On Thursday, March 11, 2004, at 09:40 AM, STEVEN BISSELL wrote:
> Gus wrote, in a much longer and well thought out post,
>
>> Quick response to Steve -
>> An issue can be legal as well as moral. Think slavery, civil rights,
>> gay marriage, etc. I am focusing only on the moral. Corporate money
>> pretty much dominates the legal these days anyway.
>
> Agreed. I hope you weren't making the point that lawyers and judges
> were incapable of moral as well as legal decisions?
Steven-
No, I wasn't. Some of my best friends are lawyers. And one was a
judge. ;-)
> I fully recognize that sometimes the moral decision is illegal and
> that sometimes a legal decision is immoral, or amoral, or at least
> unethical. My only point was that I don't see an ethical issue in
> patents, only a legal issue. Now the *application* of patented
> material can be moral, ethical, but not, IMHO, the patenting process
> itself.
OK. I misunderstood your point. I agree with you. I have no problem
with the principle of patents, either legally or morally. (Both are
involved because they give a legally sanctioned monopoly which
necessarily restricts others' actions.)
But their application can involve legal (in the US, Constitutional)
issues as well as moral issues such as when is it appropriate to give
someone a legally sanctioned monopoly.
For example, it is a powerful moral issue whether any part of the human
genome can be patented. Some but not all the same issues are raised
with patenting any kind of life, and they are tied up with the entire
ethics of ownership - and whether the common law notion of ownership as
a despotic relation (Lord Coke I believe, but I can look it up) is
appropriate with respect to living things and, if not, why not. So
it's really really complex.
I think ultimately even legality translates into moral terminology.
The concept of legitimacy implies ethical criteria, and is necessary to
distinguish legislatively passed law from a mugger who is briefly
enforcing his sovereign will on you in a dark alley. Law without
legitimacy is simply force, rather indistinguishable from the mugger.
So we have no argument, I think.
Gus
>
> Steven
>
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