Doing heroin, meth, cocaine, and other drugs doesn't even fall in the same category as "skiing, sailing, abseiling, skydiving, rock climbing, scuba diving, racing, rugby, bowling, reading, sewing, playing video games, going to the cinema, discussing philosophy..." — Wallows

If the category is "consensual activities" it does, Alex

Drugs are harmful to oneself and its effects spread out from there like a wave into everything else. It's a global disaster.

However, it must be understood that some people can control their urges and can moderate, quite effectively, their intake. These people are rare and so no point in giving them leverage.

The vast majority of drug users are slaves to their addiction. So, it is this that we must prevent or cure.

I think it isn't immoral to take drugs but it is immoral to sit on your hands and do nothing to mitigate the problem.

This isn't even comparable. — Wallows

Yeah it is, and you obviously need come up with more stringent criteria than "medical application".

Doing heroin, meth, cocaine, and other drugs doesn't even fall in the same category as "skiing, sailing, abseiling, skydiving, rock climbing, scuba diving, racing, rugby, bowling, reading, sewing, playing video games, going to the cinema, discussing philosophy..." — Wallows

Recreational activities. People do stuff for recreation, including taking drugs. Do you have a credible objection or not? Because thus far you haven't presented one.

Moral stances are personal dispositions/"feelings" about the acceptability of interpersonal behavior that one considers more significant than etiquette. — Terrapin Station

If you really adhere to Emotivism, you'll have to explain how it is at all rational to engage in ethical debate, considering you're admitting that your arguments are only valid to you. If when you say murder is "bad," you mean it's bad to you, but maybe not to me, just like I might think chocolate ice cream tastes good to me but bad to you, then it hardly makes sense for us to debate whether murder (or chocolate ice cream) is actually bad. I'm not engaging in the meta-ethical debate of whether morality is ultimately objective or subjective, but I am saying it makes no sense to present logical bases for a topic you're declaring emotional.

What medical application does snorting cocaine or doing meth have? None. So, let it be prohibited is what I think is the best option. — Wallows

The problem is that you don't articulate a specific principle here that determines morality from immorality. If you are deriving a moral principal and declaring that purposeless behavior is immoral per se, then that will have to be applied to other instances other than drugs, meaning we might end up declaring things like skiing and dancing immoral.

I'm not really sure why we're reinventing the wheel here though and trying to form moral theories from scratch. Maybe we can start with some time honored solutions like Utilitarianism or Kantianism. Otherwise we're just going to hack away at our own half-baked theories and slowly watch them collapse through this Socratic dialogue.

Drugs are harmful to oneself and its effects spread out from there like a wave into everything else. It's a global disaster. — TheMadFool

People should be free to harm themselves from smoking, drinking, drug taking, eating too much or too little, piercing or tattooing themselves, partaking in sports, and so on. It's not a global disaster unless these things are forced upon us, which they're not. And if engaging in any of these kind of activities becomes a problem, which it won't necessarily, then there are things that people can do about that, like stopping or getting help.

However, it must be understood that some people can control their urges and can moderate, quite effectively, their intake. These people are rare and so no point in giving them leverage.

The vast majority of drug users are slaves to their addiction. So, it is this that we must prevent or cure. — TheMadFool

Loads of people drink, smoke weed, or take cocaine on a more casual basis without any major problems and without being "slaves".

I think it isn't immoral to take drugs but it is immoral to sit on your hands and do nothing to mitigate the problem. — TheMadFool

There's loads of help available for those for whom it has become a problem without any need of me getting in on the act.

lack a meaningful life? — Wallows

I suspect for many, pot is about not having a sense of having a meaningful life. But I should talk? :gasp: I am addicted to coffee. I like feeling alert and driven to accomplish something. Especially not in my later years, life seems very short I don't want to loosing time feeling like a zombie. My struggle is to feel full of energy and not like I want to take a nap. :lol:

Moral, coffee is a better stimulant than pot. :lol:

In my old age, I am very strongly opposed to the idea that one does not need to consider anyone but one's self. I have seen what addiction or habitual use of pot does to families and children and it is not a pleasant reality. It is an ugly reality that gets passed on generation after generation. Addicted people become the center of a lot of painful drama involving many people. It is not as simple as being an individuals decision to do as s/he pleases. I think we have experienced far too much self-indulgence and a sad of lack of a concept of family, social and political duties. The moral is addictive substances can lead to a lot of avoidable human pain and suffering for generations and we need to stop denying that.

However, pot is likely one of the best medicines nature has given us and hemp has many good purposes. We need to be more rational about growing and using marijuana.

If you are not choosing it over responsibilities, and it's not a financial burden, is it really bad?

My main drug in question is marijuana.

Would it be more immoral to lie to people that "it makes them crazy, rapists, and killers?" — Drek

Certain chemicals lead to agency deconstruction-reconstruction, which isn't a bad thing at all. Entheogens are like teachers with a common message of renewal and pruning the Will of slag (after having shown what is closed to the habitually other-organized sense of agency, the mode of agency which rears against apprehension of the unconscious; we always have structure agentially, yet it can get caught up in a slavish external locus of control and make us unaware of the liminality between self and other; renewal, then, is simply honest regaining of autonomy).

Said chemicals, classic psychedelics, lead one away from the addiction model at the center of the market society, consumerism, etc. If you look into the default mode network of the brain, one of the main things you'll learn is that reward seeking behavior, not limited to drug use, but including gambling, work, consumerism, eating, sex, exercise, video games, the latest technology, etc. (many other forms of addiction besides), is what leads to a lack of mindfulness, which in turn may lead to delusions and immoral acts.

As to pot, it may not be great for those who place a premium on auto-psychoanalysis through dream work. It commonly precludes lucid dreaming and memory of dreams. Smoking weed sometimes makes me feel too much like Rip Van Winkle...causing very deep, maybe too deep, sleep. For people with insomnia or parasomnias, it would be a great herb to take some form of.

The issue of drugs and the extant authoritarian, punishment-obsessed (Jehovah-style), law is a farce, anyways, it is so concerning the treatment of naturally occurring (found or discovered) substances by the law. This said, hobby chemistry used to be a freer, thus more liberating, pursuit before the war on drugs campaign retarded socio-cultural openness. You and I are schedule one seeing as our bodies are chemical laboratories. That's right, our bodies produce chemicals that have been made illegal by the intensely confounded legislative system. Cannabanoids and DMT (naturally synthesized by the human body)...make us illegal. It's the statutes, the rules, which as you can see, are often morally corrupt and unmoored in any wholistic and salubrious contextual order.

I agree it is not so simple, and it is like Thomas Aquintas (sp?) was getting at. Nothing in excess, but again anything can be taken to excess and drugs seem to be an easier spot to become excessive in. Excessive exercisers don't really make the headlines. I think people really don't like the lifestyle that accompanies illegal drugs than the drugs themselves.

Are you sure it is immoral to break the law? What if there was a law that was immoral? Most laws have legitimacy but not ALL laws. Some laws favor certain people over the greater good. Look at youtube with some people espousing hate... it's legal but is it really moral?"

It is not as simple as being an individuals decision to do as s/he pleases. — Athena

While I agree with that, I would say that it is as simple as not legally prohibiting persons' decisions. That is highly immoral.

If you really adhere to Emotivism, you'll have to explain how it is at all rational to engage in ethical debate, considering you're admitting that your arguments are only valid to you. — Hanover

I wouldn't say they're valid to me, either. Validity is about truth. Moral stances are not the sorts of things that are true or false.

"Moral debate" is purely a practical matter of trying to persuade people to not treat others (and create laws for others) in a way that you do not prefer, in a way that you disapprove of. It's akin to, say, being in a band and trying to persuade your bandmates to write or play a particular section of a song you're working on a particular way.

Are you sure it is immoral to break the law? — Drek

Socrates thought so. Obeying the law is like driving on the correct side of the road. You don't have to, but a lot goes wrong, can go wrong, if you don't, and a whole lot more if everyone doesn't.

And it's in the nature and substance of the social contract. You break the law; someone else suffers. Who told you you could hurt someone else?

But then there are laws that arguably should be broken. Notwithstanding good law or no, break it and likely there will be consequences, perhaps many unintended.

Ignorant people break laws big and small all the time. Thinking people realize breaking any law is no joke, and thus take care not to, or at least choose the ones they'll break with some care.

The moral/ethical dimension? It's there if you look for it. Not easy in 100% of cases, though.

What if you had a moral obligation to break the law? To stand up to tyranny? Like we had a "Hunger Games" world? Is Catniss wrong for wanting her people freed? Slavery was legal, are blacks suppose to just take it? I'm sure there are cases like this throughout life big or small.

A police officer told me once that he technically could bust me for anything, there is a lot of legality just crossing the street.

What if you had a moral obligation to break the law? — Drek

Easy to write; easy to say. Now think about what it means.

It means to me there should be moral and a rationale behind a law and not for a particular interest. The pen is mightier than the sword. Legally boxing yourself out of freedom is important isn't it? Not a legal positivist. The laws the law isn't a good enough explanation.

No way in Hell I'm going to think we should follow laws just because they're laws. That's pretty much the complete opposite of my disposition.

I'm very pro tactics like jury nullification, too.

The law's the law isn't a good enough explanation. — Drek

Isn't a good enough explanation of what? What is it, exactly, you want explained?

"Moral debate" is purely a practical matter of trying to persuade people to not treat others (and create laws for others) in a way that you do not prefer, in a way that you disapprove of. It's akin to, say, being in a band and trying to persuade your bandmates to write or play a particular section of a song you're working on a particular way. — Terrapin Station

Then the entirety of your argument would be "don't murder because I prefer people not murder." That doesn't seem at all persuasive. If you interject other reasons, like "don't murder because human life has intrinsic value" that might be more persuasive, but it'd be disingenuous because the basis you provided had nothing at all to do with the reason why you believed murder was wrong. The reason you feel murder is wrong is because you don't prefer it. And, of course, should you prefer it, it would be right,

If though you have an underlying principle that justifies your preferences, then you need to state that principle because that principle is the primary cause of your moral judgments, not your unwashed preference.

Your defense... to me you are saying, if it is a law it must be good enough on its own. So, if it were legal to steal you'd do it.

No way in Hell I'm going to think we should follow laws just because they're laws. — Terrapin Station

Do you know of any law that is a law just because it is a law? It's ignorance that's your foundation, your own. More reason and thought, less macho, please.

Then the entirety of your argument would be "don't murder because I prefer people not murder." — Hanover

No, it isn't. There's a whole art to persuasive rhetoric. You're going to tailor it to the person (or the people) you're trying to persuade, a la the traditional sense of ad hominem. And yeah, it's "disingenuous" on your view, but that hardly matters. The goal is to persuade others.

There are laws that protect corporations at the expense of the American people for one. I'd go even patent laws as patents are now currency. You can buy your way into monopoly. That's legal...

Do you know of any law that is a law just because it is a law? — tim wood

No, but what's the relevance of that (aside from not understanding a common idiom, which seems to be symptomatic around here.)

Oh money talks... that's another

No, it isn't. There's a whole art to persuasive rhetoric. You're going to tailor it to the person you're trying to persuade, a la the traditional sense of ad hominem. And yeah, it's "disingenuous" on your view, but that hardly matters. The goal is to persuade others. — Terrapin Station

Yet you can't persuade anyone who has even an elementary understanding of your position, which is that you'll say whatever it is you need to to obtain a result, including offering entirely fraudulent reasons for your position as long as you think it might pacify them. You can't admit to disingenuousness without consequence.

Great understanding of the rhetoric of persuasion. You have it all figured out.

I like how you gamble on the idea that I've never persuaded anyone morally, as if I'm maybe a 20-year-old who is speaking purely hypothetically a la stuff I just made up now. You sure didn't stick your foot in your mouth there.

I mean sure, a lot of laws are good... not trying to break the whole system... but saying ALL laws were put into place for the interest of the American people... just doesn't seem to fit my world view. Norms change... much like pot is illegal due to not having a free market, and Du Pont wanted to make more money over hemp. Just one example I know, but I am sure there are others.

Your defense... to me you are saying, if it is a law it must be good enough on its own. So, if it were legal to steal you'd do it. — Drek

Nope. Most (not all) places, each law has its reason. A layering of reasons, actually. A citizen of such a place has an implied duty to know those reasons (i.e., ignorance is usually not exculpatory). That is, most law is particular with respect to what it controls. If you break a law for your own reasons, you haven't really broken it, you've just been stupidly ignorant. On the other hand, if you choose to break the law for reasons that seem good and sufficient to you, then the question, do you know all the reasons? If not, back to stupid ignorance. Breaking the law for some over-riding principal is serious business. In effect you're not merely violating some rule, but breaking law itself.

Call it a failure to reconcile purpose and intent with consequence. But get that right and you may have grounds....