Comments on: 24 Ethics

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 03:20:54 +0000

This is a timely report for our discussion: Documents Show Army Seized Wives As Tactic

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:40:09 +0000

You do have a talent for asking huge questions Bill. I'm about to be out for the weekend but will try and give a decent reply in a few days.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 03:20:39 +0000

“I have no problem in saying it would be better to be killed than to be forced at gun point to rape one's sister. It would be better to be killed than to be raped b/c of gun point by one's brother.”
I do not argue against this, Micah, but I know that there are many thousands of people living today who chose differently in that very situation. It is hard to accuse them of moral error, given the awfulness of the choice they were forced to make. Some of my Armenian friends told me stories of what their grandparents were forced to do before they were finally thrown out of their country. It is a dark and awful part of their history. I am sure some chose as you would. I know that some did not.
Now that we've dealt, though, with your interest in whether I affirm moral absolutes, can we get back to my question?
How do you find scripture informs you regarding a prohibition of harming an innocent person? You've mentioned murder, but that is at best only a small subset of this area of ethics.
To get to the question of whether we would harm an innocent person in any fashion in order to accomplish a greater pragmatic good, I am interested to know if you feel there is a moral absolute against this, or even related to it.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 22:48:00 +0000

I have no problem in saying it would be better to be killed than to be forced at gun point to rape one's sister. It would be better to be killed than to be raped b/c of gun point by one's brother.
There are worse things than violent death. That said, we seem to be in agreement on the larger question of whether there are moral absolutes, though you seem more certain about your epistemic uncertainty than you are about the moral absolutes.
We are all CERTAIN about something . . . even if it is the status of what little we can be sure of knowing.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 20:46:28 +0000

Micah, I am willing to affirm that there are absolutes. I am not one who believes there are no absolutes. I am just hesitant to name them. I would for instance believe that it is highly improbable that we could possibly conceive of a situation where it was right to rape a five year old. The idea is so repulsive that it is hard to imagine any context where that would be the best moral choice.
Even this, though, is not an esoteric question, because forcing family members to have sex with one another has been and continues to be a regular part of ethnic cleansing. Reframing the context such questions whether it would really be 'rape'. Is it morally better for the brother to choose not to have sex with his sister at gun point if it means that they will both be killed? This is a different framing than we had before. I might describe it more as consenting to sex under threat of death than raping per se.
That is a very different act than raping the bomber's daughter to persuade him to give the details of the bombing that would prevent the slaughter of many.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:16:09 +0000

Let me back up. To murder is to kill someone intentionally, and unlawfully. Intentionally killing an innocent person is murder, but it is not the only example of murder. I'm happy to take up the burden of defining what “murder” means, and think I just have, at least in a dictionary sense. We could talk about intention if we want, for this is what distinguishes war-time casualties from premeditated murder, and also why we think of manslaughter as different from murder, even if the acts themselves can look very similar.
But the larger issue we were discussing has to do with whether there are, or are not, exceptionless moral norms. Here I'd put the burden back on you Bill. Do you really think that there are circumstances that would justify/make right/allow for the raping of a five year-old girl? The torture and lynching of a black man, perhaps to keep a racist white town from killing even more blacks?
Amy earlier mentioned the woman who slept with a Nazi guard to save lives, noting that adultery was clearly prohibted by Scripture. A good example. I would have to agree that the line is drawn when it involves doing something to someone else. If that woman were married, I'm not sure about her actions. I'm willing to call that a gray area perhaps.
But what about denying Christ? Should we ever do that? I'm not saying I wouldn't buckle if someone had a gun to my daughter's head, but I'm not prepared to say it would be right for me to deny Christ in such an instance either. After all, many of these hypotheticals depend on us taking the word of someone who is prepared to do something unspeakably awful (i.e. if I believe that some thug will actually kill my daughter if I don't deny Christ, why should I trust his character enough to think he'll keep his word if I do deny Christ?).
Thus the omniscience thing comes back into play. When we talk about it as armchair ethicists we make out an equation: If terrorist A has information about a bomb that will kill X number of people, and I can rape terrorist's daughter B, I can get that information and save X. Many lives saved outweighs one horrible rape, therefore the rape becomes good and necessary.
I just don't think right and wrong works that way. I am more sure that I should not rape the girl than I am about any of the other facts: 1) the existence of the bomb, 2) that the guy really knows where it is, 3) that raping the daughter will get him to tell me the truth, 4) that I'd be able to stop the bomb anyway.
I should add that I have very little problem with roughing him up some to get him to talk, again with some limits. I also wouldn't have a problem with making him think I was going to do terrible things to someone else.
I can talk about why rape is so wrong, and can recommend analytical philosophers on the subject, but I recoil a bit at the notion that I need to defend the notion. And so we get back to one of the prior questions which I'd ask Bill, do you agree that there are SOME things that we should never do? Can you think of a justification for the acts I mentioned above? (rape, lynch). If not, we are in heated agreement. If so, disagreement. Note that my view doesn't mean there are no murky areas, just that not everything is murky.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 04:25:34 +0000

To misquote, I know it when I see it.
Micah, I doubt I would get to the word 'innocent' in a definition of murder.
What is and is not murder? Killing someone in defense of self or others from mortal threat or threat of grave bodliy injury is not murder.
Intentionally killing someone because they have angered you with no other mitigating circumstances is almost definitely murder.
Homocide is justified by things like a threat or a credible reason to believe there was a threat. Innocence doesn't seem to come into play as to whether a homocide is justified, or it is murder.
I haven't defined it, but I've given some bounds.
I would shift this burden to you though. It would have to be established that killing an innocent person was murder. It would not be a given. Collateral damage in a surgical strike that kills civilians is very rarely considered murder. Killing an innocent just isn't a very good basket to hold murder in. Too many don't fit that we know are murder, and some that we don't believe are murder would fit.
I can murder a VERY guilty man.
I can kill someone who was innocent, though I had credible reason to believe he was a mortal threat, and it is not murder.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 02:18:07 +0000

Your comment was definitely related. It's my response that would have hijacked the discussion! It's such a huge topic.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 02:14:11 +0000

And you've all convinced me to rent 24, Season 1.
Then my work is done here!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 01:49:33 +0000

Amy –
No worries about not veering off into a discussion on pacifism. I saw it as connected, I wasn't trying to hijack!
So I'll save my thoughts on pacifism for when you give it a fuller treatment.