Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Technological Morality
How can one accurately create a law from morals when people do not all share the same morals? With the world constantly changing due to new technologies coming out every month, how can the government keep up on laws? It cannot simply come down to what is right and wrong to a set of people if people view a subject differently. For example, when the internet first started to become popular for home use, how did the government decide what could and could not be viewed? In China, as well as several other countries, some websites are blocked, and if people try to view certain pages, they can be fined or arrested. The Chinese government believes that this is moral. However, Americans can view nearly anything online, including political satire. So who is to say that their morals are wrong and American morals are right, or vice versa? This can be viewed from a few different angles: the Chinese government may be trying to protect people from harmful things online while the American government doesn't care for their people, or the American government can be preserving freedoms of their people while the Chinese government is oppressing them and limiting their free will. Americans are likely to choose the latter. Whatever the case may be, the key point is that there is a difference of what is considered to be morale. Therefore, I do not believe all laws can be derived solely from morals.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with the author's main point that suggests morals differ among people and that because of this all laws cannot be derived solely based on fundamental morals. He points out that regulation of internet access differs from the US and China because countries adhere to different moral norms. Here, I believe the distinction between law and morality is overlooked based on views of positivists and natural law theorists. Natural law theorists would condemn China for ignoring the civil rights of people. Positivists would argue that, although this might be true, law as law stands because law has the interest of the greater good in hand.
ReplyDeleteThe statement that was made about the internet is very interesting, the way one looks at how laws are created can impact their thoughts. If we look at one country, any country, it would not take much to find a law that is frowned upon by other civilizations. This is because laws are evaluated in their original context when they are created. When someone tries to come along evaluate the morals from the outside, there is sure to be differences of opinions. It is important that besides the almost universally agreed upon moral to not commit murder, most sets of morals are evaluated in a subjective manner inside the system they are meant to constrain.
ReplyDeleteThere are three points that need to be considered: first, how does the existence of different moral views impact the theory of natural law? Second, how does positivism respond to cases where moral interests promote two contradictory legal rules? Third, is moral indeterminacy the only or even the primary form of indeterminacy the law has to deal with?
ReplyDeleteI'll start with the third point because it is the easiest to answer: Moral indeterminacy is only a small subset of linguistic indeterminacy. Whenever the law, as a general rule, has to be applied to particular cases there will be disagreement about whether the law applies to the specific circumstances that constitute a case. For example, a prohibition against killing is fairly straightforward about its meaning, but we tend to discount the violation in cases of self-defense. Why? Linguistically, killing in self-defense and killing for pleasure are identical. Both are killing. So, due to the nature of language that Hart discusses on or around page 68 in terms of the "core and penumbra" of settled meaning, there are frequent disagreements about what law requires linguistically and moral disagreement is a subset of linguistic indeterminacy.
So, what about cases where these disagreements are not about words but what morality requires? Speaking for natural law, Aquinas seems to think that there are frequent disagreements about what morality requires. This is why human laws differ so widely, but also why there are disputes about the existence of natural law itself. Neveretheless, Aquinas thinks that our capacity as rational creatures, i.e. human nature, requires law makers to justify their laws by rationally appealing to the differing views of others. So, it seems that natural law has some sense that there are few widely held moral beliefs. It simply claims that many are wrong and that the correct version of morality is the one that integrates many opposed viewpoints into a single system that appears reasonable to those involved because it fulfills what morality naturally requires.
Positivism does something similar, though it denies that any single system can collect all veiwpoints into an organized whole. As Brandon's example makes clear, there are sometimes tradeoffs between liberty and security. In those cases, Hart suggests that explaining those tradeoffs as moral requirements obscures the fact that the preference for security is only that: a preference exercised by a particular people at a particular time. In other words, the tradeoff results from "social aims" rather than moral requirements. Moreover, some societies can have evil aims, so social sanction is no clue to moral value.
Again the distinction comes down to whether moral deliberation is best carried out within the legal system, as natural law theorists believe, or whether moral considerations are private matters which can be used to influence the law if they possess enough popular support.
I read this post and automatically thought back to the second day of class, when I argued about how universal morality does not exist, but the examples provided here are much better than the ones I proposed during the class discussion. Needless to say, I completely agree with the author and am a huge proponent of the idea that morality cannot create laws because there are no universal morals in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the author of this post. I am a strong believer that there is no universal morality. The United States is known for it's diversity, culture, ethnicity, races, and religions. At least in our country, universal morals are non existent. It's impossible.
ReplyDeleteI agree as well with this post. There is no actualy universal morality. We all have different views in certain things or situations.
ReplyDeleteI think there has to be some type of universal morality, because if there wasn't, then anyone could do anything they wanted justifying their actions.
ReplyDelete