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Re: I do agree with you, (sort of) MalkierKnight Send a noteboard - 15/06/2010 04:50:04 AM
Legal justice and the process of law and moral justice and a basis of morals are tied together wholly unseparably. A just legal system or system of prosecution and punishment can only be just if they are enforcing just laws and offering just judgement. In order for just laws and just judgements a standard of rightness must be present by which we can measure the justness of any law/judgement. Without a standard of rightness, a set of principles of moral justice, legal systems of justice and systems of retribution and punishment are inherently unjust. If anything is in defense of a social, political or economic system that cannot be proven just, it must be assumed unjust for lack of a standard of rightness.

It is possible to argue that since every individual case is separate and contains such a variety of factors that it is impossible to impose upon it a standard of rightness; the only true justice can be achieved by human intuition from case to case. However, this is, in fact, a standard of rightness, that we leave the decisions to be up to human intuition in all cases. There is a school of moral justice that agrees with you, saying that since individual cases are so different and varying, only human intuition can possibly handle the variances and no iron law can hold up. It is also possible to interpret this evidence in a different way. Every human with the possible exception of psycopaths, has an inborn ability to tell right from wrong in most cases. This is a commonly accepted fact and is, in essence, a major contributing principle to the development of a jury system in the United States. If there is a human standard of rightness and wrongness, it is clear that there is something called "right" and "wrong." It is evident that a general standard can arise from an accordance of human intuition to create perfect justice, an ideal discrimination of right and wrong.

I view that fact that good can cause bad and bad good to be irrelevent, at least in a broad sense. There are those that view that the motives of any action determine rightness or wrongness, others that say the ends justify the means, that the the consequences of an action determine that actions inherent rightness or wrongness. I personally believe that it is a combination of both, a man that would nuke a city because he thought that there was a bad guy in it, a good motive but a surely evil outcome, is evil; a man that would kill thousands of people because he didn't like them and it turned out that they were all planning to kill millions more is surely not good. In judgement, in a moral theory, it would be integral to associate motive and consequences together in a dark stew of good and evil. I agree with you that good and evil are not mutally exclusive, and that in this world, in any world, there is no true good nor true evil. However, I don't believe that these facts act as a barrier to the development of a theory of morals.


First, let me say that the justice system when using the term "justice" does not presuppose morality, or at least, it should not since it so woefully short of that ideal. Legal justice is based more upon effectiveness and a general agreement between many people (at least in a democracy, which is precisely what makes democracy so widespread and effective).

Second, I'm not saying that human intuition should take over because the situation is too complex. Human intuition ought only guide one's individual actions and actions which he or she can confine to him or herself. This is because human intuition differs (because intuition itself is subject to manipulation by social and cultural norms as well as the weakness of the human mind), but more because one cannot prove why one's intuition stands over another's. Intuition is ineffable and perhaps illogical. It is strictly subjective and thus has no place in the realm of justice, if there is one. The discussion on justice as a whole is frivolous before discussing whether or not right or wrong exist. To say that they just do is not sound logic at all. That sort of statement again relies on intuition, which is subject to the very same criticism I stated above. Right and wrong, good and bad, only exist, for sure, conceptually. They are extensions of things observed in reality, but they themselves do not exist in reality. Pure good, pure evil, pure right, pure wrong, exist in the imaginary world of the concept. As such, they have no place in judgments about reality.

Third, I bring up good coming from bad and bad coming from good only to show the fluidity of the two concepts. That the ends justify the means is a rationale that the world cannot exist without. At the same time, utilitarianism has the power to cause the very bad it wishes to present because its rationale can be abused. The same is true of deontology.

The trend we are beginning to see, and it is the point I'm getting at, is that logic can be manipulated. Reason only takes us so far in these important matters of morality. Rather than seek a rule, or lexicon, for behavior and thinking, we should be mindful of our actions, our limitations, and the consequences of our actions. The greatest evils in the history of mankind have not been wrought by a singular force, but by a collection of small misfortunes. It is only individually that we can remedy this situation, not by appealing to moral law.
You must unlearn what you have learned.
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Re: I do agree with you, (sort of) - 15/06/2010 04:50:04 AM 288 Views
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