requoted for ease of reference:
You might think that you can do that, but you'll find that others disagree. For instance suppose that I go into work and paste code written by others at my job to Perlmonks. How many people think that it is now right and fair for Perlmonks to do anything that it likes with that code? Do the people who think that Perlmonks should not compound what I did in that hypothetical example have invalid systems of ethics?

Morality is a far more complex topic than most people realize. And if you're a moral relativist, like I am, it becomes harder still.
I chose to address the issue of your conflation of "ethics" and "morality" as the primary issue because I didn't feel like making anyone feel insulted. It is my experience that telling moral/ethical relativists that their own avowed belief system is self-contradictory, and thus logically invalid, usually prompts feelings of personal offense even where it is not intended.

The fact of the matter is that appeals to popularity (one of which makes up the substance of your entire post aside from the conflation of morality and ethics) mean exactly zero when determining logical validity of an argument. Somewhere along the line, you seem to have completely misplaced an understanding of what the word valid means. Hint: Calling an argument "invalid" has nothing to do with being in a wheelchair.

For your edification, and to refresh your apparently spotty recollection, you made reference to morality in response to my own reference to ethicality. If you aren't confusing the two and essentially calling them the same thing, then this entire conversation has been an exercise in futility because you have been constructing straw men to knock down.

If you really want to pursue an in-depth discussion of ethics with someone that has spent a good deal of his time engaged in a careful analysis of theory of ethics, I suggest you choose a forum for discussion better suited to the task than PerlMonks. We don't need dissertations upwards of 5,000 words that are wholly off-topic posted in node comments at PerlMonks.

- apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin

In reply to Re^11: Musing on Monastery Content by apotheon
in thread Musing on Monastery Content by Old_Gray_Bear

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