Simon_Jester wrote:Bakustra wrote:Go ahead and explain why the facts of the case reveal that the actions taken were not as I have described them, the lesser of two evils. Or perhaps you are lying, or else refusing to read what I actually post in favor of some strawman you can knock down. I can only speculate as to why you would wish to do this, but I doubt my own rationality in such speculation, since all I can come up with are fairly unkind reasons. I have bolded that statement, in the vain, vain hope that you will recognize the actual position I hold.
You didn't even mention this position until you'd already been driven out of other ones. To me, it feels more like an
ad hoc fallback position that lets you keep disagreeing with people while maintaining a self-righteous attitude than it does like a serious argument. Once upon a time, you were arguing the numbers, without even a hint that the whole thing was fueled by some kind of grand revolt against utilitarianism:
Bakustra wrote:*snip*
What I take exception to, more than anything else, is the way you keep redefining your argument without admitting you have done so, and in the process wrench the thread off the original subject of discussion. And to the way that you keep trying to arrogate the moral and philosophical high ground to yourself; once upon a time, you were bouncing between calling Stuart an amoral simulacrum of a human being and calling PeZook's thinking identical to that which gave rise to the Nazis.
The fact that you were
already doing this when the debate revolved around the details of the
Laconia incident does not bode well for your willingness and ability to carry on an honest discussion on the subject of philosophy. Philosophy offers more ground for obscurantism, covert goalpost-moving, and the pretense that you were really arguing over the semantics of an issue, not the substance.
I stand by my belief that treating the actions of Captain Hartenstein as immoral solely because he was a Nazi is fundamentally identical to Nazi thought, which you can see here:
Stuart wrote:It can only be that simple if you ignore all of the surrounding events and the relevent circumstances. A wider perspective that takes into account the circumstances comes to a different conclusion. That would dictate the German actions as being both immoral and illegal. The American actions were entirely legal and there is no moral aspect to worry about. The sub was there, it was a legitimate target, bye-bye.
His "broader circumstances":
Stuart wrote:*** Blinks **** The point made (repeatedly) is that in 1914, a German U-boat skipper named Weddingen established the precedent that ships in process of rescuing survivors from a sinking were a legitimate target and could be attacked at will. For that he was - and is - lionized as a hero. Now, I have no objection to that precedent, in his position I would probably have done the same thing, but approve or not, that is the precedent set. Ships picking up survivors are legitimate targets. This is nothing to do with demonizing anybody; I will go as far to say if Weddingen hadn't set that precedent, somebody else would have done. That also doesn't matter; in the old saying we eat what is set before us and the situation is what it is. The Weddingen Precedent is set and that's that. Now, with the Laconia incident, the Germans tried to suspend that precendent because it was politically convenient for them to do so. they were not allowed to get away with doing so. That ends the matter and the "moral argument" ends there as well. The actual moral question is "do the Germans have a unique right to set and suspend precedents and rules as they find convenient?" I would suggest that any moral answer would have to be "no."
Which ignores the Naval Protocol of 1936, to which Germany acceded and which required submarines to rescue survivors. But his objection is that Germans can't do that, because that's ignoring the "precedent".
Oh, another:
Isolder74 wrote:Also you condemn the attacking of a submarine picking up Italian Prisoners of War as immoral but continue to ignore the fact that this was done by a nation that not only set the precedence that any warship doing so was a legitimate target and now it was this nation that was trying to insist that the precedence be ignored. That is what was immoral in this situation. The outright hypocrisy of the Nazis in this situation is very telling. To ignore that is ignoring the entire moral implication of the previous incidents in order to try and twist this one into a immoral action. That is a very non sequitur point to try and make.
Which more obviously places this upon the Nazis.
I misread PeZook's position and thought that he was arguing that. I do apologize for that. My disagreement is and has been with describing the action as a moral one. I'm going to go all the way back to the first few pages of the thread here:
Stuart wrote:The point is though that is not a phenomenom reserved for today. The Germans have always behaved like this. You must admit there is something so twisted it is almost funny about the country that invented and deployed flamethrowers trying to claim that the use of shotguns is brutal and inhumane.
The same applies to the Laconia case; the fact is that despite all the mock outrage, the bomber crew did nothing wrong. (Well, actually they did, they went around and queried their orders and that might have made the difference that allowed the submarine to escape and subsequently sink another merchant ship. They should have done their job properly and attacked without warning.) It was the submarine crew who were committing war crimes (which we have already listed, the list extending every time more aspects of the situation come to light).
and another:
Stuart wrote:
Political considerations and political considerations only led to the U-boat staying in the locality. Under any other circumstances, they would have sailed away. They were unable to do so due to those political requirements so they used the PoWs in the water as a shield against attacks. By the way, I have no sense of queasy moral responsibility at all about the conduct of the B-24 crew and my only criticism of them is that they endangered their aircraft for no good reason. They didn't even strafe the submarines as they made their run.
That is what I argued against. I probably have not been quite clear on that. But the point is that to say that this action was moral in and of itself because it hurt the Axis, which is what people argued initially, is tantamount to justifying any action which hurt the Axis, which I feel is fundamentally no different from my position as of now- while one can justify such an action on the grounds of being the lesser of two evils, that is not what people presented. If you wish to disavow that, then we have no argument apart from you misunderstanding what I post. That said, I will also stand by my comments on medics and POWs. If you accept that an action is moral because it harms the enemy in wartime (and people's arguments against that on grounds of practicality can be applied to killing the (POW, no less!) survivors of a submarine attack as well), then any such action which harms the enemy is moral. While you can justify it on the grounds of being a lesser evil via circumstance, my belief is that it is not a good idea to classify it as moral regardless. Am I being clear?
I called Stuart an amoral simulacrum of a human being. Well, I suppose that I could respond to this by going through all your posts to find some insult you have made that is not strictly based in fact and demanding that you justify it. But I hope you'll agree with me that that is ludicrous. As for amoral, when an individual responds to moral arguments with "but it was legitimate", I hope you will pardon me for saying that they must be amoral or a Legalist.
Maybe you take exception to the description of the action as immoral, in which case discussion of whether there is such a thing as objective morality is quite relevant, as that is the only way in which you can introduce facts into it.
I take exception to your trying to base a massive, highly diverse campaign of condemning the attack on the U-boat on what appears (in your mind, taking your word for it) to be a purely semantic issue: reluctance to
refrain from disapproving, let alone to approve, when something bad happens, because it's irrelevant whether it's a least-bad outcome.
You have taken it upon yourself to lead a one-man charge against the conduct of the Allies in this incident. The philosophical arguments you present for doing so are fairly coherent, but they don't produce a conclusion strong enough to justify your behavior. Especially not the parts near your starting point, when you
were disputing the objective facts of the case, within the same utilitarian frame you started despising when it stopped supporting your argument so reliably.
The objective facts I admitted supported the attack from a legal perspective. The objectivity of morality is itself quite relevant as to whether one can consider a moral opinion objective such that it can be proven or disproven, as you did. I don't see why the null statement should be that morality is objective, and I presented an argument for the subjectivity of morality which you have declared irrelevant.
You complain about the philosophy while insisting that I was making a "grand revolt against utilitarianism". Simon, do you have any clue what I was talking about, or are you projecting onto me when you say that I am grasping for straws?
Samuel wrote:So? What does it matter? You can't prove or disprove it, so the system of morality cannot be proven or disproven without some means to test it. Appealing to the future- well, it's possible that an objective system of morality could be developed in the future. I agree with that.
Well, my point is it violates what we know about reality. Unless you think science goes for 100% certainity, we can toss it.
When does taxation become actively harmful? You could say that it decreases pleasure a priori, but it's only harmful when it actually harms people in some way. You could also make a greater-good argument in the case of decreasing pleasure, since the money goes to ensure public services, security and all that. But I was talking about harm in this case.
It is harmful because people don't want to give up their money. This isn't hard. As for greater good because it provides services that is
exactly my point. Causing actions that are harmful for people's own good.
No disagreement on the first, except that this is different from saying it to be a true or false system of morality, but on the second, if the individual is okay with paying taxes, then you cannot say that taxes are harmful in and of themselves. Not everybody views taxes as a knife in the heart.