When should immoral behaviors be illegal?

[PyramidHead]

Clearly, there are cases where something is illegal and immoral for roughly the same reasons. However, there are also behaviors that are immoral but not illegal. It may be said, the consequences of making such actions illegal would be worse than the consequences of performing the action legally. Lying is a straightforward instance of this, as it is legal in the vast majority of scenarios. Is this always true, though? If something is immoral, when do the bad consequences of letting it happen without legal repercussions outweigh the task of enforcing it?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

One can assess such matters on a case by case basis, but as far as I know, as usual there is no known and correct theory that addresses those matters with that level of generality, except perhaps for trivial answers like transparently tautological ones.

 

[Juma]

Lying is a straightforward instance of this, as it is legal in the vast majority of scenarios.

Eh. I would say that lying that really is immoral is pretty much already illegal (fraud, perjury, slander etc)

 

[rousseau]

The wisdom of our collective sub-conscious has largely worked this out already, at least in some places.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Lying is a straightforward instance of this, as it is legal in the vast majority of scenarios.

Eh. I would say that lying that really is immoral is pretty much already illegal (fraud, perjury, slander etc)

There is plenty of immoral lying that is usually legal, like (assuming they're false, they're at least often immoral), "I'm not married", "I don't have a girlfriend [or a boyfriend", "Don't worry, he/she is just a friend", "I swear nothing happened", "I will call you tomorrow", etc., not to mention "I saw the Virgin Mary", "We don't know how, but the blood turns liquid every year. It's a miracle.", or even "I didn't mean that: you're misinterpreting my post", and a very long etc.

I would say that the vast majority of immoral lying that actually takes place not illegal.

 

[Bronzeage]

Now we get into that "what is morality?" question, which has been beaten flat in a couple dozen threads, a month.

The point of morality and moral codes is to define acceptable behavior and what we should do when someone violates the moral code. This is a pretty simple concept when we lived in a small village and everybody was our cousin. As population groups got larger, all kinds of problems arose. The first was that not everybody knew everybody and not everybody had access to all the facts, any more. This is the point where people had to accept government, in whatever form it took. Someone was put in charge of taking care of things that people didn't have the time to do.

Governments of all forms have a common problem. They can't do everything that everybody wants done, so they drop the small stuff and concentrate on what keeps people safe and reasonable public order. Such things as revenge killings and retribution between families or clans cause chaos, so government takes over prosecution for murder and theft. Most people are content to let them take the job.

There was a time on this continent when government prosecuted things such as illicit sex and adultery. They don't do that anymore, even though most people still consider cheating on a spouse to be an immoral act.

As for lying, we had to create a special category of lying, known as perjury, because ordinary lying just wasn't worth the trouble. When it's really important to tell the truth, we make people swear to tell the truth, under penalty of some kind, if they don't. The rest of the time, it's someone else's problem.

 

[fromderinside]

As for lying, we had to create a special category of lying, known as perjury, because ordinary lying just wasn't worth the trouble. When it's really important to tell the truth, we make people swear to tell the truth, under penalty of some kind, if they don't. The rest of the time, it's someone else's problem.

Good presentation of Pinker's 'lumping it' category supporting trust option in the prisoner's dilemma in
The Better Angels of Our Nature".*

* "The Better Angels of Our Nature" https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...Wwecf57wpHk-jjgDg&sig2=ALJn1605LngCNX1PHCMoAg

 

[PyramidHead]

Now we get into that "what is morality?" question, which has been beaten flat in a couple dozen threads, a month.

The point of morality and moral codes is to define acceptable behavior and what we should do when someone violates the moral code. This is a pretty simple concept when we lived in a small village and everybody was our cousin. As population groups got larger, all kinds of problems arose. The first was that not everybody knew everybody and not everybody had access to all the facts, any more. This is the point where people had to accept government, in whatever form it took. Someone was put in charge of taking care of things that people didn't have the time to do.

Governments of all forms have a common problem. They can't do everything that everybody wants done, so they drop the small stuff and concentrate on what keeps people safe and reasonable public order. Such things as revenge killings and retribution between families or clans cause chaos, so government takes over prosecution for murder and theft. Most people are content to let them take the job.

There was a time on this continent when government prosecuted things such as illicit sex and adultery. They don't do that anymore, even though most people still consider cheating on a spouse to be an immoral act.

As for lying, we had to create a special category of lying, known as perjury, because ordinary lying just wasn't worth the trouble. When it's really important to tell the truth, we make people swear to tell the truth, under penalty of some kind, if they don't. The rest of the time, it's someone else's problem.

Good post. It seems to be a matter of logistics, then. It's interesting how different countries approach the issue of lying. We have slander/libel laws, but news and radio personalities can spew forth falsehoods to millions of voters with no consequence. In other countries, I don't know that they get a pass.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I'd say when it causes unnecessary harm to another person. If it doesn't do that, why would you call it either immoral or illegal?

 

[PyramidHead]

I'd say when it causes unnecessary harm to another person. If it doesn't do that, why would you call it either immoral or illegal?

It's not that simple, though, otherwise the Westboro Baptist people wouldn't still be shouting mean things at every funeral. That certainly causes unnecessary harm, but I don't feel like it should be criminally punishable. Same with many cases of lying and adultery.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I'd say when it causes unnecessary harm to another person. If it doesn't do that, why would you call it either immoral or illegal?

It's not that simple, though, otherwise the Westboro Baptist people wouldn't still be shouting mean things at every funeral. That certainly causes unnecessary harm, but I don't feel like it should be criminally punishable. Same with many cases of lying and adultery.

Good point. I'd certainly classify that as immoral, but it doesn't cross the line into illegal.

 

[fromderinside]

It's not that simple, though, otherwise the Westboro Baptist people wouldn't still be shouting mean things at every funeral. That certainly causes unnecessary harm, but I don't feel like it should be criminally punishable. Same with many cases of lying and adultery.

Good point. I'd certainly classify that as immoral, but it doesn't cross the line into illegal.

The notion of harm is important. Thanks for that. What level is harm to be addressed? When and by whom should sanctions for harm be addressed.

I only want to respond to legal sanctions for behavior based on moral behavior codes need be applied.

First, what is unnecessary harm and to whom does that apply. Many things cause unnecessary harm to others. Telling the truth and telling lies may both be harmful in the same situation. Its then we are advised to withhold information by some moralists. All of these may be illegal under some circumstances.

Its in these conditions when I think the lump it principle should apply. That is there will be harm but those who receive the harm should just suck it up and move on. Some laws and some moralists say this is immoral too.

My recommendation that the lump it to unnecessary harm principle of morality needs to refer explicitly to the greater good. For instance, those who are bombarded by Westboro Baptists should just seethe and there should be public officials around to control the venom that may arise on both sides as seems to be the case in most situations.

What is needed is to codify, at some Leviathan level, sanctions against groups who side with groups that bother, unnecessarily, other groups in such situations. The problem will be where that level of group recruiting must stop or be knocked down to maintain order and continued cohesion for which the moral and legal rules are underwritten.

 

[Bronzeage]

Good point. I'd certainly classify that as immoral, but it doesn't cross the line into illegal.

The notion of harm is important. Thanks for that. What level is harm to be addressed? When and by whom should sanctions for harm be addressed.

I only want to respond to legal sanctions for behavior based on moral behavior codes need be applied.

First, what is unnecessary harm and to whom does that apply. Many things cause unnecessary harm to others. Telling the truth and telling lies may both be harmful in the same situation. Its then we are advised to withhold information by some moralists. All of these may be illegal under some circumstances.

Its in these conditions when I think the lump it principle should apply. That is there will be harm but those who receive the harm should just suck it up and move on. Some laws and some moralists say this is immoral too.

My recommendation that the lump it to unnecessary harm principle of morality needs to refer explicitly to the greater good. For instance, those who are bombarded by Westboro Baptists should just seethe and there should be public officials around to control the venom that may arise on both sides as seems to be the case in most situations.

What is needed is to codify, at some Leviathan level, sanctions against groups who side with groups that bother, unnecessarily, other groups in such situations. The problem will be where that level of group recruiting must stop or be knocked down to maintain order and continued cohesion for which the moral and legal rules are underwritten.

Harm or the threat of harm is the only thing to be considered when determining if a crime is committed. Motive, or reasons for the action, are only considered as secondary. This is why we have so many degrees of the crime of murder. A person who is shot and killed in a robbery is just as dead a person hit by a falling piano. The first is consider one of the most heinous forms of murder, while the other is negligence on the part of a piano mover. Punishment is warranted in both cases, but there is a wide difference between the two. In either case, the morality of killing is not really factor.

The critical factor in both cases is the law's responsibility to protect the public from both armed robbers and incompetent piano movers.

 

[Dutch_labrat]

Clearly, there are cases where something is illegal and immoral for roughly the same reasons. However, there are also behaviors that are immoral but not illegal. It may be said, the consequences of making such actions illegal would be worse than the consequences of performing the action legally. Lying is a straightforward instance of this, as it is legal in the vast majority of scenarios. Is this always true, though? If something is immoral, when do the bad consequences of letting it happen without legal repercussions outweigh the task of enforcing it?

Law should not be used to regulate what people ca or cannot do according either religion or ethics. Why should the government have any interest in what people do?

What law should be (but rarely is) is the protection of people, the shield that guards the weak against the strong.

The question is not what kind of behavior should be illegal but who should be protected.

 

[fromderinside]

The notion of harm is important. Thanks for that. What level is harm to be addressed? When and by whom should sanctions for harm be addressed.

I only want to respond to legal sanctions for behavior based on moral behavior codes need be applied.

First, what is unnecessary harm and to whom does that apply. Many things cause unnecessary harm to others. Telling the truth and telling lies may both be harmful in the same situation. Its then we are advised to withhold information by some moralists. All of these may be illegal under some circumstances.

Its in these conditions when I think the lump it principle should apply. That is there will be harm but those who receive the harm should just suck it up and move on. Some laws and some moralists say this is immoral too.

My recommendation that the lump it to unnecessary harm principle of morality needs to refer explicitly to the greater good. For instance, those who are bombarded by Westboro Baptists should just seethe and there should be public officials around to control the venom that may arise on both sides as seems to be the case in most situations.

What is needed is to codify, at some Leviathan level, sanctions against groups who side with groups that bother, unnecessarily, other groups in such situations. The problem will be where that level of group recruiting must stop or be knocked down to maintain order and continued cohesion for which the moral and legal rules are underwritten.

Harm or the threat of harm is the only thing to be considered when determining if a crime is committed. Motive, or reasons for the action, are only considered as secondary. This is why we have so many degrees of the crime of murder. A person who is shot and killed in a robbery is just as dead a person hit by a falling piano. The first is consider one of the most heinous forms of murder, while the other is negligence on the part of a piano mover. Punishment is warranted in both cases, but there is a wide difference between the two. In either case, the morality of killing is not really factor.

The critical factor in both cases is the law's responsibility to protect the public from both armed robbers and incompetent piano movers.

Aren't we discussing whether moral transgressions should be treated as illegal? If so the starting point is a moral issue. All willful killing of one by another is the immorality you apparently present. If we take immorality actions harmful to another then it is illegal because the community agrees that it is immoral to kill in a society.

It may be the threshold for illegality is sufficiently harmful to others to have a probability of harming the society. That is the immorality of an individual or group needs to have the potential for disrupting, causing the collapse or alteration, a society.

That we play with intent and/or extent of harm caused by the act clearly signals the societal concern. It may be, in some societies, a killing of an individual, say a wife for committing adultery, is justified by joint morality considerations as in a society where heredity is the link to power.

Not in my world. But still.

Put that with your negligent piano mover and we join cultural with secular illegalities. There are secular moral codes too which often nearly match those of the more pious which may be used to justify continuing a morality legality parallel. Or the society may set up a purely secular or political secular such as some think was Russian Communism.

Which brings us back to the issue you presented. Almost always something other than logic mixes with legality in a society in fabricating laws. So what is harm and threat of harm but code words for subjective determination of what is a crime. My harm may be other than physical as has been posted by others. So here we are back at eliminating the separation of motive from what act transpired.

So while there is the need for law to accommodate social need to respond to both armed robbers and negligent piano movers we come back to intent as motive setting the bar for whither and extent of punishment. My insertion of lump it has a place there.

 

[Bronzeage]

Harm or the threat of harm is the only thing to be considered when determining if a crime is committed. Motive, or reasons for the action, are only considered as secondary. This is why we have so many degrees of the crime of murder. A person who is shot and killed in a robbery is just as dead a person hit by a falling piano. The first is consider one of the most heinous forms of murder, while the other is negligence on the part of a piano mover. Punishment is warranted in both cases, but there is a wide difference between the two. In either case, the morality of killing is not really factor.

The critical factor in both cases is the law's responsibility to protect the public from both armed robbers and incompetent piano movers.

Aren't we discussing whether moral transgressions should be treated as illegal? If so the starting point is a moral issue. All willful killing of one by another is the immorality you apparently present. If we take immorality actions harmful to another then it is illegal because the community agrees that it is immoral to kill in a society.

It may be the threshold for illegality is sufficiently harmful to others to have a probability of harming the society. That is the immorality of an individual or group needs to have the potential for disrupting, causing the collapse or alteration, a society.

That we play with intent and/or extent of harm caused by the act clearly signals the societal concern. It may be, in some societies, a killing of an individual, say a wife for committing adultery, is justified by joint morality considerations as in a society where heredity is the link to power.

Not in my world. But still.

Put that with your negligent piano mover and we join cultural with secular illegalities. There are secular moral codes too which often nearly match those of the more pious which may be used to justify continuing a morality legality parallel. Or the society may set up a purely secular or political secular such as some think was Russian Communism.

Which brings us back to the issue you presented. Almost always something other than logic mixes with legality in a society in fabricating laws. So what is harm and threat of harm but code words for subjective determination of what is a crime. My harm may be other than physical as has been posted by others. So here we are back at eliminating the separation of motive from what act transpired.

So while there is the need for law to accommodate social need to respond to both armed robbers and negligent piano movers we come back to intent as motive setting the bar for whither and extent of punishment. My insertion of lump it has a place there.

Yes, we are discussing discussing whether moral transgressions should be treated as illegal and the answer is maybe. Morality, moral codes, morals are cultural in their details. Moral codes are rules developed to allow people to live in groups. This is why all moral codes have the same basis, which is "Don't kill your friends and don't steal from your friends. After that, it gets kind of fuzzy. Moral codes are not some absolute divination of right and wrong. It simply doesn't work that way. Moral codes define when something maybe right, and when it maybe wrong. The particular act is relevant. The context and circumstances are.

Thy shalt not kill.
Okay got that, but what if a man is strangling my mother? Can I hit him on the head with a club, even though this maybe a fatal injury?
Well, that's different. It's allowed to fracture the skull of a motherchoker.

Moral codes work fine as long as the group remains small and everyone knows everyone else. We run into a problem when our village, town, city, culture, society, yada yada yada, grows so large, this is no longer possible. There is no way for any person to know everybody or everything about a particular person. We have to appoint agents who are given the job of dealing with people who rob or steal from friends. It is their job to collect facts and determine what happened. This is time consuming. If we are to keep order in our giant village, our moral code has to be condensed to cover the more serious problems.

Soon our village is actually made of many villages and it is inevitable to find conflict between moral codes. This is mainly because different cultures have different beliefs about property. Some may think it is proper to kill a thief, while others say this is a great overreaction. As societies increase in population and take in other cultures, the part of the moral code which is handled by the agents becomes more narrowly focused and the legal code becomes a least common denominator of all the different moral codes.

The property thing becomes significant in your question about killing and adulterous wife. Adultery is a crime against property, and falls under the "killing a thief" provisions of the law. When the denominator is lowered, murdering your wife for cheating on you is always one of the first things to go.

In any workable legal system, the first priority is to determine if a crime has been committed.
"Officer, my car has been stolen." After the policeman establishes who I am, and that I do in fact own a car, he will take my word for it, that it is no longer in my possession.

The second priority is to determine who is responsible.
They find my car and apprehend the person driving it. He can't provide proof of ownership, so he is held as a thief.

The third priority is to establish all the facts, so a proper decision can be made.
The thief is put on trial and given a chance to answer the accusation.

The fourth priority is to decide what to do with him.
He is either found guilty or not guilty. Yeah, he did it.

At this point, everything is straight forward. It's all facts based on what happened in the past. Now, we must project into the future. What do we do about a car thief? We must discourage him from this behavior, and thus discourage other car thieves.

We could rerun this whole scenario with, "Officer, my pen has been stolen." Unless my pen was a Princess Grace Mont Blanc(retail price $895), the policeman is likely to say it's my problem and he can't help me.

Here is what it comes down to. Both are immoral acts of theft, but a stolen ballpoint pen is insignificant. It works the same way with other immoral acts. It's always a maybe.

 

[Valjean]

Law may legitimately enforce the first three 'foundations' of Moral Foundations Theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Foundations_Theory

Enforcement of the following three are illegitimate and authoritarian, typical of repressive, tyrranical governments.

(From the Mighty Wiki):The Six Foundations
1. Care/harm for others, protecting them from harm.
2. Fairness/cheating, Justice, treating others in proportion to their actions (He has also referred to this dimension as Proportionality.)
3. Liberty/oppression, characterizes judgments in terms of whether subjects are tyrannized.
4. Loyalty/betrayal to your group, family, nation. (He has also referred to this dimension as Ingroup.)
5. Authority/subversion for tradition and legitimate authority. (He has also connected this foundation to a notion of Respect.)
6. Sanctity/degradation, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions. (He has also referred to this as Purity.)

 

[PyramidHead]

Clearly, there are cases where something is illegal and immoral for roughly the same reasons. However, there are also behaviors that are immoral but not illegal. It may be said, the consequences of making such actions illegal would be worse than the consequences of performing the action legally. Lying is a straightforward instance of this, as it is legal in the vast majority of scenarios. Is this always true, though? If something is immoral, when do the bad consequences of letting it happen without legal repercussions outweigh the task of enforcing it?

Law should not be used to regulate what people ca or cannot do according either religion or ethics. Why should the government have any interest in what people do?

Because what people do has effects on the interests of other people represented by the government.

What law should be (but rarely is) is the protection of people, the shield that guards the weak against the strong.

The question is not what kind of behavior should be illegal but who should be protected.

That question is reducible to what people should do. You cannot make a law saying who is protected without it stipulating specific actions that are and are not permissible. Guarding the weak against the strong, by the way, is meaningless without some moral/ethical framework.

 

[arkirk]

I'd say when it causes unnecessary harm to another person. If it doesn't do that, why would you call it either immoral or illegal?

It's not that simple, though, otherwise the Westboro Baptist people wouldn't still be shouting mean things at every funeral. That certainly causes unnecessary harm, but I don't feel like it should be criminally punishable. Same with many cases of lying and adultery.

I think it is immoral for the Westoboro Baptists to shout mean things at any funeral. That is unnecessary and definitely hurtful. Adultery is a religious abstraction and not really a moral issue, depending on the parties involved. The issue of adultery is bad only if lying is connected to it. That leaves lying. Now Kant thought lying was indeed a big no no...an immoral act. Actually lying facilitates harmful activities in almost every case. We know of course about the white lies, sometimes used to protect the feelings of others. We know about the lies of omission used to protect people from undue persecution. But in general, if your moral considerations are humanistic, "immoral" essentially equals "ought to be illegal."

 

[Dutch_labrat]

Law should not be used to regulate what people can or cannot do according either religion or ethics. Why should the government have any interest in what people do?

Because what people do has effects on the interests of other people represented by the government.

What law should be (but rarely is) is the protection of people, the shield that guards the weak against the strong.

The question is not what kind of behavior should be illegal but who should be protected.

That question is reducible to what people should do. You cannot make a law saying who is protected without it stipulating specific actions that are and are not permissible. Guarding the weak against the strong, by the way, is meaningless without some moral/ethical framework.

That mode of thought brought us legal systems where people end up decades in prison for growing weed while people that defrauded for millions walk free. (And fill in hundreds of similar injustices.) Most legal systems are rituals where following the rules and rites are more important than anything else.

The whole system is broken from the ground up, easily demonstrated by the fact that more severe punishments do not prevent crimes. There have been legal societies where people were tortured to death in public for a minor theft and people still stole. Harsh prisons only enforce the causes of the criminal behavior (Social isolation, removing any sense of belonging, distrust of society and government etc..) and create a class of people that can never function in society again.

The mistake is in thinking that an act in itself can be evil and that society should regulate ethics. It is a logical fallacy brought on by dualistic thinking born from monotheism and other strict ethical systems like confucianism. This way of thinking is as old as Hammurabi and it is about time it got buried as well.

The other mistake is thinking that "criminal" is a property of a person, like the iconic Disney criminals. It isn't, criminality is the result of complex interactions between society, personal traits, social status, economics etc..

The result is a system that enforces and punishes out of habit. Compare it to somebody cleaning a room with a leaking vacuum: The dust keeps shifting around and al that dust is used to validate the vacuuming that keeps redistributing the dust.

Now approach it from a totally different side. Person A killed somebody, is that right or wrong? You can't answer that easily, it requires deep understanding of all kinds of related facts and motivations. It is also irrelevant.

YES, it is irrelevant. Who cares if what somebody does is unethical to your philosophy? There is nothing you can do short of breathing that some society or religion could not consider evil, up to and including eating certain foodstuffs or playing ball in the park on a certain day. Isn't that exactly the kind of decision you want to keep away from government?

How about you ask yourself the question: 'What danger is this A to society?' and act on that answer. Now you have a proper ground for a government and society to act upon: Keep harm away from society.

You don't set out to punish A, that would be a visceral reaction that helps no-one. If A is danger to society he should be kept in a safe place, be cruel to A and you sink to their level and lose all moral high ground and with that the right to intervene.

A legal system that sets out to protect can both be harsher and more ethical. For example if you keep a serial rapist locked up not to punish him (lizard-brain revenge thinking) but to protect a society from such violence you don't need limited incarceration time.