It's unethical
...as they don't actually have the money to lend.

If they could only lend out money they had in reserve, they wouldn't be quite as free with it and that would ensure that they only lend it to people who can pay it back (for the most part) and then we don't end up with a society where one in four people are paying for the basic nessecities of life (utility bills, water, heat, food etc...) on a credit card, which can only, in turn, ensure that they carry on doing more of the same.

Everyone in society has a moral obligation for the upkeep of that society, and that includes banks. Yes, they are there to make a profit, and profit they can do, without slamming people into the floor at the cost of the whole of our society.

/rant.
(dchurch bah, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 10:01, 1 reply)

Hmmm
I've not studied economics since I was an undergrad, but I'm sure that the relationship between capital and lending isn't as straightforward as you suggest, and that it needn't be.

Everyone in society has a moral obligation for the upkeep of that society.

Really? Really?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 10:55, closed)

Yes.
Fractional reserve banking is the problem - simply, they can lend money they don't have. It's even written in law that they can actually lend over and above by a certain % of their wealth (liquid and assets).

Really? Really?

Of course they do, otherwise you end up with this mess we have at the moment, where responsibility is taken from the individual and the state is relied on to sort all ills.

If someone behaves amorally, then it's the fault of the state - apparently; if the state were to butt out and stop telling everyone things like 'Christmas tree baubles may break and hurt you', then people will eventually re-learn to act with a moral concience, not least because the state will no longer be held responsible for the actions of the individual.
(dchurch bah, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 11:13, closed)

I ask this as a genuine question:
what motivation is there for me to have a moral conscience? I fully get the idea that it would all be very nice, co-operative and reciprocal if we all did have some kind of moral obligation to some hazily-defined 'society', but since this is not innate, what underpins the moral duty you describe?
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 11:38, closed)

What is the motivation to be good?
Isn't that a bit of a sociopathic question? (Not saying you are a sociopath, just that I'm skipping the answer that most people would take as read)

But for ignoring a sense of right and wrong there is still the carrot and stick:- (Appear to) behave well and generally people will have a higher opinion of you and life will be easier. Behave badly (and get caught) and there is likely to be punishment.

If it works this way most of the time then society forms ... erm, the behavioural equivalent of an evolutionarily stable system, which I can't remember the term for. So the strategy "I'll be quite nice" will generally give a better outcome than "I'll mug grannies".

So - the reason "a society protects itself" is sufficient reason to behave well. There are others.
(teebie jeebie, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 12:15, closed)

Not necessarily.
One might argue that a degree of private vice is a necessary component of public good. (Think of the Borgias.)

You're also running together goodness and rightness, and making a claim about getting caught - which has nothing to do with the moral question.

EDIT: Your last sentence doesn't make any sense at all.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 12:24, closed)

See where I say "ignoring a sense of right and wrong"
...That's me saying "I think saying you should behave morally can be taking as read. If you don't then there are other reasons to do such. Here's a statistical one".

(Nature has several examples where an organism benefits from altruism. Because under some circumstances the creatures displaying altruistic behaviour have done better than those that didn't.)

I've used goodness and rightness to mean the same thing because, in the context I used them, they do.
(teebie jeebie, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 12:57, closed)

Humptyism.
It's clear to anyone who's used the words that there's a huge difference between them. You can't be a Humpty Dumpty and ignore that.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 13:25, closed)

What do you mean by "moral" here?
I'm not sure that a moral conscience is something that needs motivation. It's incomprehensible that someone should act in a way that they think neither right, good, nor justified. It simply doesn't make sense.

On this basis, I think we're entitled - forced - to think that everyone's actions are based on an account of the good. Of course, some people might misidentify the good, or misatribute goodness to their means of achieving it. But that means we're talking about a false moral belief - motivation has dropped out of the account.

"Moral" doesn't mean nice, cooperative or reciprocal. Why should it?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 12:21, closed)

I see your point,
if your point is that whatever I chose, I'm choosing it on the basis that I consider it moral, whether it is widely accepted as 'good' or not.

So, bearing in mind that I am not a philosopher and I don't even play one on the Internet - er, what's the point of having a moral obligation if there's no definition of morals?

No, I don't get it. I don't see how how you can make the assumption that everyone acts in a way that is right, good or justified. Sure, they can act in a way that they feel is right, good and justified, but that might conflict with everyone else's ideas of what is right, good or justified, therefore if you can't establish a fundamental definition of what is morally acceptable and what is not, why bother talking about morals at all?

I'm a bit RIS. We don't get to do this sort of shit in computer science.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 12:31, closed)

Well...
The fact that noone can agree on the right thing isn't going to demonstrate that there's not a right answer to be had in principle: "can't agree" in this sense simply means that there's an ongoing dispute, not that its irresolvable. Indeed, if everyone did agree, they might still be wrong - unless you think that morality is simply a matter of consensus. (I don't.)

So how would we resolve the debate? Well, in this case, there'd be a second-level argument - some people might look to the outcomes and hope to be able to say that the world is objectively better or worse for this or that action, or for this or that kind of action (and there's a third-level debate for you...). Others might think that outcomes are irrelevant, and that some things are just right or wrong.

What I meant by my claim about people's actions is pretty much as you say. Imagine the opposite: it doesn't make sense. Not just would we have to imagine someone acting wrongly, but someone acting because it's wrong or admittedly not worth doing. (A terrorist planting a bomb might think his action is wrong, and do it with regret, but think that it will be worth it in the long run. In this case, the dispute is about his beliefs concerning justification. Still, that he thinks his action is justified seems indisputable.)

The point is, I suppose, that talking about this stuff is indicative of a belief that there is an aswer to be had. Were we to abandon that belief, then we'd also have to relinquish a lot else besides - the very idea that people act for a scrutable reason would seem to be in danger. That seems like a very high price to pay.

There are problems with my account - it's hard to see how Hitler could have misidentified the good so radically, for example. But this is a problem that I share with everyone else and every other account, so it doesn't bother me all that much.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 12:41, closed)

Hang on a tick...
Are you talking about amorality, or immorality? That'll make a difference.

Now, you've moved from a claim about the responsibilities of individuals - on which more anon - to a claim about one about the relationship between the state and the individual. I'm not sure you can run the two together like that. It's not clear why your first claim leads to your second.

Now, about those responsibilities. There's a problem of scaling down - even if we think that social life is a good thing, it doesn't follow from that that the responsibility for its upkeep is anything that falls on any one of us. The most it would seem to be possible to say is that we have an obligation not to set out to fuck things up - but that's pretty trivial. Indifference, in this account, is not all that blameworthy.

Note, too, that "society" is a horribly vague word...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 12:18, closed)

Both, really.
With power, any power - be it the power an average person has to be able to put food on the family table, or the power of a bank to break a whole economy, comes with resposibility.

I have the responsibilty to make sure my kids don't eat crap food and end up with heart attacks etc...

Banks have the responsibility to make sure they don't break a whole economy and pushing people into life changing debt on the way.

Healthy profits can be made without going about it the way they have.
(dchurch bah, Tue 23 Dec 2008, 16:49, closed)

Ahhh... the power/ responsibility saw.
I don't see it. Power means you can discharge responsibilities more easily, but I don't see how it generates them. So we still have to establish what a person's (or organisations's) responsibilities are. (We'd have to do that anyway...)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 9:42, closed)

If
we are talking moral responsibility then normative ethics must apply.

These are defined (by who? Can't remember) as: justice, beneficence anhd fidelity if my memory serves me correctly.

Even if morals are defined as utilitarianism (as is the case with some sociologists) then what we have here is anti-utilitarianism being practiced by the banks on a very large scale, and again, thus, immoral and unethical.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:35, closed)

Oh, dear.
1. Agreeing that we're trying to figure out what the relavent norms are won't tell us anything about the content of those norms. That's what seems to be at issue here, though.
2. Spouting someone's principles isn't going to establish that those principles get things right, or that the person you're citing is correct. Moreover, "justice" can have any number of different and incompatible interpretations. Beneficence seems not to be a criterion of minimal decency (see my post above from a minute ago). Fidelity seems irrelevant.
3. Utilitarianism is not opposed to the use of principles. Adherence to principles presupposes a substantive account of morality that might be utilitarian or might be non-utilitarian. There's an argument to be had here - that's what normative ethics is, at least partly, about. (I take "normative ethics" to be distinct from metaethics, which deals with values fit into the world, and applied ethics, which is about the application of principles. Normative ethics is about what those principles ought to be.)
4. I don't see what utilitarianism has to do with sociology, any more than it has anything to do with chemistry. (Except that chemistry says interesting things...)
5. Being non-utilitarain is not the same as being immoral. I'm anti-utilitarian by instinct - for the record, I'm somewhere between Aristotle and Kant. I think that utilitarianism gets morality wrong. But, whatever one thinks along these lines, there's an argument to be had, and a position to defend. A normative ethical claim has no substance: it's no more moral or immoral than is a claim in the natural sciences.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:53, closed)

I'm not
sure the 'oh dear' is in order.

You continually ask what morals are and where they are defined. I gave you an answer as to where people have attempted to define morals and ethics.

You, in turn have not given me any reason to doubt their reasoning, but at least I have attempted to give you a definitive answer.

Fidelity may well be irrelevent in this arguement, however, I'm pretty sure that the three as defined by whomever it was, were not mutually exclusive.

In short, having morals IS the difference between right and wrong, and what that society as a whole believes right and wrong to be.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:01, closed)

But...
An attempt to define a moral code isn't the same as doing so successfully. The principles you've outlined here strike me as woefully inadequate. There doesn't seem to be any reasoning to doubt.

And you're just wrong about societal beliefs being the final word on matters of right and wrong, as I pointed out above. There's no way at all that that claim could be correct.


Right. I'm going home. My freelance consultancy fee is about £170 an hour, by the way. I might set up a PayPal account on the way out...

:)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:06, closed)

Ahh
like most consultants - charge a hefty price for providing big words and very little sustance.

;-)
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:10, closed)

*splutters*
I'm happy to talk substance once the ground as been cleared.

I'm still trying to get rid of the rubble.


And I don't get much freelance work. :(
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:14, closed)

Ha
you know I'm only jesting, right?

;-)
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:26, closed)