"White Man's Burden"

[Guest]

12 hours ago, DixonHur said:

Assuming we take the modern dictionary definition of 'fair', does something being unfair automatically make it amoral?  Is it amoral for the older brother to take the toy?  Or is it simply a case of Darwinian survival of the fittest? 

My dogs get upset when the other takes its toy/bone, but I would prescribe morals to them.  It's just resource guarding.

As my mom always said..."life isn't fair"

In the cases of the brother taking the toy because he's able to, the more dominant dog taking the bone, and the general claim that life isn't fair, these are statements on the way things are.  But they are not statements on the way things ought to be.  In other words, they are statements of what is and not statements of ethics.  This distinction is known as the is-ought gap or is-ought fallacy in ethics.  Put simply, there is a gap in reasoning when one claims that things are a certain way and therefore they should be that way; it is a fallacy if one states that something is ethically justified merely because things are that way without providing additional reasoning to bridge the is-ought gap.  

So in the case of the brother being able to take the toy, it is true that he can take it if he wants and may decide to do so.  But the ethical question is ought he take the toy merely because he can?  Does his greater strength give him moral justification to take the toy?  In the case of life not being fair, this is a truth that virtually no one will deny.  But does that mean that we can take whatever we want from any weaker person and then give the simple claim of "life isn't fair" for justification of our actions?  I don't know of anyone who thinks that the fact that life isn't fair is moral justification for the strong to take whatever they want.  Again, it often does occur and has throughout human history and so we can say that it is that way, but that really has nothing to do with how it ought to be.

 

[DixonHur 11967]

5 minutes ago, Aphelion said:

In the cases of the brother taking the toy because he's able to, the more dominant dog taking the bone, and the general claim that life isn't fair, these are statements on the way things are.  But they are not statements on the way things ought to be.  In other words, they are statements of what is and not statements of ethics.  This distinction is known as the is-ought gap or is-ought fallacy in ethics.  Put simply, there is a gap in reasoning when one claims that things are a certain way and therefore they should be that way; it is a fallacy if one states that something is ethically justified merely because things are that way without providing additional reasoning to bridge the is-ought gap.  

So in the case of the brother being able to take the toy, it is true that he can take it if he wants and may decide to do so.  But the ethical question is ought he take the toy merely because he can?  Does his greater strength give him moral justification to take the toy?  In the case of life not being fair, this is a truth that virtually no one will deny.  But does that mean that we can take whatever we want from any weaker person and then give the simple claim of "life isn't fair" for justification of our actions?  I don't know of anyone who thinks that the fact that life isn't fair is moral justification for the strong to take whatever they want.  Again, it often does occur and has throughout human history and so we can say that it is that way, but that really has nothing to do with how it ought to be.

 

I think the answer to your question is, it depends.  If we are talking about natural law as you proposed earlier, then I would say the answer is yes, that is exactly how it ought to be.  I say this because all organisms from single cell to human resource guard and establish hierarchies based on relative strength.  In other words, it is the natural order of things.  So whether you believe life was created by God or via natural chemical reactions, it was 'designed' with these inherent mechanisms.  Therefore I would argue that's the way it was 'meant' to be.

Humans however, are endowed with a powerful brain which enabled us to farm, and empathy to understand the feelings of those around us.  Farming lead to us having plenty of food, which in turn provided time to contemplate other things aside from immediate survival. 

This freedom, along with the formation of larger communities necessitated a different form of social interaction.  It's this formalization of societal rules that I think are the basis for what we call morals, or ethics.  And these ethics and morals differ across cultures.

In some tribes, when a woman becomes pregnant, all the men in the village have sex with her so that the child is considered to belong to all of them.  In our culture this would not be considered moral, but to them it would be amoral not to do it.

 

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

I think the answer to your question is, it depends.  If we are talking about natural law as you proposed earlier, then I would say the answer is yes, that is exactly how it ought to be.  I say this because all organisms from single cell to human resource guard and establish hierarchies based on relative strength.  In other words, it is the natural order of things.  So whether you believe life was created by God or via natural chemical reactions, it was 'designed' with these inherent mechanisms.  Therefore I would argue that's the way it was 'meant' to be.

Humans however, are endowed with a powerful brain which enabled us to farm, and empathy to understand the feelings of those around us.  Farming lead to us having plenty of food, which in turn provided time to contemplate other things aside from immediate survival. 

This freedom, along with the formation of larger communities necessitated a different form of social interaction.  It's this formalization of societal rules that I think are the basis for what we call morals, or ethics.  And these ethics and morals differ across cultures.

In some tribes, when a woman becomes pregnant, all the men in the village have sex with her so that the child is considered to belong to all of them.  In our culture this would not be considered moral, but to them it would be amoral not to do it.

 

By natural law I don't mean the laws of nature nor what it is done by the animals & organisms in their habitats nor the natural order derived from the interactions of the animals fighting for survival.  I am referring to the natural law as used by Aquinas and John Locke et alia.  From the linked article on Locke, natural law expresses "the idea that there were certain moral truths that applied to all people, regardless of the particular place where they lived or the agreements they had made" and that "natural law can be discovered by reason alone and applies to all people."  Natural law is the absolute morality that all men can know through the dedicated use of reason alone (i.e. it doesn't require divine revelation or command) and it applies to all men as rational free moral agents.

So suppose you and I teamed up and as educated men of means we decided to swindle some poor lesser educated families in real estate scams in which they gave us down payments for what they believed were valid contracts on houses.  But instead we took their money and gave them nothing in return and they had no legal rights as the contracts were not binding in any way.  If we apply the law of the fittest as our moral guidelines then we are perfectly justified in our actions as we are more clever in these matters and we deserve what we get and they are less clever and therefore they deserve to be swindled.  But our actions would be in violation of any reasonable code of natural law and would rightfully be deemed reprehensible.  I'm assuming that you also believe our actions in this hypothetical would be reprehensible.  If so, on what basis would you say that these actions are morally wrong?

 

  

Edited July 6, 2018 by Guest

[DixonHur 11967]

2 hours ago, Aphelion said:

By natural law I don't mean the laws of nature nor what it is done by the animals & organisms in their habitats nor the natural order derived from the interactions of the animals fighting for survival.  I am referring to the natural law as used by Aquinas and John Locke et alia.  From the linked article on Locke, natural law expresses "the idea that there were certain moral truths that applied to all people, regardless of the particular place where they lived or the agreements they had made" and that "natural law can be discovered by reason alone and applies to all people."  Natural law is the absolute morality that all men can know through the dedicated use of reason alone (i.e. it doesn't require divine revelation or command) and it applies to all men as rational free moral agents.

So suppose you and I teamed up and as educated men of means we decided to swindle some poor lesser educated families in real estate scams in which they gave us down payments for what they believed were valid contracts on houses.  But instead we took their money and gave them nothing in return and they had no legal rights as the contracts were not binding in any way.  If we apply the law of the fittest as our moral guidelines then we are perfectly justified in our actions as we are more clever in these matters and we deserve what we get and they are less clever and therefore they deserve to be swindled.  But our actions would be in violation of any reasonable code of natural law and would rightfully be deemed reprehensible.  I'm assuming that you also believe our actions in this hypothetical would be reprehensible.  If so, on what basis would you say that these actions are morally wrong?

 

  

I think you and I agree on everything except the idea of natural law.  I believe morality is a learned behavior.  That's not to say I don't think the "lowest common denominator" form of morality is important, I just don't think it's innate.

[Bat Guano 363]

1 hour ago, DixonHur said:

I think you and I agree on everything except the idea of natural law.  I believe morality is a learned behavior.  That's not to say I don't think the "lowest common denominator" form of morality is important, I just don't think it's innate.

Would your thinking change if you knew that animals have an innate sense of fairness also? (Maybe you do already; this is a well-known phenomenon.)

 

[DixonHur 11967]

4 hours ago, Bat Guano said:

Would your thinking change if you knew that animals have an innate sense of fairness also? (Maybe you do already; this is a well-known phenomenon.)

 

Very funny video, but no, that doesn't change my opinion. 

While fairness and morality are related, I'm in the camp that doesn't think they are interchangeable.  I liken them to a rectangle and a square.  A square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't necessarily a square.  Similarly, fairness is an indicator of morality, but something doesn't have to be fair to be moral.  For example, if I'm diving off the coast of Jamaica and find Blackbeard's long lost treasure, morally (and in this case legally) I know the treasure belongs to Jamaica since it was in their territorial waters, but I don't have to think it's fair that I can't keep it.