Is a thing or action or fact unjust if it came to be through injustice?

[Aimless]

We have on this forum some slightly different takes on/approaches to questions of morality and justice. I'd appreciate some help with probing/exploring one such question:

Is a thing or action or fact unjust if it came to be through injustice?

Put another way, is it possible to do something just by doing something unjust? Do unjust means corrupt the ends? If you believe they do, a follow-up question: do you believe that only holds for proximal causes or is the taint of injustice inherited down the chain like original sin? If the former, is injustice cancelled out or is it diluted or what happens to it?

Feel free to develop or expand on the questions if you feel they're too limited, tricksy etc. or if you have a special point you'd like to make that the questions don't directly touch on

[Aimless]

Just so we're clear, I'm not asking if the ends can justify the means; rather, I'm asking if the means unjustify the ends.

[Dreadnaught]

Just so we're clear, I'm not asking if the ends can justify the means; rather, I'm asking if the means unjustify the ends.

Interesting. Is it really that strong of a distinction? I get the distinction you're trying to make, but I'm not sure it's particularly different from an ends-vs-means argument.

I mean, sure you can retroactively say that a goal was reached unjustly if you later find out that it was accomplished via something horrible. But that final calculation still seems to rely on a "does reaching this goal justify the means" kind of balancing.

[Loki]

Pretty much anything that exists in this world was at one point acquired unjustly.

[Aimless]

Naturally, and I'm asking what the significance of that may be, eg. if that means that everything in the world today is unjust. If that's not the case, what happens to the injustice?

[Loki]

If everything is unjust, doesn't that negate the value of justice? Just like happiness would have no meaning if either everyone or no one was happy.

[ar81]

Put another way, is it possible to do something just by doing something unjust? Do unjust means corrupt the ends? If you believe they do, a follow-up question: do you believe that only holds for proximal causes or is the taint of injustice inherited down the chain like original sin? If the former, is injustice cancelled out or is it diluted or what happens to it?

Two wrongs can't make a right, but three lefts will do.

[LittleFuzzy]

Two wrongs can't make a right, but three lefts will do.

Only if it amounts to all three being exactly 90 degress. If you end up only changing direction 177 degrees over the course of the three lefts than you're only mostly right.

[Veldan Rath]

How close is that to mostly dead?

[Wraith]

What kind of justice are we talking about? Criminal justice, karmic justice, what? There are different flavors.

[Aimless]

Interesting. Is it really that strong of a distinction? I get the distinction you're trying to make, but I'm not sure it's particularly different from an ends-vs-means argument.

I mean, sure you can retroactively say that a goal was reached unjustly if you later find out that it was accomplished via something horrible. But that final calculation still seems to rely on a "does reaching this goal justify the means" kind of balancing.

I posed the question in such a way as to directly get to the point Loki raised:

If everything is unjust, doesn't that negate the value of justice? Just like happiness would have no meaning if either everyone or no one was happy.

If injustice is inherited, then I think this would be the inevitable consequence. I think that may be problematic, for reasons of practicality if nothing else.

I can think of several ways to resolve the problem:

1. Agree that injustice isn't inherited, ie. that the ends must be viewed separately from the means
2. Let the ends justify the means and clean things up retroactively
3. Agree that only proximal injustice matters ie. that injustice can be inherited from one step to the next but not further. The injustice-meter is reset, and the new starting point is treated as a neutral fact.
4. Assert that injustice is more diluted the further you get along the chain of events from an unjust act or thing.
5. Conflate injustice with morality and avoid the problem altogether by saying that we can only look at the moral worth of free and direct interactions between moral agents. This can still be complicated by questioning the moral worth or justness of disregarding everything but the two or more moral agents involved in a specific moral interaction, and it also requires a consensus on limiting ourselves to this limited take on justice.

There are no doubt other ways around the problem but I can't for the life of me think of a single practical and sound solution that doesn't require an approach to justice that is conventional--or based on consensus--and relative/situational... rather than being universal and absolute. My intuition tells me that there should be arguments from the latter position but I'm not sure what those arguments are and it's possible that I can't think of them because my own views and values are so thoroughly entrenched.

What kind of justice are we talking about? Criminal justice, karmic justice, what? There are different flavors.

More karmic than anything else, I think. Justice outside of law?

[LittleFuzzy]

I posed the question in such a way as to directly get to the point Loki raised:



If injustice is inherited, then I think this would be the inevitable consequence. I think that may be problematic, for reasons of practicality if nothing else.

I can think of several ways to resolve the problem:

1. Agree that injustice isn't inherited, ie. that the ends must be viewed separately from the means
2. Let the ends justify the means and clean things up retroactively
3. Agree that only proximal injustice matters ie. that injustice can be inherited from one step to the next but not further. The injustice-meter is reset, and the new starting point is treated as a neutral fact.
4. Assert that injustice is more diluted the further you get along the chain of events from an unjust act or thing.
5. Conflate injustice with morality and avoid the problem altogether by saying that we can only look at the moral worth of free and direct interactions between moral agents. This can still be complicated by questioning the moral worth or justness of disregarding everything but the two or more moral agents involved in a specific moral interaction, and it also requires a consensus on limiting ourselves to this limited take on justice.

There are no doubt other ways around the problem but I can't for the life of me think of a single practical and sound solution that doesn't require an approach to justice that is conventional--or based on consensus--and relative/situational... rather than being universal and absolute. My intuition tells me that there should be arguments from the latter position but I'm not sure what those arguments are and it's possible that I can't think of them because my own views and values are so thoroughly entrenched.



More karmic than anything else, I think. Justice outside of law?

I guess I would mostly go with 4 but. . . the I'm a bit weirded out because it kinda seems like you're trying to construct justice in a semi-mathematical system where it can be balanced, shifted around, treated as some sort of semi-concrete thing. It's not, it's a sort of guideline concept to help choose current or future actions or evaluate their immediate results.

[Wraith]

More karmic than anything else, I think. Justice outside of law?

In that case, I'm going to go with no. Since we're basically talking about whether somebody deserves what they got, that can be determined in a vacuum. How it happened is independent of whether they deserve it.

Just don't try to extend this out to something like criminal justice, where there are more issues at play.

[Aimless]

In that case, I'm going to go with no. Since we're basically talking about whether somebody deserves what they got, that can be determined in a vacuum. How it happened is independent of whether they deserve it.

Hmmm as in approach no. 5 wherein justice is exclusively considered in the sense of moral desert?

[Wraith]

More like #1. What's the point of all this, though? The path you seem to be going down seems largely meaningless.

[Aimless]

The point is to find an approach to solving this problem that is consistent with a practical view of justice as being a property that is universal and absolute rather than being entirely defined by convention, consensus, context.

[Illusions]

practical view of justice as being a property that is universal and absolute

Justice is a philosophical human concept, not a concrete one like red.

[Loki]

The point is to find an approach to solving this problem that is consistent with a practical view of justice as being a property that is universal and absolute rather than being entirely defined by convention, consensus, context.

Read Rawls or Hayek. Both lay out a universal idea of justice.

[Illusions]

Read Rawls or Hayek. Both lay out a universal idea of justice.

Wouldn't this still be a concept of justice as defined by consensus? Aimless seems to be looking for a concept of justice that is universal and absolute, like gravity.

[Loki]

Wouldn't this still be a concept of justice as defined by consensus? Aimless seems to be looking for a concept of justice that is universal and absolute, like gravity.

He said the exact opposite in his last post. For something to be universally just doesn't mean that everyone must consider it just. Most pedophiles don't consider child molestation to be unjust. The Saudis don't consider child marriages to be unjust. Slavery was unjust 300 years ago, even if everyone supported it.

[Illusions]

Slavery was unjust 300 years ago, even if everyone supported it.

...because the consensus now is that slavery is unjust, and we have the ability to look back at our history. If the world fell into a totalitarian dictatorship that endorsed slavery, then what happened 300+ years ago would be considered just by them. Of course we'd consider their view to be unjust, but thats because right now, at this very second, the common consensus among us humans discussing this idea is that it is unjust. It is not scrawled or woven into the fabric of the universe. It is an opinion, held by humans.

[Aimless]

Read Rawls

The enemy

[GGT]

Yes, minx, the concept of moral relativity is real and has merit.

And to Enoch....you'd be hard pressed to untangle social values, and morality, with the times in which they were conceived.

[Aimless]

If any of you platonistas can help me resolve my dilemma I would be very much obliged.

As for shadows, a single object can cast many seemingly different shadows and different objects can also cast similar shadows. I'm not sure what we're supposed to do. Are objects more important than shadows?

[Aimless]

The arrangement of the solar system, the laws of physics, pretty much every single scientific fact prior to its discovery, laws of probability and statistics,...,...

[Illusions]

The arrangement of the solar system, the laws of physics, pretty much every single scientific fact prior to its discovery, laws of probability and statistics,...,...

How are these things universal, but not shared by everything to which they apply? To be bluntly honest this list is ridiculous, because:

1) The arrangement of our solar system is not something universally applicable.
2) The laws of physics apply to everything. There is nothing in our universe exempt from them.
3) If its a scientific fact whether or not we knew about it would be inconsequential to its universality.
4) Laws of Probability and Statistics govern numerous different things.

The fact that you're mentioning things like your claims regarding individuals at all tells me you did not bother seriously reading my earlier post.

I did read it, however I was a bit confused by your evolutionary psychology claims, since I didn't make any, but now that I've read it again, I'm assuming you're referring to outside claims made by evolutionary psychology in regards to morality?

The only claim of yours I discussed in my post at all was regarding Society, and at that I was only posting wrt the evolutionary psych angle suggested earlier, as my counter-example.

Evolutionary psychology would explain why certain morals are more "popular" or shared, but would not negate the fact that we have people who believe its moral to murder, rape, steal, or whatever. So for instance we can't claim that its universally held that murder is amoral, because we have people, a large number of them in prison, who don't feel that way.

[Aimless]

1) The arrangement of our solar system is not something universally applicable.

Of course it is. No matter where you go in the universe the arrangement of our solar system will be the way it is (with provisions made for the laws of physics) and that arrangement will be true for more or less everyone. Yet until fairly recently our knowledge and understanding of this arrangement was flawed or at least very limited. Even if you wish to be stubborn about this, in most of the universe, planets orbit stars--not the other way around. And how long have we known that?

2) The laws of physics apply to everything. There is nothing in our universe exempt from them.

Which doesn't stop us from being ignorant of them, misunderstanding/misinterpreting them, or denying them. How long have we really known that falling objects accelerate at the same rate? About the size of the universe? About how it was likely to have originated? About the weirdness of the quantum world? Etc.

Enoch's position seems to be that there are facts or laws of morality that are universally applicable and from which no moral agent is exempt. If he is right, then there are certainly ways for moral agents to nevertheless deny or not recognise that claimed truth.

3) If its a scientific fact whether or not we knew about it would be inconsequential to its universality.

I think you're losing track of this particular line of discussion:

This isn't necessarily true. Something may be universal (hypothetically speaking) without our knowledge/understanding/acknowledgement of that thing being universal. See much of biology, physics, geology, etc!

Then you have to prove that every single one of the 6.5 billion+ humans all share a common moral for it to be universal.

I'm not opposing the gist of your argument, I'm only addressing your assertion of what things would necessarily be like if there were such a thing as an absolute and universal moral law. If such a thing were even remotely analogous to more or less absolutely true universal things in eg. biology, physics, whatever then we would not all of us necessarily share it. This goes back to Enoch's and Fuzzy's shadows

If it's a scientific fact then our knowledge/understanding/acknowledgement would indeed be inconsequential to its universality. That seems to be Enoch's point: a hypothetical universal absolute moral fact or law would be thus regardless of whether or not we know of it.

4) Laws of Probability and Statistics govern numerous different things.

Yes and our understanding of those numerous different things would be limited by our limited understanding of those laws

Evolutionary psychology would explain why certain morals are more "popular" or shared, but would not negate the fact that we have people who believe its moral to murder, rape, steal, or whatever. So for instance we can't claim that its universally held that murder is amoral, because we have people, a large number of them in prison, who don't feel that way.

To summarise, some hold that those things are immoral regardless of the ignorance/obstinacy/evil of murderers, rapists etc. Ie. that their opinion is inconsequential. Never mind that there are murderers and rapists and thieves etc who deep down inside know and believe that their actions are immoral.

[Illusions]

If it's a scientific fact then our knowledge/understanding/acknowledgement would indeed be inconsequential to its universality. That seems to be Enoch's point: a hypothetical universal absolute moral fact or law would be thus regardless of whether or not we know of it.

Then you're going to have to create a hypothesis as to what it is, why there are people who do not share it, and what causes it, in a way that is scientifically testable.

To summarise, some hold that those things are immoral regardless of the ignorance/obstinacy/evil of murderers, rapists etc. Ie. that their opinion is inconsequential. Never mind that there are murderers and rapists and thieves etc who deep down inside know and believe that their actions are immoral.

I 1) Find it doubtful that all people who commit acts regular people consider immoral also consider the action immoral 2) If you hold it true that a collection of people who hold that immoral actions are immoral universally, I'm sure we can find people who feel the same way who hold conflicting morals 3) You are again going to have to offer up a solid hypothesis as to what a universal morality would constitute and what causes it, other than "We can't be sure there isn't, and we haven't proven there isn't" and then point to scientific facts as evidence of your rightness. Or if you'd like to, you can debate it philosophically.

Are you seriously making the claim that people never engage in acts that they themselves consider to be immoral?

No, I'm not making that claim. My claim is that morality is not universal.

I'm willing to bet that most people in prison

So most, but not all?

there are of course psychopaths out there who don't hold any morals, but you can't judge society on the basis of people who operate outside of its norms.

However I can use it to state that there isn't a universal morality.

[Aimless]

Then you're going to have to create a hypothesis as to what it is, why there are people who do not share it, and what causes it, in a way that is scientifically testable.

... how about the limitations of human knowledge? Differences in experiences? Differences between brains? Why can two people come to different results when adding together the same fractions?

I'm honestly not sure where you're coming from because the things you're asserting as necessary... well, aren't. Not based on anything that's been said here anyway. The predictions you're making are incorrect, so the approach you're proposing for testing these hypotheses is inappropriate.

I 1) Find it doubtful that all people who commit acts regular people consider immoral also consider the action immoral 2) If you hold it true that a collection of people who hold that immoral actions are immoral universally, I'm sure we can find people who feel the same way who hold conflicting morals 3) You are again going to have to offer up a solid hypothesis as to what a universal morality would constitute and what causes it, other than "We can't be sure there isn't, and we haven't proven there isn't" and then point to scientific facts as evidence of your rightness. Or if you'd like to, you can debate it philosophically.

No no no. What I'm saying is that, regardless of whether or not there are universal absolute platonic moral facts/laws, the claims you're making are not necessarily correct. People can definitely have conflicting morals, just as we've in the past had conflicting theories in science. Does that mean that scientific facts do not exist?

The point here is not that Enoch's morals exist, and the question isn't even what those morals are. The key point is simply that, if they do exist, no matter what they actually are, reality could still look the way it does to us today. That is of course one of the more frustrating aspects of these worldviews

So most, but not all?

Why would it have to be all? I'm fairly sure you're committing an argumentative fallacy here but I'm not sure which one

[Loki]

Are you seriously making the claim that people never engage in acts that they themselves consider to be immoral? I'm willing to bet that most people in prison for murder either acknowledge that murder is wrong or don't believe the act they committed was murder. There are of course psychopaths out there who don't hold any morals, but you can't judge society on the basis of people who operate outside of its norms.