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I fully agree. But still it makes a difference from a moral analysis point of view, because my aim is to condemn the buyer, and don't judge the seller. So now
by wsy 8y ago
I fully agree. But still it makes a difference from a moral analysis point of view, because my aim is to condemn the buyer, and don't judge the seller.
So now you have to convince me that buying the right to beat someone to death is a morally justifiable action. It is not sufficient for you to judge selling as justifiable to make your point. I actually agree that selling is morally justifiable, and would never vote to make this a punishable offense.
- yellowapple 8y agoLike I mentioned in another branch of this thread, if selling is allowed, then it would be immoral to not allow buying; punishing someone for buying something that's legal to sell would be entrapment. In fact, doing so might even pass that immorality down to the grandfather seeking compensation for his suicide; if he's aware of the illegality of buying his life, and yet exercises his right to sell it anyway, then at best it's a meaningless gesture and at worst he's complicit in entrapping prospective buyers. That's what I mean when I say buying and selling are intertwined. Without one, you can't have the other. If one is moral, the other must be moral as well. If one is immoral, the other must be immoral as well. Attempting to carve out an exception is inevitably going to run into all sorts of moralistic and/or logical snags.
- wsy 8y agoLet me try to repeat your argument: whenever something is morally allowed for an individual, the moral system must ensure that the individual actually can do it. This does not stand on its own, you need to provide a good argument why a moral system should be designed such that everything which is allowed can also actually be done. In particular, because our current system is not designed that way. And even if you find such an argument, we end up with a moral dilemma, as long as you can't argue that buying is morally good in itself.
- yellowapple 8y ago"whenever something is morally allowed for an individual, the moral system must ensure that the individual actually can do it" More like "whenever one of an inherently-coupled pair of actions is morally allowed, the other of those actions is morally allowed". A moral system which allows one and not the other is self-contradictory. In this case, a moral system which permits the right to sell a life but denies the right to buy a life self-contradicts; unless you believe that it's moral to trick someone into committing an immoral act (I do not), any attempt to exercise the right to sell one's own life would be inherently immoral because of the impossibility of doing so without causing someone else to perform an immoral act. The only way for the sale of one's own life to be moral is for the corresponding purchase to also be moral. "we end up with a moral dilemma" Only if you insist that buying is wrong while also insisting that selling is not wrong. When both are right or both are wrong, then there is no such self-contradiction.
- wsy 8y ago> "whenever one of an inherently-coupled pair of actions is morally allowed, the other of those actions is morally allowed". Why does that follow? I could understand it for actions you are morally obliged to do, but I fail to see why it follows for actions which are merely allowed. A 6-year old boy is allowed to fall in love with his teacher, but she is not allowed to fall in love with him, so his love - even though morally allowed - can never be fulfilled. That is a perfectly fine situation, from a moral point of view.
- yellowapple 8y agoA 6-year-old is not capable of informed consent. A 60-year-old man is.
- wsy 8y agoNow you are discussing another topic.