Peterkin

Which is what I've been saying all along. One may deem it necessary to commit a wrong to prevent a greater wrong. That might make it acceptable in an isolated situation. That might make it justifiable to the society whose collective ethics have been violated. That might make it forgivable. Nothing could make it right.

Is that a yes to my question? Does the motivation of the actor determine the morality of the act?

So, what's your objection to my believing it all the time, not just most of the time? Yes. Is not. The "word-game" is flipping the definition of wrong for your own reasons.

Maybe so; this being a philosophical venue 'an all, I assumed thinking about the philosophical aspects was appropriate. I didn't. This wasn't me: This was mistermack, applauded by two other posters. His conclusion was inaccurate, but you were happy with it: "Outweigh. Not wipe out." There was no playing; I simply refused to abandon my original stand on the wrongess of torture. I said the same thing over and over, as many times as I was asked : Sometimes I do wrong for what I consider a compelling reason, but I refuse to pretend that my compelling reason makes it right. So, I ask again: Does motivation change the nature of the act? If so, by what philosophical mechanism?

Strange coincidence: we have been watching The West Wing on DVD, and just passed the episode where they had to decide about an air-strike on an apartment building where the terrorist leaders lived. The military calculation was straightforward: if they did it right away, that night, civilian casualties were estimated between 35 and 50. If they waited until the children went to school and some adults went to work, they would only kill only 15-20 civilians. However, by morning, some or all of the terrorists might also be gone. This kind of casualty trade-off calculation is standard for military strategists; has a quite different effect on politicians and policy-makers; and different again on the uninvolved spectator. There is a significant difference, too, in numbers and persons. 15 civilians is the price of an important move against a dangerous enemy; collateral damage. A little girl selling bread has a face and an identity: killing her is a murder. And I'm still holding out for a difference between pushing a button to blow somebody up from a distance, suddenly without warning, and the protracted, deliberate, direct infliction of pain while looking into another person's eyes.

No, no, of course I must have misunderstood. You were all very nice gentlemen about my calling torture unequivocally wrong and my lack of certainty in whether I could or would ever employ it in a scripted situation that gives me no other options. I'm sure your disgust was a sincere as my attempts at explanation, all of which you deemed 'improper'. The question remains: If you admit having done something you consider wrong, why should I not admit the same? It's the WHY part I'm interested in, not the specifics of expression. Why is it important that I change my assessment of torture in the made-up situation? Why does the intent of the act change the nature of the act? Is it the motivation that makes something right or wrong? Take a minute to think of the implications.

So has everyone else. All I did was admit that I did this very dark grey one for a better reason than I had done previous transgressions of a lighter shade. Why beat up on me for that?

And have you never done anything in your life that you consider to be wrong?

All I'm saying is that killing and torture do not come under the same heading or into the same discussion. Killing is a different issue and any question about it needs to be framed separately.

I can think of reasons they would want to be anonymous, and I'm sure their physicians protect their identities. You could look on social media or special-audience blogs, if any of the patients discuss their experience, but I wouldn't know how to start. China is not, AFAIK, progressive in this area. That's what I said early on. Assuming that reproduction is not at issue. Though, someday..... who knows?

I realize that all of this has been covered, by several different posters, in lucid terms. I would just like to summarize before leaving the thread: I think we're answering different questions. The fundamental one is: Is your principle of right and wrong constant or situational? Whether your adherence to either principle is constant or situational is the secondary question. Any consideration of consequences proceeding from each application of each principle is tertiary. My principle is constant - which means my classification of good and bad is not really open to debate. My adherence to the principle is situational (if's, but's, maybe's, arguments and excuses). Sometimes I do wrong, for some reason I consider worth doing wrong for. My problem with the sliding morality is that its advocates appear to demand preemptive amnesty; insist that a compelling motive flips bad to good. This attitude suggests to me a quite steep slippery slide both for individuals and for societies. No, they're not.

Don't wait up! I trust nobody's international openings. I embrace nobody I haven't frisked for weapons. And I go noplace on an airplane.

I didn't know it was a game of chance, or choosing up sides. I answered the questions about what I believe, what I would do and why as truthfully as I could. I strongly disapproved of your bringing a civilian into a police procedure and explained why. I do not question your politics, your morality, your allegiances, your sincerity or your intentions - even though I don't share them, and will [99.9% probably] never share them.

We have known that for some time; I never expected it to be otherwise. To me, the more interesting aspect of this "debate" is why it's so important - why it's worth the name-calling and large bold font and umpteen repetitions of the same question - that I should agree with your position.

The problem with my argument seems to be not in the uncertainty of the prisoner's guilt, which was dealt-with in an "it's in the script" assertion, nor the uncertainty of the efficacy of torture, which was dealt-with by "we have to try anyway", and not even my uncertainty regarding my own capability and response to a circumstance I have not experienced. The main objection seems to be to my refusal to agree that a shade of grey turns white if you put it next to black. It may look white, but it isn't.

I'm 99.9% sure of the same thing. Why would you want my forgiveness? It's your own conscience you have to deal with. However, to that extent that it's within my purview, I would most willingly forgive you, even if you failed. The only thing I refused to do here is lie under peer pressure. I don't understand why you want me to change my position, about which i was honest in the first post and have remained truthful throughout. I certainly never expected any of you to change your positions.

What's so difficult about words like right wrong greater and lesser? There is a slight problem with "admitted" as a reference to a simple open statement. I've said what I said, as clearly as I could, and repeated it as many times as I was asked to. As a game, this quite tedious. This a simple statement of personal belief. Not everyone has the comfort of 100% certainty about everything, but at least I'm 99.9% convinced of what I consider right and wrong. If being unsure of my own capacity for evil is a disgusting hard-line position, I suppose it's one I'll have to live with until those limits are tested in real life.

No, it's exactly one way, the only way it can be, and I'm perfectly clear on it. I've done a great many things in my life that i knew were wrong - and so, I imagine, have we all, not for life-and-death outcomes, but for trivial reasons: anger, avarice, fear, pride, spite, expediency... none of those reasons flip wrong to right and back again. A three-year-old knows when he's doing something wrong, and decides to do it anyway, for reasons that seem to him compelling at the time. Later, when he's being carpeted for it, he looks at the floor a stammers out a semi-coherent excuse. The adult either believes that the temptation was stronger than child could be reasonably expected to resist, and forgives him or doesn't and metes out some punishment she considers appropriate: either way, the wrong is cancelled and the child may go in peace. If he isn't caught, he carries the wrong action on his conscience, even as he's enjoying the ill-gotten gain. Right and wrong don't change. The situation changes your priorities. In some situations, you're convinced that no right action would achieve the desired results, so you have to choose between wrongs. Outweigh. Not wipe out. Here's another thing I don't know: Suppose the city is Wuhan, the bomber is English and the only witness is the bomber's nine-year-old daughter. Obiously, she's not going to rat her daddy out without serious persuasion. Is the right and wrong of torturing her still as readily flippable as it was in the other case?

Well, that's certainly an unequivocal opinion. London is about to be vapourized and it's all my fault. Fair enough.... Oh, wait, no, it isn't fair at all. What I said from the beginning is that I can imagine situations in which I would resort to torture. I maintain that whether and when and in what circumstance I would or could actually carry out, I can't tell you, not even under torture (though, of course I'd tell you something, anything, everything), because I don't know. (I suspect you don't, either, never having been faced with a such a situation, but that's only a suspicion, since I know even less about you and your experience than you know about me and mine.) If I did carry out a wrong and bad act, I hope it would be for a reason I could justify. But I would not pretend that it was right and good. Sorry, I missed the connection between The Impossible Dream and a drowning child.

Don't take that advice, Dimreepr! The best goals are impossible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHVGOp5Usv4

No. I don't know. You already have the answer, many times over.

What!!?? You mean, like they might with an unpaid hooker or like an English lord might have with a milkmaid? Nothing to do with being foreign! Prisoners of war were often enslaved, as were people taken as tithes from subject nations. But foreigners could also join the Roman army and become citizens. No, they didn't. They were usually quite pragmatic in their dealings with subject nations. The co-operative regimes were allowed a wide latitude in self-governance and freedom of religions. The rebellious ones were punished. Many legionnaires married local women and, upon retirement, settled in the occupied territories. That's different "they's" Spanish, French and English, with different approaches. Amerinds made poor slaves, it's true, but they sometimes - that is, some Native nations, in some regions - were relatively easy to convert to Christianity and worked voluntarily for the Spanish missions. Some French (and a few from the British isles) settlers got along so well with Natives that they created a whole new nation of Metis. No, they just wanted the land. All of it. Motive enough. You don't see the contradiction there? Caste and class systems have nothing to do with difference and everything to do with exploitation.

Does it? In war, every leadership makes an effort to dehumanize the enemy -for the same reason: it's easier to kill a ______ (insert national slur of choice) than a farm-boy just like yourself. In slave states, after slavery was ostensibly abolished, why was it necessary for officials to raise artificial barriers between children of different races? Why was it necessary to enact miscegenation laws? Why was it necessary to segregate people on public transport, in recreation areas, in neighbourhoods, even in the army....? If people instinctively don't want to mix, why go to all that trouble to keep them apart? And how come they went and mixed anyway?

Generally, but not invariably. The most common factor today, as it has been many times before in history, is debt. https://scroll.in/article/898862/india-is-home-to-the-worlds-largest-slave-population-yes-slavery-still-exists ; https://nyupress.org/9780814742969/white-cargo/ The masters still need a mechanism of dehumanizing and objectifying their bonded servitors - whether by dressing them differently or denying them specific privileges reserved for the free citizen, or simply branding them like livestock. Why do you think those laws were necessary? And why were they so often broken? It's the intent to commodify that makes the dehumanizing necessary: it's harder to justify benefiting from the subjection of someone like yourself than from the subjection of an inferior creature. It's easier to justify inflicting pain on a criminal or terrorist than on an adolescent. It's easier to deny shelter to a bum than homeless man. (Or, as e say now, "A man experiencing homelessness," as if it were like a cold or other temporary inconvenience) And, of course, the ruling class has to convince the working class that they're different from and better than the slave class, the welfare class, the vagrant class - or else they could unite and form a much more powerful underclass that's harder to exploit.

I'm nice enough to avoid eating meat.... But I'm pretty sure that doesn't count much toward my general unworkability. How sweet! So are you.