TheRobin Posted January 23, 2013 Posted January 23, 2013 Hey everyone, I just had one of those ideas, that make me unable to catch any sleep until I share it with someone, so even though it's quite a small thing, maybe this can raise some intersting debates or insights.The idea I got is rather simple: Since being a moral agents requires the capacity to choose. And since using force or violence against another person makes that person unable to chose (or so stops them from being a moral agent), NAP-violations can't be said to be immoral, but rather anti-morality.When a person's capacity to chose is (temporary or permanently) destroyed, his ability to do good (or act mroally) is gone too. So we could say that from that point NAP-violations are evil, since it prevents people to do good.The reverse however would also be true, as it prevents a person from doing evil it could said to be good.Either way, what it certainly prevents is people from being moral agents, which means NAP-violations destroy their capacity to act either morally or immorally, and might therefore be called anit-moral.So we could basically say, that even before coming up with a moral theory, the NAP has to be accepted as the basis, even before we decide what we call moral or immoral. Since if we try to make NAP-violations either a good or an evil, we'd use anti-morality to justify morality, which doesn't seem to make sense.I'm looking forward to yor feedback on that idea (and also to maybe finally catch some sleep (been awake for over 22hours now, so I desperately hope this isn't one of those posts I'll regret after a good nights sleep )
Mike Larson Posted January 25, 2013 Posted January 25, 2013 Great insight! I have always seperated the NAP from other "moral" principles in my own mind and thought that it ought to be in it's own category, but couldn't really figure out how to articulate the distinction. Thanks for sharing
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