What if the pharmacist had to pay his debt from college and from opening up a pharmacy? He eats the loss from the theft, misses another payment, and the bank wants to take over his store. Who will sell the magic, yet ridiculously expensive drug now? hypos r fun
And yes, rhester thinks it is wrong to steal food from the guy who has imprisoned you and starving you for kicks.
The act itself is wrong. Circumstances leading to the act should be considered. Lets say the guy is tried for stealing the food. Story shows up on Twitter and it's now drawn outrage to bleeding hearts across the world. Guy gets freed from the press. Does attention make the act any more right or wrong?
Actually I think it is wrong to be cruel to prisoners, unless they are rich and famous and they complain if the gourmet food is not seasoned right or the jacuzzi is broke. like I said, stealing isn't ever right, but there are definately times you don't punish someone for doing it because the circumstances are unique. Let's go back to a traffic example. We put these yellow stripes dividing a road and tell people which side of the stripe they have to drive on. That is a moral decision, it is telling them the right lane to drive in and the wrong lane to drive in. Now we understand that under unique circumstances the correct choice is to cross over into the opposite lane for the safety of yourself or others. Just because we can think of hypothetical reasons to crossover the line do you think it makes it right to remove the center stripe and have everyone decide for themselves which is the correct lane to drive on? No, if we did that there are enough teenage drivers who like to push the limit and play chicken like I did when I was young and dumb; and then there are those people who hate to be told what to do and they will try there best to exert their own opinion on others so they will certain buck the majority and so basically you will have roads without morals and alot of death and destruction. I also gave the example of me breaking the speed limit to rush my son to a hospital emergency room, however I did not say I would deliberately run over 3 girls scouts crossing an intersection to get there. Every right and wrong moral choice must be judged and there are many instances where violating what is right should not be punished because of a higher and greater good, and certainly many cases where one should be given mercy or even commended.
No. It doesn't make it any more/right wrong if he ends up going to jail and getting the electric chair for stealing it. It doesn't even make it more wrong if he is exonerated and goes on a child killing spree. His intent was to survive by taking food from his oppressor. I see absolutely nothing morally wrong with that. rhester, your examples... I don't care about punishment, this was a question of morality wasn't it? Whether laws are moral is a different debate.
Exactly my point, I said it was wrong to steal. Always. My point in your example was that if the prisoner was treated right and fed good he wouldn't think of stealing because it is wrong. But under the difficult and desparate circumstance he stole to sustain his own life, others might have died of starvation rather not steal, I don't know, each person might handle it different. But the situtation didn't make stealing right. The situation made stealing necessary in his judgment and we can be reasonable about how we would view the theft. Suppose you are the jailer and you find out that the prisoner has stolen the affection of your wife, she helps him escape and they leave you penniless and full of hate and bitterness. We don't have to make stealing right for some situations and wrong in others to understand why someone might do it for a good reason. If you told a prisoner to steal food because they are trying to starve him, you might take away someone higher up's ability to discover the abuse and show mercy and pardon to the prisoner. There are all kind of 'hypothetical' ways of looking at situations but right and wrong can be established if you define goodness. Choosing the best and highest good for all without partiality is a bible concept that explains God's actual character- God is Love.
BTW you don't need to believe in a God to define a moral, all you need to determine what brings the highest and best benefit to people. That isn't easy to find out for people so it helps alot to get 'a' God view of it. Sorta gives you a moral compass, a head start, a clear path to follow.
The hypothetical involved someone being unjustly imprisoned by a captor, not someone in a standard prison. It isn't a fair hypothetical. Someone is 'evil', and he is being cruel to someone for no reason beyond sadism. Yes, someone could expand the hypothetical and make make the prisoner seem like the villain. (Prisoner killed the guy's wife and ate his dog.) But, that was the not case presented. That being said, am I correct in this interpreting of your writing: Two wrongs don't make a right. In a Utopian society, no one would steal, which proves stealing is wrong? Which, I understand. It is noble, and in a universal sense... (to me) you're correct. And I'll admit, with my moral system, my society would probably end up blind. <-example of half blind! And yes, I realize that I'm not actually OK with the stealing, but rather with the punishment of the jailer. Hell, I don't think stealing food is enough in this situation. The guy should kill the jailer. (For staying his hand, I consider the prisoner a better man than me.) Now we get the story of the kid who goes after his father's murderer. So continues the story of the blind society. Morality to me is regional/cultural/personal... and there are degrees. World is gray. On the lpg scale with the medicine, I waffle between stages 2 & 7, depending on the day/blood sugar. (I no longer remember the point I was trying to make... time for soda.)
good stuff, and there is no doubt the world is gray in that sense it is hard to see right when so much wrong is justified. Why did we invade Iraq for example. I can't think of one reason that makes it right. But alot of good people think it is right and would say I hate our soldiers which just isn't true or fair. I love our soldiers and I appreciate and respect what they are doing, but I understand that they do their duty not because the occupation is noble but because doing their duty is noble in itself. One soldier told me no good soldier actually risks his life for a cause but for his buddy next to him.
OK, let me change the scenario up a little bit: you're still unjustly imprisoned, but this time you have the opportunity to steal the key to your cell. In this case, you are actually able to remedy one injustice by committing another. Is stealing still wrong? All ethics are situational, because without situations there are no ethics. There is no such thing as stealing apart from the various actions we group under that label; the criteria we set for what is right and wrong are mere tools of abstraction to help us make complex decisions in real time. So is breaking the law always wrong? Even unjust laws? How does a law gain the ability to determine right and wrong? How do contradictory laws happen if morality is absolute? Obviously, man-made laws cannot be the standard for an objective morality. So how about God-made laws? Well, people have different, often contradictory ideas of what those are too, so that really doesn't get us anywhere. Once again, I disagree with your insinuation that the wife did anything wrong. She is under no obligation to obey her husband's commands, and there is nothing wrong with yelling at a child when they aren't able to reason for themselves as to why it's not a good idea to run accross the street. But is actually your position, not mine, that we are not responsible for our right or wrong actions. Running a stop sign to get your son to the hospital in time to save his life is wrong, but that wrong act does not necessarily require a punishment, according to you. It is impossible not to choose what is right for yourself. In a world where nobody steals, stealing is neither right nor wrong because something that doesn't exist cannot be anything. Stealing only becomes wrong when somebody makes a determination not to steal. This is more circular reasoning. If loving is doing what is good, then every action performed out of love is necessarily good, or right. The man's motive for stealing the food is irrelevant in determining the rightness or wrongness of his actions--he made the determination that stealing was the right thing to do or he wouldn't have done it. I reject your false dichotomy between love and self-interest. Love exists because it serves self-interest, otherwise it would have been selected out of the population. I'm not sure how love or self-sacrifice are distinctly Christian. I believe that those are universally human traits that Christianity incorperated into its mythos. Well, then I must disagree with the Cristian bible. There is no Platonic form of an ideal human; we are all making things up as we go along. Even the Bible and all its commentaries could not hope to encompass the range of possible ways of being human. In fact, what it means to be human itself is constantly changing--never fixed or exended through time. You're missing the point. It is entirely irrelevant why those folks did what they did--the results are the same either way. Ultimately, they, not God, made determinations for themselves as to what was right. Perhaps they felt they were doing God's will, but so do some psycho killers. No, you've said all along that whether something is right or wrong doesn't depend on the situation. Stealing is always wrong--remember? Again, morality doesn't have to be absolute or objective in any sense; that is your opinion, and incorperating your opinion into the definition is circular reasoning. Thank you, as well!
Hey! Kohlberg! I’ve actually posted these on this board a couple of times. I’m not as familiar with the pre-conventional level but I think it’s possible that the child could rationalize taking the medicine from the self-interest standpoint. It’s true that the child won’t see the universal as it relates to all mankind, but they may see the personal gain, once removed in this case. Maybe they'd view it as a daddy helping mommy.
Actually I think rhester is largely right there. He’s essentially working through the dilemma, and it’s the process of working through the dilemma that raises ones awareness level and moves a person to the next level on Kohlberg’s list. Interestingly the Bible addresses some very similar dilemmas. Matthew 12 1At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath." 3He answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? 6I tell you that one[a] greater than the temple is here. 7If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,'[b you would not have condemned the innocent. 8For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." 9Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" 11He said to them, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." 13Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt 12&version=NIV This idea is in fact a key to why the New Testament is not about just obeying the Law. Strictly speaking Christians are no longer under the Law at all. They are to live by the Spirit of God instead. Look at Kohlberg’s moral hierarchy and consider what a person at each level would do if their actions were motivated by a spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I suggest that no matter which level of awareness a person is at these motivations will point them in a very similar direction.
