Civil Disobedience

[Mr. Fight the Power]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

Perhaps, however we can be sure that positive law can be moral law. Why are such cases purely coincidental?

Are moral laws, which happen to be positive (guaranteeing access to education or a living wage, perhaps), moral for some reason, and negative moral laws moral for some other reason, or simply for their agreement with what is moral?

I am not contrasting positive and negative, I am contrasting positive legalism with normative natural law. Positive laws are the work of men and governments, while a natural moral law would transcend that, being a law that is built into nature.

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

Perhaps, however we can be sure that positive law can be moral law. Why are such cases purely coincidental?

Are moral laws, which happen to be positive (guaranteeing access to education or a living wage, perhaps), moral for some reason, and negative moral laws moral for some other reason, or simply for their agreement with what is moral?

The only meaning I know for, "positive law" is man-made law, as contrasted with divine law, or with moral law. What do you mean by it?

[Doobah47]

Morality is riddled with fallacy, if law is founded upon morality then it is sure to disrupt what would otherwise be a free society. Law should operate with regard to empiricism - what doesn't work for a positive beneficial society, what hurts people - if we found law upon common moral codes then we fall into the trap of multi-billion corporate profit being legal; everybody thinks it is just to make as much money as possible as long as nobody is harmed or treated in a derogatory fashion along the way, yet many corporations treat people like dirt yet they treat them within a law which is founded in morals, usually morals founded in religious doctrine.

Surely our society would operate in a more just fashion if there were laws forcing the rich to donate money, yet religious morality doesn't acount for financial inequality, it accounts for such silliness as disobedience or adultery.

Sure theft or murder should be illegal, although law doesn't stop the government from thieving and killing, law should stop people from doing so because it harms others. When you see the inequalities in a system founded in sheer religious subjugation then you realise that the biggest criminals in this society operate within the law.

For me the word 'justice' bears no relation to morality, it relates to pain, discomfort, hardship and to forcing those who do not consent. Sure you could outline a moral argument against these things and make a good job of it, but when we talk about injustice some morally acceptable actions could be considered unjust and some immoral actions could be considered just. Lets take an example of a prostitute; she's not drug addicted, she lives in a nice house and she has friends outside of the sex trade, for many people any kind of prostitution is immoral because engaging in it encourages society to engage in the less decent sides to prostitution; morally we have to live in a society governed by 'correct' answers to social questions. It is my opinion that sleeping with the higher class prostitute is just, and sleeping with the drug-addicted prostitute is unjust - surely law could allow for such discrepancies, if only it were founded in empiricism and not morals.

On the other hand it would appear to be acceptable, although perhaps not morally, to target children with addictive damaging substances such as sugar, caffeine, fats and salt. However, it seems that no religion has accounted in their moral codes for billion dollar corporations following the laws of the land and damaging the children of this society - blatantly unjust yet accepted by the governments, they might pass pithy laws banning sugar adverts on Cartoon Network, but we all know that Coca-Cola has a hold on this society's desire; through sneaky marketing and steadfast branding, they could sell a 5 year old a bottle of Dr Pepper through his older brother or his mother or his gran.

I might sound like a militant crazy person, dont get me wrong I used to love going wild on sugar rushes as a child, I'd never deny such experiences to children, but they shouldn't be targetted, and having Santa Claus in an advert is surely targetting children.

There we go, rant over... but it was sincere, and I wholeheartedly believe that the point I'm making is real secular justice.

[Mr. Fight the Power]

Originally Posted by Doobah47

Morality is riddled with fallacy, if law is founded upon morality then it is sure to disrupt what would otherwise be a free society. Law should operate with regard to empiricism - what doesn't work for a positive beneficial society, what hurts people

This is a normative statement about how law should operate. I don't know how you wish to establish a legal framework without a moral basis, and it doesn't appear that you do either.

[Didymos Thomas]

I am not contrasting positive and negative, I am contrasting positive legalism with normative natural law. Positive laws are the work of men and governments, while a natural moral law would transcend that, being a law that is built into nature.

Well, then what if the laws of man align with those natural laws. Are the laws of men then moral? It would seem so.

The only meaning I know for, "positive law" is man-made law, as contrasted with divine law, or with moral law. What do you mean by it?

We can use the terminology in several different ways, I suppose. My thinking went to the nature of the law, positive being those laws that support a right to do something, negative being those laws that support a right to be left alone in some respect.

[Mr. Fight the Power]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

Well, then what if the laws of man align with those natural laws. Are the laws of men then moral? It would seem so.

But then obligation has nothing to do with it being positive law.

[Doobah47]

Originally Posted by Mr. Fight the Power

This is a normative statement about how law should operate. I don't know how you wish to establish a legal framework without a moral basis, and it doesn't appear that you do either.

I don't think what you've understood me to say is what I am trying to say.

To be honest I do not think that pain or death require morality to decide whether they should happen or not - our subconscious and instincts may be logical or function according to routines which they adopt (for example people learn that x is painful), yet I do not think that they make the decision to categorize x as 'bad' compared with some other y which is 'good'.

Now our bodies and our subconscious minds have got us quite far, so I think it would be silly to disregard the natural laws and routines which we adopte and prosper with when inventing the laws which govern our conscious minds and conscious activities. After all, if we consciously knew that x meant punishment then surely our subconscious mind would follow and not suggest x if the sunconscious was based in morality, yet we know that not to be the case, so the subconscious is not a moral phenomena.

OK so we seem to have calculated that we should govern ourselves, but surely it was religion that invented these concepts of 'good' and 'bad', in a secular society we should not accept these terms as absolute, ultimate definitions of action x.

You should have understood from my example about the prostitute that there is a flaw in moral justification, and that we need to judge events with empiricism.

My only suggestion would be to defer from ever using the words 'bad' or 'good' when ascertaining whether an event should merit punishment, and that would mean disregarding morality and using democracy and empiricism instead; however I doubt whether this will ever happen, morality is so heavily indoctrinated in society that it would take generation after generation to erase 'good' and 'bad' from the common lexus.

[Didymos Thomas]

But then obligation has nothing to do with it being positive law.

Right, the obligation comes from the law's agreement with morality. None the less, if positive law can agree with some unwritten greater moral law (the specifics of which we could debate all day and not agree upon), then the positive law is moral law.

[WorBlux]

Originally Posted by Doobah47

OK so we seem to have calculated that we should govern ourselves, but surely it was religion that invented these concepts of 'good' and 'bad', in a secular society we should not accept these terms as absolute, ultimate definitions of action x.

Moral statements can be judged true or false, in accordance to evidence and reason.

A moral statement is of how people should act. To be true, it must apply to all people, be consistent with all other known moral laws, and there be some empirical evidence that such a course of action is more desirable than the alternative.

For example we can know that a moral premise "Theft is moral" is false. The thief wishes deny ownership of an object from it's owner (denying him use of the property) while at the same time planning to assert ownership over the property (using it for his own satisfaction and protecting it from others).

If theft were universally moral, the thief would be immoral in protecting his property from others, thus because of this contradiction, we know that theft by some cannot be moral.

We also know that property rights exist and are empirically valid, because systems completely denying them have failed before being fully implemented.

Therefore theft is absolutely and unequivocally immoral (Even without assuming the existence of God or an obligation to obey the majority)

[Didymos Thomas]

Moral statements can be judged true or false, in accordance to evidence and reason.

A moral statement is of how people should act. To be true, it must apply to all people, be consistent with all other known moral laws, and there be some empirical evidence that such a course of action is more desirable than the alternative.

For example we can know that a moral premise "Theft is moral" is false. The thief wishes deny ownership of an object from it's owner (denying him use of the property) while at the same time planning to assert ownership over the property (using it for his own satisfaction and protecting it from others).

Let's use your example, then. What if the thief steals from someone who has accumulated his wealth with unethical business practices? And then, what if our thief is a Robin Hood sort of fellow, and instead of asserting ownership over what he steals, he gives what he steals to the needy?

We also know that property rights exist and are empirically valid, because systems completely denying them have failed before being fully implemented.

That's a difficult argument to make. What of those systems which have thrived which do not recognize property rights? Feudalism did not fail before being implemented, instead it thrived all over the world for centuries.