|
||||||
|
Socrates Exchange: Is it ever right to do what is wrong?
By Laura Knoy on Thursday, May 27, 2010.
Do the ends ever justify the means? Assuming, for example, that lying, torturing, stealing, and murder are wrong, are such actions justified in rare instances in order to avoid some terrible consequence, or to achieve some great good? If so, how far does this go? Are all actions potentially justified, so long as the benefit is sufficiently great? Or are some actions so horrible that they are never justified, no matter what the consequences? What makes actions right or wrong in the first place-the consequences, or something else?
Guest
- Max Latona, Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Anselm College
Background Reading
Here’s a hypothetical to generate some thought on this question taken from an article in the Phoenix Examiner...
“Suppose your neighbor knocks at your door and you let him in. He explains there is a hit man trying to kill him. He asks you to hide him and being a moral person, you do. A few minutes later, there is another knock at your door. It is the hit man. You know who it is because your neighbor gave you a good description. The hit man tells you he has dropped in to visit your neighbor who doesn’t seem to be at home at the moment. Then he asks you the important question: “Do you know where he is?””
How do you respond? Do you lie and tell him you don’t know where he is? You have been brought up being told that lying is wrong. Do you do it anyway to save your neighbor’s life? Or if lying is wrong, do you tell him he’s hiding in your bedroom closet which most likely means your neighbor will be killed?
Every day we are faced with questions where we need to choose between right and wrong. Most don’t come with fatal consequences. Do I speed to get to work on time? Should I fib about my evening plans to keep the secret of a surprise party intact? Do I not answer someone honestly for fear it may hurt their feelings?
Our answer to the question “is it ever right to do what is wrong?” might depend on how we define ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ and how strenuously we maintain a boundary between the two. Different philosophers have answered this question in different ways. Absolutists such as Immanuel Kant believe that there are certain absolute rights and wrongs which we have a duty to do (and avoid doing), with the result that actions like lying, stealing and murder are never acceptable. On the other side are utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham and John Stewart Mill, who look at the consequences that an action brings to determine if it is right or wrong, and specifically whether it promotes the greatest good for the greatest number of people. So for Bentham and Mill, it is quite possible that an action (such as lying or stealing) that is usually wrong could, in an unusual circumstances, be the right thing to do. Thus, while Kant would never permit us to lie to the inquiring murderer, Bentham and Mill would demand that we do so—in so far as it prevents the pain and suffering associated with the death of your neighbor.
Personally, I have struggled with this question. I was brought up by a mother who told me it was never OK to lie. So, growing up I never did lie to her. It was understood as I got older and was a little more responsible, that if I was going out and did not want her to know where I went, then “out” was an acceptable question to “where are you going tonight?” I felt good about my mother’s strict rules about lying. I felt proud I could look her in the eye with a special understanding of trust.
Now my mother has Alzheimer’s disease and because of this I have resorted to lying at times. She has been recently asking me about her mother, who died in 1971. She has no short term memory and I know that if this is on her mind, she will ask “do you know where my mother is” 5-6 times in one visit. Telling my mother the truth will upset her, telling her the truth 5-6 times will upset her 5 or 6 times as much. Science has shown that although Alzheimer’s robs you of factual memory, it many times does not rob you of emotional memory. So she will not remember that her mom has passed, but that something sad has happened to her several times in a short period of time.
So I choose to lie to her. I make up some story about her mother and why she can’t be with us at that minute and the moment passes. This is a decision I feel OK with because I guess I’m taking the utilitarian route and choosing the lesser of two evils.
The line between right and wrong can get blurred whether Its lying to the hit man, to your mother with Alzheimer’s disease or making a decision to kill one human being in order to save others.
This is the final question we’re asking in our first season... one with a lot of angles. Have fun, challenge each other and most of all GET SOCRATIC.
Keith Shields,
Project Director
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Facebook
Twittercomments
All comments are moderated before appearing on the site. Comments must adhere to the NHPR.org comment guidelines and terms of use.
I think that it depends on the occasion. If someone is telling you to do something that you do not want to do, you shouldn't do it, even if it is the right thing to do. But if you are planning on murder or to steal from someone, you should think of the consequences that will come if you do do that thing. There are plenty of people that should have thought over what would have happened that felt it was right to do what was wrong. Now, I'm not perfect, and I at least attempt to do the right thing, but most of the time, I don't. I try to think what would happen, but most of the time, I just don't care enough to think. But the point that counts is that I at least try.
ShaenaBergeron@gmail.com
Yes, unfortunately it is at times right to do something wrong. I want to first state that I am adamantly pro-choice. However, from a moral standpoint I do believe abortion is wrong. There are times in an individual's life when an unplanned pregnancy is too great a burden to bear and it must be terminated. I doubt it is seldom an easy choice but the might be the right choice for the individuals involved. I can believe something is wrong but the best decision at the time.
Thank you for so well stating my thought. Although I personally would not have choosen an abortion and have been willing to help friends in tough circumstance develop a plan for an infants well being. However, as a nurse, I have seen many people who have had to make this difficult decision and quite frankly seen some people avoid this when is was the right choice for mom and child (as proved by later circumstances). Thus pro-choice.
First, one has to determine what is wrong for oneself. Would it have been right to allow an ailing Hitler to die without treatment during the 2nd World War? Is it wrong to spare a friend's feelings about her weight or a social problem that is preventing her to achieve her desires? Is it wrong to support a war from one's country if innocent people are being killed, as well as our own soldiers, or if there is no clear justification for fighting or invading? Is it wrong to hunt? I think maybe a "one size fits all" approach is impossible.
In the extreme cases mentioned,viz torture etc the answer is always NO.
In less extreme cases, it is not so clear. There are 2 cases to mention:
1. The right thing at the wrong time generally works out to be wrong.
2. As appreciation of things change, the definition of 'wrong' also changes. Example - it may be that in a few decades society will consider eating animals is wrong. At this time we do not think so. But when the future generations look back they will consider we were wrong .
Sorry to be Clintonesque, but it depends on what 'wrong' is.
I daily do wrong in the eyes of my masters, the "Health Insurance" companies. Their definition of right is whatever drops the most number of dollars to the bottom line. I do my best to do wrong by them.
Is it wrong to end a leech's life by pouring salt on it?
A Jain would never speak to you again.
But I would.
Bill Danby
I think lying is justified at times. The old chestnut about the Nazis at the door asking if there is anyone hiding in the attic is one clear example. In less dramatic situations, often we need to at least modify the truth, as in tact vs. brutal candor.
It is not only 'right', it is regularly rewarded. Most societies acknowledge that to kill is 'wrong', yet most modern societies award medals to their soldiers who kill enemy soldiers; the more outrageous the odds against the killer the higher the award. The difficulty with this question is in the definition of 'right' and 'wrong'; who defines 'right' and who defines 'wrong'? Was it right for Rosa Parks to sit where she did on the bus? Of course it was because most people recognize the inequity of that rule. But is it ever right to enslave another human being? This gets trickier because most people would accept the idea that no human being should be enslaved; the 'right' and the 'wrong' in question is the key...
I would say usually no, but there is a lot to think about. Any thing involving pain is definately no.
No matter how we may rationalise our actions, our goals will be shaped by how we achieve them.
I expect pretty conventional thoughts to be expressed here, and doubt participants are prepared for a radical departure from the usual fare where the good is discussed, but here goes anyway:
The Modern Era began when Luther underscored lurking divisions in the Christian world, and worldview, that had only temporaqrily been settled by the domination of the Vatican, which had become so corrupt it was hardly the feat of courage on Luther's part that he is attributed with. This cracked open a space in which mounting evidence anomalous to Ancient mythic symbolism and Christian era revelation could be used to create a venue for secular speculation about the laws of nature. But, even though driven by such anomalies, that secular movement nevertheless adopted a method prejudicial to attributing any meaning to anomaly as such, prefering to rely on the "dicsovery" of natural laws that would squeeze natural anomalies into a manageable enclosure. The best example of this is calculus, which theorizes the reduction of anomlies into geometries so confining of it as to be infinitely negligible. The problem, of course, is that this reduction requires that infinity to be real for that anomaly to be truly neglible, and later theory, Quantum Mechanics, explicitly states it cannot be, proving that anomaly is at the root of all that is real. But how is anomaly so liberated from the very law that would confine it that that very law gets its meaning from that liberation? And what does this mean for the good? It meaqns there is no rulebook for what is right and wrong!
There is a negation of what is affirmed in every affirmation unrecognized in that affirmation. There is an affirmation of what is negated unrecognized in every negation. There is a crossroads of responsibility in every logical judgment unrecognized of this movement betweeen affirmation and negation. We call this crossroads morality. Through it what is unrecognized is imminent of motivating the inference progressing from what is unrecognized in the current judgment. A moral sense is nothing more nor less than a readiness for that recognition inferentially imminent to what is unrecognized in the current judgment. And the more rigorous that judgment the more imminence there is of movement in the recognition motivating it. Moral character dialectically unfolds until the truth of it is wholly liberated from the discipline of judgment that would limit anomaly to the context of some confining law. In this way the very effort to limit anomly to some real infinity of the negligible, and so confining it to order or form or normative authority, emancipates it such that the more precision in that limiting anomaly to negligibility the more complete its liberation from that limiting. If time is anomaly, if time is just the differing it is, the least term of that differing is all the differing it is. Moment is the completest time. Morality is that explosive reduction of anomaly to the most liberating breach in law. It is easy enough to be evil, all we have to do is to perennially defer that moment of liberation. But it is not possible to be good alone, for it is the emancipation of all time in the least term of it that the good it real.
Yes, there are times that it is right to do what is wrong. That doesn't make the wrong thing right, it just means it was the least wrong thing to do in a situation and the best choice available. For instance, if you are driving and there's an obstacle and you must either swerve into a pedestrian or swerve into a tree, choosing the tree is the best option, but I cannot imagine anyone would say that driving into a tree is the right thing to do in general.
Anonymous poster,
Your prosaic answer is great, bringing the rights and wrongs down to everyday examples vs. big, big dilemmas.
Before deciding if it is ever “right” to do “wrong,” the two terms need to be defined. I think a “universal” definition for either of them is impossible.
Is it "right," that to follow my own perceived sensibilities, I abstain from using incredible pain, degradation, and fear to torture one or more persons, who are known to be intent on doing terrible harm to thousands of people?
So, is torture “wrong?” Is saving the many by sacrificing the few "right"? Are the consequences of using torture to serve a “greater good,” good or bad for the individual and collective “soul”?
By not using torture on a few to save the many, often considered a “right” choice, and devastating consequences of death, pain, and mayhem result to many “innocents,” can that choice of not doing “wrong” to get that vital information before the action, still be considered the “right” choice?
There is no “right” or “wrong” answer.
I would have to say yes. I can recall some horrible situations I have read about where a person was put into a position to do "wrong". The most vivid example is from Tracy Kidder's book, Strength in What Remains, where a young African, after witnessing horrors and atrocities, to his family and others, is on the run for his life, fleeing to safety. He comes across a crying infant in the baby's dead mother's arms. The young fleeing African cannot take the baby; he has no way to feed it or care for it, and its crying would reveal the African's whereabouts. It is not possible to be on the run fleeing to safety while carrying an infant. The African survives but the image of having to leave that baby (to die) stays with him forever. So was it wrong to leave the baby?
The first time I realized I can't figure out what's right once and for all was at a lecture by Prof. William Perry on what it means to be educated. He described a young man from a small town in Iowa who realizes he has been exposed to only one point of view, and he has a lot of questions. If "thou shalt not kill," should he become a vegetarian? Should the poor receive welfare or "tough love"?
The young man has been accepted at a large university on the east coast, and he is certain that the professors there, who have studied and found the Truth, will impart it to him. To his dismay and frustration, he finds that the professors disagree, so it seems to be his job to study and discern which of them really has the Truth.
After a long struggle, the young man comes to the conclusion that the quest is never-ending, but that's OK; he's gotten pretty good at figuring out what's nearest right. He will have to keep refining and adapting all his life, but he feels he can handle that. "Then," said Perry, "he is educated."
I saw I wasn't alone in an unending struggle to figure out the right thing to do. It's not right to pull the wings off flies, but should I kill Japanese beetles that have infested the roses? If a child misbehaves, should he be disciplined or simply be shown proper behaviour through word and example? Perhaps with a different approach on my part, the child wouldn't have misbehaved in the first place.
So I know now I can't figure out everything once and for all, relax, and quit the struggle to progress. But then, that's life!
I simply love this response. I couldn't agree more, and I think this is what Socrates meant when he spoke of the "human wisdom" of knowing that you don't know, and never tiring of the search...
I think that it depends on what your doing. I think that sometimes it is ok depending on what your situation is but, You shouldn't do something if you know it will make you ashamed afterwords.I think that if you do, do something that is wrong and any you know it is think of what might happen if you do, do that. Think of your family, because your going to let them down.
As an adoptive parent (China), I have seen people lie on their medical forms in order to adopt a child. They say that they do not take certain medications, even though they do. Some will stop taking them for a week or two; others will switch doctors, fill out a new form that says no meds under the questionnaire, and then get a clean bill of health. China expressly forbids people from adopting who take anything for depression or anxiety, and those people must be cleared for two years. This stems from both a different belief system about medicine and the role of medicine in treating illness (East vs. West) and also from a genuine desire to be sure that the adopted child will have their new parents for their growing up years. Is this right? Is it better for the kids to live in foster care until adulthood than for them to be with permanent families who also take our western drugs? Is it wrong to lie on the form or to switch clinicians in order to get the form completed in a favorable way? Is there nothing that parents wouldn't do for their child, already with them or waiting for them?
Yes, it is sometimes necessary to do what is wrong, when what is considered wrong is right. The standard examples are opposing
anti-semitism in Germany, apartheid in South Africa and slavery and then segregation and Jim Crow in America--all of which were legal.
Dr. King (MLK Jr.) talked about just and unjust laws in opposing segregation and inequality. And there's the passage in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in which Huck agonizes over whether to turn in Jim, but can't do it, even though he believes turning in the fugitive slave Jim is the right thing based on the distorted values of slavery. He thinks it's so serious he'll go to hell, but decides going to hell is what he'll have to do.
We can think of examples of stealing that helped society--Daniel Ellsberg's taking the Pentagon Papers, for example.
I'd like to hear about instances in which torturing and murder are justified.
Should this discussion include Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development and the work of Carol Gillligan, who posits women relate differently to moral situations.
Kohlberg's and Gilligan's work (especially in the ways they disagree!) are fascinating, and are certainly relevant to the discussion. In the case of Kolhberg, I would imagine he would say that at the highest stage of moral development, it is never right to do what is wrong. Gilligan might disagree, and argue that this is a male-centered focus on principles and rules...What do you think?
While I was in Greenland, I was advised that if someone of the community needs something, such as a part or a tool, they will come in and get it. What we might consider stealing, they consider sharing. What is right and wrong is dependent on social norms.
I don't think that doing wrong is ever really right. Killing one person to save millions is not right, but it is not wrong. It is just more right than doing nothing. Stealing medicine to help your kid it not right, but it is more right than letting your kid suffer. Torturing is not right, but it is better than letting the bomb go off and everyone ending up dead anyways.
ZACH M
5/27/10
IS IT EVER RIGHT TO DO SOMETHING WRONG
I think some things are okay although from different points of views it may look bad. Take lieing as an example, I know for a fact that adults lie to children even though they are teaching them to not lie. The adult might think it to be fine because they are hiding a secret that the child isn’t old enough to understand or it’s to inappropriate. But some might say it’s not okay to lie to a child because that mean being a hippocrate which isn’t the example to set. But what it comes down on is opinion it almost always does. In those old gangster movies they always owed some one money and they would always try to steal or kill some one to help pay the debt but if you were a judge you would probably think guilty no second thought but if you were the guy you would think it was reasonable that you killed to stay alive. It’s eat or be eaten in this world.
It mainly depends on what you define is wrong. It is wrong to kill a person but is it wrong to kill a person when they attacked you and you use self defence? Is it wrong to break in to a house or a store but is it wrong to break into a store to et medicine you can't afford to help save a loved one? This al surrounds on how you define right v.s wrong. If you define wrong as killing a random bystander v.s killing a person that is mugging you or assulting you off the street and you using self-defence. If you are drunk and you swerve off the road and hit someone is it the same thing as just running over a random person because you are sad?
I do believe it is right to do what's wrong. However only you can decide because right and wrong are based on ethics and everyone has a different set of ethics. In my opinion it is right to do what's wrong when you have beneficial reasons for doing it. If you look at the consequences for the "wrong" act and decide that the consequences are not as big as the benefit then it should be okay to do the "wrong". For me if doing something wrong means that a relationship,whether a friendship or a family member, will not be ruined then I would do the wrong. This is how I grew up and these are the things I think are right. So for somebody else, their ethics may be different and they may think that what's wrong is wrong.
Well, you are in the majority with this view: it describes a utilitarian analysis that argues that actions are right or wrong based on the consequences, and specifically on whether they promote (or fail to promote) the greatest good for the greatest number. One major problem that this view runs into (as mentioned on the show) is that it appears to justify potentially any and all actions, no matter how evil. Thus, no matter how bad the action, I can think of a scenario in which the cost-benefit analysis concludes that the action is justified. So, your view would force you to admit that rape, child abuse, torture, murder, etc. are potentially justifiable! Ugh!
But wait, Max--
What *you* are saying is that, in whatever horrific scenario you can think of that *would* justify, say, rape, it would be better to let that horrific scenario play out? Seems to me that the "wrong" is in the situation here--it is clearly a lose-lose scenario--and not in the morality of the person choosing to rape.
You are wrong in suggesting that this justifies "any and all actions, no matter how evil." Rather, it puts the actions into their respective contexts, and recognizes that there are contexts in which the same action may be moral or immoral. Dissecting an action out of its context is artificial, and *that* is the problem.
...is this not the case in any "defensive" war action. While offensive war is hard to justify, if war is waged on you, are you justified in waging war back? If so rape, torture, murder, etc. will inevitably happen. Of course if you did nothing rape, torture, murder, etc. and occupation, with whatever that entails in addition, will also happen. You can say that with the best intentions your defensive war will restrain and control war crimes to the best extent possible, but it cannot guarantee that they will be eliminated.
A classic real-life example would be the "Hydro" ferry sinking carried out by the Norwegian resistance in WWII. Was the death of civilians (their own civilians at that) justified to keep the German nuclear program at bay?
I admit it's not easy to fully accept this or clearly see when such action is justified. The best answer I can think of is that clearly every other possible action should be considered before such troubling ones are taken. After all was John Brown a martyred abolitionist or a fanatical terrorist?
Now you are saying the problem is that we "cannot guarantee that [war crimes] would be eliminated". That's a pretty high bar; your initial scenario was simply that a particular heinous act could be "justified" by an even more heinous scenario. In that particular thought exercise, I am taking your example at your word, and asking if an unchanging morality (one that will not bend despite the knowledge that bending would be justified) is better than one which recognizes context.
You appear, in some of your comments, to put a premium on action. It appears (correct me if I am mistaken) that you consider a lie of commission worse than a lie of omission, that a deliberate action to harm is worse than knowingly standing by and doing nothing when you could have alleviated harm. I very much disagree; whether you are choosing to act or not to act, to tell or not to tell, once you are in the situation you must consider all the consequences of either action or inaction. If it is moral to simply "not tell", it is every bit as moral to actively lie; if it would be immoral to lie, then a lie of omission counts, too.
We *never* have *all* the information in front of us (except in these hypothetical scenarios), so after-the-fact tinkering is essentially moot; for every scenario in which unexpected consequences made a well-intentioned decision horrific in hindsight, alternate (but equally unexpected) consequences could have made it better (for every "but the baby you killed would have been Einstein", there is a "but the baby you killed would have been Hitler"). I tried to stay with the scenario as you set it: "I can think of a scenario in which the cost-benefit analysis concludes that the action is justified."
Every so often it is right to do what is wrong. Lying is wrong but sometimes you do it to protect someone from being mentally hurt. For example if you have a deadly disease you might not want to tell your kids. This prevents them from worrying. In this case it would be okay to do something wrong.
Good points, but I wonder if we can make a distinction between telling the truth, on the one hand, and unnecessarily providing full disclosure, on the other. It seems to me that we have an obligation to speak truthfully, but that does not entail that we must always speak in the first place! In the example that you provide, I may have an obligation to tell my children the truth if they ask: "Dad, are you going to die soon?" (if I know that I will). But if they don't ask the question, I don't necessarily have any obligation to tell them of my impending death (especially if I think it would be needlessly harmful to them to know this at the present moment).
This isn't actually a very good example, because if you are ill and going to die soon, it is really important for you to talk about it with your kids and prepare them to deal with that eventuality. It's more a matter of HOW you talk with them, not if.
Is it ever right to do what is wrong?
Yes, it is right to do what is wrong but it all depends on the situation. You can't just go around killing people that you hate because you think that it is right; that would be the definite wrong thing to do no matter how right it may feel. If someone was trying to go after a family member of yours you wouldn't give the information about where they are and who else they are with. In a situation like this it would be okay to lie because you are trying to help a loved one. Knowing what is right and wrong is a big part of growing up and everyone needs to understand these concepts before they get into adulthood. For a person to know whether it is ever right to do something what is wrong is up to each individual because everyone is different.
There is no question that morally requires the freely-made decisions of each individual. If there were no such thing as free choice of the will, there would be no morality, for we would all be automata. However, having said that, and even when we acknowledge that people make different decisions in the same or similar circumstances, it doesn't follow that all decisions or choices are equally correct. Five persons might have five different answers to the question "what is 2+2?", but there is only one right answer. Isn't the same true for questions of morality??? If not, why not?
I think that it is okay to do something wrong even though its not the right thing to do, because maybe that's the only way that you can do what you what. For Example: If you are told not to, lets say, go on the highway and you do it anyway. But you do it anyway, because that's just what you want to do. All you want to do is go on the highway to the store to get gum. Your told that you can't go because its not safe, or your just not aloud to. I would not advise going over to a friends house when your grounded and you ask your folks and they say no, then just don't go and you can most likely go when your not grounded. In some situations its nice to just listen to what your told. What I am trying to say is that it is okay at times, like when its appropriate and then there are times when you definitely should not do something wrong. I think that it is appropriate to do what is wrong as long as you don't do it all the time, well if its not a bad thing but its not allowed then if you do it anyway then so what. If you do something thats wrong don't get to carried away with it. Like if you tell your parents that you want to go to the beach with friends and they say no, and you say that your going to do it anyway, they will ask who is going to be responsible. And if you lie and say that your friends mom or dad is going to be responsible then I would say that that is going to far/ getting carried away. You should just say that no one is going to be there to watch you and just leave it at that. Lying, stealing and other things that you shouldn't do, is going to far if that is what you do. Well thats all that I can say for know.
Many of the examples that you cite involve doing things that some external authority tells you are wrong: whether it be the state laws, or parents, etc. In these instances, it is quite possible that the laws or one's parents are wrong, so that doing the forbidden action is in fact moral. For example, civil disobedience during the civil rights era may have been legally wrong, but it was arguably morally right. My question to you now is this: is it ever right to do what your own internal authority tells you is morally wrong--because some great good can be achieved, or some unfortunate consequence avoided?
Seems like a false dichotomy. When faced with a moral DIlemma, there's usually another choice: if there's a hitman at the door, don't answer the door! Also, are there situations in which the moral judgement is removed from the individual by the fact that someone else is committing an unmoral act: does the hitman's intent to murder the neighbor remove the moral judgement from us?
Bob,
I disagree with your first point, but agree with the second. On the first point, I share your frustration with many of the moral dilemmas cleverly devised by philosophers, but I don't think there is always another (easy) solution. If I had more time I would give you numerous examples. Your second point is more important, however. I agree that the moral responsibility for the evil committed in the case of the inquiring murderer is borne by him, and not me--even when I tell the truth. Bernard Williams (a contemporary philosopher) makes this point in his critique of utilitarianism: we only have a moral responsibility for our own actions, not for those evil actions on the part of others that we may happen to have an opportunity to prevent, and don't (especially if preventing those actions requires me to do things that are against my own principles). Williams is disturbed by the utilitarian (and consequentialist) view that we are just as responsible for actions that we fail to prevent (negative responsibility) as we are for actions that we commit on our own (positive responsibility).
Of course there is not always an "easy" solution. One problem is that we can't see the future, and usually don't have all the information we need to make an informed moral decision: suppose the neighbor lied, and the "hitman" is really a police officer coming to arrest him? My instinctive reaction in most situations is to get more data. Usually moral decisions don't happen in a vacuum, in spite of the artificial problems we're given in philosophy class; some actions have led up to the situation in question, and may have a bearing on the morality of a particular choice, but we usually know that only after the fact. That's why we have judges, juries, lawyers, and philosophers: to tell us what we SHOULD have done after we've done it, and hope we can use that to order our future behavior. Unfortunately, no future situation is going to be identical to the past ones, so we have to keep repeating the process, hoping to get more situations in the books to inform future decisions...
My radio asked, as I drove along,
“Is it ever right to do what is wrong?”
It wasn’t odd; it wasn’t strange,
It was The Socrates Exchange.
One caller (I didn’t catch his name)
Began with that most ancient claim,
That biblical morality
Determines “right” for you and me;
The Ten Commandments, he avowed,
Delineate what God’s allowed,
And deep within our hearts we know
What’s right, because God made it so.
(Such certainty, it frightens me;
I only hope we never see
Some group, so sure of their god’s powers
They hijack jets and hit some towers—
Cos, after all, it’s not absurd
To think obeying Allah’s word
Is “right”, unless it’s also odd
To heed the word of a Christian God.)
There is no moral absolute
Existing that’s beyond dispute;
It’s up to woman and to man
To muddle through the best we can
And recognize, as oft we might
That one man’s wrong’s another’s right;
That, sometimes, choosing not to act
Cannot be done; we still impact
And influence our fellows here,
Humanity both far and near—
So… leave the Bible on the shelf
And do some thinking for yourself.
If one's thinking is off or even sublime
how could we justify supporting such thought?
For from whose basis would we rely?
It seems that without some margin for thought
we all could be in for a lot.
Where would it lead mankind one might think
but to suggest an answer may be for naught even if on the mark.
We all can think and that we must do
but to suggest a response that would be off
would be like striking at thinking with the chance of being turned off.
Who then may one turn to to bring us all back to sanity?
If every thought would be left to ones opinion that would risk it leading to general demise.
We all know that would result in turmoil
unless we centered our thoughts with guidance.
But whose guidance would we rely?
Perhaps with the One who has chartered the Way!
What is wrong with a proven Way?
It wouldn't limit thinking but would instill guidance and eliminate self doubt as to whether ones thinking is off!
Am I far off?
So…
If one’s thinking is “off” (which, of course, it could be)
And our view of the world has gone odd
We add to the problem (it seems so to me)
When the thing we’re perceiving is God.
Throughout all our centuries, thousands of gods
Have been worshipped (and some worship none);
On the face of it, those are some pretty long odds—
Do you really think yours is the one?
The same human frailties that make you dismiss
Our perceptions of things on the ground
Are how we choose gods—and the problem is this:
There’s no evidence—none—to be found!
When we share observations with others as well,
And collectively form an alliance,
The empirical questions, at least, we can tell
(Thus the stunning successes of science)
The wishes of gods, or of angels on pins
Bring up questions, of course, by the score;
Two groups disagree, and that’s how it begins,
And it ends, all too often, in war.
No, give me a group that embraces its doubt,
And continues to work on their flaws
Instead of some followers, dear and devout
Of some Mesopotamian laws.
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-flawed-perception.html
some look around at nature
and see intelligent design
the burden of proof is on the scoffer
who has been given over to a debased mind
though what is known about God
is plain for them to see
instead of worshiping the seed planter
they worship the tree
and so it has been
as you point out
there are many gods
without a doubt
and since we all are
wired to worship....
Repent and forsake your sins, and trust Jesus Christ for your salvation. Then you will see and know the God who does not want any to perish. He is is patient and loving but also just and good and will punish all who are lawless and die in their sins. Please.
heard from teacher Ken McLeod (see iTunes)
a mid-level buddhist abbot, responsible for several isolated monastaries, comes across one where the temple dogs (who guard the temple and keep out vermin) are flea-ridden and quite sick.
the monks have not applied flea and tick killer because of the prohibition on killing
"I'll take the kharma" says the abbot, "put the ointment on the dogs."
Consider - maybe sometimes we accept that we are doing wrong. It's not made right by the ends it serves, its a price we have to accept to do
what has to done.
stealing is never right, but if you have a starving family, you may decide to do wrong by stealing from the grocery store. You take the kharma (consequences).
>stealing is never right, but if you have a starving family, you may decide to do wrong by stealing from the grocery store.
>You take the kharma (consequences).
Precisely. If you kill 1 person to save 100, there is blood on your hands. You owe a debt to the 1 (or to his heirs). Neutral third parties might agree with your action, and judge you to be an unlikely future threat, but until the 1 victim is made whole (difficult in the case of murder) by someone (e.g. the 100), the egg-breaking, omelet-making middleman remains in karmic debt.
If your actions are "wrong", then you are not doing "right". If your actions are "right", then you are not doing "wrong".
Whenever we make a DECISION, it is either the right decision or the wrong decision. For instance, telling the truth to the hit man is the WRONG thing to do, as the direct, predictable consequences of that action is to take part in a murder. Lying may be "wrong", but there is a difference between lying and not telling the truth.
For instance, if you lie to the hit man, you may be caught in the lie and risk your own life as well as your friends. Refusing to give up information is NOT lying. The right thing to do in this situation is to refuse to talk to the hit man, or to ask questions of him - "who are you?", "what do you want with him?".
Also, saying things like "I can't say", or "You'll have to ask somebody else", or "I don't share information about my neighbors without their permission" or something similar are perfectly acceptable responses. Lying IS wrong, so if you lie, you are doing wrong. However, lying is not AS wrong as giving up your neighbor to a hit man. The MOST VIRTUOUS decision is to deny information to the hit man requesting it.
It seems that the circumstances that create the dilemma require existing moral uncertainty. If the gestapo is looking to see if you are hiding your Jewish neighbor, you are already living in a world where ethnic cleansing and genocide are deemed reasonable and right. Whether you decide to lie or not seems somewhat trivial by comparison.
Circumstances can require hard decisions that have no easy answers, regardless of this being a man-made circumstance such as Nazi Germany or the slave south, or lifeboat/disaster situations. The moral action includes not doing something as well as actively doing something (I vaguely recall from freshman philosophy something about free will on this point).
I would say that the answer to the question is yes, but that doesn't mean you have to like it.
When I heard the opening of the discussion this morning, my first reaction was surprise. I found the question absurdly self evident.
After listening for a bit longer, I appreciated that the purpose was discussion, not presenting a solution and discussing that.
The fundamental problem here is in the question itself. It presents the false dichotomy of acts being absolutely right or wrong (otherwise the question is meaningless).
All acts exist on a spectrum between absolute right and absolute wrong, with very few acts at the extremes. The best we can do is keep ourselves aware of the choices we make in life, and assure we act in way that minimizes wrong.
"How does one determine the relative rightness or wrongness of an action" would, I think, have been more to the point but a bit less... marketable.