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Morality
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Post by
MyTie
No, it doesn't go any higher, it doesn't escalate, it doesn't go anywhere. It's just an extremely rare ( I have never had this happen to me ever, I've never had an accidental discount, I've actually tipped instead when I didn't have to plenty of times) occurence that is so minor it doesn't even have a moral color.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I think justification through being relative is a slippery slope. I don't think it works at all.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
cloudp
a 2000$ purchase, and 1 cent, ONE CENT, one measly little cent, was accidentally discounted off. Are you seriously telling me that anyone, anyone anywhere, would give a dam?
Just saying, but I know someone whose course was literaly not credited (the University didn't provide the diplomma) because she missed 1 cent of her payments; 4 years of studying would amount to just about 4000 euros (to the university alone, discounting any other expenses). It was basically nullified until that was corrected.
The funny thing is that
that was a mistake
... she paid one
extra
cent.
You have no idea the lengths a simple mistake like that can go.
Post by
MyTie
No, it doesn't go any higher, it doesn't escalate, it doesn't go anywhere. It's just an extremely rare ( I have never had this happen to me ever, I've never had an accidental discount, I've actually tipped instead when I didn't have to plenty of times) occurence that is so minor it doesn't even have a moral color.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I think justification through being relative is a slippery slope. I don't think it works at all.
I already said I wouldn't do it, and that it has never happened to me, and is an extremely rare ocucrance. Not really a slippery slope when it almost never happens, or never happens to you.
No one is judging you personally. We are trying to define morality. You are also probably not going to have to steal medicine for your sick wife, but how you empathize with Heinz is the reason that the question is legitimate.
Is it morally acceptable to keep 1 penny in over-payment from a 2K dollar transaction?
Post by
134377
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
It's a question of whether or not the cashier or his boss will care, or what will happen to the cashier if I did instead of informing him that he made a mistake before his boss could find out.
I don't think that matters. Other people's opinions and actions do not define my actions morally. You keeping a penny is you keeping a penny, regardless of what anyone thinks about it. I define what is wrong for me. Personally, if something isn't mine, I return it to its owner, within reason.
Post by
gamerunknown
but they refuse to correct their own.
Do you have any cites for this? Every cashier I've spoken to with an issue with a receipt has sorted it out, it would cost them far too much in lost rep not to. I've also accidentally handed double the amount in notes to people twice and they've both given them back.
I wouldn't. I don't think I would ever steal something, I just have some kind of built in mentality that I think makes me unable to steal things.
I've thought this over a few times and it always comes down to whether I'd be willing to die or let my family and friends die. I realise that even having this discussion or argument depends on continued agriculture and systems of food distribution. If for whatever reason these collapsed and everyone had to return to working on 100 yards 6+ hours a day in order to sustain themselves, or if there was a catastrophic blight, one would be confronted with the options of murder or starvation.
That said, there's a biological deterministic argument that comes up after that, that's addressed by Lewontin in "Biology as Ideology", where it's held that humans have aggression in their nature and we have to construct society so that we can account for wars and capricious murderers cropping up. It's not a well founded doctrine and even if it were, it doesn't make sense to eschew altruism because it "creates" psychopaths as society reverts to a mean... Societies with social programs that prevent deaths from malnutrition tend to have lower murder rates and higher lifespans.
Anyway, I'd personally agree with Asakawa's initial judgement. I don't think morality needs to be predicated on Kant's categorical imperative. I think if everyone in the world were posting to wowhead right now, the servers would crash, people would die of starvation and illness, power plants would run into irrevocable failures, etc. That doesn't make it immoral for me to post on wowhead. So I think that a person can choose to do something that is for the greater good (Utilitarianism) but society can choose to punish him to discourage other people replicating that behaviour.
Moral dilemmas themselves have issues with external validity: there's no ethical way to test whether people's behaviours will match their explanations, nor whether their explanations match their cognitions. That said, I did encounter another one that posed a serious challenge for me:
The ship one is travelling on is wrecked and the survivors accumulate in a lifeboat. There are not enough provisions for everyone to survive until the coast is reached and no chance of a rescue operation. As explained in class, (though highly implausible) if one throws the disabled, elderly, sick and the children overboard, the majority of people will survive. If one refuses to murder anyone, everyone will perish. Personally, I think that it may be moral to murder people for the purpose of a greater number surviving. I still think those that participated in the murder should be tried so that the gravity of the actions are still acknowledged on land (though perhaps a slightly reduced sentence from capital murder). I can understand if everyone on the boat unanimously agreed to suicide though, I think there are methods that would be preferable to drowning or starvation.
Post by
MyTie
I would not murder a single person to save the entire world.
Post by
Lombax
I would not murder a single person to save the entire world.
I would, if the person could be me. If it couldn't be me it would depend a lot.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I would not murder a single person to save the entire world.
Didn't you write something a few weeks/months back about how if someone hurt your kids you'd not only murder them, but send pieces to their parents? And don't you support the military? Clearly, there are some circumstances where you feel that you would, or that people should, be willing to kill each other.
Post by
MyTie
I would not murder a single person to save the entire world.
Didn't you write something a few weeks/months back about how if someone hurt your kids you'd not only murder them, but send pieces to their parents? And don't you support the military? Clearly, there are some circumstances where you feel that you would, or that people should, be willing to kill each other.
Ah, yes. I meant it in the context of morality. Allow me to reword.
It is not morally acceptable to murder a single person to save the entire world.
Post by
Azazel
Depending on the person, I think it is in some cases.
Post by
Lombax
Kill Hitler, save world!
Post by
MyTie
Depending on the person, I think it is in some cases.
I really don't think I'm a qualified person to decide who is "acceptable" to kill.
Post by
Azazel
Depending on the person, I think it is in some cases.
I really don't think I'm a qualified person to decide who is "acceptable" to kill.
Perhaps. But if the end was about to come, I'd probably shoot first and ask questions later.
Post by
MyTie
Perhaps. But if the end was about to come, I'd probably shoot first and ask questions later.
The question isn't what you would do, but what you think is morally correct. I myself might shoot too, but that's not the point.
Post by
Azazel
It's a tough one. It really depends on so many things. I don't think there's a line in the sand where it will be right or wrong.
Post by
gamerunknown
I would not murder a single person to save the entire world.
If you lived in a country where self-defence was considered murder, would you incapacitate an armed intruder to the home if you had the opportunity, even if there was a possibility that the consequences could be fatal for the intruder?
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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