I don't know, let's ask Jack Bauer, I think he'd know a thing or two about it.
This.
When you must coerce someone evil, usually by force, to stop doing evil things.
this answer is meaningless without a solid definition of what evil is. if you don't want your ethics to be ambiguous, you can't define it with something as ambiguous as "evil".
Don't really know much about ethics. This is one of the only aspects of my life that I follow my emotions on. I'd say to protect life and limb of myself or my loved ones, possibly even at the detriment of the same for the contrary party. It probably varies from person to person. Depends on how you feel your duties are towards the community vs. to yourself.
Coercion seems like it can be ethical in certain corner cases regarding ignorance. Say if some person doesn't understand the consequences of there actions will adversely affect X, you could coerce them to make a different action and then explain things later. I actually had to do this today with a 62 year old subordinate of mine today to ensure that he didn't screw over himself on his paycheck.
I highlighted seem because I think defaulting to the above mo probably results in lots of "evil" taking place as your taking the choice away from people and it can be rightful I believe argued that people have the right to be wrong and make some bad decisions. Everyone has to live there own life.
Now that I've probably made myself sound like an idiot, I'm going to contemplate taking an ethics class
LP, I'm checking your article out as well. Behind all of your swag is the brain of one of the most intelligent Magic players I've ever known. I guess that's one more thing for you to add to the wall of ego that is your Sally sig.
I can go with that. LK, you are the Mace Windu of red mages...cool, tempered logic in deliberation, but capable of just flat kicking tail when the situation warrants it.
I don't know, let's ask Jack Bauer, I think he'd know a thing or two about it.
This.
When you must coerce someone evil, usually by force, to stop doing evil things.
this answer is meaningless without a solid definition of what evil is. if you don't want your ethics to be ambiguous, you can't define it with something as ambiguous as "evil".
Not at all meaningless. Actually, this general phrasing is very helpful.
Very few (possibly none - possibly definitionally?) moral codes don't include a notion of moral wrong. One of the key arguments that made moral relativism so unpopular in the first half of the 20th century was that it couldn't declare Hitler evil, and one of the key shifts when it came back into some sort of vogue (I daresay it's still a position few philosophers are willing to outright embrace, but it's at least taken seriously again) has been rejection along various lines (by various thinkers) of the full throated "There is no evil" version of moral relativism.
The question in the topic is not, "What's the correct ethical code", but rather "When is coercion ethical?" An answer along the lines of, "When you're coercing someone to stop them from threatening their immortal souls" or "When you're coercing someone into doing no harm to others" or "Never, because if everyone obeyed a general law that we should coerce, society would break down" would leave us arguing over the particulars of an ethical code, when nearly every ethical code will fall into one of three answers*: "Coercion is justified when it prevents a worse evil", "Coercion is justified when you're coercing someone into not doing evil", or "Never, because coercion itself is a moral wrong and nothing can justify doing wrong, not even preventing more wrong."
"When you must coerce someone evil, usually by force, to stop doing evil things." - This is therefore a fairly succinct answer to the question posed, which avoids some irrelevant (though interesting) side issues, and which has quite enough content to be debated. I don't know that I agree with it, of course.
(I grant that there might be another option or two, but I can't think of them - I suppose if I granted Naziism the status of a moral code, "When it advances the interests of the favored in-group" might be a fourth option, but frankly, I don't know that I want to include Naziism as a moral code)
When it [coercion] is necessary to repel an ongoing attack, and to the extent it is required to do so.
When it [coercion] is necessary to repel a future attack which is reasonably foreseeable, and to the extent it is required to do so.
The second part is trickier, and should there be any sensible way to get around the coercive element, it would be recommended, because coercion is generally not ideal, even when dealing with the problem of coercion itself.
When there are more positive consequences for the most amount of people possible than negative consqeuences. This is practically being honest about the society we live in.
Having a regulation requiring companies to print food labels is still a form of coercion. But most of us have come to accept this is a good kind of coercion.
The ends justify the means.* Similarly, the means do not justify the end.** There is no absolute answer as this is no absolute example - context must be taken for each event where we perform coercion.
*The ends justify the means if they are successful, noble enough, and the means not unnecessarily wicked, creating more problems than they solve. The end, then, must be taken in context as the greater fallout of the event, rather than any one specific goal.
**Your upstanding moral nature is a hindrance if it prevents achievement of practical goals. Morality demands some degree of utilitarianism as good is an end, not a means. So morality declares that dangerous individuals need to be restrained for the safety of society - do we sully good by allowing this theft of liberties to be included within it, or permit ourselves to commit a lesser evil for a greater purpose? We are left in blindness if only the means matter - doing good but committing evil.
To what extent are you applying said coercion tactics? Verbal threats? Physical abuse? Sticking people with burning cigarettes?
I suppose a quick answer from me would be: "When not doing so endangers me or that which I hold dearly." And yet it's not much of an answer, is it?
If you would narrow the question to something like, "When is torture ethical?" you may have a better question. But, even then, you'd still have to define the line that is ethical/unethical.
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This.
When you must coerce someone evil, usually by force, to stop doing evil things.
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“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
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Coercion seems like it can be ethical in certain corner cases regarding ignorance. Say if some person doesn't understand the consequences of there actions will adversely affect X, you could coerce them to make a different action and then explain things later. I actually had to do this today with a 62 year old subordinate of mine today to ensure that he didn't screw over himself on his paycheck.
I highlighted seem because I think defaulting to the above mo probably results in lots of "evil" taking place as your taking the choice away from people and it can be rightful I believe argued that people have the right to be wrong and make some bad decisions. Everyone has to live there own life.
Now that I've probably made myself sound like an idiot, I'm going to contemplate taking an ethics class
Not at all meaningless. Actually, this general phrasing is very helpful.
Very few (possibly none - possibly definitionally?) moral codes don't include a notion of moral wrong. One of the key arguments that made moral relativism so unpopular in the first half of the 20th century was that it couldn't declare Hitler evil, and one of the key shifts when it came back into some sort of vogue (I daresay it's still a position few philosophers are willing to outright embrace, but it's at least taken seriously again) has been rejection along various lines (by various thinkers) of the full throated "There is no evil" version of moral relativism.
The question in the topic is not, "What's the correct ethical code", but rather "When is coercion ethical?" An answer along the lines of, "When you're coercing someone to stop them from threatening their immortal souls" or "When you're coercing someone into doing no harm to others" or "Never, because if everyone obeyed a general law that we should coerce, society would break down" would leave us arguing over the particulars of an ethical code, when nearly every ethical code will fall into one of three answers*: "Coercion is justified when it prevents a worse evil", "Coercion is justified when you're coercing someone into not doing evil", or "Never, because coercion itself is a moral wrong and nothing can justify doing wrong, not even preventing more wrong."
"When you must coerce someone evil, usually by force, to stop doing evil things." - This is therefore a fairly succinct answer to the question posed, which avoids some irrelevant (though interesting) side issues, and which has quite enough content to be debated. I don't know that I agree with it, of course.
(I grant that there might be another option or two, but I can't think of them - I suppose if I granted Naziism the status of a moral code, "When it advances the interests of the favored in-group" might be a fourth option, but frankly, I don't know that I want to include Naziism as a moral code)
When it [coercion] is necessary to repel an ongoing attack, and to the extent it is required to do so.
When it [coercion] is necessary to repel a future attack which is reasonably foreseeable, and to the extent it is required to do so.
The second part is trickier, and should there be any sensible way to get around the coercive element, it would be recommended, because coercion is generally not ideal, even when dealing with the problem of coercion itself.
Having a regulation requiring companies to print food labels is still a form of coercion. But most of us have come to accept this is a good kind of coercion.
....
'course now you HAVE to get an objective meaning for ethics or this just becomes "because others are diff'rent".
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
*The ends justify the means if they are successful, noble enough, and the means not unnecessarily wicked, creating more problems than they solve. The end, then, must be taken in context as the greater fallout of the event, rather than any one specific goal.
**Your upstanding moral nature is a hindrance if it prevents achievement of practical goals. Morality demands some degree of utilitarianism as good is an end, not a means. So morality declares that dangerous individuals need to be restrained for the safety of society - do we sully good by allowing this theft of liberties to be included within it, or permit ourselves to commit a lesser evil for a greater purpose? We are left in blindness if only the means matter - doing good but committing evil.
What exactly is ethical in your eyes?
To what extent are you applying said coercion tactics? Verbal threats? Physical abuse? Sticking people with burning cigarettes?
I suppose a quick answer from me would be: "When not doing so endangers me or that which I hold dearly." And yet it's not much of an answer, is it?
If you would narrow the question to something like, "When is torture ethical?" you may have a better question. But, even then, you'd still have to define the line that is ethical/unethical.