Although our roots go back to the ancients, I believe in the modern context that 'western civilization' means non-Muslim, non-Buddhist, etc, but since about the middle ages and on up to the present.

When we talk about decrying or ruing the turns of events in modern times, "western civilization" means Europe, Great Britain, the 'colonies', or in general the (more) secular countries in the mid-20th Century and on to the present.

One acts based on results only in teleological ethics, not in deontic ethics.


Kant's maxim isn't bereft of consequential thinking because, although lying is proscribed, preventing the murderer from entering your domain isn't. You may defend yourself, and your own. This is anticipatory in nature, thus giving regard to possibilities, i.e., consequences.

As the argument is countenanced at the OP, it sounds like petitio principii at [3] (using as a premise the very point he was to demonstrate).

"...I am a moral nihilist at the moment. I think inventing moral ideas for personal gain is the reverse of morality..." Unless I misunderstand you here, you are contradicting yourself.

Morality is a set of rules reached by general consensus as a framework for two or more people to begin to trust and to respect each other, and to cooperate for their mutual benefit. When and where two disagree in that respect, there must be a detent or war. If it is your position that you may encourage my minor child to have sex with you, providing she agrees, and I am of the opposite opinion regardless of her agreement, where does that leave me in my determination that you shall not prevail? What type of 'society' could you and I build where you may have your way and where I must agree to it, or not?

"...I don't agree with your characterization of morality. I think you can give different definitions of what morality is or does..."

This appears to be your end to any further discussion, at least with the person known as Terrapin Station.

He is not 'characterizing' morality, but rather attempting to operationally 'define' it so that the two of you can have a more objective and cohesive interaction. Your simply rejecting his attempts to find common ground don't bode well for your enlightenment.

In my experience, when people want 'revenge', they want retribution, and humans being what they are, they want the 'punitive' component added. Morton Deutsch called it his 'crude law of social interaction'. We go one better. You raped my wife? I'll rape yours AND your daughter...and now we're even.
Of course that 'logic' doesn't come close to adding up, so-to-speak, but it's the logic behind revenge. You transgressed against me, and I get to get my own back, plus a penalty because you did it first. So, revenge tends to be more than an evening of the score; it's an exactment of retribution and a warning that you'll do even worse if it happens again.

Justice is revenge exacted by the state, ostensibly one one's behalf. It uses the pretext that it sequesters the offender until either he has served the penalty phase and/or he has been reformed or reoriented, or 'fixed' via psychological intervention, and can now be released where the hope is that the offender will no longer be a threat to people. This is what makes the death penalty unethical. It's the eye-for-an-eye punishment from which the offender can never hope to make good or demonstrate that he is even capable of reform and a productive life.

Honest behaviours are always motivational...intentional. So, yes, there is adherence, but I'm not sure people adhere because of the 'rule', or because of the proscription for not having that orientation in the Kantian sense (if that's what you mean by saying "...the commands of good intention.". They may just adhere because it's their orientation prima facie. They may do it because they're in love with the person. They may do it out of fear of being caught out in a lie. They may be harkening to that still small voice.

Sincerity is simply forthrightness or honesty. In that respect, few of us are always sincere.

Who are the "I" and "me" of which you speak? And how do you know they are one and the same?

What if God IS the stone?

It is my position that all antisocial behaviours, self-serving that they are, are transgressions of theft. When we breach contracts and informal agreements, we rob each other of dignity and of our natural inclination to trust one another. This is why Ross mentions 'promise-keeping'. Societies were not built on stealing, deceit, injury, insult, and on letting such things go by simply because we lack courage, integrity, and the will to correct such faults, or to prevent them as best we can. It's the reasoning behind much of our legal systems.

We dignify the acts of kindness we receive when we express our gratitude for them. Naturally, we tend to reinforce those behaviours thereby.

We enhance our lives, and by extension the lives of others, when we seek to improve ourselves in any capacity.

Essentially, when our chief orientation is inward, we are most likely to raise the mistrust in, and to discourage co-operation from, others. Surely it is easy to see how this impoverishes all involved to an extent, and that it makes living more onerous.

The values of trust, honesty, integrity, responsibility/accountability, and contrition when we understand how we have caused injury, intended or otherwise, are essential values for young adults to adopt and to adhere to as strictly as their will permits.

Love is as much emotion as it is a cognitive function. Emotions generate bias. In fact, bias is what limits or corrupts our orientation to others and to the world around us. The bias can come from limited knowledge and from limited experience. It tends to be inward-looking in that it seeks to reduce inner tension or cognitive dissonance...if you prefer.

For me, honesty, responsibility, integrity, duty...or perhaps the Seven Duties* proposed by William Ross are good places to start. The idea is to encourage a sense of outreach from the mind. Get the young people to understand that life will be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short if they first seek to serve their own interests and place the interests of others never higher than second. This is closely linked with what have been proposed as the stages of moral development by such people as Lawrence Kohlberg. While not a perfect model, it's still useful for monitoring the development of youth.


*Promise keeping

Fidelity

Gratitude for favours

Non-maleficence

Beneficence

Self-improvement

Justice

Begging the question. Your second premise uses as a certitude the very thing you wish to prove is the case.

I set the meaning in the statement following the one you quoted. If some subsist by eating animals (and they do), and animals are sentient, and if eating animals (that are sentient) is immoral, what excuse could you allow to any human for eating an animal for any reason? Would a person who is in extremis, literally starving, be excused for eating his dog? Or, if because it is immoral to kill and eat 'sentient' beings, he should simply get on with his own demise?

Chatterbears, have you decided that you'll ignore me? You haven't responded to me yet, now on the page before this one.

I claim that it is arbitrary to place humans on one plain, the warm 'n fuzzies a close second, and slugs, snails, tadpoles, shrimps, sea anemones, and plants sufficiently far below those-in-the-club that we can tread on them or eat them as we wish. I claim this because of the very intelligence and superior grasp of moral principles that you say humans possess. For example, I haven't seen a compelling argument yet that mere sentience, if that truly applies to any one of the warm 'n fuzzies, is a sufficiently distinctive quality to place them outside of our list of consumables. There isn't even a good argument against cannibalism, except for a few glitches arising from prions and other defects. Instead, the arguments seem more to rely on the 'ick' factor than anything else.


If it is immoral to eat animals, as the more zealous insist, and not just to farm them more efficiently, then it is immoral for all humans because we are deemed to be equal. How would you fault, in a compelling argument, those who subsist on animal byproducts? After all, their prey are 'sentient'....aren't they?

"Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I will address your statement. We have a higher moral consideration to life that is sentient,.."


Arbitrary. How do you feel about tadpoles? Or algae? What's the difference between them? Can either carry on a conversation with me, and can they object to how I decide to treat them if my intent is 'injurious' to them? How about that nice roan in yon pasture....would it (notice my choice of pronouns) object, or is it your opinion that it would object if it could? How about that hapless tadpole; would it not object if it could?

"... And if it is unnecessary, it is our responsibility to stop it..."

Who decides what is and what isn't 'necessary?' Are each of us exempt from finding out and enduring what we must in order to survive? Is that all there is to homo sapiens, that he/she ekes out a living on plants? Is the digital device you are using to read my response really 'necessary', or is it something we enjoy to our advantage because we ARE homo sapiens? Shouldn't every life form be entitled to maximization in any number of ways? Why do plants get the short end of the stick on this one, or why do horses get the beneficent nod that plants don't simply because we think we can interact with them on an exalted level? Or that our women like them? Or that children adore them? Or that they have cute young? It's arbitrary.



"... Plants are not sentient, as they don't have a brain or nervous system to process things like pain and/or pleasure..."

Yes, we tell ourselves that. It helps, doesn't it, while we masticate them with glee. If you are a plant and incapable of objecting to what we do with you, well....it just sux. But, if you're a horse, and every bit as incapable of objecting, you'll be anointed with beneficium humanae.

Indeed, petitio principii. Using as a necessary premise the very thing you were to demonstrate. Good call.

Let us suppose the person being cheated on is not related by blood, and that the cheater, your sister, is sleeping with someone you know is carrying serum HIV.

You seem to attribute to death, by your construction, that it has anthropic properties, or sentience and maleficence of some kind. Death is not a person, but a state, one which befalls each of us. How do we say X 'is' dead if they are not X? By your argument, we ought not to attend funerals for the deceased we know...oops, we can't know them if they no longer are whom they were prior to (their) deaths. Funerals are out because they are about death, and not the dead.

Once again, death does no depriving. It simply is, it becomes, just as those who live become...dead.

You say, "A wrecked car is simply a wrecked car. It is not a car." Wrong, it is only a wreck...just like all other wrecks that are not what they were prior to the wrecking. At least, as I understand you, that is what you are using for logic. There are no dead people, just dead, or The Dead. So, we can group rotting corpses of all kinds and species, The Dead, into one broad category, indistinguishable. We can't talk of The Dead because they have no identity and therefor no names are useful. We might talk of the memories of The Departed, but we can't call them human, men or women, and not even distinguish between those advanced in age and those who died during childbirth.

To me, a misfortune is something you endure, consciously, for which you must suffer to some extent. We don't suffer death. We experience it while it is happening, however fleetingly or prolonged the experience may be, but when we actually die, when we 'get' death, we don't know it (stories of bright lights and voices notwithstanding). We lose consciousness and die, and the rest is really irrelevant, be it bodily damage, autopsy, dragging by heels through the streets, hanged, quartered, drawn, head displayed on a spike...it's nothing like a misfortune to the dead 'person'. To that person's loved ones, well that's another matter.

Arbitrary speciesism. It mews, or it's warm 'n furry, or it has pups, or it makes eye contact...so I won't/cant eat it. Pity the poor plant which cannot give its consent (apparently) and so is fair...ummm...game.

Isn't ALL life imbued with the same value, all things which can self-replicate? Why do we kill and eat plants. Shame on us.

Only those who were can be called that. What is a wrecked 'car'? Was it a horse, or is it still a car? Does it cease to be a car simply because it is inoperable and beyond economical repair?

If I sent you looking for a wrecked train, would you look for a wrecked car on your drive? If I sent you to look for a lost boy, would you look for a lost girl instead? Or maybe the wrecked car?

Again, if death befalls all of us, how can it be countenanced as a misfortune.

Fortune is admitted by caprice, stochastic processes, or chance if you prefer. A fate that 'occurs' to all living things can hardly pass as fortune, good or bad.

"Man's Search for Meaning," Victor Frankl.


Matthew's Gospel in the Christian Bible, specifically, Ch 6, vs 20/21. Truer words were never spoken if you take the meaning about motivation and value-assignment, and forget the part about Heaven if you are wont. The Book of Job can teach us a tremendous amount about loyalty, focus, servitude, placement, endurance, forbearance, and humility...which I think a professor of architecture would want to inculcate in her learners.


If you have the time, The Plays and Tragedies of Sophocles. You'll learn a great deal about humanity there.

Legally, the prisons would be many times in number and in occupation if it were illegal to have affairs. Fortunately, or perhaps only wisely, that is not the case, except in some jurisdictions that are not Judeo-Christian, probably other eastern religions, etc.

It is self-serving, to be sure, and one could argue that it is a breach of a contract and therefore unethical (think of William Ross' Seven Duties). Or, if you prefer, Onora O'Niell would ask the cheater if he/she thinks his/her spouse would agree in principle, and consent, to his/her acts outside of their marriage. Most of us would see simplicity in the matter with those 'tools'.

Morality is a sub-set of the greater field of ethics. If it's unethical, it's also immoral.....somewhere. Again, in some circles the denizens would argue that cheating is acceptable with some justification, even with or without the spouse's consent.

Let's muddy the waters. What if the injured party is your sister? Or, what if the cheater is your very best friend....or brother? Would you let your father know that your mother was cheating on him? Why not?

"...By the by "high calorie fat and sugar is cheap" would be more correctly stated as "high calorie fat and sugar are cheap" :)…"

Not so fast! Is this statement grammatically correct: "Too many cooks spoils the broth?"

Not so fast. Is the following grammatically correct: "Too many cooks spoils the broth?"

Yes, it is. Or, it is not. It depends on what you intend for the subject. If the subject is 'cooks', then no, it is not. If it is "Too man cooks...", then it is indeed grammatically correct.

0 thru 9, you are quite correct to chastise Streetlight for the reasons you cite, but he/she is partially justified, only partly, in spanking the OP [corrected attribution later]. He/she knows the OP can do better because the OP has done better, even recently.

Bitter Crank replied to you as I was about to until I saw his third paragraph explaining that these economic refugees are fleeing a conflagration of epic proportions in their country, something quite beyond them; hyper-inflation. When you go to bed, a loaf of bread costs 200 rubles, and the next day they are 300 rubles each. Have your wages gone up by the same percentage overnight? Probably not, eh? Worse, you had managed to cobble together the price of a loaf of bread last night, but you'll go hungry today. It won't be many long days...and nights...before you decide to do something drastic, like leave. Flee.

You seem to be undoing yourself because you contradict, just above, what you set out to ask about as an artefact of modern life. How can it be taboo and at the same time, "...we do share them. And we can talk successfully about them..." Or is it your thesis that we can/and should discuss death, but it's a taboo? If that is the case, I don't see evidence for it. There are many books about it, most responsible adults over the age of 50 have wills and discuss them with their children or heirs, youtube has many videos about assisted suicide and other videos about dying which seem heavily subscribed and which draw many appreciative comments. Any child who has buried a parent, while not especially endeared to death, is at least more comfortable with it and has had experience with its aftermath and finality....and with the emotions it elicits.

I guess I reject your premise that it is a taboo subject. Difficult, perhaps, not conducive to a parlor game party surely, and best avoided when attempting to seduce your partner, but otherwise....it's just a fact of life.

"...
The ancients had a great respect and enthusiasm for bowel motions and the Druids or Shamans of old Ireland once practiced the noble art of 'gastromancy' predicting the future and communicating with the spirit world through and interpretation of flatulence and bowel sounds..."

When we become the 'ancients', I don't think that those who come after us, even if more enlightened, will have any stronger a penchant for discussing death than we do at present, and for the same reasons. It just isn't that interesting, even if it is definable and describable in a one-sided-view way.

"...When our 'sophistication' and romance with technology comes to an end... when it is recognized as the cause of our undoing.. we shall return to a worship of the natural.. a dialogue with death... and we might well listen to the wisdom of our bowels."

Who dialogs with death now, and who did among the 'ancients' you speak of? I think technology tells us much more, and reliably, about our bowels than did the musings of the 'ancients' who merely drew sticks through scat and human waste in order to predict outcomes. The lowly microscope, now 400 years old and hardly a technical darling except to those who know what it's good for, has shown us more about bowel movements than the sticks and the Mark I Eyeball ever has. In any case, it's beside the point...death...and bears no light to it.

I don't feel there is a taboo about death, or even of talking about it. It is unfathomable, final, devoid of process for appeal, offers no second chances or Mulligans, and offers no clues about what, if any, experience lies beyond it. Like finding for oneself that the stove is hot, every experience of it is unique and unidirectional; no one comes back from death offering anything tangible or verifiable for us to ponder. These qualities make death extremely difficult to contemplate or to share.

There is no commiseration in death, even if one can commiserate during its process, however briefly. You can't take a friend with you. There are no photos or video after the fact. We have no tour guides to help us to enjoy a better journey....whatever that means.


In that sense, I think the subject is simply too stark and obscure to discuss at length. It's heavy, dark, and conclusive. It just has no real appeal in social gatherings, any more than one's bowel movements would.

Pilgrim, I think you are getting bogged down by consequentialism. It might be true that we run risks in acting on our free will, but it doesn't follow that choosing to act in compliance, or to mitigate or to reduce risk, is not itself an act of free will. Why do we have criminals? Are they acting in fear or on impulse? Do they run risks of consequences that you say rob them of free will if they DON'T act out?

",,,Eventually who stole what from whom becomes a moot point...."

Said long since in another field, "Possession is nine points of the Law."

Keep a ring gotten by unethical or immoral means? How would that dignify you in a way it doesn't dignify the capitalist who extracts it and brings it to market for her own purposes? How would it improve the people from whom it was 'taken in capitalism' if you elect to keep it? Is it more valuable to you than it would be to them?

Sam Sam, I think you are too hard on yourself with the B-. That you thought to seek advice from people about it suggests that you were feeling guilty about even considering keeping (quiet about) it. You have a decent mind, a hounding and loyal conscience, and you listened to it. Then, you considered the advice, somewhat varied, offered to you. You then took convenient and reasonable steps to determine (for yourself) that the seller had no legitimate or moral claim to the non-toy train item. When you could no longer accept that the seller had no interest in the ring, you offered to return it.

It was always the decent thing to do. So, as others have suggested, you should give yourself full credit for being positively oriented to other people, at least for this instance and in the way you handled it.

"This doesn't equalize the exchange.
At this point you still have acquired energy (work,money) without giving the same amount of energy (work, money) back to them. "

I am not under any obligation to 'equalize' the exchange. It was deemed by both parties to be equal, even if accidentally, when it was concluded. Both parties left, each with a misapprehension. One was potentially salutary, the other not. In Good Will, I offer to return an item that is apparently, or possibly, unintended for sale. If the person never contacts me, even with several earnest attempts to for me to contact him, at some point I can let the matter go.

BTW, to whom would be cede the nation and all of its states and infrastructure? The greater numbers of non-aboriginals are irrelevant, just as, to follow your logic, the passage of time is irrelevant for the possession of the ring...or its 'guardianship.' So, we should give it, the nation, back. But, to whom? To which congregation of supremacy, and at what point in time should we fix the supremacy? At which point in time should we accept the ownership of any one congregation...or tribe...or organization...or culture? There were many, and they quarreled and raided constantly.

"...Reverting back to square one is too complicated in this regards to justify it's possibility as a route of action, so instead of giving them the entire country, the country allots them afirmative action. .."

I translate this as, "It is inconvenient."

Again, we disagree. I would not find it inconvenient to do the right thing...a pragmatic, a reasonable, attempt to ascertain the legitimate title to an article whose ownership is ambiguous. A message left on an answering machine, a text message if possible, or an email....these things take but seconds, and would be among perhaps twenty similar exchanges about which we would not give a second thought on any one day.

I would not have the ring after ten years. I would not wear it, and probably would either give it away or sell it for cash and use its value for something more valuable to me. I would do so without compunction, having made that reasonable attempt to feel more secure in my decision-making.

Let's continue the scenario you present:

"Did you by any chance find a diamond ring in that box you bought from us years ago?"

"I did! I sent you a text message, left a message on your phone, and sent you an email. I tried to call you about three days later, but your phone went to the answering service. So, I eventually decided just to keep the ring." I would shrug, express sympathy, but no regrets. I was reasonable in my attempt to make contact and to wait a period before I considered the matter closed.

What each person must do is what his/her conscience dictates. I would freely take what I thought were responsible steps to determine ownership, but then I would assume, at my convenience, when the item becomes truly mine. For me, three days is plenty, along with those three different attempts at contact.

We'll have to disagree. In my code, and being pragmatic as well as ethical, responsibility lies only in a reasonable attempt to determine the veracity of the inclusivity of the sale. Just as the accidental inclusion is not the buyer's responsibility, neither is it his responsibility to chase down an unreachable seller interminably, or to safequard the ring for as long.


In ethics, even in Kantian terms, no one is obliged to conduct himself any more than is convenient, provided the act is done in Good Will, and that it passes the tests of ends and universalizability. We would not expect our hapless buyer to pass guardianship, as you put it, on to his son, and his son to his son, in perpetuity. In fact, it would cease to be convenient even on his deathbed. If he passed guardianship onto a trusted agent, say a lawyer or to the police, one would require payment to locate the 'rightful' owner and the other would not have much of an incentive to act except to place the item in a lost-and-found holder. I can tell you which of these would be convenient, but I'm not sure they would be satisfactory.

Sam Sam, that estimated value seems low to me. I paid $1400 43 years ago for my wife's engagement ring, a solitary brilliant cut of the same quality and 0.6 weight. When we last had the ring appraised by a qualified gemologist in 1986, its value had risen to $3K. I know the market varies, but I think the ring you describe is probably insurable, for replacement, near USD$3000. I could be wrong...


You are doing the right things. Your conscience will be a good guide that you can trust. Your instincts will tell you if and when you can safely pocket the ring and do with it as you please.

"...and any deceit after the fact is not their responsibility..."

Deceit is intentional, so one who engages in it is always going to be responsible for it. Kant would have waved us away from any deceit since it is uttering falsehood, i.e.- lying.


I think what you mean is that, once one does the right thing (inquiring), one is then only obligated insofar as her conscience dictates. If the seller makes a reasonable case that the ring was not meant to be included, the right thing would be to return it expecting nothing more than gratitude. If the person doesn't respond (you can ensure emails are opened at the recipient's end) after 72 hours, I would say my obligation to do the right thing has been completed; the ring becomes my rightful property.

"... An ethical dilemma is where you have two possible responses to an ethical question and you can't figure out which is the most ethical..."

Somewhat true, but incomplete. An ethical dilemma must have at least two permissible options from which to choose. We haven't established if all the options here are permissible. To the point, IS IT okay to just keep the ring? That's what we're attempting to establish.

The other components of an ethical dilemma are that the correct, or best, option is not immediately obvious without some analysis/calculus, and that the option of not acting at all is illegitimate; one of he permissible choices must be undertaken.


I agree with you, however; this doesn't constitute an ethical dilemma. A box of 'railroad' junk sold in a driveway yard sale would not include a boxed diamond ring let alone a loose one, any more than a used car would include a well-maintained and loaded pistol in its glovebox. No way, no how.