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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Nick, I decided to engage in a softer form of
debate recently as reasonably requested by a number of folks. I think it
safe to say that my last several posts to you and the others have reflected
that. I must say that I find your characterization of this intentional
outreach as "someone without a clue harrassing" you, to be unfortunate.
Still, I will press on in this new vein. It is however very late on one of
the longest days of my life, so I will adress your essay this weekend when more
time allows and with a spirit of legitimate and fair minded intellectual
engagement.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Have a good weekend.
-T</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=ngier@uidaho.edu href="mailto:ngier@uidaho.edu">Nick Gier</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, November 16, 2006 11:47
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Expediency vs.
Morality</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Greetings:<BR><BR>I promised a lecture on utilitarianism and
morality, but I said that I did not have time. Since someone without a
clue is harassing me, I'll do the lecture in small units.<BR><BR>Before I get
to the issue at hand, I need to repeat an essential moral point about
abortion. One cannot make a moral equivalence between aborting a fetus
and killing innocent persons unless the fetus is a person. As I have
repeated too many times on this list, our moral, legal, and religious
traditions have not recognized that the fetus is a person until late in
pregnancy. Until our respected traditions are changed with good reasons
and the laws are revised, abortion is the taking a human life (equivalent to
other mammalian lives), not the murder of a human person. For more see
<A href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm"
eudora="autourl">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm</A>.<BR><BR>As one
who respects all life, I would not want any woman to request an abortion
unless there are very good reasons to do so. But I would respect her
right to do so under the law, and a I certainly would not want anyone to
condemn her for murdering a person, because the early fetus is not a
person. Remember that 91 percent of abortions are performed during the
first trimester.<BR><BR>As to the alleged moral value of expedient acts, let
me just refute it by a simple example. Let's say that someone attacks me
and is threatening my life. Let's also say that I am armed and that I
kill my attacker. Killing persons violates basic morality. I have
committed a wrong and I would feel terribly guilty about it, and if I were a
religious person I would seek repentance for my act. (Actually, unbelievers
can also repent in their own ways.) The fact that the law would clear me
because it was a justified killing in self-defense does not in any way remove
the moral fact that I've done wrong.<BR><BR>Let's say that I'm watching a
Vandal game with Tom Hansen in my backroom. Let's also say that a homicidal
maniac comes to door armed with an AK-47 and handguns. The maniac says
that he has read Tom's posts on V2020 and that he deserves to die. He
also says that he has good information that Tom is at my house. I
quickly make up a big fat lie and say that Tom is not at my house and was
never my friend. Somehow I convince him and the brute goes
away.<BR><BR>Under a duty or rule based ethics, I again would have to say that
I broke the rule about truth telling. Expediency made me break that
rule, but I broke it nonetheless. Lying to save a friend's life is an
expedient act, but it has no moral value. Again, as a person with
conscience, I would repent of my actions.<BR><BR>This example, I believe,
shows the superiority of virtue ethics. Honest people have developed a
strong disposition to tell the truth. This moral habit is a
virtue. The fact that this unusual situation has forced me to tell a lie
does not make me a liar. Far from it: after this ordeal I immediately
return to my habit of truth telling. Rule based ethics would say that I
have broken a rule, but virtue ethics says that virtues are supreme and that
moral imperatives and moral prohibitions are simply abstractions from the
virtues and the vices respectively.<BR><BR>Let me now repeat my point.
The saturation bombing of Germany and Japan may have been an expedient act to
win military victory. But in no way was it a moral act.<BR><BR>I've
known Larry Johnston, the UI physicist who designed the trigger for the atomic
bomb, ever since I arrived in Moscow 34 years ago. He is a good man and
a devout Christian. In all the public pronouncements on his part in the
atomic bombing of Japan, I've never heard him say that he was sorry.
I've never had the courage ask him personally, but I hope that the next time
he's interviewed he will finally express some remorse. <BR><BR>Using
evil means to justify a desired end can be called "good" only if you are crass
utilitarian who holds that as long as there is 50.0000000001 percent more
hedons (units of pleasure) than dolors (units of pain) in your actions, then
you are acting morally.<BR><BR>I once saw a great utilitarian maxim in a
bathroom stall on the 3rd Floor UI Admin. Building. It said: "A long war
is a small price to pay for eternal peace." This is theological
utilitarianism gone wacko, but here is the hedonic calculus: eternal
life for the righteous victors represents an infinite number of hedons and it
will always trump any possible number of dolors committed in the name of the
righteous war on earth. So let us all join the fundamentalists of our
choice and kill all the unbelievers because "a long war for God is a small
price to pay for eternal peace." Reductio ad absurdum.<BR><BR>Sorry, but
I just discovered that I can't do anything in "small units." This is the
end of my lecture on ethics.<BR><BR>Nick Gier<BR><BR>Your life is a
test. If this were a real life, you would have been given proper
directions. <BR><BR>And please don't tell me that proper directions are
found in the Koran, the Bhagavad-gita, or the Bible! In the Gita Krishna
advised Arjuna that it was OK to kill his relatives on the other side, because
nothing he or anyone does can touch the eternal soul. Arjuna then led
his troops into a battle that, if we believe the reports, caused the largest
number of causalities in the history of warfare. Onward Religious
Warriors!<BR><BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite">Nick suggests that an expedient
means of ending a war, and thus saving <BR>potentially tens of thousands of
American lives, cannot fairly be regarded <BR>as a moral
act.<BR><BR>Fascinating!<BR><BR>Have a pleasant weekend ya'all.
-T<BR>----- Original Message ----- <BR>From:
<nickgier@adelphia.net><BR>To: <vision2020@moscow.com><BR>Sent:
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 2:38 PM<BR>Subject: [Vision2020] Why the
Nagasaki Bombin and Why So Soon After?<BR><BR><BR>>
Greetings:<BR>><BR>> There is credible evidence that the main reason
for the Nagasaki bombing <BR>> was to test a different type of
bomb. I don't have the details or <BR>> references at my finger
tips, but they are available.<BR>><BR>> Furthermore, when I have time
I want to lecture the list about the moral <BR>> failings of
utilitarianism, the only "moral" theory that can conclude that <BR>> the
ends justify the means, and theory that has been used quite a bit by
<BR>> at least two on this list.<BR>><BR>> I believe that the
atomic bombing of Japan, just as any conventional <BR>> bombing of
populated centers, can have no moral justification at all. It <BR>>
can be justified as only an expedients means to a desired end and nothing
<BR>> more than that.<BR>><BR>> Nick Gier<BR>><BR>>
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<P></X-SIGSEP><FONT size=2>"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the
application of it to human affairs."<BR>--Ralph Waldo Emerson<BR><BR>"Abstract
truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who represent it, by
proving their readiness to die for it."<BR> --Mohandas
Gandhi<BR><BR>"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system
cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each
part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the
interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual life.
It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The
whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." --Ma</FONT><FONT
size=1>x Planck<BR><BR></FONT>Nicholas F. Gier<BR>Professor Emeritus,
Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho<BR>1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID
83843<BR><A href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm"
eudora="autourl">http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm</A><BR>208-882-9212/FAX
885-8950<BR>President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO<BR><A
href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm"
eudora="autourl">http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm</A><BR><BR>
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