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Comment by __turbobrew__ | Hacker News Reader

As a military professional how do you determine morality?

If morality is the letter of the law, that law can be changed by an unjust majority. If the majority of Americans think it is OK to put dog collars on prisoners in Abu Ghraib, who are you to deny them that?

What else do we have to base our morals off of, religion?

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> What else do we have to base our morals off of, religion?

The American founding fathers understood the “rights” that constrain democracy to originate from God (“they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”). That’s an internally consistent world view: divine or natural law can constrain man-made law.

If the people don’t recognize a shared higher law, then there is nothing higher—nothing more legitimate—than democratic law. If the people decide it’s okay to put dog collars on prisoners in Abu Ghraib, what legitimate authority can say they’re wrong? Some Harvard professors of moral philosophy?

The religious aspect there is a red herring - people of the same religion can easily disagree on what God's opinion is. What actually matters is the aggregate perspective of the people who control the military (particularly senior officers like generals). They can call it religious or they can call it something else, but it depends on what they agree justifies mobilising the troops.

International law. The US- and many other countries- have long held that enough countries joining make international laws binding on all countries, even if that country did not sign a particular treaty. (1) This doctrine sprang up after the great POW slaughters on the Eastern Front during WW2 (2) made it untenable to allow countries to avoid their responsibilities under the treaties by not signing or to invade a country that did not sign.

1: This is complicated on the Ottawa Treaty, where the US and a few other countries have held out- though at least under most administration's the US considers itself bound by Ottawa everywhere except on the Korean peninsula.

2: The USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention of 1929 (they wanted POW's to be explicitly allowed to form political organizations- e.g. Soviets, and to not be allowed to discriminate against POW's, while Article IX of the Convention mandated that POW's be racially segregated "as far as possible") and so the Nazi's technically did not break the convention in their horrible mistreatment of Soviet POW's that led to millions of deaths.

The US holds that to be true when they are on the side of the majority. It is less clear [0] that they hold that when they are in the minority. The US opinion seems to be that democratic law can overrule international law when there is a conflict as long as the democracy is governed to a certain standard.

International law certainly doesn't represent a higher moral standard for the US. When it was set up the USSR and the British Empire both had vetos on what could be international law - it is hard to claim they had any higher moral opinion to add on how countries should treat each other.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...

Rules for thee, but not for me.

Seems like the current international order is if the US thinks you are violating international law they will kick the shit out of you, but if the US is violating international law they will also kick the shit out of you.

That still doesn’t answer the question of what US generals do when given an order which violates international law.

Why must a human look outside themselves to determine what is right?

We're not very good at doing it ourselves, as every religion and culture has implicitly and strongly agreed.

Who says, 'everyone should determine for themselves what is right'? Maybe I think it's right to shoot you for stepping on my lawn, or looking me in the eye for too long.

Internal human morals are made up entirely of external influences. People are not born with morality.

I see no reason to believe that moral judgement is completely external. Hume and Adam Smith argued for an internally derived sense of morality.

It is a deeply philosophical question, I think an unconditioned human will have no “morals” as modern society sees it.

Now you say it is deeply philosophical. Previously you stated it as fact.

And Adam Smith and Hume claim their views as facts too…

Many philosophers claim their models of the world as factual. My philosophy is that morals are purely formed of external influences, I don’t see how it could be any other way.

I don’t believe Oxana Malaya had morals.

> And Adam Smith and Hume claim their views as facts too…

Cocksuredness of pre-Popper philosophy aside: they argue for their positions. They don’t make a statement and call it a day.

Not that we are philosophers or need to write essays on anything. What I wanted to point out is that this position is not self-evident.

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