Where moral comes from is dependent on a time and space. Where it is applied generally does not.
Ignoring those morals which are dependent on location, today's american applies the same set of morals against those on american soil as well as those on chinese soil.
They also apply those morals across time, such judgment on Ancient Greek behavior.
In the same fashion, we do not alter our moral judgement based on the jurisdiction the event takes place in. At least, we do not do so naturally, without additional effort. If this occurred in the open seas, would we hold our tongue? In a country where no such laws exist?
Legality is also hardly a strict mapping of morals to rules, with complete coverage of what we're trying to express -- if it were, there would be no need for judges; we could simply feed the evidence into an algorithm and spit out the result. And the arbitrary flip from legal to illegal, by virtue of a day, is hardly the concept we're trying to morally express through the law. But for practicality, a strict deadline was given.
Hell, what's your argument? That because morals are relative, there cannot be any discussion of it? Morality precedes the law; You don't make a moral judgement by referring to the law.
My point is that morality actually has a jurisdiction. It isn’t as well defined as legal jurisdiction, but it does exist.
China is a great example where the morals are very different. Barring a few extra territorial laws (corruption, child prostitution for Americans), the jurisdictions are disjoint.
Again, the provenance of a particular morality is bounded by space and time, but the application of it is not; the american judges the chinese with the american morality, irrespective of what chinese society might say.
It is valid, and normal, to discuss morality of actions occurring in different places, without including the morality of that place itself; in this case, stallman isn’t talking about the remote island’s morals, but the morals of where he is and how it applies to events elsewhere
Ignoring those morals which are dependent on location, today's american applies the same set of morals against those on american soil as well as those on chinese soil.
They also apply those morals across time, such judgment on Ancient Greek behavior.
In the same fashion, we do not alter our moral judgement based on the jurisdiction the event takes place in. At least, we do not do so naturally, without additional effort. If this occurred in the open seas, would we hold our tongue? In a country where no such laws exist?
Legality is also hardly a strict mapping of morals to rules, with complete coverage of what we're trying to express -- if it were, there would be no need for judges; we could simply feed the evidence into an algorithm and spit out the result. And the arbitrary flip from legal to illegal, by virtue of a day, is hardly the concept we're trying to morally express through the law. But for practicality, a strict deadline was given.
Hell, what's your argument? That because morals are relative, there cannot be any discussion of it? Morality precedes the law; You don't make a moral judgement by referring to the law.