Iciaros wrote:Bombadil wrote:It's less made up because it can be judged on outcomes. We might argue whether spanking a child is moral. I might say the primary aspect is to steal security from the child, you might argue that a child misbehaving steals from a parents right to an orderly family. I might retort that the primary aspect to the individual is morally worse than the secondary aspect to the family in this case and research showing that spanking children leads to poor outcomes support my view.
I see. I think that is called a consequentialist view in philosophy, which basically means that the goodness or badness of an act is judged by its outcome rather than its motivation or some inherent characteristic. Theft, however, is an action rather than an outcome, and it is really the deprivation of a particular thing (which is what is being stolen) that is the outcome. In that case, wouldn't it be better to frame the prism in terms of the result rather than the action? Your (quoted) argument seems to espouse an outcome-oriented approach, since the focus is not on the theft but rather weighing the poorness of the outcome to the child and family respectively.
Bombadil wrote:Even then.. to determine an absolute morality is not to say it physically exists or is a fundamental aspect of the universe. It's to say we can determine a prism that objectively and absolutely resolves our moral compass.
I'm not quite sure I understand this particular quote, but perhaps to ask some questions:
1. What does it mean to 'objectively' resolve a moral compass?
2. Since I presume ideas of good and bad differ depending on who you ask, wouldn't it have to be that some moral compasses would not be absolutely resolved by the prism you propose?
First, thanks for the tone of questions.
To the first paragraph I think it's mutually compatible. If one applies this prism then one will see the outcomes justify the prism. They're a measure not the absolute moral prism. I'd be curious if one could share an example where the outcome doesn't justify the prism given real world studies.
For the two questions.
1. Essentially answered above
2. Good and bad are irrelevant to opinion, if you are stealing security or property (these terms need definition a bit) that is absolutely morally wrong in and of itself. However we can relatively determine the overall utility (this doesn't mean I'm talking to the maxim of 'the greater good' of utilitarianism) it balances the individual rights weighted over societal good.
One could take various issues.. abortion, immigration, corporal punishment.. and run them through this prism to determine, I think, an objective outcome. Even if not absolute I think it's certainly better than 'god did it'.
The initial question is who is the perpetrator and who is the victim of theft, then we can look at studies as to the outcomes and see of we can arrive at a conclusion that matches.
Take immigration.. does it steal jobs, increase criminal behaviour, add to a society, overload systems such as health.. who and where does it balance through the prism of who's stealing from who.
Uan aa Boa wrote:"From the moment when private ownership of movable property developed, all societies in which this private ownership existed had to have this moral injunction in common: Thou shalt not steal. Does this injunction thereby become an eternal moral injunction? By no means. In a society in which all motives for stealing have been done away with, in which therefore at the very most only lunatics would ever steal, how the preacher of morals would be laughed at who tried solemnly to proclaim the eternal truth: Thou shalt not steal!" - Engels
The point here is that an absolute moral truth would presumably have to be true independently of any consideration of the needs and circumstances of the society it emerged from, and this seems unlikely.
Ooh.. hence above I note we need to define property, I don't mind the idea that 'property is theft' in and of itself. I kind of think that unfairly acquiring property is kind of theft in that if one party has outsized knowledge or bargaining power then theft is involved.
Yet the prism remains true.