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So are you the kind of person who says we shouldn't try to apply objective moral/ethical standards to other cultures in the present age? I submit that there's

So are you the kind of person who says we shouldn't try to apply objective moral/ethical standards to other cultures in the present age? I submit that there's a much greater cultural distance from modern England to modern Pashtun Afghanistan than to England of fifty years ago. Would you say that we should withhold judgement when an Afghan woman is beaten or murdered for leaving her house alone? You say that Jefferson was "doing his best". I think you chose Jefferson to make such a statement as easy as possible for yourself. I don't believe that the people most responsible for Turing's fate were "doing their best". I think they knew they were doing something wrong. I think that the Taliban know that blowing up girls' schools (and the girls) is wrong. This is why I say you lack a common moral foundation with supporter of an official apology to Turing. I say that it's wrong, always and everywhere, for a man to be hounded to suicide for his sexual orientation. If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future? (that's largely a rhetorical question; I'm well aware that there have been two millennia of debate over absolute ethics, but for me this issue is clear as day). EDIT: Grammar-- damn this vanity.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
So are you the kind of person who says we shouldn't try to apply objective moral/ethical standards to other cultures in the present age? I think you've reached exactly the opposite conclusion from what I am trying to say. I'm saying that we have a obligation to apply our standards as a group to other cultures in the present age -- much more so than to people who aren't around to defend themselves. If you believe that Jefferson knew he was wrong then I envy you -- you live in an age where you understand what is truly moral and those in ages past did not. It must feel good (and I'm only being a bit sarcastic here) to feel so free of ambiguity and nuance when it comes to reviewing other people's lives. If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future? If you truly are interested in preventing immoral things from happening in the future, wouldn't your best course of action be to identify and confront those things you find immoral in the present day that nobody does anything about? Why go beating up folks who aren't around? There's so much actual bad stuff, does it make you feel better to lionize Turing and demonize his tormentors than to actually stand up against, say, the violence against Tibetians? Or slavery in the Arab world? Or genital mutilation in Africa? When you start dealing with modern morals, you find that it gets tricky very quickly: to make a difference you have to navigate all of this stuff between you and effective action. Yet to deal with some historical injustice it's very easy: find the good guy, find the bad guy, and make some kind of symbolic statement. Odd that you can't see that the very difficulties you face today in being moral were also faced by those in the past. No matter how right or wrong you are about things, unless you're actually changing something it's all so much whining. Turing is a good example of somebody we can rally around and feel good about supporting -- he had a great mind and was treated terribly. But our reaction is all just so much fluff. It's modern morals: change your lightbulbs to CFI, write a check to a charity and leave the heavy-lifting to somebody else. Just not my cup of tea. I think if they want to Knight the guy that's a completely different thing, and it sounds like a great idea. Just not so much the navel-gazing and symbolic and empty self-flaggelation.
- nate_meurer 17y ago
  Jefferson absolutely did know that slavery was wrong, and he wasn't shy about saying it, or writing it into legislation-- see his first draft of the Northwest Ordinance for a good example. I'm not getting a real strong moral-relativism vibe from you. I mostly perceive apathy.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    I was arguing -- and continue to argue -- for empathy, but if all you can see is apathy I'll take it. I'd rather be dispassionately interested than a member of the mob-of-the-day club.
randallsquared 17y ago
I think that the Taliban know that blowing up girls' schools (and the girls) is wrong. I would totally disagree with this. Unfortunately, I think that this assumption that those who are against us "really" believe as we do and are deliberately acting in a way they know is wrong is terribly corrosive to finding solutions; it implies both that we need not sincerely explain ourselves to "the bad guys", and simultaneously, that they can be convinced to stop doing bad things if we shine a light on the things they're doing, since it's assumed that they're really feeling guilty and don't believe the things they say. You cannot shame a person into behaving properly if they believe they are already behaving properly.
- nm2 17y ago
  What? Are you kidding me? This may be something that we won't agree on, but I chose that extreme example for a reason. Can you honestly say, with a straight face, that you believe these people think that killing innocent schoolgirls is good? And I'm not talking about the ends-justify-the-means kind of good, but rather objective good.. Do you really think that? If so, then what exactly what are we supposed to "explain" to them, and why would you imagine that they can be reckoned with at all? Wouldn't that make them, sort of, oh I don't know... totally frickin' evil to the core? How does it benefit us to assume that about our enemies? Besides, the evidence is against you here. When the Taliban announced last month that are now devoting themselves to protecting civilians, I can't imagine that their embrace of the PR value is completely detached from reality. BTW - This is still nate_meurer... I can't login from my home for some reason, thus the new account. Also BTW - Yes, I am equating the folks who hounded Turing to this death with the Taliban.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    They don't even claim to believe that killing innocent schoolgirls is objective good, so that's a total straw man. Obviously, the ones who believe (and I'm not saying all of them do, of course), believe that protecting innocent people is good, and killing evil people is good, and so on. In some cases, they and we would disagree on what "innocent" entails. I would say that at least some of the Taliban are evil, sure. Does that mean they can't change, or that they can't be reasoned with, or at least intimidated into not harming people? No, though that might be the case with some. I dunno. How does it benefit us to assume that about our enemies? Seeing your enemies as they are can only help, as far as I can see. Assuming that they really believe what you do, but for some reason have acted as though they don't -- well, I don't think that's going to be very helpful in predicting their future actions.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

So are you the kind of person who says we shouldn't try to apply objective moral/ethical standards to other cultures in the present age? I think you've reached exactly the opposite conclusion from what I am trying to say. I'm saying that we have a obligation to apply our standards as a group to other cultures in the present age -- much more so than to people who aren't around to defend themselves. If you believe that Jefferson knew he was wrong then I envy you -- you live in an age where you understand what is truly moral and those in ages past did not. It must feel good (and I'm only being a bit sarcastic here) to feel so free of ambiguity and nuance when it comes to reviewing other people's lives. If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future? If you truly are interested in preventing immoral things from happening in the future, wouldn't your best course of action be to identify and confront those things you find immoral in the present day that nobody does anything about? Why go beating up folks who aren't around? There's so much actual bad stuff, does it make you feel better to lionize Turing and demonize his tormentors than to actually stand up against, say, the violence against Tibetians? Or slavery in the Arab world? Or genital mutilation in Africa? When you start dealing with modern morals, you find that it gets tricky very quickly: to make a difference you have to navigate all of this stuff between you and effective action. Yet to deal with some historical injustice it's very easy: find the good guy, find the bad guy, and make some kind of symbolic statement. Odd that you can't see that the very difficulties you face today in being moral were also faced by those in the past. No matter how right or wrong you are about things, unless you're actually changing something it's all so much whining. Turing is a good example of somebody we can rally around and feel good about supporting -- he had a great mind and was treated terribly. But our reaction is all just so much fluff. It's modern morals: change your lightbulbs to CFI, write a check to a charity and leave the heavy-lifting to somebody else. Just not my cup of tea. I think if they want to Knight the guy that's a completely different thing, and it sounds like a great idea. Just not so much the navel-gazing and symbolic and empty self-flaggelation.

nate_meurer 17y ago
Jefferson absolutely did know that slavery was wrong, and he wasn't shy about saying it, or writing it into legislation-- see his first draft of the Northwest Ordinance for a good example. I'm not getting a real strong moral-relativism vibe from you. I mostly perceive apathy.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  I was arguing -- and continue to argue -- for empathy, but if all you can see is apathy I'll take it. I'd rather be dispassionately interested than a member of the mob-of-the-day club.

randallsquared 17y ago

I think that the Taliban know that blowing up girls' schools (and the girls) is wrong. I would totally disagree with this. Unfortunately, I think that this assumption that those who are against us "really" believe as we do and are deliberately acting in a way they know is wrong is terribly corrosive to finding solutions; it implies both that we need not sincerely explain ourselves to "the bad guys", and simultaneously, that they can be convinced to stop doing bad things if we shine a light on the things they're doing, since it's assumed that they're really feeling guilty and don't believe the things they say. You cannot shame a person into behaving properly if they believe they are already behaving properly.

nm2 17y ago
What? Are you kidding me? This may be something that we won't agree on, but I chose that extreme example for a reason. Can you honestly say, with a straight face, that you believe these people think that killing innocent schoolgirls is good? And I'm not talking about the ends-justify-the-means kind of good, but rather objective good.. Do you really think that? If so, then what exactly what are we supposed to "explain" to them, and why would you imagine that they can be reckoned with at all? Wouldn't that make them, sort of, oh I don't know... totally frickin' evil to the core? How does it benefit us to assume that about our enemies? Besides, the evidence is against you here. When the Taliban announced last month that are now devoting themselves to protecting civilians, I can't imagine that their embrace of the PR value is completely detached from reality. BTW - This is still nate_meurer... I can't login from my home for some reason, thus the new account. Also BTW - Yes, I am equating the folks who hounded Turing to this death with the Taliban.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  They don't even claim to believe that killing innocent schoolgirls is objective good, so that's a total straw man. Obviously, the ones who believe (and I'm not saying all of them do, of course), believe that protecting innocent people is good, and killing evil people is good, and so on. In some cases, they and we would disagree on what "innocent" entails. I would say that at least some of the Taliban are evil, sure. Does that mean they can't change, or that they can't be reasoned with, or at least intimidated into not harming people? No, though that might be the case with some. I dunno. How does it benefit us to assume that about our enemies? Seeing your enemies as they are can only help, as far as I can see. Assuming that they really believe what you do, but for some reason have acted as though they don't -- well, I don't think that's going to be very helpful in predicting their future actions.