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THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

~ Science, logic, and ethics, from a Whiteheadian Pragmatist perspective (go figure)

THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

Tag Archives: moral laws

Mothers of the Disappeared

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Gary Herstein in Ethics, Fascism, Moral Law

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Ethics, moral laws, Morality

Anyone defending Trump’s concentration camps on the ground that “there aren’t gas chambers”, has only convicted themselves of absolute moral bankruptcy. These same people will still be justifying these concentration camps when there ARE gas chambers.

 

Children Auschwitz

Trump’s recent EO is irrelevant to the above, which was true long before that EO was ever signed. Such persons have shown their true colors. And that EO only nominally stops the further sepAration (note the spelling, which Trump managed to fuck up); it does nothing to address those who have already been herded into the camps, many of whom have long since been entirely lost in the system.

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King

18 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by Gary Herstein in Ethics, Ferguson, Martin Luther King, Moral Law

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Ethics, Martin Luther King, moral laws, objective morality

I missed Dr. King’s actual birthday, because I’ve the organizational skills of an F3 tornado and the discipline of a goldfish. But at least I’ve something for the official Martin Luther King day.King Injustice Anywhere

While the Reverend Doctor King had a Ph.D. from Boston University in Speculative Theology, he was also (of course) a Baptist Minister. I’ll have some thoughts to share about right-wing reactions to this fact below the fold, but now I wish to point out some facts that make some atheists on the left side of the political spectrum a bit uncomfortable. First among these, not only was King a Baptist minister, but the entire American Civil Rights movement was religious to its core. A number of the noisier atheists seem to think that, after watching five minutes of Pat Robertson, they are now experts in theology and the history of religion. This presumption often leads these folks to conflate right-wing ideologues spewing twaddle clothed in a veneer of religious talk with the entire spectrum of human religious experience, and utterly oblivious to theological (to say nothing of philosophical) ideas about “god.” (See for example HERE and HERE.) But more importantly for our purposes, there is oftentimes a systematic failure amongst some secularists and atheists to understand that the American Civil Rights movement was irreducibly religious in character, in organization, and in philosophy. Secularists participated in the movement, but they played no substantive role. So these types of atheists contradict themselves when they simultaneously praise the civil rights movement and yet damn all religion wholesale. Continue reading →

When We do “IT,” It’s ok …

01 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Anonymous, Critical Thinking, Ethics, Objective Morality

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Anonymous, Critical Thinking, Ethics, moral laws

So, I just read how the hacker “group” Anonymous has been publicly outing members of the KKK. This has been variously accompanied by triumphalist celebrations by some people on the political Left. “Yay … justice … woo-hoo …”

I find such behavior singularly disgusting, both the outing and the celebration of it. When homosexuals are outed against their will – sometimes with devastating consequences – this is an intolerable violation of those persons’ privacy and lives. But when “we” do something similar, it is “justice”! When workers and protectors at a Planned Parenthood clinic have their faces, their families, their home addresses plastered all over the internet, this is a violent attack on their persons and safety. But when “we” do it, it is “justice”. Because, “obviously,” “we” are “good” guys, and “they” are “bad” people.Mlk-in-birmingham-jail

How is it that the question of right or wrong is exhausted by answering whether or not we are the one’s doing it? The question is obviously rhetorical, and the answer is, “obviously, it is not.”

There are numerous examples of nominally wrong actions being done for right reasons such that those reasons suffice to (arguably, at least) justify those actions. To kill another person is wrong, but if that killing occurred in the course of self-defense or the protection of innocent people, it will generally be viewed as a justifiable homicide. Violating the law is typically viewed as wrong, but when the law itself is unjust and immoral, then violating that law can itself become a moral duty. This is the leverage I wish to apply to the actions of Anonymous toward the KKK. My instrument of choice here is one of the most tightly reasoned moral arguments of the last century: Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Continue reading →

Ethics, Pedagogy, and Process

20 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, Ethics, Martin Luther King

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Edgar Sheffield Brightman, Ethics, Martin Luther King, moral laws

This entry is a follow-up to The Road To Hell, insofar as it concludes with an outline of Edgar Sheffield Brightman‘s Moral Laws. gavel1-md Brightman, as I noted in that earlier post, is the man that the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King went to Boston University to study under for his (King’s) Ph.D. On this account alone, Brightman is one of the most singularly influential figures in American thought. So it is more than a little disturbing that he is not given a single mention (to say nothing of an article) in either of the main online encyclopedia’s of philosophy. But leaving that travesty aside, I thought it might be useful to embed the outline of Brightman’s argument in a larger discussion about the nature of philosophical ethics. Specifically, how ought one teach it (note that that “ought” is itself an ethical imperative), and what ought one to teach? As usually happens, these questions are not unrelated.

Continue reading →

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