True or false?

by Frank Paynter on June 9, 2006

The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Martin Seligman 06.10.06 at 12:00: I said the very same thing when I put those dogs in the pavlovian harness and shocked them until they couldn’t cope with life anymore. The greater good! The greater good! More than a hundred of them just to make sure my results were scientific. It was immoral when they tried to bite me, however.
jr 06.10.06 at 8:16: False, it is the excuse that is used to explain the failures of the system when looked on from a historical sense. You can not substitute morality for legality

Well, it wasn’t amoral when we did it versus Well, it wasn’t illegal when we did it.