From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Moral theories
Date: 16 Apr 92 04:43:20 GMT
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations


>That's not true.  This is the commonly held view of values...that you 
>have a choice to either sacrifice your own interests for others or to 
>have them sacrifice theirs for you.  As I see it BOTH are immoral.  It
>is as if when I say that it is a bad thing to be stolen from, you accuse me
>of being in favor of theft (since the only alternative to being robbed 
>is to rob others).

Well, if you'd said that the purpose of life is to own property, then
if faced with the alternatives of committing theft or owning no property
it would seem logical to steal to get it.  You stated that the purpose
of life was to live.  The implication is that an individual should
do anything to prevent himself from being stopped from living.


>Seriously though, do you think that the life of a murderer, a coward,
>a traitor, or a liar is really in your best interests?  Or is being 
>praceful, brave, trustworthy, and honest really in your best long term 
>interests even if in some constrained context they might cost you 
>something?

But what if they cost you _everything_ (i.e. dying for a good cause)?

>I don't agree with this view of yours that it's better to be a liar, theif, or
>killer, but if that is the case, why ought one to be moral?  Why not be a liar
?   
>Why not steal?  Why not become a ruthless dictator?  If being immoral 
>is so great, why not be immoral?

Because it's wrong.  _Why_ it's wrong, where the borderline cases are,
and so on are debateable.  Books and novels and great debates can be
made from whether it's ever moral to steal, or whether any lie can be
good, or if it's possible that even a dictator could be a good person.
But in the vast majority of cases, there's no more widespread
disagreement over whether, say, murder is wrong than whether the sky
is blue, and I don't really feel it necessary to go beyond that.  Any
moral theory which says, for example, that murder is, as a whole,
right, is wrong on its face, and I don't need to go into it in any
more detail than I would a physical theory that said that under normal
conditions stones fall up.

>> >reasoning about them.  It's not just a matter of subjective choice
>> >where Jim Jones' choice to drink poison KoolAid is no better or worse
>> >than Edison's choice to invent the light bulb.

>> Right.  And Stalin's decision to murder tens of millions was _not_
>> immoral (since he lived to a ripe old age and never placed his life
>> in serious jeopardy, while killing anyone who looked threatening) 

>You think that Stalin lived a good life?  The reason he was so ruthless 
>is that he was (rightly) terrified that if his rule ended that his own head
>would be the first one on the chopping block.  He lived a life of terror,
>murder, paranoia, and destruction of the country he (presumably) cared 
>about.  He may have been lucky and lived to a late age, but that just
>means he got lucky.  The fact is that he made every decent, honest, and 
>intelligent person in the world hate him.  He destroyed everything he could 
>have possibly cared about (his friends, his country, his peace of mind, 
>etc.) and generated nothing of value in his life.  Stalin was a very 
>self-destructive man.  Had he chosen another course of action (say, turning
>the country capitalist, or escaping to the US) he would have been able to 
>work toward the achievement of his goals.  Instead, he chose to eliminate
>his capacity to honestly pursue goals.

But he lived-- whereas anyone in his country who attempted to honestly
pursue worthy goals (e.g. attempting to provide goods or services outside
the collectivized economy, or opposing Stalin, or suggesting that making
an accord with Hitler was a bad idea) was killed.  It appears that there's
something more than mere preservation of life to be held up as a standard,
here.

>They died RISKING their lives to achieve something they valued enormously...
>their freedom (which still lies in the balance), and I consider taking
>intelligent risks to achieve proper values a high virtue.  

Okay, so we agree that there are cases in which potentially losing one's
life in pursuit of something other than longer life is a virtue.  But
then life is _not_ the only purpose of life.


>Actually, there are a fair number of us who believe that it is against our
>self-interests to act like beasts.  It's sad to hear that you think you'd be 
>better off if you acted like one.  

I don't.  I do think that there are cases in which someone can be more
certain of living a longer life by acting "like a beast."  I simply
didn't agree with you that maintaining one's life was the only
worthy goal of life, and suggested that _if_ self-interest is defined only
in terms of life, _then_ the logical conclusion is that many acts
we'd normally consider wrong would be right, and vice versa.

However, it's clear from the examples you used that you _don't_ think
that simply staying alive, regardless of how one suffers or causes
suffering, is the only point of life-- that there are certain goals
(freedom, being an obvious one) worth a serious risk to life.
While I suspect we'd disagree on what those goals are and what they
derive from, I would be far more wary of a moral code which placed
nothing before life itself.

Mike

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Never let your sense of morality prevent
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 you from doing what's right!"
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 --Mayor Salvor Hardin of Terminus
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Isaac Asimov, _Foundation_
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