Good Samaritan

Re: Good Samaritan
I have no idea what you're trying to say here, coberst, so instead I'll focus on one statement you made:

coberst wrote:

Rawls assumes that we inherently agree on what constitutes moral behavior.

Where did he say that? As I understand Rawls, he says that we can come to an agreement on morality based upon the principles of justice as fairness, not that we already agree on what constitutes morality. Have you found some writing in which Rawls says otherwise?

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Re: Good Samaritan

joefromchicago wrote:

I have no idea what you're trying to say here, coberst, so instead I'll focus on one statement you made:

coberst wrote:
Rawls assumes that we inherently agree on what constitutes moral behavior.

Where did he say that? As I understand Rawls, he says that we can come to an agreement on morality based upon the principles of justice as fairness, not that we already agree on what constitutes morality. Have you found some writing in which Rawls says otherwise?

Rawls speaks of using a "veil of ignorance" while tryin to ascertain the principles of justice. This "veil of ignorance" to be effective must assume that we can find within us the urge to moral action if we do not allow our bias to distort our consideration. He is essentially saying that morality (justice as fairness) is given to humans at birth by our DNA.

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Re: Good Samaritan

coberst wrote:

Rawls speaks of using a "veil of ignorance" while tryin to ascertain the principles of justice. This "veil of ignorance" to be effective must assume that we can find within us the urge to moral action if we do not allow our bias to distort our consideration. He is essentially saying that morality (justice as fairness) is given to humans at birth by our DNA.

True, Rawls uses the "veil of ignorance" in his attempt to ascertain the principles of justice as fairness, but the veil is purely a heuristic device. Ultimately, for Rawls, morality rests on an innate sense of self-interest (i.e. in setting up the rules of society, I should act as if I were disadvantaged, so that the rules will not hurt me in the event that I am disadvantaged), not on any innate sense of fairness or morality.

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Conservatives represent religious morality; liberals, secular morality. That's always been my view, anyway.

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It is funny that classical liberalism had an extreme laissez-faire economic idea, but that has now changed (It had changed in Britain when the Liberals introduced their welfare ideas). It seems like the Liberals and the Conservatives switched economic ideology, which is probably a good thing.

I question Adam Smith's concept of the invisible hand. It seemed to me that he thinks that most, if not all, people will always think with a degree of sympathy, which is not always true, and which is complicated by power disparity.

I agree with Nietzche (the poster) to an extent about the Conservatives' and Liberal's moral ideology, except that I would replace "religious morality" to "tradition based morality." Cheers.

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Agreed. Better choice of words.

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Re: Good Samaritan

coberst wrote:

Not quite. Sympathy is one of the emotional responses to misfortune however it's also been discovered that the human brain automatically reacts with pleasure to witnessing pain that is seen as "deserved". Your average person experiences both reactions with the possibility of one overwhelming the other.

The ratio between these two impulses depends on the personality of the individual in question.

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Re: Good Samaritan

Sleeper World wrote:

coberst wrote:

Not quite. Sympathy is one of the emotional responses to misfortune however it's also been discovered that the human brain automatically reacts with pleasure to witnessing pain that is seen as "deserved". Your average person experiences both reactions with the possibility of one overwhelming the other.

The ratio between these two impulses depends on the personality of the individual in question.

I suspect you are correct. Even in a face-to-face encounter our reaction may be based on ideology. I tend to suspect this however. If my sympathy reaction is part of our DNA then our first response would be sympathy followed by 'just desserts' response after time to think.

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Good Samaritan

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