The Masters is actually in Ethics but it’s still a branch of philosophy so totally counts
I always thought that ethics was not defined and it is undefineable. Because it is societal indoctrination, which does not even stick with everyone, and it can hugely differ from society to society, as it is culture-dependent. So how do you prepare to defend a thesis about something undefinable and undefendable?
But I guess the same can be said of Ethics, and metaphysics. So 'tis a go, after all. Just don't try to apply ethical theories to something in the real world.
I always thought that ethics was not defined and it is undefineable. Because it is societal indoctrination, which does not even stick with everyone, and it can hugely differ from society to society, as it is culture-dependent. So how do you prepare to defend a thesis about something undefinable and undefendable?
Most people who do defend and define ethics just outright don't buy your initial premises.
Something is only then indoctrination when critical thinking is not allowed.
The answer to the problem of different cultural ethical norms is simply that different cultures are (or were at some point in history) wrong about different things.
And anywhere in the world you find the same underlying principles to ethics: don't cause unnecessary suffering, for example.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 17:25#3448140 likes
the majorities of most countries would agree with at the very least, not having unnecessary suffering inflicted upon themselves individually, as a community, as a country.
Maybe most people in most countries would agree with that, although we never actually did an empirical study to discover whether that's the case, and I'd suspect that we'd need to clarify the terms for most people in order for them to give an answer that isn't fleeting or easily so ambiguous because of different semantics that the response wouldn't actually tell us much. We'd need to clarify just what counts as unnecessary, just what counts as suffering, etc.
The more important point though is what does it matter for the sub-discussion that was occurring?
In other words, suppose that's a fact. What would you say the relevance of it is to Artemis' response to god must be an atheist's comment?
Deleted UserOctober 23, 2019 at 18:18#3448240 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station It matters because while a places culture and history factor into the moral ecology of said place, it isn’t the only factor.
For example, there is plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that most views reside within most places regardless of culture or tradition of those places. Demographic ratios may show a differing majority but nevertheless the views still exist within that culture. Actually the most substantial empirical evidence you could hope to find. Schools. Schools have records of their graduates core beliefs in every field you could imagine. Including ethics.
It also matters because it relates to the pragmatic definition of truth and the data found in Descriptive Moral relativism which takes into account these demographics and is an amazing data tool for ethics.
Well, respectfully Terrapin, you may not be the best example to use in this argument because (and correct me if I'm wrong) you have in previous threads claimed to outright reject any overarching princples in ethics. Which really leads to you not having an "ethics" per se.
If you look at any system of ethics, I think you will find (semantics and details of the hows and whys aside) that there are some universal themes.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 19:57#3448540 likes
The answer to the problem of different cultural ethical norms is simply that different cultures are (or were at some point in history) wrong about different things.
And anywhere in the world you find the same underlying principles to ethics: don't cause unnecessary suffering, for example.
:up:
PossibilityOctober 24, 2019 at 03:56#3449400 likes
I always thought that ethics was not defined and it is undefineable. Because it is societal indoctrination, which does not even stick with everyone, and it can hugely differ from society to society, as it is culture-dependent. So how do you prepare to defend a thesis about something undefinable and undefendable?
— god must be atheist
Most people who do defend and define ethics just outright don't buy your initial premises.
Something is only then indoctrination when critical thinking is not allowed.
The answer to the problem of different cultural ethical norms is simply that different cultures are (or were at some point in history) wrong about different things.
And anywhere in the world you find the same underlying principles to ethics: don't cause unnecessary suffering, for example.
The way I see it, the idea that there is an objective or universal sense of ethical principles is sound. That such principles can be stated, however, is inaccurate. A stated or defined ethical principle is going to be wrong about something from some perspective of the universe. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to approach a universal sense of ethics. But I don’t think it comes down to ‘DON’T’ statements, to be honest.
Deleted UserOctober 24, 2019 at 04:14#3449430 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
creativesoulOctober 24, 2019 at 04:39#3449460 likes
A few simple, common sense, defensible, and easily teachable ones...
I could swear I saw a post in here I wanted to reply to later, and now it's gone. It was something to the effect of "even though there is no objective morality, it's still useful to debate moral topics so we can come to an agreement on what we will subjectively take to be morality just for practical purposes of getting along". I can't remember who wrote it.
In response, I wanted to submit the idea that that is all that it takes to develop an objective morality. If there are reasons that could persuade someone to prefer something, with the likes of which you could conduct such a debate as above, then working out what all of those reasons taken together say we should prefer just is figuring out what is objectively moral. (If there are no such reasons, then such debate is doomed to failure regardless, and we're doomed to a world where everyone does whatever they want and can't be persuaded to do otherwise, so might substitutes for right and there's no point debating why the guy with the sword shouldn't gut you if he feels like it).
"Objective morality" doesn't have to entail that there be ontological moral objects, moral facts that are true in the same way that non-moral facts are. Moral claims are not descriptive, they're prescriptive, so why would you expect them to be made true by, justified by the same kind of reasons as, descriptive claims? They don't need that to be objective claims. They just need to be unbiased; "objective" just means "unbiased". There just need to be something in common to our experiences that we can point to and say "because of that" as a reason to reject the supposed morality of something, and so begin narrowing in on what the remaining possibly-moral options are, in the same way that we point at disagreement with empirical experiences as reasons to reject descriptive claims and narrow in on the truth.
It seems that hedonic experiences serve that function perfectly well: we demonstrate the falsehood of descriptive claims by saying in effect "stand here and look that way and you'll see that that's false", and we can likewise demonstrate the badness (analogous to falsehood) of prescriptive claims by saying in effect "stand here and feel this and you'll feel that it's bad". Sure, someone can always say "I don't want to stand there and feel that and you can't make me so I don't have to agree that that's bad" (the "somebody else's problem" response), but that's just ignoring relevant evidence in the same way that someone refusing to look at empirical evidence of a descriptive claim would be.
creativesoulOctober 24, 2019 at 07:12#3449720 likes
Reply to creativesoul Its prescriptivity, which can be elaborated upon in terms of direction of fit. A descriptive claim is like a detective's list of the things a man he's investigating bought at the grocery store; a prescriptive claim is like the shopping list the man's wife gave him. The lists might be exactly the same, but they are for different purposes: if the things the man bought disagree with the detective's list, the detective's list is wrong, but if the things the man bought disagree with his wife's list, the things the man bought are wrong instead.
If there are reasons that could persuade someone to prefer something, with the likes of which you could conduct such a debate as above, then working out what all of those reasons taken together say we should prefer just is figuring out what is objectively moral.
But it seems fundamental that there are not 'resaons' why we prefer things. We do not prefer things for reasons. Can you convince someone to prefer green, prefer chocolate to vanilla? Can you convince an arachnophobe to prefer spiders?
Where would you start? "We shouldn't prefer to cause unnecessary harm because..." (ignoring for now the ambiguity in both 'unnecessary' and 'harm'). What could your 'because' possibly be?
If there are no such reasons, then such debate is doomed to failure regardless, and we're doomed to a world where everyone does whatever they want and can't be persuaded to do otherwise
Why would we be in such a world? We can persuade people not to do what they want by all sorts of means. It's not a case of saying "If we can't persuade them to actually prefer not to do X we might as well just let them do X"
There just need to be something in common to our experiences that we can point to and say "because of that" as a reason to reject the supposed morality of something, and so begin narrowing in on what the remaining possibly-moral options are, in the same way that we point at disagreement with empirical experiences as reasons to reject descriptive claims and narrow in on the truth.
This is very much the myth of moral realism writ large. Note the vague hand-waiving when it comes to the really important bit. Yes, we can point to some things in our common experience, we're all humans and biologically we have some pretty similar gut feelings about stuff, but they're just that - vague gut feelings. the really important bit is the bit you simply assumed, the "begin narrowing in on what the remaining possibly-moral options are". I'm afraid in most cases, the 'remaining possibly-moral options' are almost anything we would realistically be arguing about anyway. It doesn't really get us anywhere.
we demonstrate the falsehood of descriptive claims by saying in effect "stand here and look that way and you'll see that that's false", and we can likewise demonstrate the badness (analogous to falsehood) of prescriptive claims by saying in effect "stand here and feel this and you'll feel that it's bad".
Again, this only works where some degree of 'bad' is universally agreed on, and some long-term lack of compensatory benefit is universally agreed upon and they never are. How would it help getting someone to imagine themselves to be a 'rank-and-file' soldier in the German army 1940. "would you like to be in his position, would you like to be shot at?", "No", "Well then you shouldn't shoot German Soldiers in World War Two". Where would that have got us? A lot of innocent people were killed in World War Two. They were killed because many people thought the long-term good outweighed the bad.
What you're describing is simply empathy. Over reliance on empathy is what makes people donate to sick-donkey sanctuaries that they happen to have visited but still maintain consumer practices which contribute to the suffering of thousands (who they can't see).
But it seems fundamental that there are not 'resaons' why we prefer things.
There are raw experiential feelings of “preferring”, hedonic experiences of something just seeming good or bad, that are not had for reasons; but then there are also things that we instrumentally prefer for reasons grounded in exactly those experiences.
We can persuade people not to do what they want by all sorts of means.
If we are the ones in power and so can create circumstances that they’ll consider reasons to behave like we want (like “I’ll hurt you if you don’t“), sure. If they are the ones in power then we’re fucked. That’s why in absence of any way to persuade anyone, might supplants right.
Yes, we can point to some things in our common experience, we're all humans and biologically we have some pretty similar gut feelings about stuff, but they're just that - vague gut feelings.
I’m not talking about floofy gut feelings about what circumstances we instrumentally prefer, but about the experiences that lead us to prefer them. It’s like I’m talking about comparing empirical observations and you think I’m talking about comparing people’s beliefs. Beliefs and desires don’t matter, they are subjective interpretations of experience; it is the experiences we have in common that matter.
(And biological similarity is not strictly necessary. We can account for differences in people’s senses when taking empirical account of the world, and we can do likewise with peoples’ appetites when taking hedonic account of it).
How would it help getting someone to imagine themselves to be a 'rank-and-file' soldier in the German army 1940. "would you like to be in his position, would you like to be shot at?", "No", "Well then you shouldn't shoot German Soldiers in World War Two". Where would that have got us? A lot of innocent people were killed in World War Two. They were killed because many people thought the long-term good outweighed the bad.
Ideally we would not shoot soldiers in wars. That is bad. But if something else bad will happen if we don’t, if we’re forced to choose between two bad options because we can’t find an all good one, then we choose the least bad of course. You say nothing here that shows that it is not possible to compare options to see which is less bad.
There are raw experiential feelings of “preferring”, hedonic experiences of something just seeming good or bad, that are not had for reasons; but then there are also things that we instrumentally prefer for reasons grounded in exactly those experiences.
If we are the ones in power and so can create circumstances that they’ll consider reasons to behave like we want (like “I’ll hurt you if you don’t“), sure. If they are the ones in power then we’re fucked. That’s why in absence of any way to persuade anyone, might supplants right.
But if we resort to persuasion, aren't the ones with the most persuasive rhetoric in power? I don't see how, by using persuasion, you've bypassed power structures. We already live in a situation where people can be persuaded to vote one way or another. The people with the best access to, and control of, the media tend to do better.
Also, on the slightly less cynical side, there's more than just "I'll hurt you if you don't", there's things like ostracisation which can persuade people to act against their preferences. We don't always have to choose between a dispassionate rational debate and a fight. There's the whole of politics in between.
It’s like I’m talking about comparing empirical observations and you think I’m talking about comparing people’s beliefs. Beliefs and desires don’t matter, they are subjective interpretations of experience; it is the experiences we have in common that matter.
I don't understand what you're saying here, could you try and explain it again?
if something else bad will happen if we don’t, if we’re forced to choose between two bad options because we can’t find an all good one, then we choose the least bad of course.
No, it's not about the least bad, it's about what will or will not come to pass. The issue with the Second World War was not "which is worse, killing some innocent Germans or being taken over by Hitler?", it was "is killing some innocent Germans a necessary act in preventing us from being taken over by Hitler?". That question is not resolvable by empathy.
But if we resort to persuasion, aren't the ones with the most persuasive rhetoric in power?
I suppose I misspoke; by "persuasion" I meant more specifically "reason". You're absolutely right that there are other influences between reason and physical violence, but my point was to distinguish between reason and all of those other non-rational influences, with physical violence just being the clearest exemplar of them. (Something like "if you don't I'll make you feel embarrassed" is still the same kind of "create a reason they'll pay attention to" use of power as "if you don't I'll hurt you", albeit softer of course).
It’s like I’m talking about comparing empirical observations and you think I’m talking about comparing people’s beliefs. Beliefs and desires don’t matter, they are subjective interpretations of experience; it is the experiences we have in common that matter. — Pfhorrest
I don't understand what you're saying here, could you try and explain it again?
Gladly, this is the most important part of my whole ethical model really.
When it comes to investigating reality, we don't just ask people what they believe (what they think is true or false), and try to come up with something that's true according to everyone's beliefs. That would be ridiculous and is obviously almost guaranteed to be impossible. Instead, we ask people what looks true or false to them, what they observe. (And it's important to highlight the difference here also between perception and sensation, where perception is of something like "a ball", and sensation is of something like "a pattern of light"; sensation is raw sense data, akin to the pixels of an image displayed on a screen, while perception is interpreted sensation, akin to a vectorization of that pixel data. Perception is "feeling" like something is true, sensation is raw phenomenal experience with implications on truth). Observation is not about perception, which has all the same problems as belief, but rather about sensation). And then we don't just take their word for it, we go and stand in the same circumstances they said they observed it and see if we observe it too, and if we don't we try to account for differences between each other (and of course, first, double-checking for differences in the circumstances) to see if that can explain the differences in observation. Once we have an agreed-upon set of observations, we try to come up with models that satisfy all of them, which may or may not be what anybody initially believed or even perceived on account of those observations.
My ethical model hinges upon making a similar distinction as that between belief, perception, and sensation: instead of just wants or preferences, we need to distinguish between what I term intentions (thinking that something is good, "moral beliefs" some would say), desires (feeling that something is good, analogous to perceptions), and appetites (experiences of things like pain, hunger, etc, with implications about what to feel or think is good, but no propositional content to that effect as such yet). Just as in investigating morality we don't care about what people believe or even what they perceive but about their senses, their empirical experiences, and then we try to replicate those and build up from them to a model that satisfies them all even if it's not what anybody initially believed, so too in investigating morality we shouldn't care about what people intend or what they desire but about their appetites, their hedonic experiences, and then try to replicate those (stand in the same circumstances and see if we experience the same, try to account for differences between us and double-check for differences in the circumstances), and then try to come up with models that satisfy the set of everything that survives that process, which models may or may not be what anybody initially intended or desired on account of those appetites.
There's a whole lot more philosophy and what I'd call "ethical sciences" needed to build from that basic criteria to a complete understanding of what in particular is morally right, just like we can't just say "Empiricism is reality. There, all of the physical sciences are complete, everyone can go home now, we know everything about reality, it's just whatever you observe!" But this at least gives you criteria by which to start making prescriptive judgements.
No, it's not about the least bad, it's about what will or will not come to pass. The issue with the Second World War was not "which is worse, killing some innocent Germans or being taken over by Hitler?", it was "is killing some innocent Germans a necessary act in preventing us from being taken over by Hitler?". That question is not resolvable by empathy.
That is a descriptive question. All actions hinge on making both descriptive and prescriptive judgements (usually called "beliefs" and "desires" in traditional philosophy of action, but I'd say "beliefs" and "intentions" instead, per the above). To know whether we ought to kill some innocent Germans, we both need to answer the descriptive question of whether that is necessary (or even sufficient) to prevent us from being taken over by Hitler, and the prescriptive question of whether some innocent Germans being killed is better or worse than us being taken over by Hitler. And any judgements on either of those questions are fallible, and might be wrong, so we might end up doing the wrong thing, but just because we can't be completely certain what the correct answer is to something doesn't mean that there is no correct answer, whether we're talking about reality or morality.
I just remembered a comment from another thread I recently made that may also be helpful describing my view here:
me in another thread:as far as I'm concerned, "needs" as I would construe them technically cannot conflict, in the same way that observations of the world technically cannot conflict. They can suggest interpretations about what is or ought to be that conflict, but what actually is must account for all observations, even if it's a really difficult creative task to figure out how to do that, and what actually ought to be must account for all needs, even if it's a really difficult creative task to figure out how to do that.
(Consider the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each one feels a different thing and interprets that as meaning there's a different object, and while all three of those interpretations cannot be simultaneously true, the actual reality is nevertheless compatible with the different things each of them feels to prompt those interpretations. Analogously, people's different feelings may prompt them to want different states of affairs, and those states of affairs may be incompatible, but what's actually a moral state of affairs will nevertheless account for everyone's different feelings, even if it means nobody gets any of the states of affairs that those feelings prompted them to want).
Its prescriptivity, which can be elaborated upon in terms of direction of fit. A descriptive claim is like a detective's list of the things a man he's investigating bought at the grocery store; a prescriptive claim is like the shopping list the man's wife gave him. The lists might be exactly the same, but they are for different purposes: if the things the man bought disagree with the detective's list, the detective's list is wrong, but if the things the man bought disagree with his wife's list, the things the man bought are wrong instead.
Reply to creativesoul More or less. There is not a clear distinction on my account of prescriptive claims that are moral versus ones that are not moral, but sometimes in writing about it I get the feeling that using the word "moral" in place of just "prescriptive" might confuse some part of the audience, so I'm not certain that for all speakers they are synonymous.
The sense I get from those who might make such a distinction is between other-directed action and self-directed action, though on my account there is no need to make that distinction for the claims to be broadly speaking "moral": I'd say one ought not, for example, literally beat oneself up (like punch oneself in the face) over one's failures, and that "ought" is prescriptive, and therefore on my account the same kind of claim as a claim that one ought not beat up overs over their failures, but I get the sense that others would say that only the latter claim about interpersonal action is "moral" and the first is... something else, I guess? I would make a distinction between self-directed and other-directed action when it comes to procedural justice, saying that someone has the right to beat themselves up but not the right to beat someone else up, but that's only a subset of moral concerns, and in the broader sense I'd say that the first is moral too.
Something is only then indoctrination when critical thinking is not allowed.
Single-concern bullshit is not the same as critical thinking.
Demanding evidence within a system for system-wide axioms is not the same as critical thinking. On the contrary, it is just stupid, infinite regress.
Seriously, all of that amounts to system-less nonsense and not to critical thinking. What these people are doing, is easy. It does not require any skill. It is inferior nonsense.
They think that they are doing logic, but they have absolutely no clue about systems of logic. Why don't they try to reason within or about e.g. Hilbert-Ackermann calculi, if logic is so important to them?
They think that they are doing logic, but they have absolutely no clue about systems of logic. Why don't they try to reason within or about e.g. Hilbert-Ackermann calculi, if logic is so important to them?
Why don't they try to reason within or about e.g. Hilbert-Ackermann calculi, if logic is so important to them?
my point was to distinguish between reason and all of those other non-rational influences,
Reason is not necessarily a 'rational' influence though. I think 2000 years of debate have pretty firmly established that reason does not deliver one clear answer to complex moral dilemmas, it is highly susceptible to competing theories and competing selections of empirical evidence. Simply presenting to someone a 'reasonable' case for doing X as a moral imperative is to simply bias that person in favour of doing X if one know that there also exists a 'reasonable' case for not doing X. The idea of reasonable debate producing the answer to moral dilemmas, even notwithstanding the possibility of genuine differences in objective, relies on the flawed assumption of full access to relevant empirical data and the pre-existence of all rational lines of thought in each mind (as opposed to having them introduced by persuasive argument). Neither I think are the case.
In addition, I simply do not think it is possible for the human mind to make rational decisions absent of any cultural, or psychological bias. There is an entire field made up entirely of evidence that this is the case and (to my knowledge) zero evidence to the contrary. We can't even take in the basic empirical data without bias, it's ingrained in our entire thinking systems.
___
I'm still not sure I fully understand your ethical theory, but rather than just ask you to write it out again, I'll tell you what I've got so far and you can correct/add.
The moral 'good' can be defined as satisfactory hedonic experiences.
We can determine the states of affairs which bring about those experiences scientifically because (unlike feelings and beliefs about what will bring them about) the experiences themselves are empirically verifiable.
Where people differ in their hedonic experiences in what appear to be the same states of affairs, we can examine closely to find if there are perhaps some subtle differences in those states of affairs.
Upon discovering the ranges of states of affairs which bring about satisfactory hedonic experiences in people we can derive some generalisable states of affairs which we can label 'good' on that basis.
To know whether we ought to kill some innocent Germans, we both need to answer the descriptive question of whether that is necessary (or even sufficient) to prevent us from being taken over by Hitler, and the prescriptive question of whether some innocent Germans being killed is better or worse than us being taken over by Hitler.
Demanding evidence within a system for system-wide axioms is not the same as critical thinking. On the contrary, it is just stupid, infinite regress.
No one said anything about demanding such evidence "within" the system. Your error is in presuming there's no wider system of which religious texts are only a part. Most atheists consider themselves to be part of some system of physical, biological, psychological, social...etc system of laws which they refer to to make rational decisions. Religions are not the only systems.
We can't even take in the basic empirical data without bias, it's ingrained in our entire thinking systems.
I don't disagree, but we don't use that as a basis to say that nothing is actually real, just that we are bad at figuring out what is actually real. I think the case for figuring out what is moral is comparable: we may be bad at figuring out what is moral, but that's not an excuse to say that nothing is actually moral. And I don't have any particular commitment to contingent particulars about how relatively better or worse we may tend to be at each; just that's it's a task we can undertake, however fallibly, in both cases.
it's a task we can undertake, however fallibly, in both cases.
The question (one that I think virtue ethics tackles) is whether the flaws in these calculatory systems are not so massive as to render them less useful than intuition.
More or less, though I expect some important technical details will probably need clarification in further conversation.
OK, thanks. So...
1. I don't see the benefit in asserting that the moral 'good' is satisfactory hedonic experiences. So many people would disagree and you get mired in an argument that can't be supported. Why not just say if you want to maximise satisfactory hedonic experience, then it seems empirically indicated that you should do X. Turning it into an if/then statement removes all the mess of the is/ought problem and, if you're right about most people's desires, would still resonate with the vast majority of people.
2. I don't see anything there about judging hyperbolic discounting (future possible hedonic gains are worth less than current definate ones).
There may be more, but let's not get bogged down too much to start with.
The difficulty is finding something which is truly good - like a 'true north' for the moral compass. That requires that there be a 'summum bonum'. Sounds too much like religion for most people’s liking. It has to be ultimately subjective in some sense - a matter of choice.
Most atheists consider themselves to be part of some system of physical, biological, psychological, social...etc system of laws which they refer to to make rational decisions.
But what laws are there apart from physical necessity? I had the idea that in the atheist’s world the only principles resembling laws were physical laws i.e. laws of motion, thermodynamics, and so on. Social and civil laws would have no direct grounding in such laws, rather are grounded in social convention. And ultimately they’re underwritten, it’s assumed, by successful adaptation, are they not?
But what laws are there apart from physical necessity? I had the idea that in the atheist’s world the only principles resembling laws were physical laws i.e. laws of motion, thermodynamics, and so on.
No, I think most atheists subscribe to some social, psychological and even economic models which they reference in rational thinking. "X will likely lead to Y because..." does not always have to reduce to physical laws.
Religious systems may well provide "do not do X because..." type of answers, but so can a favoured economic model. Of course you have to have - a) faith in the model, and b) an initial feeling about the objective you want the model to help you achieve. But I don't see religion getting anyone out of those problems. One must have faith in the system and one must always decide that following the system (or sometimes the rewards within it, like heaven) is an objective one wants to achieve.
One major difference between religious systems and non-religious ones is that faith in non-religious systems is more easily justified by their utility at helping to provide useful strategies, but this is far from universal (many people stick with favoured non-religious systems despite abject failures to produce anything useful, and conversely some religious systems produce useful interrim results people find useful).
Deleted UserOctober 25, 2019 at 12:52#3452750 likes
Reply to Isaac “No, I think most atheists subscribe to some social, psychological and even economic models which they reference in rational thinking. "X will likely lead to Y because..." does not always have to reduce to physical laws.”
In my experience, most atheists in regards to Ethics are either Relativists or Pragmatists. You should check out Pragmatic ethics, I think you’d really like that. Moral ecology and Piercean Realism are also subjects you should research.
Are you considering things like (but not limited to) evolutionary ethics, virtue ethics, utilitarianism, or rights based ethics to fall under those two categories broadly?
Deleted UserOctober 25, 2019 at 13:42#3452830 likes
Reply to Artemis Well technically for Descriptive relativism yes. Only in saying that the rational relativist sees no moral absolute, but would say these things exist on the relative moral spectrum as beliefs within our population.
Pragmatists are probably more utilitarian when it comes to ethics but not metaethics. In that they apply a utilitarian principle toward ethics, looking at every moral view for utility to find pragmatic truth.
Pragmatic truth is probably best defined as that definition of good which is closest to objective by the empirical facts we have on hand. So at the individual level this can lead to different flavours of pragmatism.
Fundamentally the pragmatist believes in objective good, they just don’t believe it is possible to truly identify without us knowing all the facts of the universe. This also leads to a second feature of pragmatism (which I am oft prone to forgetting in my practice of it) is that it is not the individual that is being judged as moral or immoral, but the society individuals collectively create. Simply because one individual cannot have access to our entire collective knowledge as it is, let alone if we legitimately knew everything there was to know about the universe already.
Now we arrive at moral ecology which is the view that we have to manage our collective moral views as we would an ecosystem. There is some disagreement on moral ecology though, some think all views need to be represented and maintained while others (myself included) feel certain maladaptive and destructive moral views will always contribute to a negative moral judgement on humanity as a whole and don’t contribute to our survival, stability, security or moral progress.
The only valid criticism of Pragmatism I’ve come across really is that at times it conflates the distinction between normative and descriptive ethics, but no more than science conflates the distinction between empirical facts about the universe and the opinions on those facts. If anyone has other criticisms of pragmatism though I’d be willing to hear.
The one I’ve noticed myself reading this back; is that if the individual cannot know everything there is to know, then how would the pragmatist ever know if the society they are in is moral or not even if collectively we knew everything?
To put it simply though, pragmatism for the individual requires building ones own ethica pragmatica; A working theory of what good is, an obligation to hold true to that good with a moderate grip, so that one has the integrity to fight for it and yet isn’t so rigid that concrete evidence against their theory of good isn’t ignored.
Then you have adaptive pragmatism as a philosophy as opposed to pragmatic ethics (it is quite possible to be a philosophical pragmatist but not a moral one and vice versa) it’s only real difference between Pragmatism is that it requires a philosophy of science to be quantum accommodated, meaning a philosophy of science is incomplete without an attempt(A horrible, long and confusing attempt because of how probabilistic it is) at interpreting philosophy of quantum mechanics.
In conclusion, the answer to your question is Relativism is broad but pragmatism can be as broad or narrow as the individual pragmatist feels is justified.
Deleted UserOctober 25, 2019 at 14:12#3452930 likes
Moral Ecology expanded: Take my heated debates with @Bartricks
After thinking on it last night, I realised I’m not angry at him for being an Antinatalist and I’m not even angry at Antinatalism. I’m angry at my inner conflict over its place in our moral ecology.
On the one hand, Antinatalists at their current numbers in my perspective are useful in that they slow the human growth rate making a small contribution to resource management.
On the other hand it is one of the views that if it gains too much popularity could lead to a logical progression from Antinatalism is okay, to Genocide is okay. That’s not to say that’s what they currently think and I’m happy to take back that accusation I threw at Bartricks yesterday.
However now that he has a bit more insight into my own views (if he reads my response to @Artemis)and I’m agreeing to walk back my anger from our previous debates in the pursuit of seeing each other as persons and not means to our ends; maybe he can make the case to me that Antinatalism belongs in our moral ecology without me having to fear them hounding for mine, my descendants or everyone else’s death at some point down the line?
Is that fair Bartrick? I do apologise, but I think you can at least empathise with the fact that your views are controversial and emotive to most.
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 14:46#3453130 likes
I'm not sure I understand how you can have an "ethics" of any sort without some principles you fall back on?
Like, you previously stated something along the lines of judging each situation individually, but on what basis do you make a judgement?
The basis upon which anyone makes any moral judgment is their dispositions or intuited feelings about interpersonal behavior. That's how people wind up forwarding or buying into moral principles as well.
My ethics is my set of preferences/judgments about interpersonal behavior (more significant than etiquette)
Deleted UserOctober 25, 2019 at 14:49#3453160 likes
What do you use to make these judgements? Your opinions and preferences on empirical data?
Not just me, but everyone uses their dispositions/intuitive feelings. It can both be in response to empirical observations and in response to imagining scenarios.
PossibilityOctober 25, 2019 at 14:53#3453210 likes
Wouldn't any positive statement imply a negative one?
Only if you’re looking for one - ie. if you’re motivated by fear.
Any statement of ethical principle is inaccurate, whether it’s positive or negative.
Deleted UserOctober 25, 2019 at 15:00#3453250 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station Could imagines scenarios not fall under the category of social, psychological and linguistic etc empirical data? For example when the imagined scenario is written down and becomes a literary work of fiction or when the imagined scenario is explained to the psychologist and the sociologist is looking for trends and patterns in accounts of people’s imaginings?
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 15:01#3453270 likes
Could imagines scenarios not fall under the category of social, psychological and linguistic etc empirical data? For example when the imagined scenario is written down and becomes a literary work of fiction or when the imagined scenario is explained to the psychologist and the sociologist is looking for trends and patterns in accounts of people’s imaginings?
That's fine, but you could imagine something and keep it to yourself, too.
Deleted UserOctober 25, 2019 at 15:06#3453320 likes
How do you differentiate that from essentially a moral code?
I wouldn't say there's any conventional difference between the two (and I don't use the terms differently . . . well, not that I even use the phrase "moral code").
Only if you’re looking for one - ie. if you’re motivated by fear.
Any statement of ethical principle is inaccurate, whether it’s positive or negative.
I don't really understand why something like "don't drown kittens in a burlap sack" would be either inaccurate or motivated by fear.
And an ethics where all maxims/codes/whatever you want to call them are inaccurate is not really an ethics per se. I'm not saying it's an indefensible position on that basis, just that it doesn't count as an ethics. Like atheism is not a form of theism.
Okay, so then you must have some underlying principles you fall back on? And why wouldn't avoiding unnecessary suffering be one of them? (And let's not get sidetracked in semantics. A scenario where you recognize that suffering is unnecessary. And suffering as understood to be something non-masochistic-actually-causing-pleasure-loophole.)
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 15:46#3453670 likes
Okay, so then you must have some underlying principles you fall back on?
No. Because I think that seeing any moral principle as a trump card (so you're falling back on it) always results in ridiculous policies.
Re "unncessary suffering," first, I think that both parts of that--especially the "suffering" part, are very vague with respect to how people use those terms. A lot of things that I see people call "suffering" are not something that I consider morally problematic at all. Some things that almost everyone considers "suffering" I think are either neutral or positive and/or indicative of a problem (like a mental problem) on the sufferer's part.
Re necessity, in this sort of context, I consider necessity/needs to hinge on wants/desires.
So an example is saying something that offends someone else. I not only see that as not morally problematic, I see it as desirable to offend the offendable, and I see it as indicative of a problem on the offendees part that they were offended. Which is a reason that I think this is a good thing--knowing that you're offendable should be a cue to work on yourself and fix those issues.
No. Because I think that seeing any moral principle as a trump card (so you're falling back on it) always results in ridiculous policies.
Seems to me you yourself still fall back on them, even if you're just doing it "intuitively."
And I think you have to distinguish between a naive Kantian maxims doctrine versus more nuanced ethical approaches that take context and situationally conflicting morals into account.
Re your re's, you're totally disregarding my suggestion to leave semantics aside for a moment. When I'm talking about your personal moral maxim, it doesn't matter what other people consider these terms to mean. And your example about offense simply implies that sometimes you think offense is a necessary thing.
Would you beat up a small child in an alleyway if you knew you could get away with it and suffer absolutely zero social or financial or other external consequences? Why or why not?
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 16:10#3453770 likes
Seems to me you yourself still fall back on them, even if you're just doing it "intuitively."
I don't though. I intentionally try to intuit how I feel about a particular situation, simply as that particular situation. I particularly have a distaste for what I consider overreactions, and those tend to follow from people relying on a principle-oriented approach.
When I'm talking about your personal moral maxim, it doesn't matter what other people consider these terms to mean.
The problem is that I don't frame anything in terms of "suffering." (Or any sort of unqualified "harm" even.) "Suffering" is not a term that I normally use in any context, unless someone else is using the term.
Would you beat up a small child in an alleyway if you knew you could get away with it and suffer absolutely zero social or financial or other external consequences?
I wouldn't beat up anyone "out of the blue," where it's not in response to something. That's not my personality.
More or less. There is not a clear distinction on my account of prescriptive claims that are moral versus ones that are not moral, but sometimes in writing about it I get the feeling that using the word "moral" in place of just "prescriptive" might confuse some part of the audience, so I'm not certain that for all speakers they are synonymous.
The sense I get from those who might make such a distinction is between other-directed action and self-directed action, though on my account there is no need to make that distinction for the claims to be broadly speaking "moral": I'd say one ought not, for example, literally beat oneself up (like punch oneself in the face) over one's failures, and that "ought" is prescriptive, and therefore on my account the same kind of claim as a claim that one ought not beat up overs over their failures, but I get the sense that others would say that only the latter claim about interpersonal action is "moral" and the first is... something else, I guess? I would make a distinction between self-directed and other-directed action when it comes to procedural justice, saying that someone has the right to beat themselves up but not the right to beat someone else up, but that's only a subset of moral concerns, and in the broader sense I'd say that the first is moral too.
How does the direction of fit play a part(apply) in "One ought not literally beat oneself up over their failures"?
It is, because nothing else is available. I'm not saying that it's what others necessarily believe that they're doing. But it's what they're doing nonetheless.
There has to be. Or else everyone would respond to all situations like a toddler.
I'm not saying intuition doesn't play a role. But there are other elements to decision making.
Hence the word ultimately. That wasn't just there for decoration.
First off, obviously we don't stay emotionally the same as toddlers as we age.
But other than that, we already said that you can use various stances as foundational stances on a given occasion (and some people can decide to far more consistently use the same foundation(s)). And then you can reason from those foundational stances. But ultimately, which means when we go back to the foundational stance(s), it's simply how someone feels, what their dispositions are.
Well first you can't help but feel that some behavior is okay and not other behavior. That's built into us.
Why do people do "hard thinking" about it? Because we also have an inbuilt tendency to want to be consistent, and if we don't think about our moral dispositions very much, we're less likely to be consistent in our reactions. That particularly bothers us in moral situations as long as we have empathy, because we'll wind up doing things that we're not comfortable with on reflection.
I still don't see why someone with your view of the matter would bother. If my disposition at point t=0 is just as valid as at t=1, then it would all be inherently consistent.
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 17:15#3454260 likes
Again, you can't help but feel the way you do. That's built into our biology.
For example, you beat up someone for no reason today. Well, a couple days later, you might realize that you don't really feel comfortable with beating up someone for no reason. Why? It's simply a way that you feel. A disposition you have.
So then you feel regret that you did something you don't now feel comfortable with. Your think that your previous actions are inconsistent with how you really feel--especially if you simply didn't think too much about it when you beat up someone for no reason.
So you decide that you're going to try to figure out how you really feel about these sorts of things.
I've only got five minutes so don't want to fully get into this right now, but whilst this is fresh. The two points you've just raised seem to me to be exactly what you were denying when we spoke about moral discussions last. 1) that people have foundational moral principles "you can use various stances as foundational stances on a given occasion (and some people can decide to far more consistently use the same foundation(s))", and 2) that people may take a stance on one matter which they may later come to regret because they tend to prefer consistency.
These two principles are exactly those on which I was basing the value of moral argument - a) you're a human being, biologically driven, and most human beings have X as a foundational moral stance, and b) if you take position Y it clashes with stance X and I think you will regret that later.
The moral argument being essentially an attempt to convince the person that, firstly they do (or probably do) have moral stance X, and then to demonstrate by reason that activity Y is inconsistent with it and they will regret that inconsistency later.
In my experience, most atheists in regards to Ethics are either Relativists or Pragmatists. You should check out Pragmatic ethics, I think you’d really like that. Moral ecology and Piercean Real.
Pragmatism and utilitarianism are founded on what is useful, what works - so ‘what is good’ in the sense of what is useful. It leads to an ethic of reciprocal self-interest, rather than a sense of a true good, something good in its own right and of its own accord.
Interestingly, Peirce was not atheist (nor materialist). See his Evolutionary Love wherein he proclaims ‘agap?’ as a creative force (and distinguished from ‘tychism’, evolution by chance, and ‘anancastism’, evolution from mechanical necessity.)
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 20:08#3454530 likes
If I can't help how I feel, how can I purposefully change it through introspection?
I'm not saying anything about changing how you feel.
Your moral dispositions are "deep" or "gut-level" dispositions that may not be immediately obvious.
You can also have shallower feelings that may be reactionary and that are far more fleeting. For example, you might do something out of anger.
To know your moral view about something, you often have to engage in introspection, or what's sometimes called "hard" or "deep" thinking, where you're trying to intuit how you feel about something on a gut level.
Sometimes those gut-level feelings emerge naturally in the wake of something you or someone else did that you wind up regretting or resenting.
The reason that you bother, which is why you asked me, is that you can't help but have these sorts of states--the gut-level moral stances, for example. And most people are uncomfortable being inconsistent--so, for example, they might be uncomfortable with something they did out of anger, in a reactionary, fleeting moment, where that doesn't match their gut-level disposition about that sort of behavior.
Interesting. Where do these gut-level things come from?
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 21:00#3454610 likes
They're rooted in genetics ultimately. As I said, they're built into our biology--it's a way our brains work, because we're a species where survival was aided by empathy, by having opinions about how other members of the species should and shouldn't be treated.
1. wouldn't that mean that we all probably have the same gut-level instincts ultimately with slight preference variations.
2. wouldn't that suggest that there is some objectively identifiable and justifiable reason/s for having those? Like, altruism is our gut-level preference because it's better for group survival, etc.
The question (one that I think virtue ethics tackles) is whether the flaws in these calculatory systems are not so massive as to render them less useful than intuition.
I don't really see how it could possibly be less useful than intuition, since intuition is where you start from and then try to improve upon it. (E.g. "I think this ought not happen" [intuitively] "Why not?" [asking for reasons] "Because I suffer in this way when it happens." "Really? Let me see... oh yeah, that sucks. But if we do that other thing, I suffer in this way, see? So I don't think we should do that either." "Oh you're right, that's awful. Well what else can we do besides those two things that don't cause either of those problems?" etc...)
1. I don't see the benefit in asserting that the moral 'good' is satisfactory hedonic experiences. So many people would disagree and you get mired in an argument that can't be supported. Why not just say if you want to maximise satisfactory hedonic experience, then it seems empirically indicated that you should do X. Turning it into an if/then statement removes all the mess of the is/ought problem and, if you're right about most people's desires, would still resonate with the vast majority of people.
It's not a matter of just asserting or defining that satisfactory hedonic experiences are goodness, which people will argue about for sure; it's that for something to be a satisfactory hedonic experience just is for it to seem good, in the same way that an empirical experience of something is for it to seem true. So we can completely sidestep the (IMO malformed*) question of whether that's "really" good, we're just trying to find a common ground of agreement to work from, so it's just a matter of getting people to have a common base of experiences that, they can all confirm for themselves, sure enough seem good or bad at least, and then from that common base working out what states of affairs avoid the experiences that seem bad and only leave ones that seem good (or minimize/maximize at least), and then the hard work of figuring out how to bring about those good(-seeming) states of affairs while avoiding bad(-seeming) ones.
*(Arguing about whether satisfactory hedonic experiences are "really good" seems akin to arguing about whether the world as it appears to empirical observation is "really real". Sure, mumble mumble evil demon philosophical nonsense, but at the end of the day what we're trying to do is to explain how the world that appears to us operates, to understand and predict it, so whether that appearance is "really real" is beside the point. Likewise, bracketing all philosophical mumbo jumbo about what's "really good", we're generally all concerned about avoiding suffering at least, so "does this hurt?" is good enough to work with for those purposes as "does this observation contradict the hypothesis?" does for the physical sciences. Any crazy people who think suffering is morally irrelevant are as dismissable as people who think observation has no bearing on reality).
How does the direction of fit play a part(apply) in "One ought not literally beat oneself up over their failures"?
The "ought" part. It's what distinguishes the sentence from "One does not literally beat oneself up over their failures."
Both of those sentences are concerning the same state of affairs: someone beating themselves up over their failures.
One of them (the descriptive, "does" statement) compares that idea (of someone beating themselves up over their failures) to the world, and if they don't match (or "fit"), judges the idea wrong, in need of changing so that it fits the world.
The other (the prescriptive, "ought" statement) compares that idea (of someone beating themselves up over their failures) to the world, and if they don't match (or "fit"), judges the world wrong, in need of changing so that it fits the idea.
PossibilityOctober 25, 2019 at 23:22#3455070 likes
I don't really understand why something like "don't drown kittens in a burlap sack" would be either inaccurate or motivated by fear.
And an ethics where all maxims/codes/whatever you want to call them are inaccurate is not really an ethics per se. I'm not saying it's an indefensible position on that basis, just that it doesn't count as an ethics. Like atheism is not a form of theism.
That’s a specific statement about very specific behaviour, that doesn’t even come close to an ethical principle. Why is it bad to drown kittens in a burlap sack? Does that make it okay to drown kittens in a plastic bag instead? What if I just put the kittens in the sack and give it someone else - I’m not doing anything wrong then, am I?
This is what I mean by inaccurate. If that statement is an ethical principle, then it’s a highly inaccurate account of the principle, isn’t it? Is there a statement of ethical principle, either positive or negative, that doesn’t require further explanation in terms of what is or is not acceptable?
PossibilityOctober 25, 2019 at 23:31#3455090 likes
Now we arrive at moral ecology which is the view that we have to manage our collective moral views as we would an ecosystem. There is some disagreement on moral ecology though, some think all views need to be represented and maintained while others (myself included) feel certain maladaptive and destructive moral views will always contribute to a negative moral judgement on humanity as a whole and don’t contribute to our survival, stability, security or moral progress.
Would you agree that ‘our survival, stability, security and moral progress’ constitutes an anthropocentric value system, rather than an attempt to approach an ‘objective good’?
Deleted UserOctober 25, 2019 at 23:43#3455140 likes
Reply to Possibility Not to me. Reverence for life demands Biocentrism. It would be foolish to ignore the value of the non human parts of the biosphere in our own and their survival. Whether that is an Earth biosphere, the solar systems, galaxy or universe. Symbiosis with nature is a far safer state of affairs than behaving parasitically toward it.
Why is it bad to drown kittens in a burlap sack? Does that make it okay to drown kittens in a plastic bag instead? What if I just put the kittens in the sack and give it someone else - I’m not doing anything wrong then, am I?
This is what I mean by inaccurate. If that statement is an ethical principle, then it’s a highly inaccurate account of the principle, isn’t it? Is there a statement of ethical principle, either positive or negative, that doesn’t require further explanation in terms of what is or is not acceptable?
I think your definition of inaccurate is inaccurate. The wrongness of burlap sack drowning does not preclude the wrongness of plastic bag drowning. The wrongness of drowning does not preclude the rightness of giving them to a better home (though, please, don't carry kittens around in any kind of sack, even if you're giving them to a good home---that's still mean :(
PossibilityOctober 26, 2019 at 00:02#3455200 likes
Reply to Mark Dennis Yet if it came down to choosing between a human life and, say, a shark, then under what circumstances might the shark be the priority?
We value ‘non human parts of the biosphere’, but only insofar as they are of benefit to human survival, stability, security, etc. As I’ve said before - we need to be honest about the limits of our ‘symbiosis’.
Reverence for life demands Biocentrism. It would be foolish to ignore the value of the non human parts of the biosphere in our own and their survival. Whether that is an Earth biosphere, the solar systems, galaxy or universe. Symbiosis with nature is a far safer state of affairs than behaving parasitically toward it.
Hey, look at that! More common ground :wink:
god must be atheistOctober 26, 2019 at 00:25#3455250 likes
A few simple, common sense, defensible, and easily teachable ones...
What would happen if everyone acted like that?
Be helpful.
Do what's good for goodness sake.
Artemis, Tim Wood, Mark Dennis, et al, I still think you are misguided in thinking that there is an overriding, or underlying, or penetrating ethical principle.
Creativesoul just helped me illustrate this case. You all call ethical what's good. You all call ethical what reduces suffering. But I claim that you just gave a different name to "good deed".
That's A.
B. is that most ethical "good deeds" as I insist, is bad for some other people. Some case studies (thought experiments, not recounting of facts):
1. Claim: I am good because I give money to the poor. Therefore I am ethical.
counter-claim: you actually hinder the poor to find his own footing and help himself to a better life. You actually deprive the rich of more money than they could have if you gave your money to them, not to the poor. You actually deprive many other poor people because you gave your money to one poor person, callously ignoring the plight of the rest of the poor.
2. Claim: I am a factory owner. I believe in fair trade, and I pay my workers more than other factories do in my industry.
Counter-claim: you make your product incompetitive on the market, because with a same margin of profit, you have to charge a higher price for your products than your competitors do. Since you can't sell a comparative product at a higher price than your competitors' price, you go bankrupt and you have to let your entire work force go.
3. Claim: I am a soldier. I serve my country, its leaders, its people, and the women and innocent children, by fighting the enemy.
Counter-claim: you, as a soldier, kill people; spend a long time in training how to kill people. You deprive your country of the productive work you could be otherwise performing, which woudl benefit all. You fail to pay taxes. You are liable to torture enemy subjects, and to rape their women, when you think you can get away with it.
------
Simply put: most good deeds are bad in one way or another. If ethics is defined as "good deeds for most", then the balance of good vs. bad would make almost all actions ethical, even those that we intuitive call unethical, because the good that society produces is more than the bad that society produces. If you disagree, and say that society produces more bad than good, then the balance would indicate that most deeds are unethical.
PossibilityOctober 26, 2019 at 00:34#3455260 likes
I think your definition of inaccurate is inaccurate. The wrongness of burlap sack drowning does not preclude the wrongness of plastic bag drowning. The wrongness of drowning does not preclude the rightness of giving them to a better home (though, please, don't carry kittens around in any kind of sack, even if you're giving them to a good home---that's still mean :(
Exactly - as a statement of underlying ethical principles governing the behaviour, ‘don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is inaccurate, due to its incompleteness. If you were trying to prevent someone from doing the wrong thing to a bunch of kittens, could you change the wording of the statement to ensure that when they do act with respect to kittens, they won’t end up doing something wrong anyway, even if they follow this ethical principle precisely as stated?
Let’s look at the Decalogue as an example: 10 do or don’t statements that were intended as ethical principles. And yet the moment they were employed as such, they required clarification, qualification and interpretation in practice, which then proceeded to fill several books of Law. The ethical principles behind the statements may have been understood at the time, but the statements themselves are inaccurate accounts of those underlying ethical principles.
The point I’m trying to make is that we can discuss ethical principles all day, and even approach an agreement ‘in principle’ on how we should behave towards one another in particular circumstances. But I don’t believe there are any written statements, maxims or codes that would accurately communicate these ethical principles to cover ALL possible circumstances.
Simply put: most good deeds are bad in one way or another.
Correction, Simply put: ethics is more complicated than the naive early-Kantian maxims doctrine. Even Kant recognized that later in his career.
Note that by judging any of those scenarios good and then bad, you have to rely on underlying ethical judgments. All of your counterclaims tacitly imply that there exists an objective standard by which you could measure these actions somehow.
The answer to the problem of different cultural ethical norms is simply that different cultures are (or were at some point in history) wrong about different things.
And anywhere in the world you find the same underlying principles to ethics: don't cause unnecessary suffering, for example.
When you say something is wrong, it is a judgment, and judgments can be derived only by comparing a deed to a code, or by personal gut feelings.
I wish you to state the code of ethics, that universally seperates "wrong" ethics from "right" ethics. I don't want you to make up one; judgment by code USES and already defined code. What is this code, why is it undefeatable, by whose authority or by what logic is it absolute, that it may be used to judge some ethical decisions wrong, while others to be right?
-----------
As if you had anticipated my question, you say "don't cause unnecessary suffering" is the ultimate code of ethics.
It is not found everywhere in the world. So it is not the code that you can derive universally from all behaviour. In fact, there are many cultures in the world that encourage behaviour, that calls for unprecedented unnecessary suffering. I claim that there are benefits to some participants in a society that view the same action as necessary suffering, while others view the very same suffering as unnecessary.
PossibilityOctober 26, 2019 at 00:42#3455310 likes
As if you had anticipated my question, you say "don't cause unnecessary suffering" is the ultimate code of ethics.
Interesting choice of paraphrasing. I did not say "ultimate." I suggested that it is one example of an underlying principle that I believe to exist in most cultures across the world. Now, I haven't exhaustively studied all world religions/ethics, but I have yet to come across one that actually contradicts the wrongness of unnecessary suffering. Though people might disagree on what things are necessary or are suffering, generally all ethics seeks to reduce the sum total of suffering.
2+2=4 is not an ethical principle, and doesn’t claim to be.
Doesn't matter. Your definition of the word "inaccurate" should be applicable in both cases if it is to be... accurate (by both of our definitions of accuracy, mind you).
PossibilityOctober 26, 2019 at 00:53#3455360 likes
Doesn't matter. Your definition of the word "inaccurate" should be applicable in both cases if it is to be... accurate (by both of our definitions of accuracy, mind you).
I disagree. 2+2=4 is correct in all details, exact. The statement ‘Don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is not a faithful representation of an underlying ethical principle - which is what you are claiming the statement to be. As a specific command, it can be considered correct in all details and exact.
The statement ‘Don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is not a faithful representation of an underlying ethical principle - which is what you are claiming the statement to be. As a specific command, it can be considered correct in all details and exact.
It's not a matter of just asserting or defining that satisfactory hedonic experiences are goodness, which people will argue about for sure; it's that for something to be a satisfactory hedonic experience just is for it to seem good, in the same way that an empirical experience of something is for it to seem true.
So could there be a satisfactory hedonic experience that did not seem good?
'cause I'm thinking along the lines of Moore, that something might be pleasant and yet not good.
I was waiting for that - it’s not what I’m saying at all, and I think you’re aware of that.
The statement ‘Don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ doesn’t say it’s not okay to drown kittens. Adhering to it as an ethical principle will prevent a particular behaviour, but the statement itself provides no information as to the rightness or wrongness of drowning kittens in general. Or drowning anyone. Or how we should treat kittens. So unless you also add quite a few more do and don’t statements, you won’t even come close to a faithful reflection of the ethical principles that govern behaviour in relation to drowning, kittens or burlap sacks. It’s only when a person actually drowns kittens in a burlap sack that we can apply the statement. If they drown kittens in a plastic bag, or even if they think about drowning kittens, the statement has no practical use in clarifying ‘good’ behaviour.
Allow me to suggest an alternative:
‘Increase awareness, connection and collaboration.’
This statement challenges much of what we consider to be ethical behaviour. Many people would reject this as a comprehensive statement of ethical principles, because it does nothing to protect the agent from pain, humiliation, lack or loss. To fully embrace this as an ethical principle is to face our fears - to recognise that we cannot ensure our survival, safety or stability without compromising our moral progress, and vice versa.
It’s not a perfect statement, but for me it is the closest I think we can come to an objective ethical principle.
Deleted UserOctober 26, 2019 at 02:55#3455560 likes
Yet if it came down to choosing between a human life and, say, a shark, then under what circumstances might the shark be the priority?
We value ‘non human parts of the biosphere’, but only insofar as they are of benefit to human survival, stability, security, etc. As I’ve said before - we need to be honest about the limits of our ‘symbiosis’.
Good question; it depends greatly on the shark and the human and whether or not I am capable of saving them without it being a suicide mission for myself.
So let’s build a thought experiment; You are standing atop a cliff overlooking the bay. You have two remote detonators in your hand. One attached to a human swimming in the bay and the other to a shark swimming a short distance away and the detonators connect to explosives on each. Next to you on the cliff is someone else with the exact same setup and are connected to the same shark and human swimming in the bay.
This person tells you, “that if the shark attacks the human they will press the detonator attached to the shark, killing it. but not if you press the detonator for the human and kill them first or you could blow up the shark first and save the human.
So, if you do nothing then both the shark and the human will die. If you make a choice between the two only one will die. What do you do?
Is your answer going to be based on the identity of the individual human if they can be known or the species of shark if it can be known? What if it is an endangered species of shark and the human a serial killer? What if it’s a prolific shark species and a child? If we are taking into account all of these factors then we are morally considering all parties and are engaging in biocentrism no matter how we choose to act. If however we make it humans vs nature and we save the human every time then we are engaging in anthropocentrism
As for your second paragraph; I don’t believe this is true as there are plenty of animals on the endangered species list with little to no discernible benefits to our species save for our appreciation of its existence. Why are we valuing them I wonder? Why do things need to have a benefit for us in order for us to just appreciate the fact that they exist?
Take bacteria, if we didn’t get bacterial infections at all, where would we be right now in terms of managing our resources if bacteria didn’t play it’s part in thinning us out a little bit? Same question for Mosquitos?
we need to be honest about the limits of our ‘symbiosis’.[
This statement I agree with. We can’t ignore that we value our own place in the biosphere also and naturally will defend our ability to remain a part of it. However one can hope it never requires the total genocide of any life but Anthropocentrists I’m sure will make sure the biocentrists recognise when this is the only alternative or will act so biocentrists don’t have to do something they consider immoral. Just in case a species with Dalek like motivations and psychology happens to crop up. For me, a genocide would only be justified for us or another species to carry out if that aggressor species is a genuine threat to ALL life or just ALL human life specifically.
So for example, if an extremely large Asteroid with an atomosphere that contained some form of life was on a collision course with our planet, I’d say we’d be justified in blowing it out of the sky if diverting its course isn’t an easy option.
Deleted UserOctober 26, 2019 at 03:24#3455630 likes
Also to anyone reading my last; if that shark happened to be Bruce the vegetarian Shark from Finding Nemo... then I highly encourage you to push the other person with detonators off the cliff.
god must be atheistOctober 26, 2019 at 04:15#3455720 likes
Again, I must call attention to a Youtube video. I am not allowed to post links, but I can post here the search terms to find it. Try
ethics private and public 2019 09 22
The guy talks about ethics as a dual mechanism: drowning kitties and puppies is abhorrent, and more abhorrent is drowning your own children. Nobody does that**, and people even go into a burning building, much like cats do, to save their children. The guy calls that private ethics, and he juxtaposes that with public ethics, and he claims that public ethics grew out of private ethics, by transferring the reward-punishment system from one, which preserves the closest relative possible, to ethics that preserve society as such. He names a number of parameters, most of which I can't remember, that are different between what he calls private ethics and public ethics, but the jist is that private ethics are DNA driven, inborn; public are taught by peers and by other educators. Oh, and private ethics are universal, unavoidable, not a matter of choice, (see **) but public ethics are varied, and the individual not necessarily makes all of them his own.
Luckily he has some typed charts at the end of his video, because his accent is incomprehensible.
I would really like to see what @Mark Dennis and @Artemis have to say about the proposition the video makes.
** A few people with the applicable genetic mutations might.
god must be atheistOctober 26, 2019 at 04:20#3455740 likes
As for your second paragraph; I don’t believe this is true as there are plenty of animals on the endangered species list with little to no discernible benefits to our species save for our appreciation of its existence. Why are we valuing them I wonder? Why do things need to have a benefit for us in order for us to just appreciate the fact that they exist?
They may or may not play vital role in the preservation of the interconnected food chain. Their poop may be a delicacy to those microbes that are the feed for other bigger microbes, that feed the algea with nitrogen, and the algea feed blue whales and halibut... which feed us.
This what I wrote is conjecture, but I can see some merit in figuring that humans have not uncovered for their own edification some vital links in the natural preservation of life on this planet.
Deleted UserOctober 26, 2019 at 04:36#3455770 likes
They may or may not play vital role in the preservation of the interconnected food chain. Their poop may be a delicacy to those microbes that are the feed for other bigger microbes, that feed the algea with nitrogen, and the algea feed blue whales and halibut... which feed us.
This what I wrote is conjecture, but I can see some merit in figuring that humans have not uncovered for their own edification some vital links in the natural preservation of life on this planet.
It may be conjecture but its point is pretty valid as we do have data on a lot of systems like you describe.
This strengthens my point that there is value in these systems and each creature within the system has a right to what it values from it, so long as it doesn't endanger the system itself.
The guy talks about ethics as a dual mechanism: drowning kitties and puppies is abhorrent, and more abhorrent is drowning your own children. Nobody does that**, and people even go into a burning building, much like cats do, to save their children. The guy calls that private ethics, and he juxtaposes that with public ethics, and he claims that public ethics grew out of private ethics, by transferring the reward-punishment system from one, which preserves the closest relative possible, to ethics that preserve society as such. He names a number of parameters, most of which I can't remember, that are different between what he calls private ethics and public ethics, but the jist is that private ethics are DNA driven, inborn; public are taught by peers and by other educators. Oh, and private ethics are universal, unavoidable, not a matter of choice, (see **) but public ethics are varied, and the individual not necessarily makes all of them his own.
As grotesque and abhorrent as I find the idea of drowning kittens and puppies, to say that nobody does that is wrong. However, we could also argue that the only motivation behind this is mental illness and the acts of the mentally ill cannot be moral statements outside of lucidity (Depending on the condition, Episodic Schizophrenics for example can make acts out of moral motivation when not in an episode).
I'm about to go to sleep but I will search and watch what you suggested and give you a thought out perspective on it tomorrow at some point.
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 05:01#3455820 likes
Reply to creativesoul It originates with Austin and was mostly developed by Searle in regard to Speech Act Theory, yes. I don't remember what name was associated with whatever I read about it in the moral psychology class I learned about it from over a decade ago (I've always been bad at bibliography), but since I think that was also the place I first learned of Speech Act Theory I'd guess it was probably Searle. Some quick Googling suggests that someone named Velleman is mainly responsible for its introduction to philosophy of mind, and since we were discussing the status of moral beliefs (a la Kantianism vs Humeanism) in the context where that was introduced, rather than the meaning of moral assertions (though I might be confusing that class with my metaethics class, which were the same term at university and I think back to back), I think it might have actually been Velleman that we were reading, and maybe Searle was just mentioned by Velleman or something.
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 05:15#3455860 likes
I've never thought about an utterance of ought in terms of direction of fit. Promises... that's another matter altogether... Very interesting when talking in terms of what counts as a moral claim, moral facts, and what it takes for one(the claim that is) to be true(matching the moral fact(s) where "facts" are what has happened and/or is happening. That's my current working framework.
On your account are promises moral claims?
Deleted UserOctober 26, 2019 at 05:23#3455910 likes
Some quick Googling suggests that someone named Velleman is mainly responsible for its introduction to philosophy of mind, and since we were discussing the status of moral beliefs (a la Kantianism vs Humeanism) in the context where that was introduced, rather than the meaning of moral assertions
I’d very much like to hear your opinions of Humeanism in this regard as it will make an interesting study in discussing new beliefs from the same geographical location today by comparing them to my own. (Me and Hume are both from Edinburgh although admittedly his family also had an estate down south in Berwick.) So I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on how the Cultural context of Scotland effected the status of Humes moral beliefs and then I can tell you what contextual differences there are there now.
PossibilityOctober 26, 2019 at 05:38#3455920 likes
So let’s build a thought experiment; You are standing atop a cliff overlooking the bay. You have two remote detonators in your hand. One attached to a human swimming in the bay and the other to a shark swimming a short distance away and the detonators connect to explosives on each. Next to you on the cliff is someone else with the exact same setup and are connected to the same shark and human swimming in the bay.
This person tells you, “that if the shark attacks the human they will press the detonator attached to the shark, killing it. but not if you press the detonator for the human and kill them first or you could blow up the shark first and save the human.
So, if you do nothing then both the shark and the human will die. If you make a choice between the two only one will die. What do you do?
Is your answer going to be based on the identity of the individual human if they can be known or the species of shark if it can be known? What if it is an endangered species of shark and the human a serial killer? What if it’s a prolific shark species and a child? If we are taking into account all of these factors then we are morally considering all parties and are engaging in biocentrism no matter how we choose to act. If however we make it humans vs nature and we save the human every time then we are engaging in anthropocentrism
What I would do is attempt to convince the other person not to press any detonator at all - that punishing the shark would not bring the human back, and so would be a pointless act of hate towards an animal that is unaware of how important that human is to either of us. If the shark attacks the human, or the person next to me blows up the shark, these are not actions that I choose to initiate, and seeking to prevent harm by causing harm is not justifiable in my book.
Deleted UserOctober 26, 2019 at 06:03#3455960 likes
I hadn't really thought before about where promises fit into this scheme, but on a bit of quick consideration my first-pass answer is that they're probably double-direction of fit, the same category as things like the utterances "I do [take them to be my spouse]" and "I now pronounce you man and wife" in a wedding. That's different from either the direction of descriptive assertions or prescriptive assertions.
Alternatively, they could possibly be interpreted as in the same category of moral claims, if a promise is taken to be a declaration of one's intention to do something, where on my account an intention is identical to what others would call a "moral belief" (see below).
I’d very much like to hear your opinions of Humeanism in this regard as it will make an interesting study in discussing new beliefs from the same geographical location today by comparing them to my own. (Me and Hume are both from Edinburgh although admittedly his family also had an estate down south in Berwick.) So I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on how the Cultural context of Scotland effected the status of Humes moral beliefs and then I can tell you what contextual differences there are there now.
I don't actually know very much about the sociocultural context of Hume, just his philosophical conclusions. I'm not sure if this is at all what you were asking or something you already know, but Hume's position on moral beliefs is that there is no such thing, there are only desires, non-cognitive feelings that something should be some way, about which we cannot reason (though we can reason about what will bring about those things we desire).
In contrast Kant held that moral beliefs are genuine beliefs that are cognitive and can be true and false and reasoned about in all the same ways as non-moral beliefs.
My position is that there is a false dichotomy between Hume and Kant, and that in addition to prescriptive feelings (desires) and descriptive thoughts (beliefs), there are also descriptive feelings (perceptions), and prescriptive thoughts (intentions). Feelings cannot be reasoned with, neither prescriptive nor descriptive, but they can be judged (by the same person having them) and accepted or rejected to form thoughts, prescriptive or descriptive, which can be reasoned about. The form of logic used in that reasoning is the same either way (with some suggestions I have for formally clarifying that), and the standards of evidence for both are experiential, phenomenal, but different aspects of our phenomenal experience for each, empirical in the case of descriptive beliefs, hedonic in the case of prescriptive intentions (as elaborated earlier in this thread).
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 06:41#3456160 likes
I wonder, since it is evident that you take all this quite seriously...
How important is it, by your lights, for us to get thought and belief right?
I reject Hume and Kant on different grounds than you've mentioned here. But... the difference is one of degree, it seems and not kind so much. I mean I agree with what you just pointed out about Hume's and Kant's frameworks.
PossibilityOctober 26, 2019 at 07:01#3456300 likes
Even if you have to cause harm to an adult to stop them killing a child? Or a dog attempting to kill a baby or a kitten?
It would be rare that such an action would suddenly be my only option, and to find myself in such a position would suggest (to me) that I had chosen not to be aware, to connect or collaborate at some earlier point. Any harm that I initiate is my responsibility - the adult is responsible for their actions towards the child, but not for my actions towards them. I may very well choose to cause harm in these situations, but the adult or the dog are not to blame for that harm, and my actions are not justified by ‘objective’ ethical principles, even if they are deemed ‘justified’ by law or by anyone else.
How important is it, by your lights, for us to get thought and belief right?
I'm not sure I understand the question, but maybe this will answer it: I think all of our actions are driven by a combination of beliefs and intentions, so everything we do hinges entirely on us having the right beliefs and intentions. So, I guess my answer is "very important". But still within limits; being right in your beliefs or intentions about circumstances that have no effect on you or that you can have no effect on is not, in practice, very important.
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 07:24#3456410 likes
Let me see if I can clarify... Your answer was fine.
Getting thought and belief right, is not equivalent to having true thought and belief, except if and when we're talking about having true thought and belief about our own thought and belief. I'm particularly interested in what all thought and belief consists of.
You draw a distinction between intentions and belief. I would concur. However, while intentions consist of more than just belief, they are existentially dependent upon belief, but not the other way around. Intentions are plans... forethought to do something in particular. Whereas belief can be as simple as attributing causality or perhaps having/holding/forming expectation.
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 07:28#3456420 likes
Enjoy! Also take a look at On Meaning And Language and On Intention, and On Practical Action, all of which cover in more detail the relationship between belief and intention on my account. I'll be away for the weekend as soon as I go to bed shortly, but might be able to make brief replies from my phone.
Metaphysician UndercoverOctober 26, 2019 at 12:02#3456820 likes
One major difference between religious systems and non-religious ones is that faith in non-religious systems is more easily justified by their utility at helping to provide useful strategies...
This may be true, but strategies are applied as the means to ends. We still need to judge the ends themselves, to produce a true justification, a justification which is more than just an illusion. This requires that the ends are put in relation to further ends, as the means toward those ends.
It's like the distinction between a valid argument and a sound argument. One can say my logic is valid therefore my conclusion is justified, but this is just an illusion of justification, because the premises might not be sound. Therefore we need to put the premises in relation to some further principles of truth, to judge how "good" they are, in order to produce a true justification.
That is the problem with your claim that faith in non-religious systems is more easily justified, the justification referred to here is just an illusion.
I don't really see how it could possibly be less useful than intuition, since intuition is where you start from and then try to improve upon it.
I just don't see conversations like that really taking place through, or doing what you think they're doing. When I talk about intuition, I'm not talking about using intuition to answer some moral question (how late should abortion be allowed, for example). I'm talking about it in the virtue ethics sense of making you (the actor) feel right. That's not necessarily a question that can be answered using your empirical methods.
Basically, intuition often gets crowded by the social pressures of 'debate', no matter how rationally carried out, and if we're not determining moral actions to be in line with our intuition, then what are we aiming for?
it's just a matter of getting people to have a common base of experiences that, they can all confirm for themselves, sure enough seem good or bad at least,
and then from that common base working out what states of affairs avoid the experiences that seem bad and only leave ones that seem good (or minimize/maximize at least), and then the hard work of figuring out how to bring about those good(-seeming) states of affairs while avoiding bad(-seeming) ones.
No. This is just too much mico management ignoring the value of the very intuition that gave the objective.
I think you're creating too sharp a distinction between feeling - perception - action which just isn't there. I don't think we can trust the intuitive feelings (which we label 'good') but not trust the intuitive behaviour (even without a clearly thought out objective). I don't think we can work towards some feeling of 'goodness' as an objective but then try to work towards it with empirical facts as if the perception of those facts wasn't biased by the very feeling their collection is working toward.
2. I don't see anything there about judging hyperbolic discounting (future possible hedonic gains are worth less than current definate ones). — Isaac
I'm not sure what you mean here, you'll need to elaborate.
So hyperbolic discounting is the name for the effect I described earlier, good things now are worth more than equally good things in the future. I was wondering how your system accounted for it. Is the discount rate one of the things we just 'feel', or is it one of the "work out how to get there" things?
That is the problem with your claim that faith in non-religious systems is more easily justified, the justification referred to here is just an illusion.
How so? We can't continue to justify a system by logical measures (like non-contradiction). At some point it's just a faith and the justification is utility. Non-religious systems tend to be used for prediction, so their utility is more easily measured. Religious systems are rarely used for prediction, they're rarely used for any kind of function which produces results in this world, so most of the time they cannot be justified by utility.
I agree with that. But what are you increasing your awareness, etc about?
As for the kittens, you still haven't disproven the wrongness of drowning kittens in burlap sacks. All you're saying is that it can't be the only principle you follow. It's not exhaustive in scope. But neither is 2+2=4.
As for the kittens, you still haven't disproven the wrongness of drowning kittens in burlap sacks. All you're saying is that it can't be the only principle you follow. It's not exhaustive in scope. But neither is 2+2=4.
I don’t have to disprove it - I agree with it as an instruction, but it’s not an ethical principle. An ethical principle is a foundation thought or idea that makes an ethical standard correct. Adhering to an ethical principle should provide sufficient guidelines to act correctly. All this statement does is prevent a specific action, while giving no indication of what a correct action would be in the situation.
I’m not saying it needs to be exhaustive in scope, and I acknowledge that ‘inaccurate’ is not the best term to describe why the statement is not an ethical principle. The statement ‘Don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is inadequate as an ethical principle. If you asked me what two plus two is, and I gave the answer ‘two plus two is NOT five’, the statement would be correct in itself, but its function as a statement of what two plus two is would be inadequate. Likewise with the statement I’m questioning above.
What woudn’t it be good to increase awareness of, when the opportunity arises?
In ethics, increasing your awareness of the the specific shade of lipstick Mary Tyler Moore wears on the Dick Van Dyke Show seems fairly nonessential, for example.
If you asked me what two plus two is, and I gave the answer ‘two plus two is NOT five’, the statement would be correct in itself, but its function as a statement of what two plus two is would be inadequate.
Ethics and math share this striking resemblance: it's of equal importance to figure out when something is wrong as it is to figure out when something is right.
How so? We can't continue to justify a system by logical measures (like non-contradiction). At some point it's just a faith and the justification is utility.
Just as I explained. That X is good, because it is efficient for bringing about the desired effect Y, is not a real justification, it's an illusion of justification. It is required that Y be demonstrated as good, in order for the justification to be real. That utility is justification is an illusion, because utility is relative to the goal, or end which grants the thing its usefulness, and this goal must itself be justified. That's why Wayfarer referred to the need for a "summum bonum". So your claim that non-religious systems are more easily justified is false because the 'justification' you are referring to is not justification at all, but an illusion of justification.
That X is good, because it is efficient for bringing about the desired effect Y, is not a real justification, it's an illusion of justification. It is required that Y be demonstrated as good, in order for the justification to be real. That utility is justification is an illusion, because utility is relative to the goal, or end which grants the thing its usefulness, and this goal must itself be justified.
:up:
A well put meta- (or criterion).
PossibilityOctober 27, 2019 at 06:07#3459140 likes
Ethics and math share this striking resemblance: it's of equal importance to figure out when something is wrong as it is to figure out when something is right.
There is something here that you seem to be overlooking: 2+2=4 is NOT a mathematical principle. So as ‘right’ or ‘accurate’ as the statement may be in itself, it is not a principle but a specific example of the principle of addition, and is inadequate as a statement of the principle to which it refers - even though it is more useful than the statement ‘two plus two does not equal five’.
Likewise, as ‘right’ or ‘accurate’ as the statement ‘don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is in itself, it is only a specific example of a broader ethical principle. As a statement of whatever ethical principle you think it describes, it is not only inadequate, but is less useful than a positive statement in describing that principle.
...is not a real justification, it's an illusion of justification.
- Why not? You haven't explained your main objection. Why is utility not a justification for adopting a system? All you've done so far is asserted that it isn't, not provided any explanation as to why. Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
- Must it? Must everything be justified? How does that work non-circularly? If 'The Goal' is what I feel what am I supposed to do on finding that it is not justified (by your method which you've yet to reveal)? Am I supposed to now not feel that way?
So your claim that non-religious systems are more easily justified is false because the 'justification' you are referring to is not justification at all, but an illusion of justification.
- So religious commandments have all of the criteria you list above, or lack them just as much?
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 10:33#3459360 likes
[i]"As if you had anticipated my question, you say "don't cause unnecessary suffering" is the ultimate code of ethics."
— god must be atheist[/i]
Interesting choice of paraphrasing. I did not say "ultimate." I suggested that it is one example of an underlying principle that I believe to exist in most cultures across the world. Now, I haven't exhaustively studied all world religions/ethics, but I have yet to come across one that actually contradicts the wrongness of unnecessary suffering. Though people might disagree on what things are necessary or are suffering, generally all ethics seeks to reduce the sum total of suffering.
Or can you give me a good counter example?
You're right. It is not a code of ethics. It is a CHARACTERISTIC OR PROPERTY OF ETHICS. But it is also a characteristic or property of many things.
(An example would be car design. You could design a car seat for the driver that has tacks on the seat, pricking the driver. It would cause unnecessary suffering, yet it has nothing to do with ethics. Or more at hand, some car seats are more comfortabel than other seats for drivers, while some two drivers may find the seat that is comfortable for one, may be uncomfortable for the other, yet it is not unethical to put the particular seat in a car in the course of the manufacturing process.)
So we are back at square one. I still claim, because you yourself denied that you defended the idea successfully that there is an ultimate and pervasive ethical principle that applies to all cultures. My point is that such principle does not exist. Your point is that it exists. I opine that if you insists that it exists, then it is your responsibility, or rather, that the onus is on you to show that your claim is true, and there is an underlying principle. My job is to show that such principle is not universal, or not ethical, or not applicable.
It is definitely tougher for you, inasumch as you have to prove something exists that nobody has found yet. My job is not possible until I have something concrete in front of me that you show me that supports your claim.
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 10:45#3459380 likes
That's why Wayfarer referred to the need for a "summum bonum". So your claim that non-religious systems are more easily justified is false because the 'justification' you are referring to is not justification at all, but an illusion of justification.
Is there a philosophy of good, such as the epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge, and ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morals, and aesthetics is the branch that deals with beauty.
If there is no formal discussion on what constitutes good, then the quality of good is like a sore missing tooth in the grinding jaws of philosophy. ("How can a missing tooth ache?" You may want to ask.)
Good is wholly undefinable. That something is good or not is a subjective judgment, and therefore to justify X as good because it leads to Y where Y is also good, is only justifiable by personal subjective means.
If you or anyone else justifies moral actions on whether they are good or not in intention or in final result, then you or anyone else is walking on thin ice.
I asked before and you evaded the question, but I'll ask again: how broad or narrow does an ethical principle have to be to fit your definition thereof?
My point is that such principle does not exist. Your point is that it exists.
No. I'm not saying and have never said that there is one naive Kantian maxim by which all ethics function. You can stop strawpersoning me now.
I have said, and you have yet to disprove, that there are commonalities between ethics globally.
No, I'm not going to do a survey of all ethics across the globe to prove it, as that would be a project of many years, and simply too much work for an online discussion. I assume you feel the same way about proving your own position.
Therefore, we can agree to disagree or try this from a different angle.
Good is wholly undefinable. That something is good or not is a subjective judgment, and therefore to justify X as good because it leads to Y where Y is also good, is only justifiable by personal subjective means.
(1) Is harm (e.g. betrayal, rape, deprivation, injury, trauma, incapacitation, bereavement) judged "good or not" for the harmed "a subjective judgment"?
Consequently:
(a) Is 'conduct which, ceteris paribus, avoids, prevents, minimizes or helps recovery from harm' judged "good or not" "a subjective judgment"?
(b) Is 'conduct which, ceteris paribus, inflicts or exacerbates harm' judged "good or not" "a subjective judgment"?
If all answers above are "no", then by implication don't we have at least a provisional (non-subjective) definition, or conception, of "good or not"?
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 13:35#3459580 likes
Reply to Artemis You say there are commonalities between ethics globally. I hope I did not misquote you this time.
Please name a global commonality between ethics globally that pertains to nothing but ethics. It does not have to be all inclusive; but it can't be applied to anything BUT to ethics.
This commonality does not need to be a single quality; you could name a combination of qualities, but in combination they must apply to all ethics globally and to nothing else but ethics.
As you can see, I am not asking you to define ethics, or give an inclusive description of it; all I ask is one characteristic that is ethics-specific, and not specific to any other thing.
If you can show me such a criterion or characteristics of ethics, then I will agree to disagree. Otherwise I still maintain that there are no ethical principles as such.
As long as you fail to show a characteristic of ethics as a quality that applies to ethics and to nothing else, your ideation that there is a commonality amoung ethics globally is not a philosophically acceptable propostion, but a personal opinion of yours. Nobody can take it away from you, but you must realize that you can't argue on ethical grounds for anything, as ethics mean to you something different from what ethics mean to other philosophers.
Metaphysician UndercoverOctober 27, 2019 at 13:46#3459660 likes
You haven't 'explained', you've asserted. There's a difference.
An explanation is a series of assertions intended to elucidate. That's what I provided. If what I am saying still remains unintelligible to you, then I have failed in that intention. I have "explained", but my explanation has failed.
Why not? You haven't explained your main objection. Why is utility not a justification for adopting a system? All you've done so far is asserted that it isn't, not provided any explanation as to why.
OK, I clearly failed in my attempt. I'll try again. Utility is determined in relation to a goal. A thing is useful for obtaining such and such a goal, and that determines utility. Now, goals are inherently subjective, varying from one subject to another, due to the fact that they exist relative to one's intention. Intention is the property of an individual.
Justification, as it is defined, and generally understood, requires that one demonstrates the correctness, or rightness of what the person is claiming. This means that for the justification to succeed, and actually be a justification, there must actually be success. Notice the difference between explanation and justification. I can explain without success, but I cannot justify without success.
Demonstrating that a system is useful for obtaining my goal, does not demonstrate the correctness of the system because it requires that my goal is judged by the other person to be correct. If the system is useful for obtaining a goal which the other person believes is not a righteous goal, the system will not be justified no matter how useful it is. The utility itself will be judged as unrighteous, incorrect, and therefore unjustified. And an unjustified utility will not justify use of the system. In fact there will be the reverse effect. The more useful the system is for obtaining an unrighteous goal, the more unjustified the system is.
Therefore, I must first demonstrate to the other individual the correctness of my goal, before the utility of the system for obtaining my goal can be judged as justification of that system. And, the utility of a system, as justification for that system, is completely dependent on justification of the goal which the system is useful for obtaining. Are you not familiar with the phrase "the end justifies the means"?
Must it? Must everything be justified? How does that work non-circularly? If 'The Goal' is what I feel what am I supposed to do on finding that it is not justified (by your method which you've yet to reveal)? Am I supposed to now not feel that way?
Where's the circularity? If the goal is not justified, then the means for obtaining that goal (the system) is not justified. Isn't this straight forward and obvious to you? It seems pretty basic.
Is there a philosophy of good, such as the epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge, and ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morals, and aesthetics is the branch that deals with beauty.
I would say that the philosophy of good is moral philosophy. Morality involves distinguishing good from bad. Morality may be subsumed within metaphysics, as a branch of metaphysics. It is necessarily prior to epistemology because the "correctness" which epistemology relies on is a form of "good". That is what Plato demonstrated in The Republic. It is metaphysics because of the requirement of determining the ontological status of "good".
Good is wholly undefinable. That something is good or not is a subjective judgment, and therefore to justify X as good because it leads to Y where Y is also good, is only justifiable by personal subjective means.
This is exactly why the ontological status of "good" needs to be determined. Your claims about "good", that it is "undefinable", and that whether something is good is a "subjective judgement" are themselves subjective judgements. So it appears like the nature of subjective judgements, and the ontological status of such, needs to be understood in order to understand "good". Do you believe that subjective judgements are real things, with real ontological status, the nature of which may potentially be understood?
If you or anyone else justifies moral actions on whether they are good or not in intention or in final result, then you or anyone else is walking on thin ice.
How else would you propose that one might justify moral actions?
Why does it have to be exclusive to ethics? I don't understand that criterion.
And I already stated a common ethical principle: avoid causing unnecessary suffering. An example of how that gets applied globally is that murder is prohibited globally. While definitions of what constitutes "murder" differ, the fundamental concept is still global.
PossibilityOctober 27, 2019 at 14:49#3459940 likes
I asked before and you evaded the question, but I'll ask again: how broad or narrow does an ethical principle have to be to fit your definition thereof?
As broad as you can make it.
Principle: ‘a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning.’
‘Do no harm’ is a common statement of ethical principle in the health profession. I personally don’t find it adequate on its own (some people do), but in concert with other ‘principles’ such as autonomy, fidelity, veracity, etc, they seem to suffice for behaviour within the profession, at least.
If you consider ‘don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ to serve as a foundation for a system of behaviour, even as one of a set of principles, just how many different principles do you think there are?
just how many different principles do you think there are?
Why should there be a limit?
While, sure, the kitten principle is a more specific version of "do no harm," that doesn't mean it's not a principle. Just like the law generally prohibits theft, but it also has more specific rules about specific kinds of theft.
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 16:04#3460290 likes
Why does it have to be exclusive to ethics? I don't understand that criterion.
This is so that we can separate ethics from other things. I say ethics as a universal quality does not exist. If you can give just one thing that is exclusive to ethics and applies to all ethics, then while at the same time it does not prove ethics, and while at the same time it does not define ethics, the fact that there is one quality that is typical to ethics, and only to ethics, the existence of that one quality will give some respectability to the validity of the claim that ethics exists.
However, if you can't find even one, then I rest my case, and feel satisfied that you failed to show me that ethics exist.
Right, but it does not apply exclusively to ethics. Please read my car seat example as a support of my claim in this matter.
You've shown that principles might have non-ethical applications, not that this invalidates their ethical ones. No more than a tire used on a car invalidates the use of a tire on a bicycle.
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 22:08#3461510 likes
You've shown that principles might have non-ethical applications, not that this invalidates their ethical ones. No more than a tire used on a car invalidates the use of a tire on a bicycle.
Precisely!! You got it right.
Now show me that ethics is a different thing from everything else, by showing at least one quality (which may be a combination of qualities) that applies only to ethics. If you show that, then you prove that ethics exist.
I claim that you can't show that.
Much like that car tires and bicycle tires are both round, and made of a material that has a high coefficient in their resistance to pavement, but the difference is that car tires can support a car, and bicycle tires can't support a car; furthermore, car tires don't fit bicycle wheels and bicycle tires don't fit car tires.
This way I showed that at least a difference exists between car tires and bicycle tires, and they are different, from, say, tables, mind bottlenecks, spokes, and ratchet screwdrivers.
I wish you to show something in the same vein that shows that ethics is different from everything else, in combination of qualities or by a single quality. I put it to you, that you can't.
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 22:11#3461530 likes
You've shown that principles might have non-ethical applications, not that this invalidates their ethical ones. No more than a tire used on a car invalidates the use of a tire on a bicycle.
Just a side-issue: You denied that the example we talked about was a principle of ethics; you said it was only a feature (again, I may have misquoted you) of ethics.
I wish you would settle with one qualifier, that is, you'd settle what you call the thing that we talk about. I'll gladly go along, but I wish to avoid a defence by you, in which you say "no, that's not a principle of ethics, it's a quality in ethics, please stop misquoting me, god must be atheist" and at the same time and in the same respect you could also say "no, that's not a quality in ethics, it's a principle, stop misquoting me, god must be atheist".
I wish to avoid that. But that's not a major issue right now. Right now I am curious to see that you can show a feature (principle or quality) of ethics, which is unique and pervasive to all ethics. Both UNIQUE and PERVASIVE.
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 22:11#3461540 likes
Now show me that ethics is a different thing from everything else, by showing at least one quality (which may be a combination of qualities) that applies only to ethics. If you show that, then you prove that ethics exist
Ethics is always about acceptable and/or unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 22:20#3461590 likes
Creative soul, if at work which is computer programming, I start to play loud music, or else start to sing loudly, or play roulette with my co-workers, I display unacceptable behaviour, but they are not unethical.
If they ARE unethical, then please show me what is the underlying ethical consideration that makes them unacceptably unethical.
------------------- @Creativesoulet al, please don't start bombarding me with untested, random or near-random, and in any way inconclusive stabs at what you think is a feature of ethics. Please think it through, before you post it. I don't wish to spend my time refuting something that a five-year-old child can do. I ask you to please only come up with features that stick to the requested parameters, and I ask you to rigorously test them before you post them. Thanks.
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 22:30#3461640 likes
I am curious to see that you can show a feature (principle or quality) of ethics, which is unique and pervasive to all ethics. Both UNIQUE and PERVASIVE.
Ethics is always about acceptable and/or unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
That's the answer. I stand beside it. Rather than be a blowhard, offer one example to the contrary. I adequately satisfied your request, which I took to be a standard which if met would convince you that ethics exists.
There it is. All ethics have that much in common, amongst other things.
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 22:33#3461660 likes
Creative soul, if at work which is computer programming, I start to play loud music, or else start to sing loudly, or play roulette with my co-workers, I display unacceptable behaviour, but they are not unethical.
Do those behaviours break the rules of acceptable conduct at your workplace? Are you allowed to act like that?
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 23:23#3461870 likes
I can't fight against private opinions. I disproved that your description stands. You stand beside it, but IT does not stand.
Understand.
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 23:31#3461880 likes
@Creativesoul:
Jerry calls Tyson's mother a whore. During math class, Tyson retaliates by starting a fight.
Tyson's behaviour is not acceptable.
-----------
I am not going to give you any more examples that refute that your statement of what's ethical is not PERVASIVE and UNIQUE to ethics.
You can carry on the vehement and adamant claim that your statement is pervasive and unique to all ethical acts. I won't respond.
I will respond to you on other threads, though. I have no ill will for you, and I am not pissed off, I am just simply not prepared to fight against frivolous claims, it tires me out and it leads to nowhere.
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 23:34#3461890 likes
Do those behaviours break the rules of acceptable conduct at your workplace? Are you allowed to act like that?
I don't think any reasonable employer would allow his employees to spend time on the job gambling illegally, instead of doing work. I am surprised you had to ask.
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 23:37#3461920 likes
All ethics is about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
That's the claim.
Do you disagree?
god must be atheistOctober 27, 2019 at 23:38#3461930 likes
@Creativesoul:Jerry and Tom call Tyson's mother a whore. Phil, the strongest boy in the class who is a good fighter, does nothing, though he knows that it's an unfair call. Phil knows that Tyson's mother is not a prostitute, and he does not step in to stop the daunting of Tyson by Jerry and Tom, which continues. Tyson is way too weak to fight Jerry, and he is way to weak to fight Tom, and he definitely can't fight the two at the same time.
Now show me that ethics is a different thing from everything else, by showing at least one quality (which may be a combination of qualities) that applies only to ethics. If you show that, then you prove that ethics exist.
Does an apple only exist because it is different from everything else? And here I thought all fruit share various qualities and aspects.
I can put the same apple in a sauce, in a pie, in a fruitcake, in a crumble, in cider, or just eat straight. Is it now not an apple per your definition?
an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct:
a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived:
a fundamental doctrine or tenet; a distinctive ruling opinion:
principles, a personal or specific basis of conduct or management:
guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct:
an adopted rule or method for application in action:
The word can mean several things. You are trying to tie it down to a single definition that fits your own position, but that's not how I have employed it throughout this discussion.
And a principle is a feature of ethics. Calling something either of those terms is not mutually exclusive.
god must be atheistOctober 28, 2019 at 00:10#3462130 likes
Does an apple only exist because it is different from everything else? And here I thought all fruit share various qualities and aspects.
Ay-vey. You are going at it from an angle you ought not to.
Apples exist. But to show it to a person who denies the existence of apples, you have to show him an apple.
If you can't show him an apple, from his point of view he won't accept that apples exist.
------------
You have allegedly seen ethical deeds. Show me one. If you can't, I can not only say I am not convinced, but I can also say that you yourself have not seen one. It is not an apple; it can be described in philosophical terms. A person does not need to taste, smell, touch ethics like he would an apple to believe it exists.
So if you can't show a man an apple, he won't believe apples exist.
If you can't show an ethical action, then you show not only to me, but to yourself too, that you don't know what ethics is, and I claim it is so because it is your personal opinion only that ethics exist.
Ay-vey. You are going at it from an angle you ought not to.
Apples exist. But to show it to a person who denies the existence of apples, you have to show him an apple.
If you can't show him an apple, from his point of view he won't accept that apples exist.
I'm sorry, but you're just a moving target. You've gone from needing ethics to be totally and absolutely exclusive to ethics (which is dumb, because ethics is about life and how to live/act) to now needing some physical, tangible proof that probably you'd prefer is edible as well.
But the target you've moved to doesn't even make sense. I've never seen a dinosaur, and I believe they've existed. I've never seen -- actually seen, with my own little eye-- a bacteria, and I believe they exist. I've never even seen the molten iron core of planet earth and I believe that exists.
Furthermore, since ethics is conceptual, you can't show it physically other than pointing perhaps to a book about ethics. Just like statistics is conceptual, or love, or so many other things.
At this point I'm really not sure where the conversation is going, because from my vantage point (and I'm sorry if this isn't true from your vantage point) your answers/questions are becoming more and more silly.
god must be atheistOctober 28, 2019 at 00:20#3462180 likes
noun
an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct:
a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived:
a fundamental doctrine or tenet; a distinctive rulingopinion:
principles, a personal or specific basis of conduct or management:
guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct:
an adopted rule or method for application in action:
The word can mean several things. You are trying to tie it down to a single definition that fits your own position, but that's not how I have employed it throughout this discussion.
And a principle is a feature of ethics. Calling something either of those terms is not mutually exclusive.
The bolded ones are personal opinions.
The italicised ones are principles that are not defined, and have no definitons anywhere.
(You): "The word can mean several things. You are trying to tie it down to a single definition"
(I, in response): NO! Not at all. I ask you for an INSTANCE, for a single quality, which is not ALL ENCOMPASSING, but PERVASIVE and UNIQUE to ethics. That's what I asked, and I asked that precisely because you DEFENDED that you can't make an all-encompassing definition.
Fine. Don't make a definition, I can accept that. But do state a quality or aspect of ethics that is unique to and pervasive over, all ehtical acitons.
After all, you claim that there is one, and if you don't claim it, you don't claim that ethics is pervasive and it is of unique considerations.
If there is no single such quality (which can be a combination of some other qualities), then:
1. Your idea of ethics does not exist, if no quality can be unique to all ethical acts.
2. Your idea of ethics does not exist, if no quality can be pervaseive to all ethical considerations.
Please see the video I begged you to see. It answers your dilemma perfectly, I think.
god must be atheistOctober 28, 2019 at 00:23#3462210 likes
At this point I'm really not sure where the conversation is going, because from my vantage point (and I'm sorry if this isn't true from your vantage point) your answers/questions are becoming more and more silly.
If that's how you feel, fine. I accept that. It is your personal opinion and I can't fight personal opinions on a philosophical vein.
I rest satisfied, however, that you were unable to show one single unique and pervasive trait or quality, which may be a combinaition of qualities, that applies to what you call ethics.
And I rest satisfied, that you can't define ethics, or its fundamental principles.
I rest satisfied, however, that you were unable to show one single unique and pervasive trait or qualioty, which may be a combinaition of qualities, that applies to what you call ethics.
I mean, that can be your personal opinion as well. But of course you were making impossible and simultaneously illogical demands for proof... but you can ride off into the sunset believing whatever you want to believe sans reason. :rofl:
god must be atheistOctober 28, 2019 at 00:47#3462490 likes
I mean, that can be your personal opinion as well.
Except it is not. It is not a personal opinion of mine that you failed to give one example even that would have disproved my claim. It is not my personal opinion: it is out there for the whole world to see.
But of course you were making impossible and simultaneously illogical demands for proof.
I asked for a single occurrence that would have served as a disproof of my claim. You failed to provide it.
If you KNEW what you were talking about, you would have easily provided it. Your ignorance is a proof to me that you yourself are not on sure footing that ethics exist. You may fight for it, but you don't know what you are fighting for.
Have you watched the video?
PossibilityOctober 28, 2019 at 01:08#3462550 likes
Because we’re talking about underlying ethical principles, not specific rules. I acknowledge that rule, law and principle are often employed as interchangeable terms for rhetorical effect, but the distinction is one of specificity.
While, sure, the kitten principle is a more specific version of "do no harm," that doesn't mean it's not a principle. Just like the law generally prohibits theft, but it also has more specific rules about specific kinds of theft.
Yes, it does mean it’s not a principle. If it is a more specific version, then it is neither fundamental, nor can it serve as a foundation for a system of behaviour. ‘Do not steal’ is a statement of law referring to an ethical principle for cohabitation that values property ownership - the foundation from which specific rules regarding theft are derived.
A rule is referred to as a ‘principle’ only in reference to a specific area of activity. ‘Don’t drown kittens’ could be described as an ethical ‘principle’ only in specific relation to being in possession of kittens near water.
It may seem like I’m being pedantic here, but it’s important to make the distinction between rule, law and principle when we’re talking about the possible existence of ‘objective’ or ‘universal’ underlying ethical principles. This is as broad as one can get in terms of behaviour, so any suggestion of ethical principles in this sense must have an effect on behaviour in the broadest application.
If there is a more fundamental or general version of the so-called ‘principle’, or if adhering to it still allows unethical behaviour, then what you have is not a principle in this context, but a specific law or rule that derives from a principle.
creativesoulOctober 28, 2019 at 03:36#3462860 likes
you failed to give one example even that would have disproved my claim. It is not my personal opinion: it is out there for the whole world to see.
Again, I've shown that your demands of ethics are absurd and irrelevant. That is also there for the world to see. I'm happy to leave it the way it stands for others to see.
Now, goals are inherently subjective, varying from one subject to another, due to the fact that they exist relative to one's intention. Intention is the property of an individual.
I'm not talking about any specific goal, I'm talking about the having of goal, something which is common to every intentional creature. The argument is simply that if system X is one which helps me achieve my goals it is justified that I maintain it. In order to be satisfied with that justification, one only need to also have goals and consider whether one would also maintain a system useful in helping to achieve them. It's about empathy.
Notwithstanding that, what alternative could you possibly implement? What system-less method of justification could we use instead?
The utility itself will be judged as unrighteous, incorrect, and therefore unjustified. And an unjustified utility will not justify use of the system. In fact there will be the reverse effect. The more useful the system is for obtaining an unrighteous goal, the more unjustified the system is.
You're conflation unrighteous (in a moral sense) with incorrect (a technical sense). Say a criminal mastermind sets up an elaborate trap to kill millions. He has used (to achieve his evil goal) the system of 3d spatio-temporal relativity. Is that system now wrong? Wat if he calculated how many guns he'd need using arithmetic, is arithmetic now wrong?
Must it? Must everything be justified? How does that work non-circularly? If 'The Goal' is what I feel what am I supposed to do on finding that it is not justified (by your method which you've yet to reveal)? Am I supposed to now not feel that way? — Isaac
Where's the circularity? If the goal is not justified, then the means for obtaining that goal (the system) is not justified. Isn't this straight forward and obvious to you? It seems pretty basic.
Because you have to use a 'system' to judge the righteousness of the goal. Must you then justify that system?
So religious commandments have all of the criteria you list above, or lack them just as much? — Isaac
I haven't said anything about religious commandments, I'm addressing your deceptive claim that a system is justified by its utility.
No, I know. I just thought I'd get it out there now. It's the subtext behind all of your philosophy. You don't seem capable of investigating any matter without forcing it down some path which ends with "...because God".
I like sushiOctober 29, 2019 at 07:30#3466720 likes
The argument is simply that if system X is one which helps me achieve my goals it is justified that I maintain it.
This is clearly false. If your goal is an unjustified one (a bad one), then system X as aiding in reaching this goal, is not justified. If your goal is to have so and so dead, using a gun to shoot that person in the head is not justified just because it helps you achieve your goal.
I'm talking about the having of goal, something which is common to every intentional creature.
The problem is that a system is not used to achieve "goals" in any absolute, or general sense, any strategic system is geared toward a particular type of goal. To judge the system as to whether the use of that system is justified or not requires judgement of the good or badness of the particular goal which it is used toward achieving.
In order to be satisfied with that justification, one only need to also have goals and consider whether one would also maintain a system useful in helping to achieve them. It's about empathy.
This again is false. We were not talking about judging whether the use of systems toward reaching goals is justifiable (in the most general sense), as you imply here, we were talking about justifying the use of a particular system. And to justify the use of a particular system requires judgement of the type of goal which it will be useful for bringing about.
You're conflation unrighteous (in a moral sense) with incorrect (a technical sense). Say a criminal mastermind sets up an elaborate trap to kill millions. He has used (to achieve his evil goal) the system of 3d spatio-temporal relativity. Is that system now wrong? Wat if he calculated how many guns he'd need using arithmetic, is arithmetic now wrong?
You do realize this thread concerns ethical principles don't you? I do not know what you would mean by "incorrect" in a technical sense. But you now appear to have come across an important point. The same system may be used toward good goals, and toward bad goals.
In your example, it is the use of the system toward goal A instead of goal B, which is wrong. Perhaps we have been barking up the wrong tree, and you and I can move toward a compromise here. It is not the system which we justify, but the use of the system. Would you agree with this? A system is not the type of thing which we justify, but a particular way of using a system is what we justify. This allows that a "system" exists in a general sense, as an aid, or tool for assistance in achieving goals, but the system is not itself bad or good, because these are terms reserved for judging the goals. We might judge a system as more efficient than another, or something like that.
If we start referring to the efficiency as "good", while we also judge the goals as "good" we might equivocate.
Because you have to use a 'system' to judge the righteousness of the goal. Must you then justify that system?
I think that if you start to understand the nature of particular goals, without referring to "goals" in general, you'll find that we do not apply a "system" for judging goals. This is why the nature of morality is so difficult to understand, and why there is so much variance in the ethical codes; systems produced by moral philosophy. Notice the system of ethics is derived from the moral judgement; a judgement which is based in some sort of intuition or something other than a system.
No, I know. I just thought I'd get it out there now. It's the subtext behind all of your philosophy. You don't seem capable of investigating any matter without forcing it down some path which ends with "...because God".
I'm sorry, I'm just seeking the truth in these matters. If, where the inquiry leads offends you, then I apologize for the offence.
unenlightenedNovember 02, 2019 at 11:59#3480280 likes
Have a little taste of Chinese ethics, guys.
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-mengzi-came-up-with-something-better-than-the-golden-rule?fbclid=IwAR3kI7V7ph5grR0i55lvj4AZPfxWd-Tsk5rzrmhadXufSWn9FE2ODWRI2Bw
Comments (175)
I always thought that ethics was not defined and it is undefineable. Because it is societal indoctrination, which does not even stick with everyone, and it can hugely differ from society to society, as it is culture-dependent. So how do you prepare to defend a thesis about something undefinable and undefendable?
But I guess the same can be said of Ethics, and metaphysics. So 'tis a go, after all. Just don't try to apply ethical theories to something in the real world.
Most people who do defend and define ethics just outright don't buy your initial premises.
Something is only then indoctrination when critical thinking is not allowed.
The answer to the problem of different cultural ethical norms is simply that different cultures are (or were at some point in history) wrong about different things.
And anywhere in the world you find the same underlying principles to ethics: don't cause unnecessary suffering, for example.
That's not a view I agree with. So how would it be the case that you find that everywhere in the world?
Maybe most people in most countries would agree with that, although we never actually did an empirical study to discover whether that's the case, and I'd suspect that we'd need to clarify the terms for most people in order for them to give an answer that isn't fleeting or easily so ambiguous because of different semantics that the response wouldn't actually tell us much. We'd need to clarify just what counts as unnecessary, just what counts as suffering, etc.
The more important point though is what does it matter for the sub-discussion that was occurring?
In other words, suppose that's a fact. What would you say the relevance of it is to Artemis' response to god must be an atheist's comment?
For example, there is plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that most views reside within most places regardless of culture or tradition of those places. Demographic ratios may show a differing majority but nevertheless the views still exist within that culture. Actually the most substantial empirical evidence you could hope to find. Schools. Schools have records of their graduates core beliefs in every field you could imagine. Including ethics.
It also matters because it relates to the pragmatic definition of truth and the data found in Descriptive Moral relativism which takes into account these demographics and is an amazing data tool for ethics.
Thank you, and yes.
Well, respectfully Terrapin, you may not be the best example to use in this argument because (and correct me if I'm wrong) you have in previous threads claimed to outright reject any overarching princples in ethics. Which really leads to you not having an "ethics" per se.
If you look at any system of ethics, I think you will find (semantics and details of the hows and whys aside) that there are some universal themes.
That's right. I wouldn't say I don't have an ethics, but it's not any sort of systematic ethics, sure.
I'm not sure I understand how you can have an "ethics" of any sort without some principles you fall back on?
Like, you previously stated something along the lines of judging each situation individually, but on what basis do you make a judgement?
:up:
The way I see it, the idea that there is an objective or universal sense of ethical principles is sound. That such principles can be stated, however, is inaccurate. A stated or defined ethical principle is going to be wrong about something from some perspective of the universe. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to approach a universal sense of ethics. But I don’t think it comes down to ‘DON’T’ statements, to be honest.
What would happen if everyone acted like that?
Be helpful.
Do what's good for goodness sake.
In response, I wanted to submit the idea that that is all that it takes to develop an objective morality. If there are reasons that could persuade someone to prefer something, with the likes of which you could conduct such a debate as above, then working out what all of those reasons taken together say we should prefer just is figuring out what is objectively moral. (If there are no such reasons, then such debate is doomed to failure regardless, and we're doomed to a world where everyone does whatever they want and can't be persuaded to do otherwise, so might substitutes for right and there's no point debating why the guy with the sword shouldn't gut you if he feels like it).
"Objective morality" doesn't have to entail that there be ontological moral objects, moral facts that are true in the same way that non-moral facts are. Moral claims are not descriptive, they're prescriptive, so why would you expect them to be made true by, justified by the same kind of reasons as, descriptive claims? They don't need that to be objective claims. They just need to be unbiased; "objective" just means "unbiased". There just need to be something in common to our experiences that we can point to and say "because of that" as a reason to reject the supposed morality of something, and so begin narrowing in on what the remaining possibly-moral options are, in the same way that we point at disagreement with empirical experiences as reasons to reject descriptive claims and narrow in on the truth.
It seems that hedonic experiences serve that function perfectly well: we demonstrate the falsehood of descriptive claims by saying in effect "stand here and look that way and you'll see that that's false", and we can likewise demonstrate the badness (analogous to falsehood) of prescriptive claims by saying in effect "stand here and feel this and you'll feel that it's bad". Sure, someone can always say "I don't want to stand there and feel that and you can't make me so I don't have to agree that that's bad" (the "somebody else's problem" response), but that's just ignoring relevant evidence in the same way that someone refusing to look at empirical evidence of a descriptive claim would be.
What makes a claim moral in kind?
But it seems fundamental that there are not 'resaons' why we prefer things. We do not prefer things for reasons. Can you convince someone to prefer green, prefer chocolate to vanilla? Can you convince an arachnophobe to prefer spiders?
Where would you start? "We shouldn't prefer to cause unnecessary harm because..." (ignoring for now the ambiguity in both 'unnecessary' and 'harm'). What could your 'because' possibly be?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Why would we be in such a world? We can persuade people not to do what they want by all sorts of means. It's not a case of saying "If we can't persuade them to actually prefer not to do X we might as well just let them do X"
Quoting Pfhorrest
This is very much the myth of moral realism writ large. Note the vague hand-waiving when it comes to the really important bit. Yes, we can point to some things in our common experience, we're all humans and biologically we have some pretty similar gut feelings about stuff, but they're just that - vague gut feelings. the really important bit is the bit you simply assumed, the "begin narrowing in on what the remaining possibly-moral options are". I'm afraid in most cases, the 'remaining possibly-moral options' are almost anything we would realistically be arguing about anyway. It doesn't really get us anywhere.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Again, this only works where some degree of 'bad' is universally agreed on, and some long-term lack of compensatory benefit is universally agreed upon and they never are. How would it help getting someone to imagine themselves to be a 'rank-and-file' soldier in the German army 1940. "would you like to be in his position, would you like to be shot at?", "No", "Well then you shouldn't shoot German Soldiers in World War Two". Where would that have got us? A lot of innocent people were killed in World War Two. They were killed because many people thought the long-term good outweighed the bad.
What you're describing is simply empathy. Over reliance on empathy is what makes people donate to sick-donkey sanctuaries that they happen to have visited but still maintain consumer practices which contribute to the suffering of thousands (who they can't see).
There are raw experiential feelings of “preferring”, hedonic experiences of something just seeming good or bad, that are not had for reasons; but then there are also things that we instrumentally prefer for reasons grounded in exactly those experiences.
Quoting Isaac
If we are the ones in power and so can create circumstances that they’ll consider reasons to behave like we want (like “I’ll hurt you if you don’t“), sure. If they are the ones in power then we’re fucked. That’s why in absence of any way to persuade anyone, might supplants right.
Quoting Isaac
I’m not talking about floofy gut feelings about what circumstances we instrumentally prefer, but about the experiences that lead us to prefer them. It’s like I’m talking about comparing empirical observations and you think I’m talking about comparing people’s beliefs. Beliefs and desires don’t matter, they are subjective interpretations of experience; it is the experiences we have in common that matter.
(And biological similarity is not strictly necessary. We can account for differences in people’s senses when taking empirical account of the world, and we can do likewise with peoples’ appetites when taking hedonic account of it).
Quoting Isaac
Ideally we would not shoot soldiers in wars. That is bad. But if something else bad will happen if we don’t, if we’re forced to choose between two bad options because we can’t find an all good one, then we choose the least bad of course. You say nothing here that shows that it is not possible to compare options to see which is less bad.
OK, I see what you mean.
Quoting Pfhorrest
But if we resort to persuasion, aren't the ones with the most persuasive rhetoric in power? I don't see how, by using persuasion, you've bypassed power structures. We already live in a situation where people can be persuaded to vote one way or another. The people with the best access to, and control of, the media tend to do better.
Also, on the slightly less cynical side, there's more than just "I'll hurt you if you don't", there's things like ostracisation which can persuade people to act against their preferences. We don't always have to choose between a dispassionate rational debate and a fight. There's the whole of politics in between.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I don't understand what you're saying here, could you try and explain it again?
Quoting Pfhorrest
No, it's not about the least bad, it's about what will or will not come to pass. The issue with the Second World War was not "which is worse, killing some innocent Germans or being taken over by Hitler?", it was "is killing some innocent Germans a necessary act in preventing us from being taken over by Hitler?". That question is not resolvable by empathy.
I suppose I misspoke; by "persuasion" I meant more specifically "reason". You're absolutely right that there are other influences between reason and physical violence, but my point was to distinguish between reason and all of those other non-rational influences, with physical violence just being the clearest exemplar of them. (Something like "if you don't I'll make you feel embarrassed" is still the same kind of "create a reason they'll pay attention to" use of power as "if you don't I'll hurt you", albeit softer of course).
Quoting Isaac
Gladly, this is the most important part of my whole ethical model really.
When it comes to investigating reality, we don't just ask people what they believe (what they think is true or false), and try to come up with something that's true according to everyone's beliefs. That would be ridiculous and is obviously almost guaranteed to be impossible. Instead, we ask people what looks true or false to them, what they observe. (And it's important to highlight the difference here also between perception and sensation, where perception is of something like "a ball", and sensation is of something like "a pattern of light"; sensation is raw sense data, akin to the pixels of an image displayed on a screen, while perception is interpreted sensation, akin to a vectorization of that pixel data. Perception is "feeling" like something is true, sensation is raw phenomenal experience with implications on truth). Observation is not about perception, which has all the same problems as belief, but rather about sensation). And then we don't just take their word for it, we go and stand in the same circumstances they said they observed it and see if we observe it too, and if we don't we try to account for differences between each other (and of course, first, double-checking for differences in the circumstances) to see if that can explain the differences in observation. Once we have an agreed-upon set of observations, we try to come up with models that satisfy all of them, which may or may not be what anybody initially believed or even perceived on account of those observations.
My ethical model hinges upon making a similar distinction as that between belief, perception, and sensation: instead of just wants or preferences, we need to distinguish between what I term intentions (thinking that something is good, "moral beliefs" some would say), desires (feeling that something is good, analogous to perceptions), and appetites (experiences of things like pain, hunger, etc, with implications about what to feel or think is good, but no propositional content to that effect as such yet). Just as in investigating morality we don't care about what people believe or even what they perceive but about their senses, their empirical experiences, and then we try to replicate those and build up from them to a model that satisfies them all even if it's not what anybody initially believed, so too in investigating morality we shouldn't care about what people intend or what they desire but about their appetites, their hedonic experiences, and then try to replicate those (stand in the same circumstances and see if we experience the same, try to account for differences between us and double-check for differences in the circumstances), and then try to come up with models that satisfy the set of everything that survives that process, which models may or may not be what anybody initially intended or desired on account of those appetites.
There's a whole lot more philosophy and what I'd call "ethical sciences" needed to build from that basic criteria to a complete understanding of what in particular is morally right, just like we can't just say "Empiricism is reality. There, all of the physical sciences are complete, everyone can go home now, we know everything about reality, it's just whatever you observe!" But this at least gives you criteria by which to start making prescriptive judgements.
Quoting Isaac
That is a descriptive question. All actions hinge on making both descriptive and prescriptive judgements (usually called "beliefs" and "desires" in traditional philosophy of action, but I'd say "beliefs" and "intentions" instead, per the above). To know whether we ought to kill some innocent Germans, we both need to answer the descriptive question of whether that is necessary (or even sufficient) to prevent us from being taken over by Hitler, and the prescriptive question of whether some innocent Germans being killed is better or worse than us being taken over by Hitler. And any judgements on either of those questions are fallible, and might be wrong, so we might end up doing the wrong thing, but just because we can't be completely certain what the correct answer is to something doesn't mean that there is no correct answer, whether we're talking about reality or morality.
Wouldn't any positive statement imply a negative one?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Are all prescriptive claims moral in kind?
The sense I get from those who might make such a distinction is between other-directed action and self-directed action, though on my account there is no need to make that distinction for the claims to be broadly speaking "moral": I'd say one ought not, for example, literally beat oneself up (like punch oneself in the face) over one's failures, and that "ought" is prescriptive, and therefore on my account the same kind of claim as a claim that one ought not beat up overs over their failures, but I get the sense that others would say that only the latter claim about interpersonal action is "moral" and the first is... something else, I guess? I would make a distinction between self-directed and other-directed action when it comes to procedural justice, saying that someone has the right to beat themselves up but not the right to beat someone else up, but that's only a subset of moral concerns, and in the broader sense I'd say that the first is moral too.
Single-concern bullshit is not the same as critical thinking.
Demanding evidence within a system for system-wide axioms is not the same as critical thinking. On the contrary, it is just stupid, infinite regress.
Seriously, all of that amounts to system-less nonsense and not to critical thinking. What these people are doing, is easy. It does not require any skill. It is inferior nonsense.
They think that they are doing logic, but they have absolutely no clue about systems of logic. Why don't they try to reason within or about e.g. Hilbert-Ackermann calculi, if logic is so important to them?
These people are just a bunch of idiots.
Reason is not necessarily a 'rational' influence though. I think 2000 years of debate have pretty firmly established that reason does not deliver one clear answer to complex moral dilemmas, it is highly susceptible to competing theories and competing selections of empirical evidence. Simply presenting to someone a 'reasonable' case for doing X as a moral imperative is to simply bias that person in favour of doing X if one know that there also exists a 'reasonable' case for not doing X. The idea of reasonable debate producing the answer to moral dilemmas, even notwithstanding the possibility of genuine differences in objective, relies on the flawed assumption of full access to relevant empirical data and the pre-existence of all rational lines of thought in each mind (as opposed to having them introduced by persuasive argument). Neither I think are the case.
In addition, I simply do not think it is possible for the human mind to make rational decisions absent of any cultural, or psychological bias. There is an entire field made up entirely of evidence that this is the case and (to my knowledge) zero evidence to the contrary. We can't even take in the basic empirical data without bias, it's ingrained in our entire thinking systems.
___
I'm still not sure I fully understand your ethical theory, but rather than just ask you to write it out again, I'll tell you what I've got so far and you can correct/add.
The moral 'good' can be defined as satisfactory hedonic experiences.
We can determine the states of affairs which bring about those experiences scientifically because (unlike feelings and beliefs about what will bring them about) the experiences themselves are empirically verifiable.
Where people differ in their hedonic experiences in what appear to be the same states of affairs, we can examine closely to find if there are perhaps some subtle differences in those states of affairs.
Upon discovering the ranges of states of affairs which bring about satisfactory hedonic experiences in people we can derive some generalisable states of affairs which we can label 'good' on that basis.
Is that about right?
Quoting Pfhorrest
OK, that's cleared that up.
No one said anything about demanding such evidence "within" the system. Your error is in presuming there's no wider system of which religious texts are only a part. Most atheists consider themselves to be part of some system of physical, biological, psychological, social...etc system of laws which they refer to to make rational decisions. Religions are not the only systems.
I don't disagree, but we don't use that as a basis to say that nothing is actually real, just that we are bad at figuring out what is actually real. I think the case for figuring out what is moral is comparable: we may be bad at figuring out what is moral, but that's not an excuse to say that nothing is actually moral. And I don't have any particular commitment to contingent particulars about how relatively better or worse we may tend to be at each; just that's it's a task we can undertake, however fallibly, in both cases.
Quoting Isaac
More or less, though I expect some important technical details will probably need clarification in further conversation.
The question (one that I think virtue ethics tackles) is whether the flaws in these calculatory systems are not so massive as to render them less useful than intuition.
Quoting Pfhorrest
OK, thanks. So...
1. I don't see the benefit in asserting that the moral 'good' is satisfactory hedonic experiences. So many people would disagree and you get mired in an argument that can't be supported. Why not just say if you want to maximise satisfactory hedonic experience, then it seems empirically indicated that you should do X. Turning it into an if/then statement removes all the mess of the is/ought problem and, if you're right about most people's desires, would still resonate with the vast majority of people.
2. I don't see anything there about judging hyperbolic discounting (future possible hedonic gains are worth less than current definate ones).
There may be more, but let's not get bogged down too much to start with.
Quoting Isaac
But what laws are there apart from physical necessity? I had the idea that in the atheist’s world the only principles resembling laws were physical laws i.e. laws of motion, thermodynamics, and so on. Social and civil laws would have no direct grounding in such laws, rather are grounded in social convention. And ultimately they’re underwritten, it’s assumed, by successful adaptation, are they not?
No, I think most atheists subscribe to some social, psychological and even economic models which they reference in rational thinking. "X will likely lead to Y because..." does not always have to reduce to physical laws.
Religious systems may well provide "do not do X because..." type of answers, but so can a favoured economic model. Of course you have to have - a) faith in the model, and b) an initial feeling about the objective you want the model to help you achieve. But I don't see religion getting anyone out of those problems. One must have faith in the system and one must always decide that following the system (or sometimes the rewards within it, like heaven) is an objective one wants to achieve.
One major difference between religious systems and non-religious ones is that faith in non-religious systems is more easily justified by their utility at helping to provide useful strategies, but this is far from universal (many people stick with favoured non-religious systems despite abject failures to produce anything useful, and conversely some religious systems produce useful interrim results people find useful).
:roll: :roll: :roll:
In my experience, most atheists in regards to Ethics are either Relativists or Pragmatists. You should check out Pragmatic ethics, I think you’d really like that. Moral ecology and Piercean Realism are also subjects you should research.
Are you considering things like (but not limited to) evolutionary ethics, virtue ethics, utilitarianism, or rights based ethics to fall under those two categories broadly?
Pragmatists are probably more utilitarian when it comes to ethics but not metaethics. In that they apply a utilitarian principle toward ethics, looking at every moral view for utility to find pragmatic truth.
Pragmatic truth is probably best defined as that definition of good which is closest to objective by the empirical facts we have on hand. So at the individual level this can lead to different flavours of pragmatism.
Fundamentally the pragmatist believes in objective good, they just don’t believe it is possible to truly identify without us knowing all the facts of the universe. This also leads to a second feature of pragmatism (which I am oft prone to forgetting in my practice of it) is that it is not the individual that is being judged as moral or immoral, but the society individuals collectively create. Simply because one individual cannot have access to our entire collective knowledge as it is, let alone if we legitimately knew everything there was to know about the universe already.
Now we arrive at moral ecology which is the view that we have to manage our collective moral views as we would an ecosystem. There is some disagreement on moral ecology though, some think all views need to be represented and maintained while others (myself included) feel certain maladaptive and destructive moral views will always contribute to a negative moral judgement on humanity as a whole and don’t contribute to our survival, stability, security or moral progress.
The only valid criticism of Pragmatism I’ve come across really is that at times it conflates the distinction between normative and descriptive ethics, but no more than science conflates the distinction between empirical facts about the universe and the opinions on those facts. If anyone has other criticisms of pragmatism though I’d be willing to hear.
The one I’ve noticed myself reading this back; is that if the individual cannot know everything there is to know, then how would the pragmatist ever know if the society they are in is moral or not even if collectively we knew everything?
To put it simply though, pragmatism for the individual requires building ones own ethica pragmatica; A working theory of what good is, an obligation to hold true to that good with a moderate grip, so that one has the integrity to fight for it and yet isn’t so rigid that concrete evidence against their theory of good isn’t ignored.
Then you have adaptive pragmatism as a philosophy as opposed to pragmatic ethics (it is quite possible to be a philosophical pragmatist but not a moral one and vice versa) it’s only real difference between Pragmatism is that it requires a philosophy of science to be quantum accommodated, meaning a philosophy of science is incomplete without an attempt(A horrible, long and confusing attempt because of how probabilistic it is) at interpreting philosophy of quantum mechanics.
In conclusion, the answer to your question is Relativism is broad but pragmatism can be as broad or narrow as the individual pragmatist feels is justified.
After thinking on it last night, I realised I’m not angry at him for being an Antinatalist and I’m not even angry at Antinatalism. I’m angry at my inner conflict over its place in our moral ecology.
On the one hand, Antinatalists at their current numbers in my perspective are useful in that they slow the human growth rate making a small contribution to resource management.
On the other hand it is one of the views that if it gains too much popularity could lead to a logical progression from Antinatalism is okay, to Genocide is okay. That’s not to say that’s what they currently think and I’m happy to take back that accusation I threw at Bartricks yesterday.
However now that he has a bit more insight into my own views (if he reads my response to @Artemis)and I’m agreeing to walk back my anger from our previous debates in the pursuit of seeing each other as persons and not means to our ends; maybe he can make the case to me that Antinatalism belongs in our moral ecology without me having to fear them hounding for mine, my descendants or everyone else’s death at some point down the line?
Is that fair Bartrick? I do apologise, but I think you can at least empathise with the fact that your views are controversial and emotive to most.
The basis upon which anyone makes any moral judgment is their dispositions or intuited feelings about interpersonal behavior. That's how people wind up forwarding or buying into moral principles as well.
My ethics is my set of preferences/judgments about interpersonal behavior (more significant than etiquette)
What do you use to make these judgements? Your opinions and preferences on empirical data?
Not just me, but everyone uses their dispositions/intuitive feelings. It can both be in response to empirical observations and in response to imagining scenarios.
Only if you’re looking for one - ie. if you’re motivated by fear.
Any statement of ethical principle is inaccurate, whether it’s positive or negative.
That's fine, but you could imagine something and keep it to yourself, too.
It all is eventually.
How do you differentiate that from essentially a moral code? Seems to me at least any intuition could be formally stated as a type of premise?
I wouldn't say there's any conventional difference between the two (and I don't use the terms differently . . . well, not that I even use the phrase "moral code").
Quoting Artemis
Sure, it could.
I don't really understand why something like "don't drown kittens in a burlap sack" would be either inaccurate or motivated by fear.
And an ethics where all maxims/codes/whatever you want to call them are inaccurate is not really an ethics per se. I'm not saying it's an indefensible position on that basis, just that it doesn't count as an ethics. Like atheism is not a form of theism.
I'm not sure yet either what word I'd use for my personal ethical.... Um, guidelines? But you get my drift.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Okay, so then you must have some underlying principles you fall back on? And why wouldn't avoiding unnecessary suffering be one of them? (And let's not get sidetracked in semantics. A scenario where you recognize that suffering is unnecessary. And suffering as understood to be something non-masochistic-actually-causing-pleasure-loophole.)
No. Because I think that seeing any moral principle as a trump card (so you're falling back on it) always results in ridiculous policies.
Re "unncessary suffering," first, I think that both parts of that--especially the "suffering" part, are very vague with respect to how people use those terms. A lot of things that I see people call "suffering" are not something that I consider morally problematic at all. Some things that almost everyone considers "suffering" I think are either neutral or positive and/or indicative of a problem (like a mental problem) on the sufferer's part.
Re necessity, in this sort of context, I consider necessity/needs to hinge on wants/desires.
So an example is saying something that offends someone else. I not only see that as not morally problematic, I see it as desirable to offend the offendable, and I see it as indicative of a problem on the offendees part that they were offended. Which is a reason that I think this is a good thing--knowing that you're offendable should be a cue to work on yourself and fix those issues.
Seems to me you yourself still fall back on them, even if you're just doing it "intuitively."
And I think you have to distinguish between a naive Kantian maxims doctrine versus more nuanced ethical approaches that take context and situationally conflicting morals into account.
Re your re's, you're totally disregarding my suggestion to leave semantics aside for a moment. When I'm talking about your personal moral maxim, it doesn't matter what other people consider these terms to mean. And your example about offense simply implies that sometimes you think offense is a necessary thing.
Would you beat up a small child in an alleyway if you knew you could get away with it and suffer absolutely zero social or financial or other external consequences? Why or why not?
I don't though. I intentionally try to intuit how I feel about a particular situation, simply as that particular situation. I particularly have a distaste for what I consider overreactions, and those tend to follow from people relying on a principle-oriented approach.
Quoting Artemis
The problem is that I don't frame anything in terms of "suffering." (Or any sort of unqualified "harm" even.) "Suffering" is not a term that I normally use in any context, unless someone else is using the term.
Quoting Artemis
Again, in my view, that would have to hinge on wants/desires. But understanding that, sure.
Quoting Artemis
I wouldn't beat up anyone "out of the blue," where it's not in response to something. That's not my personality.
Seems to me you're contradicting yourself now.
Your intuition must be based on something, or else it's just random and random actions won't do anyone any good whatsoever.
Yeah, on my body. How I feel about the situation at hand/what my natural disposition is.
Again, this is ultimately what everyone does.
How does the direction of fit play a part(apply) in "One ought not literally beat oneself up over their failures"?
So, if you're just having a particularly bad "body day" you might actually beat up the kid in the alley?
Nope.
Is it a possibility? Sure. There's no way to rule out that being a possibility for anyone.
Quoting Artemis
It is, because nothing else is available. I'm not saying that it's what others necessarily believe that they're doing. But it's what they're doing nonetheless.
There has to be. Or else everyone would respond to all situations like a toddler.
I'm not saying intuition doesn't play a role. But there are other elements to decision making.
Hence the word ultimately. That wasn't just there for decoration.
First off, obviously we don't stay emotionally the same as toddlers as we age.
But other than that, we already said that you can use various stances as foundational stances on a given occasion (and some people can decide to far more consistently use the same foundation(s)). And then you can reason from those foundational stances. But ultimately, which means when we go back to the foundational stance(s), it's simply how someone feels, what their dispositions are.
But then you said there's nothing else available. Seems contradictory.
Nothing else available for what morality ultimately depends on than subjective dispositions.
"this is ultimately what everyone does" is what I said. Nothing else is available for what everyone ultimately does when it comes to morality.
Is that different from intuition?
You intuit what your dispositions or "gut feelings" are. Basically, you do "hard thinking" to discover how you really feel about things.
But why? What's the point?
Well first you can't help but feel that some behavior is okay and not other behavior. That's built into us.
Why do people do "hard thinking" about it? Because we also have an inbuilt tendency to want to be consistent, and if we don't think about our moral dispositions very much, we're less likely to be consistent in our reactions. That particularly bothers us in moral situations as long as we have empathy, because we'll wind up doing things that we're not comfortable with on reflection.
I still don't see why someone with your view of the matter would bother. If my disposition at point t=0 is just as valid as at t=1, then it would all be inherently consistent.
Again, you can't help but feel the way you do. That's built into our biology.
For example, you beat up someone for no reason today. Well, a couple days later, you might realize that you don't really feel comfortable with beating up someone for no reason. Why? It's simply a way that you feel. A disposition you have.
So then you feel regret that you did something you don't now feel comfortable with. Your think that your previous actions are inconsistent with how you really feel--especially if you simply didn't think too much about it when you beat up someone for no reason.
So you decide that you're going to try to figure out how you really feel about these sorts of things.
If I can't help how I feel, how can I purposefully change it through introspection?
I've only got five minutes so don't want to fully get into this right now, but whilst this is fresh. The two points you've just raised seem to me to be exactly what you were denying when we spoke about moral discussions last. 1) that people have foundational moral principles "you can use various stances as foundational stances on a given occasion (and some people can decide to far more consistently use the same foundation(s))", and 2) that people may take a stance on one matter which they may later come to regret because they tend to prefer consistency.
These two principles are exactly those on which I was basing the value of moral argument - a) you're a human being, biologically driven, and most human beings have X as a foundational moral stance, and b) if you take position Y it clashes with stance X and I think you will regret that later.
The moral argument being essentially an attempt to convince the person that, firstly they do (or probably do) have moral stance X, and then to demonstrate by reason that activity Y is inconsistent with it and they will regret that inconsistency later.
Yet you seemed earlier to reject this very basis.
Pragmatism and utilitarianism are founded on what is useful, what works - so ‘what is good’ in the sense of what is useful. It leads to an ethic of reciprocal self-interest, rather than a sense of a true good, something good in its own right and of its own accord.
Interestingly, Peirce was not atheist (nor materialist). See his Evolutionary Love wherein he proclaims ‘agap?’ as a creative force (and distinguished from ‘tychism’, evolution by chance, and ‘anancastism’, evolution from mechanical necessity.)
I'm not saying anything about changing how you feel.
Your moral dispositions are "deep" or "gut-level" dispositions that may not be immediately obvious.
You can also have shallower feelings that may be reactionary and that are far more fleeting. For example, you might do something out of anger.
To know your moral view about something, you often have to engage in introspection, or what's sometimes called "hard" or "deep" thinking, where you're trying to intuit how you feel about something on a gut level.
Sometimes those gut-level feelings emerge naturally in the wake of something you or someone else did that you wind up regretting or resenting.
The reason that you bother, which is why you asked me, is that you can't help but have these sorts of states--the gut-level moral stances, for example. And most people are uncomfortable being inconsistent--so, for example, they might be uncomfortable with something they did out of anger, in a reactionary, fleeting moment, where that doesn't match their gut-level disposition about that sort of behavior.
Interesting. Where do these gut-level things come from?
Environment influences them, too, though.
If they're rooted in genetics, two questions:
1. wouldn't that mean that we all probably have the same gut-level instincts ultimately with slight preference variations.
2. wouldn't that suggest that there is some objectively identifiable and justifiable reason/s for having those? Like, altruism is our gut-level preference because it's better for group survival, etc.
I don't really see how it could possibly be less useful than intuition, since intuition is where you start from and then try to improve upon it. (E.g. "I think this ought not happen" [intuitively] "Why not?" [asking for reasons] "Because I suffer in this way when it happens." "Really? Let me see... oh yeah, that sucks. But if we do that other thing, I suffer in this way, see? So I don't think we should do that either." "Oh you're right, that's awful. Well what else can we do besides those two things that don't cause either of those problems?" etc...)
Quoting Isaac
It's not a matter of just asserting or defining that satisfactory hedonic experiences are goodness, which people will argue about for sure; it's that for something to be a satisfactory hedonic experience just is for it to seem good, in the same way that an empirical experience of something is for it to seem true. So we can completely sidestep the (IMO malformed*) question of whether that's "really" good, we're just trying to find a common ground of agreement to work from, so it's just a matter of getting people to have a common base of experiences that, they can all confirm for themselves, sure enough seem good or bad at least, and then from that common base working out what states of affairs avoid the experiences that seem bad and only leave ones that seem good (or minimize/maximize at least), and then the hard work of figuring out how to bring about those good(-seeming) states of affairs while avoiding bad(-seeming) ones.
*(Arguing about whether satisfactory hedonic experiences are "really good" seems akin to arguing about whether the world as it appears to empirical observation is "really real". Sure, mumble mumble evil demon philosophical nonsense, but at the end of the day what we're trying to do is to explain how the world that appears to us operates, to understand and predict it, so whether that appearance is "really real" is beside the point. Likewise, bracketing all philosophical mumbo jumbo about what's "really good", we're generally all concerned about avoiding suffering at least, so "does this hurt?" is good enough to work with for those purposes as "does this observation contradict the hypothesis?" does for the physical sciences. Any crazy people who think suffering is morally irrelevant are as dismissable as people who think observation has no bearing on reality).
Quoting Isaac
I'm not sure what you mean here, you'll need to elaborate.
The "ought" part. It's what distinguishes the sentence from "One does not literally beat oneself up over their failures."
Both of those sentences are concerning the same state of affairs: someone beating themselves up over their failures.
One of them (the descriptive, "does" statement) compares that idea (of someone beating themselves up over their failures) to the world, and if they don't match (or "fit"), judges the idea wrong, in need of changing so that it fits the world.
The other (the prescriptive, "ought" statement) compares that idea (of someone beating themselves up over their failures) to the world, and if they don't match (or "fit"), judges the world wrong, in need of changing so that it fits the idea.
That’s a specific statement about very specific behaviour, that doesn’t even come close to an ethical principle. Why is it bad to drown kittens in a burlap sack? Does that make it okay to drown kittens in a plastic bag instead? What if I just put the kittens in the sack and give it someone else - I’m not doing anything wrong then, am I?
This is what I mean by inaccurate. If that statement is an ethical principle, then it’s a highly inaccurate account of the principle, isn’t it? Is there a statement of ethical principle, either positive or negative, that doesn’t require further explanation in terms of what is or is not acceptable?
Would you agree that ‘our survival, stability, security and moral progress’ constitutes an anthropocentric value system, rather than an attempt to approach an ‘objective good’?
How broad or narrow does a principle have to be to fit your definition thereof?
Quoting Possibility
I think your definition of inaccurate is inaccurate. The wrongness of burlap sack drowning does not preclude the wrongness of plastic bag drowning. The wrongness of drowning does not preclude the rightness of giving them to a better home (though, please, don't carry kittens around in any kind of sack, even if you're giving them to a good home---that's still mean :(
We value ‘non human parts of the biosphere’, but only insofar as they are of benefit to human survival, stability, security, etc. As I’ve said before - we need to be honest about the limits of our ‘symbiosis’.
Hey, look at that! More common ground :wink:
Artemis, Tim Wood, Mark Dennis, et al, I still think you are misguided in thinking that there is an overriding, or underlying, or penetrating ethical principle.
Creativesoul just helped me illustrate this case. You all call ethical what's good. You all call ethical what reduces suffering. But I claim that you just gave a different name to "good deed".
That's A.
B. is that most ethical "good deeds" as I insist, is bad for some other people. Some case studies (thought experiments, not recounting of facts):
1. Claim: I am good because I give money to the poor. Therefore I am ethical.
counter-claim: you actually hinder the poor to find his own footing and help himself to a better life. You actually deprive the rich of more money than they could have if you gave your money to them, not to the poor. You actually deprive many other poor people because you gave your money to one poor person, callously ignoring the plight of the rest of the poor.
2. Claim: I am a factory owner. I believe in fair trade, and I pay my workers more than other factories do in my industry.
Counter-claim: you make your product incompetitive on the market, because with a same margin of profit, you have to charge a higher price for your products than your competitors do. Since you can't sell a comparative product at a higher price than your competitors' price, you go bankrupt and you have to let your entire work force go.
3. Claim: I am a soldier. I serve my country, its leaders, its people, and the women and innocent children, by fighting the enemy.
Counter-claim: you, as a soldier, kill people; spend a long time in training how to kill people. You deprive your country of the productive work you could be otherwise performing, which woudl benefit all. You fail to pay taxes. You are liable to torture enemy subjects, and to rape their women, when you think you can get away with it.
------
Simply put: most good deeds are bad in one way or another. If ethics is defined as "good deeds for most", then the balance of good vs. bad would make almost all actions ethical, even those that we intuitive call unethical, because the good that society produces is more than the bad that society produces. If you disagree, and say that society produces more bad than good, then the balance would indicate that most deeds are unethical.
Exactly - as a statement of underlying ethical principles governing the behaviour, ‘don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is inaccurate, due to its incompleteness. If you were trying to prevent someone from doing the wrong thing to a bunch of kittens, could you change the wording of the statement to ensure that when they do act with respect to kittens, they won’t end up doing something wrong anyway, even if they follow this ethical principle precisely as stated?
Let’s look at the Decalogue as an example: 10 do or don’t statements that were intended as ethical principles. And yet the moment they were employed as such, they required clarification, qualification and interpretation in practice, which then proceeded to fill several books of Law. The ethical principles behind the statements may have been understood at the time, but the statements themselves are inaccurate accounts of those underlying ethical principles.
The point I’m trying to make is that we can discuss ethical principles all day, and even approach an agreement ‘in principle’ on how we should behave towards one another in particular circumstances. But I don’t believe there are any written statements, maxims or codes that would accurately communicate these ethical principles to cover ALL possible circumstances.
Correction, Simply put: ethics is more complicated than the naive early-Kantian maxims doctrine. Even Kant recognized that later in his career.
Note that by judging any of those scenarios good and then bad, you have to rely on underlying ethical judgments. All of your counterclaims tacitly imply that there exists an objective standard by which you could measure these actions somehow.
By your logic: 2+2=4 is inaccurate because it does not tell us that 3+5=8.
If the human were Trump :rofl:
When you say something is wrong, it is a judgment, and judgments can be derived only by comparing a deed to a code, or by personal gut feelings.
I wish you to state the code of ethics, that universally seperates "wrong" ethics from "right" ethics. I don't want you to make up one; judgment by code USES and already defined code. What is this code, why is it undefeatable, by whose authority or by what logic is it absolute, that it may be used to judge some ethical decisions wrong, while others to be right?
-----------
As if you had anticipated my question, you say "don't cause unnecessary suffering" is the ultimate code of ethics.
It is not found everywhere in the world. So it is not the code that you can derive universally from all behaviour. In fact, there are many cultures in the world that encourage behaviour, that calls for unprecedented unnecessary suffering. I claim that there are benefits to some participants in a society that view the same action as necessary suffering, while others view the very same suffering as unnecessary.
2+2=4 is not an ethical principle, and doesn’t claim to be.
Interesting choice of paraphrasing. I did not say "ultimate." I suggested that it is one example of an underlying principle that I believe to exist in most cultures across the world. Now, I haven't exhaustively studied all world religions/ethics, but I have yet to come across one that actually contradicts the wrongness of unnecessary suffering. Though people might disagree on what things are necessary or are suffering, generally all ethics seeks to reduce the sum total of suffering.
Or can you give me a good counter example?
Doesn't matter. Your definition of the word "inaccurate" should be applicable in both cases if it is to be... accurate (by both of our definitions of accuracy, mind you).
I disagree. 2+2=4 is correct in all details, exact. The statement ‘Don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is not a faithful representation of an underlying ethical principle - which is what you are claiming the statement to be. As a specific command, it can be considered correct in all details and exact.
You think it's okay to drown kittens??? :scream:
So could there be a satisfactory hedonic experience that did not seem good?
'cause I'm thinking along the lines of Moore, that something might be pleasant and yet not good.
Sure - just don't use burlap.
Can I drown apes wearing sunglasses in burlap?
Mine or the ape's?
I was waiting for that - it’s not what I’m saying at all, and I think you’re aware of that.
The statement ‘Don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ doesn’t say it’s not okay to drown kittens. Adhering to it as an ethical principle will prevent a particular behaviour, but the statement itself provides no information as to the rightness or wrongness of drowning kittens in general. Or drowning anyone. Or how we should treat kittens. So unless you also add quite a few more do and don’t statements, you won’t even come close to a faithful reflection of the ethical principles that govern behaviour in relation to drowning, kittens or burlap sacks. It’s only when a person actually drowns kittens in a burlap sack that we can apply the statement. If they drown kittens in a plastic bag, or even if they think about drowning kittens, the statement has no practical use in clarifying ‘good’ behaviour.
Allow me to suggest an alternative:
‘Increase awareness, connection and collaboration.’
This statement challenges much of what we consider to be ethical behaviour. Many people would reject this as a comprehensive statement of ethical principles, because it does nothing to protect the agent from pain, humiliation, lack or loss. To fully embrace this as an ethical principle is to face our fears - to recognise that we cannot ensure our survival, safety or stability without compromising our moral progress, and vice versa.
It’s not a perfect statement, but for me it is the closest I think we can come to an objective ethical principle.
Good question; it depends greatly on the shark and the human and whether or not I am capable of saving them without it being a suicide mission for myself.
So let’s build a thought experiment; You are standing atop a cliff overlooking the bay. You have two remote detonators in your hand. One attached to a human swimming in the bay and the other to a shark swimming a short distance away and the detonators connect to explosives on each. Next to you on the cliff is someone else with the exact same setup and are connected to the same shark and human swimming in the bay.
This person tells you, “that if the shark attacks the human they will press the detonator attached to the shark, killing it. but not if you press the detonator for the human and kill them first or you could blow up the shark first and save the human.
So, if you do nothing then both the shark and the human will die. If you make a choice between the two only one will die. What do you do?
Is your answer going to be based on the identity of the individual human if they can be known or the species of shark if it can be known? What if it is an endangered species of shark and the human a serial killer? What if it’s a prolific shark species and a child? If we are taking into account all of these factors then we are morally considering all parties and are engaging in biocentrism no matter how we choose to act. If however we make it humans vs nature and we save the human every time then we are engaging in anthropocentrism
As for your second paragraph; I don’t believe this is true as there are plenty of animals on the endangered species list with little to no discernible benefits to our species save for our appreciation of its existence. Why are we valuing them I wonder? Why do things need to have a benefit for us in order for us to just appreciate the fact that they exist?
Take bacteria, if we didn’t get bacterial infections at all, where would we be right now in terms of managing our resources if bacteria didn’t play it’s part in thinning us out a little bit? Same question for Mosquitos?
This statement I agree with. We can’t ignore that we value our own place in the biosphere also and naturally will defend our ability to remain a part of it. However one can hope it never requires the total genocide of any life but Anthropocentrists I’m sure will make sure the biocentrists recognise when this is the only alternative or will act so biocentrists don’t have to do something they consider immoral. Just in case a species with Dalek like motivations and psychology happens to crop up. For me, a genocide would only be justified for us or another species to carry out if that aggressor species is a genuine threat to ALL life or just ALL human life specifically.
So for example, if an extremely large Asteroid with an atomosphere that contained some form of life was on a collision course with our planet, I’d say we’d be justified in blowing it out of the sky if diverting its course isn’t an easy option.
ethics private and public 2019 09 22
The guy talks about ethics as a dual mechanism: drowning kitties and puppies is abhorrent, and more abhorrent is drowning your own children. Nobody does that**, and people even go into a burning building, much like cats do, to save their children. The guy calls that private ethics, and he juxtaposes that with public ethics, and he claims that public ethics grew out of private ethics, by transferring the reward-punishment system from one, which preserves the closest relative possible, to ethics that preserve society as such. He names a number of parameters, most of which I can't remember, that are different between what he calls private ethics and public ethics, but the jist is that private ethics are DNA driven, inborn; public are taught by peers and by other educators. Oh, and private ethics are universal, unavoidable, not a matter of choice, (see **) but public ethics are varied, and the individual not necessarily makes all of them his own.
Luckily he has some typed charts at the end of his video, because his accent is incomprehensible.
I would really like to see what @Mark Dennis and @Artemis have to say about the proposition the video makes.
** A few people with the applicable genetic mutations might.
They may or may not play vital role in the preservation of the interconnected food chain. Their poop may be a delicacy to those microbes that are the feed for other bigger microbes, that feed the algea with nitrogen, and the algea feed blue whales and halibut... which feed us.
This what I wrote is conjecture, but I can see some merit in figuring that humans have not uncovered for their own edification some vital links in the natural preservation of life on this planet.
It may be conjecture but its point is pretty valid as we do have data on a lot of systems like you describe.
This strengthens my point that there is value in these systems and each creature within the system has a right to what it values from it, so long as it doesn't endanger the system itself.
As grotesque and abhorrent as I find the idea of drowning kittens and puppies, to say that nobody does that is wrong. However, we could also argue that the only motivation behind this is mental illness and the acts of the mentally ill cannot be moral statements outside of lucidity (Depending on the condition, Episodic Schizophrenics for example can make acts out of moral motivation when not in an episode).
I'm about to go to sleep but I will search and watch what you suggested and give you a thought out perspective on it tomorrow at some point.
Mahalo.
Is that Austin or Searle, or someone else? It's from the Speech Act Theorists, isn't it?
You've misunderstood. Different folk have different ideas of what's good. So what?
Austin's How To Do Things With Words maybe?
I have a copy...
I've never thought about an utterance of ought in terms of direction of fit. Promises... that's another matter altogether... Very interesting when talking in terms of what counts as a moral claim, moral facts, and what it takes for one(the claim that is) to be true(matching the moral fact(s) where "facts" are what has happened and/or is happening. That's my current working framework.
On your account are promises moral claims?
What I would do is attempt to convince the other person not to press any detonator at all - that punishing the shark would not bring the human back, and so would be a pointless act of hate towards an animal that is unaware of how important that human is to either of us. If the shark attacks the human, or the person next to me blows up the shark, these are not actions that I choose to initiate, and seeking to prevent harm by causing harm is not justifiable in my book.
That sounds familiar, so maybe.
Quoting creativesoul
I hadn't really thought before about where promises fit into this scheme, but on a bit of quick consideration my first-pass answer is that they're probably double-direction of fit, the same category as things like the utterances "I do [take them to be my spouse]" and "I now pronounce you man and wife" in a wedding. That's different from either the direction of descriptive assertions or prescriptive assertions.
Alternatively, they could possibly be interpreted as in the same category of moral claims, if a promise is taken to be a declaration of one's intention to do something, where on my account an intention is identical to what others would call a "moral belief" (see below).
Quoting Mark Dennis
I don't actually know very much about the sociocultural context of Hume, just his philosophical conclusions. I'm not sure if this is at all what you were asking or something you already know, but Hume's position on moral beliefs is that there is no such thing, there are only desires, non-cognitive feelings that something should be some way, about which we cannot reason (though we can reason about what will bring about those things we desire).
In contrast Kant held that moral beliefs are genuine beliefs that are cognitive and can be true and false and reasoned about in all the same ways as non-moral beliefs.
My position is that there is a false dichotomy between Hume and Kant, and that in addition to prescriptive feelings (desires) and descriptive thoughts (beliefs), there are also descriptive feelings (perceptions), and prescriptive thoughts (intentions). Feelings cannot be reasoned with, neither prescriptive nor descriptive, but they can be judged (by the same person having them) and accepted or rejected to form thoughts, prescriptive or descriptive, which can be reasoned about. The form of logic used in that reasoning is the same either way (with some suggestions I have for formally clarifying that), and the standards of evidence for both are experiential, phenomenal, but different aspects of our phenomenal experience for each, empirical in the case of descriptive beliefs, hedonic in the case of prescriptive intentions (as elaborated earlier in this thread).
Powerful first impression(linking your site).
I wonder, since it is evident that you take all this quite seriously...
How important is it, by your lights, for us to get thought and belief right?
I reject Hume and Kant on different grounds than you've mentioned here. But... the difference is one of degree, it seems and not kind so much. I mean I agree with what you just pointed out about Hume's and Kant's frameworks.
It would be rare that such an action would suddenly be my only option, and to find myself in such a position would suggest (to me) that I had chosen not to be aware, to connect or collaborate at some earlier point. Any harm that I initiate is my responsibility - the adult is responsible for their actions towards the child, but not for my actions towards them. I may very well choose to cause harm in these situations, but the adult or the dog are not to blame for that harm, and my actions are not justified by ‘objective’ ethical principles, even if they are deemed ‘justified’ by law or by anyone else.
Thanks!
Quoting creativesoul
I'm not sure I understand the question, but maybe this will answer it: I think all of our actions are driven by a combination of beliefs and intentions, so everything we do hinges entirely on us having the right beliefs and intentions. So, I guess my answer is "very important". But still within limits; being right in your beliefs or intentions about circumstances that have no effect on you or that you can have no effect on is not, in practice, very important.
Let me see if I can clarify... Your answer was fine.
Getting thought and belief right, is not equivalent to having true thought and belief, except if and when we're talking about having true thought and belief about our own thought and belief. I'm particularly interested in what all thought and belief consists of.
You draw a distinction between intentions and belief. I would concur. However, while intentions consist of more than just belief, they are existentially dependent upon belief, but not the other way around. Intentions are plans... forethought to do something in particular. Whereas belief can be as simple as attributing causality or perhaps having/holding/forming expectation.
I'm going to look a bit closer at your site... the belief icon in particular...
Cheers!
This may be true, but strategies are applied as the means to ends. We still need to judge the ends themselves, to produce a true justification, a justification which is more than just an illusion. This requires that the ends are put in relation to further ends, as the means toward those ends.
It's like the distinction between a valid argument and a sound argument. One can say my logic is valid therefore my conclusion is justified, but this is just an illusion of justification, because the premises might not be sound. Therefore we need to put the premises in relation to some further principles of truth, to judge how "good" they are, in order to produce a true justification.
That is the problem with your claim that faith in non-religious systems is more easily justified, the justification referred to here is just an illusion.
I just don't see conversations like that really taking place through, or doing what you think they're doing. When I talk about intuition, I'm not talking about using intuition to answer some moral question (how late should abortion be allowed, for example). I'm talking about it in the virtue ethics sense of making you (the actor) feel right. That's not necessarily a question that can be answered using your empirical methods.
Basically, intuition often gets crowded by the social pressures of 'debate', no matter how rationally carried out, and if we're not determining moral actions to be in line with our intuition, then what are we aiming for?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Agreed...but
Quoting Pfhorrest
No. This is just too much mico management ignoring the value of the very intuition that gave the objective.
I think you're creating too sharp a distinction between feeling - perception - action which just isn't there. I don't think we can trust the intuitive feelings (which we label 'good') but not trust the intuitive behaviour (even without a clearly thought out objective). I don't think we can work towards some feeling of 'goodness' as an objective but then try to work towards it with empirical facts as if the perception of those facts wasn't biased by the very feeling their collection is working toward.
Quoting Pfhorrest
So hyperbolic discounting is the name for the effect I described earlier, good things now are worth more than equally good things in the future. I was wondering how your system accounted for it. Is the discount rate one of the things we just 'feel', or is it one of the "work out how to get there" things?
How so? We can't continue to justify a system by logical measures (like non-contradiction). At some point it's just a faith and the justification is utility. Non-religious systems tend to be used for prediction, so their utility is more easily measured. Religious systems are rarely used for prediction, they're rarely used for any kind of function which produces results in this world, so most of the time they cannot be justified by utility.
I agree with that. But what are you increasing your awareness, etc about?
As for the kittens, you still haven't disproven the wrongness of drowning kittens in burlap sacks. All you're saying is that it can't be the only principle you follow. It's not exhaustive in scope. But neither is 2+2=4.
I will have to get back to you later about the video.
What woudn’t it be good to increase awareness of, when the opportunity arises?
Quoting Artemis
I don’t have to disprove it - I agree with it as an instruction, but it’s not an ethical principle. An ethical principle is a foundation thought or idea that makes an ethical standard correct. Adhering to an ethical principle should provide sufficient guidelines to act correctly. All this statement does is prevent a specific action, while giving no indication of what a correct action would be in the situation.
I’m not saying it needs to be exhaustive in scope, and I acknowledge that ‘inaccurate’ is not the best term to describe why the statement is not an ethical principle. The statement ‘Don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is inadequate as an ethical principle. If you asked me what two plus two is, and I gave the answer ‘two plus two is NOT five’, the statement would be correct in itself, but its function as a statement of what two plus two is would be inadequate. Likewise with the statement I’m questioning above.
In ethics, increasing your awareness of the the specific shade of lipstick Mary Tyler Moore wears on the Dick Van Dyke Show seems fairly nonessential, for example.
Quoting Artemis
Ethics and math share this striking resemblance: it's of equal importance to figure out when something is wrong as it is to figure out when something is right.
In the end, when increasing ethical awareness, etc., you're going to be working on your awareness of ethical principles.
Just as I explained. That X is good, because it is efficient for bringing about the desired effect Y, is not a real justification, it's an illusion of justification. It is required that Y be demonstrated as good, in order for the justification to be real. That utility is justification is an illusion, because utility is relative to the goal, or end which grants the thing its usefulness, and this goal must itself be justified. That's why Wayfarer referred to the need for a "summum bonum". So your claim that non-religious systems are more easily justified is false because the 'justification' you are referring to is not justification at all, but an illusion of justification.
:up:
A well put meta- (or criterion).
There is something here that you seem to be overlooking: 2+2=4 is NOT a mathematical principle. So as ‘right’ or ‘accurate’ as the statement may be in itself, it is not a principle but a specific example of the principle of addition, and is inadequate as a statement of the principle to which it refers - even though it is more useful than the statement ‘two plus two does not equal five’.
Likewise, as ‘right’ or ‘accurate’ as the statement ‘don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ is in itself, it is only a specific example of a broader ethical principle. As a statement of whatever ethical principle you think it describes, it is not only inadequate, but is less useful than a positive statement in describing that principle.
I hope I have made my argument a little clearer.
You haven't 'explained', you've asserted. There's a difference.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover - Why not? You haven't explained your main objection. Why is utility not a justification for adopting a system? All you've done so far is asserted that it isn't, not provided any explanation as to why.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover - Required by whom or what?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover - Must it? Must everything be justified? How does that work non-circularly? If 'The Goal' is what I feel what am I supposed to do on finding that it is not justified (by your method which you've yet to reveal)? Am I supposed to now not feel that way?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover - So religious commandments have all of the criteria you list above, or lack them just as much?
You're right. It is not a code of ethics. It is a CHARACTERISTIC OR PROPERTY OF ETHICS. But it is also a characteristic or property of many things.
(An example would be car design. You could design a car seat for the driver that has tacks on the seat, pricking the driver. It would cause unnecessary suffering, yet it has nothing to do with ethics. Or more at hand, some car seats are more comfortabel than other seats for drivers, while some two drivers may find the seat that is comfortable for one, may be uncomfortable for the other, yet it is not unethical to put the particular seat in a car in the course of the manufacturing process.)
So we are back at square one. I still claim, because you yourself denied that you defended the idea successfully that there is an ultimate and pervasive ethical principle that applies to all cultures. My point is that such principle does not exist. Your point is that it exists. I opine that if you insists that it exists, then it is your responsibility, or rather, that the onus is on you to show that your claim is true, and there is an underlying principle. My job is to show that such principle is not universal, or not ethical, or not applicable.
It is definitely tougher for you, inasumch as you have to prove something exists that nobody has found yet. My job is not possible until I have something concrete in front of me that you show me that supports your claim.
Is there a philosophy of good, such as the epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge, and ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morals, and aesthetics is the branch that deals with beauty.
If there is no formal discussion on what constitutes good, then the quality of good is like a sore missing tooth in the grinding jaws of philosophy. ("How can a missing tooth ache?" You may want to ask.)
Good is wholly undefinable. That something is good or not is a subjective judgment, and therefore to justify X as good because it leads to Y where Y is also good, is only justifiable by personal subjective means.
If you or anyone else justifies moral actions on whether they are good or not in intention or in final result, then you or anyone else is walking on thin ice.
I asked before and you evaded the question, but I'll ask again: how broad or narrow does an ethical principle have to be to fit your definition thereof?
No. I'm not saying and have never said that there is one naive Kantian maxim by which all ethics function. You can stop strawpersoning me now.
I have said, and you have yet to disprove, that there are commonalities between ethics globally.
No, I'm not going to do a survey of all ethics across the globe to prove it, as that would be a project of many years, and simply too much work for an online discussion. I assume you feel the same way about proving your own position.
Therefore, we can agree to disagree or try this from a different angle.
(1) Is harm (e.g. betrayal, rape, deprivation, injury, trauma, incapacitation, bereavement) judged "good or not" for the harmed "a subjective judgment"?
Consequently:
(a) Is 'conduct which, ceteris paribus, avoids, prevents, minimizes or helps recovery from harm' judged "good or not" "a subjective judgment"?
(b) Is 'conduct which, ceteris paribus, inflicts or exacerbates harm' judged "good or not" "a subjective judgment"?
If all answers above are "no", then by implication don't we have at least a provisional (non-subjective) definition, or conception, of "good or not"?
Please name a global commonality between ethics globally that pertains to nothing but ethics. It does not have to be all inclusive; but it can't be applied to anything BUT to ethics.
This commonality does not need to be a single quality; you could name a combination of qualities, but in combination they must apply to all ethics globally and to nothing else but ethics.
As you can see, I am not asking you to define ethics, or give an inclusive description of it; all I ask is one characteristic that is ethics-specific, and not specific to any other thing.
If you can show me such a criterion or characteristics of ethics, then I will agree to disagree. Otherwise I still maintain that there are no ethical principles as such.
As long as you fail to show a characteristic of ethics as a quality that applies to ethics and to nothing else, your ideation that there is a commonality amoung ethics globally is not a philosophically acceptable propostion, but a personal opinion of yours. Nobody can take it away from you, but you must realize that you can't argue on ethical grounds for anything, as ethics mean to you something different from what ethics mean to other philosophers.
An explanation is a series of assertions intended to elucidate. That's what I provided. If what I am saying still remains unintelligible to you, then I have failed in that intention. I have "explained", but my explanation has failed.
Quoting Isaac
OK, I clearly failed in my attempt. I'll try again. Utility is determined in relation to a goal. A thing is useful for obtaining such and such a goal, and that determines utility. Now, goals are inherently subjective, varying from one subject to another, due to the fact that they exist relative to one's intention. Intention is the property of an individual.
Justification, as it is defined, and generally understood, requires that one demonstrates the correctness, or rightness of what the person is claiming. This means that for the justification to succeed, and actually be a justification, there must actually be success. Notice the difference between explanation and justification. I can explain without success, but I cannot justify without success.
Demonstrating that a system is useful for obtaining my goal, does not demonstrate the correctness of the system because it requires that my goal is judged by the other person to be correct. If the system is useful for obtaining a goal which the other person believes is not a righteous goal, the system will not be justified no matter how useful it is. The utility itself will be judged as unrighteous, incorrect, and therefore unjustified. And an unjustified utility will not justify use of the system. In fact there will be the reverse effect. The more useful the system is for obtaining an unrighteous goal, the more unjustified the system is.
Therefore, I must first demonstrate to the other individual the correctness of my goal, before the utility of the system for obtaining my goal can be judged as justification of that system. And, the utility of a system, as justification for that system, is completely dependent on justification of the goal which the system is useful for obtaining. Are you not familiar with the phrase "the end justifies the means"?
Is that a better explanation?
Quoting Isaac
Where's the circularity? If the goal is not justified, then the means for obtaining that goal (the system) is not justified. Isn't this straight forward and obvious to you? It seems pretty basic.
Quoting Isaac
I haven't said anything about religious commandments, I'm addressing your deceptive claim that a system is justified by its utility.
Quoting god must be atheist
I would say that the philosophy of good is moral philosophy. Morality involves distinguishing good from bad. Morality may be subsumed within metaphysics, as a branch of metaphysics. It is necessarily prior to epistemology because the "correctness" which epistemology relies on is a form of "good". That is what Plato demonstrated in The Republic. It is metaphysics because of the requirement of determining the ontological status of "good".
Quoting god must be atheist
This is exactly why the ontological status of "good" needs to be determined. Your claims about "good", that it is "undefinable", and that whether something is good is a "subjective judgement" are themselves subjective judgements. So it appears like the nature of subjective judgements, and the ontological status of such, needs to be understood in order to understand "good". Do you believe that subjective judgements are real things, with real ontological status, the nature of which may potentially be understood?
Quoting god must be atheist
How else would you propose that one might justify moral actions?
Why does it have to be exclusive to ethics? I don't understand that criterion.
And I already stated a common ethical principle: avoid causing unnecessary suffering. An example of how that gets applied globally is that murder is prohibited globally. While definitions of what constitutes "murder" differ, the fundamental concept is still global.
As broad as you can make it.
Principle: ‘a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning.’
‘Do no harm’ is a common statement of ethical principle in the health profession. I personally don’t find it adequate on its own (some people do), but in concert with other ‘principles’ such as autonomy, fidelity, veracity, etc, they seem to suffice for behaviour within the profession, at least.
If you consider ‘don’t drown kittens in a burlap sack’ to serve as a foundation for a system of behaviour, even as one of a set of principles, just how many different principles do you think there are?
That leads you to something as useless as "just do it" or worse, "do."
Quoting Possibility
Why should there be a limit?
While, sure, the kitten principle is a more specific version of "do no harm," that doesn't mean it's not a principle. Just like the law generally prohibits theft, but it also has more specific rules about specific kinds of theft.
Thanks, look forward to it.
This is so that we can separate ethics from other things. I say ethics as a universal quality does not exist. If you can give just one thing that is exclusive to ethics and applies to all ethics, then while at the same time it does not prove ethics, and while at the same time it does not define ethics, the fact that there is one quality that is typical to ethics, and only to ethics, the existence of that one quality will give some respectability to the validity of the claim that ethics exists.
However, if you can't find even one, then I rest my case, and feel satisfied that you failed to show me that ethics exist.
Why are you ignoring what I said?
Right, but it does not apply exclusively to ethics. Please read my car seat example as a support of my claim in this matter.
So you can say that ethics has to do with humans. But so does love, hate, and pilfering.
Or you can say that ethics has to do with fair trade and with respect for the next guy. That also applies to a whole range of things.
But if you find one thing that pertains to ethics, all ethics, and to nothing but ethics, then you showed me that ethics indeed exist.
P.s. I am going shopping. Be back and sometime later today I'll resume responding if you wrote anything new.
Yup, that's what happened.
Quoting god must be atheist
You've shown that principles might have non-ethical applications, not that this invalidates their ethical ones. No more than a tire used on a car invalidates the use of a tire on a bicycle.
Precisely!! You got it right.
Now show me that ethics is a different thing from everything else, by showing at least one quality (which may be a combination of qualities) that applies only to ethics. If you show that, then you prove that ethics exist.
I claim that you can't show that.
Much like that car tires and bicycle tires are both round, and made of a material that has a high coefficient in their resistance to pavement, but the difference is that car tires can support a car, and bicycle tires can't support a car; furthermore, car tires don't fit bicycle wheels and bicycle tires don't fit car tires.
This way I showed that at least a difference exists between car tires and bicycle tires, and they are different, from, say, tables, mind bottlenecks, spokes, and ratchet screwdrivers.
I wish you to show something in the same vein that shows that ethics is different from everything else, in combination of qualities or by a single quality. I put it to you, that you can't.
Just a side-issue: You denied that the example we talked about was a principle of ethics; you said it was only a feature (again, I may have misquoted you) of ethics.
I wish you would settle with one qualifier, that is, you'd settle what you call the thing that we talk about. I'll gladly go along, but I wish to avoid a defence by you, in which you say "no, that's not a principle of ethics, it's a quality in ethics, please stop misquoting me, god must be atheist" and at the same time and in the same respect you could also say "no, that's not a quality in ethics, it's a principle, stop misquoting me, god must be atheist".
I wish to avoid that. But that's not a major issue right now. Right now I am curious to see that you can show a feature (principle or quality) of ethics, which is unique and pervasive to all ethics. Both UNIQUE and PERVASIVE.
Ethics is always about acceptable and/or unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Creative soul, if at work which is computer programming, I start to play loud music, or else start to sing loudly, or play roulette with my co-workers, I display unacceptable behaviour, but they are not unethical.
If they ARE unethical, then please show me what is the underlying ethical consideration that makes them unacceptably unethical.
-------------------
@Creativesoul et al, please don't start bombarding me with untested, random or near-random, and in any way inconclusive stabs at what you think is a feature of ethics. Please think it through, before you post it. I don't wish to spend my time refuting something that a five-year-old child can do. I ask you to please only come up with features that stick to the requested parameters, and I ask you to rigorously test them before you post them. Thanks.
Ethics is always about acceptable and/or unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
That's the answer. I stand beside it. Rather than be a blowhard, offer one example to the contrary. I adequately satisfied your request, which I took to be a standard which if met would convince you that ethics exists.
There it is. All ethics have that much in common, amongst other things.
Do those behaviours break the rules of acceptable conduct at your workplace? Are you allowed to act like that?
I can't fight against private opinions. I disproved that your description stands. You stand beside it, but IT does not stand.
Understand.
Jerry calls Tyson's mother a whore. During math class, Tyson retaliates by starting a fight.
Tyson's behaviour is not acceptable.
-----------
I am not going to give you any more examples that refute that your statement of what's ethical is not PERVASIVE and UNIQUE to ethics.
You can carry on the vehement and adamant claim that your statement is pervasive and unique to all ethical acts. I won't respond.
I will respond to you on other threads, though. I have no ill will for you, and I am not pissed off, I am just simply not prepared to fight against frivolous claims, it tires me out and it leads to nowhere.
I don't think any reasonable employer would allow his employees to spend time on the job gambling illegally, instead of doing work. I am surprised you had to ask.
I think there's misunderstanding here...
All ethics is about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
That's the claim.
Do you disagree?
Does an apple only exist because it is different from everything else? And here I thought all fruit share various qualities and aspects.
I can put the same apple in a sauce, in a pie, in a fruitcake, in a crumble, in cider, or just eat straight. Is it now not an apple per your definition?
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/principle
noun
The word can mean several things. You are trying to tie it down to a single definition that fits your own position, but that's not how I have employed it throughout this discussion.
And a principle is a feature of ethics. Calling something either of those terms is not mutually exclusive.
Ay-vey. You are going at it from an angle you ought not to.
Apples exist. But to show it to a person who denies the existence of apples, you have to show him an apple.
If you can't show him an apple, from his point of view he won't accept that apples exist.
------------
You have allegedly seen ethical deeds. Show me one. If you can't, I can not only say I am not convinced, but I can also say that you yourself have not seen one. It is not an apple; it can be described in philosophical terms. A person does not need to taste, smell, touch ethics like he would an apple to believe it exists.
So if you can't show a man an apple, he won't believe apples exist.
If you can't show an ethical action, then you show not only to me, but to yourself too, that you don't know what ethics is, and I claim it is so because it is your personal opinion only that ethics exist.
I'm sorry, but you're just a moving target. You've gone from needing ethics to be totally and absolutely exclusive to ethics (which is dumb, because ethics is about life and how to live/act) to now needing some physical, tangible proof that probably you'd prefer is edible as well.
But the target you've moved to doesn't even make sense. I've never seen a dinosaur, and I believe they've existed. I've never seen -- actually seen, with my own little eye-- a bacteria, and I believe they exist. I've never even seen the molten iron core of planet earth and I believe that exists.
Furthermore, since ethics is conceptual, you can't show it physically other than pointing perhaps to a book about ethics. Just like statistics is conceptual, or love, or so many other things.
At this point I'm really not sure where the conversation is going, because from my vantage point (and I'm sorry if this isn't true from your vantage point) your answers/questions are becoming more and more silly.
The bolded ones are personal opinions.
The italicised ones are principles that are not defined, and have no definitons anywhere.
(You): "The word can mean several things. You are trying to tie it down to a single definition"
(I, in response): NO! Not at all. I ask you for an INSTANCE, for a single quality, which is not ALL ENCOMPASSING, but PERVASIVE and UNIQUE to ethics. That's what I asked, and I asked that precisely because you DEFENDED that you can't make an all-encompassing definition.
Fine. Don't make a definition, I can accept that. But do state a quality or aspect of ethics that is unique to and pervasive over, all ehtical acitons.
After all, you claim that there is one, and if you don't claim it, you don't claim that ethics is pervasive and it is of unique considerations.
If there is no single such quality (which can be a combination of some other qualities), then:
1. Your idea of ethics does not exist, if no quality can be unique to all ethical acts.
2. Your idea of ethics does not exist, if no quality can be pervaseive to all ethical considerations.
Please see the video I begged you to see. It answers your dilemma perfectly, I think.
If that's how you feel, fine. I accept that. It is your personal opinion and I can't fight personal opinions on a philosophical vein.
I rest satisfied, however, that you were unable to show one single unique and pervasive trait or quality, which may be a combinaition of qualities, that applies to what you call ethics.
And I rest satisfied, that you can't define ethics, or its fundamental principles.
This is fine with me.
I mean, that can be your personal opinion as well. But of course you were making impossible and simultaneously illogical demands for proof... but you can ride off into the sunset believing whatever you want to believe sans reason. :rofl:
Except it is not. It is not a personal opinion of mine that you failed to give one example even that would have disproved my claim. It is not my personal opinion: it is out there for the whole world to see.
Quoting Artemis
I asked for a single occurrence that would have served as a disproof of my claim. You failed to provide it.
If you KNEW what you were talking about, you would have easily provided it. Your ignorance is a proof to me that you yourself are not on sure footing that ethics exist. You may fight for it, but you don't know what you are fighting for.
Have you watched the video?
Not if you want it to ensure ethical behaviour in every instance when followed.
Quoting Artemis
Because we’re talking about underlying ethical principles, not specific rules. I acknowledge that rule, law and principle are often employed as interchangeable terms for rhetorical effect, but the distinction is one of specificity.
Quoting Artemis
Yes, it does mean it’s not a principle. If it is a more specific version, then it is neither fundamental, nor can it serve as a foundation for a system of behaviour. ‘Do not steal’ is a statement of law referring to an ethical principle for cohabitation that values property ownership - the foundation from which specific rules regarding theft are derived.
A rule is referred to as a ‘principle’ only in reference to a specific area of activity. ‘Don’t drown kittens’ could be described as an ethical ‘principle’ only in specific relation to being in possession of kittens near water.
It may seem like I’m being pedantic here, but it’s important to make the distinction between rule, law and principle when we’re talking about the possible existence of ‘objective’ or ‘universal’ underlying ethical principles. This is as broad as one can get in terms of behaviour, so any suggestion of ethical principles in this sense must have an effect on behaviour in the broadest application.
If there is a more fundamental or general version of the so-called ‘principle’, or if adhering to it still allows unethical behaviour, then what you have is not a principle in this context, but a specific law or rule that derives from a principle.
Do it again, I must have missed it..
Again, I've shown that your demands of ethics are absurd and irrelevant. That is also there for the world to see. I'm happy to leave it the way it stands for others to see.
I'm not talking about any specific goal, I'm talking about the having of goal, something which is common to every intentional creature. The argument is simply that if system X is one which helps me achieve my goals it is justified that I maintain it. In order to be satisfied with that justification, one only need to also have goals and consider whether one would also maintain a system useful in helping to achieve them. It's about empathy.
Notwithstanding that, what alternative could you possibly implement? What system-less method of justification could we use instead?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You're conflation unrighteous (in a moral sense) with incorrect (a technical sense). Say a criminal mastermind sets up an elaborate trap to kill millions. He has used (to achieve his evil goal) the system of 3d spatio-temporal relativity. Is that system now wrong? Wat if he calculated how many guns he'd need using arithmetic, is arithmetic now wrong?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because you have to use a 'system' to judge the righteousness of the goal. Must you then justify that system?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I know. I just thought I'd get it out there now. It's the subtext behind all of your philosophy. You don't seem capable of investigating any matter without forcing it down some path which ends with "...because God".
This is clearly false. If your goal is an unjustified one (a bad one), then system X as aiding in reaching this goal, is not justified. If your goal is to have so and so dead, using a gun to shoot that person in the head is not justified just because it helps you achieve your goal.
Quoting Isaac
The problem is that a system is not used to achieve "goals" in any absolute, or general sense, any strategic system is geared toward a particular type of goal. To judge the system as to whether the use of that system is justified or not requires judgement of the good or badness of the particular goal which it is used toward achieving.
Quoting Isaac
This again is false. We were not talking about judging whether the use of systems toward reaching goals is justifiable (in the most general sense), as you imply here, we were talking about justifying the use of a particular system. And to justify the use of a particular system requires judgement of the type of goal which it will be useful for bringing about.
Quoting Isaac
You do realize this thread concerns ethical principles don't you? I do not know what you would mean by "incorrect" in a technical sense. But you now appear to have come across an important point. The same system may be used toward good goals, and toward bad goals.
In your example, it is the use of the system toward goal A instead of goal B, which is wrong. Perhaps we have been barking up the wrong tree, and you and I can move toward a compromise here. It is not the system which we justify, but the use of the system. Would you agree with this? A system is not the type of thing which we justify, but a particular way of using a system is what we justify. This allows that a "system" exists in a general sense, as an aid, or tool for assistance in achieving goals, but the system is not itself bad or good, because these are terms reserved for judging the goals. We might judge a system as more efficient than another, or something like that.
If we start referring to the efficiency as "good", while we also judge the goals as "good" we might equivocate.
Quoting Isaac
I think that if you start to understand the nature of particular goals, without referring to "goals" in general, you'll find that we do not apply a "system" for judging goals. This is why the nature of morality is so difficult to understand, and why there is so much variance in the ethical codes; systems produced by moral philosophy. Notice the system of ethics is derived from the moral judgement; a judgement which is based in some sort of intuition or something other than a system.
Quoting Isaac
I'm sorry, I'm just seeking the truth in these matters. If, where the inquiry leads offends you, then I apologize for the offence.
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-mengzi-came-up-with-something-better-than-the-golden-rule?fbclid=IwAR3kI7V7ph5grR0i55lvj4AZPfxWd-Tsk5rzrmhadXufSWn9FE2ODWRI2Bw