From: silver@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (silver)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Not killing as a moral absolute (was Re: Best Bible translation?
Date: 17 Aug 92 08:23:45 GMT
Organization: The Tally Ho

In article <1992Aug14.211415.19637@vaxeline.ftp.com> clennox@vaxeline.ftp.com (Systems Anarchist) writes:
>In article <1992Aug14.170059.7480@leland.Stanford.EDU> yergeau@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dan Yergeau) writes:
>>In article <1992Aug13.185337.19907@vaxeline.ftp.com>, clennox@vaxeline.ftp.com (Systems Anarchist) writes:
>>
>>|> Essentially, an action is moral
>>|> or immoral only if the person performing the action *believes* it to
>>|> be so.
>>
>>This, however, I cannot buy.  Why aren't the beliefs of those 
>>who are affected by the actions also considered?
>
>I never said they weren't.  If person A holds the belief, for example,
>that it is wrong to injure others, then A's moral assessment of any
>action must of necessity take the beliefs and feelings of others into
>account.
>
>>Since most
>>moral issues deal with social interaction, it seems to me that
>>the determination of whether an action is right or wrong must 
>>include viewpoints from all parties involved.
>
>Well... in a strict sense it is not possible for a person to "know"
>another person's viewpoint on a matter.  What a person can hold is an
>interpretation of another person's communication of his/her viewpoint.
>The interpretation will be of undetermined accuracy (there is no way
>to objectively verify it) and will be evaluated in the *only* manner
>possible: within the structure of the person's own thoughts, beliefs
>and experiences -- which brings us back to my original assertion.
>
>>I'm not trying
>>to assert that there are moral absolutes, or even that there
>>is always a mutually agreeable moral action.  I'm just trying 
>>to find a middle ground between the extremes of moral absolutes, 
>>and complete personal morality.
>
>As an atheist, I'm not sure one really exists - or if did, what use it
>would be.  Since I don't believe in God, heaven, hell, or an
>afterlife, there can be no reward for morality, or punishment for
>immorality, beyond that meted out by my own conscience and self-image.

this may sound overly Rand-ite of me, but:
one might suggest that your own continued mental and physcial well-being is
the yardstick of morality. so there is a reward for moral behavior: you
breathe and presumably enjoy it
there is a punishment for immoral behavior: you suffer hardship/harm (often
oversimplified by Rand as out-and-out 'death'... oh, would that immoral 
folk just dropped out of our hair).
this is not to say that you can go out killing people, or even lying to 
them... humans are naturally social and murder and lying (mostly just when
you're caught at it) are good ways to get you kicked out of society, a 
massive impairment to your mental well-being and probably your physcial
well-being.
your own nature provides your morality... this is very intuitive and straight
forward... and it certainly seems to apply to non-sentients... 
it has flaws, of course... it works great on a desert island (or in Galt's
Gulch) but it starts to fall apart when no one is irreplaceable and hiding
places abound. Killing people was deemed wrong by Rand because it's bad for
your health, but her example is usually something like a desert island wherein
you're probably killing the only person producing x, which you you need to
survive... but in our day and age, a zillion other people will probably be
producing x (especially if we set x equal to 'non-skilled labor'), so the
corpse is replaceable without loss to your health... and if no one ever knows
=you= are the killer, you get to wander around society, anyway, and spend your
money as you like and whatnot, and so the murder had no affect on your
health.
One might argue that we forbid ourselves to kill people because we want no one
to kill us, but one could probably justify anything with that kind of argument,
so we discount it.
Lying, also, is bad bad bad on the desert island scenario in which Randian
ethics work so well, but that's because on the island you'll invariably be
caught and no one will trade with you anymore... in reality, things are 
fuzzier, and Rand's argument against lying (like many of her other arguments)
assumes everyone is fully knowledgeable of everything applicable to a given
situation.

why did I present a possible code of morality to shoot it down in the next
paragraph?
(a) to save bandwidth, so that people who want to shoot down the proposed
morality measure don't have to.
(b) because I think it serves as a good starting point were we to want to
figure out what a human in a society of billions can go on as a good system
of morality that isn't so amazingly introspective that it makes Manson a
saint, but is still derived from the nature of humanity rather than a
'ready guide in some celestial voice'

--silver--                                     | "...Sloooow the plot down,
internet: silver@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu            | we'll scuttle the story
realitynet: silver Harloe@(512)/445-6087       | and run her aground..."
In the Village: Number Eight -- Be Seeing You! |        --MST3k/Mighty Jack

ps - yes, I spent almost a year as a Randite thumping Atlas Shrugged and
The Virtue of Selfishness as hard as any Bible thumper, but I'm over it now
and have developed a good library of attacks against her theories...
however, I think that she presents a better starting off point for getting
at 'the truth' (whatever that means)

pps - and, yes, I will credit Rush for that quote in the last paragraph of the
body of my text... I was told they're a bunch of Randites, but I'm more 
inclined to believe they got over it, too.

theme songs for the anti-religious: Free Will, by Rush, and 
The Only Way, by Emerson Lake and Palmer
(on the backside of Tarkus, like anyone ever listened to the backside of
Tarkus before the advent of cds, when suddenly it's all one side)


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