Ethical Investment!

[davearnie]

I think you have missed the point ezra. The point is that most moral judgements are debateable and depend on your individual values or indeed what the majority hold as a value in a particular region.

Yes it is true that most people would agree that murder,theft - the big ones are immoral - the usual arguement - philosophy 101 - being that society as a whole would not function if murder,theft etc was permitted.

However, on day to day morality there are differing beliefs.

For instance a christian would say that it is immoral to have sex before marraige and he would be right in the sense that his moral values come from a book which says that its wrong.

However an athiest might say, that having sex before marraige is neither moral or immoral - as long as no one is getting hurt by the process.

There is also what has been mentioned above as the "greater good".
How does one determine what that greater good will be?
How can you tell that if you stop doing x that y will happen and will be better.
Noone can really tell for certain what the greater good or lesser evil would be for the world as a whole - especially on ethical investment - and before you go on and give a counter example such as:

It would be a greater good for us to stop polluting the atmosphere.

Would it really? How do you define this greater good? How do you really know that it is better for the world to last longer than say for humanity as a whole to prosper - even if that means pollution. I'm not being very pecific here but you get my point - you would be defining what you meant by greater good but equally someone else could define something else and it would be a matter of opinon. Furthermore, you could not predict that what you meant as a greater good would indeed happen as a result of what you wanted to change.

The same can be said for ethical investment. How does one know that it would benefit humanity as a whole better? How many people would have to suffer on this side for it not to be better? What is the greater good?

One final point I would like to make. If one can invest money in a immoral way, could you please explain to me, what it is to invest money in a moral way???

This may sound like a silly question, but once you answer it, I would like the opportunity to reply.

[ezra]

I think you have missed the point ezra. The point is that most moral judgements are debateable and depend on your individual values or indeed what the majority hold as a value in a particular region . . . on day to day morality there are differing beliefs.

Sure - but that doesn't show anything. Different people hold different scientific beliefs; some people believe in ghosts. It doesn't mean that there's no truth in science, or no fact of the matter about whether ghosts exist.

How does one determine what that greater good will be? . . . How do you define this greater good? . . . my point - you would be defining what you meant by greater good but equally someone else could define something else and it would be a matter of opinon.

You don't have to be able to define it; plenty of contemporary meta-ethicists think that you can't. That you can't define it shouldn't be a serious problem.

could you please explain to me, what it is to invest money in a moral way???

Yep: invest in companies which promote goods - for instance, micro-banking projects in India, or companies which operate a fair-trade policy. By 'goods' I mean good things, not 'traded goods'.

[Guest]

Quoting Mr Comedy from 13:48, 18th Nov 2005

Quoting Webbie from 23:09, 17th Nov 2005
corporations do engage in manslaughter/murder, especially in the third world)

Dear me, that is uninformed nonsense, isn't it? Would you be so kind as to provide details of corporations with a track record of murder for us?

In the Third World anything goes, and to think otherwise is naive. Is there any reason not to murder someone in your way if there are no/rare/unenforcable consequences against you? And aren't corporations all about minimising individual responsibility for consequences?

[Humphrey]

Quoting from 15:40, 18th Nov 2005

Quoting Mr Comedy from 13:48, 18th Nov 2005

Quoting Webbie from 23:09, 17th Nov 2005
corporations do engage in manslaughter/murder, especially in the third world)

Dear me, that is uninformed nonsense, isn't it? Would you be so kind as to provide details of corporations with a track record of murder for us?

In the Third World anything goes, and to think otherwise is naive. Is there any reason not to murder someone in your way if there are no/rare/unenforcable consequences against you? And aren't corporations all about minimising individual responsibility for consequences?

To be fair, he was asking for reliable evidence of actual incidents involving corporate murder in the third world, not 'impressions' or unsubstanciated properganda.

[hr]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/humphrey_clarke/

[Bitterandtwisted]

Quoting ezra from 16:01, 18th Nov 2005

To be bad, one must make a concious desision to go against someone else's moral values.

Ah, so if Hitler wasn't making a conscious decision to go against our moral values, what he did wasn't bad? If someone hits their wife, thoughtlessly, without making a conscious decision to go against anyone's values, that's OK?

oh, come on.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I meant "to be bad (from the point of view of an observer), one must make a concious desision to commit an act that goes against said observer's moral values."

Whether the person commiting the act knows or cares he is upsetting the observer is irrellevant.


[hr]

No man made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do little.

[davearnie]

Different people do not hold different SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS, the belief in such things as ghosts etc are not scientific beliefs but spiritual ones which have no basis in science. Further scientific study is about understanding the way our physical world works and not trying to describe wheather or not meta-physical things exist. Scientists for instance can tell us why we perceive that the sky is blue but they can and will not try to tell us why in actual fact it wasnt made to be perceived as red!

Greater Good - if one cannot define what is meant by this term , how can one strive for it. If we have no understanding of what it means for something to be a greater good then we cannot possibly try to do something which will be a greater good. It would be like me trying to swim when i didn't have the faintest idea what the definition of swim was - i cannont possibly attempt to swim if i do not know what it is to swim.

You still have not explained what it is to invest in good. How do you define this good? who's set of moral values are you using? how do you know that investing this way is indeed for the better and greater good? From above, ie you cannot define greater good ergo you cannont possibly say lets invest in a company that does good.

[ezra]

Bitter&Twisted: so you don't think there can be unconscious wrongdoing?

DaveArnie: different people *do* hold different scientific beliefs. The case of 'ghosts' is a separate issue.

On the definition issue, we use undefinable terms all the time, and use them to guide our behaviour. Concepts such as 'happiness', 'red', 'painful', etc.

i cannont possibly attempt to swim if i do not know what it is to swim.

Really? So you think that fish know the definition of swimming?

[diputs]

Quoting Humphrey from 17:16, 18th Nov 2005

Quoting from 15:40, 18th Nov 2005

Quoting Mr Comedy from 13:48, 18th Nov 2005
[quote]Quoting Webbie from 23:09, 17th Nov 2005
corporations do engage in manslaughter/murder, especially in the third world)

Dear me, that is uninformed nonsense, isn't it? Would you be so kind as to provide details of corporations with a track record of murder for us?

In the Third World anything goes, and to think otherwise is naive. Is there any reason not to murder someone in your way if there are no/rare/unenforcable consequences against you? And aren't corporations all about minimising individual responsibility for consequences?

To be fair, he was asking for reliable evidence of actual incidents involving corporate murder in the third world, not 'impressions' or unsubstanciated properganda.

[hr]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/humphrey_clarke/[/quote]

You seriously doubting that it happens, without going into the veracity of the links? How comfortable would you be with the statement that "governments kill people"? (governments can't commit what is legally referred to as murder btw) Or that crime rings are involved in murder? The borders of "corporation" blur into many other entities.

[davearnie]

Ok if you want to be literal about it then! One cannot possibly attempt to do something which they have no concept of provided that it was not in their nature to do said thing.
For instance a fish knows instinctively how to swim because it has to know this, just like i know how to see things naturally. However i do not know naturally how to swim, if someone put me in water i may attempt to do what you call swimming yes, however if someone just came up to me on the street and said to me "go and try to swim" , if i didnt know what swim meant, i wouldn't know to go to water, etc

Different people have different scientific beliefs. Ok i will give you that one, only so far as to say that there may be 2 Scientific Theories - equally valid - to describe a PHYSICAL EVENT, and one may believe one or the other. However a SCIENTIFIC THEORY is what we are talking about , insofar as believing in say Intelligent Design as opposed to a scientific theory is nonsense. As ID is not a scientific theory , if you would like to argue this point further feel free , i will then go into depth what a scientific theory entails and what it does not.

I do not believe you are correct in your assumption that we use undefinable terms all the time to guide our behaviour, furthermore I do not think it applyies here. For instance, the things you call "undefinable" are things that in our nature we have to experiance. For instance you can experiance RED all you want, but if you do not know that it is called RED you could never be asked to draw a picture with the colour red. Same with pain and happiness, it is in our "nature" for us to feel these things. However, I would argue that all the terms you have came up with are very definable. Unless you want to get into the arguement that anything that is definable uses already defined terms which uses already defined terms etc down to something which is then undefinable, but that is an arguement for the origin of language. For instance if i define red to be the colour i see on a london bus, then that is it, that is it defined. If i define happiness to be the state of mind i am in when x happens to me, then that is what happiness is. These terms are not undefined.

And your arguement that we use these so called undefined terms to guide are behaviour is not correct in the context of the arguement. These things like i said are in our nature, so we know instinctively what to do with them. A thing such as greater good is not something we instinctively know anything about and therefore, if it is undefined we cannot possibly strive towards it.

The only possible arguement you could make would be that we instinctively know what the greater good is - but i would then argue that we do not.

I hope that clears things up.

[ezra]

argh. sorry, but i'm going to resort to numbered points again:

i. people do know naturally how to swim; try putting a newborn into a pool and see what happens.

ii. we do use undefinable terms to guide behaviour. yes, i'll use that regress argument. you claim that all of the undefinables which we use to guide action are 'in our nature'; ok, let's pick something learnt, and use that as a counterexample. how about numbers?

iii. if you allow ostensive definition - i.e. defining by pointing to something - then you cannot possibly require me to define 'the greater good' on the messageboard, because I don't have the right exemplars to point to. perhaps this is how we learn the meaning of ethical terms; we're presented with situations, and told that certain acts are right or wrong, and then extrapolate from those. either way, I still don't need to provide a verbal definition.

Let me put the point another way. Suppose there is a class of things, which we can delineate using a certain predicate (like 'good', or 'cool', or 'courageous'). What reason is there to think that we can pick out precisely the same class of objects using a different concept, or different set of concepts? Some things admit of definition; some - like 'right', or 'cool' - do not.

[flarewearer]

Quoting ezra from 19:12, 18th Nov 2005
Let me put the point another way. Suppose there is a class of things, which we can delineate using a certain predicate (like 'good', or 'cool', or 'courageous'). What reason is there to think that we can pick out precisely the same class of objects using a different concept, or different set of concepts? Some things admit of definition; some - like 'right', or 'cool' - do not.

Ezra, while you may be a post-graduate philosopher and perhaps in a better position to construct a logically sound argument than others, it does not make your opinions or point of view any more relevant or correct than anyone elses.

Your condescending and lecturing tone does you no credit, as you obviously know what you're talking about but simply seem to wind people up by endlessly contradicting them.

Get over yourself, not everyone thinks like a trained philosopher and it really doesn't rub with people who aren't.

[hr]

image:www.magnificentoctopus.com/x/elgar.png

[Humphrey]

Quoting diputs from 17:37, 18th Nov 2005

Quoting Humphrey from 17:16, 18th Nov 2005

Quoting from 15:40, 18th Nov 2005
[quote]Quoting Mr Comedy from 13:48, 18th Nov 2005
[quote]Quoting Webbie from 23:09, 17th Nov 2005
corporations do engage in manslaughter/murder, especially in the third world)

Dear me, that is uninformed nonsense, isn't it? Would you be so kind as to provide details of corporations with a track record of murder for us?

In the Third World anything goes, and to think otherwise is naive. Is there any reason not to murder someone in your way if there are no/rare/unenforcable consequences against you? And aren't corporations all about minimising individual responsibility for consequences?

To be fair, he was asking for reliable evidence of actual incidents involving corporate murder in the third world, not 'impressions' or unsubstanciated properganda.

[hr]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/humphrey_clarke/[/quote]

You seriously doubting that it happens, without going into the veracity of the links? How comfortable would you be with the statement that "governments kill people"? (governments can't commit what is legally referred to as murder btw) Or that crime rings are involved in murder? The borders of "corporation" blur into many other entities.[/quote]

I accept that there may be abuses in the third world, however i'm a historian and therefore I like evidence, preferably from unbiased sources.

[hr]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/humphrey_clarke/

[exnihilo]

Crazy talk!

[ezra]

while you may be . . . in a better position to construct a logically sound argument than others, it does not make your opinions or point of view any more relevant or correct than anyone elses

really?

[Dave the Explosive Newt]

Quoting ezra from 19:49, 18th Nov 2005

while you may be . . . in a better position to construct a logically sound argument than others, it does not make your opinions or point of view any more relevant or correct than anyone elses

really?

Yes.

[hr]

Will Watson - half man, half beast. All awesome.

[Steveo]

Can you accept that I have my reasons for being against ethical investment? Can you also accept that these reasons are no less correct and valid as your own?

[hr]

Not my ethics.

[Webbie]

Just because it may happen in the third world or that the legal obligations are ambiguous does not make it right. Not to me and not to the 92% who voted for E.I. in the referendum.

I could produce a list of examples as long as my arm, but they would doubtless be referred to as biased examples.

But, can someone still please explain to me why they are "biased"? What do they have to gain? The public care more for Jodie Marsh et al than courageous investigative journalism. It takes them a lot of effort to find out this info, to be regared is biased hippies is unfair.

I repeat, the flip side of the argument is far larger, with far more funding and massive PR campaigns. Doing it for profit. For their own gain.

[Webbie]

Oh yeah, just thought of an example of corporate manslaughter closer to home.

The Hatfield rail crash

[Bitterandtwisted]

Quoting ezra from 18:28, 18th Nov 2005
Bitter&Twisted: so you don't think there can be unconscious wrongdoing?

No. A hurricane is distructive, but does not know (and is incapable of caring) about the loss of life it causes. We may not like it, but we do not call it evil.

Mosquitos do not know that they carry a parasite that kills more humans than anything else on Earth. Neither the Mosquitos nor the parasites can be called "evil".

An unthinking thing can be destructive, but not evil.

Getting back to you're idea of different morals being like different views on science, I would have to dissagree with you. The two are not alike. In science, one weighs up the evidence to arrive at the most likely explanation. The "true" explanation if you like.
With morality, there is no true answer. There is no evidence or rationality behind it. Some may say "If it hurts no-one it's ok", others "If this old book says it's ok, it is".
It's an abstract human construction that you won't find in nature, any more than you'll find our other bizzare notions of "justice", "honour" or "mercy"

[hr]

No man made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do little.

[ezra]

That wasn't the question. The question was this: can someone do something wrong, but unconsciously? Suppose someone simply lashes out in anger at a small child, and inflicts serious damage . . . ?

So you think that there's no true answer in morality? Why do you think that?

Dave Newt: I'm reassured to know that people don't think that sound, logical arguments are more likely to yield correct verdicts. On second thoughts, no, I'm not. I despair, really I do.