Things that are always wrong.

POSTED BY: Wishimay
UPDATED: Sunday, November 7, 2010 15:16
VIEWED: 21168
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CAUSAL

Wednesday, October 13, 2010 10:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
...Specific 'bad' actions, like murder, can be morally grey, or even noble and admirable to an extent, as they do not always have 'bad' motivations (eg. killing in self defence or defence of others).

It's not personal. It's just war.

I would argue that if it's in self-defense, then it's neither murder, nor morally grey. Murder is something like unlawful killing--so I wouldn't even use the word "murder" to describe killing in self-defense.

As to motivations, I'm not sure that I can agree that an act's moral value is completely attached to the motivation behind it. Suppose Bob believes in an extreme form of corporal punishment that he uses in order to train his children to behave. His motivation, I would argue, is a good one: to train his children to behave. But I would argue that he is at best misguided in that project, if not morally blameworthy. So although his motivations were good, his means were morally blameworthy.

After all, you know what they say about the road to hell and good intentions!

________________________________________________________________________

- Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
- Captain, FFF.net Grammar Police
- Vote JonnyQuest/Causal, for Benevolent Co-Dictator of Earth; together, toward a brighter tomorrow!

MAL4PREZ

Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Yes, but don't think about specific actions, rather what motivates them. Actions motivated by selfish greed, or callous cruelty will always be morally ugly. Actions motivated purely by love or compassion will always be morally beautiful.

I believe the exact opposite. Very few people--very, very few--do evil acts out of a conscious wish to do evil. And yet evil shit is going down constantly. How many child molesters will look you in the eye and tell you they did for love? You may think they're full of shit, but if they truly believe it was *love*, does that make it a beautiful act?

The majority of bad acts have good intentions behind them. The human brain is a fucking mess, and selfish motivations easily hide behind denial: "I do this for your own good! I take away your rights because you'll be better off! I hurt you because I need to protect those other people over there..."

In the end, it's the act that matters. Did you harm innocents or didn't you? That's the baseline to me.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

CYBERSNARK

Thursday, October 14, 2010 2:19 AM

Perhaos the wiccan rede has it right: "an it harm none, do as ye will."

Quote:
Originally posted by Mendur:
Quote:
Originally posted by Cybersnark:
I'm ambivalent on AI; for every human-killing monstrosity, there's a WALL-E, an R2-D2, a Tachikoma, an Autobot, a Doc Hologram, or an Andromeda Ascendant. Machines I'd happily trust with my life.

Don't know the others well enough to guess.

The Tachikoma are heavily-armed AI-controlled tank-robots in Ghost in the Shell, and are among the most intelligent AIs in the GitS universe --they're adorable.

Doc Hologram is everyone's favourite walking, snarking computer program.

And of course, the Autobots gave us Optimus Prime.

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

KPO

Thursday, October 14, 2010 6:20 PM

Quote:
In the end, it's the act that matters. Did you harm innocents or didn't you? That's the baseline to me.

Yep, I don't think we disagree - only in terminology. As a pragmatist and a humanist my ultimate interest is in protecting and increasing the sum of human happiness. So I don't forgive actions that cause harm; I just believe stupidity often causes more harm than 'evil'.

Ideology is a big cause of human suffering in my view, and is a special self-indulgent type of stupidity. You are determined to see that the world works a certain way, and no facts or horror can shake you from it. For e.g., I wouldn't call Chairman Mao more 'evil' than Hitler, or Stalin or Sadaam, or Idi Amin - yet he killed more people: 45 million just in 4 years during his 'great leap forward' (and an estimated 70 million in total).

Similarly with George W Bush and the Iraq invasion: his main crimes in my view were complacency, ignorance, arrogance (or lack of humility) - and just, general stupidity. Probably some selfish interest in there as well with respect to oil, etc., but the important point I think is that (to my mind at least) he wanted to do right by the Iraqis; he wanted to create a stable, prosperous democracy, and oil-producing friend to the U.S. So it doesn't make sense in my mind to call him 'evil' (or Tony Blair for that matter). Maybe it's emotionally satisfying to - but the world doesn't work that way in my eyes. As I say, stupidity , carelessness and arrogance are capable of causing massive human suffering (especially in someone in a position of power).

Quote:
In the end, it's the act that matters. Did you harm innocents or didn't you? That's the baseline to me.

Going back to this: the main flaw in this I would say is simply that you can harm innocents by accident. Either through carelessness, recklessness - or just pure accident. A man flying in a single seater airplane suffering a stroke, and crashing into a skyscraper. Or a nuclear power plant, and causing a meltdown (though my Dad says this wouldn't happen). It doesn't make sense in my mind to call such actions 'evil', just because they harm innocents.

Quote:
You may think they're full of shit, but if they truly believe it was *love*, does that make it a beautiful act?

It's not so much about what the person 'believes' :-/ I don't think such acts can be motivated by love, do you? Lust springs to mind. Perhaps they have some loving or caring feelings towards the child, but molesting the child is serving their own lust. So either they selfishly put their caring for the child's interest to one side, or else they convince themselves that the experience will be 'good for the child, because it comes from love', or something like that - which is a kind of ideology, and so again a kind of selfishness... Usually (or often) an ideology has 'making a better world' as its goal - this ideology just has 'rationalising sex with a child as being okay' as a goal. So the motivations of the child molestor are more purely selfish than those of the Operative, if that makes sense. But the main point is that the motivation of the child molestor is selfishness through and through, any way you look at it.

I apologise for the length and heavy nature of the post...

It's not personal. It's just war.

KPO

Thursday, October 14, 2010 6:41 PM

Quote:
I would argue that if it's in self-defense, then it's neither murder, nor morally grey. Murder is something like unlawful killing--so I wouldn't even use the word "murder" to describe killing in self-defense.

Apart from a pre-emptive murder perhaps... but otherwise yeah, I agree.

Quote:
As to motivations, I'm not sure that I can agree that an act's moral value is completely attached to the motivation behind it. Suppose Bob believes in an extreme form of corporal punishment that he uses in order to train his children to behave. His motivation, I would argue, is a good one: to train his children to behave. But I would argue that he is at best misguided in that project, if not morally blameworthy. So although his motivations were good, his means were morally blameworthy.

After all, you know what they say about the road to hell and good intentions!

Following on from what I said to Mal4prez, I views this kind of rigid belief as a form of 'ideology' (maybe I need a better term). This guy practicing an extreme form of corporal punishment is motivated by his own quite extreme ideology, and worldview; and I would suggest that he must be getting a form of gratification from that. He's approached the question of how to raise his children from a selfish place like, "I know how kids should be raised, I'll show the world..." This kind of douchish standpoint basically. Rather than simply, "I love my kids and am going to try and do the best for them that I can". Am I being unfair to Bob?

It's not personal. It's just war.

BORIS

Friday, October 15, 2010 4:37 AM

My HAir...it's never right. Never does what I tell it, only holds a style for about 5 minutes and then goes back to just being unruly and obnoxious. I use extra strong claw grips to imprison and intmidate it and it mocks me by eating about 2 a month and attempting to take over my face. That's just wrong! Cutting it doesn't help as it grows so damn fast.

Silliness aside....Bodies and faces should always be imperfect (i.e. wrong)shows character.There should never be a "right" way to look. nothing I hate more than turning up to a "do" and seeing a bunch of automatons all looking the same, wearing the same styles, same "in" trends...blegh! My clothes are either practical with a tweek here or there for individuality or fully express who I am. When I dress up I don't want to look like something prescribed by the media or societal norms. I also want any make up I wear to add to the effect rather than act as a mask or make me look like someone else. I trully feel sad when I see women who feel they need to morph their whole face to be accepted.

Rose S

AURAPTOR

Friday, October 15, 2010 12:11 PM

Yes. Mimes may be done away with by any means necessary.

"The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal."

CAUSAL

Friday, October 29, 2010 10:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
[B
Quote:
As to motivations, I'm not sure that I can agree that an act's moral value is completely attached to the motivation behind it. Suppose Bob believes in an extreme form of corporal punishment that he uses in order to train his children to behave. His motivation, I would argue, is a good one: to train his children to behave. But I would argue that he is at best misguided in that project, if not morally blameworthy. So although his motivations were good, his means were morally blameworthy.

After all, you know what they say about the road to hell and good intentions!

Following on from what I said to Mal4prez, I views this kind of rigid belief as a form of 'ideology' (maybe I need a better term). This guy practicing an extreme form of corporal punishment is motivated by his own quite extreme ideology, and worldview; and I would suggest that he must be getting a form of gratification from that. He's approached the question of how to raise his children from a selfish place like, "I know how kids should be raised, I'll show the world..." This kind of douchish standpoint basically. Rather than simply, "I love my kids and am going to try and do the best for them that I can". Am I being unfair to Bob?

For the sake of argument, let's suppose you are being unfair to Bob. For the purposes of the discussion, let's say Bob dearly loves his children and knows that part of their success as adult people depends on their ability to get along in a civilized way with others (I don't think that anybody would disagree that this is a worthwhile desire for him to have). So he knows that now, in their childhood, is when he has to teach them that value. But because he had an abusive father, all he knows in terms of teaching his kids is strict corporal punishment that most would consider abusive. There's no misguided ideology at work, nor secret enjoyment--Bob just doesn't know any other way!

I would argue that while Bob has good intentions this isn't all that counts in terms of how we evaluate his action. We should also think about means that he is employing to bring about what I think we can all agree is a good end: kids who grow up able navigate civil society skillfully. Yet, his means are fatally flawed, I would argue.

Incidentally, John Stuart Mill had the opposite problem that you have: he argued that the only thing that counts towards an action's rightness or wrongness was the outcome of that action in terms of happiness. If an action promoted happiness, it was right, period. Yet he also wanted motivation to play a part: if a happiness-promoting action were done from a bad disposition (saving a drowning man because he owes you money, for instance, so your disposition is greed), might be right, but it's not Really Right--it's just accidentally right. Similarly, Bob is accidentally wrong--he has a good disposition (to be a good parent), but he doesn't know that his action is actually pain-promoting, hence his action is not wrong on purpose, but accidentally wrong.

All this is to say that I think we need to do more than just look at motivations. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

________________________________________________________________________

- Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
- Captain, FFF.net Grammar Police
- Vote JonnyQuest/Causal, for Benevolent Co-Dictator of Earth; together, toward a brighter tomorrow!

KPO

Sunday, November 7, 2010 3:16 PM

Quote:
But because he had an abusive father, all he knows in terms of teaching his kids is strict corporal punishment that most would consider abusive. There's no misguided ideology at work, nor secret enjoyment--Bob just doesn't know any other way!

Yep, I actually thought of the alternative scenario where Bob has inherited some quite extreme religious beliefs, which dictate the way he brings up his children. In both these cases there is an inherited 'stupidity' (I would call it) which has a bad effect on how Bob raises his children, but for which he is not primarily culpable.

Quote:
Incidentally, John Stuart Mill had the opposite problem that you have: he argued that the only thing that counts towards an action's rightness or wrongness was the outcome of that action in terms of happiness.

I don't disagree with this, I don't use the words 'right' and 'wrong' much, but if they are to mean anything it makes sense to define them in terms of human happiness. But then it doesn't make sense to me to describe 'right' or 'wrong' actions as 'good' or 'evil'. There was a discussion thread I read online a few months ago, where people were choosing 3 historical figures they could assassinate, and a Jewish guy made a point of saying he wouldn't assassinate Hitler because although he had inflicted so much suffering on Jews, his actions had also ended centuries of previous persecution and suffering in Europe, and lead to the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and therefore Jewish happiness. Now I'm not claiming that the happiness enjoyed by modern Jewish people having a homeland definitely exceeds the suffering of the Holocaust (and some ppl might argue that the Israeli state is an ongoing poisonous legacy of that suffering), but there is an argument there, strangely, that they Hitler's actions were for the best - and therefore 'right' ('accidentally right' you might say). But can anyone argue that Hitler's hate-filled actions in trying to exterminate millions of Jews were anything other than evil? That doesn't make much sense.

I'll distill my position a bit more then:

1. Evil describes an action that is motivated purely by morally 'ugly' motivations, and ignoring concerns for human happiness (this last clause is new, but important I feel).

2. Stupidity often causes more suffering than 'evil'.

3. Stupidity can sometimes be self-indulgent or self-gratifying: like clinging rigidly to a foolish ideology in spite of the suffering it causes. This stupidity is more morally blameworthy than the ordinary kind (Homer Simpson causing a meltdown at the nuclear plant)

It's not personal. It's just war.

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