I have met people who exaggerate the differences [between the morality of different cultures], because they have not
distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief
about facts. For example, one man said to me, “Three hundred years ago
people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the
Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?” But surely the reason we do not
execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we
did-if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold
themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return
and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or
bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the
death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of
moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may
be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral
advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You
would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so
because he believed there were no mice in the house.
Wait, C. S. Lewis didn’t believe in witches, i.e. that there could be people who “sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers” to hurt others? Color me surprised.
In any case, he certainly didn’t do much to repudiate the part of his intellectual pedigree that was responsible for belief in witches in an attempt to avoid such errors in the future.
Bad weather, as in ‘rain that rots your crops and causes famine’, ‘wind that takes the roof off your house’, ‘blizzards that kill your livestock’, etc...
I suspect that 300 days of sleet might have an effect, even now.
I have met people who exaggerate the differences [between the morality of different cultures], because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, “Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?” But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did-if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.
-C.S. Lewis
The kind of epistemology that allows you to be that certain about something so false is immoral.
To wit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5cFKpjRnXE&feature=player_embedded
Incidentally, the Spanish inquisition did not believe in witches either, dismissing the whole thing as “female humours”
Wait, C. S. Lewis didn’t believe in witches, i.e. that there could be people who “sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers” to hurt others? Color me surprised.
In any case, he certainly didn’t do much to repudiate the part of his intellectual pedigree that was responsible for belief in witches in an attempt to avoid such errors in the future.
For bad weather? As in… 3^^^3 days of sleet is worse than 50 years of torture?
Well, bad enough weather in an agricultural society is murder.
Bad weather, as in ‘rain that rots your crops and causes famine’, ‘wind that takes the roof off your house’, ‘blizzards that kill your livestock’, etc...
I suspect that 300 days of sleet might have an effect, even now.
My Cthulhu, yes. 3^^^3 days of sleet is so far beyond my normal conceptions of badness that I’m not sure a dozen lifetimes of torture would be enough.
3^^^3 is a very large number.
3^^^3 is a very large number
Trivial things can be horrendous if there are 3^^^3 of them.
Things that require a large number like 3^^^3 of them in order to be horrendous are trivial things.
It is implied that bringing bad weather is a relatively trivial thing.
There are other things that are worse than bad weather, per victim and instance, like torture.
Saying “if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did” is a little bit funny if the crime is bad weather.
Agreed. My previous post probably reads more seriously than intended.