7 ms·

I think we're getting way off topic, but anyway: 1. It's my understanding of the present state of affairs in most countries. Apart from religious law, it is ra

by kijin 13y ago

I think we're getting way off topic, but anyway: 1. It's my understanding of the present state of affairs in most countries. Apart from religious law, it is rare for criminal statutes to include a clause like "No person shall murder another." People do tend to interpret "Murderers shall be put in prison" as "Thou shalt not murder", but IMO the latter is an assumption behind the law, not its content. All the lawmakers already assume that murder is wrong. The law's job is to decide how to discourage murders, what to do when murder happens, etc. 2. The set of objective moral imperatives that exist at all times and places, and their application in particular circumstances, should exhaust the set of all the moral imperatives that we are ever obliged to obey. By "all times and place" I mean "even in times and places where the state does not exist", because that's the condition in which humans lived for the majority of their existence on Earth. So I don't think it even makes sense for there to be a moral imperative that only exists in certain circumstances (e.g. the state) unless it is an application of an all-times-and-places moral imperative. But I cannot seem to find an all-times-and-places moral imperative that could be applied in such a way as to justify obedience to the laws of a state just because they are the laws of a state. 3. Bad example. What makes you think it is morally permissible to steal something just because the owner had obtained it immorally? (Two wrongs don't make a right, etc.)

foldr 13y ago
>It's my understanding of the present state of affairs in most countries. My understanding is that there are laws against murder in most countries. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? This is a rather surprising claim. I don't see anything to back it up in the Wikipedia article on Murder in English common law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_English_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_English_law >So I don't think it even makes sense for there to be a moral imperative that only exists in certain circumstances Why not? Ethical situationism certainly makes sense, even if you don't agree with it. In any case, you can just assume that there is a conditional moral imperative to obey the laws if there are any, in which case this imperative could perfectly well have been valid throughout human history. Most moral imperatives presuppose the existence of things which don't necessarily exist. E.g., "don't steal" presupposes the existence of property. >What makes you think it is morally permissible to steal something just because the owner had obtained it immorally? If he obtained it immorally then in what sense does he "own" it? At most in a legal sense. But that shouldn't matter to you.
- kijin 13y ago
  > Wiki link to Murder_in_English_law All I see is an RFC that (a) defines what counts as "murder" and (b) specifies what protocols the government should follow when murder occurs. AFAIK it doesn't contain any sentence to the effect of "persons MUST NOT commit murder", not even anything that amounts to "persons SHALL NOT commit murder". So I stand by my claim that such a prohibition is an assumption behind the law, not the content of the law. The Ten Commandments, on the other hand, definitely includes the clause "persons MUST NOT commit murder". So do a lot of other religious texts. The idea that criminal law is comprised of a set of prohibitions, IMO, is a sticky residue from the days of theocracy when people thought there was a big guy in the sky who went around issuing explicit prohibitions. > a conditional moral imperative to obey the laws if there are any I accept that ethics may differ in different situations, but only to the extent that general imperatives allow. Every conditional moral imperative (hypothetical imperative according to Kant) is an application of a general moral imperative (categorical imperative according to Kant). Therefore the proxy analogy still holds, and I don't see any general moral imperative that can lead to the conclusion that I should obey whatever 51% of an arbitrarily delimited group of people say I should. The closest you can get is that the majority is likely to be right, but empirically, that's a rather questionable assumption. In my view there is no general moral imperative not to steal. That presupposes the concept of ownership, which, as you said, is problematic. Rather, I think there is a moral imperative to refrain from depriving people of things they hold dear, which is itself an application of the general moral imperative to respect individual human beings.
  - foldr 13y ago
    > [murder] Again, you are making a bizarre claim (that laws against murder do not constitute requirements that people should not commit murder) and provide nothing to back this up. You need to show that this is actually how laws are interpreted by the judiciary, not just give your own amateur legal opinion. > Every conditional moral imperative...is an application of a general moral imperative (categorical imperative according to Kant). That's not what I mean. I'm talking about a general moral imperative whose logical form is that of a conditional sentence. E.g. "If your society has laws, obey them." There is actually no such thing as a "conditional imperative" in Kant's system (were you thinking of hypothetical imperatives?) See the following (p. 293 first complete paragraph) for an explanation of why something with the form of a conditional sentence isn't necessarily a hypothetical imperative: http://books.google.ca/books?id=GBzrg47sxBwC&lpg=PA291&ots=tpffig6rsf&dq=kant%20%22conditional%20imperative%22&lr&pg=PA293#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.ca/books?id=GBzrg47sxBwC&lpg=PA291&ots=t... The irony here is that Kant didn't think that people had a right to break the law or rebel against the government! http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2707741?uid=3739464&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21102498034087 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2707741?uid=3739464&ui... In any case, I'm not a Kantian, so I don't really care whether his ethical theory has this consequence or not.

by kijin 13y ago

foldr 13y ago

>It's my understanding of the present state of affairs in most countries. My understanding is that there are laws against murder in most countries. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? This is a rather surprising claim. I don't see anything to back it up in the Wikipedia article on Murder in English common law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_English_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_English_law >So I don't think it even makes sense for there to be a moral imperative that only exists in certain circumstances Why not? Ethical situationism certainly makes sense, even if you don't agree with it. In any case, you can just assume that there is a conditional moral imperative to obey the laws if there are any, in which case this imperative could perfectly well have been valid throughout human history. Most moral imperatives presuppose the existence of things which don't necessarily exist. E.g., "don't steal" presupposes the existence of property. >What makes you think it is morally permissible to steal something just because the owner had obtained it immorally? If he obtained it immorally then in what sense does he "own" it? At most in a legal sense. But that shouldn't matter to you.

kijin 13y ago
> Wiki link to Murder_in_English_law All I see is an RFC that (a) defines what counts as "murder" and (b) specifies what protocols the government should follow when murder occurs. AFAIK it doesn't contain any sentence to the effect of "persons MUST NOT commit murder", not even anything that amounts to "persons SHALL NOT commit murder". So I stand by my claim that such a prohibition is an assumption behind the law, not the content of the law. The Ten Commandments, on the other hand, definitely includes the clause "persons MUST NOT commit murder". So do a lot of other religious texts. The idea that criminal law is comprised of a set of prohibitions, IMO, is a sticky residue from the days of theocracy when people thought there was a big guy in the sky who went around issuing explicit prohibitions. > a conditional moral imperative to obey the laws if there are any I accept that ethics may differ in different situations, but only to the extent that general imperatives allow. Every conditional moral imperative (hypothetical imperative according to Kant) is an application of a general moral imperative (categorical imperative according to Kant). Therefore the proxy analogy still holds, and I don't see any general moral imperative that can lead to the conclusion that I should obey whatever 51% of an arbitrarily delimited group of people say I should. The closest you can get is that the majority is likely to be right, but empirically, that's a rather questionable assumption. In my view there is no general moral imperative not to steal. That presupposes the concept of ownership, which, as you said, is problematic. Rather, I think there is a moral imperative to refrain from depriving people of things they hold dear, which is itself an application of the general moral imperative to respect individual human beings.
- foldr 13y ago
  > [murder] Again, you are making a bizarre claim (that laws against murder do not constitute requirements that people should not commit murder) and provide nothing to back this up. You need to show that this is actually how laws are interpreted by the judiciary, not just give your own amateur legal opinion. > Every conditional moral imperative...is an application of a general moral imperative (categorical imperative according to Kant). That's not what I mean. I'm talking about a general moral imperative whose logical form is that of a conditional sentence. E.g. "If your society has laws, obey them." There is actually no such thing as a "conditional imperative" in Kant's system (were you thinking of hypothetical imperatives?) See the following (p. 293 first complete paragraph) for an explanation of why something with the form of a conditional sentence isn't necessarily a hypothetical imperative: http://books.google.ca/books?id=GBzrg47sxBwC&lpg=PA291&ots=tpffig6rsf&dq=kant%20%22conditional%20imperative%22&lr&pg=PA293#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.ca/books?id=GBzrg47sxBwC&lpg=PA291&ots=t... The irony here is that Kant didn't think that people had a right to break the law or rebel against the government! http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2707741?uid=3739464&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21102498034087 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2707741?uid=3739464&ui... In any case, I'm not a Kantian, so I don't really care whether his ethical theory has this consequence or not.