WL Crapping Philosophy...

LOL... Was crapping out my 2nd "Plus One" Ethics & Public Policy response paper.

My Prof does not believe that morality is absolutely relative, unlike me. But I think I crapped out a convincing argument that morality is relative.

It goes something like this:

First, we begin by analyzing the Ethics of Torture in times of War. One side of the argument is that we can use Torture to save lives (of our soldiers in the war), thus it is ethically justifiable for the "Greater Good". Indeed, this is one of the justifications throughout history (I think), and in context to my readings the early 20th Century American government.

Fast forward to today, this line of reasoning is not so solid, cause there has been studies that show a low correlation between torture and obtaining accurate & useful information from that process. Many people believe today that ultimately torture does unnecessary harm for minimal good, and so it is unwarranted.

Next, WL argues that what if the ethical decision-makes back then (early 20th century) did not have access to this information. WL then furthers his argument that what if the academic field to support such a study did not exist?

One conception of morality is that you are responsible for not only the direct consequences of your actions, but the reasonably foreseeable/indirect consequences as well. For e.g. if you run a train service in Germany, and during WW2 you transport Jewish passengers from Pt A to Pt B, without transporting them back, you are ethically wrong in doing so, cause you should we be aware and can infer that you are most likely transporting the Jews to their extermination campsites.

Ok, back to the issue at hand.

If you argue that it is the American government duty to find out whether torture really does provide the information effectively, then you are saying that morality is "Information-Specific". Meaning that it is morally OK to torture your enemies, until you find out from some studies that it does more harm than good which then makes it not morally OK.

If you argue that the American government back then could not possibly have known about the ineffectiveness of torture, then you are saying that morality is "Time-Specific". This means that it is morally OK to torture your enemies back then but not morally OK today.

Henceforth, morality is relative. Period. Nice bullshit eh???

I suppose if I flop as a Scientist, I can consider being a Philosopher. The Philosophy book that I am reading for my course now is terrible. The writer (a Philo Full Prof) writes bullshit... his essays are convoluted like fuck... no thesis... no topic sentence... always roundabout arguments... totally nonsensical at times.

Sloppy Writing = Philosophy.