2004-03-09 20:00:07
| #virus from 2004-03-09 20:00:00 (showing messages 1-30) Bookmark the permanent url.
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20:00:07 | Lucifer | time to chat |
20:00:20 | Lucifer | Tonight's topic is "When does the end justify the means?" |
20:00:44 | Lucifer | I've been wrestling with this quite a bit recently |
20:01:22 | prometheus | Specific case or general concept? |
20:01:44 | Lucifer | If we can come up with a general solution to this question I will be amazed |
20:02:09 | Lucifer | Of course we could theoretically assert the answer is "never" |
20:02:39 | Lucifer | Maybe we could start with that |
20:02:50 | Lucifer | Assume the answer is never, now does that work? |
20:03:10 | Lucifer | Can you come up with an example where that would lead you morally astray? |
20:03:44 | prometheus | If the means is killing one person to save one thousand? |
20:04:26 | localroger | It depends firstly on how rigid the moral principles are which you'd be violating. |
20:05:05 | Lucifer | Can that be measured? |
20:05:09 | localroger | If your moral principle is that killing is always wrong, the "killing one to save a thousand" is a difficult choice. |
20:05:33 | Lucifer | Agreed, but does that mean that the moral principle is flawed? |
20:05:50 | localroger | Much of the difficulty comes from absolute moral precepts -- killing is always wrong, censorship is always wrong, abortion is always wrong, sex for means other than procreation is always wrong, etc. |
20:06:08 | rhino | rhino (rhino@[death to spam].ppp3-adsl-237.ath.forthnet.gr) has joined #virus |
20:06:08 | ChanServ | Mode change [+o rhino] on #virus by ChanServ |
20:06:32 | localroger | Much of the problem magically vanishes if we simply accept that moral absolutes are unreasonable. This, of course, introduces a large barrel of other worms. |
20:06:42 | Lucifer | Do you think that there will always be a theoretical case where the end justifies breaking any given absolute moral principle? |
20:07:15 | Ophis | Ophis (~Ophis@[death to spam].ns1.abiose.net) has joined #virus |
20:07:16 | Lucifer | It is the large barrel of other worms that worries me |
20:07:20 | prometheus | So should we work from the principle that Life is good and that saving more lives outweighs saving less, then? |
20:08:02 | Lucifer | What kind of lives? |
20:08:08 | rhino | i think that giving an absolute meaning to the verb "justifies" is the tricky part |
20:08:11 | TylerEmerson | TylerEmerson (~afd@[death to spam].host-64-72-54-38.classicnet.net) has joined #virus |
20:08:26 | Lucifer | Do animal lives count? Are all human lives considered equal? How do you compare? |
20:08:44 | prometheus | That is the hard part. |
20:08:46 | TylerEmerson | TylerEmerson is now known as Guest9027463 |
20:08:47 | Ophis | :-) |
20:09:02 | Guest9027463 | Guest9027463 is now known as TylerE |