cbo@utai.UUCP (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) (10/11/84)
| From: faustus@ucbcad.UUCP | ... Nuclear war, however, is not | a moral issue, because whether somebody wants to destroy the human | race is not a relativistic thing. It is something that no sane person | would want to do, and thus is beyond the moral level, it is a basic fact | of human psychology. Calling it a moral issue just confuses it with | the Moral Majority and what they call "moral" issues. I cannot buy that judgements of sanity are "basic facts" of human psychology. Such judgements are often loaded with notions of what kind of behavior is "appropriate". (For example, for the inappropriate behavior of "talking too fast", "digressing a lot", and "over intellectualising", I have been diagnosed by a (bona fide PhD MD) psychiatrist as a schizophrenic requiring "corrective medication"). Why wouldn't a sane person want to destroy the human race? How do you know he or she could not have good reasons? Either moral reasons, or reasons based on self interest? I can think of both kinds, easily. -- Calvin Bruce Ostrum, University of Toronto Department of Computer Science uucp: { utzoo linus ihnp4 floyd allegra uw-beaver ubc-vision cornell watmath hcr decwrl }!utcsrgv!utai!cbo