h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

you can't achieve moral results by immoral means
the ends don't justify the means
we all end up compromising at various times when we find there are no good choices but in general I think thats true

"you can't achieve moral results by immoral means

Illegal suveilance of criminals by the police?

The fire bombing of Dreseden?

The atomic bombing of Nagasaki?

The deposing of Sadam?

I'd say you can Blackberry I wouldnt go so far as to say the ends justify the means in such instances but I can see good coming from "immoral" actions.

The problem is that to a large degree moral/good and their polar opposites are relative for each of us.

We all have a sense we inherit learn and adapt of what is bad/immoral and their opposite but they do as this thread shows differ from person to person.

So its fairly obvious there is no universal morality.

one love

I agree with Blackberry. I think that outcomes of immoral means can be measured as "moral," but not if you take into account the amount of anger, resentment, and future immoral actions that the action has put into the world.

I don't think we have to agree on morality for there to be a universal morality (I read it as "objective" reality). Maybe I'm having a different argument from everyone else.

I agree with both of you
there are times when you're choosing the lesser of 2 evils, but a choice must be made
I think I said in my 1st post there is no universal morality, only that determined by society, but it is neccessary for society to function that morality exists

It strikes me that the whole ends and means thing is a bit of a red herring. You make your judgement based on the potential costs and benefits of the whole situation as far as you are looking at it.

the arguement against ends justifies the means is that the means used affect the end
Bolshevik dictatorship was a means to achieve socialism
obviously it didn't
did the means used lead inevitably to Stalinism, an undesirable end

"ends justifies the means" depends on isolating the "ends" and the "means" from everything else. Otherwise, there is no way to weight the two against each other. Obviously, you can't isolate events from each other; everything affects everything. What people disagree on is the degree to which this is true, i.e. is this a negligible effect, can I get away with these immoral means to an end without leaving behind the taint of immorality in the world?

But you can't expect to have a totally moral world. If you do not perform any action from which you cannot predict the results then you will not be able to do anything at all. You have to take your best guess on the implications of the action you will take and if you belive that it will do more good than harm then you should do it. If it's a really important or ambiguous decision then it's probably worth asking some other people what they think the implications will be (Not their moral judgements on them mind - just what they think will happen), but you can't simply refuse to perfrom any action that might have an undesirable effect.

I agree with what you said, and as a result feel that people have a responsibility to educate themselves to be better at predicting the results of actions. I won't for the moment make an argument as to how this should be done, but I think that people who could see "further" the results of their actions would see that immorality hurts them, not just the people they consider expendable.

Obviously you can't expect to live in a totally moral world but without morals it'll get worse
More trouble arises when there are different moral systems within the same society
I never accepted the 80s idea that greed is good (obviously Thatcher and her successors didn't put it quite like that)

<, would you endorse brainwashing techniques, or a big brother society. (don't mention religion don't mention religion don't mention religion>.

No, but I am distinguishing between morality for the individual and the needs/desires of society! People are social beings, and morality is 50% social, at least in its effects.
BTW, I don't accept that religion is brainwashing, I think that's a rather shallow assertion - there's so much more to it!

I'd say brainwashing is not voluntary
eg reeducation camps in modern China
so a religion could practice brainwashing but not all religion is brainwashing

Yes, Blackberry Cat, I'd go along with that...

I think that any idea that actively discourages you from evaluating the idea is designed to brainwash. Isn't being brainwashed simply a lack of analysis? Christianity tends to say, "questioning your faith in christianity is wrong," preventing analysis of whether christianity is a worthy concept, and people tend to think "christianity" when they hear "religion," at least in the US. However, many religions encourage analysis, introspection, experience, and growth, even in faith, which is more like the opposite of brainwashing.

A lot of this is how you define the meanings of words
I wouldn't say brainwash but I'd agree that Christian churches especially the Catholic one through such means as the Index of proscibed books have tried to indoctrinate people

I support whatever belief systems make us better human beings. My problem has always been with religious dogma intended to manipulate behaviour, and a claim by any religion that theirs is the One True Way

*Wanders in, sees the direction of the thread drift, gets a strange sense of familiarity.*

Kierkegaard suggested that 'the ethical is the universal' -- meaning (according to my lecturers) that moral rules typically declare what _one_ must do, rather than what _I_ (as an 'existing individual') must do. I suspect that 'universal' is being used here in a different sense, though.

If morality is wholly relative to the individual, how is it possible to speak of it? We tend to make the assumption, I think, that we have roughly common notions of what the domain of ethics covers, and can therefore have discussions like this one, speaking of 'ethics' in order to ask whether ethics is universal or not. So if 'ethics' is in this sense common, one might expect an ethic to be at least (rationally) comprehensible in common terms; if it isn't, how do we know, or how can we agree, that it's an ethic? That being the case, can it be proven that there is, or isn't, the potential for there to be common and universal terms in which each ethic is evaluable?

There might be one or two simple universal guidelines.

If you think about doing something YOU know is wrong and do it anyway.
It's generally a bad thing to do.

If you think about doing something good for somebody and do not.
It is generally a lazy or apathetic thing.

You are right, abbi, pure and simple.

Thanks

I had trouble posting a much longer one saying the same thing last week. The brevity was apparently a successful exercise in writing!