From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Jul 19 2003 - 06:30:08 MDT
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Lee Corbin (responding to my comments) wrote:
> I am not following you here at all. For me, there are no
> rationally arrived at "moral frameworks"---basically, one
> consults his or her own intuitions on the matter, and
> attempts to make them as rationally consistent as possible.
> It also helps one's intuition to consult the voices of
> others, including those long dead but whose wisdom is
> widely respected.
I would consider the ExI Principles a rational moral framework,
but as Anders points out they may be lacking with respect to
suggesting behaviors to adopt towards others, in particular any
whom have particularly entropic views and behavior patterns.
Where things get messy is when ones intuition and the other
voices of wisdom get contradicted.
One might cite dealings by societies with with known mass
murderers or sex offenders -- why does society not simply
eliminate these people (as humanely as possible)?
What justifies the cost of supporting them (over a
term of life imprisonment) given the risk that they
pose to others should the escape or be paroled?
I'm simply expanding the discussion somewhat. Perhaps
I am looking for someone to say "These fundamental
human rights trump any extropic moral framework."
And then I'm looking for a rational, or intuition,
or wisdom based argument as to *why* that is the
case. (Rather than say a genetic/tribal argument
that one simply doesn't "kill" other human beings
due to probable risks to oneself. After all most
of us have no problem "killing" cattle, pigs,
chickens, many types of fish, etc. -- so it isn't
the "killing" aspect that upsets people.)
Robert
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