Alonzo Fyfe

And you just made my point.

Your whole argument is a moral argument, and your conclusion is a moral conclusion. You did not derive your conclusion from a single statute or judicial opinion. You derived your conclusion the way that all moral conclusions are derived, using moral arguments, and defended a conclusion about whether certain types of legislation are morally permissible or impermissible.

However, your conclusion really is not "thou shalt not legislate morality', Your conclusion is "thou shalt not legislate against harmless acts.'

And I agree with you. This is something 'thou shalt not do'.

But not because people disagree. If we make impermissible every law over which people disagree, then there should be no laws.

And, you also need to note that, just as people disagree over whether homosexuality is right or wrong, they also disagree over whether it is permissible to legislate against it or not. So, nothing you advocate avoids disagreement. You're just moving the debate from one topic to another.

Why is it somehow mysteriously impermissible to debate whether or not homosexuality is wrong, but not mysteriously impermissible to debate whether legislating against harmless acts are wrong? Why is the 'subjectivity' of one and the fact that people disagree considered such a great point of crisis, but the subjectivity of the other and the fact that people disagree considered insignificant and dismissed?

Why the inconsistency?

Donnmathan

I think you miss my point - you need to divorce laws from morals!

'Right' and 'wrong' most certainly ARE subjective, in that no two people will neccesarily apply them in the same way. Some people are saying that sodomy laws are good laws, you and I both say they are bad; we are making subjective, or opinion-based statements about how WE percive the law. To state that a law is unconstitutional, however, is to say it is an unjust or unethical law; it violates those codes set down in the constitution. This is an objective, or fact-based statement - it can be proven or disproven independent of personal opinion.

Now let's look at the closing statement from that same post -

Replace WRONG with HARMFUL and you turn the first two statements from opinions to facts - which can be proven or disproven (and have been - mental and emotional harm can come from either, along with harm to society in general). The last is not so concrete, but then, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it!'

Donnmathan

How so? Morals cannot deal with fact, only opinion, because moral statements are all opinion-based.

Hmm...perhaps I should rephrase my base premise: Without violating the Constitution, one cannot legislate purely based on moral standpoint.

Help at all?

Alonzo Fyfe

Why is "sodomy laws are good laws" subjective and "sodomy laws are bad laws" objective?


This account seems to argue that we should never change the constitution, because everything the constitution allows is just by definition, any change to the constitution must be unjust by defintion.

The abolition of slavery was not carried out because it "violated the constitution". It was carried out because it violated moral principles -- it was wrong. And so long as the constitution defended slavery the constitution itself was flawed -- the constitution itself perpetuated injustice.


It seems to me, "harmful" is no more or less subjective than 'wrong'.

Alonzo Fyfe

Perhaps you need to rethink that "morals cannot deal with fact, only opinion" part. Because you just provided a moral argument in arguing "thou shalt not legislate against harmless acts" that is structured just like any other moral argument would be structured.

If this has all of the characteristics of a moral argument, including a moral "ought" conclusion, and is based on fact rather than opinion, then perhaps moral arguments can be based on fact, rather than opinion.

Jack Kamm

Alonzo, you misunderstand me. I am not saying, "Thou shalt not legislate morality." I am asking, "Why legislate morality? What's the point?"

As for law being used as deterrence and protection:
I completely agree. If I could, I would make it illegal to fire me or harm me in any way (I'm not quite sure how I would prevent myself from getting paper cuts, though). However, everyone else only stands to lose from these laws, so there's no way I'm going to be able to make a social contract with them and have the law enforce it. However, almost everyone gains from preventing murder and theft, so it's much easier creating a social contract and enforcing it.

Donnmathan

I never said that - both are subjective - pure opinion.

The constitution is no more flawless than those who wrote it - it is a living document for that very reason, and so that it may be altered to adjust for changing times. The abolition of slavery was actually an attempt to iron out one such flaw; the bill of rights talks about freedoms, yet we were holding a whole group seperate and apart from those very freedoms. The document contradicted itself, and also provided us with a way to fix it. I might add that the idea that certain people were less than human and could be made property was an opinion - it was not shared by all (else there would have been no anti-slavery movement), and was quite harmful to the African-american population. By my definition, this made it unjust. In this very way, the constitution allows flaws and contradictions to be delt with...but also allows new ones to creep in. A flawed, but forward thinking document framed be a group of forward thinking men.

Really? If I shoot you in the knee, is the harm done to your body subjective? No, it is objective, quantifiable and factual. For you to claim that the pain is worse than a broken leg is subjective - people experience pain differently. Just ask anyone with either a high or low pain threshold. I grant you, mental and emotional harm are more judged on measurable side effects than actual effects, but both are still observable and objective. Was I wrong? That depends entirely on the situation, doesn't it? If I was a police officer and you were spraying a crowd with an uzi, I would say it was not wrong at all. Self-defense? Possibly wrong, because it could have been an over-reaction. Just because I wanted to? Definately wrong! Do any of these cases change the fact that harm was done to you? Not in any way, shape, or form.

I have NEVER said 'thou shalt not'! I will restate my case once more, and attept to further narrow my definition until I am making a falsafiable statement: the legislation of opinions (morals) that deal in areas that cannot be proven to cause harm is normally (greater than 50% of the time) deterimental to or opressive of the society as a whole. This statement is a FACT - falsifiable, objective. If you can prove to me that my statement is false, that is one thing; trying to state that moral statements are facts is faulty reasoning!

Donnmathan

Hmm...in rereading this entire thread, I see that I may have shot myself in the foot with my choice of language in various places. If no one objects, let me try to redefine the arguement I was attempting to make...

I do not feel it is justifyable to enact laws that will affect the whole of society based on the moral judgements of a section of society purely because they believe the practice in question is 'right' or 'wrong', unless they can also prove, objectively and conclusively, that those commiting the act in question are a verifiable threat to the health and well-being of the rights of others or society as a whole. Please note that no human right deals with the purely spiritual or metaphysical (this includes the soul), and thus no law can be made by my arguement base on the state thereof.

Perhaps I would have been better served by saying that you can't legislate against 'sin'.

Alonzo Fyfe

Donnmathan:

I added the "thou shalt not" to illustrate a point -- that the principles being proposed here have the same form as those that are being criticized. Where do these principles come from? How do they get their justification?

If a person wants to argue, "thou shalt not legislate against harmless acts," I would agree with him. But this is a moral principle -- one that happens to be objectively true.

If he should proclaim, "thou shalt not legislate religion" (or, as you now put it, "thou shalt not legislate against sin") I whole heartedly agree. I would argue that this moral principle can also be proved true.

However, the principle, "Thou shalt not legislate morality" is a self-contradictory piece of dogma that belongs in the same box as, "Rule 1: Ignore all the rules."

Ultimately, we base laws on moral principles -- that it is wrong to harm innocent people, that people have a right to equal status before the law, that punishment ought to be proportional to the severity of the crime, that no person should be punished merely for expressing an unpopular opinion, and so on. All of these are moral principles, and it is these moral principles that are the ultimate foundation of just law.


I agree that harm is objective. But harm is a value -- nothing counts as harm unless it is bad. Saying that X is harmed and that something bad has happened to X are two different ways of saying the same thing.

This is the very fact that got me to rethinking the whole "value is subjective" idea, and finding it to be nonsense. If value is subjective, then harm is subjective. If harm is objective, then value must be capable of being objective. You simply can't have it both ways. It's a contradiction, and logic abhors a contradiction.

It's entirely inconsistent to say that values judgments subjective, and harm is objective, because harm requires a value judgment.

If you can make sense of harm as something objective, you can make sense of value as something objective. And if value can be objective, then right and wrong can be objective. Slavery is not only inconsistent with the constitution, it is wrong. And if the constitution had been consistent in its defense of slavery, the result would not be "slavery is good". It would be "The constitution is bad."

These topics are going to play a major part in my next posting in my formal debate on objective morality, in case you are interested.

And, I find your final statement, "you can't legislate against sin," to be illuminating of the whole discussion. By 'can't' you certainly don't mean 'it is not causally possible'. It seems more accurate to translate this into "you should not (thou shalt not) legislate against sin." Now, if it walks like a moral statement, quacks like a moral statement, and flies like a moral statement, then it is a moral statement. "You should not (thou shalt not) legislate against sin" is a moral statement. One that I agree with, but a moral statement nonetheless.

Tani

i'm not sure value can be made entirely objective. indeed it must contain objective elements, since i can't image if there is no object which i can value for such concept to even arise. but consider shooting at the bull's eye, why shoot the bull's eye? there is the red bull's eye, the white circle, and the blue circle. i can find no objective reason as to why bulls eye is more impoartant, and hence the higher value, than the white and blue circle. higher score perhaps? but then what about golf? the lowest score suddenly becomes the highest in value. surely, demolition was not considered the same as just "damage" to a building but what objective factor is there exactly to differentiate them?

anyway, keeping myself in topic - in jurisprudence, there is a contraversy on what basis is one obligated to obey laws, the reason i usually heard is of moral obligation. so morality does play a part in laws, at least a lot of people believe so, except jurisprudence has also for the longest time try to explain how laws are different from morality... the issue, as far as i know, isn't settled yet. however, regarding the moral obligation to obey laws, i am compel to ask though, unless i actually feel the obligation, what would entice me to obey this moral obligation, which is now as foreign to me as the laws are? since it is appearent that if legistated laws are the same as legistated morals, moral obligation as a reason would seem to be circular.