Soccer and Philosophy: Beautiful Thoughts on the Beautiful Game by Ted Richards

Author:Ted Richards
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780812696820
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2010-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Torturing Children Is Bad

Comparing the statement, “Aston Villa scoring a goal is good,” with the moral statement, “The torture of children is bad,” seemingly reveals the difference between being a supporter and being an ethical agent. What could be the logical foundations of such a moral belief? Here’s a list:

A. My friends, family and culture agree that torturing children is wrong;

B. In 1953, a child torture ring was exposed and it was horrifying for society at large;

C. A society that condemns and prohibits the torture of children is more stable than one that does not and a stable society is something we want;

D. I don’t like the torturing of children, it is unpleasant;

E. It is just wrong to torture children, full stop;

F. The torture of children is harmful to their welfare;

G. If asked, the children would express the wish not to be tortured, so they would not consent to the practice and if you do then torture them, you are infringing their liberty to decide what to do.

Now A isn’t a good reason. What if my friends and family believed otherwise? Would the torture then not be bad? B makes the wrongness of the action contingent on an historical event and if it hadn’t happened (or hadn’t been exposed), then torturing children would be fine. And beneath A and B, we see an old logical fallacy—the genetic fallacy: explaining how a belief came about is not the same as justifying a belief. If you just happen to think that torturing children is wrong because your culture thinks it is wrong, that does not justify your belief (that is, demonstrate why it’s true), it only explains why you believe something to be true. C also poses a problem. Imagine that society could be made stable by the wholesale and gratuitous torture of children. Would you happily pick up the pliers? D is unpalatable: the torturer could conceivably find it pleasant. So a reason for you is no reason for him to stop and surely you want to make the statement, “You (and me) ought not to torture children.” Imagine the nonsensical rant: “You say ‘I like cheese,’ but you can’t like cheese, you ought not to like cheese, because it is horrible. . . .”

Herein apparently lies the difference between supporting and being ethical. On the one hand, there can be reasons for me to support a football team—reasons that explain the historical or personal circumstances of supporting Aston Villa—but no reasons why anyone ought to support them. These ‘reasons’ are explanations and not justifications. You support a team and that is just a contingent historical fact—it is trivial—even if it can be explained. On the other hand, there are reasons for all of us to support the values of liberty, equality, and welfare and to let them determine our behaviour whether this be because liberty is a good, or welfare is a good, or human beings are autonomous, and so on and so forth.

And morality is different because it can offer reasons for all of us to behave in a certain way.

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