According to the Canadian Criminal Code (and probably a lot of other criminal codes), murder can be reduced to manslaughter if the person was provoked. Provocation is defined as “a wrongful act or an insult that is of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self-control …
Category: ethics
Oct 25 2013
The Right to Life – a given?
What if the right to life was a natural, inalienable human right to age 18, but after that it was an acquired, alienable right? So you had to deserve it somehow, you had to deserve to be alive. And you could lose it, by doing any of a number of things…
Oct 18 2013
Needs and Wants
I don’t like living in a global community. When everything is so interconnected, everything I do (or don’t do) is bound to be at someone else’s expense. Mere self-interest seems impossible; selfishness is inevitable. For example,
Jul 15 2013
Making Certain Words Illegal
Hate speech. Libel. Slander. Threat. Intimidation. Blasphemy. ‘Making words illegal violates our freedom of speech!’ Of course it does. But that freedom, like many others, isn’t absolute. Our freedoms are limited freedoms. They are limited by several things (Joel Feinberg identifies six liberty-limiting principles), one of which is the harm principle. That is, when our …
Jun 27 2013
Canada Day – Are you sure you want to celebrate?
Before you get all patriotic and fly your little Canadian flags in celebration of Canada Day and, presumably, of being Canadian, think about it. Are you really proud to be:
Jun 11 2013
Air Bands and Power Point
I still remember the feeling I had when I saw my first air band performance. It was a sick kind of feeling. I hadn’t known what an air band was. The announcement came over the p.a. at my school-for-the-day, and I dutifully shepherded the class to the gym. Then I watched, incredulous, as group after …
Jun 02 2013
The Futility of Teaching Business Ethics or Why Our World Will End
There are four reasons why teaching ethics to business students is an exercise in futility. 1. The profit motive trumps everything. As long as this is the case, there’s no point in teaching students the intricacies of determining right and wrong. Whether something is morally acceptable or not is simply irrelevant to them. It might …
May 04 2013
Ethics without Philosophers
Could someone without a business degree become a marketing consultant? Then how is it that people without philosophy degrees are becoming ethics consultants? [1] Is it that people don’t know that Ethics is a branch of Philosophy just as Marketing is a branch of Business? Doubtful. Is it just the typical male overstatement of one’s …
Apr 25 2013
Dr. Frankenstein, meet Dr. Spock
Thanks to genetic research, we may soon see people with the money to do so making sure their kids are born-to-succeed – parents paying to guarantee their kids have the right stuff. I’m not talking about a straightened spine or a functional optic nerve. I’m talking about designer kids: those made with healthy bodies, intelligent …
Apr 03 2013
In Commemoration of the Holocaust
I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m not saying that, in any way, it was okay. But I’d like to point out that a devout Jew would’ve done, would do, the same thing to the Germans – if God told him to. ‘Oh but God would never command such a thing.’ Take a better look …
fiction
