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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (71018)	6/6/2008 7:56:44 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542950

"But once you get into "moral" law, it gets pretty wobbly- we don't all agree on what constitutes a moral action. That's probably why we see "mitigating circumstances" appearing in our courts." Action is based on circumstance, which is always unique and subject to the perspective of those agreeing or disagreeing. So it is impossible to codify moral absolutes into action. The best we can do is to have a system that guides decision making based on concepts of legal rights and wrongs which is still technically a moral code ... robbery is wrong, paying for goods and services is right. But that is still not simple or comprehensive enough to make a moral law of actions ... Uhm when the apple falls from your neighbor's tree to your ground is it right or wrong to take it or to keep it? Who should take the apple? He would have to trespass, but he says it belongs to him because he grew it. The limb was technically growing in your space so was it your property? Should he pay for the ground storage space if you agree to let him pick up all the apples on your side? Moral laws as you refer to them 'absolutes' are ideals and we can only use ideals as a guide since there is no absolute circumstance. Circumstances are complex so one ideal even if absolute does not cover any particular circumstance which can never be ideal and which is subject to other references to ideal goods/bads. Even very basic circumstances are not easily ruled on by ideal guides ... Thou shalt not kill but if someone is heinously brutalizing a child is it wrong to use force against them even if it does result in death and what if it is more complicated where the child has been recruited as a gun toting combatant in war. Social mores of decent treatment of one unto another are another type of common morality which may or may not overlap with the legal system.