|
 |
Copyright laws | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4715 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 41 of 52 10 January 2012 at 4:33am | IP Logged | |||||
In my last post, I said
This is very unfortunate. My debate style should be used to debate all subjects including politics and religion, but because people haven't been able to debate these logically without resorting to name-calling and threats, whole topics of debate are labeled taboo and off-limits. I'll state it again: "It is morally good to debate for the purpose of changing your opponent's mind." I call a debate idealistic when the arguments used to change your opponent's mind are grounded in logic, including the separation between the types of debate. I feel it is immoral to give up on debating someone idealistically because this is when we stop talking to each other and start think of what kinds of punishment our opponents deserve. I desperately want this style of debate to catch on and I fully assume the burden of convincing everyone in the world that rewording everything they believe in in terms of morality will make their positions more convincing than they otherwise would be. It all starts with the acknowledgement of the principle that there are two types of debate (scientific/factual and moral) that have nothing to do with each other. So I ask you, Cainntear, and everyone else: Is this an actual logical principle, or have I deluded myself? Until every participant agrees, the real debate can't begin and I can't reply to your questions about my peculiar moral views. Oh, and we should limit all discussion on this thread to copyright infringement of language programs and books before we get reprimanded, so I think we should only use analogies related to this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 42 of 52 10 January 2012 at 5:09am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I wasn't having a go when I said, "leaving aside political arguments", in fact I'm one of
the worst offenders. I only wanted to make those 3 more-or-less apolitical assertions in a search for common ground before going straight back to my usual style in the rest of the message. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4715 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 43 of 52 10 January 2012 at 5:17am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Okay, Random review, so do you accept the principle I proposed?
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 44 of 52 10 January 2012 at 7:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Do you mean this?
I don't know, man, I really don't. Do you think that's helpful in the context of this thread? I tried to make a distinction between what's morally OK and what is legally OK because downloading old courses is definitely illegal but whether it is morally OK is very much a live issue. I think this is helpful as it can help people make up their own minds about whether to do it or not. I'm not sure I'd like to defend that distinction as a universal principle, the real world is never that neat and tidy...and I guess the same goes for the principle you propose. Edited by Random review on 10 January 2012 at 7:01am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4715 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 45 of 52 10 January 2012 at 7:24am | IP Logged | |||||
Oh, but I do think it is universally applicable! It's the result of years of thought, and I can't find a situation where it's not true. Things can still get murky when discussing what people are thinking because people's minds can't be read with today's technology, so I avoid saying things like "It's immoral for a person to think/feel/believe..." and prefer to refer only to observable human actions. This way, we can observe when someone is acting hypocritically. Give it more thought and try to show me I'm wrong. I think I can clear up all doubts. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 46 of 52 10 January 2012 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is a statement that I would vehemently oppose. Morality isn't about our actions, but about their consequences. Cause and effect is a matter of nature, hence science. And consider medical ethics -- doctors often have to make decisions (or at the very least, recommendations) about treatments based on the good and harm they cause. This is a moral decision, but it cannot be made without full knowledge of the scientific facts. Reductio ad absurdum: a dying man may be given a painkiller that causes irreperable organ damage and hastens his death if it is believed it will alleviate his suffering. A man with a very sore toothache would be refused the same treatment, even if it was the only way to alleviate the (short-term) pain. OK, that's an extreme case, and you could argue that science alone is enough. But what if the choice was between an antibiotic that drastically reduces a patient's lifespan or the amputation of his right arm? That's a subjective judgement, and cannot be answered by science alone, but in question arising from science. And we cannot take morality out of questions of science -- in purely scientific terms, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment offered potentially useful data. But morally, it shouldn't have been allowed to happen (and the researchers should technically have got the death penalty, assuming there was a death penalty in Alabama at the time). Properly applied, science provides us boundaries in which to evaluate moral questions. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4715 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 47 of 52 11 January 2012 at 5:24am | IP Logged | |||||
This isn't necessarily true. There is an infinite number of conceivable human actions. Every person should go down that list and indicate whether each action is morally good, not morally good, not morally bad, or morally bad. There are also actions for which a person may say that morality does not apply (N/A). What designation each action receives and why can be left up to each individual person, whether or not that person knows what the majority of the public thinks of that action, the likely consequences of that action, the historical context of that action, or what current law says about that action.
Yes, what caused what effect can be debated scientifically, but the scientific method can't be used to determine if an action is morally good. Here is an analogy. Please do not treat the following questions as rhetorical. Imagine an author suffering from migraines. She is fluent and proficient in both Japanese and English, and is writing a book aimed at English speakers who wish to learn Japanese. However, the book she is writing is actually intended to teach fake Japanese to the gullible. It is full of misinformation intended to make the learner a laughing stock if he were to actually try using what he learned from the book in Japan. Suppose the migraines prevent her from finishing the book, and she needs painkillers. Is it morally good to give her some even if you know her book is intended to harm language learners? Suppose you meet her as a complete stranger and she asks you for some. Is it morally good to give her some in this case, even though the consequences of giving them to her would be the same? Now suppose you give her some and she finishes the book and puts it on the market for $500 and no books sell. Does this change your answer? Now suppose only one person ends up buying it and ignores the copyright laws and copies it onto the internet for the purpose of helping all the Japanese learners that couldn't afford to pay $500, thereby unwittingly spreading bad learning materials. Now do you think it was morally good to help the author? Now do you see that debating the observable facts cannot help you answer these questions? After the online version of the book is spread, a debate about the facts can determine if some gullible people believed the book all the way to Japan, if the majority of those people felt embarrassed, who was the person that copied the book onto the internet, if he actually broke a law, if the author broke a law by writing such a book, and if you broke a law by letting her finish it. Even if you did break a law, that doesn't mean you have to concede that giving her the painkillers was immoral. That's why I said it is a logical fallacy to mix these debates, and the same reasoning can be applied to the medical examples you gave. Provide me with your answers (and the reasons for those answers) to the moral questions above so I can make this even clearer. Edited by Hiiro Yui on 11 January 2012 at 5:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 48 of 52 11 January 2012 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
You're taking too hard a line here. Just because we cannot know consequences with certainty doesn't make consequences irrelevant. Science can deal with uncertainty too. The probable outcome of giving a stranger a couple of headache pills isn't that that person will go on to do harm. The probably outcome of treating a sick man isn't that when he returns to health he will become a despot and start World War III. Morality does have to take into account possible outcomes as well as probable outcomes, but there's still always the question of likelihood.... 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
