I'm always happy to leave room for ignorant, incoherent, or otherwise incorrect. I don't grok disingenuous though.

As far as dangerous, it seems you are mostly referring to the possibility of cherry picking arguments and ending up with an intellectually shallow position, but I don't think considering things from more than one meta-ethical angle immediately constitutes ignoring counter-arguments. And in this case, both the utilitarian and deontological approaches yield the same result, in my opinion, and that fact should give strength to the conclusion, rather than rendering it dangerous or disingenuous. Ultimately judging the relative merits of a theory of ethics is as much a moral problem as resolving a moral quandary.

Beyond that, what I mean by "I don't care about meta-ethics" is mostly the following: Systematic approaches to normative ethics (which is what I really meant by "meta-ethics", I should have been more precise: deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, etc) are mostly attempts to give a rational basis for making moral judgements, or at least a rational framework, even if the fundamentally important features are axiomatic. Which is all fair enough, but human beings as they actually live make moral judgements without first adopting some theory of ethics and then sticking doggedly to it. My opinion is that while the theories have their uses, they fundamentally fail to achieve their objective. People make wise moral judgements without needing the rational systematization, or adherence to a single theory. On the other hand, rigid adherence to a theory, applied algorithmically, quite often leads to absurd results. I don't think everything has to be reduced to a process of logic.

None of this means that I wouldn't give consideration to an argument, formulated according to a particular framework, that was contrary to my prior judgement. It just means that I don't think it's feasible to resolve moral quandaries by first adopting an ethical theory that must be adhered to for all possible questions.

Where were you when me and chezlaw were trying to make this exact same point on the politics forum?

This is true. But thte question is whether our moral intuitions are sufficient on their own for good moral guidance.

I agree about the insufficiency of the various moral frameworks to fully encapsulate our moral perspective, and I don't believe that we can reach a fully coherent moral framework that is consistent with our intuitions through pure logic (probably because our intuitions are conflicting at some level).

What do you think the "objective" of these moral theories is?

I expect it is unlikely that your moral perspective will change based on argumentation. I'm not saying that this is either good or bad, but more of a reflection of how it looks like you're holding your moral perspective based on the above. I think it's more likely that your moral intuitions will be changed by situations or circumstances that you are in (or observe or think about) where you experience a conflict between your moral intuition and your emotional response (like a "yuck factor" response). If you're flexible with your moral framework, I just don't see how an argument within a particular moral framework can persuade.

Also, I don't really think that the goal of these frameworks is to "resolve" moral quandries. In fact, I think the goal of the frameworks is to highlight the quandries and to understand how some of that basic moral intuition works and to help hone it so that it is "better" in some way.

I was probably ignoring the politics forum when that happened.

Maybe relavant.



Western Europe strongly anti tourture.

It seems to me, that most of the arguments given here are that there are better alternatives to information extraction, along the lines of gaining your detainee's trust.

So...bribe first, offer protection if they narc, then Jack Bauer up if that fails?
Or possibly, illegally detain, make threats, then release and follow? Followed by recapture and Jack Bauer up if they give you no leads?
(No torture seems best to me...fwiw)

Torture just seems intuitively wrong to me, but the only reason I can think of is - bad karma. I just don't want to open myself up to being tortured.


In conclusion:

I think bribery works best for information extraction

Torture works best for deterring opposition. (but also information extraction in a pinch...to a degree)

I was taking the objective to be the ability to claim that all moral judgements can only properly be made within the framework of the theory, and that only judgements in accordance with the given framework are valid, or have ethical force. I'll try to clarify my thought process a little. You said it was "dangerous" to make an argument using separate and incompatible normative theories, i.e utilitarianism along side virtue ethics. I took that to mean that moral arguments could only have force if they were in accordance with a singular adopted theory, and the objective of the theory is to provide the single true and correct framework for making moral judgements. I was attempting to explain why I disagree with that. To whatever extent the "objective" is something else, my disagreement doesn't apply.

I don't think that's true, but perhaps I am not qualified to render judgement on my own weaknesses and biases. In any case, it doesn't seem very relevant to whether or not my use of a utilitarian argument (it doesn't work) alongside a virtue-ethics argument is dangerous, or how it's dangerous.

I am fine with this. I think they are useful, just not dispositive. I probably should have spoke with more nuance than "I don't care about meta-ethics" but I was not intended to imply they had no usefulness, only that I don't care about making sure my moral judgements conform to only a single theory, or consistently using only one theory in all situations, which is the way I was reading your usage of "dangerous", which I'm still not sure I understand.

I looked at the original discussion and could not find the data presented such that race and religion were not handled unevenly. Did anyone else find that? It seems obvious that if you want to make a point about religion or race you should compare them independently. To say white/Catholics versus all no religion is an obvious attempt to manipulate the statistics. At this point I would reject the entire presentation as useless because it raises the question "Why did they make this obvious error in the data presentation". Usually when that occurs it means that they could not find anything dramatic in a more even handed approach.

I'd take your point to some extent, but just barely. There are a lot of White Christians in this country and apparently they think torture is a great idea. It seems like a big problem regardless of whether or not non-white Christians have divergent views. Looking at the breakout by only race, it seems relatively likely that non-white Christians support torture at a lower, but still alarmingly (imo, for Christians) high rate.

I can't really see dismissing the entire question merely because of the statistical presentation.

I guess we have no way of knowing. I would like to have seen race and religion treated separately. Why not have religion independent of race? Doesn't it raise any alarm bells to see whites separate on the religion side of the poll but leave all races on the non-religious side. It does for me. It just smells like an obvious manipulation.

They have given me no way to separate an obvious source of bias from the data. Under those circumstances I will always reject the data whether it agrees with my preconceptions or not.

I am not dismissing the question to be clear. I am dismissing this data since it is not presented in a way that allows a conclusion to be reached.

Part of this is my background. I was the head of R&D for a large technology company and have probably evaluated a hundred data packages supporting proposals for projects, acquisitions or JV's. I had that role in part because I was very good at sifting those packages and teasing out the occasions when data was massaged to support an unjustified conclusion. Whenever I found something like this, it was hiding a statistically insignificant effect. The only difference is that they usually did a much better job at hiding it than this did. I am sincerely surprised that more people did not call "BS" on this data treatment. It would appear that if the presentation supports the predominant prejudice, skepticism is not such a strong force on this forum as people would like to pretend.

From what I know about public opinion polling (read: what I've read from Nate Silver over the last 6 years) my guess would be that they didn't interview enough non-white religious people and they didn't think the results of that particular cross-tab was good enough to present separately.

Which is its own kind of problem but it's a common one with the way polls do sampling.

I'm not sure religion is being the driving force here. athiests tend to be liberals, and liberals tend to oppose torture more strongly. Support or opposition for torture ties in fairly well with other values on the traditional left right political spectrum. Liberals tend to oppose the death penalty, conservatives tend to be tough on crime and hawkish in military conflicts, etc. and if one didn't know the answer, it would be pretty easy to extrapolate these values to guess which side was pro and against torture. Alternatively, there isn't much about the theology or lack there of that implies answers about morality of torture (and certainly proponents of torture aren't generally giving theological justifications). So I'm going to put it in the political camp far more than the religious camp for the explanation here.

I don't think religion is the driving force either, to be clear. I don't think Christians are thinking our use of torture was justified for religious reasons, I think that they should have religious reasons to oppose torture, but have lost track of them. Obviously I also think they are politically misguided, but at least here I'm more concerned with the religious aspect. Whatever the motivation, Christians should not condone torture. That is my view. I support giving some breathing room between religious views and the exercise of politics in a pluralistic secular state, but not quite that much room :P

So in that sense I disagree about there being a lack of Christian teaching with implications concerning the morality of torture.

But they were able to interview enough non-white non-religious people? Shouldn't you just do the comparison on whites in both cases if you are uncomfortable with your data on non-whites?

Actually I went back and looked at the data summary again and I am not buying your explanation at all. They had a category comparing conservative republicans with other political ideologies and they did not do any separation of race. Are you saying that they were not able to interview enough non-white religious people to use the data but they were able to interview enough non-white conservative republicans so they did not have to adjust the data? I think I will give you a chance to take your point back and try again.

I agree that showing white-religious against all non-religious is poor form. Actually I agree with all your methodological criticisms

But the only difference it really makes might be to show that white religious people are not altogether more likely to oppose torture than white non-religious people, or that non-white religious people oppose torture. I probably would have still made a thread though, because the comparison isn't that relevant to what bothers me.

I think this is part of it. I think also that the authors wanted a conclusion that made religion look bad and they gamed the numbers a bit to make it more dramatic. I would bet money that if you mixed the Latinos into the Catholic numbers for example, the difference from non-religious would lose all significance. Also, there are a lot of Black southern Christians that would probably change the Christian numbers a great deal.

Basically very bad reporting.

Just to be clear, I am opposed to torture, capital punishment etc. I do think that terrorism presents a real problem and that military action by independent groups without government sanction does create a problem that I am not sure how to handle. In the past, such non-sanctioned combat activity was grounds for summary execution. Nowadays I do not know how to handle a combatant under arms who is not responsible to any governmental control. To whom do you release them when hostilities end?

Perhaps Jack Bauer routinely torturing people in the popular television show 24 has had some effect on the U.S. collective conscious. Also Leam Neeson tortured at least one person in the popular Taken film. In nearly if not all instances, it worked out in the script.

Us? Nothing wrong with me. I'm still the perfect person I've always been.

I don't know how you can be surprised that the same people who think eternal torture is justified also believe temporary torture can be justified.

This sounds like people develop their religious and political ideology independently from one another.

You got me there

this entire argument about torture is silly without defining the torture.

making some one listen to miley cyrus music nonstop could be torture.

threatining someones family could be also. so what torture is wrong. is making someone uncomfy considered torture? if inflicting severe physical pain is wat you are all saying, then im on board.

I think this particular issue is fairly independent, but certainly don't think this is true generally. For instance, abortion is a political issue very tied to religious views. Even here there is a connection, it is just much more indirect than the direct way in which the religious viewpoint affects the political one on abortion. Let me elaborate:

People tend to form world views where certain values and ideas dominate. Liberals and conservatives are identified by effectively prioritizing different sets of such values and ideas. So it is often interesting where you have seemingly very different types of issues that totally segregate along traditional lines. You may be a member of camp A because of religious reasons, and thus prioritize certain values and ideas, and then apply them to issue X. But this is a more indirect association between religion and issue X than "I believe my view on issue X because of my religious views".

So it is here. I don't think there are many who think "my religion tells me torture is correct", not in the way they do for gay marriage or abortion. However, for a range of reasons, religious conservatives in the U.S. have adopted a set of tough of crime, hawkish, nationalistic views which when applied to torture make it okay where atheist liberals emphasize views about human rights and suffering of individuals and so forth which informs their views on torture as well.

That said, your point about eternal torture is pretty persuasive for a more direct connection

It's true that a line needs to be drawn somewhere. Thusfar I've been talking about inflicting severe pain.

But, detaining someone and making them listen to Miley Cyrus for a week long while locked in a room would qualify as a mental kind of torture, and would also be wrong imo.

Spanking your kid seems ok however...