[b]Quoting puzzled from 23:18, 25th
ethics and laws are not completely separate. When enough people agree that something is ethically wrong, they pass a law against it (though i grant you that much bad legislation is still passed). Laws are effectively merely ethical views which have got enough support in society.
You are confusing ethics [i.e. what is right and wrong] with people's ethical beliefs. Read more carefully next time, please. My claim was about ethics, not beliefs.
Education and teaching are not concepts somehow completely alien to scholarship. Quite what 'mutal support' is is unclear, but I'll let that pass.
Mutual support: 'the one supporting the other'. The educators supporting the educated, and vice versa. Clear? [/quote]
The court are in a position of trust to administer the assests of the university as best they can. 'Ethical' investment does not maximise the return from these assets; it is making future generations pay for indulging in the whims of the protestors.
Yes, that's precisely my point: in your own words,
as best they can
. The point which you keep missing is that 'best' is an ethically-loaded term.
Plagiarism . . .
It is also in breach of a freely entered in to contract between the student and the university, which is why they can throw you out for it.
Maybe so, but that's beside the point. You claimed that the only restrictions should be legal; this is a straight counterexample. Maybe you should try responding to it.
Actually it is a legal issue - they are obliged to have such bodies in many cases (eg medicine).
Yes: in 'many such cases'. Not in all. Again, you're missing the point. What's your view on those ethics committees which aren't a matter of legal obligation? Do you think they just 'stand in the way of scholarship?'[/quote]
[re: dirty hands]
You'll forgive me, I hope, if i say that this reeks of hypocracy. 'I don't want future generations at this university to be funded by profiting from XYZ, but I'll benefit personally from it because that's different'.
As for not changing something by boycotting it, i wonder if you you would have bought south african goods while they were under apartheid?
You've made two mistakes. First, I'm talking about systems; my point was that if you want to have an impact on politics, you're better off becoming an M.P. than you are boycotting the democratic process. Secondly, it's not hypocrisy to benefit from a system which you criticise. If you think this is hypocrisy, I suggest you drop my old DoS a line. One of his students (an extremely bright girl, and highly ethical) had decided not to accept her place due to the university's involvement with primate research. His response, in brief, was that you need to acquire qualifications in order to engage with those who make the relevant decisions. If you want to sit in on an ethics committee, it helps to have a degree in philosophy. It's not hypocrisy if the purpose is instrumental, rather than intrinsic. [and I'm willing to bet you ignore this distinction, if you're prepared to reply].
Oh, and it's hypocrisy, not hypocracy.
Well the union profits from having blackwells as a tenant and it sells rascist literature (eg mein campf). Personally I think there are market based incentives for why the univeristy would avoid investing in rascist literature, but who is going to draw the line in your world?
Oh, Jesus. You just don't read stuff with any degree of care, do you? I said *specialised* in distributing racist literature. You keep on missing the point. I don't understand what you're getting at with that last question, either. I asked a question; you avoided answering it. Let me re-iterate: if there was a highly profitable, but clearly unethical, investment opportunity - the BNP, say, or Mugabe's Burn & Pillage Stocks & Shares PLC., or some manufacturer of Concentration Camp Death Gas - would you want the university to invest in it? Do you think it should?
This isn't arrogance, puzzled: it's just abject despair at your inability, or unwillingness, to think, or engage with the issue at hand.
postscript: you seem to think that the 'ethical investment' line is that 'I don't want future generations at this university to be funded by profiting from XYZ'. If this is right, then you don't understand the project at all; the issue isn't of the intrinsic moral disvalue of profiting from XYZ, it's about supporting the activities of XYZ. It's perfectly consistent to say 'I want the university to stop investing in BAT (for instance); I also want a degree from this university.' I'm sure most of the ethical-investment advocates here would be happy if the university shifted its portfolio immediately. That's consistency, not hypocrisy.
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