[Date Prev][Date Next] [Chronological] [Thread] [Home]

Re: drugs...? pathetic

To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org


Greetings,

Rab-

Yes, thank you for your response too! :-)
-

I would have thought that cases of criminal behaviour would involve an abuse of the rules that most people believe are right (and thus, are laid down in law). Of course the law does not represent everyone's moral standpoint but I doubt that it doesn't represent a criminal's standpoint. The criminal will (usually) have the same beliefs about morality that we all possess but, he/ she chooses to act in contravention of those beliefs. The criminal will surely act according to the percieved benefits of acting in a criminal (and often, immoral) manner. It's not necessarily that the criminal doesn't agree that doing X is both immoral and unlawful, it's that he/ she believes that greater gains can be achieved by acting unlawfully and immorally.
-

Laws involving commerce are hardly the main object of moral judgements/ beliefs.
Wouldn't 'you should always honour a deal' count more as an ethical statement than a moral one, in the sense that it's a good guide to the regulation of moral conduct rather than an expression of what it is for something to be good (or an example of).

I'm not sure that the petrol-example is right here. I wouldn't say that either case is a proper object of moral judgement (at least not typically). It's might be an object of legal judgement but some laws are there purely as a matter of function (e.g. 'drive on the left side of the road'). So, perhaps I should re-clarify and say that there are laws that represent widely-held moral opinions/ intuitions (though, obviously, not necessarily the other way around). It would unwise of us to conclude that because some laws represent moral views that all laws do so. But, I think that it's quite clear that those laws which pertain to what are traditionally conceived as being 'moral matters' (e.g. theft, violence) ARE representations of common-morality.
-

Do our attitudes vary according to whether the subject of concern is public or private? Sure. Does this occur because there is a difference between our personally orientated beliefs on the one hand, and private beliefs on the other? In the case of familial relations it seems like we DO have a strong feeling that doing (or failing to do) such-and-such (as in your example). If we simply had different attitudes depending on who it was that we were judging then we wouldn't have any hesitation in our dealings with family. The fact is that when dealing with those close to us we do feel ambivalent:
We know that what they've done is wrong but, we resist punishing them. And that, without meaning to gloss too much, probably has a lot todo with 'emotional investment'.
Take the following analogy:
suppose that a fire is out of control in your neighbourhood. The fire is spreading and houses must be destroyed to prevent the spread of the fire. Now, you might well have no qualms about razing homes, manors, factories, hospitals aslong as it stops your own home (among many others) from burning down. However, I dare say that if your home was one of those to be destroyed you'd feel somewhat different. Indeed, suppose that the fire isn't threatening life, only property: let's imagine that it can be stopped by quickly destroying the local bank which contains your life saving and those of your entire family. i think that would make you think twice. You've invested in the bank and if it suffers a loss then so do you. In the same way, we emotionally 'invest' ourselves in those close to us.
-

Your last point is really important and I'm not sure about the answer.
On the one hand it's clear that a great deal of drug-use (like alcohol-abuse) spills over into the public domain; on the other hand, the distinction can deal with these cases but, what of those cases which don't spill-over? Are we to argue that drug-use will innevitably burden the health services of this country?
The latter line of thought is tricky since I've recently had a discussion which covered this exact ground: the problem is that if we follow it we might well end up saying that people have an obligation to NOT do that which might burden the health services. It's not necessarily a slippery-slope but, might we not take away from this the view that we have an obligation to prolong our lives? Even if this latter conclusion does not follow, what about the former? If I have an obligation to NOT do that which will burden the health serives then I ought not:
drink, smoke, sit on my backside all day, play dangerous sports, cross the road without the help of a lollipop lady.
If we are going to play the line that 'drug-use innevitably results in a burden' then the same can be said for many things.
On what other grounds are we going to rule against drug-use, and if we don't find some other line of reasoning don't we risk throwing the baby out with the proverbial bath-water?

Respectfully,

Luis Johnstone.


Robert Charleston wrote:

To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org


Hi Luis, thanks for the response.

That people don't always follow the law doesn't entail that the law does
not represent the moral views of society as a whole. It's true to say
that there are some things that people do regardless of whether those
things are legal. But what follows from this?


The law is usually taken to be represent a moral standpoint. That is, to some extent most laws tell you what you should and should not do. If people break a certain law deliberately (rather than *acratically* - i.e. trying to comply, but having a failure of will) then I rather think it does indicate that the law in question does not represent their moral standpoint - at least in regards to what is morally acceptable in their own behaviour. How else could it be understood?

I am somwhat confused as to why you've distinguished between a personal
view on drug-use and a public one (where in the case of the latter I
take you to mean something more like 'policy'). I would have thought
that having a different public policy on drug-use while possessing, say,
a converse personal position would be the height of hypocrisy.


Well that's certainly one answer to my question 3. - whether our personal attitudes and public attitudes ought to be the same. Maybe they ought to. Maybe if they are not, then we are hypocrites. But isn't it possible to personally have a different attitude to something than you can allow yourself in public. Consider:

A. 'I'm going for a smoke.'
B. 'You said people shouldn't smoke!'
A. 'That's right, they shouldn't. I'd always encourage them not to.'

Is that hypocritical? It's not clear to me that it is. What about forgiving your family for things you would demand were not forgiven in a law court? Compare:

1. My brother promised to leave petrol in the car. He did not. It inconvenienced me and left me out of pocket.

2. The Shell garage's petrol pump said it had filled my car's tank. It had not. It inconvenienced me when my car stopped and left me out of pocket.

The latter is an appropriately public thing, properly governed by trading law and generalized contracts. These are supported or argued against according to your public attitudes. The former is a personal thing, a private relationship and deal, a matter of your personal attitudes.

In 1. I would say to anyone that they should forgive their loved one. Their personal attitude to contracts should be flexible. In 2. I would say to anyone that they should sue the public company. Their attitude to contracts ought to be non-flexible, and demanding of compensation.

If we make the person in question Prime Minister, I would say that they should personally not enforce this particular contract, whilst publically arguing that contracts should be rigorously enforced. I don't think this is hypocritical either. We should have different attitudes in personal matters than those we will defend in public affairs. We would be inhuman otherwise, end up killing our own sons like Brutus.

The question is which kind of thing drug use is (and drunkenness and junk food and promiscuity etc.). And this is detail-dependent. Does the person in question take their drugs quietly at home? Are they quiet drugs or manic ones like metamphetamines? Does this occur in a society that pays for the medical treatment and burial of others. Are we brutalised just by there being drug-users in our society? Is any drug-user an island? If not, how much effect on others should we allow? All very J.S.Mill...

Which is why I agree wholeheartedly with your last bit below. I just see it within a different political framework of private and public spheres and attitudes.

However, what I think is really interesting is whether there is or
should be a difference between our attitudes on public drug-use and
private drug-use. Is drug-use really the business of others IF it's a
private matter which does not directly impact upon others? And, is there
such a thing as a 'private-matter' anyway? It is, of course, a tricky
matter as to where we draw the boundaries between the two.



Whaddya reckon?

Best wishes,

Rab.


Browse or search the BUPS-DIS archives, or unsubscribe from the mailing list at: http://www.bups.org/mailinglist.htm





Browse or search the BUPS-DIS archives, or unsubscribe from the mailing list at: http://www.bups.org/mailinglist.htm