True, but...
Ian: "I don't care if 80% of Americans were homophobic, that doesn't suddenly make it alright to deny them their rights. What Bush is doing is very, very directly a parallel of a political leader in the South during or before the Civil War continuing the allow slavery simply because it's popular: that doesn't make it right."
I agree with this. But it makes me wonder if we can any longer denounce anything that Bush does that we don't like because a majority of his consituents also don't like it. Ian's point would seem to nullify such an argument. I've heard such arguments used to shoot down things that Bush has done. ("Oh, his own people don't support this or that.")
If the right or wrong of an action is independent of the democratic will of a nation (and I think it is), then you have to argue things on whether they're right or wrong, not on whether the public supports it or not.
This raises two major concerns for me.
First, how do you determine what's right and what's wrong? When studying ethics it drove me nearly mad when I realized that most actions can be ethically justified if you use the right ethical standards. So, who decides which standards you use?
The second concern I have is whether that point invalidates democracy or not. If the will of the people cannot be used as a guide to the course of action a government takes, then what of democracy? A problem posed by my Advanced Problems in Public Policy professor last year: two democratic communities are in peaceful conflict over a water source. If community A, which is at the base of the mountain, takes a vote, they'll decide they should get most of the water. If community B, at the source further up the mountain, does the same, they'll decide they should get the majority of the water.
In a lot of cases, democracy isn't the way to solve a problem.
And neither is science, when you come down to it.
Science is excellent for explaining how things work and why they work that way. But it is really quite bad at saying what you should do. Because once you start talking about what should be done, you're no longer doing science. (Ugh. "Doing science." I don't like that phrase, but for simplicity's sake I'm going to let it stand.)
Science can say, "If you do x, in many cases y will result." It can't say, "You should do x because y will often result."
"Should" implies a value judgment on an outcome. It implies y is a better outcome than z. And whether y is better than z depends on your standards for judging better, for judging good and bad. (Which brings me back to my first concern...) That's not science. Science can act as a guide. Nothing more.
That all came from the Advanced Problems in Public Policy course. And it's made me want to pull out my old readings from that course now. Excellent. Like I don't have enough to do. Like sleep.
I agree with this. But it makes me wonder if we can any longer denounce anything that Bush does that we don't like because a majority of his consituents also don't like it. Ian's point would seem to nullify such an argument. I've heard such arguments used to shoot down things that Bush has done. ("Oh, his own people don't support this or that.")
If the right or wrong of an action is independent of the democratic will of a nation (and I think it is), then you have to argue things on whether they're right or wrong, not on whether the public supports it or not.
This raises two major concerns for me.
First, how do you determine what's right and what's wrong? When studying ethics it drove me nearly mad when I realized that most actions can be ethically justified if you use the right ethical standards. So, who decides which standards you use?
The second concern I have is whether that point invalidates democracy or not. If the will of the people cannot be used as a guide to the course of action a government takes, then what of democracy? A problem posed by my Advanced Problems in Public Policy professor last year: two democratic communities are in peaceful conflict over a water source. If community A, which is at the base of the mountain, takes a vote, they'll decide they should get most of the water. If community B, at the source further up the mountain, does the same, they'll decide they should get the majority of the water.
In a lot of cases, democracy isn't the way to solve a problem.
And neither is science, when you come down to it.
Science is excellent for explaining how things work and why they work that way. But it is really quite bad at saying what you should do. Because once you start talking about what should be done, you're no longer doing science. (Ugh. "Doing science." I don't like that phrase, but for simplicity's sake I'm going to let it stand.)
Science can say, "If you do x, in many cases y will result." It can't say, "You should do x because y will often result."
"Should" implies a value judgment on an outcome. It implies y is a better outcome than z. And whether y is better than z depends on your standards for judging better, for judging good and bad. (Which brings me back to my first concern...) That's not science. Science can act as a guide. Nothing more.
That all came from the Advanced Problems in Public Policy course. And it's made me want to pull out my old readings from that course now. Excellent. Like I don't have enough to do. Like sleep.
