Torture

Here it is: no. no no no. NO NO NO. NOOOOOO!!!!

We haven't talked about it in class yet but I suppose it's up for discussion on the blogs. Beyond the purely emotional reaction as worded so eloquently above, I have deeply seated objections to the legitimate use of torture of the death penalty.

I will use a term that seems unphilosophical but in fact gets across exactly why I object. This term is 'barbaric.' The act of torture is barbaric in precisely the way that the more sophisticated Roman civilization thought the human sacrifice of Druids in Britain was barbaric, because it was incompatible with their civilization and they had found a better way to live. The metaphor goes even further and shows how we have plenty of atrocities beyond torture that we have very few qualms with, the same way the Romans carried out mass murder and genocide but for some reason found human sacrifice barbaric. But I digress.

We don't want torture to ever be acceptable, and as in my last post, I disagree with legitimizing it as a means to extract information because it could lead to the far more dangerous means to extract revenge. In effect, legalizing torture in any situation would be a hugely regressive policy.

Response to "Nazis =/= Monsters"

Original post here

I've been pondering this subject on and off for quite a while now, and I think that a sustained effort to prove that is is never OK to dehumanize human beings under any circumstances, even petty criminals or mass murderers.

First off there are very real practical objections to why you should never treat a criminal as only a criminal. By putting a murderer into prison you strip him of everything he has besides being a murderer and is reminded of his social role as villain every moment of his life. As a criminal he is not given attention in his role as a normal member of society, and as it is being proven in progressive mental institutions, it is far more effective to treat the part of the person that is not sick than to constantly remind them of the part of them that is wrong. It encourages exactly the wrong part of a person to grow and develop.

A more philosophical consideration is that to treat someone with as much dignity as that person acted with  against another person is just forcing the state or community giving out justice to stoop to the same level as them.

A system of justice, whether domestic, or in response to genocide and war, has the dangerous propensity of perpetuating the desire for revenge. By using the state as an instrument of revenge it legitimizes acts of revenge both big and small throughout society and in daily interactions. If revenge wasn't a legitimate means of emotional release we would be forced to pursue options that wouldn't perpetuate cycles of physical and emotional violence.

The model of enlightened compassion for criminals would lead to a more humane system of justice. I am absolutely not suggesting we pardon all crimes, but we would be forced to see justice in a more reasonable light. That is, as a way society regulates itself so we are able to maintain the furthest extent of our freedoms without compromising those of others. Criminals that made a mistake or can be rehabilitated should be rehabilitated, if criminals are a danger to other's rights and freedoms they should be segregated from the general population. Revenge and the hatred it engenders should never be a part of it.

Prohibition Anyways

Can a state realistically achieve a functional prohibition on certain substances? Is it desirable to make the attempt anyways? (Q&A 2)

I think the first question I ask is almost rhetorical. Prohibition as clearly not eliminated addictive substances in the past, and it is clear to all involved that prohibition will never be perfect.

Should we try to prohibit use despite this? One of the critiques of cannabis legalization is that society actually saves itself a lot of expense and trouble by suppressing use of cannabis. If it as legalized there would be huge issues with productivity, psychosis, and addiction recovery. That seems to follow, if you can do the numbers out and if you think productivity is a big societal priority. However, if that logic follows, why don't we attempt to legally suppress alcohol for the same reasons? 

This whole debate depends on how people run the scenario of legalization in their heads. In my mind, even if all banned substances where legalized, there would still be a huge stigma and a vast majority of the population would avoid using addictive substances. If you think that legalization would lead to an ever growing proportion of the population becoming addicts, then clearly legalization is a bad idea. 

Peripheral and Essential Moral Charicteristics

Where is the line between an act such as cloning-to-produce-children become morally wrong in itself or morally wrong due to peripheries? What distinguishes a periphery from what is central to a moral action? (Q&A 1)

In the cloning debate in class there was a lot of talk about what was peripheral to the idea of cloning, especially when we where discussing the possible health effects. Are effects of a morally considered action therefore peripheral and something else essential? But an action is a thing producing results, so the results define the action.

Maybe the difference between an essential and a peripheral quality of an action is weather the effects of the action must necessarily make certain results. If human cloning necessarily has negative health effects then that would be essential to the action of cloning. If ill health effects can be avoided, then they are a peripheral quality of the action of human cloning.

Then the only essential quality of cloning to produce a person is creating a human clone. We can solve all the peripheral qualities of that action as they come up, but the action of cloning itself doesn't seem to be challenged much at all.

Under Grad Research Conference

Ok, I admit I signed up for this class to have a lot of debates about meta-ethics, which has been marked off limits since the begining of the course. I also wish I had gone to see the philosophy presentations last Thursday at the undergraduate research conference because JonDavid told me of a really interesting presentation.

When it comes to morality, I don't think there is any objective basis to be found in nature or in the way humans are that will tell you how to behave morally. Morality is based entirely on what sort of outcomes you want to produce through your actions, the pretense that morality is an objective truth or at all universal is only used to motivate those who do not act moral because of reason reason.

Apparently Jacob Wheeler's presentation was about his attempt to find an objective basis for morality. Failing that, as he necessarily would, he concluded that we need to hold onto morality because of its utility as a regulative idea.