11 ms·

I think the big similarity is the tortuous killing of innocents to stop the wrongdoing of governments over which they have almost no control.

danielam 7y ago
Yes. Morally, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unjustified and evil. To say so is not to deny the evil of other bombing and destruction campaigns. The old claim that it was the only way to end the war is a utilitarian/consequentialist claim that misses the point which is that evil means cannot be used to accomplish good ends.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  I don't know how you can sidestep the question of whether we could have won the war with less hardship. It isn't missing the point it IS a really important point. Any more complex ethical framework is inevitably only ethical in anyone's judgement until such time as it leads to a bad enough effect that nobody would countenance. For example bombing cities is a horror whether its with nuclear or conventional weapons. If you could reliably predict that refraining from such unethical behavior would lead to an allied loss would you say that it remained the ethical choice knowing that it led to a greater evil end result? I would say that any strategy however ethical that led to a Nazi/Imperial Japanese empire across the world would have been an unforgivable evil no matter how high minded. Logically there is no just reason to desire the suffering of the Japanese people. A solution that also preserved the lives of the Japanese people would be most ethical but what if you have to pick? Even if the end result is not on net evil like Nazi domination of the globe those whose responsibility is the lives of say the English people seem duty bound to consider the needs of their charges over a foreign power. Is this not ethical too? How does that interact with your ethical framework or utilitarians? It seems more apt to suppose that a grand unified theory of ethics just doesn't exist. Its always more complicated than you think. It seems that in some cases refusing to sacrifice your personal ethics to prevent greater evil would itself be evil. Shitty right.
  - danielam 7y ago
    I'm not sidestepping the question. I'm claiming that the question is irrelevant because EVEN IF we knew that the war would have been shortened, fewer lives would have been lost, etc, etc, the committing of an evil action for a good end is NEVER justified. If you want a name for the principle behind this moral judgement, I refer you to the doctrine of double effect. The last bit is, frankly, nonsense. If sound moral judgement is how one determines what is good or evil, then how does the suspension of that moral judgement (what you quaintly and confusingly refer to as "sacrific[ing] your personal ethics") allow you to judge which evil is greater, or what is evil in the first place?
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      > I'm not sidestepping the question. I'm claiming that the question is irrelevant because EVEN IF we knew that the war would have been shortened, fewer lives would have been lost, etc, etc, the committing of an evil action for a good end is NEVER justified. If you want a name for the principle behind this moral judgement, I refer you to the doctrine of double effect. And we're claiming that you're wrong. The doctrine of double effect is not the be-all and end-all of ethical thinking, either among theoretical ethicists nor among people wrestling with an ethical dilemma. You seem to think that dogmatically stating your position proves the point. It doesn't. [Edit: On re-reading, you stated that this is what you are claiming, not that this is true, so I was a bit harsh. You may have gotten some spill-over from a completely different topic, where a completely different poster was stating the conclusions of a non-mainstream theory as if merely stating them clinched the matter. It's a bit unfair to you that you get the shorter fuse for someone doing that, when you aren't quite doing so.]
      - danielam 7y ago
        Not at all. From the fact that I made an assertion, as everyone here does, it does not follow that I was under any special obligation to defend the principle in question. Contradicting my assertion with incoherent counterclaims and false assertions accomplishes nothing. Same for presumptuously guessing what I “seem to think”. FWIW, natural law theory (from which the principle is drawn), is, at the VERY least, very defensible.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
refurb 7y ago
The Japanese population was largely prepared to fight to the death against any invasion. The emperor derives his power from the will of the populous. Saying they have zero control over their govt or the situation is overstating things.
- JasonFruit 7y ago
  I could see, "the Parliament/President/other elected official derives his power from the will of the populace," but the Emperor? An emperor derives his power from his ability to impose it on others. In fact, so does the elected official; just because people have voted for the one they mind the least doesn't mean they consent to any of the bums.
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    The Japanese were heavily indoctrinated to view the Emperor as their god-king. That was one reason the occupation went so well, because when MacArthur took over, the Japanese generally treated him as a god-king, which made his policies much easier to implement. https://books.google.com/books?id=iuA-ZOCpTfIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT431#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=iuA-ZOCpTfIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT...
- krapp 7y ago
  > The Japanese population was largely prepared to fight to the death against any invasion. The Japanese military was, clearly since they went so far as to attempt a coup against the emperor to prevent his surrender[0]. I don't know that the Japanese population at large shared the same sentiment by the end of the war. They didn't exactly fight to the death as expected during the occupation. >The emperor derives his power from the will of the populous. That interpretation would seem to come from the modern, postwar Japanese constitution, in which the emperor is just a figurehead without real power. At the time, however, the emperor derived power from a claim of divine lineage from the sun goddess Amaterasu. >Saying they have zero control over their govt or the situation is overstating things. Not by much. The whole country was essentially a military dictatorship run by a religious cult overseen by a god-king. Common people tend not to have much influence over the policies of such regimes. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

danielam 7y ago

Yes. Morally, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unjustified and evil. To say so is not to deny the evil of other bombing and destruction campaigns. The old claim that it was the only way to end the war is a utilitarian/consequentialist claim that misses the point which is that evil means cannot be used to accomplish good ends.

michaelmrose 7y ago
I don't know how you can sidestep the question of whether we could have won the war with less hardship. It isn't missing the point it IS a really important point. Any more complex ethical framework is inevitably only ethical in anyone's judgement until such time as it leads to a bad enough effect that nobody would countenance. For example bombing cities is a horror whether its with nuclear or conventional weapons. If you could reliably predict that refraining from such unethical behavior would lead to an allied loss would you say that it remained the ethical choice knowing that it led to a greater evil end result? I would say that any strategy however ethical that led to a Nazi/Imperial Japanese empire across the world would have been an unforgivable evil no matter how high minded. Logically there is no just reason to desire the suffering of the Japanese people. A solution that also preserved the lives of the Japanese people would be most ethical but what if you have to pick? Even if the end result is not on net evil like Nazi domination of the globe those whose responsibility is the lives of say the English people seem duty bound to consider the needs of their charges over a foreign power. Is this not ethical too? How does that interact with your ethical framework or utilitarians? It seems more apt to suppose that a grand unified theory of ethics just doesn't exist. Its always more complicated than you think. It seems that in some cases refusing to sacrifice your personal ethics to prevent greater evil would itself be evil. Shitty right.
- danielam 7y ago
  I'm not sidestepping the question. I'm claiming that the question is irrelevant because EVEN IF we knew that the war would have been shortened, fewer lives would have been lost, etc, etc, the committing of an evil action for a good end is NEVER justified. If you want a name for the principle behind this moral judgement, I refer you to the doctrine of double effect. The last bit is, frankly, nonsense. If sound moral judgement is how one determines what is good or evil, then how does the suspension of that moral judgement (what you quaintly and confusingly refer to as "sacrific[ing] your personal ethics") allow you to judge which evil is greater, or what is evil in the first place?
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    > I'm not sidestepping the question. I'm claiming that the question is irrelevant because EVEN IF we knew that the war would have been shortened, fewer lives would have been lost, etc, etc, the committing of an evil action for a good end is NEVER justified. If you want a name for the principle behind this moral judgement, I refer you to the doctrine of double effect. And we're claiming that you're wrong. The doctrine of double effect is not the be-all and end-all of ethical thinking, either among theoretical ethicists nor among people wrestling with an ethical dilemma. You seem to think that dogmatically stating your position proves the point. It doesn't. [Edit: On re-reading, you stated that this is what you are claiming, not that this is true, so I was a bit harsh. You may have gotten some spill-over from a completely different topic, where a completely different poster was stating the conclusions of a non-mainstream theory as if merely stating them clinched the matter. It's a bit unfair to you that you get the shorter fuse for someone doing that, when you aren't quite doing so.]
    - danielam 7y ago
      Not at all. From the fact that I made an assertion, as everyone here does, it does not follow that I was under any special obligation to defend the principle in question. Contradicting my assertion with incoherent counterclaims and false assertions accomplishes nothing. Same for presumptuously guessing what I “seem to think”. FWIW, natural law theory (from which the principle is drawn), is, at the VERY least, very defensible.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

refurb 7y ago

The Japanese population was largely prepared to fight to the death against any invasion. The emperor derives his power from the will of the populous. Saying they have zero control over their govt or the situation is overstating things.

JasonFruit 7y ago
I could see, "the Parliament/President/other elected official derives his power from the will of the populace," but the Emperor? An emperor derives his power from his ability to impose it on others. In fact, so does the elected official; just because people have voted for the one they mind the least doesn't mean they consent to any of the bums.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  The Japanese were heavily indoctrinated to view the Emperor as their god-king. That was one reason the occupation went so well, because when MacArthur took over, the Japanese generally treated him as a god-king, which made his policies much easier to implement. https://books.google.com/books?id=iuA-ZOCpTfIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT431#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=iuA-ZOCpTfIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT...
krapp 7y ago
> The Japanese population was largely prepared to fight to the death against any invasion. The Japanese military was, clearly since they went so far as to attempt a coup against the emperor to prevent his surrender[0]. I don't know that the Japanese population at large shared the same sentiment by the end of the war. They didn't exactly fight to the death as expected during the occupation. >The emperor derives his power from the will of the populous. That interpretation would seem to come from the modern, postwar Japanese constitution, in which the emperor is just a figurehead without real power. At the time, however, the emperor derived power from a claim of divine lineage from the sun goddess Amaterasu. >Saying they have zero control over their govt or the situation is overstating things. Not by much. The whole country was essentially a military dictatorship run by a religious cult overseen by a god-king. Common people tend not to have much influence over the policies of such regimes. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident