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.

Response to "Film Transgressions"

Raanan's original post here.

It is likely many parents, or so-called advocates, where only shown that scene out of context, or else just heard about it out of context. Also, it seems many advocates for public morality are very willing to exploit each instance of content, which could be debatable, to the extreme.

This reminded me very much of the ransom put on the writer of The Satanic Verses by the government of Iran. Several passages could be taken from the text and look like an attack on Islam, but the larger work is not a critique of Islam and is in fact wide ranging and dreamy. Despite this, the Iranian government decided to ruin the life of this poor author, who had to live in hiding for years, because of a few disembodied passages.

Race Beyond Crime and Punishment

Are there other ways to deal with race besides different practices regarding punishment and discrimination? (Q&A 2)

While it is clear that racism and the social segregation of race is supported institutionally through patterns of criminal punishment, the roots of racism must be deeper than the economics of impoverishment and crime. Why is it we are trapped in this rut? I know I wont be able to fully answer this question.

I'm sure one reason that racism is still popular among poor whites is one of the same reasons it became popular in the first place. That is, that it is an accepted way to boost your ego, racism says that you are innately better than those people over there, and that is understandably an ego boost. It is unsurprising then that in my experience the upper middle class at least makes a nod at being anti-racist, and people from less financially secure backgrounds tend to be occasional racists. This might also be especially true because people living closer to poverty live in the same areas as impoverished blacks, and have more contact with racist concepts that are more readily replicated because of regular contact with blacks.

Responding to 'The Men's Center'

Brandon's original post can be found here

When reading this post I thought of an analogy that had been bugging me since I started looking for colleges. There are so many Black Student Unions, which are fine, but a White Students Union would clearly be racist.

I don't know if this fully explains it, but the logic behind oppressed groups banding together shares the logic of the classical Marxist proletariat organizing itself against its opporessor. However in the case of the proletariat the oppressors are just thrown off and cease to exist. If you attempt to do the same thing with race or gender you will never be able to achieve the same sort of result.

I fear that there are at least two competing logic in the politics of race. One is integration, where the cultures of the different race communities do not have to dissolve but cannot be separate. The second, more dominant, is the new separate but equal, except this time around it is not institutionally supported by racist government policy but by the way the black and white communities segregating themselves from each other mutually. It fits in very well with rhetoric of multiculturalism, which the listener understands as multiple separate cultures living together. I think the logic of the second is driving black student unions, and the logic of separation and difference might explain certain strains of feminism.