Re: Contrary to Morality - What is that?

On 10/11/05, Agenbroad, James (Civ,ARL/CISD) <jagenbro[_at_]arl.army.mil> wrote:

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This raises a question: Which morality do we use as the basis for determining the morality of an action? Certainly, we don't want to use Taliban's morality as guideline for deciding how using chess can be contrary to morality (for those who do not know Taliban's morality, it is simply illegal to play chess, no exception period).

Contrary to morality has to be very offensive that no morality would support it. An example that I thought I saw somewhere in movie but could not recall the details is using chess to determine the fate of kidnapped kid. If police loses the chess game, the kidnapper will simply end the life of the kidnapped kid. If police wins the chess game, the kidnapped kid will be freed. This is kind of use that is very offensive to anyone's morality. (The list at http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/7378/movies.htm contains movies that used chess; it could be some of them contain good examples of how playing chess can be contrary to morality.)

Back to your example of cheating in a chess tournament, cheating obviously is not honorable and does not do anything good to the cheater's reputation. But, is it extremely evil that it is contrary to morality? I don't think so. Bad, yes. Deadlier than any of the 7 deadly sins, probably not.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<josephpietrojeungriolo[_at_]gmail.com>
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

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Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Tue Oct 18 2005 - 01:40:01 GMT