Promises and Bonds
Aaron opines that breaking scholarship bonds is immoral. I say opines, because he has basically provided no argument for that.
We can agree that if breaking bonds is immoral, it is because it involves breaking a promise. The big gap in Aaron’s post, the gap which renders it an opinion rather than an argument, is that he has not shown that there is such a promise involved. From his analogy with adultery, we can take it that he considers the promise one of unconditional commitment to the scholarship agency. What he has to show, therefore, is that, even though the legal agreement is clearly conditional, there exists an implicit agreement between the scholar and the agency that the commitment is unconditional. Now, he may think that there should be such an agreement, but all that is relevant is whether there is such an agreement, between real scholars and real scholarship agencies (not those in Aaron’s ideal world). If there is no such promise, then it is simply impossible for the scholar to violate the promise, and hence we cannot say that he/she is immoral because he/she violates that promise.
Until evidence is offered to show that real scholars and real scholarship agencies have a voluntary, implicit agreement that the declaration of commitment by the scholars is unconditional, Aaron has no justification for thinking that breaking bonds is immoral because it violates a preexisting agreement (though perhaps it is immoral for other reasons).
As I stated in the comments in Aaron’s post, I am open to the idea that breaking bonds is immoral for reasons other than that it violates a promise, but I’m not convinced there is a robust argument for that assertion either.
Of course I’m just stating my opinion based on my own set of ideals and values. It’s up to you whether you accept my ideals and worldview. If you do, you will be able to accept my opinion. If not, we are like parallel lines that never meet.
By the way, I don’t think you are wrong though. I think we just have different paradigms. ^^
Comment by Aaron — March 22, 2007 @ 5:22 am
I don’t object to people having opinions. I object to people presenting unsupported assertions as proper arguments. If you didn’t intend it to be a rigorous argument, then I suppose I was being too heavy-handed.
Comment by twasher — March 22, 2007 @ 6:30 am
Basically, I think you are expressing an opinion that a scholarship agreement should contain an implicit unconditional commitment. I have no beef with that. However, the fact that you think it should contain that commitment does not imply that scholars think it does contain that commitment (it is not an ideal world, sadly). And as long as scholars do not think it contains that commitment, they cannot violate that commitment. So they cannot be immoral when they break their bonds. You have to recognise that whether you think the agreement contains that implicit commitment is irrelevant to the question of whether scholars are immoral in breaking bonds, because your opinion has nothing to do with the agreement they think they have made. They cannot be immoral in violating an agreement that they did not think was made, and certainly you have not shown that the agreement they thought was being made is the one that you think should, in an ideal world, be made.
Comment by twasher — March 22, 2007 @ 6:40 am
Every scholar should have a different take. Some see it as a contract, some see it as an agreement. Perhaps it was not accurate of me to think those who approach it from the POV of a contract are immoral when they break their bonds. Nonetheless, as you pointed out, it is my opinion on the issue. My opinion indeed has nothing to do with the agreement scholars made, but that doesn’t mean I cannot have an opinion on what the agreement should be.
The entry, if you read carefully, is replete with the use of the word “I” because I have no intention to persuade people otherwise. If you agree with me, great! If you don’t agree, there’s nothing I can do. If you don’t understand why my take is like that, we can discuss it further.
Anyway, I appreciate your effort in trying to explain. I like to hear other points of view, even though I might not agree with them all the time. But that’s just life, isn’t it?
Comment by Aaron — March 23, 2007 @ 5:41 am
Aaron,
Thanks for the reasoned response. I really don’t care if you think that the agreement should be unconditional, since I can’t think of an argument why it should not be, or why it should be. It’s pretty much like saying one likes the colour blue and not the colour red. I just don’t like it when people make fallacious arguments. Unfortunately, since you attempted to draw a conclusion about morality from a poor analogy, I had to point out that it was simply not a good argument for immorality. I may be too idealistic, but I believe the blogosphere would be a more interesting place if people actually knew how to construct proper arguments. Arguing over why one prefers blue to red is not very interesting. This is not your fault, but 95% of the comments on your post are crap, especially now that Philip Yeo has jumped in under his hypocritical pseudonym calling people names again.
Comment by twasher — March 23, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
Sorry for the late reply. I was out of town.
There are alot of funny and weird comments indeed, and I do not profess to construct the best arguments but I seldom am out to win an argument, even though it might look that way. I usually write to make people jump, because only when people jump, they will start to think more about their personal views and opinions. I think arguing is important, but what is more important to me is to think hard, and that’s what I like to make people do.
By the way, I didn’t deliberately leave a reasoned response. I’m a friendly and harmless guy by nature, just that I have a colourful way of talking sometimes. But, I’m nowhere near Philip Yeo’s standard.
Comment by Aaron — March 27, 2007 @ 2:54 am