If Colombians dare to slake the thirst for drugs of Americans, murder Venezuelans on the high seas. The Venezuelans ARE right next door, after all, and THEY'VE got the OIL!
At the macro level, some degree of collective guilt is acceptable. For example, in a battle, I do not have a moral obligation to ensure that an individual “enemy” soldier personally approves of his masters before I can kill him
What is wrong is to excuse my excesses while insisting that my foe must be held accountable for the same
That depends. What if your excesses are the kind of excesses that occur when the American, British, Canadian, French, Swiss, or Danish armies fight, and your enemy's excesses are the kind that occur when Hamas, or the unlamented Waffen SS, fights?
Or of course, since we are philosophers and want to be complete, vice-versa?
Most of this discourse is actually irrelevant. What matters is:
Do your actions align with your goals and values?
Often we turn it into a moral conversation to avoid the practical implications. For example:
“We burned their town to punish them for burning our town”
Is burning towns in accord with our values? No
Does it dissuade the enemy from burning our towns? Given that them burning our town incited us to burn theirs, likely no
So why do it? Because we were angry and wanted to lash out. Everything else is rationalisation.
When it comes to achieving your goals, you must be honest about how your enemy will react. It doesn’t matter how morally justified you feel - what matters is if your actions progress your goals and values. And if they don’t, maybe you are lying - even to yourself - about what matters.
Whether your actions align with your goals is simply tactics, not ethics. Your goals may be good or evil.
Burning towns in pursuit of a larger good--as in the case of Hiroshima--absolutely does accord with our values, three of which were a swift victory, saving American lives, and minimizing the collateral damage to the Japanese.
Burning towns just to kill all the Jews does not align with our values: not yet, though Qatari money is working on that.
You think everything you don't understand, or don't agree with, is rationalization? That doesn't prove anything about the world; it just shows your understanding is stunted.
“Our atrocity was justified; their atrocity was evil.”
Is there a scenario where what they are doing leads to what we could consider a good outcome? No? So the issue isn’t they are bad; the issue is that we want to stop the activity and change the outcomes. Labelling them “bad” is just a crutch to legitimise actions that we find distasteful but want to do anyway.
I go back to Socrates and Pericles. We can go around the loop on “us good, then bad” until the cows come home. But us feeling morally justified to burn their town and morally outraged when they burn ours isn’t stopping them burning our towns!
So our moral indignation is inciting us to perform actions that lead to them doing bad stuff to us. And no-one is going to step in and give them a penalty and unburn our towns just because we feel that we have the moral high ground.
The only valuable discussion is “what is the cost we are willing and able to pay to stop it, and will it be effective?” Do we surrender? Do we wipe them from the earth? Do we agree to lay aside existing offences and sign a peace agreement? Do we think they will keep it? Can we? Can we enforce it?
Deciding they are “evil” might make certain actions more palatable. But it’s more valuable to understand how far we can trust them and how far they trust us. Maybe they ARE completely implacable? But before we commit to “them or us”, we might want to ensure that “us” has a genuine win scenario. We might believe in the righteousness of our cause, but if they also believe in theirs then it somewhat cancels out.
It’s easy to play them and us. It’s harder but more profitable to figure the cost you are willing to pay to achieve the outcome you are willing to accept. While remembering that in any conflict the other guy gets to vote too, and he’s always in favour of you paying more.
I am very disappointed in Bryan, they are not striking them because of collective guilt they are striking because that is the way the world was and a nation that showed weakness would have been quickly taken advantage of by its neighbor. Nor today do I see "collective guilt" used this way. From my favorite philosopher this is a poor argument.
Let us Greeks just burn ourselves alive! Then the Persians wouldn't have any Greeks to burn and we wouldn't commit evil acts against innocent Persians!
It's a category error. The contradiction is resolved by understanding moral reasoning as social technology for ingroup conflict resolution, trust and coordination. You can extend the scope of the reasoning if and when you're sitting at the negotiating table with the Persian. That's a stage of an inter-group conflict where emphasizing "common ground" is reasonable. Emphasizing common ground as an a priori principle and letting it restrict your permissible actions (beyond fear of retaliation, escalation, risk or doubts about efficacy), when you're in a bloody conflict with a group is being a suicidal coop-bot. Terrible game theory.
Across history, humanity has lived mostly under moral relativism, the law of power and survival, with only brief, fragile eruptions of moral law grounded in universal conscience.
Moral relativism is a natural, adaptive trait born of fear and necessity, while moral law is a divine or transcendent impulse that demands restraint, compassion, and justice even at great cost.
Civilizations that abandon moral law may survive in body but die in spirit; those that uphold it may suffer and fall, yet preserve the only thing that makes humanity worth saving.
Good dialogue. It relates to a principle featured in Scott Alexander's Consequentialism FAQ (https://web.archive.org/web/20161115073538/http://raikoth.net/consequentialism.html) - morality must live in the world. If someone's judgement of a multi-decade conflict begins and ends with who started it, they're inflicting philosophical disempowerment on most or all of the living people involved, rendering their worldviews, values, interests and moral dilemmas irrelevant.
Those not willing to make war (with all that entails) to preserve civilization must submit to barbarism.
And yes, barbarians (especially if able to engage a PR firm within civilization) will claim to be the civilized ones. However, it is not usually difficult to tell the difference, unless one is willfully trying to be blind.
Do all Persians have a responsibility to prevent attacks on the Greeks, just as Socrates is displaying about Greek behavior? If so, then there is a collective guilt — when some (guilty) Persians attack, the Persians who did not think the attack was warranted are nevertheless wrapped up in it because they lost the battle amongst Persians to prevent the attack.
Yeah, no. Plato’ s Republic differentiates between war amongst Greeks (stasis) and war against barbarians (polemus). In the former, he saw war as a disruption of nature requiring a guardian class to impose rules of conduct and methods to settle disputes. Against barbarians, war is the natural state of affairs, with victory through any means was just.
This is why, across two millennia, Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue still hits home. Regarding Persians and Macedonians, the former were barberoi, the latter Greek. Different rules apply.
More relevant than who started the conflict is whether one or both sides is willing to make a binding agreement to stop fighting the other and return any property to the side it belonged to before the war. If your side is not willing to make such an agreement you’re probably the bad guys.
Both Greeks and Persians are willing to abide by a written agreement that states "Everyone stops fighting and [my faction] hen forth rules over [the opposing faction]."
Nation states are a thing and respond to incentives. Attacking Macedonia won’t disincentivize Persia. Attacking any of Persia does disincentivize Persia. Therefore, nation states will behave accordingly.
"When the Persians attack, you are careful not to respond by attacking the Macedonians."
I wish people did even this standard, but actually people respond by attacking blatantly differently groups regularly.
If Colombians dare to slake the thirst for drugs of Americans, murder Venezuelans on the high seas. The Venezuelans ARE right next door, after all, and THEY'VE got the OIL!
Not nearly as satisfying as murdering the people who rationalize for them on the Internet.
Nobody hates Venezuela because of the oil. It's la socialisma, stupid.
Propagandist blocked.
At the macro level, some degree of collective guilt is acceptable. For example, in a battle, I do not have a moral obligation to ensure that an individual “enemy” soldier personally approves of his masters before I can kill him
What is wrong is to excuse my excesses while insisting that my foe must be held accountable for the same
That depends. What if your excesses are the kind of excesses that occur when the American, British, Canadian, French, Swiss, or Danish armies fight, and your enemy's excesses are the kind that occur when Hamas, or the unlamented Waffen SS, fights?
Or of course, since we are philosophers and want to be complete, vice-versa?
Most of this discourse is actually irrelevant. What matters is:
Do your actions align with your goals and values?
Often we turn it into a moral conversation to avoid the practical implications. For example:
“We burned their town to punish them for burning our town”
Is burning towns in accord with our values? No
Does it dissuade the enemy from burning our towns? Given that them burning our town incited us to burn theirs, likely no
So why do it? Because we were angry and wanted to lash out. Everything else is rationalisation.
When it comes to achieving your goals, you must be honest about how your enemy will react. It doesn’t matter how morally justified you feel - what matters is if your actions progress your goals and values. And if they don’t, maybe you are lying - even to yourself - about what matters.
Irrelevant to what, pray?
Whether your actions align with your goals is simply tactics, not ethics. Your goals may be good or evil.
Burning towns in pursuit of a larger good--as in the case of Hiroshima--absolutely does accord with our values, three of which were a swift victory, saving American lives, and minimizing the collateral damage to the Japanese.
Burning towns just to kill all the Jews does not align with our values: not yet, though Qatari money is working on that.
You think everything you don't understand, or don't agree with, is rationalization? That doesn't prove anything about the world; it just shows your understanding is stunted.
Fool muted.
And yet you prove my point.
“Our atrocity was justified; their atrocity was evil.”
Is there a scenario where what they are doing leads to what we could consider a good outcome? No? So the issue isn’t they are bad; the issue is that we want to stop the activity and change the outcomes. Labelling them “bad” is just a crutch to legitimise actions that we find distasteful but want to do anyway.
I go back to Socrates and Pericles. We can go around the loop on “us good, then bad” until the cows come home. But us feeling morally justified to burn their town and morally outraged when they burn ours isn’t stopping them burning our towns!
So our moral indignation is inciting us to perform actions that lead to them doing bad stuff to us. And no-one is going to step in and give them a penalty and unburn our towns just because we feel that we have the moral high ground.
The only valuable discussion is “what is the cost we are willing and able to pay to stop it, and will it be effective?” Do we surrender? Do we wipe them from the earth? Do we agree to lay aside existing offences and sign a peace agreement? Do we think they will keep it? Can we? Can we enforce it?
Deciding they are “evil” might make certain actions more palatable. But it’s more valuable to understand how far we can trust them and how far they trust us. Maybe they ARE completely implacable? But before we commit to “them or us”, we might want to ensure that “us” has a genuine win scenario. We might believe in the righteousness of our cause, but if they also believe in theirs then it somewhat cancels out.
It’s easy to play them and us. It’s harder but more profitable to figure the cost you are willing to pay to achieve the outcome you are willing to accept. While remembering that in any conflict the other guy gets to vote too, and he’s always in favour of you paying more.
I am very disappointed in Bryan, they are not striking them because of collective guilt they are striking because that is the way the world was and a nation that showed weakness would have been quickly taken advantage of by its neighbor. Nor today do I see "collective guilt" used this way. From my favorite philosopher this is a poor argument.
Let us Greeks just burn ourselves alive! Then the Persians wouldn't have any Greeks to burn and we wouldn't commit evil acts against innocent Persians!
ONLY IF the Persians do likewise! Got a match?
It's a category error. The contradiction is resolved by understanding moral reasoning as social technology for ingroup conflict resolution, trust and coordination. You can extend the scope of the reasoning if and when you're sitting at the negotiating table with the Persian. That's a stage of an inter-group conflict where emphasizing "common ground" is reasonable. Emphasizing common ground as an a priori principle and letting it restrict your permissible actions (beyond fear of retaliation, escalation, risk or doubts about efficacy), when you're in a bloody conflict with a group is being a suicidal coop-bot. Terrible game theory.
Across history, humanity has lived mostly under moral relativism, the law of power and survival, with only brief, fragile eruptions of moral law grounded in universal conscience.
Moral relativism is a natural, adaptive trait born of fear and necessity, while moral law is a divine or transcendent impulse that demands restraint, compassion, and justice even at great cost.
Civilizations that abandon moral law may survive in body but die in spirit; those that uphold it may suffer and fall, yet preserve the only thing that makes humanity worth saving.
Good dialogue. It relates to a principle featured in Scott Alexander's Consequentialism FAQ (https://web.archive.org/web/20161115073538/http://raikoth.net/consequentialism.html) - morality must live in the world. If someone's judgement of a multi-decade conflict begins and ends with who started it, they're inflicting philosophical disempowerment on most or all of the living people involved, rendering their worldviews, values, interests and moral dilemmas irrelevant.
As if we could solve wars by reasoning about it. If only.
Those not willing to make war (with all that entails) to preserve civilization must submit to barbarism.
And yes, barbarians (especially if able to engage a PR firm within civilization) will claim to be the civilized ones. However, it is not usually difficult to tell the difference, unless one is willfully trying to be blind.
Do all Persians have a responsibility to prevent attacks on the Greeks, just as Socrates is displaying about Greek behavior? If so, then there is a collective guilt — when some (guilty) Persians attack, the Persians who did not think the attack was warranted are nevertheless wrapped up in it because they lost the battle amongst Persians to prevent the attack.
Yeah, no. Plato’ s Republic differentiates between war amongst Greeks (stasis) and war against barbarians (polemus). In the former, he saw war as a disruption of nature requiring a guardian class to impose rules of conduct and methods to settle disputes. Against barbarians, war is the natural state of affairs, with victory through any means was just.
This is why, across two millennia, Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue still hits home. Regarding Persians and Macedonians, the former were barberoi, the latter Greek. Different rules apply.
Is this a real Socratic dialogue, or a modern invention?
It's an pseudonymous imitation by medieval Islamic sources.
So halfway between. Got it.
Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.
More relevant than who started the conflict is whether one or both sides is willing to make a binding agreement to stop fighting the other and return any property to the side it belonged to before the war. If your side is not willing to make such an agreement you’re probably the bad guys.
What, pray, is a binding agreement between to sovereign powers? What binds either one? (Spoiler: nothing much.)
Both Greeks and Persians are willing to abide by a written agreement that states "Everyone stops fighting and [my faction] hen forth rules over [the opposing faction]."
Nation states are a thing and respond to incentives. Attacking Macedonia won’t disincentivize Persia. Attacking any of Persia does disincentivize Persia. Therefore, nation states will behave accordingly.
That is true. But.
Nation states don't respond to incentives as individuals do. That is simplistic.
Good point.
Well done!