Re: female circumcision
Bryant (mycol1@unm.edu)
28 Nov 1994 11:12:58 -0700
In article <3bbqcr$p6t@crl8.crl.com>, L. William Franke <franke@crl.com> wrote:
>Bryant (mycol1@unm.edu) wrote:
>: The global village
>: can afford multiple currencies of morality--but on torture, there should
>: be no rationalizations.
>: Talk about ivory tower bullshit.
>
>Labeling something "torture" was a moral judgment the last time I looked,
Sure is. A moral judgement about somebody who has committed no crime (by
any standard) being put through an ordeal of extreme pain.
>so I guess you really mean that "the global village can afford to have
>multiple currencies of morality" except when it offends your personal
>notion of what is moral.
No, I meant that we can accept multiple currencies of morality when
innocent people are not suffering severe fitness impacts and torture.
I place the sovereignty with the individual organism in questions such as
these. You place it with the culture in which she has the misfortune to
live. Cultural change seems to be blasphamy to you. Would you support
such change if the women (girls, really) being cut in this fashion begged
you to? Or is their pain totally irrelevant in the umwelt of strict
cultural relativism?
After all, if there is universal agreement on
>morality, there can't be "multiple currencies of morality," or can there?
>
On many, many issues, there certainly can. Excusing Nazi attrocities
as an expression of German culture, however, smacks of somebody unwilling
to make *any* moral decisions.
>Talk about solipsistic bullshit.
>
>Bill Franke
>
Yeah, right. Sympathy for a screaming little girl having her clit snipped
off is solipistic; playing sophist's games about the relevance of her suffering
is "cultural tolorance."
Bryant
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