Philosophy students: Moral judgment is worse than murder.

[Todeswind]

What is the context of that particular picture?

[Rogue 9]

For one, it misses that central message of people the author terms relativists. Their message is not "All cultures are equal, so what they do is just as good as what we do!" it's a more nuanced message which is "All cultures and societies are based on ideas that are generated through subjective evaluations, and before we start passing moral/ethical judgments on other people we should be aware of our own biases and try to correct for them."

The second one may be what is meant, but the first is evidently what the students understood.

To put it in terms of the OP article itself, he phrases it as:

One outcome has been the popular convention that all cultures are of equal value. If Afghan men see their treatment of women as just, then it must be so.

The proper answer is not that the students see the way the woman was treated as inherently just, it's that they (and the people he derisively terms 'relativists') are trying to come to terms with a conception of "justice" that isn't just as arbitrarily flawed as the one used by people who fucking mutilated her and (hopefully) understand that having a fucking kneejerk reaction that "this is bad and must be stopped" is probably a bad thing.

One conception of it says that it is just to cut off a woman's nose and ears and leave her on a mountain to die of exposure. The other says that this is injust. I think we can draw a value judgment here without a lot of trouble.

And, frankly, when it comes to ethics I'm much more... comfortable with a room full of people that are hesitant to pass judgment on something without studiously questioning a proposition from all sides than I am with a room full of people who make kneejerk moral judgments without any hint of anxiety or self-reflection. Especially when, after re-reading the article again, it becomes clear that the teacher offered the picture without any fucking context for them to make a judgment.

How much context do you need? Name one solitary situation in which doing that to a person is a moral course of action.

Second, the students are there to fucking LEARN and question. When he comes in and shows a picture of a mutilated woman and asks how they feel they act confused and concerned. Even if they do care they're not sure how to express their feelings.The line 'I don’t feel anything at all; I see lots of this kind of stuff .' is fucking exactly perfect because that's the entire point of a class on ethics. The clothes on most of their backs (including the teacher's, I bet) were crafted in third-world sweat shops, a grand majority of them almost certainly eat animal products (again including the teacher), and they live within a system which uses the world's resources at a voracious rate. The teacher and students do not object to these things, but they are expected to react to a picture of a fucking mutilated woman? That's why you take an ethics class. To see different ways of evaluating the world around you and to try and stumble towards the best one.

Of course they're there to learn, but that's the point; determining the ethics of benefiting secondhand from low-wage labor is a thornier problem than determining the ethics of a deliberately cruel attempt at murder.

Third, I have a fucking problem with kneejerk reactions like the one the author calls for. This is the sort of shit that justifies imperialism, leads to 'humanitarian interventions' like the United States' conquest of Cuba and the Philippines (or the reservation systems across the world), and lead to the first world ignoring third world peoples and cultures because they don't know how to see the world right. Fuck that shit and fuck the high horse that O'Leary rode in on.

I don't disagree, but there's quite a large leap from being able to conclude that doing this is wrong and concluding that the proper course of action is to go conquer half the world.

Yes, of course I am. By the time they're seventeen years old, they should realize that cutting off a person's nose and ears and leaving her on a mountainside to die is immoral behavior. This is very basic stuff, which, incidentally, is explicitly why it was chosen for the first problem presented in the unit.

[img]http://www.chooseveg.com/SmallPhotos/Pi ... 28.jpg[img]

This is a picture of a piglet being castrated without anesthetic.

How does it make you feel, Rogue?

Pigs are food. If you think I'm going to get as worked up about it as I would over a sapient being, you're sadly mistaken. I've long held that if you're going to eat it, you should not only realize and accept that it has to die for you to do so, but you should be willing to do the dirty work yourself. I am. That said, the particular act strikes me as needlessly cruel to the animal.

Incidentally, I've noted that shock photos of animal slaughter isn't a very effective way of making people go vegetarian and stay there. It worked on one of my cousins for about a year and a half before she could no longer resist the Thanksgiving turkey.

[Straha]

Pigs are food. If you think I'm going to get as worked up about it as I would over a sapient being, you're sadly mistaken. I've long held that if you're going to eat it, you should not only realize and accept that it has to die for you to do so, but you should be willing to do the dirty work yourself. I am. That said, the particular act strikes me as needlessly cruel to the animal.

Bam! Done. Thread over.

Either:

A. You're a moral relativist who holds an opinion contrary to those of another culture regarding what constitutes ethical treatment of other sentient creatures and belong in the teacher's classroom (or the Afghan highlands) to learn how relativism is fucked up.

or

B. You've developed this opinion after examining different ethical systems and deciding that giving a shit about animals who look different than you is pointless. In which case you're in no fucking position to look down on the High School students because they're doing the exact same shit you once did.

Either way get off your high fucking horse because you're in no position to criticize those kids for being just like you.

[Rogue 9]

There's a severe qualitative difference between a pig and a woman, so you can just go fuck yourself.

[Straha]

There's a severe qualitative difference between a pig and a woman, so you can just go fuck yourself.

Whoooosh.

You hear that? That's the sound of you missing the point of the last post completely and not being the least bit self-aware. Shall we try this again, Rogue? Or is basic reading comprehension really beyond you?

[Rogue 9]

There's a severe qualitative difference between a pig and a woman, so you can just go fuck yourself.

Whoooosh.

You hear that? That's the sound of you missing the point of the last post completely and not being the least bit self-aware. Shall we try this again, Rogue? Or is basic reading comprehension really beyond you?

You can try whatever you want. Doing that to a person is an absolute moral wrong, and anyone who can't recognize that is fundamentally broken. I will not be moved from that position, because it is self-evidently right. If you care to defend her mutilation, you just go right ahead, because successfully doing that is the only way to oppose my position, as that's all I'm arguing.

Or, of course, you can continue with irrelevant tangents followed by declaring victory. In fact, that's what I expect. It makes little difference to me either way.

[Simon_Jester]

I will say that without a transcript of how the teacher presented this material, there are a lot of things we don't know.

If he presents a picture "without comment," will students know what to think about it? Will they just consider it an attempt at shock value, or will they deduce that this girl's nose was cut off out of spite and cruelty and staggering, jaw-dropping misogyny?

If he messes up the explanation of what happened to the girl, or phrases his questions in a way that makes it unclear what kinds of answers he expects, that will affect what the students say- there are plenty of teachers who do their jobs badly almost entirely because they do not truly communicate with their students, preventing a meeting of the minds and a transfer of learning.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'd also wonder about the anecdotal quality of the story, as well as wondering if it was ever repeated under other circumstances (or to toher classes) and if so how many times and under what conditions. This is a topic that is guaranteed to be 'emotionally charged' (and reading the linked article in the OP part of me suspects that that angle is being intentionally pressed - at least in the link) and that cna skew things.

[Straha]

You can try whatever you want. Doing that to a person is an absolute moral wrong, and anyone who can't recognize that is fundamentally broken. I will not be moved from that position, because it is self-evidently right. If you care to defend her mutilation, you just go right ahead, because successfully doing that is the only way to oppose my position, as that's all I'm arguing.

My word... not only are you terrible at reading but you're astoundingly even more incompetent at writing! Whatever primate lab you inhabit must be very happy to have you as a specimen.

Now let me break this down for you so that even you, of all people, can understand what's going on. Your original post was about how High School students on the first day of an ethics class were either immoral people for not immediately decrying a picture they saw without comment as a gross moral wrong or were cultural relativists (and thus immoral.) What you missed was that they were learning about ethics and developing the ethical axioms necessary to come to those conclusions. In other words, they were doing what was absolutely necessary for them to be able to condemn the treatment of the woman.

Moreover your own ethical guidelines are both resultant to the same style of reflection that you're condemning these students for trying to undertake AND don't condemn actions that quite a few other people look at as inherently heinous, which means that either way you're fucking guilty of one of the two things that you were trying to condemn the students (and/or the Afghan highlanders) of.

As an aside, a quick note on the on something being "self-evident". Something is self-evidently right if it's mere existence proves something beyond a doubt. Saying you're "self-evidently right" that it's "an absolute moral wrong" to mutilate a woman isn't exactly accurate because the fact that a photo exists of a mutilated woman makes it self-evident that people disagree with you.

Now you end this latest post of yours by going all in on your THIRD stance of the thread, and say that all you're arguing is that it's wrong to mutilate women. However much everyone in this thread might agree with the idea that the treatment of Bibi Aisha was wrong, myself included, you're dead wrong in saying that's all you're arguing. What you've been arguing is that people should make kneejerk fucking reactions to ugly pictures and make blanket moral condemnations without any sort of questioning or examination. So instead of trying to set yourself up as a white knight defending the rights of the repressed why don't you actually defend your intellectual position, and its consequences.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Can a passing moderator put a NSFW tag on this thread, or at least a warning before the picture of the pig surgery? Thanks.

Anyway, it sounds like this teacher is really pretty awful, and set this entire situation up for the express purpose of ranting about perceived moral deficiencies in today's youth. There is no way a rational observer can look at this and actually think it is somehow representative of wider ethical judgments in our culture. Not only is it entirely anecdotal, but it is dripping with bias.

EDIT: Honestly, I question whether or not the student's responses that he reports aren't either fabricated or extremely exaggerated. This reeks of bullshit.

[Thanas]

Can a passing moderator put a NSFW tag on this thread, or at least a warning before the picture of the pig surgery? Thanks.

Done.

[General Mung Beans]

Third, I have a fucking problem with kneejerk reactions like the one the author calls for. This is the sort of shit that justifies imperialism, leads to 'humanitarian interventions' like the United States' conquest of Cuba and the Philippines (or the reservation systems across the world), and lead to the first world ignoring third world peoples and cultures because they don't know how to see the world right. Fuck that shit and fuck the high horse that O'Leary rode in on.

Of course if one should understand "third world" cultures and many of their practices we do not like we should also understand our ancestors' differences in morality from our own including for example their imperialism. (And don't forget imperialism did end practices like the Thugees and Sutte in India).

[Straha]

Of course if one should understand "third world" cultures and many of their practices we do not like we should also understand our ancestors' differences in morality from our own including for example their imperialism.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say?

Are you just saying we should have a historical understanding of the roots of our cultural practices? Or is there something more here that you're not getting across?

[General Mung Beans]

Of course if one should understand "third world" cultures and many of their practices we do not like we should also understand our ancestors' differences in morality from our own including for example their imperialism.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say?

Are you just saying we should have a historical understanding of the roots of our cultural practices? Or is there something more here that you're not getting across?

No I'm saying if we should not rush to judgement on say Afghans, we should not do so on people in the past in the West for their imperialism or colonialism.

[Straha]

No I'm saying if we should not rush to judgement on say Afghans, we should not do so on people in the past in the West for their imperialism or colonialism.

I may have missed the memo here but I don't think anyone in this thread is saying we shouldn't attempt to formulate ethical decisions/judgments, just that those decisions shouldn't be snap judgments and should instead be made after careful reflection.

[General Mung Beans]

No I'm saying if we should not rush to judgement on say Afghans, we should not do so on people in the past in the West for their imperialism or colonialism.

I may have missed the memo here but I don't think anyone in this thread is saying we shouldn't attempt to formulate ethical decisions/judgments, just that those decisions shouldn't be snap judgments and should instead be made after careful reflection.

I know. Hence why I said "rush to judgement".

[madd0ct0r]

ok, but nobody is sayng we should rush to judgment on colonialism either. are you sure your're in the right thread?