eBook piracy, how common is it?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Are you seriously suggesting that a moral code can consist of nothing more than, for example, "I think killing people for no reason is good so therefore it is"?

I was thinking about instaces were X is a God or a goverment or a culture. And especially in the God case you cannot show what is good.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

What I mean by absolute wrong is a wrong that would be considered wrong in any normal human beings moral code. By "normal human being" I simply mean someone who is not mentally disturbed, intellectually incapable of reasoning, that sort of thing. I don't mean "anyone who is different to me isn't normal" or anything like that.

So it is a psychological concept (I have read it as a moral theory concept in this thread). In that case it is obvious a moral theory cannot give any firm conclusion about what all "normal" people will think. Also moral theory cannot be based on the intuition people have since you cannot go from is to ought.

In you example there could have been the case that all that was killed was going to cause a lot of suffering and that the optimal things to happen was what happened. Of course this is not very probable but a consequence ethics theory (utilitarian theory) allows for this possibility.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by tompe

Also moral theory cannot be based on the intuition people have since you cannot go from is to ought.

Actually, G E Moore's Principia Ethica agrees that you cannot move from is to ought, but holds that 'Good' is indefinable, but recognised via intuition.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by tompe

I was thinking about instaces were X is a God or a goverment or a culture. And especially in the God case you cannot show what is good.

Ok, lets go with the X is god thing.

I do not know of any God type moral code(for lack of a better way to put it, I've had some sleeping pills and am probably not thinking straight!) that says "go out and kill people for no reason at all, that is a good thing to do". If there is some sort of religion that teaches that then I will happily stand corrected.

Now, there are many instances of people claiming their god told them to go out and kill for this or that reason. I may not agree with their moral code but at least you could argue that it is a moral code because a higher power told them to go out and do it for a reason.

The only instances I have heard of people claiming god told them to go murder a bunch of people for the fun of it or for no reason at all were clearly delusional, mentally unhinged people. I see that as no different to them simply saying I did it cause it was fun and it is ok because I say it is ok. I don't think it is a rational argument to suggest that this be considered any sort of true moral code.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Ok, lets go with the X is god thing.

I do not know of any God type moral code(for lack of a better way to put it, I've had some sleeping pills and am probably not thinking straight!) that says "go out and kill people for no reason at all, that is a good thing to do". If there is some sort of religion that teaches that then I will happily stand corrected.

How about the Bible story where Abraham is prepared to kill his son because his God tells him to? (That's always struck me as weird. )

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Actually, G E Moore's Principia Ethica agrees that you cannot move from is to ought, but holds that 'Good' is indefinable, but recognised via intuition.

That way neatly making it impossible to say anything at all about the subject, as the only requirement is that something is "intuited" by some "moral sense".
Philippa Foot, in Natural Goodness, says this on the argument:

One finds its deepest roots in David Hume. But more immediately, Ayer and Stevenson's emotivism, like Hare's prescriptivism, came into being as a result of the 'linguistic turn', popularized by logical positivism but developing far beyond it. For with 'linguistic philosophy' came the idea of explaining the singularity of moral judgement in terms of a special use of language, called 'evaluation' but more akin to exclamation and command than to anything one would normally mean by that term. With this idea it seemed possible, at last, to say clearly what G. E. Moore had meant, or should have meant, when he insisted that goodness was a special kind of 'non-natural' property. In the development of emotivism and prescriptivism the idea of a special ('non-natural') property was replaced by that of a special and essentially practical use of language. And this, it seemed, was a great discovery. The language of evaluation was 'emotive'. It expressed a speaker's feelings and attitudes, as well as inducing similar feelings and attitudes in others. Those who had these 'attitudes' 'favoured' the things they called 'good': the idea of an attitude being linked to a tendency to act. Such also was Ayer's doctrine; and a little later Hare tied 'evaluation' even more closely to individual action, in his theory of universalized imperatives by which a speaker exhorted others and, in the acceptance of a first-person imperative, committed himself to choose what he called 'good'. So 'prescriptivism'—a distinctive version of the doctrine that I have in my sights—was added to the emotivism with which it had started out.
[...]
In early versions of these theories it was suggested that only a demand for consistency set any limits on the classes of actions to which words such as 'morally good' or 'morally bad' could be applied. So the extra feature supposedly involved in moral judgement could stand on its own, ready to form the core of alien moral systems confronting, or even directly contradicting, our own; if no linguistic device existed for expressing 'moral approval' or 'moral disapproval' in their purity, this was held to be merely an accident of language. Thus these early theories were radically subjectivist, allowing the possibility even of bizarre so-called 'moral judgements' about the wrongness of running around trees right-handed or looking at hedgehogs in the light of the moon, and so opening up limitless possibilities of irresolvable moral conflict. Nowadays it is commonly admitted, I believe, that there is some content restriction on what can intelligibly be said to be a system of morality.

The whole problem with this being that it entirely ignored where these 'evaluations' came from, or what made them reasonable.
Luckily, we've moved beyond that ;-)

Originally Posted by Sparrow

How about the Bible story where Abraham is prepared to kill his son because his God tells him to? (That's always struck me as weird. )

Or worse, those stories where he commands the israelites to go out and subdue your neighbors by any means necessary (of Walls of Jericho fame).
Anyway, finding murder-happy stories in the OT is too easy.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by tompe

So it is a psychological concept (I have read it as a moral theory concept in this thread). In that case it is obvious a moral theory cannot give any firm conclusion about what all "normal" people will think. Also moral theory cannot be based on the intuition people have since you cannot go from is to ought.

No it is not a psychological concept. I merely used the psychological aspect as a defining quality of a normal human being. What I was trying to say is I don't think it is rational or constructive to argue that the ravings of a mad person for example should be considered a true moral code. If we were to accept such ravings as a true moral code(even one we didn't agree with) then anything at all could be considered a moral code and there would be no debate possible as there would be no agreed upon constucts to enable debate. Anyone could come in and say "nope sorry you are all wrong, I think the only moral thing to do with regards to eating is that everyone must eat only human flesh and drink only human blood" for example.

Maths, for example, has a set of rules and definitions that all mathematicians agree upon before they debate mathematical things. If someone came in and said "well I think 2+2=8" I don't think any mathematician would argue that they must consider this as possibly valid and take that viewpoint into consideration when debating mathematics. Some things are simply not worth taking into consideration because they add nothing to the debate, and in many cases detract from the debate.

Originally Posted by tompe

In you example there could have been the case that all that was killed was going to cause a lot of suffering and that the optimal things to happen was what happened. Of course this is not very probable but a consequence ethics theory (utilitarian theory) allows for this possibility.

Well it is my understanding, from what you and Patricia have said, that in utilitarian theory one must consider the consequences of the action to determine its wrongness or othewise.

Now how is one to determine the future? How is one to determine that the 35 people killed in Port Arthur were going to go on into the future and cause alot of suffering?

Now, I would argue there is no way to do such a thing and therefore there is no way to determine that the action is good because of such a consequence.

So doesn't that invalidate the idea that this action of killing 35 people could have been good? If it being categorised as being good relies upon a determination of what the future would have been had these 35 people not been killed?

Cheers,
PKFFW

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

How about the Bible story where Abraham is prepared to kill his son because his God tells him to? (That's always struck me as weird. )

Yes very wierd but again there was a reasoning behind why God asked Abraham to sacrafice his own son. That is the critical difference.

Again, I may not agree with that particular moral code but I would still agree that it can be argued as being a moral code in the first place.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

In early versions of these theories it was suggested that only a demand for consistency set any limits on the classes of actions to which words such as 'morally good' or 'morally bad' could be applied. So the extra feature supposedly involved in moral judgement could stand on its own, ready to form the core of alien moral systems confronting, or even directly contradicting, our own; if no linguistic device existed for expressing 'moral approval' or 'moral disapproval' in their purity, this was held to be merely an accident of language. Thus these early theories were radically subjectivist, allowing the possibility even of bizarre so-called 'moral judgements' about the wrongness of running around trees right-handed or looking at hedgehogs in the light of the moon, and so opening up limitless possibilities of irresolvable moral conflict. Nowadays it is commonly admitted, I believe, that there is some content restriction on what can intelligibly be said to be a system of morality.

This is pretty much what I was trying to say about some things simply not being worth considering as they detract from the debate.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[PKFFW]

Off to bed now as the sleeping pills are kicking in big time.

Bye all,
PKFFW

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Again, I may not agree with that particular moral code but I would still agree that it can be argued as being a moral code in the first place.

"Do what I say or I'll punish you for the rest of eternity" is something you can base a moral code on? Law of the Jungle indeed.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Actually, G E Moore's Principia Ethica agrees that you cannot move from is to ought, but holds that 'Good' is indefinable, but recognised via intuition.

Yes, I remember that there was theories like that but they did not seem to be mainstream or have many followers. The first thing that is imprinted in students reading moral philosophy at our university it not to trust your intuition.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Ok, lets go with the X is god thing.

I do not know of any God type moral code(for lack of a better way to put it, I've had some sleeping pills and am probably not thinking straight!) that says "go out and kill people for no reason at all, that is a good thing to do". If there is some sort of religion that teaches that then I will happily stand corrected.

The point is that there are types of theories that have the property that you can never know what is good in advance so it is impossible to show that something follows from all theories.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Well it is my understanding, from what you and Patricia have said, that in utilitarian theory one must consider the consequences of the action to determine its wrongness or othewise.

Now how is one to determine the future? How is one to determine that the 35 people killed in Port Arthur were going to go on into the future and cause alot of suffering?

That is only a practical difficulty. It does not change if an action is good or bad according to the theory. And remember I just gave an example of a moral theory that had certain conclusions. I did not say it was a theory that can be used in specific cases or that I believe it is correct. It is a theory that is common in the literature and have been debated much.

[tirsales]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Maths, for example, has a set of rules and definitions that all mathematicians agree upon before they debate mathematical things. If someone came in and said "well I think 2+2=8" I don't think any mathematician would argue that they must consider this as possibly valid and take that viewpoint into consideration when debating mathematics.

Clearly you are not a mathematician