52 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Hiiro Yui
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4715 days ago
111 posts - 126 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
| Message 49 of 52 11 January 2012 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
I understand what you are saying, but why didn't you answer those questions anyway?
1 person has voted this message useful
| clumsy
Octoglot
Senior Member
Poland
lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5176 days ago
1116 posts - 1367 votes
Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish
Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi
| Message 50 of 52 11 January 2012 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
I am trying to support the publisher- books are not expensive.
Unless a book in not available in my area, then I could 'borrow' it a litle from the
Internet.
I am unable to buy them anyway, so nothing wrong with it.
Hiiro Yui wrote:
Cainntear wrote:
Morality isn't about our actions, but about their consequences. |
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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.
Cainntear wrote:
| Cause and effect is a matter of nature, hence science. |
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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. |
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Giving her painkillers does not force her to write this book - she has still choice,
whether to write it, or not.
It's her choice - to write a funny book, or not.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Hiiro Yui
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4715 days ago
111 posts - 126 votes
Speaks: English*, Japanese
| Message 51 of 52 27 April 2012 at 2:24pm | IP Logged |
In the past few months I have revised my methods to remove all murkiness.
First, you and your opponent must identify a scientifically observable, human action. Next, you two must agree on the definition of that action.
The logical principle I am trying to teach is: two people can agree on the scientific facts concerning the action while disagreeing on the morality of it, or they can agree on the morality of the action while disagreeing on the scientific facts concerning the action.
This represents the complete framework of my method, and my previous posts in this thread did not perfectly represent it. I do not debate things that do not fall under the category of scientifically observable, human actions. If the action is not human, we would end up saying things like, "It is immoral for a leaf to fall on the ground" or "It is immoral for a spider to eat a fly." If the action is not scientifically observable, we would end up saying things like, "It is immoral for a person to think about flowers". The problem with this is that it can't be scientifically proven that a person thought about flowers or not. "Being" something is not an action under my definition because we would end up saying things like, "It is immoral for a person to be African". Instead, I would substitute it with, "It is immoral for a person to act like an African" and then define what that means.
Edited by Hiiro Yui on 29 April 2012 at 4:33am
1 person has voted this message useful
| Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5954 days ago
1021 posts - 1714 votes
Studies: French
| Message 52 of 52 27 April 2012 at 4:26pm | IP Logged |
Hiiro Yui wrote:
Instead, I would substitute it with, "It is immoral to act like an
African" and then define what that means. |
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Odd choice.
2 persons have voted this message useful
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