Toughest Philosophical Questions

No, that's the reason we have laws. Those so-called bankers who cheated home-buyers are now being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They were driven by greed, and cheated the system with knowledge and forethought.

Hitler committed suicide; he knew his end was coming. Nazis were prosecuted at Nuremberg, and paid the final price for their inhumanity.

It tells us that as a moral form, right and wrong has a moral context, just as truth as a moral form has a moral context... People amass millions for their children and children's children unborn and at the same time destroy the contexts under which wealth is considered an honor... Morally, people should act in a fashion that keeps their own groups alive, but also in ways that keep the context for their groups viable... We can say that the Jews have often acted individually to destroy the context within which they as Jews were accepted in Europe... We can say of nationalism, that the process of forming into one nation out of so many different tribes, that violence and injustice were fore ordained... Considering the mixed up map of Europe before hand, German Nationalism was another spelling of conflict... Nationalism is never a fair substitute for internationalism with justice, and yet as a social spur driving at one point or another all of humanity in the near recent past, it has no equal as a means of justifying war, injustice, iniquity, and genocide... No one proclaimed the German Nation as proudly as hitler, and no one came closer to their destruction... We can see that he was right, that the germans are an intelligent and industrious people... It is their slavish affection for discipline, for law and order whose contexts are long dead that has been so long a restraint on their ingenuity and creativity... Hitler was a throwback to a dead age, of mythic leaders like Barbaosa... It was only when his cause was lost that he actually began to study the battles of people like Frederick the Great... He was neither as crazy as people paint him or as sane... He bacame mad and never was normal, and in pushing Germany into a war it was unprepared for he invoked certain defeat... Making common cause with Japan when Japan had already been fought to stalemate by the Russians was pure foolishness...

And to piggy-back on my earlier post:


They knew they were doing wrong, but continued to lie about their accounting records to deceive federal and state regulators. Madoff is now spending the rest of his natural life behind prison bars, because the law of the land caught up to him and his henchmen.

I am not talking about criminals who violate the law.
I am talking about people who can't pay their rents and get evicted and have to live on the street, because some rich guys didn't get their money. Is that good and right?

That's a whole different issue; discussing the rights and/or wrongs about a single issue is more easily solved. The landlord has the "legal" right to evict people who do not pay their rent. For the landlord, it's right; a legal right.

If you want to get moralistic about economic events, why don't stores give free food to people who come in without any money to pay for the food?

Why do humans compete knowing there is a loser? If knowledge truly is virtue, who ever 'we' are, needs further examination under that microscope. If no one joined the military we would have no wars. If people could only admit that we don't have all the answers and to see that our own perspectives of self-importance is only a delusion of grandeur, perhaps that would be a start to some real dialougue between people.

Good point, Procrustes. But there's a problem here. Let me illustrate it this way. My late sainted mother was something of a pacifist, generally speaking. But she had respect for the military establishment. One day she came out with this astonishing statement: "If it wasn't for the brave soldiers, who would protect and defend us in times of war?"

You see, she was of a generation that believed it axiomatic that wars were somehow inevitable and were sure to recur again and again just like thunderstorms or any other natural phenomenon. My saying to her, "Mom, if there were no brave soldiers then there could be no wars" made hardly any impresson on her. I don't think she could get her mind around that concept.

I think it's a concept worth telling. For the generations before us and especially for the generations ahead.

Yes. But should anyone have to be homeless?
If the law gives landlords that right, and then offers no protection for those who get evicted, how do we justify that this is right?



You have a point. In affairs concerning the acquisition and preservation of wealth, moral concerns do not have priority.

"Should anyone have to be homeless?" Yes, there are homeless people all around the world. That's part and parcel of the realities of life as humans. Some are homeless through no fault of their own. It may have resulted from medical bills, loss of job, or was the victim of buying a home they could not afford - because they were lied to by the seller.

There aren't enough people who care to change this dynamic of humanity, but some of us do donate to Habitat for Humanity. They build homes for the needy around the world who otherwise could not afford to have a home.

Many of us also donate to Second Harvest Food Bank (but donations are down this year), and they provide foods to the needy in our county. Should people have to go hungry? I accept that as a matter of fact, because that's also part and parcel of the realities of life as humans. Unfortunately, even in our county which happens to be one of the "richest" in the country, those going hungry are mostly children - or about 40%.

There will always be the haves and have nots, those without homes or shelter, and those without food or starving.

Maybe, you have a solution, but I don't.

But you still claim to know the difference between right and wrong.
I am not saying that you don't, I'm just saying that the choice presented to us may not be representative for the real problem.



That is a situation that is being perpetuated by the economic system, by the haves.
I've always thought donations a curious thing, particularly when it's aimed at third world countries. They are in the **** because we take all they own, then give them donations to feed them or get them medicine and so on.
The situation has evolved to where it is right to give them help.
But they only need help because what we did to them in the first place, what we are continuously doing.

I've already delineated what is right and wrong; if you still don't understand what I've said, that's your problem.

Your simpleton example of "should people be homeless" is a good example of your inability to understand the difference between morals and legal rights.

BTW, did you open up your home to take in the homeless?

I understand the difference. But in my opinion, there should be no difference.
But does legal right relieve you of moral responsibility?

Why is it morally right to take the home of someone who then has to live on the street?
It is because everyone has to look out for themselves and their own first. The family can't pay the rent, toss them out or else you can't pay your rent either.
And if someone's got to live on the street, better it's them.

The house owner who evicts the people who can't pay is not an evil man. He doesn't act to hurt those people, he does it to help some other people.

And that's what I've been saying all along. Bad acts have good intentions. Even Hitler believed that what he did was good, and if he'd won the war it is likely that we would agree with him.

People do not know right from wrong independently of the social context. Our social context makes it justifiable that people are homeless. It makes it all right to keep entire nations in perpetual poverty to sustain our way of life. The social context defines right and wrong, not some external force or absolute principle. That's what those experiments you referred to show, that if you change the context in which the choice is made, you do not change the definition of what is morally justifiable, but you change which actions fall under that category.


I do not open my home for the homeless. But if someone here has no money, they will get enough to live and eat, and if they don't have a place to live it is provided. Even the most die hard alcoholic who can't do anything but drink and sleep all day gets a check every month.

You wrote,

There's a difference between moral and legal responsibility. Who's morals are you talking about? Your's, mine, or everybody's? Are you some kind of judge on other people's morals?

Yours for you, mine for me.
I am not attacking you, I'm asking a philosophical question.

Does legal justification relieve us of moral responsibility?

You wrote,

There's a difference between moral and legal responsibility. Who's morals are you talking about? Your's, mine, or everybody's? Are you some kind of judge on other people's morals?

In your attempts to equate a landowner and what Hitler did doesn't make any sense. They do not equate in any manner, shape, or form.

Bad acts are bad acts; to know the difference between bad acts and good intentions is skewing the argument. Just because Hitler executed over six million Jews and thousands of others, there's no "good intentions" no matter how you try to rationalize it. As I've said many times before, morals and legal are different issues when you try to talk about the homeless.

Evicting nonpaying renters does not result in "good intentions." You are confused.

By your reasoning, your enemies are all evil people who act with the motivation to be evil towards you and all those you identify with. People thinking like that is actually part of the reason there's still war in the world. It makes reconciliation damn near impossible.



I'm starting to think that you intentionally fail to get the point...

"All" is your interpretation, not mine. However, as I've mentioned before, research done at Stanford and Yale Universities have shown that above average students are prone to torture others when the right environment is set in motion. Even during Hitler's Nazi Germany, some people protested against Hitler. "All" is an extreme I will not use in discussing social issues.

It's not being perpetuated by the "economic system." It's being perpetuated by people such as our government representatives, the CEO's and Board of Directors of companies, and the political system of the conservatives who claims they wish less government intrusion into private lives, but spend most of their efforts into abortion, right to life, prayer in schools, denial of equal rights to gays and lesbians, and teaching of creationism in our public schools - and most important of all, to continue advocating for more tax cuts for the wealthy.

As far as I'm aware, "capitalism" is the best economic system practiced by humans.

Why presuppose the existence of 'moral responsibility'?

Presupposing its' existence leaves no room for others to 'think', you just 'sit back' and poke at them while they try to prove/dis-prove your presupposition.