The only moral dilemma
The only true dilemma is why shouldn't I act only in accordance with my whims? If truth and morality are man made, and not objective, but merely someone else's arbitrary impositions on me, for ultimately selfish, deceitful, and or antiquated values. If it's all motivated, power struggles, identity politics, and tribalistic allegiances, then why shouldn't I behave only in accordance with my own preferences and benefits? The only real objection to that could be that it wouldn't work, that no one is skilled enough in manipulation or deception to get away with it, but that can be reduced to the lack of certainty, and fear of
failure involved in any undertaking. It isn't obviously impossible. What could be holding them back other than fear, slavery, and attachment?
Why shouldn't I just take everything I want from everyone in every moment?
failure involved in any undertaking. It isn't obviously impossible. What could be holding them back other than fear, slavery, and attachment?
Why shouldn't I just take everything I want from everyone in every moment?
Comments (103)
There's also the objection that immorality (manipulation and deception) are harmful in themselves, regardless of the external consequences they bring. That is Plato's entire argument about the "lie in the soul". To manipulate others, you must also manipulate yourself, because manipulation entails giving power to the willful aspect of your soul which seeks to determine reality as it wants it (according to your whims) and isn't concerned with how reality is.
So just like how you manipulate X to do what you want them to do, so likewise you will manipulate your reasoning aspect of the soul to think whatever you find convenient to think, and at that point, you're lost, since you've severed your contact with reality.
That something is illegal just is that man has made such a law, and that one should behave a certain just is that man has made such an obligation.
Of course, you're able to choose to break the law (and be a criminal) and to disobey the obligation (and be immoral), but then you have to suffer whatever consequences that would entail.
No it isnt. Its far more like asking why should if follow the law if i could get away with not doing so? Aristotle said that what he got from philosophy was that he followed the law because it was right, and not because it was the law.
Also, ought we follow any and all laws, even unjust ones?
Well yes, it's quite obvious that it's not necessarily immoral to break the law.
I actually do think that that is true, but that already supposes too much of the position Im questioning. Without the soul, or truth anyway, that cant be true.
Not at all. If moral obligations are man-made then that you should behave a certain way just is that such obligations have been imposed by man.
So, "I should do X" means "man has imposed the obligation to do X", just as "X is illegal" means "man has imposed a law against X". Which is why asking "why should I do X?" is like asking "why is X illegal"? The answer to both is "because man has dictated it to be so".
No law is actually just or unjust beyond preference or fiat. Since we disagree about such things it cant be "man" that decided it but some individual or group.
Hmm, okay, but surely we can scratch out the soul since it's ultimately a metaphor, what is important is the underlying reality that it signifies. That reality would still exist whether one is a materialist or whatever else because what one thinks does not change reality.
Truth cannot be man-made for the simple reason that man isn't God and doesn't control reality. We notice this from first-hand experience - things don't always go as we wish they did. So truth is really our way of signifying what is the case independently of our desires.
Morality cannot be man-made because there are certain psychological structures which are given, which pretty much exist in all people, whether they are aware of them or not. And again we notice this from experience, both in ourselves and in others. These aspects are invariant.
I'm not sure how productive or useful it is to speculate if reality was some other way, I don't think that makes much sense since all our meaning is given by reality as it actually is.
There is indeed nothing stopping you from just whimsically deciding to be good and altruistic, but that isnt the problem, that problem is that that isnt actually better or worse than anything else. It also isnt very rational unless it is more personally beneficial to me than anything else. Its rationally at best an opportunistic strategy.
Thats the implication of what you said.
Then you ought to if you could get away with it?
If values are subjective and arbitrary, there is no ought.
What psychological structures are you referring to? If there were exceptions, would these people be subject to the same moral laws?
Hi Wosret, it's an interesting question. I think these days laws have been layered upon laws to such an extent that rather than being a moral guardrail, they are a tangled web. And there are the spiders that run across the web, using it to their own ends - to protect their own interests and prosecute their adversaries.
If we strip it right back though, I think that the fundamental laws are not manufactured for personal gain, but arise from the gut. For example stealing from those that cannot protect themselves is a crime that was made a crime because of our ability to empathize with the victim.
Consequences. Someone will beat you to a pulp or call the police eventually. Taking everything you want from everyone is fine in a world of pacifists, but that isn't the world you find yourself in, is it?
Those that form the boundaries that delimit human thought and affective capacity.
Quoting Neva
Yes, in the same manner that blindness (or any other form of ignorance, whether systematic or random) does not make one immune to the structures that are otherwise revealed by sight.
Why do you take your own personal benefit to be the "rational" thing to pursue? It seems to me that on an a priori and purely logical basis it is no more rational than to pursue the other's benefit.
What I'm trying to get at is that your determination that pursuing your own personal benefit is the rational thing to do is a superficial element that actually emerges from deeper metaphysical & psychological beliefs that structure your understanding and behaviour. That is required to provide the logical link between reason on the one hand and self-interest on the other.
So to investigate this, these underlying structures must be unearthed.
No, it's means "I should follow the obligation to do X".
The premise is "If truth and morality are man made, and not objective". Given this premise, what does "one ought not X" mean? That man has imposed a prescription against X.
There is still the hypothetical oughts. They just aren't binding in absence of motivation.
As long as you're saying that there is no reason why someone shouldn't, and are fine with that. You have no objection to it.
For the claim to be correct, the premise should be "morality is man made, and not objective, and we should follow it".
I don't think that laws are analogous to moral precepts, though clearly related. I will say though, that most laws are based in a theory, and historical precedent, and usually those theories involve innate value of human beings, and their autonomy. Neither empathy, nor compassion and such emotions are impartial, they inherently take a side.
I'm pointing out that this kind of talk is confused. Given the premise that obligations are man-made, it doesn't make sense to then include this extra notion of (objective) obligation.
If obligations are man-made then that one has an obligation just is that man has imposed this obligation.
It is the world I find myself in. I qualified if you could get away with it. This question was posed in the republic I believe it was (one of Plato's dialogues), one of the discussants suggests that if one were to find a ring that made one invisible, and one could get away with whatever they wanted while maintaining their reputation, then it is desirable to do so, and most people would do so. If morality is just prudence, then it indeed is for the weak and incompetent.
Well, yes, reason only tells you how to accomplish things, and what will come of things, this is why I said based on my preferences, and whims. So I hold that based on my preferences and whims as motivations, it is more rational, as the results are in my favor. You can't just isolate one thing I say, removed from everything else I've said.
Are your preferences and whims your own? What if they're not? Where do they come from?
Because I want to, it's natural. We, and other animals are competitive, and status driven. We all want to. There would be no dilemma, no need at all for morality if we didn't.
Doesn't matter.
Quoting Wosret
That's not a reason unless you answer the question "why should we do as is natural?".
It does matter because to answer me that it is your whims and preferences which provide the necessary link between reason and self-interest is to merely obscure its underlying foundation. Where do your whims and preferences come from? What's your underlying metaphysics? Are you an individual who decides by himself what his whims and preferences are? How does this process come about? This is important to understand why your whims and preferences are such that self-interest becomes the goal of your reasoning faculty.
I've already said that there is no reason why I should, and one could do otherwise fine, I'm asking for reasons why I shouldn't.
If your whims and preferences are actually not your own, then your reasoning faculty cannot be directed towards self-interest - it would at best appear as if it were so directed, when in reality it isn't. So that would mean that you are actually not acting in your self-interest when you think you are so acting by following your whims and preferences, meaning that you are fundamentally self-deluded.
So to avoid that, you must first determine the origin of your whims and preferences, meaning metaphysics and psychology.
Again, this talk about being obliged to follow an obligation is confused. It's just the case that there's an obligation to not murder (for example), which is to say that some relevant authority has commanded people not to murder.
And this is actually not that radical of a claim at all. We often say about others "they are not acting in their best interest". It's a phenomenon that we observe quite commonly. How is it possible that they are not acting in their best interest all the while they are certain that they are? And if that applies to them, why wouldn't it also apply to us?
It's not; there's a vast difference between one having an obligation, or being obliged, and that one should do something. Obligations are always external, and the former means that according to some other being, one should do something, whereas that one should do something (at least in the context) would be interpreted so that one themselves thinks so.
So you're just asking about motivation? You want to know what motivation one has to not murder?
No we're not, we're left with motivations, and different ones, that are presumably all equal. It isn't as if, if there are no oughts, action would be impossible... even oughts presuppose motivation to do other than one ought to, or there would be no reason for them...
You're just not making much sense. Even if our motivations are random (though they aren't, they're mainly self invested, which is why morality, and the notion of oughts exists in the first place, and even in the absence of them, would still exist), some will be randomly malevolent, why shouldn't they follow their random malevolent motivations? Do you have a real opinion on this issue, or just obfuscation?
The idea is that in the absence of right and wrong, all things are permitted, not impossible, or random... where's the precedent for that?
If it's all just normative, then one ought to do what is normative? Norms don't originate in the normative, so that would be impossible, and also implies that regardless of what is normative, that is what ought to be done... is it controversial to say that sometimes the norm is wrong?
I'm trying to understand, but I really don't have even a vague sense of what you mean. Can I get a concrete example?
Quoting Agustino
Does that mean animals are bound by the same moral laws as humans? If they are exempt, why?
I thought you were using "normative" in the natural language, and not technical sense. So, your position is just then it isn't right or wrong absent right or wrong? That one must presuppose those in order to object? Well, that is kind of the point... that one has no objection without their presupposition, but I would think, would object to that. Unless playing an intellectual game, in real life, they would object to that, and then I went into what the basis of that could be, and if it were power struggles, fiat, or prudence, then those would only be substantial objections if I couldn't get away with it.
A good question, but not quite.
Damn that's a tough question.
Seriously though, that's a question.
I think what is the reason for the motivation is a rather decent answer.
Quoting ?????????????
Quoting Wosret
The fact that motivations aren't all random as we'd expect them to be if there was no generative principle behind them points precisely to the need for further investigation. ????????????? is correct that we'd expect motivations to be random for he presupposes that different individuals will have different motivations and these would be individually mediated and thus random. However, this is not true. Motivations have a tendency to be self-invested, which points precisely to their common origin outside the individual as such.
Yes.
For example, human beings are so structured that they all need to consume food and drink water in order to survive. This is an invariant structure of being human which plays a determinate role in the types of behavior and feelings that are possible for a human being.
Another invariant structure is that human beings are vulnerable for a long time after birth, and so cannot survive alone (unlike other animals). This is another invariant feature of being human that determines possibilities of behavior and affection.
And so on.
Quoting Neva
To a certain extent they are, however, morality requires the presence of a rational aspect to the soul. And if this is present, it is much diminished in many animals where instinct governs most of the time. The absence of this rational aspect also makes animals quite incapable of committing the range of immoralities that man is capable of.
I said whim, and preference, and results matter a lot in that regard, as if the cost is high, the whim isn't worth it, that is just prudence. It's also hardly a whim that would make someone want to hurt someone so badly that they don't care about the consequences, that would require either significant distortion, obsession, and concern, or deep history investment, and the feeling of wrong.
None of that is what I'm talking about though, as most people don't have constant deranged inclinations to hurt people for no reason, I wouldn't think. They do however desire to get the things they want, that would be pleasurable, fun, or increase status, and if they could get them without damaging their reputation, or negative consequences, then they would be deeply tempted to do so.
Again, I said whim and preference. Not just whim. I really don't think that people just randomly feel like hurting people for no reason. What I'm talking about is just using people to get the things you want for expediency. People don't just want to hurt others for no reason at all. I said manipulation and deception. Not becoming a supervillain that wants to nuke metropolis just 'cause.
This question is motivated by selfishness. It is, so to speak, the ego at its extreme. The problem is, we're social animals by necessity. We don't have the biological machinery - fangs, strength, speed, claws, etc. - to make it alone in the wilderness. That means society, and each individual in it, is necessary for our survival. So, if we're to survive as an individual we must work towards the welfare of the social group we're part of.
So, strangely, two opposite paths - one that motivates your question and the one that rejects such a course of action - originate from the same place viz. Selfishness.
The point that's relevant to your query is that if one were to follow your course of action, you wouldn't survive for long in society - look what they do to criminals. In other words, ''taking everything from everyone'', although based on self-interest, is ultimately self-destructive.
I've addressed these objections. This all only true if I couldn't get away with it, and then is just more self-interest in that case, it's prudence, and understanding that in the final analysis, I would not actually benefit.
You have a point. Somebody has to know and have the power to resist you. If not, there's no reason to hold back your ego. This has happened in history - from armies looting to serial killers murdering with impunity.
Perhaps the rewards of restraining the ego are greater than that of the ego unleashed...for most that is. It may be that people reason along Kantian terms. What if everyone unbridles their ego? Surely, that would easily make one as easily a victim as a victimizer. So we choose to restrain our selfishness.
Hardly isolated events, or things of history, people think in way too extreme of terms. It's rampant, right now and everywhere. Manipulation and deception to affect status, maintain reputation, and accrue material benefits. Some are just better at it than most, but it is the norm. People generally only tell the truth when it is beneficial, spend more money and time advertising and telling people that they gave to charities, or donated time than they gave, or donated. Exaggerations, omissions, outright fabrications...
I believe that people get extreme because they always have to imagine something worse than themselves when they think of evil. A murderer says that at least they don't hurt children, or haven't killed as many as another. People are full of rationalizations, justifications, excuses. There's always someone worse than me... they're the evil one.
One thing that's important here is that the self can never be completely eliminated from human transactions. The best way to understand this is to know that even altruism, supposedly the highest good, yields personal benefits. Thus to begrudge an ostentatious donation is wrong because it's impossible for the donor to avoid some form of personal benefit in the process. Think of it as sharing - giving a part of what one has to someone in dire straits. Sharing is good, no?
Could you get away with the effects that immoral behaviour would have on you (and your own well-being), regardless of what other people do? I don't think you can, and that just shows that this is actually quite an incoherent scenario once we understand morality rightly. All this underlines that there are some things that aren't under your control such as what is right and wrong. For that matter, whether you get away with it or not in an external manner also isn't under your control.
To suppose you could get away with it is to suppose you are God and control the whole of reality.
It is certainly a valid question, and an important question, but why a dilemma?
A dilemma is a decision that is hard to make.
I don't find it hard to decide on the 'whim' question at all. I am confident that my acting solely on my whims would be catastrophic for me and for everyone that I care about.
Do you really find it to be a dilemma?
You do not take just everything you want from everyone every moment, and you dont' do the other things you question why ought not be doing them, because:
1. Morality exists
2. It is not man-made, but innate to man and other animals
3. You can't break the moral code you have
There is no "reasoning" out morality. It is not something negotiable. It has been borne out of survival advantage, it is a mutation that governs behaviour, and it is highly successful over those societies with individuals with no morality.
Morality is part of practical reasonableness, although morality has not been created by reason, but by evolutionary forces.
You don't have to avoid personal benefits, they just shouldn't be so important that you sacrifice everything for them in pursuit, and entirely irrelevant to the truth.
I already agreed with you from the beginning, you don't need to manufacturer conflict.
Desire, and compromise, problems for everyone, and you simply lack self-awareness if you believe otherwise.
1 is true, but 2 and 3 aren't. We aren't just born moral, and don't have to learn it, and strive for it. This is clearly not the case. What do you figure when you see someone that is immoral? Mutant? Every time?
Yes, but once you've learned it, it's very hard to unlearn it. It's like trying to rewrite your personality from scratch. Can't be done. You can only really tinker with what you have after a certain age. So, you're moral because it hurts not to be.
As I admitted from the beginning, it's the truth that hurts. Perhaps it is more what has been seen cannot be unseen. "Psychopaths" and other "dark personalities" are marked by their excessive denial, and lies. They just never admit to fault, or admit that what they did counts as that wrong thing, they use subterfuge doublespeak, and grandiosity. They use their language for manipulation, rather than truth.
Well, yes, being immoral doesn't hurt them. If someone gave you or me a drug that suppressed this moral pain, I have no doubt we would do whatever we could get away with that benefited us.
If we numbed ourselves, we would lose track of the truth, by silencing the guide, and wander aimlessly in a land of delusion.
A psychopath's truth is very clear to them. It's just built on different foundations to ours. Maybe you're numb to their truth and wandering aimlessly in moral delusion. That's what they would say anyhow.
I think anything to do with the self is relevant to your post. I tried to show you that, without eliminating the self from the equation, we can still reject the proposal to ''take everything from everyone''. Afterall, the self stands to gain by being selfless, as paradoxical as that sounds. Thus there's a good reason for not ''taking everything from everyone''.
Between wanting stuff and the truth.
Invisible rings don't protect you from infrared cameras, don't provide alibis, and can be found during search warrants.
Would things change if everyone had invisible rings?
No, I don't think this follows at all. Clinical psychological practice illustrates very clearly that a psychopath is self-deceived to a much greater degree than most people, and engages in actions they think will bring them satisfaction but which never do.
And the old mythological understanding of this phenomenon is also true. In the past, psychopathy was understood to be synonymous with demonic possession, which involves the loss of true autonomy and a clear understanding of the world - it involves acting according to another's interests (the demon) while you think you're acting according to your own.
This is very closely related both with Plato's "lie in the soul" and with the idea of borrowed whims and desires that I was talking with Wosret about earlier.
Quoting Baden
Yes, no doubt that many people are capable of doing immoral things.
Aren't people saying the same thing today, about, for example, the Holocaust? They do exactly that - they say if only we had lived during Hitler's time, we would never have been partners with him in the murder of the Jews. But of course, by saying that, they almost confirm they would have been partners with him, for just like him, they are not aware of their own violence.
You already are. Your 'preferences' also include your 'moral vision' for the world. Moral imposition is not just authority imposing itself upon you - it's also you deciding for yourself how you and others ought act, and imposing that upon the world (in particular ways). You already do this. How would you act when seeing someone helpless being assaulted? Perhaps step in, call the police? You yourself have a moral vision for how the world ought be, and you impose this upon yourself and others all the time. You are already acting according to your whims.
[quote=]Why shouldn't I just take everything I want from everyone in every moment?[/quote]
Because that isn't your whim. Your moral whims are already aligned towards not doing this. It's you yourself that is personally deciding that you and others ought not act this way.
Everyone is personally always-already their own source of what is right and wrong. You can't escape not deciding your own moral values. Even external moral authority must first be vetted by your own judgment before it's accepted. One must first decide for themselves to choose to believe in God, and decide that his word on morality is correct before coming under his authority. You can't help but being your own source of what is right and what is wrong.
It's up to you to decide what is right and wrong. Only you can answer "why ought I not do x?"
And even if someone typed out a convincing argument, it would only be convincing because you personally decided that it was. You can't escape your own judgment. So just own it, your own judgment is the source of what is right and wrong, you decide.
Either everything you've just said is only what you would like to be true, what you'd prefer to believe, it is coincidentally both what you'd prefer, but also true, or it is truth completely, and entirely regardless of what you'd prefer to be true. In the first case, which you seem to be suggesting, there is no such thing as truth at all. In the second case, my preferences coinciding with the truth is a happy accident, which is swell and all, but in the third case is when the truth becomes more difficult. When it isn't how you'd prefer, and allowing your preferences to determine you beliefs is called wishful thinking, self-deception, and things of that nature.
Only in the case of lies, do your preferences determine what's true.
You believe that? Everyone has the right to his or her own false beliefs. You have yours.
If you did some research, what I presented has much support in psych experiments. You believe a different truth, which I find to be false, a complete disaster of a weltanschauung. Fine, that's your privilege. But you have to show SOME evidence that my proposition is false.
If you insist that I show that my proposition has support, fine, but you'll have to wait a while while I gather up evidence.
I posed the objection, which is a long standing one to the idea that morality is innate, and based in feeling, and that is that even if every single human agreed about what it was, it would be arbitrary -- it also means that if the majority felt something to be moral or immoral, it would be impossible for them to be mistaken, and divergence would be simply a different sense, a different feeling, that would be just as arbitrary.
It is to say, that people cannot be wrong about their feelings of right and wrong, and thus there is no room for discussion (as they could not even be genuinely persuaded in any sense, as their feelings would be innate, and unmovable).
We have many innate qualities, and traits. We aren't blank slates, or without natures and constraints, but getting to the truth of any matter (even moral ones) requires experience, reason, and judgment.
I see my own judgment as the objective source of moral facts.
Can you be wrong?
I'll offer you an argument.
1) Happiness is good, unhappiness is bad. (proved by the fact that everyone wants happiness and no-one wants unhappiness)
2) What is good is commendable. (because to say that something is good is to commend it)
3) If something is commendable, we ought to do our best to bring it about. (because merely to commend something and not try to bring it about would be illogical)
4) Therefore we have an obligation to try to make people happy.
5) One can waive an obligation to oneself, but it is logically impossible to waive an obligation to someone else.
6) Therefore the obligation to make oneself happy can be waived, but the obligation to make others happy cannot.
7) Therefore one is more obligated to try to make other people happy than to make oneself happy.
8) Therefore, rather than taking everything one wants from other people, one ought to put the happiness of others before one's own happiness.
I should mention, in case anyone is wondering, that for the whole of my 65 years I have consistently failed to get anywhere near this high standard, and I confidently expect this to continue.
2. As long as commending something doesn't make it good, then okay.
3. No necessarily true, I can commend qualities, skills, appearances, activities in others without then feeling it necessary to get myself involved with their being brought about. One isn't so multifaceted.
4 is a nonsequitur, from 3. Need something more than that, without spiraling into an absurdly full schedule.
5 I do six logically impossible things before breakfast. Plus this is asserted here, without explanation. Why is waiving obligations work like that?
6 Assertio.
7 Unestablished
8 Mushy, and unshown.
Your implied argument is:
There are unhealthy conditions which involve happiness.
Therefore happiness is not good.
Not a valid argument. The happiness part of these conditions is still good, it's just outweighed by the other parts.
Quoting Wosret
If you could help, you ought to. If you would hinder, you ought not.
Quoting Wosret
By 'an absurdly full schedule' I take it you mean that you want to keep some time for yourself? That's quite natural, but it isn't a reply to the argument.
Quoting Wosret
If X owes you money, you can say to X 'that's okay, don't bother to pay it', and that lets X off paying it. If anyone but you says to X 'that's okay, don't bother paying Wosret', it doesn't let X off. That's just how obligations work.
I think 6 follows from 5, 7 follows from 6 and 8 from 7.
No it isnt that some unhealth states involve happiness, its that excessive happiness itself generates them, and if this itself is possible then happiness isnt paramount.
You need to do more than assert the oughts and ought nots. Give reasons.
Thats how debts work that others have to me, which isnt the same thing as an obligation to oneself.
Quoting Wosret
I didn't say happiness was paramount, I said it was good. I accept that in some cases it may not be paramount. My argument doesn't need it to be. Even if excessive happiness does cause these things, that doesn't mean happiness itself is not good, nor does it mean that there aren't cases of simple happiness where there are no negating factors.
Quoting Wosret
I don't just assert. I introduced 'ought' in step 3, where I stated that it was illogical to commend something and then not actively try to bring it about if you are able to. If you're not in a position to do something to bring it about, then of course there is no obligation on you to do so, which covers your point about commending "qualities, skills, appearances, activities in others". In most such cases you will not be in a position to do more than commend those people, but in cases where you are, it would be illogical not to do more.
There is a conceptual line between fact and value. I cross this line in step 1, by claiming that happiness (fact) is good (value). By the time we get to step 3 and introduce 'ought', it's already too late to object. IMO, even 'good' is morally compelling.
Quoting Wosret
The only difference I can see between a debt or obligation to oneself and a debt or obligation to someone else is that one can waive the first but not the second. What other difference is there?
I thought that I showed that it clearly doesn't follow that commending something implies any active involvement at all. Whether something is possible or not is difficult to say before hand, and affecting the success or flourishing of commendable traits beyond a shallow sense can only possible be reasonable for people that are close to you, even if merely possible for anyone. We have to manage our time practically, logical possibility has little to do with that.
I still don't understand why an obligation to oneself isn't as significant, and can be waived by one to someone else can't be. I mean, clearly physically, and behaviorally they both can be waived. There are consequences for both as well, just of different kinds.
What you're saying, I think, is that there's something wrong with saying that a bad or wrong action can have a good component. I can't see anything wrong with this. Actions and situations are complex, and their complexity makes them philosophically opaque. I think it is philosophically imperative to analyse them into their consitituent parts in order to make them less opaque and more understandable. We do this as a matter of course in many situations. For example, if the dentist hurts you but makes your tooth better, we are quite willing to say that the pain is bad but the overall result is good. This is decomposing a complex into its parts. I think that's all I'm suggesting we do. The happiness got from eating orphans is good, but is outweighed by the bad effects of eating orphans (the orphans die). The happiness got from drugs is good, but is outweighed by the effects of taking drugs (your life falls apart and your family suffer).
Quoting Wosret
Well, I don't think you have.
Suppose we try it from the opposite direction. Suppose someone said to you, 'Something very bad is going to happen, and I can prevent it, but I don't feel any obligation to do so.' Wouldn't you think there was something illogical about this? I think there is, and I think this shows that badness is morally compelling.
I think you could take up one of three positions about this, which are:
1. There is no moral obligation to prevent bad things where we can.
2. There is a moral obligation to prevent bad things where we can, but not to promote good things where we can.
3. There is a moral obligation both to prevent bad things where we can and promote good things where we can.
If yoiu agree with this analysis, which do you support? I support 3.
Quoting Wosret
They can be waived, but not by the person obligated if the obligation is to someone else. If you don't accept that then I don't know what further I can say. To me it seems obvious. Imagine telling someone 'I know I borrowed this money from you, but I'm waiving my obligation to you so I don't have to pay it back'? What do you think they would say?
Your original claim was that everyone wants happiness, and doesn't want unhappiness, without qualification, I only desired to show that this isn't quite true, that both there are things far more valuable than happiness, and that happiness isn't desirable if brought about by certain causes.
Your point now is also simplistic, and takes an unqualified position on pain. You know if you take a bunch of pain killers for long enough, then it will greatly reduce your pain tolerance thresholds. Without experiencing any pain, we will become less and less able to tolerate pain. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and all that. Taking an unqualified position on pain can also lead to unhealthy circumstances. Even "too much health" is bad, in the sense that the immune system grows and matures, and if completely sheltered from germs, dirt, or sickness, then it cannot develop, and you will become much more susceptible to sickness in later life.
You don't go into why they wish not to prevent it? A proper evaluation requires efforts, risks, involvements, and costs. Just that it is possible for them to prevent it doesn't cover what preventing it may entail. The trolley thought experiment could be worded just as "something bad going to happen" that you could prevent, but since what it is, how you'd prevent it, and all of the variables, the implied obviousness of not doing so being unreasonable is not justified. We live in a complex world is my very point, even if doing something takes five seconds, that's still a cost, and five seconds you could have been doing something else.
As for if I owed someone something, and they didn't feel like paying it, so was like, "nah son, I ain't paying" then they wouldn't like it, and there may be consequences like them not helping you, or speaking to you again, trying to attack you or some shit, but you can still do it.
As for yourself, if say, I spend extra money out of the budget, this pay check, obliging future me to contribute more to the bills out of the next one, I can say "nah fuck that". Or if you don't like that, then if I make a promise to myself to change a habit or some such, but then don't follow through, I'm not only going to feel bad about it, but I'm going to take myself less seriously the next time I proclaim such a obligation to myself, and develop a sense of myself as untrustworthy, and unreliable when speaking about such things.
I'm an uncomplicated hedonist. I take the view that happiness and pleasure are always, and the only, intrinsically good things, and unhappiness and pain are always, and the only, intrinsically bad things. Other things that people think of as good or bad are only instrumentally good or bad, i.e. only good or bad insofar as they promote or prevent happiness/pleasure or unhappiness/pain. So I do not accept that there are things more valuable than happiness, nor that happiness can be undesirable.
Quoting Wosret
If you take pain killers for a long time so that it reduces your pain threshold, then whether that is good or bad can only be worked out by estimating A = the total amount of pain over your lifetime if you take the pain killers, and B = the total if you don't; if A > B, then taking the pain killers is bad, if A < B it is good.
My view is that health is only instrumentally good, not intrinsically good, and ill-health is only instrumentally bad. Health is only good insofar as it makes you (and those around you) happy, and ill-health is only bad insofar as it makes you (and those around you) unhappy.
Quoting Wosret
A proper evaluation in principle means doing the hedonistic calculus, i.e. working out the total happiness/unhappiness to people if you prevent it versus the total if you don't. In practice this can't be done to the nth degree, so the moral requirement is to do it to the best of your ability.
Quoting Wosret
Of course you can not pay, but not paying is not the same as waiving the obligation to pay, which is what you can't do if you're the one with the obligation.
Quoting Wosret
What that would probably mean is that because you are less reliable, you are less able to meet your obligations to other people. That would be the main reason why it would be bad. The fact that it would make you less able to meet future obligations to yourself would also make it bad, but that would count for less than the other.
I just find that childish, and also in direct contradiction to obligation, and other people's happiness. Since happiness is all that matters, and the only good, one ought to only honor obligations that make them happy, and when making others happy conflicts with my happiness, they can die in a ditch.
You either have to make exceptions that put happiness into a second order below another value, without admitting that you hold other values higher, or simply say fuck the world, and everyone else when it conflicts with my happiness, in complete support of my OP, that you should just do whatever the fuck you want as long as you can get away with it, and suffer no consequences.
Obviously, as we all know, there are people who live in exactly that way. They tend to rise to the top, of course.
Why shouldn't you be like that?
Well, some people just aren't like that. I'm not like that, and I don't need a reason.
Ironically, many, most or nearly all of the people who behave in that manner claim to be devout Christians.
.But, if someone needs a reason, then howabout the fact (or call it a "claim" if you prefer) that this physical world and this brief worldly life aren't everything. Are you sure that anyone really, ultimately gets away with what they do?
Maybe that consideration does deter some people from doing their worst Obviously there are lot of people who aren't being deterred. Are a lot of professed Christians really closet Atheist Materialists?
Michael Ossipoff
Wow. Powerful philosophical argument! ;)
Quoting Wosret
You have moral obligations only insofar as your actions are likely to promote happiness, or relieve or prevent unhappiness. Other obligations, such as the obligation to keep promises, have to be assessed in line with your moral obligations. If keeping the promise would tend to promote happiness or relieve or prevent unhappiness, you should keep the promise. If it would not, you don't have to. It could even be that keeping the promise would cause a lot of unhappiness, in which case you should break the promise.
Quoting Wosret
The second half of my original argument disposes of this.
Quoting Wosret
No. As I keep pointing out, you can waive an obligation to yourself but not others, which means you should put others before yourself.
We are recycling arguments now. I think the discussion has run its course.
This is true in one sense, and false in another. A lot of business is predicated on superfluous, and damaging exchanges, in our deals, I'm getting profit, and you're getting stuff that you don't need, and may even be harming you. This becomes less and less true the closer to the top, or more direct involvement you have with them, then far more equitable profitable back-scratching exchanges are taking place. More like classist identity, than full on predator. If they were too impulsive, then they wouldn't be able to develop and maintain complex plans. If they were too lazy, then they wouldn't be able to do all of the work, and elbow rubbing that they would do to do. If they were too abrasive, or every man for themselves types, then they wouldn't be able to develop mutually beneficial networks of individuals, working together, all profiting, and towards the same goals.
Just like on every level, people need to not be too big of selfish assholes, or they'd never make it anywhere. The intelligence gap and strategic prowess of the individual that could fool everyone along the way, and into the longterm, and not just for short term benefits with high relationship turnover is an extreme rarity indeed.
The class that finds a way to make money off of the lower classes without having to put in as much effort, or with inequitable trades themselves are only able to pull it off because they actually do tend to be more intelligent, or really good people people. Most everyone would do it if they could, and don't refrain out of higher principles, but inability.
I'm not a fan of hell as a scare tactic, and heaven as a reward, as it sets up the whole televangelistic notion of "prosperity blessing", in that it implies that the wicked are punished, and the good rewarded, so that goodness itself is merely prudence.
Like Dubya? Or Dan Quayle?
Maybe it just helps to be born in a rich family.
But yes, of course there's an evolutionarily-hereditary sheep-class, and an evolutionarily-hereditary herding-class.
Maybe you've noticed how the suckers are a perfect fit to their scammers. It's like the fit of a glove to a hand.
It's eerily reminiscent of Huxley's Brave New World, except that of course there's nothing new about it
The only difference is that, instead of being done with drugs, it happened via evolution.
Evidently that herders/sheep arrangement must have been adaptive at some time in our prehistory.
Anyone who thinks they can achieve change for the better is up against a million years of evolution.
As I often say:
P.T. Barnum pointed out that there's a sucker born every minute.
W.C. Fields said, "Never give a sucker an even break."
Those two great social scientists have explained why societal affairs are the way the are, and always will be.
Really good people? Well that's reassuring, that the it's being done by really good people.
You could have fooled me.
Sure, probably so.
Michael Ossipoff
I somehow lost the last paragraph of your post.
The fear of Hell, or goal of Heaven might deter some people from their worst. If so, then it's doing some good.
It doesn't seem to be working very well, though, does it.
Michael Ossipoff
I don't mean to imply that non-worldly consequences are only a possible deterrent. I think they're real.
Of course our rulers know what they're doing, at the material level, and that's why they'll always remain on top.
But isn't it obvious that, more fundamentally, they don't know what they're doing?
Michael Ossipoff
The OP and your recent post show very different tones as if one was a devil.
Quoting Wosret
Quoting Wosret
Quoting Wosret
So happiness from a bad location doesn't amount to a lot of good. In OP there was no uncertainty, now we have a little added bonus. That actions in accordance with my preferences and benefits are only truly good with the right ruling principle behind it. The only thing your doing now is deciding which value is more important to you, this 'good', or happiness.
If there is such a thing as too much happiness, is there such a thing as too much 'good'. This magical property only achieved when helping people, or furthering good (this is a slippery slope). But the good feeling like warmth in your chest doesn't ever come from actions with no 'good' involved. So you like, I hope, much of everyone else here think 'something' is greater than happiness.
It does not matter if you consider morality subjective or objective, you still make daily determination about your behaviour.