Dear Stefan,

 quite a remarkable synthesis of the ‘structure’ of the Socratic way of dialoguing!

 As known, Socrates dialogued with short questions and answers - the so-called ‘Socratic brachilogia’ (literally "short talk") - just to give a chance to intervene and object to a party that he respected for his views.

Another feature of the Socratic dialogue, which set him apart from the torrential discourse of the sophists, was his constant demand of what was saying the other party; it seemed that he went looking for a precise definition of the dialogue. "Ti esti", "what" [what you're talking about]?

To these questions, for example, the question "what is it cowardice?", the other party would always reply with a list of cases: coward is one who harms others, who behaves in a dishonorable mode... Socrates, however, not content of this sterile catalog, rather sought the definition of cowardice in itself and not merely in a series of examples.

This is the irony of Socrates that, not to demotivate the other person and to do so without impositions that he convinces himself, pretended not to know what will be the end of the dialogue, accepts the arguments of the interlocutor and takes into account, then bringing it to the limits of absurdity so that the speaker himself realizes that his thesis is incorrect. Those who dialogued with Socrates would attempt several times to give a precise answer but eventually gave up and admitted their ignorance. Socrates just knew that from the beginning: his was not annoying pedantry but need to show that the alleged wisdom of the interlocutor was actually ignorance.

The ongoing dialogue of Socrates, surrounded by young people fascinated by his doctrine and by important people in the streets and squares of the city meant that he was taken erroneously for a sophist addicted to attack recklessly and directly politicians. The philosopher, in fact, communicating with them proved as their vaunted wisdom did not really exist. Socrates was then considered a dangerous political enemy who challenged the traditional values of citizens.

For that, Socrates, who had crossed safe previous political regimes, who had always remained in Athens and that had never accepted political office, was indicted and put on trial, from which then would follow his death sentence.

Material cause of the process were two significant representatives of the democratic regime, Anito and Licone, who, using a nominee,  an ambitious young man, failed writer, accused the philosopher to:

corrupt the youth by teaching doctrines that advocated social disorder; do not believe in the gods of the city and groped to introduce new ones.

The accusation of "atheism", which falls into that of "impiety", condemned by a decree of Diopeithes in about 430 BC, was evidently a legal pretext for a political process,

Lysias volunteered to defend Socrates, but he refused, probably because he did not want to be confused with the Sophists and chose to represent himself. Described by Plato in his famous Apology, the process highlighted two elements:

that for those who did not know him, Socrates was confused with the Sophists considered corrupting morals of youth and that he was hated by politicians.

On the charge of corrupting the youth it is explained by the fact that Socrates had been a master of Alcibiades and Critias, two characters who in the democratic re-establishment enjoyed bad reputation. Were the relations that he had  as an educator of these two characters to lay the foundations of the charge of corrupting the youth.

Today the most careful criticism showed that the trial and death of Socrates were not an incomprehensible event directed against a man apparently negligible and not dangerous for the democratic regime.

As told by Plato in the dialogue of Crito, Socrates, knowing that he had been unjustly condemned, once in prison he refused the proposals of escaping  made by his disciples, who had organized his fugue by bribing prison guards. But Socrates did not escape his sentence because "it is better to suffer injustice than to make it." He will accept death that on the other hand is not bad because it is either a dreamless sleep, or gives the opportunity to visit a better world where, Socrates says, will meet the best interlocutors with whom to dialogue. Then, he will continue even in the next world to profess the principle to which it has complied in all his life: the dialogue.

The teleological ethics, that is "the ethics of value or of the good are also known as" consequentialist "because action is not just in itself or for the intentions, but is such according to the real consequences it produces. Three observations:

1- the teleological ethics works as ‘a posteriori’ criterion of judgment,

2- requires to choose the best possible outcome, implying for a person, an unbearable psychological pressure,

3- may render unstable the rules of conduct of a social life. This coexistence is based on socially shared rules and on the assumption that everyone does the same.

It should be noted that the divergence between Teleology and Deontology at the time of establishing a norm, disappears almost entirely in terms of normative results or moral judgments: almost insignificant is the number of actions on which it is to formulate a divergent moral judgment according to the ethical-normative theory followed.

According to the teleological theory, the moral judgment must always be made starting from the consequences of the action, from their value or no value. The reference to the values and no values produced by the action or those with which it identify its consequences is so essential in the application of this theory that it requires a precise value theory.

The theory of teleological type, to be such, must orient itself primarily to the realization of the moral value. It claims that this value should always be preferred to any other non moral value. It also maintains that in the case in which the values were to enter into conflict between them, it will need to follow very specific criteria from the most fundamental and gradually the less fundamental. If, however, the conflict between the moral value and one of the many non-moral values, it should be an obligation to always prefer the highest moral value of his own goodness, even at the cost of losing the most basic non moral value of its own life".

As part of the moral virtues there can be no action that is always right or always wrong regardless of its consequences. In other words: there are no absolutely bad actions.

To understand how you come to that conclusion is convenient to explain, on the one hand, 1) the way the teleological ethics conceives the intention (or "attitude") and 2) the method by which it intends to make the moral judgment on the choice (also called "behavior") and the rules governing the choices and, on the other hand, 3) the way it is understood the mutual relationship of intention and choice and both about the morality of the person acting.

Regarding the moral virtues there can be no action that is always right or always wrong for the method to evaluate the behavior or choose from (or to establish rules for the conduct), the subject really ‘charitable’ calculates the results or the predictable consequences of various actions that for him are possible, choose one that will produce a greater good or a lesser evil (consequentialism), or the one whose positive consequences are such as to constitute a reason sufficiently proportionate to the gravity of the evils caused intentionally (proportionalism)

So, for example, in a particularly difficult situation, direct abortion could well be the behavior to choose. According to the teleological ethics, this should not be interpreted as if the good end could justify the sin of abortion, but rather means that the intentional causation of a bad ontic or non-moral  if it is responding to a 'careful assessment of the goods and evils of non-moral in the game.

So, for example, in a particularly difficult situation it means rather than the intentional causation of a bad ontic or non-moral, if it responds to a careful assessment of the goods and evils of non-moral in the game, is a morally licit.

If after a few months you get to understand that the decision has caused, contrary to what is expected, most evils than goods, the conclusion must be that the action carried out in that case was morally wrong, but we will continue to say that the subject is morally good, because the intention was good and, above all, because the most evil result is due to a lack of knowledge or prediction of events, and the moral quality of the person depends on the will, not the greater or lesser intelligence or forecasting reality or non-moral circumstances.

Dear Gianrocco

Teleological Ethics take into consideration judging by consequences,stresses on non human objects, as basic criterion holds the criterion of comparative and/or non-moral value.Teleological ethics also incorporates rules  for producing a great possible balance of good over "evil"

As a conclusion we discern Teleological ethics from Deontological Ethics by the fact that the first concerns ends, and primarily with goals of action and their goodness or badness while the latter .concerns duty, and must incorporate action.

The main reason 'to my knowledge' for the amoral behaviour of individuals and groups is that we as humans did not morally assimilate the technological advances in science and technology hence widening the gap of both the ethics mentioned and reality.  

Very interesting reflections. I have come to believe that most of us think in deontological terms, but act as thoughtful utilitarians. And that's not so bad.

One of the preeminent dilemmas of contemporary philosophy for the everyday person is the emphasis on a teleological theory or a deontological theory of ethics. They contravene each other by this way: a posteriori the teleological theory prioritizes the ends of an action and thereby judges its moral nature while the deontological theory a priori  assigns priority to the obligation of one to act in a morally satisfactory fashion. The former can be said to be primarily concerned with human welfare and general societal well being, while the latter applies on a universal level to all without the ends being a factor for moral judgment. In this paper, hence we have the arguments pertaining to John Stuart Mill's teleological utilitarianism and Immanuel Kant's deontological categorical imperative.

In Utilitarianism, Mill generated an encompassing code of ethics by the same name (utilitarianism). In doing so, he articulated several key principles to the role one's morality should play and the manner in which it must do so. The first is that actions will be right as much as they promote the general happiness, and conversely, as wrong as they promote unhappiness. Actions are evaluated morally based upon their consequences, not the actual act itself.

On the other hand, Kant's deontological approach arrives at different conclusions. That is because in "The Categorical Imperative," he places emphasis exclusively upon the will of actions, the Good Will, not the consequences of the actions. Kant believes that the good will is a condition for beatitude . As such, Kant considers that even if the good will lacks any means by which to accomplish something good, the good will remains a suitable end in itself..

Dear Constantine,

your arguments are convincing and offer the opportunity to continue my considerations having material and documentation on which I am still reflecting.

In the book of Paul Ricoeur, Ethics and Morality, it is emphasized that has become a classic distinction the teleological ethical (good) and the ethical conduct (the duty or standard). As I said, ìt is usually considered the first to Aristotle and the second to Kant but the distinction is often in opposition. Thus the question arises: is plausible for the ethics of good to converge with that of the standard? Ricoeur says yes (see. p. 61) and, distancing the intent of Hegelian conciliation, attempts a kind of "imperfect" mediation between teleology and deontology, resulting from the hermeneutic phenomenology of the self.

The fundamental expression of the ethical perspective would be: "The hope of the good life with and for others in just institutions" (p. 34). It had already been proposed in ‘Oneself as Another’ (1990), but is here reformulated especially in the second essay: "From the moral ethics and ethical", already published in 2001 on "Hermeneutica." This paper is proposed with two other essays, ranked according to a non-chronological order but according to the highlighting of a problem, which has long felt. The first essay, "Ethics and morals", from which the volume takes its title, was published in 1990, the year of publication of Oneself as Another; while the third and last essay, "The problem of the foundation of morality," is even earlier: it appeared in the journal "La Sapienza" in 1975 .

How to reconcile Aristotle and Kant not dealing with the problem of the desire for happiness? For Ricoeur, even if the desire (of fulfillment, of happiness) was ousted by Kant, because of its alleged inability to pass the test of universal accession to establish the standard of conduct required, it is not said that it has absolutely no role in the dynamism of the moral subject (see. pp. 55-56 and 58).

Ricoeur commence an investigation by the analysis of language. The character is said ‘ethos’ in Greek word that is made in Latin ‘mores’. The etymology does not in itself make clear the distinction between ethics and morality (see. P. 33). Specialists do not agree at all about semantics, although everyone tries in some way the opportunity to differentiate. The author proposes to trace ethics in what is upstream of the universal norm and makes it possible, but also to what is downstream of it, as it settles through the practical wisdom - the Aristotelian phronesis – the inadequacy and one-sidedness in some special cases (in the special ethics). Instead, of course, morality would be due at the time of establishment of the rules, such as maximum crew (See. Pp. 53-55).

Admitted this distinction, the reunification of ethics and morality becomes an open task. What would be the criteria for fulfilling this task? Surprisingly, Ricoeur answers: Nature. The moral law is law of nature. In fact, Ricoeur still adheres to the Kantian distinction between the domain of nature (to be explored with the theoretical reason) and the domain of freedom (which expresses the practical reason). Then, to talk about the law of nature serves only to mention the universality of moral norms in a combination of the legality of the outside world and the moral law (see. Pp. 99-106). Instead, rejecting the sense of nature as a source of inclinations (pulses) feature, which would - Aristotelian - transformed and transfigured from any possible ‘addiction’ of reason.

Best wishes, Gianrocco 

Violent and criminal act of war are easily justified using a teleological ethics.  It is OK to drop two atomic bombs on two Japanese city because it quicken the termination of the war and so it saves more life than it destroy.  Since this war crime was committed, nobody has been accuse of any wrong doing.  Thanks to teleological reasoning. 

Dear Stefan,

 quite a remarkable synthesis of the ‘structure’ of the Socratic way of dialoguing!

 As known, Socrates dialogued with short questions and answers - the so-called ‘Socratic brachilogia’ (literally "short talk") - just to give a chance to intervene and object to a party that he respected for his views.

Another feature of the Socratic dialogue, which set him apart from the torrential discourse of the sophists, was his constant demand of what was saying the other party; it seemed that he went looking for a precise definition of the dialogue. "Ti esti", "what" [what you're talking about]?

To these questions, for example, the question "what is it cowardice?", the other party would always reply with a list of cases: coward is one who harms others, who behaves in a dishonorable mode... Socrates, however, not content of this sterile catalog, rather sought the definition of cowardice in itself and not merely in a series of examples.

This is the irony of Socrates that, not to demotivate the other person and to do so without impositions that he convinces himself, pretended not to know what will be the end of the dialogue, accepts the arguments of the interlocutor and takes into account, then bringing it to the limits of absurdity so that the speaker himself realizes that his thesis is incorrect. Those who dialogued with Socrates would attempt several times to give a precise answer but eventually gave up and admitted their ignorance. Socrates just knew that from the beginning: his was not annoying pedantry but need to show that the alleged wisdom of the interlocutor was actually ignorance.

The ongoing dialogue of Socrates, surrounded by young people fascinated by his doctrine and by important people in the streets and squares of the city meant that he was taken erroneously for a sophist addicted to attack recklessly and directly politicians. The philosopher, in fact, communicating with them proved as their vaunted wisdom did not really exist. Socrates was then considered a dangerous political enemy who challenged the traditional values of citizens.

For that, Socrates, who had crossed safe previous political regimes, who had always remained in Athens and that had never accepted political office, was indicted and put on trial, from which then would follow his death sentence.

Material cause of the process were two significant representatives of the democratic regime, Anito and Licone, who, using a nominee,  an ambitious young man, failed writer, accused the philosopher to:

corrupt the youth by teaching doctrines that advocated social disorder; do not believe in the gods of the city and groped to introduce new ones.

The accusation of "atheism", which falls into that of "impiety", condemned by a decree of Diopeithes in about 430 BC, was evidently a legal pretext for a political process,

Lysias volunteered to defend Socrates, but he refused, probably because he did not want to be confused with the Sophists and chose to represent himself. Described by Plato in his famous Apology, the process highlighted two elements:

that for those who did not know him, Socrates was confused with the Sophists considered corrupting morals of youth and that he was hated by politicians.

On the charge of corrupting the youth it is explained by the fact that Socrates had been a master of Alcibiades and Critias, two characters who in the democratic re-establishment enjoyed bad reputation. Were the relations that he had  as an educator of these two characters to lay the foundations of the charge of corrupting the youth.

Today the most careful criticism showed that the trial and death of Socrates were not an incomprehensible event directed against a man apparently negligible and not dangerous for the democratic regime.

As told by Plato in the dialogue of Crito, Socrates, knowing that he had been unjustly condemned, once in prison he refused the proposals of escaping  made by his disciples, who had organized his fugue by bribing prison guards. But Socrates did not escape his sentence because "it is better to suffer injustice than to make it." He will accept death that on the other hand is not bad because it is either a dreamless sleep, or gives the opportunity to visit a better world where, Socrates says, will meet the best interlocutors with whom to dialogue. Then, he will continue even in the next world to profess the principle to which it has complied in all his life: the dialogue.

To whom it may concern

not so simplistic in nature as it is seemingly being put..  

Teleological  or Consequentialist Ethics

Harry Truman's difficult decision reveals something important about the manner in which we make moral judgments in many situations: our judgments often boil down to thinking through the consequences of our actions, and doing what in the end we believe will bring about the greater good. Ethicists  call this approach to moral judgment "teleological ethics" (from the Greek roots telos = end or aim +logos = reason), or "consequentialism." The basic intuition behind teleological ethics is that the purpose of moral judgment is to bring about what is good in the world, and avoid what is bad or evil. The task of teleological ethical theory is to define in explicit terms the principle behind consequentialist moral judgment, and resolve some fundamental issues concerning its application. 

In another metaphysical/philosophical  parlance the decision was by "virtue of" the fact that A was preferred to B that is the decision was "grounded" on A.  A being casualties 200000 by nuking or B being 1.000.000 estimated casualties on both sides by conventional warfare.   

The Japanese Empire paid very dearly the provocative attack on Pearl Harbour on December 1941. 

Constantine,

This kind of reasoning is totally inhuman and machine-like and can only lead to hell here on earth at the same time as maskerading as the good.  

Notice that all evil are always maskereting as a march to paradise.

Quote from Johann Gottfried von Herder entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  I think along the same lines as Herder on morality: it is undermined by the moral discourse and is supported by appropriate examplars:

''(1) Morality is fundamentally more a matter of sentiments than of cognitions. (Herder's sentimentalism is not crude, however; in subsequent works such as the Critical Forests he emphasizes that cognition plays an important role in morality as well.) (2) Cognitivist theories of morality — of the sort espoused in this period by Rationalists such as Wolff, but also by many other philosophers before and since (e.g. Plato and the critical Kant) — are therefore based on a mistake, and so useless as means of moral enlightenment or improvement. (3) But (and here Herder's theory moves beyond Kant's), worse than that, they are actually harmful to morality, because they weaken the moral sentiments on which morality really rests. In This Too and On the Cognition Herder suggests several reasons why: (a) Abstract theorizing weakens sentiments generally, and hence moral sentiments in particular (this is perhaps Herder's least interesting reason). (b) The cognitivists' theories turn out to be so strikingly implausible that they bring morality itself into disrepute, people reacting to them roughly along the lines: If this is the best that even the experts can say in explanation and justification of morality, then morality must certainly be a sham, and I may as well ignore it and do as I please. (c) Such theories distract people from recognizing, and working to reinforce, the real foundations of morality: not an imaginary theoretical insight of some sort, but a set of causal mechanisms for inculcating and sustaining the moral sentiments. (4) More positively, Herder accordingly turns instead to discovering theoretically and promoting in practice just such a set of causal mechanisms. In How Philosophy he mainly emphasizes forms of education and an emotive type of preaching in this connection. But elsewhere he identifies and promotes a much broader set of mechanisms as well, including: the influence of morally exemplary individuals; morally relevant laws; and literature (along with other art forms). Literature is a special focus of Herder's theory and practice here. He sees literature as exerting a moral influence in several ways — e.g. not only through fairly direct moral instruction, but also through the literary perpetuation (or creation) of morally exemplary individuals (e.g. Jesus in the New Testament), and the exposure of readers to other people's inner lives and a consequent enhancement of their sympathies for them (a motive which lies behind Herder's epoch-making publication of the Volkslieder (1774), a collection of translations of popular songs from peoples around the world). Herder's development of this theory and practice of moral pedagogy was lifelong and tireless.''

Dear Louis,

some four month ago I had the opportunity to deal with the issue of morality in a RG Question, where I asked how we can determine what is morally right to do by an agent. I thought it could be said to be ‘right’ (depending on the teleological theory) an act if and only if it produces or is likely to produce a preponderance of good over evil at least equal to that of any other alternative available. In other words, in this theory, the purpose of the action is placed on top of the duty and intention of the agent.

I am of the opinion that science, accepting responsibility, conditions, limitations inherent in all human activity, enters an ethical dimension. So the problem is not to pronounce or not value judgments, but in knowing on what values you act. In addition, the subject of the acting is not science in the abstract, but in concrete scientific operators, i.e. persons under the ethical-moral responsibility as any other person exercising an activity.

So you can draw satisfactory theories respecting the complexity of the ethical-moral phenomena and avoiding, above all, conflict between scientific findings and conclusions unrelated to science. In fact, from the partiality of all scientific knowledge it is impossible to derive any claim to totality, both in the sense of the whole reality and of all its aspects. Two-way dead end should, therefore, be avoided: to reduce all meanings and values to scientific knowledge and technological efficiency; to rely on fragile ethics because without foundation.

On the contrary, the urgent problems of the socio-techno-scientific cultures require an ethics capable of directing persons, societies and cultures to informed choices and responsible decisions, starting from solid moral and spiritual experiences based on the truth of man and things. Since the current language defines as moral the set of attitudes, behaviors and actions and as ethic the theoretical reflection on morality, various distinctions are given. The cognitivist or descriptivist ethics recognize cognitive character to moral propositions and consider their justification as: to show the truth, to deduce logically.

In summary, the analysis made so far allows an underscore: the positions indefinitely open become indeterminate, while those peremptory become incommunicable and sterile. Therefore, out of their extremes, interactive openings seem possible. It is necessary, however, a patient and rigorous critical criterion to connect the good reasons for each position and reprocess them into new syntheses assuming cultures and open societies. It refuses rational foundations (ontology, metaphysics), the absolute truth, the legitimacy and unity. Therefore it calls into question beliefs, values, worldviews, traditions, meaning systems, experiences, identities and personal roles, making quite precarious the ethical evidence and communication.

Have a good day, Gianrocco

masquerading is the word with all respects taken.

Louis,

On your two quotes referring to Truman's decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki i have to note aside of  philosophical arguments

1) In  Law we have inherited from the Romans two maxims.

SALUS POPULI SUPREMA LEX and DURA LEX SED LEX binding the two justifies Truman's decision(at least in my world-view)  thus combining deontology and teleology hence avoiding another holocaust by saving one million causalities estimated on both sides instead of the two hundred thousands who perished.

.

Dear Constantine,

I explored a little bit this question

Was dropping an atomic bomb on the population of Hiroshima a war crime?

70 years have passed since the atomic bomb was dropped on the population of Hiroshima. Was it the only option to end the war? Was it a war crime? 

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Was_dropping_an_atomic_bomb_on_the_population_of_Hiroshima_a_war_crime

I did not dig deeply into this affair but even a little digging show that there were other options that were discussed by the high ranking military and politicians in the US.  It was presented as two options while there was many other options that would have save much more life than those two but there was much more pressing issues than saving Japanese lifes: the cold war was gearing up behind the scene and the demonstration of nuclear superiority power was important for the US empire building.

The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was typical:

''the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. … My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children''

General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century's great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic bombings:

Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.''

Leo  Szilard, the man who first had the idea of the chain reaction and who convinced his friend Einstein to write tje  letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed, instigating the Manhattan Project. In 1960, shortly before his death, Szilard stated:

''If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.''

Regards

Dear Louis

The Japanese were warned of the destructive power of the A-bomb 

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/pdfs/6-1.pdf#zoom=100

but were convinced  only after Nagasaki

Regards

Constantine,

I just read a paper article:

Was the US bombing of Nagasaki necessary to end WWII?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/books/was-the-us-bombing-of-nagasaki-necessary-to-end-wwii/story-e6frg8nf-1226084256784

The article is about Craig Collie argument that Japan was already destined for defeat in World War II when Nagasaki was bombed. 

''True, Japan had ignored the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945, requiring "unconditional surrender". Publicly its leaders still made belligerent noises, but they knew defeat was inevitable; behind closed doors, the only issue that divided them was how to go about extracting the least humiliating terms.

Some hardliners, including war minister Korechika Anami, who ultimately committed suicide, advocated holding out longer to try to save national honour.

But the Americans knew prime minister Kantaro Suzuki and foreign minister Shigenori Togo - as well as the emperor, Hirohito - were working for peace at almost any price. In the end, during the night of August 9-10, 1945, it was the emperor who belatedly decided that Japan "must endure the unendurable", and surrender.

Now here's the kicker. Collie shows that, contrary to mythology, the atomic bomb was not a significant factor in Japan's decision. Outside Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese people remained largely unaware of what had happened (the result of strict media censorship) and even the powers-that-be did not completely understand.

The atomic bomb was but briefly discussed at the key cabinet and imperial council meetings of August 8-10. The deciding factor was Russia's decision on August 9 to enter the Pacific war. The Red Army invaded Manchuria to the north, dashing Japan's last faint hope: that the Soviets might intervene on their behalf in negotiations with the Allies.

It's hard to escape a mortifying conclusion: the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were victims of monstrous geo-political machinations. And what suffering they endured. It was better to be vaporised instantly, as tens of thousands were, than to survive maimed or irradiated for a few days or weeks.

Collie reproduces some horrifying photographs and quotes many witnesses. One saw "shadowy people with eyes hanging from their sockets, fried hair and skin peeling off in strips". Victims moaned for water or begged to be killed.

A young postman, Collie writes, "gathered up . . . scattered mail and put it in his bag, letters to addresses that no longer existed".

Amid the carnage there were tales to lift the spirit. A 25-year-old draftsman named Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts. A doctor and nurse at the wreckage of Nagasaki's main hospital treated victims as best they could; their marriage a few years later was long and happy.

But let the last word belong to the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, Robert Lewis. Just after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, he wrote in his logbook: "My God, what have we done?"''

So for one second, one second too late, that pilot saw the horrible truth from his gutts and free from the propagada spell. 

Louis

The intended  /  foreseen distinction and Just war Theory

Just war theory presupposes that we can, in practice, distinguish between what is foreseen and what is intended, and some have challenged whether this can be done. So first one needs to address this challenge. The practical test that is frequently appealed to in order to distinguish between foreseen and intended elements of an action is the Counterfactual Test, according to which two questions are relevant:

(1) Would you have performed the action if only the good consequences would have resulted and not the evil consequences?

(2) Would you have performed the action if only the evil consequences resulted and not the good consequences?

If an agent answers “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second, some would conclude that (1) the action is an intended means to the good consequences, (2) the good consequences are an intended end, and (3) the evil consequences are merely foreseen.

But how well does this Counterfactual Test work?

Douglas P. Lackey argues that the test gives the wrong result in any case where the “act that produces an evil effect produces a larger good effect”  He cites the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, as an example.

That bombing is generally thought to have had two effects: the killing of Japanese civilians and the shortening of World War II. Now suppose we were to asked 

(1) Would Harry S. Truman have dropped the bomb if only the shortening of the war would have resulted but not the killing of the Japanese civilians? (2) Would Truman have dropped the bomb if only the Japanese civilians would have been killed and the war not shortened? And suppose that the answer to the first question is that Truman would have dropped the bomb if only the shortening of the war would have resulted but not the killing of Japanese civilians, and that the answer to the second  question is that Truman would not have dropped the bomb if only the Japanese civilians would have been killed and the war not shortened. Lackey concludes from this that the killing of civilians at Hiroshima, self evidently a means for shortening the war, is by the Counterfactual Test classified not as a means but as a mere foreseen consequence. On these grounds Lackey rejects the Counterfactual Test as an effective device for distinguishing between the foreseen and the intended consequences of an action. Unfortunately, this is to reject the Counterfactual Test only because one expects too much from it. It is to expect the test to determine all the following:

(1) Whether the action is an intended means to the good consequences.

(2) Whether the good consequences are an intended end of the action.

(3) Whether the evil consequences are simply foreseen consequences 

In fact, this test is capable of meeting only the first two of these expectations. And the test clearly succeeds in doing this for Lackey’s own example, where the test shows the bombing of Hiroshima to be an intended means to shortening the war, and shortening the war an intended consequence  of  the action.

To determine whether the evil consequences are simply foreseen, however, an additional test is needed, which can be called the Non-explanation Test. According to this test the relevant question is: Does the bringing about of the evil consequences help explain why the agent undertook the action as a means to the good consequences? If  the answer is “no,” that is, if the bringing about of the evil consequences does not help explain why the agent undertook  the action as a means to the good consequences, the evil consequences are merely foreseen. But if the answer is “yes,” the evil consequences are an intended means to the good consequences.

Of course, there is no guaranteed procedure for arriving at an answer to the Non-explanation Test. Nevertheless,when we are in doubt concerning whether the evil consequences of an act are simply foreseen, seeking an answer to the Non-explanation Test will tend to be the best way of reasonably resolving that doubt. For example, when applied to Lackey’s example, the Non-explanation Test comes up with a “yes,” since the evil consequences in this example do help explain why the bombing was undertaken to shorten the war. For, according to the usual account, Truman ordered the bombing to bring about the civilian deaths, which by their impact on Japanese morale were expected to shorten the war. So, by the Non-explanation Test, the civilian deaths were an intended means to the good consequences of shortening the war.

Just war theory has been challenged in various ways. Three of the most important are a conventionalist challenge to just means, a collectivist challenge to just means, and a feminist objection to just cause and just means.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Regards

Constantine,

This kind of intellectual considerations are trying to reduce these kind of situations to a logical game where only a few choices can be made and whose consequences can be estimated while any complex situations cannot be dealt with intellectually but instintively.  The simple example of a person playing a fast paste sport has to take critical decisions very quickly and a few people, the champions, do it systematically in a way that no logical intellectual analysis could comprehend.  It is done through imagination.  The choices are not given to the agent but created by the agent imagination and this imagination capacity is build up through the agent life and will work to high level of creativity if it is oriented toward humanity's good. We all have this capacity but it has to be called for by our love of humanity.  It should not be extinghish in children by exposing them to intellectual training prior to sufficient imagination training.  The imagination should lead the way and the intellect just ordered the possibilities emerging from the  poetic imagination when it seeks answers for the good the the creation of humanity, which is calling his creator. 

There was not two choices but many possible ones and this presentention of this affair as simple a choice between two possibilities is not true.   The truth cannot be seen by the intellect that is blind without imagination.  Such analysis is totally absolutly vacuus of any trace of imagination. A true analysis of such historical situation need one to though many scholarly investigations able to return to this time and look at it from all the different actor eyes and to gather enough material where one feel able to see through the agent's viewpoint and then really re-imagine what that actor forseen and what could have been forseen from other viewpoints.   

''According to Vico, the minds of the young should not be exposed to

philosophical criticism until their “natural inclination to the arts in which imagination and memory (or a combination of both)95” had been developed. To educate adolescents in philosophy before they had been grounded in the common sense faculties of imagination and memory is to engender in them a sense of oddity and arrogance that manifests itself in adulthood and leaves them unfit for the practice of eloquence.''

http://www.philosophypathways.com/fellows/fahey.pdf

Giambattista Vico on Language and Education

Tony Fahey

Louis,

you mention... 

of course it is so when the debate is screened thru philosophy but certainly not so when you hold a hot potato in your hand ,i am referring to circa (1000000++) causalities at stake if the issue was tackled with conventional weapons.

Thanks for Giambattista Vico Tony Fahey did a fine job i thoroughly enjoyed..

Keep the colours flying

Constantine.

''Using the metaphor that society is the stage on which manners are shown, he sets up a relationship between literature and society.  However, Emerson says that it is not theater but novels that offer knowledge of these manners.  He develops a rather subtle thought that Musil took to heart, especially the idea that a function of novels is to offer moral knowledge.  For Emerson the manners depicted in novels are forms of ethics, and these ethics are invented by genius or love; they are not and cannot be legislated by law.''

https://books.google.ca/books?id=e7QdTuwWlVgC&pg=PA336&lpg=PA336&dq=robert+musil+ernst+mach&source=bl&ots=kuvv9HXrxx&sig=irfid18Ypy6SH53h_5lCDigPoCY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl6Oy_0YXKAhUP42MKHcU0A-EQ6AEIMTAF#v=onepage&q=robert%20musil%20ernst%20mach&f=false

Happy new years.

Dear Louis,

thank you for your message and for the Reference. I reciprocate your wishes for 2016.

Gianrocco

Dear Gianrocco

Some  scholars (interpreters) rest content with understanding  Socratic activity to be directed toward self-knowledge in some vague and commonsensical  manner that is they manipulate the concept of self-knowledge to the point  of unrecognizability. That is to say Self knowledge in the context of Socratic “elenchus” is rarely taken to be the knowledge of the self.

Scholars have been largely uninterested in pursuing the most direct path that is whatever the ”knowledge” aimed or affected by  Socratic conversation it turns out be in a sense reflexive it is above all of one’s sense one’s own character, tendencies , thoughts, and, beliefs

In his Metaphysics Aristotle summarizes the Socratic contribution to the search for wisdom as follows:

(MET.XIII.1078b17-23b)

I think that is a turn of ontological questioning in my reading.

Regards.     

According to Pierre Hadot who considers ancient Greek philosophy as a Bios, a way of life and it was with Socrates that ancient philosophy became that and distinguished itself from its ancient precedents: the rhetorical education of the sophists, the discourses of the pre-Socratic physikoi and historians, the sayings and lives of the seven sages, and the aristocratic concern with the paideia, or upbringing, of young men .

"The real problem [for Socrates]  is therefore not the problem of knowing this or that’’

 The content of Socratic knowledge is thus essentially 'the absolute value of moral intent,' and the certainty provided by the choice of this value’’,

  "there is [for Socrates] only one good and one value: the will to do good",

"When Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, … he meant knowledge which chooses and wants the good--in other words, an inner disposition in which thought, will, and desire are one."

in Hadot’s Socrates, care for the self and care for others coincided with Socrates’ sense of what Hadot calls “the absolute value of moral intent: a philosophical commitment embodied in Socrates’ dialogical calling, “to try to persuade all of you to concern yourself less about what he has than about what he is . . .” 

We can see that the Hadot’s Socrates is Jesus-like but in the Greek way.