Word: moralizes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...with Asia as a whole gives Washington even more reason to discourage China from intimidating its neighbors, to say nothing of starting a war. China poses a particular security worry because it has atomic weapons and has sent nuclear technology to other countries. Finally, the U.S. has both a moral and a realpolitik interest in seeing China improve its human-rights record. Encouraging the establishment of democracy and the rule of law not only satisfies America's sense of mission in the world but, if successful, would make China more stable...
...want the Chinese to use aggressive tactics, which would be the case if we gave them a blank check. I told the Chinese that Americans are unpredictable: even if we said we wouldn't defend Taiwan, the U.S. Congress and the American public might change their minds. The moral of the story is, be very cautious. As you saw in 1950--when we said we weren't going to do anything in Korea--we were at war within the year...
...wait a second. Human beings have, in addition to the physical data flow representing the heat, one other thing: a feeling of heat and pain, subjective experience, consciousness. Why do they? According to Chalmers, studying Cog doesn't answer that question but deepens it. For the moral of Cog's story seems to be that you don't, in principle, need pain to function like a human being. After all, the reflexive withdrawal of Cog's hand is entirely explicable in terms of physical data flow, electrons coercing Cog into recoiling. There's no apparent role for subjective experience...
Even civil libertarians, however, are hesitant to acknowledge this. Their usual arguments against censorship are practical, not moral. They focus on the slippery slope, fearing that censorship of action movies will lead to censorship of "Schindler's List." Defense of First Amendment freedoms is generally presented as a matter of enlightened self-interest. It's expedient: If I assume power to censor your words, you may someday assume power to censor mine. Professional civil libertarians (I include myself among them) tend to be liberals; they consider race and sex discrimination immoral and not just inexpedient (a waste of human resources...
Aficionados of speech that liberals or conservatives might deem indecent have a similar, moral right to air their alleged perversities, or share information about sexual activity, even when children are eavesdropping. Since the possibility of eavesdropping on the Internet is practically unavoidable, the telecommunications law requires that adults limit their conversations to whatever a court may consider fit for children. (Even sexually explicit speech with "redeeming social value" is included in this ban; "indecency" is defined as a "patently offensive" description of sexual or excretory activities or organs.) Federal law now treats any "indecent" cyberspeech between consenting adults that children...