Slavery and Genocide

[infoterror]

Hypothetically, what if one group of people were so renowned for terrible behavior or group stupidity that there was no use for them in a forward-moving future society? It would make sense to at the very least oppress them, possibly good sense to enslave them, and ultimately, really clear logical sense to exterminate them.

I'm thinking of a group like the English or Americans here.

We ban methods where we cannot think. Does method matter, if we have a clear goal? Ah, our society has no clear goal... now it is crystal clear: we are selfish, so utilitarian.

Exterminate all the brutes.

 

[JoeVice]

you get right on that, infoterror. i'll join your army if you provide me with free drugs.

 

[MetalBooger]

and some cake, and strippers, and a good monarchy, and tradtional backward thinking regime.

 

[derbeder]

People are not some tools that are to be used for (or to be disposed of when) engineering some "forward-moving future society" that is supposedly good for a group that thinks of themselves as forming an elite. It is never right to oppress or exterminate people for such a cause. Indeed, people who put forward such claims inevitably sound more "brutish" than anyone they accuse of being so.

 

[infoterror]

People are not some tools that are to be used for (or to be disposed of when) engineering some "forward-moving future society" that is supposedly good for a group that thinks of themselves as forming an elite. It is never right to oppress or exterminate people for such a cause. Indeed, people who put forward such claims inevitably sound more "brutish" than anyone they accuse of being so.

Are we in church? You're talking about "right" and "wrong" like good/evil, with no evidence behind them. Please talk like a philosopher, or find yourself another forum and don't trivialize conversation that others are having.

 

[derbeder]

Hypothetically, what if one group of people were so renowned for terrible behavior or group stupidity that there was no use for them in a forward-moving future society? It would make sense to at the very least oppress them, possibly good sense to enslave them, and ultimately, really clear logical sense to exterminate them.

The key idea in the last sentence is whether it "makes sense" to do some particular thing (in this case to oppress other people etc.). What is this notion of making sense that you are alluding to? A prima facie natural reading of the sentence goes as follows: under the conditions described it would be permissible for us to oppress, enslave and ultimately exterminate others (I here use "it is permissible to P" as a shorthand for "it is not the case that one should not P"). As I understand it, this means it would not be wrong for us to do these things. Here, I am not making any assumptions about what the rightness or wrongness of an act consists in, and from what these originate. Specifically I am not talking about good or evil as characterized by any religion. The religious notions of good and evil are not the same as ordinary moral notions of right and wrong. People evaluate acts in moral terms ("He shouldn't have let others tak e advantage of him, he should have retaliated" or "I should defend my race over against others" - the latter is something I believe you accept), and unless the whole practice of evaluating acts in these terms is mistaken, there will be some facts about what actions one should or should not undertake. The way you state things in the post, it appears that you are asking whether or not under certain conditions we should oppress, enslave or exterminate other people. Unless in the context of the sentence I've been talking about, you mean something very different by "making sense", you are also using morally evaluative notions. Indeed, your talk of "would it better if we had a benevolent fascism?" makes it pretty clear that you are not rejecting the application of evaluative notions (such as "good", "right" and "should") altogether. You do complain about my use of evaluative notions in the post above, but if the foregoing is correct, then the complaint will hold against yourself as well. I, of course, think that complaint is unfounded.

I am happy to trivialize the sort of conversation in the first three posts. If you are willing to call that a "philosophical conversation", I will gladly dissociate myself from "philosophical conversations".

 

[Scourge of God]

People are not some tools that are to be used for (or to be disposed of when) engineering some "forward-moving future society" that is supposedly good for a group that thinks of themselves as forming an elite. It is never right to oppress or exterminate people for such a cause. Indeed, people who put forward such claims inevitably sound more "brutish" than anyone they accuse of being so.

Why? Isn't that the basic premise behind the criminal justice system, which, in effect, practices oppression and sometimes extermination against those who are deemed to be a threat to society?

 

[infoterror]

A prima facie natural reading of the sentence goes as follows: under the conditions described it would be permissible for us to oppress, enslave and ultimately exterminate others (I here use "it is permissible to P" as a shorthand for "it is not the case that one should not P").

No, you're brainwashed.

I'm not asking for permission. I'm saying "would it make sense to," e.g. be effective in reality.

Contemplation can't be taught in a classroom

 

[derbeder]

In the sentence you quoted I explicitly explained how I used "permissible" in that context. It is amusing to see that you still think that in order for something to be permissible in this sense, one needs to get permission from someone.

 

[Seditious]

Hypothetically, what if one group of people were so renowned for terrible behavior or group stupidity that there was no use for them in a forward-moving future society?.

HAIL!

Let's kill all the teenagers! it's bulletproof!

 

[Seditious]

People are not some tools that are to be used for (or to be disposed of when) engineering some "forward-moving future society" that is supposedly good for a group that thinks of themselves as forming an elite. It is never right to oppress or exterminate people for such a cause. Indeed, people who put forward such claims inevitably sound more "brutish" than anyone they accuse of being so.

since you felt the need to say "for such a cause", I'm curious, for what causes do you feel it is right to oppress or exterminate people?

 

[derbeder]

what i said does not imply that it is right to do those things for some other reason. but the question is a good one and it is not easy to answer. there may be large scale moral dilemmas in which one might have to choose between two courses of action which are both repulsive. suppose, for instance, one were to be in a position choose between the extermination of two groups of people. no other course of action is available, and to do nothing and remain silent or inactive results in the extermination of one of the groups. what should one do? hard to say. there may indeed be some reasons to prefer saving one group rather than the other. but if one weighs the reasons for saving one group rather than the other and makes an informed choice, does that make the action right? is that what one should do in that situation? in a very clear sense, one can justify it over the only other possible course of action. more abstractly, the central question is this: even if a certain action can be justified on moral grounds over all other possible actions, does that make it right to undertake it? one does not need to accept an overall moral theory to answer this question. my inclination is to answer negatively and acknowledge the possibility of situations in which there is no right thing to do. we can call any situation one finds oneself in which there is nothing right to do, a deep moral dilemma. utilitarians and others who say "yes" to our question reject the possibility of deep moral dilemmas. as with many possibility claims, it takes more to defend the idea that something is not possible than to defend that the possibility exists.
there is a lot to think about on the question of moral dilemmas and it is important to set out the relevant issues clearly and describe the possible views on these issues.

in any case, given the state of things, we are not in a position to make a choice between the extermination of one group over another. some people appear to think that is indeed the state of things and that people who don't see that are being deluded. i am not at all convinced.

 

[speed]

Hypothetically, what if one group of people were so renowned for terrible behavior or group stupidity that there was no use for them in a forward-moving future society? It would make sense to at the very least oppress them, possibly good sense to enslave them, and ultimately, really clear logical sense to exterminate them.

I'm thinking of a group like the English or Americans here.

We ban methods where we cannot think. Does method matter, if we have a clear goal? Ah, our society has no clear goal... now it is crystal clear: we are selfish, so utilitarian.

Exterminate all the brutes.

Lets go for it!!!

Maybe the Chinese and Indians will do us a favor in 50 years, and enslave or exterminate us fat never sated Americans. At the very least, we are slaves to them financially.

Scourge, can I borrow some of that lovely Zyklon of yours?

 

[infoterror]

In the sentence you quoted I explicitly explained how I used "permissible" in that context. It is amusing to see that you still think that in order for something to be permissible in this sense, one needs to get permission from someone.

": that may be permitted : ALLOWABLE"

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/permissible

Not someone, but some abstraction, in your case. Oh how clever we can be with words, if we don't want to get anything done.

:zombie:

 

[derbeder]

I explain what I mean by the expression right there. It is indeed frequently used in that sense in deontic logic. An abstraction is not permitting anything either - abstractions don't permit things. Do you actually understand what you read? This is very straightforward English. You are not even remotely responding to my earlier post. And I was actually addressing exactly what you wrote down there, even though it merits no attention whatsoever.
By the way, never, ever refer to a dictionary in (at least what you take to be) a philosophical discussion.

 

[infoterror]

I explain what I mean by the expression right there. It is indeed frequently used in that sense in deontic logic. An abstraction is not permitting anything either - abstractions don't permit things. Do you actually understand what you read? This is very straightforward English. You are not even remotely responding to my earlier post. And I was actually addressing exactly what you wrote down there, even though it merits no attention whatsoever.
By the way, never, ever refer to a dictionary in (at least what you take to be) a philosophical discussion.

Spinning words, relying on educational credentials, still not talking about reality. If permission is needed, anything can be used as justification, especially an abstraction. See: Morality.

 

[Cythraul]

Spinning words, relying on educational credentials, still not talking about reality. If permission is needed, anything can be used as justification, especially an abstraction. See: Morality.

Excellent point! Wait, what the hell are you talking about?