Utilitarianism, which I defined rather than lectured about, is crucial to this despite what you may say. You base the argument for foreknowledge giving moral exemption on the assumption that since the immoral action will result in greater good, it is in fact moral. This is again a definition of utilitarianism.<br>
<br>Since we've come to silly examples, let me give you one as well then, it's so time-worn it's practically polished. You're a surgeon who can harvest the organs of a single worthless hobo to save the lives of great men, and you know this will work (you're a GOOD surgeon). Is your doing this moral? Like a fancy Hierogrammate, you have foresight in this one case, and killing this hobo will in fact produce greater good.<br>
<br>Does your foreknowledge give you the moral justification for murder?<br><br>A utilitarian, incidentally, would agree. This is why utilitarianism matters.<br><br>Paul<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 2:46 PM, b sharp <<a href="mailto:bsharporflat@hotmail.com">bsharporflat@hotmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>
Paul B I do think you are missing numerous hints that the Hiero-types are (as mentioned in my<br>
previous post) more omniscient and closer to the Increate in purpose than humans (and you<br>
shouldn't have tried to weaken my position by adding your own thought about power creating<br>
moral superiority ;-), I mentioned knowledge and foresight only).<br>
<br>
In more general terms, it seems to me you are stubbornly clinging to a fallacy: that you are the<br>
equal in ability to make moral judgements to omniscient beings who can directly observe the future.<br>
You are not their equal. You and all of us other humans can only guess what the consequence of an<br>
action will be and make decisions based on judgement of statistical liklihood. I hope you are not trying<br>
to argue that a moral judgement can be made completely independent from the consequences of actions<br>
(making your moral framework very Beavisian in that cool stuff rocks and bogus stuff sucks).<br>
<br>
A room full of 4 year olds might get together and decide they should be provided with loaded automatic<br>
weapons to scare away monsters. A philosopher child among them might argue that adults are bigger<br>
but possess no particular features that make them superior moral agents and the right thing to do would<br>
be to provide them with the monster protections they need. Paul, in the presence of God or Tzadkiel you<br>
are this child. As a human being, you (and I) just don't know enough to judge the actions of God and<br>
angels. And I suspect you won't be getting your guns (unless perhaps you share your daycare with baby<br>
Adolph? j/k j/k).<br>
<br>
You might see the merit of this view in which an absolute certainty about the future is a tool which confers<br>
moral superiority or perhaps not (but please no more lectures about utilitarianism which is a merely human<br>
principle based on statistical liklihood of outcome.<br>
<br>
But you might argue that you are the equal of any intelligence in making moral judgements about the past<br>
where outcomes are set. If we pretend that reading history is equivalent to directly observing the past it<br>
might seem that when we humans observe the past we can see with certainty the full consequences of an<br>
action.<br>
<br>
However this also is false because, unlike Tzadkiel, we cannot see multiple threads and multiple outcomes<br>
based on many possible choices of action. We can only know what one choice was made, see the outcome<br>
of that choice and only guess whether that outcome would have been better or worse than if other choices<br>
were made. God can see all possible choices and all possible outcomes making Him the perfect moral agent.<br>
Tzadkiel's ability approaches this making him/her far, far more morally advanced than an adult is to a child.<br>
Thus our own moral judgement of Tzadkiel's or God's actions is of negligible importance.<br>
<br>
-bsharp<br>
<br>
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