RE: Re: Contrary to Morality - What is that?

From: Agenbroad, James \(Civ,ARL/CISD\) <jagenbro[_at_]arl.army.mil>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:00:01 -0400

One can almost always construct a fanciful "life hangs in the balance, terrorists will blow up a school" hypothetical case. Outside of drug patents, IP cases rarely turn on them though. I do however take your point that questions that depend on uncodified "absolute value" are best in philosophy class and out of court, since they're pretty squishy. The French do seem to have a more expansive view of the state's role in promoting a unified culture and civil society (and therefore a more unified morality) than we in the US do.

-----Original Message-----
From: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property [mailto:CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org] On Behalf Of Joseph Pietro Riolo Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 5:40 PM
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: Contrary to Morality - What is that?

On 10/11/05, Agenbroad, James (Civ,ARL/CISD) <jagenbro[_at_]arl.army.mil> wrote:
>
> Of course, using it to cheat in a chess tournament WOULD be contrary
to
> morality.

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>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 4,824

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.

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