Misso

You sure made it seem as if it was the only criterium though.

That's nonsense. A person is always responsible for his or her own actions, and the same goes for a state. The dropping of the two bombs was primarily the responsibility of the US (although it might have been provoked by Japan).

Don't you mean non-sequitur? If so: a non-sequitur is a wrongful coclusion about causation, not a bad analogy.
Besides that, I don't see anything wrong with it, and you fail to provide any reasoning behind your criticism.


You seem pretty convinced that the answer to both questions is no, but I couldn't say, I don't know.

nermal

You don't get it. It's not about provocation. It's not about anger. It's about choices. If your choices are narrowed by forces outside your control so extremely that you may only choose among horrible alternatives, you may still make a moral choice--even if that choice would have been immoral in other contexts. If I am the agent who limits your choices through my deliberate actions, then the responsibility is mine, not yours. Your action is my sin.

Let's put your notions to bed. You wrote above:
" A person is always responsible for his or her own actions"

Let's agree for a moment that adultery is immoral, and you are a married woman.
My friend is holding a gun to your child's head, and if you don't have sex with me, he'll shoot.
Would it be immoral for you to have "concentual" sex with me under these circumstances? Of course it would. It would be immoral for you not to.
I would be the one guilty of immorality, not you.
By my deliberate choices, I have narrowed your options to two horrible possibilities:
1. Have sex with someone who isn't your husband.
2. Allow your child to be killed.
Choose the least horrible, and you've made the moral choice.
Any responsibility for your "immorality" is mine.

Picky about spelling on an internet forum? Man, your tough. You must go crazy reading the threads here.
Look the word up. It also means something which does not follow. If you had written an essay about bat guano in response to my post, that would have been non-sequitur. It would also have been as relevant as your analogy.

You're responding to someone elses post here. I can't speak to it.

Ed

fatherphil

one thing that put this issue in perspective for me was seeing an interview with a marine who was stationed in the south pacific at the time of the bombing. his next mission was to be the invasion of the main island.

Eric H

Who ever uses weapons of war to kill civilians will find a way to justify their actions.

We weren’t too happy in England during the Second World War when many of our cities were bombed killing innocent civilians.

Hitler must have said its war, so it’s ok.

America wasn’t too happy about 9-11, no doubt Bin Liner found a way to justify this action.

Maybe one day there will be peace, maybe we may find a way to recognise that all people are human and deserve to live in peace.

Eric

enigma555

Conclusion jumping, misrepresentation, invalid assumptions and contradictions are a little subjective, I'd say.

I don't see how "Japan, who had started a war and had not contacted us with an offer for peace", "without a peace offer hundreds of thousand of our citizens, and hundreds of thousands of their citizens will die" leading to "using brand new weapons to force a peace is justified" is a jumped conclusion or an invalid assumption.

Quite frankly, I don't see how I misrepresented myself anywhere.

My "we cannot judge them because we weren't there" was probably not the best choice of words, but my meaning was this: We have knowledge about the reality of nuclear weapons which were not in existance in 1945. In 1945 only several thousand to a few tens of thousands of people even knew the weapon was possible, let alone what it would do. They did not know about radiation sickness, they did not know for sure about any global environmental effects, and they did not know about any long term results to the bomb sites.

Those same things are taught to secondary school children today.

They were also in the middle of a war which had been going on for many years and since the Japanese had not contacted us with an offer for peace, it looked like we would need to invade their island. It was believed that using the atomic bombs would scare them into surrendering, saving lives on both sides.

We cannot therefore judge the morality of the use of atomic weapons based on 21st century opinions and knowledge. Do we call fertility doctors who used thalidomide on their patients immoral? No. They did not have all the information which is available to us now. Those that made the decisions in 1945 did not have all the information we do.

That is why I personally find your "Inquisition" reference a complete red herring, and irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The inquisition was not done to stop a war. The inquisition was not done to save lives, both on our side and theirs. The inquisition knew exactly what they were doing, and did not kill in order to lessen the killing. The inquisition killed just for the sheer sake of killing.

I don't see how that position is based on a jumped conclusion, a misrepresentation of the facts, an invalid assumption, or a self contradictions either.

If you want to use logic to attack the writer of a post, be sure that the post was a grand misrepresentation or misapplication of logic. I don't believe that mine was. This is a message board. Not a research article. I generally do not prefer to write 400 word descriptions of my point, and I don't believe that you do either.

themistocles

Boom.

It would be difficult to make a more profound statement in this discussion than that.

I think those who argue against the dropping of the bombs seems to miss the paradox that dropping those bombs saved lives and factually ended the violence. It's a high mountain of moral indignation to argue for the preservation of life and peace when the result of your opinion placed in action does precisely the opposite.

Nowhere357

Ed, you know I agree with your position. My concern now is how to define "moral".

I claim it should refer to actions, and not to opinions of actions.

It would be helpful if you were to consider this: can we in theory say the Palestinian suicide bombers may be commiting moral acts? I say no: the act of killing innocents is immoral. Justification is irrelevant when considering morality.

If morality is relative, then it is possible the suicide bombers are behaving in a moral fashion.

Thanks

nermal

Nowhere357:

The Palestinian suicide bombers have many options. I would have to put myself in their shoes to understand the avenues they think they have or don't have. It's an interesting example, and gives pause, since they honestly believe they are occupied by an aggressor. I guess the question to be asked is, are they acting in a way which they sincerely believe will save Palestinian lives, and serve the interests of their people? I don't think so. I think they are acting out of revenge and provocation--so I think their actions are immoral since they chould choose wiser alternatives.

The point of bifurcation between your philosophy and mine seems to be this:

I do not believe that by exercising sufficient power to limit only the choices available to you, I can seize your status as a moral agent. I think honor is more durable than that.
But this is exactly what you are positing. If someone is in a position such that they only have horrible alternatives available, your position is that they are incapable of being moral in those circumstances. They are no longer moral agents, at least for the duration of their circumstances.
I won't accept that.
You see? It's not a matter of semantics. It's much more than that. Very much more.

Ed

Nowhere357

I admit I don't entirely understand this. I think you are saying that when we choose the lesser of two evils, we are behaving in an honorable fashion. If so, then I agree.

Here I want to say that honor and morality are not synonomous.

Moral: of or relating to principles of right or wrong in behavior :ethical.
Ethical: conforming to accepted standards of conduct.
Honor: a keen sense of ethical conduct.

The principle of morality we are concerned with here, is the principle that killing is wrong.

It may be that the highest expression of honor, is to violate that principle. That is, honor may require us to engage in an immoral act. This in fact may the case, with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

By looking at it in this fashion, I can say that it is immoral for suicide bombers to target civilians. They may be behaving with honor (although I think they are behaving mostly out of hate) but they are NOT behaving morally.

Note that principles of right or wrong refer to conduct, and that "conduct" refers to action. This supports my position that morality concerns actions, and not opinions.

I really don't want to accept suicide bombing as EVER being a moral act.

Ed, I want to say that this discussion is fun and useful. At the least, given the tone of some of the posts in this thread, we are demonstrating that disagreement need not imply or validate disrespect.

themistocles

I've got to echo nermal, while I haven't walked in the shoes of a Palestinian, I'd hardly imagine that their route to independence is the best route. Which implies they are avoiding a "lesser evil" (or even a truly noble path).

Not analagous to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that ends don't justify the means: not using the bomb would create unnescessary violence in greater scale than using the bomb did. In other words, we didn't choose the lesser evil, we chose the least possible evil.

And perhaps you can seperate honor from morality, but I'm not so sure you can seperate morality from honor. By suicide bombing when peaceful means can achieve the desired goals would be dishonorable.