From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 11:17:21 MDT
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Barbara Lamar wrote:
> Lee Corbin wrote:
> > Indeed, as I have said, I personally would not recommend
> > that any nation execute an unprovoked nuclear attack on
> > any other at this time nor in the foreseeable future---
> > but I admit the possibility that I could be dead wrong.
>
> I would like to point out the difference between what Lee has written and
> the implication that one must not let a moral code stand in one's way of
> doing whatever might seem to advance a certain goal.
I believe Barbara that you may be getting at the question of
"What is the price of a moral code?" -- it is somewhat different
from but related to "What is the price of a legal code?".
[Side note -- and "accepting" the legal code in Europe (presumably
a civilized society) may end up killing two people (the Martinots)
so the question gets raised as to when and when not a "code" *should*
be accepted.]
> Lee's comments imply that before taking action, he would want to be sure
> that what he was doing did not violate his moral code. Robert's question:
> "Are we are willing to sacrifice humanity due to personal or moral
> repugnance?" implies that one should be willing to say "The hell with
> morality.
No, not "The hell with" (since that would lead to chaos and that
would likely be unextropic).
My perspective might be best viewed with Spock's observation --
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one".
(I would suspect that it is not too different from the
perspective that may have driven socialist or communist
societies during the last century.)
> This action will advance Goal Y, so I'm going to do it, regardless
> of the fact that it is incompatible with my moral code." (repugnant =
> opposed, contradictory, incompatible
If humanity dies any "moral" code (or legal code) dies with it.
It was quite interesting this week to watch the PBS viewing of
the documentary on "The Donner Party". It documents quite well
how "low" humans may need to go to save themselves.
(For those of you who have not seen this, I strongly recommend
it as a view of a very unpleasant slice of "reality".)
The point (for Barbara) would be that in at least some situations
humans seem willing to discard the "moral code" (or at least the
"acceptable" behavior code). The question from an evolutionary
standpoint might be do we want to accept or be repulsed by situations
in which the moral code gets discarded?
Robert
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