notSimple

@Simon, @notsimple: The Civil War freed approx 2.3 million slaves. it killed approx 750 thousand combatants.
Was it moral?

@notSimple – “Was the US Civil War moral? It gained freedom for many people. It killed many many thousands of others. How do you weigh the killing vs the freedom?”

– this is really a question of consequences. Every set of consequences is a mixed bag of good and bad. I think the moral aspect very much belongs to how people behave – if we know…[Read more]

Simon PayntonParticipant
@notsimple – “trying to define moral concepts eventually leads to logical inconsistency.”

– it certainly does not.  I don’t know why you say this.  Morality has a very clear and logical structure.  Some of the details, the twigs on the tree, are still to be worked out, but the tree itself is very well defined.

“Th…

[Read more]

@notSimple – “trying to define moral concepts eventually leads to logical inconsistency.”

– it certainly does not.  I don’t know why you say this.  Morality has a very clear and logical structure.  Some of the details, the twigs on the tree, are still to be worked out, but the tree itself is very well defined.

“The various ‘trolley car’ scenar…[Read more]

@Belle Rose Certainly, he’s not the friend that he once was. As @notSimple says, and it’s true, life is dynamic. I’m not the same person I was back then, either, and I definitely was not an asshole to him.

We went our own ways in the mid-80s, and then started getting in touch in the mid-90s. I’ll save the story, but things didn’t go all that well…[Read more]