Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Read what I wrote again, you misunderstood it.
As far as I can tell, your final point was that no one would be able to read the laws that were passed because they would not be allowed to download them. No offense, I am sure you English is way better than my Swedish, but your English is not that easy to follow.
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And that is not true. How many ethical systems do you now about except right based systems?
And it is not true in right based systems either.
(True for all possible situations that is).[/QUOTE]
Now this is an area where confusion is based on the terms.. right as in right and wrong or right as in the rights of man?
That being said, I am at least aware of most of the major ethical systems. Certainly I was aware enough of utilitarianism to show that even under a utilitarian ethic, profiting from another man's work without paying for it is wrong.
Too many people will take the most cursory glance at an ethical system and then apply it as they see fit without examining it closely. For example, too many people now interpret hedonism to be the personal pursuit of pleasure; and while that might be true for some schools of hedonism, it ignores the fact that some pursuits, while immediately gratifying, reduce the opportunity for or total amount of pleasure one is able to experience in one's life (thus to a certain extent, a line of utilitarian reasoning must be fallen back on). It also neglects the fact that certain hedonistic schools of ethics argued that pleasure should be maximized for as many people as possible (so in other words taking pleasure at the expense of another would not be ethical).
The funny thing though, is that most self indulgent ethical systems don't really tend to last through the centuries. Most people today are far more likely to look to the Socratics for ethical thought than to the Hedonists. Sure there are other more modern interpretations that mimic hedonism to some extent, but they almost always temper their ideas with the concept of enlightened self interest.
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Bill