If a moral theory concludes the US is not evil, it should be scrapped. It's worthless. Do you agree?

If a moral theory concludes the US is not evil, it should be scrapped. It's worthless. Do you agree? — Lionino

For a lot of it's history, yes. But you didn't answer my question: "If a moral theory concludes Nazi Germany was not evil, it should be scrapped. It's worthless. Do you agree?"

That's what I'm trying to point out.

One ends up in a moral debate about which laws are good and which aren't. — Tzeentch

Ok, but what about my question? You're a citizen of Germany in 1942. Do you follow the law and turn in the hiding Jews?

Apparently there is some confusion about this, with people trying to invoke selective interpretations of international law, which is foolish on many levels.

Suppose slavery still existed and all the countries got together and agreed that escaped slaves should be returned to their countries of origin. However, 20 years after signing the agreement, Russia has an epiphany and bans slavery. Escaped slaves flock to Russia. Should Russia follow the international agreement they signed 20 years ago and return the slaves?

But if you really want people to think about the moral choices they make, disbelief shouldn't have to be hoisted up into the bell-tower. — Vera Mont

You mean like being kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers and hooked up to a dying violinist? That's one of the most preposterous thought experiments ever. Does that stop you from thinking about the morality of the situation?

Ok, but what about my question? — RogueAI

I'm not going to play games answering your loaded questions.

If you have a point to make, make it.

If your point is that Israel commiting crimes against humanity is morally equivalent to people opposing Nazism or slavery, you're obviously off your rocker.

I'm not going to play games answering your loaded questions. — Tzeentch

:roll:

Does that stop you from thinking about the morality of the situation? — RogueAI

Stops me from taking it seriously, yes.

As a result all military action is tainted by the unjust cause and there cannot be just military action to begin with. — Benkei

It’s a war of self-defense. They were attacked brutally and are responding to the group that did it. The question becomes how to handle collateral damage. The article I provided was answering it a certain way. The part I was interested in was when considering collateral damage, how much do you weigh your own citizens versus the civilians on the other side. There are a lot of nuances there for example Citizens, soldiers, and things such as this, but you would actually have to read the premises there and then evaluate.

Stops me from taking it seriously, yes. — Vera Mont

Really? You can't take Searle's Chinese Room seriously? Mary's Room? The Experience Machine? The Transporter Problem? The Utility Monster? You just mentally shut down when you hear stuff like that?

It's not a war of self defence. It's conquest and has been for decades.

As to weighing one group of civilian lives above others or even your own soldiers, this goes against everything any universal morality would stand for. So, I don't find it interesting at all. Just glaringly an argument for the sake of opportunity.

It's not a war of self defence. It's conquest and has been for decades. — Benkei

So clearly we are not getting beyond this point.

As to weighing one group of civilian lives above others or even your own soldiers, this goes against everything any universal morality would stand for. So, I don't find it interesting at all. Just glaringly an argument for the sake of opportunity. — Benkei

I think whatever your own Benkei ideas on it to suit your own argument, it is THE argument at hand and would like an actual philosophical answer rather than a treatise on everything you know related to Just War theory or dismissive frothing at the mouth ad homs and poo poos. You see, I am not an international agency, nor am I anything to you except someone on a philosophy forum.. Your invective towards interlocutors is not warranted.

For a lot of it's history, yes. — RogueAI

Since you answered my question, I will go ahead and answer yours:

"If a moral theory concludes Nazi Germany was not evil, it should be scrapped. It's worthless. Do you agree?" — RogueAI

Yes.

With the disclaimer that moral theories shouldn't make moral judgements over whole societies that ranged over many years. Because of that, the more appropriate answer to both my and your question is that it doesn't apply.

With the disclaimer that moral theories shouldn't make moral judgements over whole societies that ranged over many years. — Lionino

But moral theories can make judgements about the policies those nations carried out, such as Manifest Destiny or the Holocaust, and if those policies are/were widely supported by the peoples of those nations, can those societies also be judged? For example, let's suppose the Trail of Tears is judged to be immoral and was supported by every citizen in the country except for one person. Wouldn't it be fair to label that citizenry as immoral, even though the label would misapply to that one moral person?

There's a glaringly obvious philosophical point which I made and you chose to ignore.

There's a glaringly obvious philosophical point which I made and you chose to ignore. — Benkei

If you're referring to the war of conquest thing, then that's not really a philosophical point as a chance to rehash the whole conflict which we have done many times here.

No. I'm talking about the article. The idea that morality gives a shit about borders is dumb as fuck. There's no difference in the moral value of innocent Israelis or innocent Palestinians and it's an affront to the just war tradition to pretend it has room to be interpreted that way.

Edit: the argument for opportunity is the article's author BTW.

Suppose on what evidence? — Vera Mont

In THIS hypothetical question, you use the evidence given in the OP.

I could. But it would take too long and you would never be convinced anyway, so it seems like a futile effort. — Vera Mont

All I asked for is what you think the reasons are for terrorist actions that have happened recently. I suppose that if you do not have any thoughts on the topic you brought up it says a lot about the things you have said so far.

Israel fails on 4 and 6 for decades already. It is also illegally occupying land and had Gaza turned into an open air prison. — Benkei

How so, their intention is to get rid of a political party called hamas. They did not decide to eradicate hamas until the attack. They tried to live with them before that.

#6 they might have gone too far, but we are sitting far away from the fishbowl and cannot see the complete picture they have. Would you walk into a place were there are a lot of dangerous people trying to kill you while hiding amongst women and children?
If, from their point of view, this is the only way left to put an end to the evils of hamas, then who am I to say that they are wrong.

Its leadership had expressed genocidal intent again and again. — Benkei

I think that after such an attack it would be a normal response. The USA went after ISIS I believe after the attacks. There were fewer cases of lateral damage because the people from ISIS did not hide in peoples houses and hospitals.

I thought this the most salient passage because I think it the crux of the debate on the whole current conflict. — schopenhauer1

Me too. I think that if the bad guys in any situation put noncombatants in danger, then I am not responsible for their safety. And I would not risk my people lives to try and solve that problem.

This is all irrelevant because they don't have a just cause. If you really want to argue that war crimes are permitted then Hamas did the right thing since everybody is equating them with Palestinians which are an oppressed group. — Benkei

Have the Palestinians denied the claims that hamas represents them and their fight for freedom yet?

The part I am most interested in what the author said here:

Walzer’s approach is well-intentioned but misguided. It repeats the same error made by many contemporary ethicists: prioritizing individual human rights to override other values. In this particular example, Walzer errs in two critical ways: 1) neglecting the obligation to protect one’s own citizens, combatants and noncombatants alike, from attacks on them; and 2) neglecting the associative duties that a country owes to its own brethren, including its own soldiers. To understand the point, let’s focus again on the common dilemma Walzer and Margalit reference:

Violating international law, Hamas launches mortars from the neighborhood toward a town in Israel. The IDF commander has two options: seek aerial support to bombard suspicious houses in the neighborhood, or order his subordinates to take the neighborhood house by house.

The advantage of the first option, using aerial support, is that it provides not only greater soldier safety, i.e., protection from risk of capture, injury, or death, but also velocity. Israel should stop the mortar attacks as soon as possible; otherwise, its civilians will continue to suffer. By failing to immediately halt these attacks with aerial fire, Israel would be prioritizing enemy citizens over its own citizens.

Israel’s citizenry, moreover, might not tolerate high “body-bag counts” from house-to-house combat and demand to end it prematurely. Indeed, over the past few decades, heads of leading democracies like Britain, France, and the United States have changed their military plans because of waning popular support following troop casualties. Morale among soldiers, moreover, regularly decreases when the troops feel their lives are being overly jeopardized. As one Israeli soldier lamented, “We’re like pizza delivery boys who have to come right to the door of the terrorists’ houses.” This is clearly a problem.

The decision to place soldiers at greater risk might also endanger the efficacy of the entire defensive mission. For this reason, countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand signed the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention (AP/1) treaty while insisting that “force protection,” i.e., actions taken toward protecting troops, must be taken into account when weighing the proportionality of a given action. (The U.S. and Israel never signed AP/1, in part because of these concerns.)

NATO, in fact, relied primarily on aerial strikes during its intervention in Yugoslavia while flying its planes at higher altitudes to avoid anti-aircraft fire. This protected the lives of soldiers and gained popular support at home, but it probably increased collateral damage, including incidents like the one in Korisa described earlier. The decision to “fly high” received much condemnation from philosophers, but citizens and soldiers lauded it.

The IDF’s decision in 2008 to send soldiers to fight house-to-house, moreover, fails to consider that those soldiers are also citizens. They are “civilians in uniform” sent on behalf of the state. Yes, we send them to fight to protect their fellow citizens. This makes them liable to attack by the enemy, but that does not mean that the state that sent them can neglect their security. On the contrary, the state that sent them to fight must constantly justify why it is endangering them. The state bears special duties toward its citizens and agents alike. Force protection, in other words, is a deep moral obligation. There is no compelling reason why the state should jeopardize soldiers’ lives to save the terrorist’s neighbor.

The lead author of the IDF’s first code of ethics, Professor Asa Kasher, and the former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, General Amos Yadlin, have repeatedly emphasized this point, including in a pointed exchange with Walzer and Margalit. Israeli forces, they argued, should try to separate enemy noncombatants from fighters. After that, “not only is the state no longer obligated to endanger the lives of its own soldiers to attempt to further such a separation, it is forbidden from doing so.”

They further argued, compellingly but with great controversy, that the IDF Code of Ethics demanded only that soldiers do “all that they can” to avoid harming noncombatants. This does not include risking their lives and those of their comrades. A very distinguished group of Israeli philosophers lined up to disagree. Yet Kasher correctly held his ground. When push comes to shove, brother trumps other.

This doesn’t mean that we allow the army to protect its soldiers by carpet bombing the enemy nation and indiscriminately killing. That strategy may (or may not) stop the mortar fire, but it would treat the enemy civilians as disposable means to achieving the end of protecting our own. Moreover, it would negate our attempt to balance the values of communal defense and loyalty with respecting the inherent dignity of all humans.

Yet at some point, these values can conflict. Choices must be made. At this stage, we should prioritize the safety of our brethren at the expense of increased enemy collateral damage. Not because we appreciate the divine image of all human beings any less, but because we value our filial responsibilities even more.

Whatever people's views of this conflict are, THIS seems to be the main justification for the bombardments in Gaza. Where is the balance between protecting one's own troops through killing from "afar", versus sending in troops door-by-door, guaranteeing the killing of one's own citizens.

What seems to be the sentiment here of some is that war can only take place in hypothetical spaces where troops can fight it out. Of course, Hamas doesn't allow for that. It has built a large infrastructure to hid within under civilians. So the empasse of whether to get the targets amongst the civilians or to send groundtroops to try to pinpoint them..

This brings up issues of protecting one's own brethren/family/people versus anothers when in a war of self-defense (preventing a group from repeatedly harming your country)..

There are several ethical frameworks here..

Social-contract theory provides a justification that states have obligations to its own citizens to protect them. One presumably can extend this even in times of war that, while international law considerations apply, one still must uphold one's obligations to one's own citizens above and beyond others when protecting lives.

Basic filial piety ethical considerations like the "lifeboat scenario" are relevant here. If a ship was sinking and all things being equal, you had to save your own family members versus strangers, what do you do? Obviously, discounting one's own brethren as having some moral weight would seem off in some ethical sense. People are people are people, but to pretend one doesn't have obligations for one's own relations is to dishonor what it even means to have relations.. or so one might argue.

Not to mention this is just psychological.. One's brethren/countrymen presumably are part of one's own survival, so by extension, one's own family/brethren/countymen would be a self-preservational response to a threat. This can be considered a natural phenomenon of ethical concern.

So I am not saying these are proof that there is now justification, but that these considerations along with merely "We are all people" when in a conflict of an enemy that wants to see you harmed or destroyed, is something to consider.

All I asked for is what you think the reasons are for terrorist actions that have happened recently. — Sir2u

I have many thoughts on the topic, and some historical data which I'm not prepared to share since they're available to anyone interested enough to bother. The most straightforward causes of what is called terrorism (When states, including powerful empires with gigantic armies and unlimited ordnance, indulge in terror against weaker opponents, it's called something else - maybe even counter-terrorism) is a people's sense of oppression, repression, and impending existential threat.
When imperialist forces invade a country, or support a rival's aggression against a country, a whole lot of people killed, maimed, bereaved, displaced and very upset. When the incursion is done by a vastly more power enemy who then attempts to govern that conquered nation with little or no regard for its culture and customs, upset turns to resentment. Over time, resentment festers in localized postules of hate and rage that periodically erupt in violence.
Destabilize a region, it tends to be unstable for quite a long time.

Thanks for replying to my actual point. I invite you to comment here as well:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/904669

Really? You can't take Searle's Chinese Room seriously? Mary's Room? The Experience Machine? The Transporter Problem? The Utility Monster? You just mentally shut down when you hear stuff like that? — RogueAI

No, I don't 'shut down'. I question the basis of the example, its relevance to real life, its constraints and its aims. Having thought about it, I then decide whether to take it seriously, dismiss it as silly, reject it on the grounds of invalidity or trickery, or respond to it.

So I am not saying these are proof that there is now justification, but that these considerations along with merely "We are all people" when in a conflict of an enemy that wants to see you harmed or destroyed, is something to consider. — schopenhauer1

Only interesting if you're not interested in morality. The moral case is clear, "we are all people" and those lives are all equal. That's why the just war tradition sets out to find objective criteria and random squiggly lines on a map ain't it.

I have many thoughts on the topic, and some historical data which I'm not prepared to share since they're available to anyone interested enough to bother. — Vera Mont

I asked what you thought, not what is available on the internet.
Could you send me a link to your brain so that i can look for myself.

The most straightforward causes of what is called terrorism ...................... is a people's sense of oppression, repression, and impending existential threat. — Vera Mont

Who oppressed ISIS, al-Qaeda?

I don't think your POV will ever get any wider or your historical perspective any longer.

Read carefully: he advised to use chemical weapons. — ssu

But he never did use it, are we discussing the OP or actually history?

And no, chemical weapons were not used in Iraq by the British forces (or else it would be part of the academic curriculum now days in the UK with all the neocolonialism etc). — ssu

OK, no idea what this has to do with the discussion though.

Some might argue thus that genocide is a defensive weapon: if the enemy hostile to your people are multiple times larger, isn't it then good to erase the threat? — ssu

Are we still discussing the OP? I am pretty sure that if Churchill had declared his desire to kill every single German, he would have gotten a lot of support for the idea.

There has to be some grain of reality even in a hypothetical, hence why think that "the only viable weapon" would an ineffective weapon system especially when all German soldiers have gas masks? — ssu

Of course there does, but in hypothetical questions one has to decide what part is reality.
In the OP it states that there is a good chance of success, that means that hypothetically someone must have done his hypothetical homework and reached that hypothetical conclusion. It is hypothetically possible that these particular invaders were to loaded down with admonitions to be able to carry gas masks. It is also hypothetically possible that the Germans thought that the British were to moral to use gas and eliminated them in favor of a couple of bottles of beer.
My point is that we are discussing the hypothetical question in the OP and not reality.

Or to put it another way: if some weapons system is really a game changer on the battlefield, in this World it surely isn't going to be banned. — ssu

This actually highlights the fact that gas being banned is just as ridiculous as banning swords and pikes. There are bigger and better ways to kill of a bunch of people nowadays which really makes both irrelevant.

I don't think your POV will ever get any wider or your historical perspective any longer. — Vera Mont

Ah, now you have hurt my feelings. :cry:

You have no idea how wide my point of view is, I at least could argue without bias from either point of view. You seem to only have one.

Just because I decided to argue from this side today does not mean I could not oppose it tomorrow, because I really don't give a shit about any of it.

And just how long is your historical perspective, if that is not an impertinent question? One never knows today what is counted as racist, feminist, homophobic and so on.

Only interesting if you're not interested in morality. The moral case is clear, "we are all people" and those lives are all equal. That's why the just war tradition sets out to find objective criteria and random squiggly lines on a map ain't it. — Benkei

Hamas doesn't think like that. They want to cause harm. The point of a self-defense war like this is to take out the people doing the repeated harm to your citizens. And my point then still stands:

What seems to be the sentiment here of some is that war can only take place in hypothetical spaces where troops can fight it out. Of course, Hamas doesn't allow for that. It has built a large infrastructure to hid within under civilians. So the empasse of whether to get the targets amongst the civilians or to send groundtroops to try to pinpoint them..

This brings up issues of protecting one's own brethren/family/people versus anothers when in a war of self-defense (preventing a group from repeatedly harming your country)..

There are several ethical frameworks here..

Social-contract theory provides a justification that states have obligations to its own citizens to protect them. One presumably can extend this even in times of war that, while international law considerations apply, one still must uphold one's obligations to one's own citizens above and beyond others when protecting lives.

Basic filial piety ethical considerations like the "lifeboat scenario" are relevant here. If a ship was sinking and all things being equal, you had to save your own family members versus strangers, what do you do? Obviously, discounting one's own brethren as having some moral weight would seem off in some ethical sense. People are people are people, but to pretend one doesn't have obligations for one's own relations is to dishonor what it even means to have relations.. or so one might argue.

Not to mention this is just psychological.. One's brethren/countrymen presumably are part of one's own survival, so by extension, one's own family/brethren/countymen would be a self-preservational response to a threat. This can be considered a natural phenomenon of ethical concern.

So I am not saying these are proof that there is now justification, but that these considerations along with merely "We are all people" when in a conflict of an enemy that wants to see you harmed or destroyed, is something to consider. — schopenhauer1

No doubt you would let your close family member drowned to save the stranger it seems. Some people disagree there.