Female Speaker: What's is the contemporary method that you like?
Male Speaker: Well, I think the two most obvious contemporary methods in this country are legalism, and that's not hard to understand since we are -- I don't know if you watch any of the TV shows with the lawyers.
Female Speaker: That is the core line runner, I think this society loves legal.
Male Speaker: Yeah and one of the things you hear the judge always saying and you notice, is the law is the law. Yeah and that's exactly what happens at the society. Many of the people in the Christian churches in the society are legalist. They are not Christians and at least as far as I am concerned, and they are legalist because of the culture. The culture influences that religion, it impacts it. And I remember driving through a place called Cadott, Wisconsin; Cadott is called that way because it's a just a dot on map.
And I was looking for home because I was teaching in a college nearby. And I came to a Stop sign. Now you got to get the picture of Cadott, Wisconsin. You can shoot and drive any speed and that hurt anybody. And I came to a Stop sign and I saw for sale sign. So I once made a right turn. I didn't come to a complete stop. Out of nowhere comes this policeman. Sunday afternoon, in Dornell and Cadott, Wisconsin and he said, you just went through the Stop sign. I said, no, I didn't go through it. He said you didn't come to a full stop.
And so that's infiltrated in a lot of the thinking of people in this society. Whatever the law is, it's what you can do and whatever the law isn't, you can't do. So they distinguish legal from moral appropriately enough, but then they don't feel obliged to the moral. They only feel obliged to the legal, and that's a pathetic thing. That's pathetic. And we'll talk about that. I want to talk about the limits of law later.
Female Speaker: But what is the one that you like? Obviously legal is not what you like.
Male Speaker: No, that's not, it's like a fatigue. The one I like the best is called the consequentialism. A consequentialism is a person who looks at their behavior, takes the kind of the fact that they have a social human nature, and then says what would I do to bring about the best outcome for my social human nature and that undergoes certain modifications and one is called the proportionalism and that is sometimes in the moral choices and this is very true in the medical profession.
You don't have a choice in the good in a bad outcome. You have a choice between a bad outcome and a worst outcome. And so proportionalism says, choose the lesser of two evils. Sure that you do the best you can, given the circumstances that you are in, and live with those limits, and that's very faithful for Aristotle. Aristotle says every discipline undergoes a logical change because not every discipline gives you the same kind of certitude.
You can't get the certitude in ethics which you gave in mathematics. You know if you can get the certitude -- I mean, if you met one, you met them all. But if you try to decide would you get married to you will hung up the aisle with a certain amount of risk and uncertainty. And that's all that impractical decisions, moral decisions allow. Certain amount of risks, certain amount of uncertainty, and we should probably play these things moral but they are part and parcel of any moral decision. There is no absolute clarity in moral decision.
Female Speaker: So the consequentialist try to determine what the consequences of the decision will be with the best of their ability, and they try and think of their actions in the nature of their socialist and choose the behavior that fits them like a melancholic wouldn't try and do something that's more natural to sanguine, they would respect their nature, and try and pick an action that suits them with the consequences that result in meta decision of their value.
Male Speaker: Yeah and the best social outcome.
Female Speaker: And the value would be to do it virtually. Very interesting, very interesting. So there is three real things we bring to it. We bring our social nature which includes our temperament, our genetics, and everything else, so the more we know about ourselves the better. We bring our methodology which is our style of thinking to a decision, and if we are legalist, that limits the range of options for us. So we have to stick right within that guideline.
Male Speaker: Yeah that's what happens with these three things. Sometimes one will override the other two. Somebody will have the law and they'll keep the law regardless of what human nature they are dealing with. I mean there are people who want to put nine years old in the electrical chair. Even though they wouldn't trust the nine year old to make a decision for them on anything.
Female Speaker: So we can say nine year old did something that they think more, and say electric chair and that's the law.
Male Speaker: That's the law, boom.
Female Speaker: They wonder with the consequentialism. They are saying that's reasonable.
Male speaker: And they won't take the kind of the human nature that's underdeveloped. So sometimes one of these will in somebody's mind override the other and just take completely over. When they do that, I think that's a serious error and you are going to make some big mistakes with that kind of behavior.
Female Speaker: Let me just give you an example of something that's going out in our society today, and see how these three come into play. And there is lot of talk about being drinking on our college campuses. So here you are on a Friday or Saturday night and you are going out and you are subscribed to the binge drinking environment, you like that and so you are getting ready, and you are using your human nature and you think that your human nature is well served by getting us terribly drunk.
You are using your methodology of consequentialism that you are going to go to this party and the consequences is that you are going to get drunk. And you are using your value that you want to be accepted by your peer group and your friends and you are going to participate in this event. So they used all -- they brought all three elements to this decision, and they went through with it. What happened?
Male Speaker: All three were wrong. First of all they had a bad value. The value isn't to be accepted by your peer group. The value is to fulfill your nature in a good social way. You are not going to be happy just because somebody else down the hall likes you. Because somebody down the hall might not like you tomorrow for something else. So you don't live for human respect. If you do, you are dead duck, and you might be a politician but you are not going to happy. And so that's the first mistake they made. Bad values, they are bad definition of human nature. Human nature is not fulfilled by binge drinking. When you are out of your mind, you are not fulfilling your nature. Your nature is rational.
Female Speaker: So they have a misunderstanding of the nature's law.
Male Speaker: Misunderstanding the nature, they have a bad value. And then, the consequences are obviously going to be somewhat disastrous because even if they were never curious, they are going to have a bad headache the next day. And so it's a bad consequentialism.
Female Speaker: So you say these three will come in to light, and if you don't have them sorted out correctly, you are on the path to bad decision.
Male Speaker: Exactly.
Female Speaker: Okay.
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