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Morality
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Post by
Adamsm
Pretty justifiable situation here actually. Husband needs a new drug to save his dying wife that a druggist has recently developed, but the druggist is refusing to sell it because he wants to make more money off it. Husband breaks into druggist's home and steals the drug from druggist, using a gun to threaten the druggist to not try to stop him, which the druggist, obviously not gonna get himself killed over money, since he doesn't even need the money, he's just a greedy bastard, and obviously he's gonna get shot as soon as he makes a move (as far as he knows), so he lets husband take the drug.Not justifiable in the least; rather then breaking into the druggist's house, why doesn't the husband sell things, hit up his family, his friends, and get the rest of the money(remember, he was already preparing to offer him half of the cash up front). We also don't know the life of the druggist; for all we know, this is his big break after living in poverty for god knows how long...but because the scenario is out to paint the druggist as the bad guy, most people don't think about that.
Not seeing any grey here. Grade school morality? What are you even talking about? Being considerate of others? Something that the druggist could've lived by, too bad he didn't.
It is grade school because it paints the husband as the good guy and the druggist as a bad guy....just because, shocker, he wants to make money: If that is what makes people evil, then the entire *!@#ing world is full of evil evil evil people who want to hit it big and make money. The gray exists because of the fact people are seeing that breaking the law is right because the druggist is 'greedy'.....yeah, that makes a lot of logic; guess I can go and steal from my neighbor because he has stuff I don't.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
207044
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
We don't know the doctor's situation, just that the question paints it as him being greedy. Also, and this is the thing people need to look again:
He did not refuse to sell it to Heinz
; he just wouldn't drop the amount down to what Heinz 'thought' was right. Hell, going off that, you are justified to kick a contractor out of his house since he wouldn't bring the price for his work on your own home.
That's still leaving aside the fact that Heinz had a thousand dollars....so, the only obvious choice is to steal the medicine? Like I said before; where are Heinz's family, his wife famly and their friends; are you really telling me none of them would have given Heinz another thousand bucks to get the drug needed to save his wife's life?
Edit: And I fail at reading, as that's how he got the 1000.
Post by
MyTie
Adamsm - I think where we differ is that you believe that since other people have various views of morality, that morality is a matter of perspective. I just happen to believe that some people are wrong about morality. It isn't that I am right and they are wrong, but rather that there is a right and wrong, and some people just don't have that figured out properly.
The core belief here, is actually pretty political. Most people will agree that the actions of the doctor are wrong. Liberals and conservatives. Liberals generally believe that government should regulate these situations, for the benefit of everyone. I believe (and I consider myself to be conservative) that government regulation will eventually drive the price up to 4 thousand dollars, instead of 2 thousand, export the manufacturing overseas due to high taxes, which puts the doctor who discovered it out of work, and then taxes the man 7 thousand for coverage on ALL drugs he might need, and of course, administration of the bureaucracy involved in regulating the mess, as well as scientific research on the man's sexuality. After the 7 thousand is proven inadequate, the government will then borrow money from the country that imported manufacture of the drug, thereby lowering the value of the money in the man's pocket, which is seen in the increase in price of all other goods he buys. He's gonna need to mortgage his house, which will be done through a government agency, which will charge him too much, and also hedge its bets through speculation using more tax dollars, and unsecured foreign debt. Undoubtedly, people will be affronted when the man loses his house (much like they were when he couldn't afford the medicine) and demand more government regulation and investment in the private market.
TLDR: Most agree on moral dilemmas, but disagree on how to solve/prevent them. To me, government is the dumbest answer to these problems.
Post by
Squishalot
1D.
Damn you people staying up late and discussing morality without me!
The issue I have with this being used as a Kohlberg experiment is that it doesn't fairly acknowledge people reading deeply into it. As an example, the comment "Criminals can't just run around without regard for the law; actions have consequences" to me implies F - that others may need the medicine just as badly. To me, 'actions have consequences' was a moral thought, not a 'if you do a bad action, your consequence is going to jail' - my thought process was 'if you steal here, you might be harming someone else' - that sort of consequence, which overlaps very well with the F responses, and therefore lent me to choose D, which would encompass the 'harming others' consequence as well as the justice system. In that respect, the trial is poorly defined.
It also doesn't recognise that I considered that others may need the medicine, but that the acts of purchasing the medicine and using it, or stealing it, using it and paying for it after the fact, is equivalent.
On that note - I can see you've copied and pasted the responses out from Wiki. Those are examples of responses, not necessarily a survey / trial experiment choice list, so in that light, I would probably try to reword those to better reflect the 6 stages rather than take them as they are, due to the ambiguity I've pointed out.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
Post by
Adamsm
Adamsm - I think where we differ is that you believe that since other people have various views of morality, that morality is a matter of perspective. I just happen to believe that some people are wrong about morality. It isn't that I am right and they are wrong, but rather that there is a right and wrong, and some people just don't have that figured out properly./shrug Gonna have to agree to disagree on that point.
TLDR: Most agree on moral dilemmas, but disagree on how to solve/prevent them. To me, government is the dumbest answer to these problems.
But I agree with you here in regards to most problems.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
And adamsm, we're going by what the op said about the druggist and the husband, were not assuming anything else about them. If the op wanted to give a justifiable excuse for the druggist, he would've.And nothing in life is ever that simple or that black and white....which is why I called this a grade school level morality issue.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
And adamsm, we're going by what the op said about the druggist and the husband, were not assuming anything else about them. If the op wanted to give a justifiable excuse for the druggist, he would've.And nothing in life is ever that simple or that black and white....which is why I called this a grade school level morality issue.
Implying that people don't do horrible things all the time in real life out of greed.
Just as often as they do horrible things in the name of love, friendship, country etc etc etc.
Post by
MyTie
Everyone here who answered 1F, or 1E, can you reconcile your views on abortion? I was reading today about partial birth abortion, and how Obama voted against a federal ban on it, but went on to ostentatiously defend abortion with some federal law that would protect abortion rights, apparently for the physical and mental health of the mother.
I don't want to make this about abortion too much. So, assuming the baby is a living human being (which can be proven so), if you approve of abortion, try to apply
Kohlburg's stages of moral development
to the BEST justification you can give for abortion. Where does it sit?
If you are at all interested in this, you should read the whole wiki page carefully before responding.
Edit:
On that note - I can see you've copied and pasted the responses out from Wiki. Those are examples of responses, not necessarily a survey / trial experiment choice list, so in that light, I would probably try to reword those to better reflect the 6 stages rather than take them as they are, due to the ambiguity I've pointed out.
No. They are good enough to get the point across. They would never be perfect if I worked on them for the rest of my life.
Post by
asakawa
MyTie, I wonder if we could move that post (you'll have to repost it actually since I can't move individual posts) to the abortion thread. I don't think I could answer the things you bring up without getting into the abortion topic. Whereas, in the abortion thread I don't think a reference to this thread (to give your question context) would take that off-topic very far.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
OverZealous
Actually, Sold, people tend to excuse their own actions (be it theft, assault, bullying or the like) with things like "but I actually didn't mean any harm", "I needed that bike really badly", "I only attacked him because he was talking about my sister" etc.
There are of course the relatively rare psychopaths that kill people for kicks, or hurt others because they like it - but in many cases, people believe they were perfectly(ish) within their rights to do whatever it was they did, because they "had to" for one reason or another.
I read an article on Cracked (tried to find it but I couldn't) that explains how we almost immediately dismiss everyone else's excuses if they've done something wrong (if someone sleeps over or is late for work, they are lazy pieces of $%^& that don't deserve their jobs), but every time we do something wrong we had a good reason and there's no reason to be mad - since you know, it was justified ("I was up
really
late last night"). That shows just how far one can go to dismiss others' reasons and "excuses" for doing things while almost everything we do ourselves is instantly justified and a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
That said, I don't feel like serial killers typically (as in never ever) don't have justifiable reasons for killing someone.
Edit: And could you please drop the "moral relativists such as yourself..."-thing? It's getting a bit repetetive, and I thought that thing was settled in the "Grey morality doesn't exist"-thread?
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
Ya, no, that doesn't happen as much as you think. Serial killers for example, what serial killer has a justifiable reason for going around mass murdering? Most people who do truly heinous things don't do it for any justifiable reason, this whole idea of people who do bad things are always doing it for a good reason is bull*!@#, I've learned of so many murders and none of them have had a rational reason for doing what they did, and I've met plenty of people who are just $%^&*!@s who get off on making the lives of others miserable, such as bullies.
What justifiable reason do these teens on an internet forum have for bullying and harrassing another teen from their school on said forum until she kills herself, intentionally bullying her to get her to kill herself? Good lord, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone from recent times who's ever done anything truly heinous for anything other than that they're just complete scumbags with no ability to feel empathy for other living things. Not for "their family" or "their country" but because they're cold hearted bastards.
And in this situation, it's about greed. Greed's a pretty powerful thing, lots of people do horrifying things out of greed, a lot of people who steel money do it because they want the money to be rich, not because they need it, but because they want money so badly that they're willing to rob people for it. People robbing banks to get enough money for their daughters operation doesn't happen nearly as often as moral relativists such as yourself believe. People doing bad things because they're bad people is real and it happens all the time.Then Sold, your world view is very very very very very narrow.....and just as said in the Gray Morality thread, very childish.
And yes, if you believe that morals are inherently subjective, than you're a moral relativist, that's the definition of moral relativity.As said in the other thread...No, it isn't.
Edit:
If I walk by a hobo and she begs me for change and I refuse because the change I have on me I need, then as I walk away she stabs me in the back with a knife and loots my money from my corpse, does that change the fact that it's an evil act? No, who cares if she needed it, so did I, and I told her that I needed it and that was why I couldn't give it to her, so what the hell gives her the right to kill me for it? I don't really give a flying crap whatever she needs it for, that doesn't give her the right to do that, ESPECIALLY when I kindly told her that I just can't spare the change I have on me. And what if that change was all she needed to finally have enough money to buy a medicine that would fix a life threatening disease she has? Doesn't she have just as much right to live as you do you selfish selfish person? /roll eyes
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
Heh, and the life of a hobo isn't a drastic one? Where they have no idea if they'll live or not through the night?
But that still goes back to morality itself being subjective, even if good and evil isn't....since you know, there are a lot of times where an invading force thinks it's the good guys right up till they find a mother murdering her children in their home because she was convinced that the invaders were going to rape them to death.
Post by
149406
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