Moral Vigilantism

[quote=darthbarracuda]I am under the impression that the only time it is morally acceptable to act is when such behavior is deemed to be morally acceptable.

Otherwise, to be a moral vigilante means to assume that your opinion has more worth than the opinions of others before it has been established by democratic vote or social meme.[/quote]

So a thing is made moral by democratic fiat? Which means that in a racist, sexist, homophobic society racism, sexism, and homophobia are morally acceptable?

Does this then mean that "morally acceptable" just means "socially acceptable"?

Reply to Michael Morals can change if the meme is spread thoroughly enough. Slavery used to be seen as morally neutral, now it is seen as immoral through the demonstrations of millions.

Oh, you aren't going to start up with this Landru Guide us meme business too, are you?

Sometimes you have to violate societies rules in order to be moral. Assassinate Hitler. Hide Jews. Help slaves escape. Drink from forbidden water fountains, eat at forbidden lunch counters. Conduct the forbidden peace march. Smash saloons (quite literally). Sometime complying with social rules is eminently immoral.

Morality is social -- you can't get "pure, absolute, perfect morality" from the great beyond. You have to find it where you are. Then, apply it. It is usually built around the golden rule. If it isn't, be suspicious.

What BC said.

Quoting darthbarracuda

Morals can change if the meme is spread thoroughly enough. Slavery used to be seen as morally neutral, now it is seen as immoral through the demonstrations of millions.

Social morals do not morality make. Not any morality worth moralizing about anyhow.

I'm of the opinion that one ought to obey laws with a threshold of reprehensibility (i.e., threat to safety and survival), at which point one ought to become a refugee. Disobedience of a specific law judged by the individual to be immoral is to act, to a degree, as a freeloader on that society. Furthermore, morality, unlike law, is not the sort of thing that can be maintained by force. To be immoral is to act on immoral principles, and is not measured by the outcome. The law is concerned with outcomes with some thought given to principles, but primarily the purpose of law is to condition behaviour. Morality conditions the character of the agent and the aim of morality is virtuous character.

Reply to Bitter Crank I'm not sure I agree with what you said. Taking morality into one's hands, being a moral vigilante, is sometimes seen as reprehensible behavior. A far-right wingnut blowing up an abortion clinic is seen by everyone else as immoral terrorism, and yet to them, it is being a moral vigilante.

I think that being a moral vigilante should be considered to be alright so long as your actions do not leave any permanent, irreversible outcomes. Like Bertrand Russell said, never die over something you believe in, because you might be wrong. Blowing up an abortion clinic is taking things too far, because it is clearly irreversible. Assassinating Hitler might be seen by some to be a good thing, but to some strict Kantians or Buddhists, murder is wrong no matter what. So the line between acceptable vigilantism and unacceptable terrorism is that the former can be reversed, usually without much difficulty, while the latter is the product of a god-head who thinks they can know what is best for everyone else.

Reply to darthbarracuda As I said, one's morality should be centered on the Golden Rule, and if it isn't, be suspicious.

There just isn't any formula that will keep one out of moral hot water under any and all circumstances. So, therefore, one has to do the best one can.

For the Right To Life Movement to endorse blowing up abortion clinics would be morally inconsistent, because it might result in the loss of life. One's willingness to violate the common morality has to be "stress tested" first -- you need to really examine the potential action very carefully. Those who decided to make an attempt on Hitler's life were not Right To Lifers and they weren't pacifists. They acted because Hitler had set the German nation on a course which might (and did) lead to its utter subjugation at the end of WWII, and the deaths of many, many people -- including Germans.

It was consistent for the assassins to carry out their plan.

It was consistent for civil rights demonstrators to perform sit ins, bus boycotts, marches, and so on -- even though these violated laws, because they were consistent with their efforts to obtain equality. The demonstrators were an aggrieved class who had suffered under segregation, Jim Crow, and a rule of terror -- and they wanted what the Constitution guaranteed them.

Yes, the civil rights movement disrupted businesses, it disrupted lives, messed up lifestyles, cost money, and so on -- but these losses were incurred by those who refused to grant equal treatment under the law.

Runaway slaves were runaway property, and property is sort of sacred to many people. Yes the abolition movement intended to deprive people of their rightful wealth and income. Rightful wealth? They had decided that it wasn't rightful to practice slavery, and that the practice of slavery must cease. Their actions were consistent. They helped slaves escape, they did not kill slave owners, their wives, or their children.

Hitler and Company were consistent too, of course. But Hitler scorned principles such as the Golden Rule as weak, feminine, and Jewish. Morality, as we know it, was a social disease for Hitler. He opposed Jews in every conceivable way, including a pretty much successful plan to liquidate every Jew he could get his ands on.

We might ask ourselves, "If we had had nuclear weapons in 1942, would it have been moral for us to carpet bomb Japan and Germany with Atomic weapons?" After all, the Jews wouldn't have been put in Gas Chambers then.

No it would not have been moral. Destroying the people of Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Hungary, and other countries that were and would be under Hitler's sway, would also have destroyed most of the Jews in those countries, since they were fairly mixed in together. We can't save the Jews by killing them first.

Reply to Bitter Crank The Golden Rule may be well-used in some, if not most, scenarios, especially in a post-hoc manner.

But what about more extreme situations, such as vigilantism regarding the re-distribution of wealth? Suppose a radical communist has, in her heart, the belief that inequality of wealth is blatantly immoral, despite her living in a capitalistic society. Every day she sees disgusting inequality, immorality to be sure. She sees society as an immoral cesspool that requires her immediate intervention. She therefore goes on a spree of armed burglaries into the homes of the very wealthy, Wall Street, and conspires with underground mafia leaders to bring down the corporations of CEOs. She hacks into the databases of the Swiss banks and steals all of the digitized money stored within. She assassinates leaders of the capitalistic regimes, all because they are oppressing the proletariat. She does all of this our of her own compassion towards the common, working man.

Or perhaps there is an efilist, who believes that it is not only her obligation but her right to destroy the world and end the suffering of the countless suffering animals that exist on planet Earth. She dreams of the day that she can press the red button and instantaneously end all life...for the good of all life! Yes, she is doing is not because she hates life, but because she hates the suffering that life inevitably brings about! She genuinely believes that abstaining from pressing a button is to be immoral, to not follow the Golden Rule.

Or maybe there is a xenophobic Luddite, who believes that human expansion into the cosmos is the wrong thing to do, and that we will inevitably screw up other civilizations by colonizing their worlds. She follows the Golden Rule when she plants explosives on the rockets aimed at Mars. In her thought process, she thinks that if she was a Martian, she wouldn't want people intruding into her life, and so therefore she think it is perfectly acceptable behavior to violently stop this incursion.

What I am suggesting is that without the consent of the majority, there is no justification for participating in irreversible moral vigilantism, for you may be wrong in your appropriation of your ethical intuitions. Perhaps it is even the case that there is no justification for participating in irreversible moral vigilantism if this in any way, shape, or form harms another individual without their consent.

I don't think that thinking about this in absolutist, abstract and context-free terms (vigilante vs. conformist) is the right way to think about it. One can think of exceptions to both. I see that your stance on moral vigilantism isn't absolutist in a simplistic sense, given that you set a condition excluding any action that leaves any permanent, irreversible outcomes. However, I don't think that that's sufficient grounds for making it "alright". Bad is bad, and not alright, whether temporary and reversible or otherwise. Almost everything is temporary in the grand scheme of things, so that sort of reasoning could be used to justify nihilism of the worst kind. Furthermore, this statement of yours, made in a later post, about moral vigilantism seems to contradict what you said about moral vigilantism in your opening post, such as that moral vigilantism is morally impermissible because of a possible difference of judgement between the individual and the rest of society. So, it's alright because it does no permanent damage, but it's not alright because the judgement of the individual doesn't take precedence over that of society as a whole? It's both alright and not alright?

Quoting darthbarracuda

What I am suggesting is that without the consent of the majority, there is no justification for participating in irreversible moral vigilantism, for you may be wrong in your appropriation of your ethical intuitions.

It's justified if there's good enough reason to act, and good enough reason doesn't require the consent of the majority. The consent is subsequent to there being just cause. And the majority are far from infallible and can also be wrong, so this mob rule could hinder or prevent justice.

Quoting Sapientia

However, I don't think that that's sufficient grounds for making it "alright". Bad is bad, and not alright, whether temporary and reversible or otherwise.

Agreed. I am not arguing that the majority's belief is the morality, rather, that the majority's belief allows permanent action based upon these beliefs. My argument is only concerned with executing the consequences of your moral view.

Quoting Sapientia

It's justified if there's good enough reason to act, and good enough reason doesn't require the consent of the majority. The consent is subsequent to there being just cause. And the majority are far from infallible and can also be wrong, so this mob rule could hinder or prevent justice.

It's a good enough reason to act so long as you happen to agree with the moral vigilante. A terrorist acting upon her moral vigilantism would probably not be seen as having a good enough reason to do so in our eyes, despite her passionate conviction that she does.

I am under the impression that the only time it is morally acceptable to act is when such behavior is deemed to be morally acceptable.

This statement is critical. Right off the bat it isn't clear what moral standards you're referring to. Are you simply stating that according to any given moral theory, it is morally acceptable to X when X is a morally acceptable action according to said moral theory?

That would be tautologous and uncontroversial. However, your following statements lead me to believe you're sneaking in this proposition under the guise of a tautology: According to any given moral theory, the only time it is morally acceptable to X when such behaviour is deemed morally acceptable by a particular set of people

Note that while the first statement is entirely uncontroversial because of its tautologous nature, the second requires justification to hold. Your further statements lead me to believe it is this second proposition you are attempting to use here such as in this case:

Blowing up an abortion clinic in protest of abortion is immoral because it violates the code of morality that a society has in place.

This assumes that the right thing to do is in fact to abide by the code of morality society has in place, regardless of any objective moral truths that may exist. While this can be justified by some moral theories, it still requires justification, and it is far from clear that all moral theories would produce this conclusion.

Consider this scenario:
There is only one objectively true moral theory, and you are its only adherent, and you know it to be true. According to this moral theory, you are morally required to blow up an abortion clinic.

By definition, the right thing to do in this instance would in fact be to blow up the abortion clinic.

Now, we might feel that it is wrong, and socially acceptable practice may be to refrain from blowing up the abortion clinic; but the intellectually honest response to this situation would not be to insist that blowing up the abortion clinic is the wrong thing to do. We could instead say that while the right thing to do is to blow up the clinic, in order to remain a functional member of society and to live a happier life, one should not blow up the clinic.

But what if, in your gut, you felt that something ought to be done and yet this was not accepted by society? Should you become a moral vigilante?

I would say, no, you are not morally permitted to be a moral vigilante because your opinion of what is moral may differ from the opinions of everyone else in the society. If you don't like the morality of the society you live in, then either gtfo or peacefully demonstrate to try to change the accepted morality.

Otherwise, to be a moral vigilante means to assume that your opinion has more worth than the opinions of others before it has been established by democratic vote or social meme.

This section on the other hand is positing that moral feelings and beliefs are simply opinions. In other words, it is denying that individuals are (at least at present) incapable of knowing an objectively true moral theory. However, this does not address the argument I have made above. I concede that for the vast majority of people, acting on what feels to be moral or what they believe to be moral would likely not be the right thing to do. This would depend on a host of other factors, but the most important one would be that they likely do not have knowledge of the objectively true moral theory.

In summary, these are the important points I want to convey:
1) The introductory lines are misleading, implying that what is said follows from the first interpretation, rather than the second
2) If one adopts the more robust first interpretation, what follows is that in the extreme case where the objectively true moral content is diametrically opposed to what the vast majority of people believe to be the moral content, the morally right action remains dictated by the objectively true moral content and not by what society believes to be the moral content.