On 3/31/07, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> This is in response to several recent posts. For the record, the concept of
> "do no harm" I was presenting to in WP was related to what information we,
> as editors, choose to include in biographies of persons. My point was that
> to consciously include gratuitous, tabloid-like junk in a biographical
> article is unnecessarily harmful to the person.
>
> And, as far as "choosing a system of ethics" for WP: I don't believe it
is
> something you shop around for. But, rather, it develops, and is agreed upon,
> by the Community of persons in WP itself.
>
on 3/31/07 7:05 PM, Slim Virgin at slimvirgin(a)gmail.com wrote:
Editors from English--speaking and European countries
do operate under
more or less the same ethical system, which promotes freedom and
fairness, and all the arguments we have are only about where the
balance should lie in any given case. The ethical system was famously
described by John Rawls in his "original position" in A Theory of
Justice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position I doubt there
are many editors from Western countries who don't subscribe to it,
whether they know it or not, and Rawls himself argued that it was in
fact universal.
For anyone not familiar with it, imagine a bunch of people sitting
round a campfire. They're there to make decisions about the type of
society they want to live in (but it can be adapted for practically
any kind of moral decision). They have only a small amount of
information about themselves. I forget what this is, but basically
they know they are human beings, and they have basic information about
the kinds of things that hurt human beings. But they don't know
whether they're male or female, black or white, rich or poor, healthy
or ill, talented or not, beautiful or not. They're behind what Rawls
called the "veil of ignorance."
Using this veil of ignorance, they have to decide what would be fair
in any given situation, knowing that they may actually turn out to be
the poor person in a wealthy society, or the woman in a misogynist
one, or the budding entrepeneur in a socialist one, the black person
in a racist one, and so on. This forces them to place themselves
radically in the shoes of each set of characteristics they consider,
and by carefully considering all positions -- as if considering their
own -- they're able to arrive at a just decision.
Geni, John Rawls would have said that this is your system of ethics,
and that it's buried deep within you as a set of instincts, even if
you feel you've rejected it. :-)
Thank you very much for contributing this.
And, Geni, Slim's right - trust your gut.
Marc Riddell
--
"Come to the edge. We might fall! Come to the edge. It's too high!
COME! TO! THE! EDGE!!
So they came and he pushed -- and they flew."
Guillaume Apollinaire