Hypothetical- A War Crimes Tribunal (RAR)

[Formless]

If nobody responds within a day or so, I'm going to declare victory.

Are you trying to make yourself look like a complete imbecile? Or maybe you just want to look as immature as possible. I wasn't going to respond before, but now you have my attention. You must realize, you just issued a challenge, and you already lost.

Here is a thought: debates aren't won by appealing to your opponent's silence. In fact, they aren't "won" at all. You lose nothing by conceding when you are wrong, and lose everything by being immature when shown exactly how you are indisputably wrong. If they were winnable, it would be up to the audience to decide (in other words, people like myself-- until now, obviously), or an impartial judge. You are a participant, so you are neither of those things.

But I think it can be systematically shown that you have no idea what you are talking about at any point in this discussion.

(this is going to be long, as I'll address the OP first, so I'm splitting it into multiple posts so I can get everything I want to discuss out there)

Since in practice War Crimes Tribunals are pulling law out of their metaphorical asses anyway, no legal training would be required to figure out what to do in them. The questions here are really ethical ones anyway.

And right there in the first sentence you've just failed the fact test. In the real world there are in fact many laws of war that define what is and isn't legal to do in war. I suggest you look them up. And why wouldn't there be? Wars aren't monkey knife fights, nations normally have agendas in war beyond killing for its own sake, and would really like to keep their own losses to a minimum. So they have for a very long time come to mutual and formal diplomatic agreements about what is and is not acceptable behavior in war; what kinds of weapons are allowed and not allowed; who is and is not an acceptable target; when to accept surrender and through what protocols; how to treat prisoners of war; defining a just war; and many other issues. It is for this reason that armies cannot intentionally bomb hospitals, shoot surrendering troops, use hollow point or soft tip bullets, use poison gas, attack civilians, torture prisoners, declare wars of conquest without automatically giving their enemies a justification for defending themselves, and many other formally defined crimes. And this is why, in fact, trained lawyers and not laymen like us are supposed to be allowed into war crimes tribunals. It takes a lot of training to know what the laws are, and why they exist. Just like any other laws. And it takes training to prove wrongdoing or defend the accused. Just like any other court setting. Whether or not war crime tribunals are objective or whether the history is written by the victors is another issue. But you are flat wrong in implying that its all bullshit from the bottom up.

Maristan's traditional enemy is Karaks, a "proper" Western nation on its borders. Maristan is not a member of the United Nations.

One of the states, Durakstan, decided to begin a policy of genocide against the minority groups in the region (totalling about 200,000 people). Durakstan had a 95% majority Marists, which is why they did it and not other states. Because this was entirely legal under the Constitution as ruled by the Courts, by literal meaning, and by intentionalist interpretation, they were not stopped. In response, Karaks invaded and exploited internal tensions to conquer Maristan. Many Maristani generals defected, contributing to the defeat.

North Korea is not a member of the UN either. But if South Korea decided to intervene against North Korea to stop a genocidal campaign, it can easily argue that other states like the US should intervene as well. Unlike something like Iraq, it will be hard for people not to see this as a black and white Kicking the Shit out of Nazi's kind of war. So tell me, do the Karaks have allies? Because those allies are likely to help with their invasion, and at that point the Maristani legal system will become moot, and the war will almost certainly not be considered a war of conquest. They will be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming, just like Japanese and the Confederacy before them. The international courts don't give a shit about what the Maristani legal system does and does not allow. Ethics has yet to factor into this RAR.

Unless there is no law against murder in general (and even if there isn't), the courts have failed to uphold the most basic human right-- the right to live. Without it, society dissolves; the Marstanis have no legal recourse for being killed by each other or by other nations when the invasion happens, except international law. Maristan is like the Titanic: its not a matter of if it will sink, but when. At this point, only one basic legal and ethical concept has been invoked, and arguably its just a matter of fact how it will impact the country. For a country to exist in any sense, the government must at minimum place restrictions on violence and enforce that. This is Thomas Hobbes Leviathan 101.

Several possible "defendants"

All of them will be tried. The courts have that option, you know. So lets do that.

A: The Prime Minister of Maristan. When told about the genocide, the Prime Minister considered intervention but soon afterwards faced a Court ruling that the extermination was entirely legal. He then decided that, whatever his views on the matter, he would not act to stop it despite disagreeing with the measure.

The ruler of Karaks sent an ultimatum to the Prime Minister. He knew that the Prime Minister had sufficient support amongst the armed forces that if he wanted to he could stop the genocides and get away with it politically- he thus threatened to declare war unless the Prime Minister did so. The Prime Minister had previously been planning to attempt political negotiations with Durakstan to try and stop the genocide. Under the circumstances, he replied that as Prime Minister, he would not pull a coup de tat against his own country, in defiance of democracy and the Constitution. The war started accordingly.

The Prime Minister's defence is that he did not directly influence the genocides. He played a major role in the war effort to ensure they took place, however- soldiers under his command defended the extermination camps from attack.

This situation is highly improbable, as stated above. The Karaks would NOT take it up solely with the Prime Minister. They would take it to the International Stage if possible, making their threats far more serious than the Prime Minister took them. But lets roll with it.

The Prime Minister from a Virtue Ethics standpoint is a spineless coward. For someone in a leadership position, that is a serious vice without anything else compounding it. Contrast him with Abraham Lincoln, who was quite able to war against the South over the thinly veiled issue of Slavery. He didn't need another country breathing down his neck to act, even though the US was one of the last countries to outlaw the practice. The Prime Minister of Maristan is also unthinking and hypocritical, able to act only when his nation was faced with war, and in defiance of his own conscience. He did not recognize the practical fact that frankly, his country was going to get stomped on and lose more Maristani lives in the process. This makes him blind to facts, another great Sin on his conscience. His loyalty to a failed constitution, one which could neither protect its citizens lives nor even the existence of the nation as defined on its own pages, demonstrates how unsuited to his job he is better than any philosophical argument could. And his apathy to death and suffering calls into question how much he really cared about stopping the genocides in the first place.

In the real world, the military would have staged their coup anyway; only they would have done it against him before he could fuck up his job any worse. That they went to war against the Karaks suggests that they themselves were actually in support of the genocides on some base level, which is unsurprising since Maristan is such a racist shithole. They too could be put on trial, from the soldiers on the ground to the generals at the top. It all depends on what the Karaks and the international community decides to do.

Its easy for him to say that he had no direct influence over the genocides. In actual fact, a choice not to act is just as much a choice as direct action. That is why the courts do not accept such excuses, especially from people in positions of authority. Such people are expected to be extraordinary in responsibility, not fucking slackers.

B: The Premier of Durakstan. The Premier did not want the extermination to take place at all, but lacked the support in Cabinet. Threatened with being deposed and his career ruined, he decided to let the majority in Cabinet have their way. However, he refused to play any direct role in the genocide and never made an active decision to contribute to it happening.

See above. He could have manned the fuck up and accepted that his career is over, but at least he would have been remembered as a hero. Certainly he had police that could have stopped the murders? Enacted a curfew? Gone out in riot gear to arrest mobs of racists? If not, then that's the real reason he couldn't have acted. But that's not the reason given. He simply wouldn't act. I'm beginning to suspect you don't understand the difference.

Are all of your characters going to make this excuse? Because if everyone believes themselves to be innocent because they wouldn't act due to selfish concerns that their careers would end, then it should be obvious why the genocide happened. All of those people are either sheepish cowards who should never have been in office, or lying through their teeth when they say they didn't approve of minorities getting lynched en mass. Sometimes ethics requires someone to make an extraordinary or even extralegal action to take responsibility for someone else's mess. Responsibility is a virtue, and it is failure to demonstrate it that implies guilt.

C: The Minister of Minorities in Durakstan, directly in charge of the extermination. Ironically the leader of the Reformist Party, he knew that the extermination would go ahead no matter what he did because of his party's relatively minor role in a Coalition government. He thus decided to cooperate and did everything he could to make the killing as painless as possible, a fact he is at pains to point out.

His actions make him out to be the most insane person in this whole tragedy of errors, and the single most irresponsible asswipe you have described so far. What he should have done is appeal to the Prime Minister that he cannot do his job under the conditions given, then handed in his resignation. After that he should have gone onto the black market or to another country and begin to arm the minorities against the coming slaughter. I mean come on, he clearly believes that death is inevitable and is willing to directly facilitate it, he might as well turn that into a virtue rather than take the path of an unrepentant, irredeemable monster.

D: A soldier known by the popular name of the Great Butcher. Notorious for overseeing the extermination of over ten thousand people, the Great Butcher was in fact conscripted into the role. By military law, refusing to obey an order carries the penalty of being burned alive (reduced to shooting at the discretion of a superior, but only in emergency and battlefield cases). The Great Butcher is at pains, of course, to point this out. He ended up exterminating far more effectively than others due to a natural talent for the job, however. The Great Butcher claims he acted to the best of his ability because his immediate superiors were well aware of his administrative talents and would see through any attempt to hold back.

“A soldier's obedience finds its limits where his knowledge, his conscience, and his responsibility forbid to obey orders.”

Generaloberst Ludwig Beck (1880-1944), executed for treason against Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.

E: The head of the Supreme Court of Maristan. He played no role in the genocide except to rule that it was legal. However, by an intentionalist interpretation OR a literalist interpretation OR an interpretation based on Maristani common law up to that point, he was right.

Another incompetent. Either he was unable to actually get anything done, which continues to paint the picture that Maristan was destined to collapse due to a powerless government, or he could have ruled that the constitution is irreconcilable with common fucking sense or even other passages of its own directives and done something to fix that.

So to answer my own question, yes, you did have every authority in this scenario plead unwillingness to act due to selfish concerns or perceived powerlessness. Good job. None of these people are commendable or worthy of the positions they were given. According to their own "defense" each of them were negligent, selfish, hypocritical, cowardly, apathetic, incompetent, or blind; and its a fair guess based on this consistent behavior that some or all of them are probably lying (poorly) to the tribunal to try and save their racist asses from the noose. I mean, they can't all play "shifting the blame" onto one another and expect the Tribunal not to notice. They've each dammed each other doing that. They were given positions of authority, jobs which by definition require them to go above and beyond the call of duty, and yet none of them acted to stop a Crime Against Humanity, and at least two of them helped facilitated it. GUILTY AS CHARGED.

F: The lawyer who acted for the State of Durakstan. Relevant in this case because, despite the Head's insistence, the Supreme Court almost ruled the genocide illegal (most likely for reasons of compassion). This lawyer put massive pains and effort into this case, primarily out of the feeling that it was his duty as a lawyer to do his best for his client no matter what the circumstances. It is primarily thanks to him that a majority of the Maristan Supreme Court was swayed to genocide.

He may be the only person you have described so far that did his job exactly as he was supposed to, as the virtue of a lawyer is to be impartial enough to play devils advocate for people who cannot do it themselves. However, he only won the case because the judge(s) was completely incompetent or uncaring. Even if the Maristani legal system survives in any recognizable form, he should follow his conscience and retire (assuming he isn't a closet racist as well-- I wouldn't be surprised, the racists probably chose one of their own to represent themselves before the court). The law is not in and of itself a moral or necessarily functional entity. It failed to protect the people, it failed to protect the nation from its own stupidity and racism, it failed to give the leaders of the nation guidelines even when their own consciences told them they were walking down a path which would end in genocide and war. It serves no purpose in its current form, either political or moral.

[Thanas]

The principle of humanity is too vague to be actually used judging from a brief checkup.

For someone who claims to use philosophical principles and who namedrops philosophical theories you kinda seem uneducated in them.

You appear to be advocating for making compromises between conflicting ethical principles. The problem with this is that compromise is a vague, feeling-based approach- as a result there are several valid solutions to a given ethical problem rather than one.

None of what you said follows from what I said.

[Formless]

Lets start on your ethics:

If people are obliged to stop disasters, then it means they are not free to live their own lives. The latter trumps the former.

Contradiction in terms. Death ends lives, which means... the dead are not free to live their own lives. Because they are dead. The dead do not get up out of their graves and just go back to doing what they were doing yesterday.

And anyway, you talk of all these other duties, but the instant someone talks about obligations you don't agree with suddenly its all about MAH FREEDOMS? Every ethical system requires people to do things they wouldn't otherwise. That's the point, you idiot.

As I explained via PM, I take human instincts to their logical conclusions even if not intuitive. This is the same approach that would lead to abolishing slavery through "All men are equal"- it is making morality actually rational, as opposed to arbitrary whims.

Until you start making it about your own arbitrary whims. Like, I dunno, "can't be obliged to help save people."

Human instinct is not in itself an ethos. Hell, its debatable whether the language of instinct is a valid view of psychology, as opposed to a set of hasty generalizations, more often used by laymen these days than actual experts. Folk psychology influenced by the influx of biological thought (or rather bio-babble).

If you don't mind, I feel like this thread would be a good place for you to actually explain your ethics, not PMs. Otherwise how the hell are the rest of us supposed to actually debate you?

On Vigilantism:
In this case, what kind of example is the Prime Minister setting? A Prime Minister embracing the actions of a vigilante means that he is saying people are not obliged to obey the law.

No, he is saying that they are not obliged to obey specific laws that currently cause suffering. Either or fallacy.

And if they aren't obliged to obey the law, then knowing human nature you're going to get all sorts of inane rationalisations for disobeying the law for selfish reasons.

Is this any better than a politician using the letter of the law to excuse selfishly saving their own career while 200,000 people are murdered by the government and/or the general public?

You assume that ethics is like science- merely approximating some sort of perfection you can't even articulate.

Ethics may be a philosophical matter, but there are ways of addressing such issues that are more scientific than others. For example, someone making a utilitarian argument can make a very clear and scientific argument that behavior x causes mental state y, where y is either human suffering or happiness. Extremely simple psychology at work. Very scientific. A rights based ethicist has it a little harder, but can pretty easily show that certain guarantees are desired by most or all human beings. Again, quite simple to investigate. And then there is virtue ethics, which is more complex psychology than utilitarianism, but psychology nonetheless. You can study human emotions, desires, and personality traits in a scientific manner. The only philosophical leaps necessary is placing a value on certain states of being; which humans do anyway, so that's not a hard leap for most people to make.

On the other hand, making claims about human nature and providing no evidence makes you no scientist nor philosopher.

If so, the problem here is that you are ignoring the possibility of something like CEV- that perhaps our moral intuitions are so contradictory that such a reconciliation cannot take place. This leaves the conclusion that we should prioritise the intuitions we consider most important over the ones we consider less important.

And how are we supposed to figure out which human intuitions we find more and less important except by doing psychological studies?

This is in fact what I've done. I've taken the intutions I understand to be at the core of human desires and taken them to their logical conclusion.

Bullshit. What degrees do you hold? What studies have you read, or better yet conducted in the fields of psychology, sociology, or anthropology? I'm waiting. But not expecting anything.

The fact that so many societies and legal codes from around the world find your personal ethics wanting makes me think that when you talk about "intuitions" and "human instincts", you really mean your own.

You appear to be advocating for making compromises between conflicting ethical principles. The problem with this is that compromise is a vague, feeling-based approach- as a result there are several valid solutions to a given ethical problem rather than one.

No, he isn't. He called both rule based and utilitarian ethics imperfect, but unlike you he hasn't jumped to the conclusion that they must either be perfect or discarded. You can't have perfection. But you can't live without ethics either.

[Carinthium]

I'm going to have to take some time answering this. I can spend a lot of time on a lot of arguments at once, but I'm going to have to respond in stages.

Are you trying to make yourself look like a complete imbecile? Or maybe you just want to look as immature as possible. I wasn't going to respond before, but now you have my attention. You must realize, you just issued a challenge, and you already lost.

Here is a thought: debates aren't won by appealing to your opponent's silence. In fact, they aren't "won" at all. You lose nothing by conceding when you are wrong, and lose everything by being immature when shown exactly how you are indisputably wrong. If they were winnable, it would be up to the audience to decide (in other words, people like myself-- until now, obviously), or an impartial judge. You are a participant, so you are neither of those things.

A debate is won by having correct arguments that "beat" the opponent's arguments. Human opinion is irrelevant.

And right there in the first sentence you've just failed the fact test. In the real world there are in fact many laws of war that define what is and isn't legal to do in war. I suggest you look them up. And why wouldn't there be? Wars aren't monkey knife fights, nations normally have agendas in war beyond killing for its own sake, and would really like to keep their own losses to a minimum. So they have for a very long time come to mutual and formal diplomatic agreements about what is and is not acceptable behavior in war; what kinds of weapons are allowed and not allowed; who is and is not an acceptable target; when to accept surrender and through what protocols; how to treat prisoners of war; defining a just war; and many other issues. It is for this reason that armies cannot intentionally bomb hospitals, shoot surrendering troops, use hollow point or soft tip bullets, use poison gas, attack civilians, torture prisoners, declare wars of conquest without automatically giving their enemies a justification for defending themselves, and many other formally defined crimes. And this is why, in fact, trained lawyers and not laymen like us are supposed to be allowed into war crimes tribunals. It takes a lot of training to know what the laws are, and why they exist. Just like any other laws. And it takes training to prove wrongdoing or defend the accused. Just like any other court setting. Whether or not war crime tribunals are objective or whether the history is written by the victors is another issue. But you are flat wrong in implying that its all bullshit from the bottom up.

All treaties, in practice, can be divided into several sections.

1- Those treaties signed prior to the Nuremburg trials.
2- Those treaties signed after the Nuremburg trials by states with Constitutions.
3- Those treaties signed after the Nuremburg trials by states without Constitutions.

Prior to the Nuremburg trials, such treaties came under sovereign immunity- a Sovereign was not legally bound to keep their treaties, they were merely promises. Breaking a treaty was not, except for the United States, implicitly Unconstitutional. At that point, no punishment was proscribed for war crimes.

Those treaties in category 2 are unconstitutional to the extent there is an implicit intenstion to cede sovereignty. Every Constitutional state has a division of powers- the actors in question are NOT permitted to cede any of these powers to outsiders under their Constitutions.

Category 3 applies, I am given to understand, only to the United Kingdom. This is an exception I concede, but an exception so insignificant as not to apply.

North Korea is not a member of the UN either. But if South Korea decided to intervene against North Korea to stop a genocidal campaign, it can easily argue that other states like the US should intervene as well. Unlike something like Iraq, it will be hard for people not to see this as a black and white Kicking the Shit out of Nazi's kind of war. So tell me, do the Karaks have allies? Because those allies are likely to help with their invasion, and at that point the Maristani legal system will become moot, and the war will almost certainly not be considered a war of conquest. They will be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming, just like Japanese and the Confederacy before them. The international courts don't give a shit about what the Maristani legal system does and does not allow. Ethics has yet to factor into this RAR.

Unless there is no law against murder in general (and even if there isn't), the courts have failed to uphold the most basic human right-- the right to live. Without it, society dissolves; the Marstanis have no legal recourse for being killed by each other or by other nations when the invasion happens, except international law. Maristan is like the Titanic: its not a matter of if it will sink, but when. At this point, only one basic legal and ethical concept has been invoked, and arguably its just a matter of fact how it will impact the country. For a country to exist in any sense, the government must at minimum place restrictions on violence and enforce that. This is Thomas Hobbes Leviathan 101.

The Chinese Empire once claimed sovereignity over the entire world. Does this mean they were automatically sovereign, in your mind, over, say, England? Does it even give them sovereignity automatically over, say, Vietnam? Of course not!

Here's a question- do you claim Nazi Germany at the time Hitler was exterminating Jews was not a country? Although I have a lot of objections to Nazi Germany, they were very clearly a country up until almost the end because they were still enforcing law of some sort.

A:
The Prime Minister is not a spineless coward, nor is he a hypocrite.

The PM had a set of principles in which stopping genocide would be good, but if and only if he could do it legally. Hence, he resorted to negotiations instead of warfare. The Karaks forced his hand, so applying the same set of principles he went to war.

You ASSUME that the Prime Minister violated his own conscience. Have you considered the possibility he didn't? Or that even if he did, which we don't know, he overrode it not based on hypocrisy but based on an ethical argument? I'll give you an analogy here, a hypothetical soldier O.

-O is a soldier under Nazi Germany who swore an oath of loyalty to Hitler. His conscience tells him not to kill Jews, but all his life he has believed that oaths come above everything else. So he ignores his conscience and kills Jews.

O is not a hypocrite- he is applying his principles intelligently. Neither is the PM.

Only consequentialists believe automatically that inaction is as bad as action just because it has the same results. Not being a consequentialist, I don't care what they think.

B:
A Premier who lacks the support of Cabinet would have lost almost instantly- the Cabinet would have passed legislation to Parliament binding him from acting. Besides, if he doesn't have Cabinet support he lacks the support most likely of the relevant Minister.

The Premier may have made implicit promises to the people by coming to office, or explicit promises. But a Premier never makes the promise coming to office of being a vigilante.

C:
He is a STATE Minister, moron. I don't have much sympathy for C myself, but from a utilitarian standpoint he did the best he could.

D:
So you're saying people have an OBLIGATION to die for YOUR morals? You're asking too much of human beings.

E:
The head of the Supreme Court would have fucking contemptible if he had ruled based on his own private opinions that the genocide should be stopped. Why? Because he is letting his own opinions override what the law actually says!

As it is, thanks to a heroic lawyer he stuck to his principles.

A and E had something in common- they stuck to their principles at all costs, in a manner that upheld Maristani law. Neither of them accepted a duty to breach the law- E would have made an explicit oath to uphold it, and A would have made one implicitly if not explicitly.

C was a consistent utiltiarian. B was cowardly, but no more than an ordinary human being would be in the same circumstances. D was a tragic figure in a bad place.

F:
What is there on F's conscience? He was merely doing his job. Even if he wasn't a racist, he would be legally obliged to take up the case merely because he was asked to.

The law is not in and of itself a moral or necessarily functional entity. It failed to protect the people, it failed to protect the nation from its own stupidity and racism, it failed to give the leaders of the nation guidelines even when their own consciences told them they were walking down a path which would end in genocide and war. It serves no purpose in its current form, either political or moral.

The law determines how the government is allowed to act. ALL goverment actions which breach the Constitution are the actions of vigilantes. Given this, it is definitely a moral factor given that any govermnent vigilante is a hypocrite.

Can you at least accept that much? If you accept a vigilante who by day upholds the virtues of law and order is a hypocrite, then it follows that the Constitution is indeed a moral factor when a government agent considers how to act.

[Carinthium]

For someone who claims to use philosophical principles and who namedrops philosophical theories you kinda seem uneducated in them.

Ad hominem.

None of what you said follows from what I said.

Your rules of compromise are simply too vague. When you have a system of compromising between ethical principles that can produce unambigious results, get back to me.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Contradiction in terms. Death ends lives, which means... the dead are not free to live their own lives. Because they are dead. The dead do not get up out of their graves and just go back to doing what they were doing yesterday.

There is no contradiction here. The libertarian ideal of freedom means that the overwhelming majority of people are free, excluding a few people who simply got unlucky. Your ideal of freedom means nobody is free.

And anyway, you talk of all these other duties, but the instant someone talks about obligations you don't agree with suddenly its all about MAH FREEDOMS? Every ethical system requires people to do things they wouldn't otherwise. That's the point, you idiot.

It is a core moral intution that people have the right to be free. Get rid of that and what's the point in morality? If we aren't free agents, why bother with morality at all?

If you follow that system consistently, you are nothing more than a slave. All people constrained by governments that enforce such duties are such wretched creatures than those outside such systems could rightly look down on them to as severe an extent as the whites in the CSA looked down on their blacks.

Until you start making it about your own arbitrary whims. Like, I dunno, "can't be obliged to help save people."

Human instinct is not in itself an ethos. Hell, its debatable whether the language of instinct is a valid view of psychology, as opposed to a set of hasty generalizations, more often used by laymen these days than actual experts. Folk psychology influenced by the influx of biological thought (or rather bio-babble).

If you don't mind, I feel like this thread would be a good place for you to actually explain your ethics, not PMs. Otherwise how the hell are the rest of us supposed to actually debate you?

Explaining my ethics will take a lot of work, so it'll be in the next post.

Human moral instincts are all we have for creating a moral system- without them we're back to moral nihilism.

No, he is saying that they are not obliged to obey specific laws that currently cause suffering. Either or fallacy.

Which leads straight into inane rationalisations. Considering that Maristan is clearly a country where people believe strongly in the Constitution, you will either get nationalistic resentment at "Karakisation" or alternately inane rationalisations for becoming thieves and lawbreakers.

Is this any better than a politician using the letter of the law to excuse selfishly saving their own career while 200,000 people are murdered by the government and/or the general public?

At least the country won't be headed towards collapse or barbarism.

Ethics may be a philosophical matter, but there are ways of addressing such issues that are more scientific than others. For example, someone making a utilitarian argument can make a very clear and scientific argument that behavior x causes mental state y, where y is either human suffering or happiness. Extremely simple psychology at work. Very scientific. A rights based ethicist has it a little harder, but can pretty easily show that certain guarantees are desired by most or all human beings. Again, quite simple to investigate. And then there is virtue ethics, which is more complex psychology than utilitarianism, but psychology nonetheless. You can study human emotions, desires, and personality traits in a scientific manner. The only philosophical leaps necessary is placing a value on certain states of being; which humans do anyway, so that's not a hard leap for most people to make.

On the other hand, making claims about human nature and providing no evidence makes you no scientist nor philosopher.

Was Aristotle no philosopher? Was Descartes? Was Kant?

You assume implicitly here the superiority of the scientific method- again, an assumption I challenge with regard to ethics.

You're ignoring what I am- in basic (I'll clarify further later), a Legal Principles Ethicist. I take ideas humans believe as moral principles to be correct on a basic, non-cultural level, based not on their cultural background but their genetic code. I then apply these principles as if they were laws, and take the results. After the initial test, intuitions are to be ignored.

And how are we supposed to figure out which human intuitions we find more and less important except by doing psychological studies?

By self-examination, which is what ethicists tend to do in practice.

Bullshit. What degrees do you hold? What studies have you read, or better yet conducted in the fields of psychology, sociology, or anthropology? I'm waiting. But not expecting anything.

The fact that so many societies and legal codes from around the world find your personal ethics wanting makes me think that when you talk about "intuitions" and "human instincts", you really mean your own.

I am doing Philosophy as a major at Melbourne University. I am doing ethics the way I have been taught- by examining my intutions. I take into account the possibility that other people may have different intutions, but although my teacher would tell me to dismiss them I instead figure them out by asking others.

Since ethicists do this all the time with only the amount of scientific knowledge I have, professional ethicists mind you, I see no problem with doing as I have been taught.

No, he isn't. He called both rule based and utilitarian ethics imperfect, but unlike you he hasn't jumped to the conclusion that they must either be perfect or discarded. You can't have perfection. But you can't live without ethics either.

Perfection by what standard? Intuitions? Intuitions are self-contradictory, moron!

What I am looking for is not a system to be compared to my standard, but a system to BE the standard! That's the difference here!

[Carinthium]

Oh, and about this idea of practicality, I will emphasise again that I do not automatically assume that a morality has to be "practical". Practicality is so vague a concept I cannot do this without hypocrisy.

The Prime Minister of Maristan was not blind to the facts- he simply applied his ethics to the facts and decided on war. He likely made an honest mistake in not realising that many of his generals would defect to the enemy, which is why he thought he could win. Even if he didn't, the next most likely scenario is that he decided to stand up for Justice and Right even if he would inevitably fail.

I should also point out that ORDINARY PEOPLE are as cowardly as you think my characters are. The median person, politician or ordinary person, would act as cowardly as you think my characters are. However, my characters are not (mostly) cowards- A, E, and F show no signs of cowardice, whilst C was acting as a consistent utilitarian. Only B and D are cowards.

What sentence would you give each candidate anyway? I'm curious to know.

Finally, although I honestly did not think of it when planning the scenario the fact nobody aided the Karaks suggests that their actions were done out of selfish motives. Suspicious, don't you think?

[energiewende]

A: The Prime Minister of Maristan. When told about the genocide, the Prime Minister considered intervention but soon afterwards faced a Court ruling that the extermination was entirely legal. He then decided that, whatever his views on the matter, he would not act to stop it despite disagreeing with the measure.

The ruler of Karaks sent an ultimatum to the Prime Minister. He knew that the Prime Minister had sufficient support amongst the armed forces that if he wanted to he could stop the genocides and get away with it politically- he thus threatened to declare war unless the Prime Minister did so. The Prime Minister had previously been planning to attempt political negotiations with Durakstan to try and stop the genocide. Under the circumstances, he replied that as Prime Minister, he would not pull a coup de tat against his own country, in defiance of democracy and the Constitution. The war started accordingly.

The Prime Minister's defence is that he did not directly influence the genocides. He played a major role in the war effort to ensure they took place, however- soldiers under his command defended the extermination camps from attack.

Without the final line I do not believe he has a case to answer. It does not seem that he controlled the actions that took place either in practice or in law. In this sense he is comparable to the sovereign of a neutral state, or someone who walks past a drowning man: possibly morally discreditable but not culpable. I also do not believe that his refusal to allow or assist an invasion of the country necessarily makes him cuplable, because this action would also cause great harm to the lives and property of innocent bystanders.

The final line introduces some ambiguity. Did he specifically defend the extermination camps or did he incidentally defend them in the course of defending the wider country from invasion? This is the difference between hanging and an acquittal.

B: The Premier of Durakstan. The Premier did not want the extermination to take place at all, but lacked the support in Cabinet. Threatened with being deposed and his career ruined, he decided to let the majority in Cabinet have their way. However, he refused to play any direct role in the genocide and never made an active decision to contribute to it happening.

By becoming Premier of Durakstan he made an active decision to play a direct role in all of its official actions. He did not choose to affirmatively disassociate himself from the government of Durkastan despite full knowledge of its intentions and actions. Threat of losing one's job is not sufficient duress to justify complicity with murder. He is convicted of murder and hanged.

C: The Minister of Minorities in Durakstan, directly in charge of the extermination. Ironically the leader of the Reformist Party, he knew that the extermination would go ahead no matter what he did because of his party's relatively minor role in a Coalition government. He thus decided to cooperate and did everything he could to make the killing as painless as possible, a fact he is at pains to point out.

A self-confessed murderer, he is convicted of murder and hanged.

D: A soldier known by the popular name of the Great Butcher. Notorious for overseeing the extermination of over ten thousand people, the Great Butcher was in fact conscripted into the role. By military law, refusing to obey an order carries the penalty of being burned alive (reduced to shooting at the discretion of a superior, but only in emergency and battlefield cases). The Great Butcher is at pains, of course, to point this out. He ended up exterminating far more effectively than others due to a natural talent for the job, however. The Great Butcher claims he acted to the best of his ability because his immediate superiors were well aware of his administrative talents and would see through any attempt to hold back.

Threat of being burned alive (and assuming this was actually carried out as a matter of course) makes this an interesting case where duress may be a legitimate defence. However, there is still a question whether he committed the least possible crime necessary to avoid the punishment. The jury deliberates and I think he would be convicted - there are too many ways he could have avoided killing so many people and even a single case or ignored opportunity to escape is enough to damn him - but from the information given I cannot make a firm decision.

E: The head of the Supreme Court of Maristan. He played no role in the genocide except to rule that it was legal. However, by an intentionalist interpretation OR a literalist interpretation OR an interpretation based on Maristani common law up to that point, he was right.

My interpretation is that he did not rule the genocide to be legal as such, but rather ruled that the federal government did not have the competence to stop it. In this case, I would again regard him as much like a judge in a neutral country ruling that he did not have jurisdiction over a neighbouring country that was committing genocide. Durakstan was in effect sovereign for the purposes of the genocide. He would not go to trial.

F: The lawyer who acted for the State of Durakstan. Relevant in this case because, despite the Head's insistence, the Supreme Court almost ruled the genocide illegal (most likely for reasons of compassion). This lawyer put massive pains and effort into this case, primarily out of the feeling that it was his duty as a lawyer to do his best for his client no matter what the circumstances. It is primarily thanks to him that a majority of the Maristan Supreme Court was swayed to genocide.

The circumstance doesn't make sense to me. If the argument is obviously correct in law why would it matter how hard the lawyer worked? The judges would have known that the argument is obviously correct in law regardless of the competence of the lawyer, so whether they would return the correct answer or try to overturn the law out of compassion seems to be in their hands alone.

But judging it as written, he was a willing agent of the Durakstani state whose objective was to bring about the genocide. Convicted of murder and hanged.

[Carinthium]

Finally, somebody who isn't being an extremist about this. A few notes:

My overall posistion is that none of these people should be punished. There was no legal jurisdiction for the international community or the Karaks in these cases.

A: The idea was that, because the strategic targets of the invaders were the Death camps, they were militarily defended.

I still think the PM is more sympathetic than you think. Given Western culture, he was likely afraid he would be punished if he simply resigned giving him the options to fight, go against his conscience, or face severe punishment post-resignation. Given what his conscience said (that he could NOT stop the genocide whatever he did), it is obvious those were his only choices.

B: Why should the Premier be punished? He did NOTHING to aid the genocide, nor would his resignation have changed anything.

C: This hangs on whether the international community has jurisdiction. I would contend it has no more jursidiction than the China of 1200 AD (which claimed rightful rulership of the world) had over England at that time.

D: Reasonable if you accept the premise jurisdiction exists.

E: Maristan is a federal country, over which Durakstan is a case. He did, however, rule that the federal government had no jurisdiction in the case as I originally saw it, implying that the genocide was entirely legal.

F: WHAT? It is the duty of a lawyer in most jurisdictions to take any cases they are given.

From a consequentialist perspective, if lawyers fear punishment for merely arguing posistions it is impossible to get all sides of a case in law. This makes the ideal of the Law being followed as written impossible, and creates a metaphorical slippery slope (as opposed to the fallacy) in which more and more opinions can be censored by fear of punishment.

From a virtue ethics perspective, the lawyer was obliged to do his job as a lawyer, which means he takes the case. It is also a deontological duty.

[Terralthra]

I DO use first principles, such as Any Hypocritical Action is Automatically Morally Wrong. Said principles are, however, rooted in instinctual human morality.

Given that humans by any measure are inherently hypocritical creatures, I don't think such a "first principle" is in any way justified. Humans routinely expect to be treated in a fashion they do not treat others with. If humans instinctively avoided hypocrisy, we would be a very very very very very different species indeed.

[Carinthium]

My defence of that particular principle is that whenever a hypocritical action is judged in another human being, it is condemned, whether mildly in some cases or severely in others. An advocate of a moral principle tends to be dismissed automatically if they are a hypocrite.

Therefore, although humans have a hypocritical side it is not part of their moral instinct.

[energiewende]

Finally, somebody who isn't being an extremist about this. A few notes:

My overall posistion is that none of these people should be punished. There was no legal jurisdiction for the international community or the Karaks in these cases.

I disagree. I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and so forth. The ability of states to make agreements between themselves ("international laws") that are morally binding on their actions is encumbent upon natural rights, not the other way around.

A: The idea was that, because the strategic targets of the invaders were the Death camps, they were militarily defended.

In that case the PM would be executed. The only legitimate justification he has to use the federal military to fight the invasion is to defend the lives and property of innocent bystanders, not to defend the genocide itself. Defending the genocide specifically makes him complicit in the crime.

I still think the PM is more sympathetic than you think. Given Western culture, he was likely afraid he would be punished if he simply resigned giving him the options to fight, go against his conscience, or face severe punishment post-resignation. Given what his conscience said (that he could NOT stop the genocide whatever he did), it is obvious those were his only choices.

I think a defence of duress to a charge of murder requires honestly-held fear of imminent death or serious physical harm. What you've described doesn't add up to that.

B: Why should the Premier be punished? He did NOTHING to aid the genocide, nor would his resignation have changed anything.

As the head of state all actions of the state were carried out in his name. His immediate resignation on learning of the genocide would have removed his moral culpability for those actions.

C: This hangs on whether the international community has jurisdiction. I would contend it has no more jursidiction than the China of 1200 AD (which claimed rightful rulership of the world) had over England at that time.

As I indicated at the start I don't agree, but this seems to be a criticism of the legitimacy of the Tribunal itself, not its treatment of particular individuals. I am happy to talk about that but I would like to keep it clearly separated.

F: WHAT? It is the duty of a lawyer in most jurisdictions to take any cases they are given.

I don't think that is true, for instance, he could have resigned.

From a consequentialist perspective, if lawyers fear punishment for merely arguing posistions it is impossible to get all sides of a case in law. This makes the ideal of the Law being followed as written impossible, and creates a metaphorical slippery slope (as opposed to the fallacy) in which more and more opinions can be censored by fear of punishment.

From a virtue ethics perspective, the lawyer was obliged to do his job as a lawyer, which means he takes the case. It is also a deontological duty.

From a consequentialist perspective, if people fear to be complicit in murder then fewer people may be murdered. From a virtue ethics point of view, murder is bad.

[Terralthra]

My defence of that particular principle is that whenever a hypocritical action is judged in another human being, it is condemned, whether mildly in some cases or severely in others. An advocate of a moral principle tends to be dismissed automatically if they are a hypocrite.

Therefore, although humans have a hypocritical side it is not part of their moral instinct.

You undermine your own case in your own wording. When a hypocritical action is judged in another person, it is condemned. In ourselves, we rationalize it. Ethically justifying internally our own hypocrisy while condemning that of others. In effect, metahypocrisy.

[Carinthium]

Alright, I'll divide it if that's your wish.

On Jurisdiction:
Pre-Nuremburg, states could do what they liked. It was even a principle of law that no treaty was legally binding. Therefore no pre-Nuremburg treaty could be a good enough basis for this.

Post-Nuremburg, you could plausibly claim it was implicit in these treaties that they would be enforced (and in some cases explicit). However, not only were some under duress (those states where it was feared war crimes would be punished anyway if comittted), but in just about every Constitutional state (the United Kingdom is a rare exception) there is no power to cede governmental jursidction to another body.

Finally, I specified initially that Maristan is not in the United Nations. This implies not signing up to various international treaties on the matter.

On Interpreting the cases:
I'll assume ad arguendum that jurisdiction exists for the next bit.

A: The problem here- does international law override the Constitution or not? Even if it has jurisdiction, it does not follow that the Constitution's obligations are overriden.

In addition, defending the death camps is a good strategic decision for the war. Put them in hard-to-attack locations and make the Karaks go on the offensive towards them. It could easily be part and parcel of an intelligent overall strategy.

In this case, righteous anger on the PM's part would be understandable. He's just been ordered to commit treason or else, for crying out loud! International law or not, it would clearly be treason for him to unconstitutionally stop the genocide! This would put him between a rock and a hard place. If he fears the Karaks would punish him with a jail term for taking the easy way out and resigning,

B: No they weren't- they were carried out in the name of Durakstan. Legally speaking, in many jurisdictions the Premier is merely a high official for formal purposes despite wielding much more real power than that. In Victoria, for example, the powerless apointee the Governor is formally the one who passes legislation. Doing nothing implies the Premier never signed any government bill.

C: IF you accept jurisdiction, then the fact he was doing what he did on sound utiltiarian logic to minimise suffering must be taken into account.

F: If he wished to remain a lawyer, anyway. Even resignation would be ethically questionable- after all, any posistion deserves to have it's day in court! Not to mention, we should remember that this lawyer is arguing for a posistion WHICH IS CORRECT IN LAW. How can we call this objectionable?

From a consequentialist perspective, if people fear to be complicit in murder then fewer people may be murdered. From a virtue ethics point of view, murder is bad.

How can you establish your posistion that "murder" is bad from a virtue ethics posistion? As far as I can tell, many people considered virtous have had people killed using a state apparatus. Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln being the primary examples, but there are others.

From a consequentialist perspective, we have to remember that Maristan is not culturally Western. Assume the Karaks will pull out, there is a severe risk the new reigme will use the Karak precedent to start trampling on rule of law due to the reputation of Rule of Law being tarnished. It is therefore essential that some measure of Rule of Law be restored in order to make sure that things happen according to the rules.

Normally I would say that the Karak ways could be adopted, but remember that Karakstan and Maristan have a rivalry comparable to Britain and France- this war is likely to lead to resentment against both minorites and the Karaks.

TERRALTHRA:

You undermine your own case in your own wording. When a hypocritical action is judged in another person, it is condemned. In ourselves, we rationalize it. Ethically justifying internally our own hypocrisy while condemning that of others. In effect, metahypocrisy.

Morality should be based on formal principles of what is considered moral, NOT based on human behaviour which is clearly not moral most of the time. Whenever a person realises they have rationalised a hypocrisy away, they condemn themselves for it after all.

[energiewende]

Alright, I'll divide it if that's your wish.

On Jurisdiction:
Pre-Nuremburg, states could do what they liked. It was even a principle of law that no treaty was legally binding. Therefore no pre-Nuremburg treaty could be a good enough basis for this.

This principle is, as stated, not binding. I choose to create a Tribunal beause I am a state and I shall do what I like.

On Interpreting the cases:
I'll assume ad arguendum that jurisdiction exists for the next bit.

A: The problem here- does international law override the Constitution or not? Even if it has jurisdiction, it does not follow that the Constitution's obligations are overriden.

In addition, defending the death camps is a good strategic decision for the war. Put them in hard-to-attack locations and make the Karaks go on the offensive towards them. It could easily be part and parcel of an intelligent overall strategy.

In this case, righteous anger on the PM's part would be understandable. He's just been ordered to commit treason or else, for crying out loud! International law or not, it would clearly be treason for him to unconstitutionally stop the genocide! This would put him between a rock and a hard place. If he fears the Karaks would punish him with a jail term for taking the easy way out and resigning,

I didn't base my judgments in positive law. I am applying roughly a common law treatment, based in natural rights. Since not everyone in the federation was complicit in the genocide the PM had a right to defend those people from the invasion, but he did not have a right to defend the extermination camps. By integrating his military actions with the extermination he became complicit. You are trying to introduce new information to defend his actions but I don't think it is materially relevant to the charge.

B: No they weren't- they were carried out in the name of Durakstan. Legally speaking, in many jurisdictions the Premier is merely a high official for formal purposes despite wielding much more real power than that. In Victoria, for example, the powerless apointee the Governor is formally the one who passes legislation. Doing nothing implies the Premier never signed any government bill.

Legislation in Victoria requires the assent of Queen Elizabeth II who is head of state. Admittedly there is some ambiguity as to the nature of the office of Premier but your example is analogous to my original interpretation. As head of state, the Premier has command responsibility for all official actions it carries out.

C: IF you accept jurisdiction, then the fact he was doing what he did on sound utiltiarian logic to minimise suffering must be taken into account.

If he had received a prison sentence it may have been lighter in consequence. However there are no gradations of death.

F: If he wished to remain a lawyer, anyway. Even resignation would be ethically questionable- after all, any posistion deserves to have it's day in court! Not to mention, we should remember that this lawyer is arguing for a posistion WHICH IS CORRECT IN LAW. How can we call this objectionable?

Then the argument is that his desire to remain a lawyer (or even just employed in that particular job) outweighs his moral obligation not to be complicit in murder. I think this is an incredibly flimsy defence.

From a consequentialist perspective, if people fear to be complicit in murder then fewer people may be murdered. From a virtue ethics point of view, murder is bad.

How can you establish your posistion that "murder" is bad from a virtue ethics posistion? As far as I can tell, many people considered virtous have had people killed using a state apparatus. Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln being the primary examples, but there are others.

Perhaps those people are not virtuous. Certainly they are not perfectly virtuous.

From a consequentialist perspective, we have to remember that Maristan is not culturally Western. Assume the Karaks will pull out, there is a severe risk the new reigme will use the Karak precedent to start trampling on rule of law due to the reputation of Rule of Law being tarnished. It is therefore essential that some measure of Rule of Law be restored in order to make sure that things happen according to the rules.

Normally I would say that the Karak ways could be adopted, but remember that Karakstan and Maristan have a rivalry comparable to Britain and France- this war is likely to lead to resentment against both minorites and the Karaks.

My Karak has consistently upheld a just and universal law in these proceedings and I am happy for it to be applied to Karak also.

[Carinthium]

This principle is, as stated, not binding. I choose to create a Tribunal beause I am a state and I shall do what I like.

Your tribunal is as legitimate as the show-trials the Bolsheviks, the Viet Cong, or the French Revolutionaries put on. It is retrospective law and has the ethical status of those tribunals.

I didn't base my judgments in positive law. I am applying roughly a common law treatment, based in natural rights. Since not everyone in the federation was complicit in the genocide the PM had a right to defend those people from the invasion, but he did not have a right to defend the extermination camps. By integrating his military actions with the extermination he became complicit. You are trying to introduce new information to defend his actions but I don't think it is materially relevant to the charge.

I am speculating on why the P.M would defend the death camps- this is non-canon, so to speak.

Common law is the closest thing I can think of in this world to a Tradition of Evil within western culture. It is based on a series of retrospective decisions, all of which are morally wrong by virtue of being retrospective.

Legislation in Victoria requires the assent of Queen Elizabeth II who is head of state. Admittedly there is some ambiguity as to the nature of the office of Premier but your example is analogous to my original interpretation. As head of state, the Premier has command responsibility for all official actions it carries out.

IF in theory the Premier is not in charge, whatever he is in practice, then I clearly win this debate.

IF in theory all actions are carried out in the name of the Premier, then you win.

O.K, that's dissolved the question in a mutually satisfactory way I think. I failed to give enough clarity on that point, I admit.

If he had received a prison sentence it may have been lighter in consequence. However there are no gradations of death.

There are gradations, if not significant ones- you can grade how painful the death is, whether the person gets last goodbyes and a last will, a decent last meal etc.

Then the argument is that his desire to remain a lawyer (or even just employed in that particular job) outweighs his moral obligation not to be complicit in murder. I think this is an incredibly flimsy defence.

What's your answer to my case that resigning would be ethically questionable if his motives are based on dodging the case, given that a posistion which is CORRECT IN LAW is being shafted? What if every lawyer resigned based on posistions they didn't like? The legal system would collapse, as popular opinion amongst lawyers would trump judges!

Perhaps those people are not virtuous. Certainly they are not perfectly virtuous.

Unless virtue ethics implicitly assumes that the model of virtue is perfectly virtuous, how the hell can it function?

My Karak has consistently upheld a just and universal law in these proceedings and I am happy for it to be applied to Karak also.

That is not how the average commoner in Maristan is likely to see it, which is the problem.

[Thanas]

For someone who claims to use philosophical principles and who namedrops philosophical theories you kinda seem uneducated in them.

Ad hominem.

True, nonetheless.

Your rules of compromise are simply too vague. When you have a system of compromising between ethical principles that can produce unambigious results, get back to me.

Read the first 20 articles of the human constitution, especially the first. Get back to me then.

Your tribunal is as legitimate as the show-trials the Bolsheviks, the Viet Cong, or the French Revolutionaries put on. It is retrospective law and has the ethical status of those tribunals.

The reason we consider the show-trials to be immoral is because they were show-trials. Here is plenty of guilt and crime to go along. Only an idiot would think otherwise.

[energiewende]

This principle is, as stated, not binding. I choose to create a Tribunal beause I am a state and I shall do what I like.

Your tribunal is as legitimate as the show-trials the Bolsheviks, the Viet Cong, or the French Revolutionaries put on. It is retrospective law and has the ethical status of those tribunals.

Where do you think the 'legitimate' law of Maristan came from, if not some initial state fiat? You are confusing legitimacy with ethics: my Tribunal is ethical because it convicts only those who have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to have knowingly committed grossly unethical acts, unlike all the examples you gave.

Common law is the closest thing I can think of in this world to a Tradition of Evil within western culture. It is based on a series of retrospective decisions, all of which are morally wrong by virtue of being retrospective.

How about divine right monarchy? This is quite a strange accusation. I don't agree that a retrospective character - which I don't think is quite a correct description of common law - is uniquely bad, as against eg. empowering a state with absolute discretion to impose whatever laws it wants, as in civil or socialist law.

Then the argument is that his desire to remain a lawyer (or even just employed in that particular job) outweighs his moral obligation not to be complicit in murder. I think this is an incredibly flimsy defence.

What's your answer to my case that resigning would be ethically questionable if his motives are based on dodging the case, given that a posistion which is CORRECT IN LAW is being shafted? What if every lawyer resigned based on posistions they didn't like? The legal system would collapse, as popular opinion amongst lawyers would trump judges!

The law is unjust, so the correctness of the case is not a virtue here. Lawyers of course have a right to resign rather than take a case that is repugnant to them. After all, people have a right not to become lawyers at all!

Perhaps those people are not virtuous. Certainly they are not perfectly virtuous.

Unless virtue ethics implicitly assumes that the model of virtue is perfectly virtuous, how the hell can it function?

My argument has not been that Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln are models of virtue. I'm not sure many people would seriously make that claim. Both of them are remembered well because they did many things that are considered to be very good, not because they never did anything that is considered to be bad.

My Karak has consistently upheld a just and universal law in these proceedings and I am happy for it to be applied to Karak also.

That is not how the average commoner in Maristan is likely to see it, which is the problem.

Maybe but so what? My conduct justifies by example only imposing the same judgements in Karak and I am not opposed to that. If Maristanis want to hurt Karak just out of spite then it doesn't seem to me I've done anything to legitimise that action.

[Formless]

A debate is won by having correct arguments that "beat" the opponent's arguments. Human opinion is irrelevant.

Okay, so let me see if I understand you. When you say "correct" you mean... what, exactly? Logically correct? well, that standard would be good but not quite-- logic is only ever valid or invalid, not correct. Fallicious arguments can be correct because the facts support them or because alternative arguments come to the same conclusion; and valid arguments can be incorrect because they rest on faulty assumptions. But that would be a good start, if I had any reason to think that's what you mean by correct. Factually correct? Well, proscriptive (i.e. ethical) arguments start with facts but do not generate them per say. They generate proscriptions for how we should act, and others may disagree due to differing moral values.

Those are the closest thing to "correct" arguments that this forum allows. That's the standard Mike asks from us. That's the standard most people agree to.

However, if by "correct" you mean "politically correct", or "I agree that this is correct", or "I am correct by default because everyone decided I am a waste of O2" then you are out to lunch. Those standards are invented by the participant in the debate, who is biased due to participating in debate, and therefor those standards are dishonest.

All treaties, in practice, can be divided into several sections.

1- Those treaties signed prior to the Nuremburg trials.
2- Those treaties signed after the Nuremburg trials by states with Constitutions.
3- Those treaties signed after the Nuremburg trials by states without Constitutions.

Prior to the Nuremburg trials, such treaties came under sovereign immunity- a Sovereign was not legally bound to keep their treaties, they were merely promises. Breaking a treaty was not, except for the United States, implicitly Unconstitutional. At that point, no punishment was proscribed for war crimes.

Those treaties in category 2 are unconstitutional to the extent there is an implicit intenstion to cede sovereignty. Every Constitutional state has a division of powers- the actors in question are NOT permitted to cede any of these powers to outsiders under their Constitutions.

Category 3 applies, I am given to understand, only to the United Kingdom. This is an exception I concede, but an exception so insignificant as not to apply.

Irrelevant on all accounts. Breaking a treaty, and committing war crimes in particular, is a casus belli in every modern country. Your conservatard obsession with constitutions has blinded you to this fact. People living in other countries are not going to give one shit what your laws say while they are marching to war against you with guns and bombs. In these matters, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is required reading. As a leader, you would get your country destroyed. This is not an ethical argument. This is not a legal argument. This is a fact that political philosophers must contend with. You haven't. You lose.

The Chinese Empire once claimed sovereignity over the entire world. Does this mean they were automatically sovereign, in your mind, over, say, England? Does it even give them sovereignity automatically over, say, Vietnam? Of course not!

What the fuck does this have to do with anything?

Here's a question- do you claim Nazi Germany at the time Hitler was exterminating Jews was not a country?

No. Its power structure so called "government" was Hostis Humani Generis. Or do you think a pirate captain can claim innocence of piracy based on the fact that he has a written charter?

A:
The Prime Minister is not a spineless coward, nor is he a hypocrite.

The PM had a set of principles in which stopping genocide would be good, but if and only if he could do it legally.

Hiding behind the letter of the law to protect your career is no more couragous than hiding in the corner of a burning room with a fire extinguisher, unable to put out another person's clothes because you are afraid of the smoke.

Hence, he resorted to negotiations instead of warfare. Hence, he resorted to negotiations instead of warfare. The Karaks forced his hand, so applying the same set of principles he went to war.

How in the fuck can you put these two sentences together without seeing how they contradict themselves? He didn't go to war, he negotiated! Then he went to war!! Dolt.

And you haven't even moved on to talk about the other five dipshits yet! How the hell can someone string together so much dogshit in so few sentences?

You ASSUME that the Prime Minister violated his own conscience. Have you considered the possibility he didn't?/quoteYou ASSUME that the Prime Minister violated his own conscience. Have you considered the possibility he didn't?

The Prime Minister had previously been planning to attempt political negotiations with Durakstan to try and stop the genocide.

Fucktard.

B:
A Premier who lacks the support of Cabinet would have lost almost instantly- the Cabinet would have passed legislation to Parliament binding him from acting. Besides, if he doesn't have Cabinet support he lacks the support most likely of the relevant Minister.

The Premier may have made implicit promises to the people by coming to office, or explicit promises. But a Premier never makes the promise coming to office of being a vigilante.

Hey guys, who was it that said "power comes from the barrel of a gun?"

Again, the guy had the power to act. He made the choice not to act. It is the choice that reveals his true character. The character of a coward, or alternatively a liar to the court. You can throw around the term "vigilante" all you like, and I can simply respond by throwing around the term "hero" every time. In the end, your logic doesn't hold, because his promises aren't even the issue. My logic does, because in the end his position binds him to keep the peace and to protect his population from harm. Another good naval analogy would be "Captain goes down with the ship". His own "defense" indicates he didn't, unless he's lying which is worse.

C:
He is a STATE Minister, moron. I don't have much sympathy for C myself, but from a utilitarian standpoint he did the best he could.

The Minister of Minorities in Durakstan, directly in charge of the extermination. Ironically the leader of the Reformist Party,

His job and his party affiliation directly contradicts what he did (barring some sort of Orwellian Doublespeak). Governors and state offices can appeal to a higher office in most countries. Furthermore, you haven't addressed my point that he could have resigned regardless then gone into the underground and armed the minorities. Or I suppose he could have helped them evacuate. Either way, you haven't even presented an argument, you utter tool.

D:
So you're saying people have an OBLIGATION to die for YOUR morals? You're asking too much of human beings.

No, I mean to show that there are actual fucking Nazi soldiers with better moral courage, integrity, and and understanding than the motherfucker you present. Whereas your character is directly comparable to Adolf Eichmann who tried the exact same defense.

In any case, a soldier's job presents risk of death from numerous sources. Enemy action, accidents, friendly fire, and yes, execution for either disobeying orders by your own state or for obeying immoral/criminal orders by an enemy state. That last two are risks you take the instant you sign up in a military during wartime. You can chose to be executed by one state, or you can chose to be executed by another state. The only dillema for this man is, do you want to die a hero or a villain?

Let me inform you something about virtue ethics. At its core, it is a system that proscribes different virtues depending on the lifestyle you choose, with the common connection being that all human beings are connected. Socially, politically... you get the idea. There is nothing meta about virtue ethics-- you can chose to opt out and accept the consequences. Its like a job offer, only instead of being paid you do it to satisfy your human needs; like finding a purpose, having friends, having accomplishments, achieving nirvana or other higher forms of happiness. Even if you opt out, though, virtues and vices are still a reality that exist within you, and which others who do have an ethos will judge your behavior by. And there is nothing about someone who chooses the lifestyle of a soldier but none of the responsibilities that is commendable. Or the lifestyle of a politician. Or a bureaucrat. Or a lawyer. Etc.

And before you make this argument (again), yes there are often multiple valid solutions to many moral dilemmas. I just can't think of any better solution than dying for the cause for this particular character, mostly for lack of information.

E:
The head of the Supreme Court would have fucking contemptible if he had ruled based on his own private opinions that the genocide should be stopped. Why? Because he is letting his own opinions override what the law actually says!

In other words, create a new legal precidence? Judges do it all the time. That's the power given to them in the political process, retard. Its also their job to resolve contradictions in law, like say, murder is illegal except when x is doing it to y.

If he lacks the ability to create precidences, then he really is powerless, which contradicts a story where his rulings tie the Prime Minister's hands. An intentionalist viewpoint is a retarded one, because it means you aren't doing your fucking job as a Judge on the Supreme Court of the nation. Judges often rule against the original intent when the original writer was an incompitent. That's. Their. Fucking. Job.

As it is, thanks to a heroic lawyer he stuck to his principles.

If those are his principles, and the writers were racist fucks (consistent with the rest of the country you depict), then he too is a racist whore. Noose, meet neck.

C was a consistent utiltiarian.

Get. The Fuck. OUT. You dishonest piece of shit. Even after multiple people have explained utilitarianism to you, you still insist something as stupid as this? Maybe you could say he thought of himself as a humanitarian, BUT NOT A UTILITARIAN BY DEFINITION. You really are a genocide apologist. The more I read your posts, the more I wish you would just make a real life analogy so we could ban your ass already.

F:
What is there on F's conscience? He was merely doing his job. Even if he wasn't a racist, he would be legally obliged to take up the case merely because he was asked to.

The fact that he was the nail the horseshoe lacked, that lost the battle that lost the war that cause a fucking genocide. That. That's what would be on his conscience. Guilty he may not be, but the events speak for themselves.

The law determines how the government is allowed to act.

Nope. It limits the government from acting in certain ways and requires them to establish certain institutions for the betterment of the people. But the government has leeway to do things not explicitely banned.

ALL goverment actions which breach the Constitution are the actions of vigilantes.

Pronunciation

(UK) IPA(key): /vɪdʒɪˈlanti/, /vɪdʒɪˈlanteɪ/

Noun

vigilante (plural vigilantes)

A person who considers it their own responsibility to uphold the law in their neighborhood and often does so summarily and without legal jurisdiction.

You are a fucking retard and have no idea what the words coming out of your whore mouth even mean.

[Thanas]

I would agree with almost everything Formless except that the Nazi Government was a legal one which is why Germany paid restitution instead of just saying "illegal, so why should we care?". But that should not hold any meaning on the debate, just because something is done by a Government does not make it automatically less criminal.

[Formless]

Well, personally I would consider the government during and after the war to be functionally different entities. Hitler's regime almost certainly wouldn't have paid restitution, whereas the government after had little other choice but to... as I said before, "clean up someone else's mess".

I'll see about posting a response to his second post aimed @ me after reading it. It might be so stupid I won't, however. That one... that was something else. I haven't laid eyes on stupidity that brazen in a while.

[Carinthium]

Read the first 20 articles of the human constitution, especially the first. Get back to me then.

The purpose of ethics is to figure out what these articles are. If it hasn't, we have failed as ethicists.

The reason we consider the show-trials to be immoral is because they were show-trials. Here is plenty of guilt and crime to go along. Only an idiot would think otherwise.

The logical conclusion of that principle, which I might point out would have been considered abhorrent pre-WWII, is that a government can make retrospective law whenever it doesn't like something. Only vague feelings, which change constantly as the culture changes, holds this back.

Or do you think the popular idea of what is and is not a war crime has not changed over 50 years?

Where do you think the 'legitimate' law of Maristan came from, if not some initial state fiat? You are confusing legitimacy with ethics: my Tribunal is ethical because it convicts only those who have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to have knowingly committed grossly unethical acts, unlike all the examples you gave.

Core human intuition: It is unfair to punish somebody who has committed no crime.

This intuition has been eroded significantly by common law, but it has always existed. It is a core part of human beings.

How about divine right monarchy? This is quite a strange accusation. I don't agree that a retrospective character - which I don't think is quite a correct description of common law - is uniquely bad, as against eg. empowering a state with absolute discretion to impose whatever laws it wants, as in civil or socialist law.

Divine right monarchy was honest, so to speak. It never pretended to be more than it was. Communism may be worse, but it's not old enough to be called a tradition.

Divine right monarchy, if we ONLY discuss those in the Western world, got more and more civilised as time went on. The evils of such monarchies got lesser and lesser- institutions were created that eventually made such monarchies powerless- in, even, say, pre-WWI Germany the monarch's power was greatly restricted by the fact one man can only do so much. This is not so of common law.

The law is unjust, so the correctness of the case is not a virtue here. Lawyers of course have a right to resign rather than take a case that is repugnant to them. After all, people have a right not to become lawyers at all!

Imagine a hypothetical America, variant-America. In Variant-America, racism is far more ubiquitous despite the fact that the Constitution actually implicitly bans slavery. However, whenever anybody attempts to challenge the law banning slavery lawyers refuse to take the case, and resign if necesary to avoid it! Therefore slavery continues.

That is the sort of problem which cannot be allowed to occur. In a sufficiently racist country, however, that very example could happen.

My argument has not been that Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln are models of virtue. I'm not sure many people would seriously make that claim. Both of them are remembered well because they did many things that are considered to be very good, not because they never did anything that is considered to be bad.

The core of virtue ethics is to approximate models of virtue. How can you proceed without a perfect model? Tell me your model, and I will base my argument from there.

Maybe but so what? My conduct justifies by example only imposing the same judgements in Karak and I am not opposed to that. If Maristanis want to hurt Karak just out of spite then it doesn't seem to me I've done anything to legitimise that action.

To a consequentialist, how Maristanis see this is the problem.

Okay, so let me see if I understand you. When you say "correct" you mean... what, exactly? Logically correct? well, that standard would be good but not quite-- logic is only ever valid or invalid, not correct. Fallicious arguments can be correct because the facts support them or because alternative arguments come to the same conclusion; and valid arguments can be incorrect because they rest on faulty assumptions. But that would be a good start, if I had any reason to think that's what you mean by correct. Factually correct? Well, proscriptive (i.e. ethical) arguments start with facts but do not generate them per say. They generate proscriptions for how we should act, and others may disagree due to differing moral values.

Those are the closest thing to "correct" arguments that this forum allows. That's the standard Mike asks from us. That's the standard most people agree to.

However, if by "correct" you mean "politically correct", or "I agree that this is correct", or "I am correct by default because everyone decided I am a waste of O2" then you are out to lunch. Those standards are invented by the participant in the debate, who is biased due to participating in debate, and therefor those standards are dishonest.

My category of correct is based not on the arguments themselves but on which argument 'beats' which argument. For example, if I claim "Hitler shouldn't kill Jews because the sky is green!" and you demonstrate the sky is Blue therefore Hitler should kill Jews, you win the argument because yours is more convincing within the argument's implied assumptions.

Basically, it comes down to whose argument is more convincing within those assumptions we both share.

Irrelevant on all accounts. Breaking a treaty, and committing war crimes in particular, is a casus belli in every modern country. Your conservatard obsession with constitutions has blinded you to this fact. People living in other countries are not going to give one shit what your laws say while they are marching to war against you with guns and bombs. In these matters, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is required reading. As a leader, you would get your country destroyed. This is not an ethical argument. This is not a legal argument. This is a fact that political philosophers must contend with. You haven't. You lose.

Implicit assumption- Ethics must be practical.

I dispute this assumption, therefore you don't have a case.

What the fuck does this have to do with anything?

Why should the sovereignty of the international community, which does not exist for practical purposes over many states (the United States could flout international law and get away with it, if it came down to that), be any more valid than the Chinese Empire?

No. Its power structure so called "government" was Hostis Humani Generis. Or do you think a pirate captain can claim innocence of piracy based on the fact that he has a written charter?

This is where we disagree. The pirate captain is attacking ships which are clearly not his by right- Hitler is dealing with Jews in his sovereign jurisdiction.

Hiding behind the letter of the law to protect your career is no more couragous than hiding in the corner of a burning room with a fire extinguisher, unable to put out another person's clothes because you are afraid of the smoke.

Remember my analogy to a Soldier O who kills Jews because he feels it is his duty. Moral courage is based on standing up for your principles, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ARE.

How in the fuck can you put these two sentences together without seeing how they contradict themselves? He didn't go to war, he negotiated! Then he went to war!! Dolt.

Possibly a wording mistake- I'm not sure. But what I meant to say is that he tried to negotiate, probably begun negotiations, but then had to call them off when war started. In each case he applied his principles logically to the facts.

Fucktard.

Think about this logically! The Prime Minister's principles say that although genocide is bad, breaking a Constitution is even worse. Therefore, he does not break a Constitution in order to stop a genocide. Entirely logical!

Hey guys, who was it that said "power comes from the barrel of a gun?"

Again, the guy had the power to act. He made the choice not to act. It is the choice that reveals his true character. The character of a coward, or alternatively a liar to the court. You can throw around the term "vigilante" all you like, and I can simply respond by throwing around the term "hero" every time. In the end, your logic doesn't hold, because his promises aren't even the issue. My logic does, because in the end his position binds him to keep the peace and to protect his population from harm. Another good naval analogy would be "Captain goes down with the ship". His own "defense" indicates he didn't, unless he's lying which is worse.

Have you ever seen a Premier try to act when most of his own Cabinet opposes him? He pretty much can't!

His job and his party affiliation directly contradicts what he did (barring some sort of Orwellian Doublespeak). Governors and state offices can appeal to a higher office in most countries. Furthermore, you haven't addressed my point that he could have resigned regardless then gone into the underground and armed the minorities. Or I suppose he could have helped them evacuate. Either way, you haven't even presented an argument, you utter tool.

A State Minister cannot appeal to the Federal Government in Australia, nor in any federal country where federalism isn't a farce.

From a utiltiarian perspective, arming the minorities would not ease their pain. Participating in the genocide would.

No, I mean to show that there are actual fucking Nazi soldiers with better moral courage, integrity, and and understanding than the motherfucker you present. Whereas your character is directly comparable to Adolf Eichmann who tried the exact same defense.

In any case, a soldier's job presents risk of death from numerous sources. Enemy action, accidents, friendly fire, and yes, execution for either disobeying orders by your own state or for obeying immoral/criminal orders by an enemy state. That last two are risks you take the instant you sign up in a military during wartime. You can chose to be executed by one state, or you can chose to be executed by another state. The only dillema for this man is, do you want to die a hero or a villain?

It is TOO MUCH to ask of a person that they remain good people under death threats! You CANNOT oblige that sort of thing! Only a small minority can pull it off.

Remember, this guy is a conscript. He never got a choice about going to war!

Let me inform you something about virtue ethics. At its core, it is a system that proscribes different virtues depending on the lifestyle you choose, with the common connection being that all human beings are connected. Socially, politically... you get the idea. There is nothing meta about virtue ethics-- you can chose to opt out and accept the consequences. Its like a job offer, only instead of being paid you do it to satisfy your human needs; like finding a purpose, having friends, having accomplishments, achieving nirvana or other higher forms of happiness. Even if you opt out, though, virtues and vices are still a reality that exist within you, and which others who do have an ethos will judge your behavior by. And there is nothing about someone who chooses the lifestyle of a soldier but none of the responsibilities that is commendable. Or the lifestyle of a politician. Or a bureaucrat. Or a lawyer. Etc.

And before you make this argument (again), yes there are often multiple valid solutions to many moral dilemmas. I just can't think of any better solution than dying for the cause for this particular character, mostly for lack of information.

So you're saying that you should punish these people because it ultimately helps your happiness? Ultimately selfish, but that's not an argument- I'm merely stating it because it might make you uncomfortable even if it isn't a valid attack.

Besides, from D's perspective it is illogical to die for happiness. Therefore, how has he commited a virtue-ethical wrogn?

In other words, create a new legal precidence? Judges do it all the time. That's the power given to them in the political process, retard. Its also their job to resolve contradictions in law, like say, murder is illegal except when x is doing it to y.

If he lacks the ability to create precidences, then he really is powerless, which contradicts a story where his rulings tie the Prime Minister's hands. An intentionalist viewpoint is a retarded one, because it means you aren't doing your fucking job as a Judge on the Supreme Court of the nation. Judges often rule against the original intent when the original writer was an incompitent. That's. Their. Fucking. Job.

NO IT ISN'T. The oath is to UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION, retard!

Why do people in the United States think judicial review exists? Because the judges say so! That is NOT A VALID ARGUMENT!

The judge could in theory have made a precedent, but if he did he would be failing to do his job. His job is to UPHOLD THE LAW.

Get. The Fuck. OUT. You dishonest piece of shit. Even after multiple people have explained utilitarianism to you, you still insist something as stupid as this? Maybe you could say he thought of himself as a humanitarian, BUT NOT A UTILITARIAN BY DEFINITION. You really are a genocide apologist. The more I read your posts, the more I wish you would just make a real life analogy so we could ban your ass already.

By participating he eases pain, which is consistent with Benthamite utiltairanism. C's are the actions of a 100%-consistent Benthamite.

The fact that he was the nail the horseshoe lacked, that lost the battle that lost the war that cause a fucking genocide. That. That's what would be on his conscience. Guilty he may not be, but the events speak for themselves.

F clearly would not feel guilty, though. Can we at least agree on that? If he did, he would not have done so well.

Nope. It limits the government from acting in certain ways and requires them to establish certain institutions for the betterment of the people. But the government has leeway to do things not explicitely banned.

Idiot. Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot IDIOT!

Besides the Tenth Amendment in the United States proving you wrong there, remember the fact that powers are divided between the Federal and State governments! Each have the RIGHT to do anything within their powers! If the Federal Government can stop the State BY FORCE from using it's powers then it is BREAKING THE CONSTITUTION!

You are a fucking retard and have no idea what the words coming out of your whore mouth even mean.

Internet definitions contradict each other all the time. See Wikipedia on Vigilante.

I would agree with almost everything Formless except that the Nazi Government was a legal one which is why Germany paid restitution instead of just saying "illegal, so why should we care?". But that should not hold any meaning on the debate, just because something is done by a Government does not make it automatically less criminal.

Explain why the international community had any jurisdiction over the actions of Nazi Germany. They had WITHDRAWN from the League of Nations, and the League of Nations had not attempted to use force to stop them.

[Formless]

There is no contradiction here. The libertarian ideal of freedom means that the overwhelming majority of people are free, excluding a few people who simply got unlucky. Your ideal of freedom means nobody is free.

So death is freedom now. Gotcha, Orwell.

Oh, that's right. Libertarians are one of the lowest forms of life in the political ecosystem. They never take the possibility of disasters into account, and yet expect the fire department to come save their house when its their lives and property on the line. When they insist that taxes are a burden on their FREEDUHMS, and can't come up with enough money to keep the streetlights on at night, they just shrug. My sister goes to college down in Colorado Springs, where that is quite literally the status quo. She doesn't leave campus very often, especially at night. What kind of freedom is that? Freedom for rich assholes who don't need it in the first place, that's what. They have their gated communities and their pensions and their easy white collar jobs, and half the time they are white men with no sense of how the rest of the human race struggles with real fucking problems.

I have witnessed Libertarianism up close, and I find it to be the position of lying selfish fuckwits who deliberately blind themselves to reality right up until the moment reality hits them in the face... and then go back to being blind again as soon as the trouble has passed.

This should set the tone for how I view your posts from now on. I'm not as generous to a fault as Simon_Jester is. And considering his view of you...

This is going to be fun.

It is a core moral intution that people have the right to be free. Get rid of that and what's the point in morality? If we aren't free agents, why bother with morality at all?

Tell me, can you translate "freedom" into 5 east asian languages? How about 5 European ones? How about 5 African ones? How about 5 Native American languages? 5 Polyponesian languages? Can you manage 5 at all?

That's quite an extraordinary claim, mr. Hitlerjugend. Got extraordinary evidence? You could start with that linguistic challenge, just to show all human cultures even have a concept of freedom.

Americanitis: ethnocentrism lite.

Oh, but we might as well deal with the question of morality. Most people live in society. Most people want friends, business partners, a house, maybe a fuck buddy, maybe some kids. Maybe your brother hit you when you were a child, and you didn't like that so you appealed to mommy or daddy. And they separated the two of you and gave your brother a time out. And you kept playing with your brother-- you still liked him but you didn't want him to hit you. And you realized, hey, maybe I shouldn't hit him either. It doesn't make him happy.

And there it is. People want to be happy, and other people are key to that happiness. But other people want to be treated in certain ways because they too are seeking happiness. So they ask you to act like you give a damn. And maybe as you get older you realize that there are more specific things you want out of life. I mean, you only get one lifetime, and while eating potato chips while lounging on the couch may be nice once in a while its an unsatisfying way to spend your life. So you go out looking for a role to play in society. And it just keeps getting more nuanced from there.

Bear in mind that I have kept this explanation deliberately simple so that even a man-child can get it.

If you follow that system consistently, you are nothing more than a slave. All people constrained by governments that enforce such duties are such wretched creatures than those outside such systems could rightly look down on them to as severe an extent as the whites in the CSA looked down on their blacks.

What was that christian saying? Better to be a servant in heaven than a king in hell. Or maybe I'm flipping a quote from literature. Meh. I may be a recovering Catholic, but the idea still has its merits. I don't want to live as a selfish douchebag, and most people don't want to either. I want to be a scientist and do research for the betterment of mankind. What do you want to do with your life? Eat potato chips on the sofa till you get fat and die? Quite a pathetic life, but its your choice. Don't whine to me about taxes or whatever, and I'll live and let live.

I mean, like I said, Virtue Ethics dodges the pit of meta-analysis bullcrap by presenting itself as a sales pitch, and you are free not to buy. But you sure are quick to judge for someone who has bought a turd, put it on a tortilla and calls it a burrito. You jealous? You think everyone should eat that... thing? Because frankly, I think its a health hazard. That's the difference between someone who seeks virtue and a selfish glutton.

I see no reason to think your ideas on psychology have the slightest shred of empirical validity. I think you're just a sad creature who's listened to too much talk radio. You are even beginning to sound like a pundit.

Human moral instincts are all we have for creating a moral system- without them we're back to moral nihilism.

How about no. How about instead of concentrating on our instincts, which even if real date to a time before gardening, we focus instead on our needs as human beings and societies? Stone age man didn't have to deal with car accidents, gun control, scientific research ethics, the internet, anthropogenic climate change, war, genocide. But nevertheless, if you brought a stone age child to the modern age and raised him alongside all these things and with a modern education, he would look at you with the same slackjawed amazement at how dumb you sound every time you appeal to instinct as I do.

Which leads straight into inane rationalisations. Considering that Maristan is clearly a country where people believe strongly in the Constitution, you will either get nationalistic resentment at "Karakisation" or alternately inane rationalisations for becoming thieves and lawbreakers.

I know that this country is a fiction made up by you for the sake of argument, but a slippery slope is still as slick.

And if they aren't obliged to obey the law, then knowing human nature you're going to get all sorts of inane rationalisations for disobeying the law for selfish reasons.

Is this any better than a politician using the letter of the law to excuse selfishly saving their own career while 200,000 people are murdered by the government and/or the general public?

At least the country won't be headed towards collapse or barbarism.

Holy bleeping leaps in logic, Batman! Also irrelevant to the question. Besides, I don't see how it could get worse than genocide and occupation by foreign powers.

What is so hard about "selfishness is bad when others are suffering on your watch" do you disagree with? Selfishness is one of the biggest single recurrent themes in your posts that you keep trying to draw attention away from. It isn't working on me. Sorry to deflate your balloon but it isn't.

Was Aristotle no philosopher? Was Descartes? Was Kant?

Aristotle is sometimes considered an early (proto)scientist. He is also a philosopher, yes. Descarte was a christian apologist, who is remembered fondly because he stumbled on one tautological truth about reality (that is often misquoted). So did Philip K. Dick, and I think his definition of reality is among the best, but people remember him as a sci-fi writer. And as for Kant, fuck him. That shit bird is one of the most obtuse "thinkers" I have ever had the misfortune of being exposed to. His epistemology is almost anti-science (as I remember it), and his ethics stem from that... so I don't see what I should respect about him. My opinion. But sure, he was a philosopher. One who pretty much defined the stereotype of dudes in armchairs who sit around babbling about metaphysical nonsense.

Namedropping philosophers (who you appear to be unfamiliar with) doesn't even begin to prove your idea that its bad to mix science and philosophy. I can namedrop too-- Jeremy Bentham explicitly justified Utilitarianism's, erm, utility based on the fact that it was scientific, and the leading approaches of his time weren't (*Cough Kant Cough*). You were saying?

You assume implicitly here the superiority of the scientific method- again, an assumption I challenge with regard to ethics.

Your challenge amounts to putting your fingers in your ears and saying "lalalalala, I can't hear you".

You're ignoring what I am- in basic (I'll clarify further later), a Legal Principles Ethicist.

I play make believe too (everyone needs a hobby, mine involves 20 sided dice), but I'm afraid that my Cult of the Precepts of Antwiler is still a made up religion.

I take ideas humans believe as moral principles to be correct on a basic, non-cultural level, based not on their cultural background but their genetic code.

*Quite literally laughing right now* Do you really. So, if you don't mind me asking, what is your background in biology and genetics? This is not a rhetorical question.

(genetics doesn't work the way you think it does. nor does anthropology)

I then apply these principles as if they were laws, and take the results. After the initial test, intuitions are to be ignored.

You realize there was an unstated point in my previous post you are quoting. I selected those quotes to show a larger pattern of contradicting yourself every other paragraph or post. Now you aren't even trying. If your ethics boil down to "everything is human intuition" and then say "but human intuition is no factor if you have second thoughts", you have a fundamental contradiction in your ethics! Unless, of course, if you mean to say "I take my intuitions as sacrosanct, and will ignore everything you say if your intuition is to slap me across the face for being a genocide apologist", then it makes perfect sense.

Oh, and if we take the literal interpretation of your word salad philosophy label up there, this would be the last thing I would associate with any of those words. I would think more like, you know, actual legal philosophy of some sort. Admit it, you have a mishmash of Libertarian propaganda, some gut feelings, and some words you came across while reading wikipedia. I have spent years on this forum debating tons of people like yourself, as well as discussing this with people smarter than me. That's why I find you to be so funny. The more you talk, the more you sound like a poseur.

By self-examination, which is what ethicists tend to do in practice.

First, actually read what those philosophers wrote rather than what you imagine they wrote. Second, ever since Jeremy Bentham formalized Utilitarianism, this has not been seen as a good thing. Its not just philosophers either, psychologists have been trying to distance themselves from this approach almost since the science was founded. As a matter of epistemology, its easy to show how failed this approach is; people assume that others are too similar to themselves than they really are. In fact it even has a name-- the False-consensus effect. One human flaw is that honest self-examination is extremely difficult; in fact, that's one advantage to having human relationships. In some ways, other people really can know you better than you know yourself.

Of course it goes without saying that I am genuinely surprised that you just admitted to projecting your personal intuitions onto the rest of humanity without thinking. Surprising, and laughing.

I am doing Philosophy as a major at Melbourne University. I am doing ethics the way I have been taught- by examining my intutions. I take into account the possibility that other people may have different intutions, but although my teacher would tell me to dismiss them I instead figure them out by asking others.

Since ethicists do this all the time with only the amount of scientific knowledge I have, professional ethicists mind you, I see no problem with doing as I have been taught.

Ohohohohohohoh. Okay, I bite. If you really are a student at said school, prove it. By all means, show for the forum some proof of enrollment for yourself. Oh yes, I am going there. You sound like you are boasting to impress people and the only thing you are impressing on me is that if you are telling the truth, your philosophy department is deeply flawed, especially your current instructor. I think you are now lying to sound more educated than you clearly are.

Perfection by what standard? Intuitions? Intuitions are self-contradictory, moron!

What I am looking for is not a system to be compared to my standard, but a system to BE the standard! That's the difference here!

And again, in two sentences you contradict yourself. You want a perfect system to "be the standard", but the system you have decided to be that system, you admit is contradictory. You are a man full of contradictions. And probably an F in logic class.

[Thanas]

Read the first 20 articles of the human constitution, especially the first. Get back to me then.

The purpose of ethics is to figure out what these articles are. If it hasn't, we have failed as ethicists.

Read the articles and the commentaries to them then.

The logical conclusion of that principle, which I might point out would have been considered abhorrent pre-WWII, is that a government can make retrospective law whenever it doesn't like something. Only vague feelings, which change constantly as the culture changes, holds this back.

Bullshit.

Or do you think the popular idea of what is and is not a war crime has not changed over 50 years?

Last I checked, killing civilians has been a warcrime since the renaissance at least. It has also been codified as such in universal law ever since the 19th century.

[Formless]

Ooh, I just saw this addendum he added. Its short, so it should take maybe five minutes to tackle.

Oh, and about this idea of practicality, I will emphasise again that I do not automatically assume that a morality has to be "practical". Practicality is so vague a concept I cannot do this without hypocrisy.

In other words, you don't care if anyone can actually follow your moral code? Practicality ain't complicated, dude. But then its probably for the best that no one can actually follow your moral code, I will grant as much.

The Prime Minister of Maristan was not blind to the facts- he simply applied his ethics to the facts and decided on war. He likely made an honest mistake in not realising that many of his generals would defect to the enemy, which is why he thought he could win. Even if he didn't, the next most likely scenario is that he decided to stand up for Justice and Right even if he would inevitably fail.

Then he is complicit in genocide, as the war was done explicitely to defend genocide. Very cut and dried. He is blind to the contradictions in his own behavior.

I should also point out that ORDINARY PEOPLE are as cowardly as you think my characters are. The median person, politician or ordinary person, would act as cowardly as you think my characters are. However, my characters are not (mostly) cowards- A, E, and F show no signs of cowardice, whilst C was acting as a consistent utilitarian. Only B and D are cowards.

You can claim that they aren't. You have done nothing to demonstrate it. The whole point of using Virtue Ethics in this case is to demonstrate that people in such positions of power are NOT supposed to be ordinary. I already explained this.

What sentence would you give each candidate anyway? I'm curious to know.

Unfortunately, this comes back to my point about how laymen are no substitute for professional judges and lawyers. I don't have the training to know what sentences are appropriate, and I accept that. I will state that I have a general stance against the death penalty, but at the same time its informed by its use against ordinary people and not political or military leaders. So if the courts were to execute the Minister of Minorities or the Premier of Durakstan, who had the most direct involvement in making the genocide happen, I might find that acceptable in these circumstances. Or I might find a lesser sentence acceptable. But again, I'm not going there. Sentencing isn't my specialty.

Finally, although I honestly did not think of it when planning the scenario the fact nobody aided the Karaks suggests that their actions were done out of selfish motives. Suspicious, don't you think?

Nice try, very nice try. But the Karaks justified their invasion based on the genocide taking place, and that is in fact a crime against humanity, so any selfishness on their part is outweighed by the severity of the crime they are stopping.

[Thanas]

He can't be a student of Kant. Even further, his ideas are nothing like Kant. Kant's whole philosophy is based on criticizing idiots who claim things without proof in the field of philosophy. Also, justifying genocide would be utterly abhorrent to Kant.


Formless, I am not sure how you can consider Kant anti-scientific?