How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by LuckyR »

Consul wrote: September 20th, 2022, 3:55 pm
Consul wrote: September 20th, 2022, 3:48 pmSo you think there are different degrees of moral wrongness (or rightness).…
Even if there are, the doing of something which is "half-wrong" is still binary in the sense that you cannot "half-do" anything: You either do it or you don't, because there is no third possibility.
That depends entirely on the timing of when "anything" is defined. If it is defined first, then performing half of the definition is "half-doing" it. OTOH, if the action is performed first then regardless of whether what is performed is a whole or half measure of this or that definition is immaterial, the action is either done or not done, in this case, the former.
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Post by Ecurb »

Pattern-chaser wrote: September 20th, 2022, 10:17 am
Pattern-chaser wrote: September 19th, 2022, 12:52 pm I think you're missing the core proverb/saying: "the lesser of two evils". Or maybe more than two. In the real world, we often need to balance one good thing against another, or one bad thing against another, or one neutral thing against... Any combination you can think of.

Justifiable does not mean "not morally wrong", it means, er, justifiable: capable of justification.
GE Morton wrote: September 19th, 2022, 1:44 pm That is obviously circular.
Yes, of course it is, because I hadn't done the web-searching for confirmation. Now I have submitted myself to that tedium:

Justify

American Heritage Dictionary — To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid.
Cambridge dictionary — to give or to be a good reason for.
Dictionary.com — to show (an act, claim, statement, etc.) to be just or right; to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded.

So justification is broader than just (😋) justice, according to these definitions. It also includes validation and confirmation. And so "justifiable" does not mean "not morally wrong". It refers to being right in a moral sense, or in a logical and reasonable sense. And let's not forget the distinction between "not-wrong" and "right". "Not-wrong" also includes the middle ground between right and wrong.
In normal usage nobody seeks to morally "justify" giving alms to the poor, saving a drowning child, or loving babies and puppy dogs. Instead, people seek "justification" for behavior which might normally be considered immoral were it not for mitigating circumstances. Shooting someone is normally wicked; self-defense or righteous warfare offers a justification.

This is obvious, but nobody seems to be pointing it out. "Justifiable" means morally correct because of unusual circumstances (the way the word is normally used).
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by GE Morton »

Pattern-chaser wrote: September 20th, 2022, 10:17 am
Justify

American Heritage Dictionary — To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid.
Cambridge dictionary — to give or to be a good reason for.
Dictionary.com — to show (an act, claim, statement, etc.) to be just or right; to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded.

So justification is broader than just (😋) justice, according to these definitions. It also includes validation and confirmation. And so "justifiable" does not mean "not morally wrong". It refers to being right in a moral sense, or in a logical and reasonable sense. And let's not forget the distinction between "not-wrong" and "right". "Not-wrong" also includes the middle ground between right and wrong.
You seem to be pointing out there that "justify" has non-moral meanings. Yes, it does --- e.g., we can say the conclusion of an argument is justified if it follows logically from the premises, or that a proposition is justified if its truth is confirmable. But those non-moral uses are irrelevant to the issue at hand. To say that an act is "morally justified" is just to say that it is not morally wrong.

Nor is there any "middle ground" between morally wrong or right. Choosing the lesser of two evils is always morally right. "Morally right" doesn't mean "morally ideal."
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

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It's morally wrong to kill animals for food too, when there are abundant vegetarian alternatives. Yet we deem an entire animal's life less important than our very transient eating pleasure.

I'm not sure we need to be all that fussy about morality, because we are already significantly flawed in too many ways to list. There are some basics that need no reiteration, of which we all have a shared understanding. The rest is up for grabs, more a matter of strategy than morality, as per the discussion here weighing the relative benefits of regulating the psychological vandalism of homophobic cruelty, or not. The more potent approaches at this point tend to rest on strategising for the wellbeing of broader society since you can't save everyone.

Whatever, many will continue to attend the circuses and eat the scraps of bread tossed to them by the powers-that-be to distract from their backroom deals.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by GE Morton »

Pattern-chaser wrote: September 20th, 2022, 10:24 am
In a given situation, it may be that the course of action that is least wrong is the best choice available, morally speaking. The real world is rarely as simple as black-and-white 'rules' indicate. So, for example, it is wrong to kill in self-defence, but any other course of action would (usually, in real life) be more wrong. The lesser of two evils, as I said.
You seem to be conflating "least evil" with "least wrong." "Evils" are non-moral; they are simply events we consider harmful or undesirable for some other reason. Only acts of moral agents are morally right or wrong. An act which results in the least evil among the available choices is the morally right action, it is not wrong or "partly" wrong because it results in some evil.
Killing in self-defence is morally justifiable, but it remains morally wrong.
That is not true either. Killing per se is neither right nor wrong; it is non-moral. If a bobcat kills a rabbit no moral wrong has been committed. Humans killing other humans is only morally wrong if the killing is not justified.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by Consul »

LuckyR wrote: September 20th, 2022, 5:58 pm
Consul wrote: September 20th, 2022, 3:55 pmEven if there are, the doing of something which is "half-wrong" is still binary in the sense that you cannot "half-do" anything: You either do it or you don't, because there is no third possibility.
That depends entirely on the timing of when "anything" is defined. If it is defined first, then performing half of the definition is "half-doing" it. OTOH, if the action is performed first then regardless of whether what is performed is a whole or half measure of this or that definition is immaterial, the action is either done or not done, in this case, the former.
I can certainly half-clean my bike in the sense of cleaning it partly or incompletely, but this is not what I mean by "to half-do sth" here. If something is morally wrong, then I ought not to do it; but what ought I to do if something is morally "half-wrong", given that I cannot "half-do" anything in the contradictory sense of both doing and not doing it?
The believer in degrees of moral wrongness can argue that violent self-defense and non-self-defense are both morally wrong, but the former is less morally wrong than the latter; so I ought to defend myself violently (if necessary). However, if I ought to do so, then it is permissible for me to do so; so why isn't its degree of moral wrongness zero?
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by Consul »

Consul wrote: September 20th, 2022, 10:32 pm … If something is morally wrong, then I ought not to do it…
Well, there are exceptions to the rule. For example, generally speaking, lying is morally wrong; but there are exceptional situations where it is not—where I ought not to tell the truth, because doing so would have undesirable consequences (for myself or someone else).
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by LuckyR »

Consul wrote: September 20th, 2022, 10:32 pm
LuckyR wrote: September 20th, 2022, 5:58 pm
Consul wrote: September 20th, 2022, 3:55 pmEven if there are, the doing of something which is "half-wrong" is still binary in the sense that you cannot "half-do" anything: You either do it or you don't, because there is no third possibility.
That depends entirely on the timing of when "anything" is defined. If it is defined first, then performing half of the definition is "half-doing" it. OTOH, if the action is performed first then regardless of whether what is performed is a whole or half measure of this or that definition is immaterial, the action is either done or not done, in this case, the former.
I can certainly half-clean my bike in the sense of cleaning it partly or incompletely, but this is not what I mean by "to half-do sth" here. If something is morally wrong, then I ought not to do it; but what ought I to do if something is morally "half-wrong", given that I cannot "half-do" anything in the contradictory sense of both doing and not doing it?
The believer in degrees of moral wrongness can argue that violent self-defense and non-self-defense are both morally wrong, but the former is less morally wrong than the latter; so I ought to defend myself violently (if necessary). However, if I ought to do so, then it is permissible for me to do so; so why isn't its degree of moral wrongness zero?
I get it. Again a question of timing. Various actions may or may not violate one's moral code... in theory, when viewed ahead of time. But at the moment of decision making, a choice deemed to be mildly immoral may be the best practical choice given the particular constraints of specific circumstances, and thus the best moral choice, ie not immoral.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Pattern-chaser wrote: September 20th, 2022, 10:24 amIn a given situation, it may be that the course of action that is least wrong is the best choice available, morally speaking. The real world is rarely as simple as black-and-white 'rules' indicate. So, for example, it is wrong to kill in self-defence, but any other course of action would (usually, in real life) be more wrong. The lesser of two evils, as I said.

Killing in self-defence is morally justifiable, but it remains morally wrong.
Consul wrote: September 20th, 2022, 3:48 pm So you think there are different degrees of moral wrongness (or rightness). [Even if there are, the doing of something which is "half-wrong" is still binary in the sense that you cannot "half-do" anything: You either do it or you don't, because there is no third possibility.]
Morality, in this context, is judgement. And yes, of course there is a spectrum here between right and wrong. It is not as (morally) wrong to tear my homework up as it is to kill me. Real-world moral judgements are nuanced, and definitely refer to a spectrum whose extremes are "right" and "wrong". And, like most/all such real-world matters, most cases lie somewhere near the middle, far away from the binary-seeming extremes.


Consul wrote: September 20th, 2022, 3:48 pm Assuming you are right, the problem still is that any action with a low degree of moral wrongness is morally wrong all the same; so you ought not to do it, which means that you ought not to hurt an attacker in self-defense. But I don't think it is obligatory for you not to do so, because it is permissible for you to do so. You ought not to exert more violence than necessary in order to prevent the attacker from hurting or even killing you; but in case the attacker does get hurt or even killed, I am not morally responsible for it as long as I act in justified self-defense.
I think I agree with all of this, except its final conclusion. You are responsible, morally and otherwise, for your actions, whatever the circumstances. This has to be part of the bedrock of our thinking here, I think? In the case of your example, I agree that, if we protect ourselves, with the minimum of harm to the aggressor, we have done the best we can; we have approached 'rightness' as closely as we can. We have done that which is morally wrong, but acting in any other way would have been a greater wrong. In the real world, no reasonable person would or could expect more from us than that. Sometimes wrong action is not practically avoidable; we all know that, based on our own real-life experience.

It's not about doing the right thing, it's more about doing the 'rightest' thing.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

GE Morton wrote: September 20th, 2022, 8:00 pm Nor is there any "middle ground" between morally wrong or right. Choosing the lesser of two evils is always morally right. "Morally right" doesn't mean "morally ideal."
🤣

If there is such a thing as "the lesser of two evils", then there must be a spectrum of evilness (which presumably also includes goodness).

Choosing the lesser of two evils is always morally preferable, but it can never be (morally) right.

Real-world judgements are not subject to this binary nit-picking. They aren't black and white. They're always, in a real-world situation, some shade of grey. There is no binary choice here; the real world is very rarely that simple.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

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Pattern-chaser wrote: September 20th, 2022, 10:24 am In a given situation, it may be that the course of action that is least wrong is the best choice available, morally speaking. The real world is rarely as simple as black-and-white 'rules' indicate. So, for example, it is wrong to kill in self-defence, but any other course of action would (usually, in real life) be more wrong. The lesser of two evils, as I said.
GE Morton wrote: September 20th, 2022, 8:18 pm You seem to be conflating "least evil" with "least wrong."
Yes, indeed, as we all do. When we get into morals — a philosophical minefield if there ever was one! 😉 — we equate "wrong" and "evil", even though both terms are vague and ill-defined. Morality is vague and ill-defined. That's partly why moral decisions are so difficult.


GE Morton wrote: September 20th, 2022, 8:18 pm An act which results in the least evil among the available choices is the morally right action, it is not wrong or "partly" wrong because it results in some evil.
To do evil is to act (morally) wrongly. You seek to excuse your own evil by word-play and nit-picking. You pretend that right and wrong is a binary thing, when a brief period of real world observation demonstrates your incorrectness. You pretend that taking the least-wrong option absolves you from the guilt of acting wrongly. It doesn't. How could it? Are there get-out-of-jail-free cards in the real world? No, there are not.


Pattern-chaser wrote: September 20th, 2022, 10:24 am Killing in self-defence is morally justifiable, but it remains morally wrong.
GE Morton wrote: September 20th, 2022, 8:18 pm That is not true either. Killing per se is neither right nor wrong; it is non-moral. If a bobcat kills a rabbit no moral wrong has been committed. Humans killing other humans is only morally wrong if the killing is not justified.
Here we are discussing morality, a human invention. A bobcat cannot act immorally, because it isn't human, and is not bound by our nonsensical and arbitrary ideas of morality.

We invent morality, then we act immorally toward one another to punish breaches of morality. We believe ourselves to be 'in the right' when we try to force other humans to act according to what we consider to be morally right. There is no logic here, or rationality, but only human nature and human behaviour.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by GE Morton »

Pattern-chaser wrote: September 21st, 2022, 8:19 am
GE Morton wrote: September 20th, 2022, 8:00 pm Nor is there any "middle ground" between morally wrong or right. Choosing the lesser of two evils is always morally right. "Morally right" doesn't mean "morally ideal."
🤣

If there is such a thing as "the lesser of two evils", then there must be a spectrum of evilness (which presumably also includes goodness).
Yes, there is. But there is no spectrum in the rightness or wrongness of an act. The act which, given the options available, yields the least evil is the right one.
Real-world judgements are not subject to this binary nit-picking. They aren't black and white. They're always, in a real-world situation, some shade of grey. There is no binary choice here; the real world is very rarely that simple.
Sorry, but the choice regarding an act is always binary --- you either do it or you don't. If choice Y among XYZ yields the least evil, you either do Y or you don't. If you do you've acted rightly. If you choose X or Z, or do nothing, you've acted wrongly.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by GE Morton »

Pattern-chaser wrote: September 21st, 2022, 8:37 am
To do evil is to act (morally) wrongly.
Nope. When all available choices will result in some evil, you only act wrongly if you fail to choose the act yielding the least evil.
You pretend that right and wrong is a binary thing, when a brief period of real world observation demonstrates your incorrectness. You pretend that taking the least-wrong option absolves you from the guilt of acting wrongly.
Huh? Of what observations are you speaking?
GE Morton wrote: September 20th, 2022, 8:18 pm That is not true either. Killing per se is neither right nor wrong; it is non-moral. If a bobcat kills a rabbit no moral wrong has been committed. Humans killing other humans is only morally wrong if the killing is not justified.
Here we are discussing morality, a human invention. A bobcat cannot act immorally, because it isn't human, and is not bound by our nonsensical and arbitrary ideas of morality.
Exactly right! Hence killing per se is not morally wrong. Humans killing other humans is not necessarily wrong either. It is not wrong if necessary to prevent a greater evil, e.g., if a cop kills a man engaged in shooting kids in a school.

Moralities are sets of rules whose aim is promoting welfare, and minimizing loss of welfare. An act is morally right when, among the options available, it best serves that goal.
We invent morality, then we act immorally toward one another to punish breaches of morality. We believe ourselves to be 'in the right' when we try to force other humans to act according to what we consider to be morally right. There is no logic here, or rationality, but only human nature and human behaviour.
A "morality" which is not rational is non-moral, and often immoral.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by Ecurb »

GE Morton wrote: September 21st, 2022, 11:26 am

Yes, there is. But there is no spectrum in the rightness or wrongness of an act. The act which, given the options available, yields the least evil is the right one.....

Nope. When all available choices will result in some evil, you only act wrongly if you fail to choose the act yielding the least evil.

This is an example of what I see as an overly negative philosophy. Why is the act that "yields the least evil" the right one? Why not the act that produces the most good?

I can think of dozens of examples in which acts that produce good also produce harm. Falling in love is wonderful -- but in the end, tragic. The beloved dies, or leaves. We could lessen the "yield" of evil by protecting our foolish hearts, but we would also limit our joy.
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Re: How May Human Sexuality Be Understood in Religion, Politics, and Philosophically, In The Twentieth First Century?

Post by GE Morton »

Ecurb wrote: September 21st, 2022, 12:12 pm
This is an example of what I see as an overly negative philosophy. Why is the act that "yields the least evil" the right one? Why not the act that produces the most good?
That too. I've only been mentioning evils because this sidetrack began with PC's "lesser of two evils" argument.

It should be noted, of course, that determining which of several possible actions will yield the least evil or most good is not always easy.
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