

Suppose someone's individual moral code tells him it's okay to take other people's property by stealth or by force. Suppose he does so. Should he then be free of prosecution because he did nothing immoral by his personal code?

The rest of us believe in this concept called "society". In particular, someone can get punished for something that we, the society, concur to be immoral, even though there is no objective standard for that consensus.

[Trinidad]

Suppose someone's individual moral code tells him it's okay to take other people's property by stealth or by force. Suppose he does so. Should he then be free of prosecution because he did nothing immoral by his personal code?

Adding to Cherdano (with whom I fully agree):

There are societies where what we would call stealing is considered perfectly fine. Furthermore, "property" and stealing are Western words. As an example, I am sure that the Native Americans initially never realized that the white were stealing their land. How can you steal something that in their view was impossible to be owned?

 

Rik