Following up yesterday's post, when I talk to people about something they judge, like torture, the topic that motivated yesterday's post, some of them point out that once you decide something is torture or right or wrong, you can do something about it. People like labeling things because labels mean so much. If you don't call a behavior torture, they think, people don't know what it means. Once you call it torture, they continue, you attach meaning to it and you can do something about it. I agree it attaches meaning, but when you use a word or a phrase or a symbol as shorthand for something, you don't know what meaning anyone else attaches to it. One person hears torture and thinks "illegal violation of…

I just watched Zero Dark Thirty and read a bunch of stuff about torture. People often ask about morality and ethics -- is such an action right or wrong, good or bad. Asking the morality of actions and behavior doesn't change them. I don't see categorizing, judging, and  labeling things helping. Calling something good, bad, right, wrong, etc does no more than label them (tomorrow I'll write more on why labels don't change things). I think people think they are making sense of things for themselves and helping others understand, but I don't think it works out that way. Or they think if they label something enough or with enough argument or emotion others will agree. But if one person says something is wrong, someone…