I find it weird to derive ethics from fictional examples at all. The reason is “ex falso quod libet”, i.e. that one can derive any statement from a false (in this case, fictional) proposition.
As an example, consider theft. As a society, we have a strong aversion to theft. This aversion is enshrined in our laws, our religions, and even our grammar (e.g. "my pen" as opposed to "your pen"). So, we would consider "Do not steal." as a general moral guideline, functional in all scenarios.
But we haven't tested it in all scenarios. Let's consider somebody who steals for the purpose of helping another, commits no other crimes, and dedicates his life to helping others, even when it harms himself. Would we still consider the theft to be immoral? I would say no, and showing such a case is the primary purpose of "Les Miserables". We have pushed our general "Do not steal." outside of usual usage, and have found that it does not apply at extreme cases.
Similarly, the author of the article is saying that Rogue One is a good test of the existing moral principle "Do not build intentionally flawed buildings." This moral principle works in most day-to-day cases. However, in the case of building a Death Star for an oppressive regime, this moral principle may not hold.
Buddha, Jesus, Plato/Socrates, Swift, Nietzsche - seriously, if you throw a dart at a random distribution of centuries, the greatest moral thinker from that century used fictional constructs of some kind to illustrate their point. The 21st century is not going to be any different.
But there's an even bigger problem here that borders on illiteracy. Believing that ideas fleshed out in fiction serve no practical purpose completely ignores the history of all ideas, not just moral ones. Great fiction thinks.
If you want to learn about love, read Shakespeare. Texts on the mating habits of higher primates are not going to help your romantic life. If you want to learn about friendship, The Lord of the Rings is going to offer better advice than anything Freud wrote. If you want to learn about government, Homer or Jonathan Swift can teach you more about the machinations of power than Machiavelli or John Locke.
I believe the reason is that fiction speaks to the whole mind, not just the part of the brain that parses language and performs algebra.
Well said.
You could replace that with "A Bucket of Clams" and the sentence is still true.
But seriously, if you can't make friends with a bucket of clams, you're just not trying.
And even if you take one or more of those documents to be literally true and a source of historical fact, even Jesus used parables--fiction--to explain moral principles.
This is really one of the strangest appeals to logic I've ever encountered.
There are so many fictional books which have so much to teach.
You can think of Star Wars how you like, but condemning fictional stories as bad only because they are no "true" stories -- is very short-sighted in my eyes. (and in my opinion a totally wrong understanding of the principles of logic).
There are also so many "true" stories, where you can draw the wrong ethics from!! (newest events included!)
And while 'real' stories might still be doctored by the writer to send a particular message and mislead you to a conclusion, at least they're constrained by the facts.
I very much doubt so.
There where to many people living, that brought suffering to others without ever been punished. Many people that slaughtered others, where living a wealthy life till their end. And others, that did good, ended in poverty.
No, "true" life sometimes teaches the wrong ethics. Or should we find our ethics in slaughtering each others?
Bad people get away with terrible things all the time. No amount of moralizing changes this true fact.
Just because it is possible to get away with bad things, doesn't mean you should do them.
A good ethics system should address this.