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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (5817)	2/14/2001 2:27:34 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

First of all, all interventions don't involve imposing anything. There are degrees of interventions. Do we jawbone or shun or start a nuclear war? Big difference. But any intervention implies that we think they're doing something wrong. Whether it's jawboning, or shunning, or whatever, there is no reason to intervene unless we want them to change something they are doing. And when it's intervention for moral reasons (which is what we're discussing) that implies we want them to change their morality. Which implies we think ours is better than theirs. So yes, we DO want to impose our standards on them, whether it be the standard of giving up international terrorism (Libya) or giving up weapons of mass destruction (Iraq) or giving up human rights abuses (China and others) or giving up institutionalized racism (South Africa under white rule) or whatever -- in every case our intervention was based on our thinking we were right and they were wrong and we wanted to impose our way on them. Whether by their agreement or force is irrelevant. If we really believe they had the absolute right to chose their moral code and if they chose it it was morally right, we would have no basis to intervene at all.

To: Lane3 who wrote (5817)	2/14/2001 3:07:57 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

And would it logically follow that, if there's an absolute morality, that there is not just a right but a requirement for imposing that morality. Are we required to start a war against China to wipe out human rights abuses because of the absolute morality? Are we required to physically restrain our neighbor's wife from going out to meet her lover? Or should we mind our own business? Or counsel her? Or what? I don't think there is necessarily a requirement to protect the human rights of others from damage by a third party. I think it is the right thing to do but we should consider the consiqences of the actions we might take to protect the rights of others before we intervene. A war against China would kill a lot of people esp. if it turned nuclear. If we insisted on throwing out China's government I doubt they would go easy. I don't believe in killing people to stop them from being abused. As for my neighbor's wife having a lover, I would say adultery is wrong, but I would not put it in the category of something that I feel is definitly, extrinsicly and absolutely wrong. Also while I would say it is immoral, I would not consider it a human rights abuse, and it would be a subject for her and her conscience and also her husband and her lover. It wouldn't be any of my business. If I was a very close personal friend of hers I might advise her not to do this, but if she made it clear that she didn't want to hear it I would not keep pestering her about it. And even if there's not an absolute morality, should we intervene to try to keep our neighbor's daughter from doing something stupid with her life? What about our own daughter? Doing something stupid with your life does not always mean doing something immoral. And even when it does it usually would not raise to the level of abusing someone else and violating their rights. I do think that a parents responsibility includes trying to guide their children, but this responsibility becomes very limited once they are an adult. I could be more specific but I would need a specific hypothetical to comment on. As far as my neighbor's daughter. Assuming that she is a child and that she is about to endanger herself I think that I should try to prevent this danger, but the level of intervention should be proportional to the level of danger and the consequences of any intervention should be considered (at least if there is time, I think I would be justified in pulling her away from the path of a truck without pondering consequences and proportionality). As for absolute morality, have you thought any more about the morality of rape and slavery when the survival of the species is at stake? How can it be moral to let the human race die out when there are means to stop it? On the other hand, how can it be moral to rape and enslave? The idea of the rights of the human race (in this case to not die out) is one that I have not considered much. A quick thought about it is that the individual has more rights then the race as such. The race has more rights only in the sense that it can be considered to include the rights of all of the individuals. So if the race could only be sustained by rape and slavery, but no one would die because of a lack of rape and slavery (lets say the race would die out because the women didn't want sex or kids and with no new kids the race would die), then it would not be right to rape and enslave people just to insure the survival of the race. If everyone will die without rape and slavery then the case is more complex. Tim