Atheism and Ethics

[Silver]

Precisely why I'm an anti-capitalist.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Fair to whom? Someone, somewhere, is definitely going to be treated poorly as a result of some group or another getting what they want. Doesn't seem fair to me.

Zero-sum thinking seems to be your superpower.

[The Grand Nudger]

The exception proves the rule.

There are no rules to law except those we make up as we go.  It's not a force of nature or even a consistent logical system. They are the very definition of relativistic value claims.

I think we're looking at this from different starting points. Why do you think law requires (or should have) a moral justification..and if it does or should, what kind of moral justification do you think suffices for a law to be considered "valid" in whatever schema you have in mind? Do you have examples of laws which satisfy and laws which don't..and what should we do with the chunk that don't (assuming any are in the other set at all).

[Angrboda]

I'm going to take a break from debating. But in a nutshell, governments are founded on the principal that they have the right to rule, make laws, and enforce them. That's a moral claim, and without it being accepted by the masses, you wouldn't have acceptance of it by the masses. Law flows inexorably from that. This or that person may say that X doesn't stem from moral claims, but when examined, you will always find the moral claims, and the person arguing the exception is making a claim to different morals, not the absence of them. You are wrong in thinking that morals aren't the justification for any law; you're simply looking at specific examples incorrectly.

ETA: There are no laws or enforcement without taxes; what legal policies to apportion that revenue to creating and enforcing is based upon moral claims. You may feel that things are distributed unfairly, which would be the case if there were no moral mandate for any particular example, but that's a claim you have asserted but not supported. Usually that simply devolves into you disagreeing with the judgement of lawmakers, not evidence that the lawmakers didn't have moral intentions in creating the law.

PS. Don't be stupid. There is an unlimited number of examples. Basically any criminal law has a moral justification. You're conflating laws being identical with morals with laws being justified by morals.

[Angrboda]

This debate is a lot like the recent nullification of the Chevron doctrine. You disagree with how government has administered their mandate, not that they didn't have a mandate.

[Lucian]

I'm going to take a break from debating.  But in a nutshell, governments are founded on the principal that they have the right to rule, make laws, and enforce them.  That's a moral claim, and without it being accepted by the masses, you wouldn't have acceptance of it by the masses.  Law flows inexorably from that.  This or that person may say that X doesn't stem from moral claims, but when examined, you will always find the moral claims, and the person arguing the exception is making a claim to different morals, not the absence of them.  You are wrong in thinking that morals aren't the justification for any law; you're simply looking at specific examples incorrectly.

ETA: There are no laws or enforcement without taxes; what legal policies to apportion that revenue to creating and enforcing is based upon moral claims.  You may feel that things are distributed unfairly, which would be the case if there were no moral mandate for any particular example, but that's a claim you have asserted but not supported.  Usually that simply devolves into you disagreeing with the judgement of lawmakers, not evidence that the lawmakers didn't have moral intentions in creating the law.

PS.  Don't be stupid.  There is an unlimited number of examples.  Basically any criminal law has a moral justification.  You're conflating laws being identical with morals with laws being justified by morals.

I know you are taking a break from debating, but a question that I am just interested in your answer, not going to debate it
Do you think it would be possible for a society to function if all laws were thought to be mere social contracts where the government is given power to enforce them to make the country function well. This would be as opposed to believing the laws are based on objective morality? Firmly in the realm of thought experiment as I don’t think it could happen that the majority of people came to that decision. Not even sure there is a sensible answer to the question, but interested anyway

[Angrboda]

That's a novel question. I don't have an immediate answer. We 'obey' a lot of things that we recognize as mere social constructs, to a degree. Cultural norms and taboos for example.

[The Grand Nudger]

This debate is a lot like the recent nullification of the Chevron doctrine.  You disagree with how government has administered their mandate, not that they didn't have a mandate.

I question whether a government has a moral mandate...and whether a government requires one in any sense.  That short barrage of questions and examples wasn't meant to debate but to clarify what you mean when you say that governments are founded on the principal that they have the right to rule, make laws, and enforce them.  Whether that's meant to be taken as a descriptive claim, a normative claim, or an existential claim.  As in; all legal systems are or have been, all legal systems ought to be, or all legal systems must be?

It's a given that you and I disagree on moral topics.  I'm trying to explain how I..as a moral realist, can be of the opinion that legal claims need not be premised on moral claims, logically or existentially... and might not ought to be in the first place, normatively.   I think we're both in complete agreement as to whether or not they are or have been. Again as a moral realist, I think that the shoddy nature of those moral claims goes a long way to explaining poor legal outcomes.

IDK, this might help. When I say I have an unalienable right to something I'm not saying I get a thing because it would be bad of you to deprive me of it..or even that it would be impossible for you to deprive me of it. I'm suggesting that you would have to fucking kill me to take it. Can you identify the moral content in such a declaration? FWIW, I actually do assert that I have such a right to do bad shit, and generally fuck up. I don't think that governments should be morality police, or that they should punish failure in and of itself. My government obviously and self evidently disagrees and they'd win that argument in court every day, lol.

[Angrboda]

I don't agree with your theory of rights. Pro-lifers grant fetuses the right to live. Noone expects the fetus to burst forth from the mother's belly to defend its right like an alien chestburster.

[Angrboda]

Oh, and history is littered with failed governments who lost their mandate to rule.