Yeah that's from Monty Python's "Philosopher's Drinking Song." Anyway, I had a lightbulb just go off...
Besides the fact that I've been deliberating about being the CEO of a plastic shovel company all night after finding that I had written something along those lines in my notes, I also found a slide on moral management in international busines.
So I shall now procede to pose a philosophical argument FROM A SET OF BUSINESS POWERPOINT SLIDES. My own absurdity amazes me.
Anyway, the slide concerns moral rights from a Kantian perspective...something I should study. Right after Just War Theory and whoever the main social justice person would be....maybe that one Pope from the turn of the last century.
Anyway...
"How does one weigh conflicting rights?"
Eg:
"the right to smoke" vs. "the right to breathe clean air"
"equal opportunity" vs. "affirmative action"
and the old doozie
"the right to life" vs. "the right to choice"
My initial reaction is to say..your right extends so far as itdoes not infringe on other people...but even then, a die hard advocate of, say, smoking, could aruge that a clean air proponent was infringing on his right to breathe in ash. Easy answers? Of course not!
Next I'd make the assumption that "inconvenience" does not equal the loss of a right...and so valuing a child or a clean air proponent over a mother (who's life is not in danger anyway) or a smoker might stand...I'm sure the other camp can find holes in that as well fo course...and I need some sort of logical proof as to why inconvenience is not infringement.
Musings...
1 year ago
2 comments:
Great post, Steve, if not a bit fragmented.
I think you'd be hard pressed to separate infringement from inconvenience, because by its vary nature for me not to infringe on your right is to not put myself in the way of your enjoyment/usage of a resource.
Also, I doubt the "right to ash" idea would really hold, because the natural state is clean air, not ash; an externality of me not smoking is not clean air, there's no causal relationship.
I'd argue that weighing conflicting rights is more difficult than you imagine because we're all putting different definitions and values on those words like "clean air" "affirmative action" and "life." Certainly you'd agree that words are just metaphors for more complex ideas. So how can we be expected to weigh things when none of us can even agree on what we're weighing - and that we usually don't even recognize that problem! Try to wrap your mind around that one.
I hope you're happy, I was going to study for my consumer behavior midterm in 40 minutes but instead I'm commenting on your blog. How... Steve-esque.
I am indeed overjoyed with the fact that there's starting to be a budding dialogue on this page.
And yes, I totally agree with the idea of words only representing far more complex and nuanced meanings. It ultimately comes down to certain assumptions about life and philosophical/moral values that differ from person to person. Now that's not to say that I don't think that someone's value set can be totally off--I do believe you can just be plain wrong. However, I also think there are more than one version of what is correct and right...and because of all these nuances, these types of moral arguments must be judged on a case by case basis and even then involve quite a lot of give and take.
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