27 May 2010

a curious set of values

Gallup

I'll just go down the line
Doc assisted suicide: morally flawed. Not sure I'd say it's morally wrong per se for someone to assist a suicide, but a doctor has a different set of professional ethics to uphold that are distinct from "average person" who sees person/friend in pain.
Gay/lesbian relations: morally fine
Abortion: morally questionable, but often the lesser of two evils.
Having baby outside of marriage: morally fine
Pre-martial sex: morally fine
Animal fur clothes: morally fine (I see this as the same as killing animals to consume them).
Medical tests on animals: usually morally questionable (issues of consent may be considered valid where tests are harmful), but I'd say this is more or less fine since most animals are not sentient and pain or suffering can be avoided in many cases (in fact, in most cases, the tests are for medical treatments of pain or suffering).
Gambling: fine
Stem cells from human embryos: fine. Such embryos would be destroyed rather than used and are thus not potential sources of life. This is little different than a miscarriage in physical terms (as are most commonly performed abortions for that matter.)
Cloning animals: fine
Death penalty: technically I have no problem if the state can provide us with a justification and assurance that the person is in fact guilty of a heinous crime and thus worthy of social disposal, but the fact that we require this justification makes it rather more expensive than simply locking people up, and this justification, as with torture related moral questions, is unlikely to be adequately provided in all cases. Abuse of the system strikes me as a moral problem as well.
Divorce: fine. Contracts should be open to amendment and re-evaluation by participants.
Suicide: dumb, but fine
Cloning humans: fine
Polygamy: fine if all parties consent to the contractual arrangement, not fine in its usual practice (since most of the time not all parties consent). Polyandry is also acceptable under these terms, though it rarely comes up.
Married people having affairs: also fine if all parties consent/aware. Not fine if consent is not granted or harms (STD transmission). Under a typical marriage arrangement, or even a non-married exclusive relationship, this is presumably not acceptable behavior.

So basically I only have problems with 3 things that a wider swath of people think are morally acceptable (medical testing, doctor provided euthanasia, and the death penalty), and one case where I'm leaning toward, but not in agreement with the majority (abortion), and everything else I'm morally permissive of, irrespective of whether the majority is supportive or opposed. Being "morally permissive" is not however to be taken as an endorsement of all these things for all people. In some cases, I regard these as skeptical actions, in others, I find that they are rarely likely to be something that would increase utility and thus be morally or socially useful and in most cases, I find that these are things that are privately arranged and consented to with the private expectations that they may increase some utility (happiness, fun, pleasures, economic gain, etc). Presumably when they don't, as they often won't, people will learn not to do them or learn to be more careful about such things. For the most part I find that people who don't want to do these things won't or shouldn't, that they have little capacity to judge or assess the character of others who do, but that they are free to attempt to argue that they are right and others are wrong for indulging in these activities. For the most part, I suspect their actions will be persuasive for a modest few who are already leaning in the direction of avoiding such things, and will have little to no impact on people who find them enjoyable and harmless.

One somewhat surprising element: I'm mostly impressed that there isn't a significant gender gap for abortion (in fact, men are more supportive of it morally than women). Given the public figures who usually speak on this topic, one wouldn't think this to be the case. Perhaps the problem, such as it is, there is less that there are few powerful women and more that there are a lot of powerful men who happen to oppose this for some reason or another. I suppose this is sort of like the gap on men and women toward rape victims in its way (with women more likely to be less sympathetic toward the rape victim, usually another woman, than men). But it's still an interesting polling artifact.

I'm not sure we're at the cloning humans party to actually have to wrestle seriously with the topic, but I'm constantly amazed at the moral inconsistency that puts abortion as wrong and yet also condemns cloning, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, etc. It would seem to me that one of the vital and strongest anti-abortion arguments is the quality and special character of creating new life. And yet all of these actions would do the same thing and are rejected, often out of hand (as in the case of human cloning). This would seem weirder still to me except I know that for the most part most anti-abortion advocates only cynically advance that argument for the purposes of covering up less popular arguments (such as advancing traditional sexual roles of women or pre-marital sexual relationships and child raising). If they took it more seriously, then arguments like those against IVF or surrogate mothers would be harder to raise with a straight face.

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