Empiricist-Bruno wrote:Trump is a narcissist; he has a mental illness and is therefore insane. But instead of locking him up in a nut house, US citizens have locked him up in the White House. So now, the USA can act without fear of doing anything wrong (no moral responsibility) as if the United States now lived in God's Grace.
But the leader of North Korea, being a supporter of deontological philosophy, realize that the USA is a mad nation and he plans to correct this by obliterating it with nuclear weapons, and this is a valid moral intention, right? The leader of North Korea acts like a very moral person, right?
That Trump is insane is just your opinion Bruno. It's just the opinion of some people who hate his guts. It could be due to jealousy and hatred that he won beating all odds, so you cannot handle his victory and so come up with things like this.
For Trump to be labelled as insane, he has to be diagnosed by a professional psychiatrist and only if the psychiatrist makes that claim can we believe it. There was a rumor circulating during the campaign by Clinton supporters that Trump was indeed insane, but when the Fox News anchor asked the guy to prove it by showing hospital or doctor records he could not do so. Here is a link to that controversy:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/ ... trump.html
How do you know that Kim Jong-un is a "deontologist"??? How do YOU know that??? You don't that that either. So, again it's your opinion isn't it??
Also, North Korea is not a person. It's a country. Ethics is applicable to individuals and not countries.
For example, are all Americans morally responsible for the dropping of the atomic bomb in Japan??
Are all German citizens who lived from 1939 to 1945 responsible for the Holocaust? It was done by Germany, the country, which according to you is a "person". So, all the people of that country should be, according to your logic responsible. But I think most people in this forum will realized that it is not how things work. If a country does something wrong like the Holocaust, the responsibility lies with the government that ran the country during that time.
When people like Peter Singer writes books, does he write for a "country"?? NO. He writes his books for INDIVIDUALS. Nobody writes ethics for countries.
So your questions cannot be answered because it is based on opinion and also it does not come under the preview of personal ethics.
Empiricist-Bruno wrote:I have read recently that tigers born in captivity and who have received no hunting education by their parents will die of hunger if they are released in the wild. So, there goes one exception to your theory, unless you are willing to include tigers as part of the human family.
Exceptions don't change the rule. For example, the exceptions that there are bad people in America like rapists and murderers don't change the rule that Americans are good people.
Empiricist-Bruno wrote: There is a glaring contradiction in your explanations: you suggest that a woman's baby is not fully a representative member of the human family until that point when the baby grows to think and talk like a normal adult human being does. My question is, do we all begin life as animals? If not then what is it we begin life as? According to you, should the killing of a human baby be viewed not as murder (the illegal killing of a human by another) but simply like the killing of an animal?
I did not say this. According to my beliefs (which includes some religious beliefs as well) even a 2 week old fetus is also human, so killing it is not a good thing, meaning unethical. I think like this because of my religion. So, because you do not a believer in my religion you will not accept it. This is understandable, since both religions and non-religious ethical systems are just opinions or beliefs. So, debating about things like these I think is futile because we are debating about what we
believe and not about factual things. It's like Christians debating atheists whether God exists or not. It does not go anywhere much.
No, since according to my system which is partly motivated by religion, partly by empirical facts and logic, humans do not begin life as animals. Humans are born human. Humans are not animals.
So, yes, according to my ethical system, killing a human baby (like a 2 week only newborn baby) is clearly murder, completely different to killing of an animal.
Empiricist-Bruno wrote:And what about the bird that is motivated to land on the branch that has been set up with a switch linked to a machine gun on a wind cock that then fires bullets and kill someone? The bird had not premeditated to kill but it did anyway. So, the bird is either crazy or it kills mistakenly?
I look forward to your usually fascinating answers.
Birds are animals. Animals are not rational creatures. Animals cannot think. So, birds have no concept of
motivation. So, associating motivation to a bird is meaningless. Birds work by instinct and genetic programming, and not by motivation. So, your question cannot be answered again.
-- Updated May 27th, 2017, 9:00 pm to add the following --
Gertie wrote:I suspect most thoughtful ethical systems boil down to notions of well-being and harm, well-being being Good and Harm being Bad, tho there are different approaches to how this can be achieved, often framed in terms of Moral Agents and Oughts as ways to achieve Goods.
In this situation we can look at the Well-being and Harm issue, and if we believe (as scientific evidence suggests) that farm animals are capable of experiencing a quality of life, including something worth calling well-being and harm, we can identify a moral problem with unnecessarily slaughtering them for food and keeping them in conditions with cause suffering.
The moral remedy would require change, Oughts, for actors involved in the causal chain leading to the Moral Bad. This causal chain includes consumers, farmers, slaughter-house workers, supermarkets, etc. An easy way to effect the desired moral change is for consumers to stop eating meat. A lot of other changes would result which need planning for with such a major shift, but in principle it's a simple moral solution to a moral problem.
Just curious. But if that is the case, would you
not buy a car and use public transport instead??
There are little over a billion vehicles in the planet now.
So, if all 3.5 billion adult humans owns a vehicle (say about 3.5 billion vehicles) it would sound the death knell to this planet (i.e. your
well being and harm motif), right?
-- Updated May 27th, 2017, 9:20 pm to add the following --
LuckyR wrote:RohanKanhai wrote:
(Nested quote removed.)
Where have I stated that my position is the standard???
I have never said this.
In fact, my position, view, or ethical system is not the standard. I know that.
This is the reason why I posted this thread.
To see the reactions from the people who have the standard position.
Little words make big differences. I didn't say you presented your (outlier) position as
THE Standard. I said you presented an outlier position as standard (or commonplace, if you prefer). If I had, i, too would be critical.
You know, come to think about it now, I don't think my position is the outlier position.
Because, just think about it.
Do you think that the overwhelming majority of meat-eaters do not know that killing of animals entails great pain??? Do you think they don't know that they suffer other types of abuse in the slaughterhouses and farms??
I don't think so. I think most people know. But eat mean in-spite of knowing this.
If you ask them, the meat-eaters, like in some YouTube videos I have seen, that is, when vegan activists confronts meat-eaters in public, ask them questions etc, most meat-eaters don't know how to answer. They cannot say why they eat meat despite of the cruelty of the process of obtaining the meat. I have see quite a number of videos like this in YouTube. Search for something like "vegans confront meat eaters".
Why is this?? I think the reason is very simple.
The meat-eaters are not consequentialists, nor do they know anything about ethics or ethical systems either.
They however don't feel guilty when buying and eating the meat. Because they are in-fact deontologists who use intention to judge the morality of action.
It is human-nature to use
intention, since humans are not animals and the only creature that can think, intention goes hand-in-hand with any action we do. It is kind of human-nature. It is inborn like fear or happiness we feel.
For example, when parents teach little children about good or bad, do they teach consequentialim?? NO, they give or teach them rules, like do not lie, do not steal, do no hurt etc. This is not consequentialsim. This is classic deontology. That is, the use of
rules.
So, humans are by nature, deontologists who use intention to judge the morality of an action. We just don't know it or aware of it. I don't think we need to be aware of it either.
Since we don't know know, when the vegans confront the meat eaters, the meat eaters fumble and don't know how to answer.
I think this is what happens.
That is, why people eat meat in-spite of knowing it's a cruel process.