Re: acting right

From: Allan C Cybulskie (allan.c.cybulskie_at_yahoo.ca)
Date: 08/14/04 

Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 18:03:01 -0400

"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:rTTRc.7795$a65.357996@news20.bellglobal.com...
> Roy Jose Lorr wrote:
> [...]
> > You cannot train conscience.
>
> Evidence?
>
> > You may only be taught to recognize conscience.
>
> Evidence?
>
> > Conscience is not of equal quality in every individual.
>
> "Quality" is a nebulous term. Metric, please.
>
> > There is no middle ground between right and wrong.
>
> Ah, you're an either-or reasoner. No wonder you don't like reason.
>
> Two comments, of a possible multitude:
>
> A) The law disagrees with you. In Europe, the US, etc, different kinds
> of killing are held to be differently culpable, for example.

This doesn't mean that they are considered to be grey areas between right
and wrong; all it means is that society has determined that the punishments
for them should be different. For example, if someone in a civil suit is
ordered to pay $1,000,000 (because they stole it) and someone who was found
guilty causing a death only had to pay $500,000, surely we wouldn't say just
because of that that stealing is more wrong than causing someone's death.

I REALLY shouldn't do this, but it's just kind of funny from an outside
observer's perspective [grin]

>
> B) Most things we do are more or less right/wrong depending on the
> situation. Eg, having a drink less than an hour before driving is mildly
> wrong if it's the only drink,

Evidence?

> but very wrong if it's the third or fourth
> drink within an hour,

Evidence?

> and extremely wrong if you're falling down drunk
> already.

Evidence?

> It's not wrong if it's only one drink, and there's an hour or
> more time lapse between drinking and driving.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, to deal with the actual point: It is
never wrong, in your example, to simply take the drinks. It's the DRIVING
while too intoxicated to do so that's wrong. And some people can drive
perfectly well if they had one drink less than an hour before driving, and
so it's hard to say that that's actually wrong. And once you are too drunk
to drive, it doesn't really matter how much over that limit you are in terms
of wrongness anyway.

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