From: ens@ccu.umanitoba.ca ()
Subject: Re: X% unethical [was Re: why hunting is unethical]
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 06:15:46 GMT

(Russel Lawrence) writes:
> <ens@ccu.umanitoba> writes:

>> Here's a hypothetical case for you.  Say every human considered
>> wearing a hat OK, but you found a fact or underlying reason that
>> convinced you that hat-wearing was wrong.  The rest of society
>> examined your facts but disagreed with your conclusion and still
>> held hat-wearing as a social grace.  Would hat-wearing in that
>> society be right ot wrong and why?

>Good example.  Let's suppose that I had uncovered ample 
>scientific evidence to prove that hat-wearing causes terminal 
>brain tumors in 20% of all wearers.  To demonstrate the 
>wrongfulness of hat wearing, I'd point to the suffering of the 
>victims, their family members, and friends;  the cost of hospital 
>and/or hospice care;  the lost productivity in our hypothetical 
>society;  etc.  If my ideas about the link between hat wearing and 
>brain tumors are accurate reflections of reality, these "wrongs" 
>won't simply go away simply because my fellow citizens refuse to 
>acknowledge the facts.  

In the proposed hypothetical society, the people examined your data
and disagreed with your conclusions. (People could be forgiven for
disbelieving you even without looking at the data, if they had seen
some of your usenet posts.)  Now either you are wrong, or you are
superior to everyone else. Either way, you are the only one to believe
that hat-wearing causes brain tumors. If this makes hat-wearing wrong,
then the definition of wrong must contain your name in it. And a
society in which you are not available to espouse ethics would have
absolutely no notion of what is right or wrong. And a society in which
you are available would ignore ethics completely. Such an idea of
ethics, having no bearing on our behaviour strikes me as completely
useless.

The scenario could be made more realistic (20% tumors would hardly go
unnoticed) if you found say 0.01% of hat-wearers got brain tumors.
And let's say you were right, and even widely believed. (Something
like the danger of ALAR used for apples.)  Now your opinion is that
needless suffering is wrong and therefore hat-wearing is wrong. (Let's
further assume here that hat-wearing is strictly for vanity or
traditional reasons; ie. the ozone layer is intact and it's never
cold.) In spite of the reduced average life-expectancy and the
suffering, most of society disagrees with your values and considers
maintaining the traditions or the fashions associated with hat-wearing
to be well worth the small risk. So you and a few followers jump up
and down at street corners shouting hat-wearing is dangerous, but
99.99% of the people ignore you and continue to wear hats.  If your
opinion that hat-wearing is ethically wrong, makes it universally
wrong, then nearly every activity known is wrong, because every
activity causes some pain, and someone somewhere must consider the
pain unjustified by the benefit. Was it Schweitzer that considered
killing mosquitos wrong?  If nearly everything is ethically wrong,
what's the use of the concept?

Werner