Desiring Good with Free Will
Desiring Good
Morality only has to do with intention, or desire. Desiring good makes us good. Desiring bad makes us bad. Outcomes can be preferable or not. They can be painful or pleasurable, but they say nothing of intention and so say nothing of morality.
Levels of Desire
Compulsive - These are probably not subject to a discussion of morality. We all have base compulsive desires. Merely having them wouldn't make one bad or good. It would have more to do with how we satisfy or resist these desires and what harms are caused in the process.
Reflective - These are desires that when we contemplate we see a vision of what we think we ought to be. We can feel the value of being honest and of good character. Of resisting compulsive desires when they are harmful.
In this way we can desire to be more like a model person who displays these attributes in abundance. Reflective desires are aware of consequence.
So there is a choice to be made. We can be ruled by our compulsive desires or by our reflective desires. Which I believe is the basis for free will and the third level of desire. This one is harder to explain, or to prove for that matter, but there is the desire of the self. The self chooses to either battle the compulsive desires and
be a slave to the reflective ones, or to be a slave to the compulsive desires and ignore the reflective.
Desiring good requires one to be a slave of the reflective desires. You have to reflect on who you want to be, what legacy of yourself you will leave behind. If you are willing to hurt others in the process of becoming whatever it is you will become. Or if you will chose to help others. What you will do with abundance if you have it.
With our free will, we can choose to be a slave to one or the other. Which one we desire to be a slave to, that is who and what we are. So lets be clear. Living entirely for pleasures for yourself is compulsive. Living in indifference is compulsive. Inaction against wrong doing is compulsive. Not making a choice is choosing to be compulsive, so no one is truly on the fence here.
Being reflective is a choice that has to be made. It has to be made daily. We will always be prey to our compulsive desires where ever we let our guard down. It is the act of keeping your guard up that makes you good. It is the self deciding what the body will be. I agree we are a product of our environment but the self can chose the environment. Maybe not when we are born, but responsibility can not be pushed off forever.
These thoughts are brand new to me after wanting to respond to arguments made by Sam Harris (and many others) on morality and free will. I wanted to take him seriously and find a way out of his line of thinking. I don't think misery and well being define morality. I don't think free will is entirely an illusion.
Any thoughts on where I may have gone wrong here?
Morality only has to do with intention, or desire. Desiring good makes us good. Desiring bad makes us bad. Outcomes can be preferable or not. They can be painful or pleasurable, but they say nothing of intention and so say nothing of morality.
Levels of Desire
Compulsive - These are probably not subject to a discussion of morality. We all have base compulsive desires. Merely having them wouldn't make one bad or good. It would have more to do with how we satisfy or resist these desires and what harms are caused in the process.
Reflective - These are desires that when we contemplate we see a vision of what we think we ought to be. We can feel the value of being honest and of good character. Of resisting compulsive desires when they are harmful.
In this way we can desire to be more like a model person who displays these attributes in abundance. Reflective desires are aware of consequence.
So there is a choice to be made. We can be ruled by our compulsive desires or by our reflective desires. Which I believe is the basis for free will and the third level of desire. This one is harder to explain, or to prove for that matter, but there is the desire of the self. The self chooses to either battle the compulsive desires and
be a slave to the reflective ones, or to be a slave to the compulsive desires and ignore the reflective.
Desiring good requires one to be a slave of the reflective desires. You have to reflect on who you want to be, what legacy of yourself you will leave behind. If you are willing to hurt others in the process of becoming whatever it is you will become. Or if you will chose to help others. What you will do with abundance if you have it.
With our free will, we can choose to be a slave to one or the other. Which one we desire to be a slave to, that is who and what we are. So lets be clear. Living entirely for pleasures for yourself is compulsive. Living in indifference is compulsive. Inaction against wrong doing is compulsive. Not making a choice is choosing to be compulsive, so no one is truly on the fence here.
Being reflective is a choice that has to be made. It has to be made daily. We will always be prey to our compulsive desires where ever we let our guard down. It is the act of keeping your guard up that makes you good. It is the self deciding what the body will be. I agree we are a product of our environment but the self can chose the environment. Maybe not when we are born, but responsibility can not be pushed off forever.
These thoughts are brand new to me after wanting to respond to arguments made by Sam Harris (and many others) on morality and free will. I wanted to take him seriously and find a way out of his line of thinking. I don't think misery and well being define morality. I don't think free will is entirely an illusion.
Any thoughts on where I may have gone wrong here?
Comments (79)
We all have different life experiences and visions, thus the words "good" and "bad" can be analyzed differently by everyone. I agree with most of your thoughts, my only question is - who decides if something is good or bad?
I agree with this statement. Using things like religion in order to manipulate people doesn't seem ethical to me. I also believe that people should be free to act upon their desires but shouldn't violate the rights of other people while doing so.
I don't agree with this premise. Morality has to do with both intentions and actions, where actions can be contrary to intentions. Killing someone where one had no intention to isn't as bad as killing them where one had an intention to, in my opinion, but it's still bad, and that's why we have categories and punishments for things like negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter, etc.
Also, in my view, no intentions sans actions are morally problematic.
1. We have free will so we are responsible.
2. Some practices can be held with contempt regardless of the culture they stem from.
This is a crucial point of disagreement.
I think its a language problem more than anything. Killing someone with out the intention is bad, no doubt. But morality in my own opinion is about the agent and not the action. One is bad, the other is morally bad.
I agree. One can desire to kill another but can also choose to not to do so. In my opinion, desiring is in the nature of our kind but so is thinking reasonably and acting upon our intentions.
I did say that compulsive desires couldn't be considered morally bad in themselves. But the moral person chooses to be in control of his compulsive desires.
There's no classification for the first? Morally bad for the latter in your view, and _____ bad for the former?
Not intending to kill and killing is bad and subject to the law, but not morally bad.
Bad - Suffering
Morally Bad - Bad Intentions, apathy ..
"Also, in my view, no intentions sans actions are morally problematic."
In my opinion ill will for someone, caused by jealousy lets say is morally bad on its own.
It just doesn't make sense to me what sort of bad this is if not morally bad.
Its bad in that it caused suffering. Suppose someone is stabbed with a knife still stuck in them and another person trying to save him removes the knife. The man dies. It is later determined that this man would have lived if the knife was left alone. This is a bad outcome. However, I find no grounds for saying that the man who removed the object was being immoral.
We seem to be agreeing somewhat, but having a problem with the words we are using. If you like lets say there is:
Bad - Immoral
And then there is unfortunate or undesirable or whatever else you would want to put here
Then bad , if it is defined to be immoral, would be a judgement of intention, and the other words a judgement of outcome.
Jesus said if you hated your brother, you were already a murderer. He placed quite a bit of stock in our intentions. Eventually I came to doubt intention-defined morality. What we do is more important than what we intend--and this is the basis of the final judgement described in Matthew: "I was hungry and you fed me, I was naked and you clothed me..."
I have no way of assessing your intentions, since I can rely only on your version of what you intended. What you did, however, is observable. So if you do good actions, (however we define good) you have done moral actions. If you do nothing in the face of need, or if you perform bad actions (however we define bad) then you have done done nothing or you have done immoral actions.
You and I can worry about our own intentions, but as a basis of morality, it doesn't work that well.
Saying that intentions are not a practical thing to try and judge someone by is correct.
However using that fact to prove that it is not the basis of morality is an incorrect leap in my opinion.
You may not be able to know my intentions and therefore not know how moral of a person I am.
Your judgement of me has to be based on my actions. Your judgement may or may not be correct.
Certainly actions are a good way to make an educated guess, but that is all it is.
More clearly intention is not a good basis for you to judge me because you can't possibly know my intentions. Intention, however can still be a basis for morality and self reflection.
In fact by my actions you are trying to guess my intent and my morality. But actions are not morality.
I've watched Sam Harris his Ted talk on morality and I would laud it, I'm all for gaining some more objectivity to negate moral relativism. His lecture on free will though.... couldn't get through it.
What appears to be bothering you (and me to some degree) is the degree in which our social environment counts as information which we can use to inform our decision making. In your case this appears to come out as seeing merely having "wrong" intentions already suffices to be accused of low morality. This does not seem like a worthwhile approach seeing this "moral righteousness" could be defined as being your specific idea of well being which negates your intuitive objections towards his train of thought in the moral sense (where I could agree with Sam Harris, based on what I've learned so far).
Would your objections be better articulated if I were to state that, what we have become familiar with in our socio cultural upbringing counts as information which is intelligible enough to use as the information we base our decisions on?
I would agree in free will not existing absolutely in the sense of direct agency yet a lot of proponents for this view make some weird leap to come to something which still includes morality and these weird leaps are what bug me personally. Daniel Dennett comes to "the free will worth having" without ever hinting at emotional engagement and Sam Harris appears to leap to physical well being as the main criteria for being morally responsible (I couldn't take his lecture any more). Both seem to forsake the idea that our emotional inclinations respond to an environment which is not (obviously) physically present (while still using this observation as being relevant to become able to respond favourably towards moral inclinations). Sam Harris acknowledges our consciousness / self awareness as the ability to suffer and states that we should try and prevent needless suffering, which I agree with.
A big part of our consciousness consists of being able to see our environment in an abstract way and respond to it as such, there is no physical theory (yet) how this works exactly but it's detrimental to our capacities to pretend we are only responding to a physical environment. As such, we can be aware of causes which are only conceivable to ourselves yet still count as 'valuable' information. Assuming this layer does not exist and does not inform the choices we appear to make does not necessarily lead to fatalism, but it does negate a large part of the experience we are most intimately familiar with.
In my view it's childish to use this conscious experience on the one hand to prove we're capable of realising the harm we might do to other (conscious?) entities while on the other hand negate our capacity to use such abstract information to make decisions, it makes no sense whatsoever to my mind.
To quote the Sam Harris in his lecture where I feel he makes a wrong turn in assessing where the line is between holding people responsible and where not: "These are differences that relate to the global properties of the mind and what's reasonable to expect of those minds in the future"
I'm going to have to give this response another read when I'm off work. I I just started my evening shift. It seems like we have some common ground though.
In some respects I think your articulating some thoughts about Sam Harris' work that I haven't been able to get out in words. Sam will talk about the importance of intentions, but he proposes a basis for morality that really doesn't consider them.
Your right it is this abstract information of emotion and intuition about the inherent wrongness of things that I don't think we should explain away or lose.
I find myself sounding like I support moral relativism, which I don't like, and can't seem to avoid. "Respect for individuality" or "individuals have a right to free expression of their personality", "Individuals have a right to reach their own conclusions about..." and so on. Western democracies pay more than lip service to these positions on the proper respect due individuals, (but sometimes they are not at all enthusiastic about some individuals who are just plain annoying). There are a number of regimes around the world who do not give a rat's ass about respecting individuals, and there are some regimes (really big ones) that not very long ago shot people for being too individualistic.
Were I a loyal member of the repressive regimes, I would probably think it quite proper to suppress individuality. I recognize that, it is a relativistic POV, and I don't like that. I recognize that many people find homosexuality wrong, perverse, intrinsically disordered, and so on, and in a pluralistic society, we are expected to grant respect to the individuals holding these views. I think they are dead wrong, however.
We seem to be fine with objective values as long as our moral objectivities are consistent with western democratic values (which I vastly prefer to repressive, oppressive regimes). But other people's moral objectivities are often considered immoral by us, and visa versa.
In other words, we all tend to be relativists. Maybe we should just admit we are relativists, like our own values better than theirs, we're right, they're wrong, fuck them, and be done with it.
It might sound like circular reasoning but in my opinion, admitting to this would do more for creating common values then claiming moral high ground by considering each value to be equal.
This isn't going to be a very clear response, but I I'm just brainstorming here.
I think it's interesting that our American values today are actually more closely related to the ideas put forth by the founders than the values the founders had themselves.
We have gone much farther in treating everyone equally. We have gone much farther toward religious freedom.
So somehow they had the ideas right and the values wrong. And whatever culture that shows moral progress will either have to do something similar or have an outside influence. The cases that are most interesting is when change is affected from within the culture.
If our culture was to be objectively morally better it might be because of starting with the right idea. It maybe that we need is Leo to incept the right ideas into other cultures so they can fix themselves.
Well i guess there are two things going on. One do they exist, and two how would they be defined if they do exist.
I would say there are dangers that have been well written about in rejecting objective moral value.
I'm not however saying that the dangers prove moral value. The dangers are not about truth as much as they are about what is good for us to know.
I would imagine your not a fan of CS Lewis, but I feel like he explains the dangers much better than I ever could in "The Abolition of Man". He is only talking about the reaches of science and not arguing for religion. The warning at the end CS Lewis gives is that we have to be careful explaining these intuitions away like the intuition that some things (for instance rape) are just wrong no matter what,
He says that we don't want to go on explaining everything away and that eventually when we have explained humanity away we won't be human any longer. Hence the abolition of man.
The analogy which I love and I'm paraphrasing:
The point of looking through the window is to to see the garden on the other side. What good would it be if the garden were also transparent. And if we are able to see through all things, that would be the same as to not see at all..
It's not that one is "explaining away" moral judgments, or that we're getting rid of things like an intuition that rape is wrong. It's that we're recognizing that what that intuition is is simply the way we feel about rape. That doesn't imply that one will stop feeling how one does about it. That's not the case any more than realizing that one's like of a particular flavor of ice cream is simply how one feels about it makes one stop liking that flavor of ice cream.
Quoting Maximus
@ Terrapin, I guess for you an 'objective' moral value would have to be an empirical fact outside of human experience? Seeing that is unlikely to happen, how about a lower boundary on which preferences we tolerate from each other then?
I suppose your right, however it seems like comparing our "taste" in morals to our taste in ice cream is still dangerous. I can't make laws about what ice cream should be made, but we do try to legislate against what is wrong. We have to be able to tell somebody that there taste for rape is wrong even though they might not think so.
Its not saying that your feelings go away, but it is devaluing them.
I'm not sure what you're asking. As I said, we certainly make moral judgments. Realizing that they're ways that we feel about interpersonal behavior doesn't make them disappear.
I don't understand the sense of "I can't" you're using there. Of course you could make food laws, or art laws, or anything like that. Those sorts of laws exist in some places.
At any rate, one of the crucial differences is that our moral judgments are about interpersonal behavior--that is, behavior that is done to other people. So naturally we want to make laws about behavior that we strongly disapprove of.
It's only devaluing moral judgments if one thinks that there's something inferior about something only being the way one feels about things. But why would one think there's something inferior about that?
Your right "I can't" wasn't the right way to say it. More that I wouldn't presume to.
Its devaluing to the point were my feeling about rape being wrong is no more valid than another's value that rape is good.
Or your value that we should do whatever we want as long as it doesn't harm others is no more valid than another's feeling that others well being doesn't matter. Or that a specific type of persons feelings don't matter.
All positions are equally valid in your view, or at least should be equally valid. There is no way to proceed in this case.
They're equally valid to what or to whom?
In other words, what determines validity, that is, just what is it that makes something valid?
This is to some degree my point. It seems we have to rely on our intuition to make value judgments yet we also assume that value judgments are purely feeling based and therefore inconsistent. So again there is no place to proceed.
Seeing you wouldn't buy into the idea of objective moral values I was rephrasing things to see if you're against the idea in principle. (Idea being that certain things are 'always' wrong).
(edit: I'm not framing you into a catch 22 situation here)
If we assume that all people are equal and we assume that we should proceed to allow everyone to act freely unless their actions harm others, we can move forward. And it some way we may be getting closer to the what the truth really is while never truly knowing what it is.
That may seem a little wishy washy, but it is what we do with the physical world. We assume there is truth and try to get closer to what that is.
You're not answering my question though. You brought up an objection based on what you take to be an "equal validity" implication. I'm challenging that objection by asking you to present a more in-depth analysis of just what the objection is positing. Equal validity to what or to whom?
Thanks for the clarification. No I don't believe there's any way to support the idea that anything is "always wrong" without qualification. After all, "wrong" (as well as "right") is always to someone.
We could say that something might be always wrong to a particular person, and it's logically possible that contingently, there could be something that everyone always feels is wrong, but that is highly implausible metaphysically given the variety that actually obtains.
Validity needs to be based on an assumption. There is no way around that. Our observations about the physical world work on the assumption that our perceptions are not entirely deceiving us. That we can use our observations to move closer to truth. Take away that assumption and there is no where to proceed. It may be a wrong assumption, but not having the assumption has no practical benefit. I think we need to make a similar assumption about morality. A basis to move forward with. Or an attempt to move forward.
I see your point, I could argue mine but I feel Sam Harris does it more eloquently.
If you wish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww&t=1194s
Do you understand the "to what" or "to whom" question?
Yes I do and the answer is valid to a moral truth. Just as scientific theories can be more or less valid to the truth. In both situations you assume there is truth and we have some sort of capability of moving towards it even if only for the reason of having practical benefits.
Okay, but you don't believe that the view I'm espousing would wind up saying that all stances are "equally valid to a moral truth" do you? After all, that there are moral truths is just what the view I'm espousing denies.
I wouldn't say he's making any sort of claim about objective ethics or anything being always wrong (to everyone or whatever) in that section of that presentation that you linked to.
All he seems to be doing us expressing his own moral views and also suggesting some very dubious ideas ignoring the is/ought distinction.
I think to say there is no moral truth is to say that all stances are equally valid which is why I oppose your view.
Perhaps you could explain why that implication is wrong.
Which, per your answers above, amounts to:
"To say there is no moral truth is to say that all stances are equally valid to (a) moral truth."
That doesn't make the slightest lick of sense, does it?
In other words, to put it slightly more formally, you'd be claiming this:
"To say there is no F is to say that all x have property ? with respect to F."
That doesn't make sense, though, because if we're saying there is no F, then we'd not be saying that something possesses a particular property with respect to F.
Your making me clarify what I think you already know I mean, but maybe not.
Equally valid is poor phrasing once again. The concept of validity make no sense at all when talking about our positions on morality if there is no moral truth. (i see this as a problem). So there is no way for me to say we should or ought to prefer one idea over the other. Equally valid in the sense that neither is valid at all is more what i meant, but its better to say validity doesn't apply.
So then what does apply to prefer imposing one set of values over another?
That I'd agree with.
However, re this:
Quoting Maximus
The way you say that is that what we should or ought to prefer, on your view, is either the interpersonal behavior that you personally feel is preferable, that you feel a strong emotional support for, or behavior that has some causal connection to or upshot for behavior that you personally feel is preferable, that you feel a strong emotional support for.
When it comes to allowing versus disallowing things legislatively, for example, we're talking about interpersonal behavior, and you have to live amongst other people, so you're not going to want behavior you strongly disapprove of emotionally to be allowed so that it can either occur to yourself or to people you care about.
What's certainly not the case is that you have no preferences just because you realize that they're only preferences.
So lets say you are a part of a culture that shares your preferred values. Are there any grounds for being critical of another culture that are stronger than saying that's not what I would prefer?
Well, saying that it's morally wrong, etc. you'd presumably say is stronger. What I'm saying is that "it's morally wrong" IS just a statement of one's preferences, one's emotional reactions, etc. to the behavior at hand. I'm not saying, of course, that people necessarily think about it that way, that they have a belief that it's just a statement of one's preferences, one's emotional reactions, but whatever they believe it to be, that's all that it really is.
And that's all it needs to be.
Objectivists--well, or some of them at least--apparently have a belief that one can only object to something morally if it's not just a way that they personally feel, but if it's a fact embedded in the extramental world somehow; or at least they believe that that's the only justification for an objection. It's not clear why they believe this though. There doesn't seem to be any argument supporting that that's the only justification for objecting to something morally.
Though he is not advocating an absolutely objective truth, to me he does make a good case why we could accept an "ought" as an "is". The example of how our consciousness can be equated to suffering, how people are able to see others (living entities) suffer (empathize), show that, although still relative, there's some common ground there.
It's a hard topic, where Maximus mentioned earlier in this thread about "incepting" the "right" ideas into certain societies; I'm inclined to think that you can have all the right ideas yet if the material abundance isn't there, it's to no avail. Similarly, kids can grow up into arrogant nitwits at times if they've been spoiled too much. So sharing material abundance more equally could be morally upright, it could be morally wrong because people might not learn how to use such abundance, who are we to decide on such a question? and could the planet cope if anyone would be able to bask in material abundance?
I for one find it morally wrong to use moral relativism to refrain from ever contemplating such issues thoroughly or negate them. I find it hampers moral progress objectively if we don't treat our own capacity to envision such moral issues responsibly ...but that's just me.
I would say for sure that denying moral progress hampers moral progress
That's nice to hear from someone who I'd considered a nihilist and expected to "hide" behind moral relativism. (where I 'was' always aware there's only so much you can read into people from observing their replies on an internet forum).
The general feeling I get from the interactions I have in my environment (which are skewed and mostly comprise the "lower" and middle social ranks of society in a very well developed part of the world) is that most people are either very adamant that there's something wrong objectively and we should all be working to negate that, claiming that things basically don't matter and you're supposed to do what makes you feel happy (rather sooner then later) or assuming they're the pinnacle of human development and others should head their opinion.
I'm biased in assuming most of these people are very well capable of coming towards a more nuanced view on many matters and am generally inclined to actively try and pursue a more nuanced view. (Where I feel it's adequate to mention that most of the people I might criticize are fairly morally praiseworthy when they are put into practice.)
Thanks for negating my preconceptions about you, I guess certain views have more nuance then I would give them credit for at first glance.
On the one hand it seems like you are saying throw out justification and on the other hand it seems you are saying proceed as if there was justification.
Please don't conflate your conversation with Terrapin fully with my conversation, these threads can branch of to some extent. If anything it could show why it's so difficult in coming towards a clearly defined consensus when it comes to values, morality, meaning, etc. The subjectivity which is inherent in most all humans might make things appear more paradoxical then they actually are.
I apologize but I prefer simple terms whenever possible.
I feel he rather advocates for an environment which we can agree on, makes most people thrive. It might be easier to see where there is a lack of such an environment (because people are suffering for instance) then necessarily stating in advance how the future needs to look like.
I think you're seeing the justification of ethical claims as necessarily needing to be rooted in objective morality, or moral truths. That's what I'm rejecting.
Well using feeling as justification seems shaky at best to me. I don't think America for instance used feeling to get where we are. I think Americans continually realized that they were not adhering to the ideas they believed in and so they continually evolved. The key being that they believed in the ideas. The group at one point felt slavery was okay. I think it took conviction from a belief to change it. At least in my opinion.
That sounds to me like you're talking about what I'm calling "feeling" though.
Okay I follow that. I seem to remember him having someone on the podcast with him saying that we can agree on that, but once we move away from the worst possible misery for everyone it becomes very convoluted as to were to go next. And that perhaps if we go one direction up a peak it may be that we have got to go back down if we are ever going to get to a higher peak. I think Sam felt like at this point our answers would be found in further understanding of the brain to see what really makes people happy and perhaps even altering the brain if the wrong thing makes them happy.
Maybe it shouldn't but that last part terrifies me.
I noticed I wasn't as far from your thought process as I thought when putting that up. I I think there is one difference. I think they believe the ideas because they felt they were true. Now feeling they are true can be enough I'm sure. However positing that there is no moral truth is more dangerous to me than it is to you. I don't think the feelings of something being bad go away, but the feeling of the feeling being true might. The feeling of something being true is what leads to action and on your view I think this is in jeopardy.
Guys I don't feel good about the slaves. Do you feel good about the slaves? I didn't think so. Well I don't like feeling bad so let's go to war and kill a bunch of hicks, and some being our brothers and fathers so that we can make an America that is more preferable to our feelings.
I realize this is not charitable and slightly comical and I'm sure it won't make a point to you but it does in my mind.
I believe that what leads to action is someone feeling strongly pro or con particular behaviors. The belief in moral principles being objective is just an ad hoc framework for understanding moral impulses, and it's one that I think is primarily influenced by socialization--it's a common belief that people express, and it has been for thousands of years. Folks simply assume in the wake of that that something they feel so strongly--strong enough that they'll intervene when it comes to others' actions, must not be coming from themselves. I don't think people would assume this if it weren't a widespread belief, however.
Quoting Maximus
I'm neither saying nor advocating that anyone is going to use different language a la "slavery is wrong/evil/etc." The only difference is that I'm saying that "what's really going on" is simply something that is sourced in persons. It's not sourced in the world external to persons.
We are sort of circling at this point, but I feel it would be disingenuous of someone with your view to use language like wrong, and evil.
Well, because you're necessarily interpreting them to refer to the objectivist framework. I rather look at it as (a) talk stemming from normal talk about morality, but also (b) acknowledging what's really going on ontologically. (a) doesn't have to be concerned with ontology at all--(b) is really a metaethical issue. But we can just do ethics. That is, (a) can just get on with the business of whether certain things are good/bad/permissible/proscribable/obligatory/etc. with no worries about the ontological background so to speak. That's what we normally do when we talk about ethical issues in practical situations.
Somewhere I take issue with this view, as humans we have the capacity to empathise with others and we can understand each other to some extent. I find it detracts from our capacities if we only imply ethical guidelines in a behaviourist way. The idea of a morally autistic person bugs me.
I don't want to get into a big tangent about other minds and empathy, but I'm not suggesting that we only deal with morality from a behaviorist perspective. If I said something that implied that to you, I probably didn't write whatever it was carefully enough.
I'm kinda curious how such a tangent would pan out but perhaps another time.
You actually wrote very clearly, it's (again) the implications which follow out of that for me (bias).
They way you mentioned that you deal with questions about morality responsibly / like an adult is not completely obvious, would it be somewhat justified to say that you "value" morality?
What I'm trying to address sort of ties in with the "problem of absent moral agents" thread. It's also a very slippery slope to "force" idea's upon others yet it could be considered as such. People could be morally "weak" (please forgive the objectification, it only serves as an example) yet if they never break any laws there's little means to do anything about it aside from possible peer pressure "forcing" preferred behaviour (through social exclusion for example).
I do feel there can be some objective moral values and I would rather see them tied to the capacity of people to understand concepts then them being written down and put into practice as law. They way peer pressure works now is the mechanism how such moral values would come about but it's hard to expect people to "understand" what they're talking about instead of claiming moral superiority in advance.
I'm not trying to push my political agenda here but an example could be immigration of some Islamist people into secular states. Secular states have a clear divide between church and state while followers of Islam can be of the (strong) opinion that Sharia law is the only law that's supposed to count. Even if they move to a secular state not out of necessity but for a preference of the wealth, that's not amoral, we all have our self interests in mind. Freedom of religion is one thing but fundamentally disagreeing with the way the state in which they were given such rights is governed and having the freedom to espouse this view onto others... there's something not quite right there. Also if they have their self interest in mind, who are we to judge if they'd use democratic means to try and accomplish a means of governance which is opposed to a lot of the rights they're given to even undertake such an effort?
One could also criticize the way our monetary systems have forced a form of governance unto people who never had any say in the matter and, even though we might claim such a means of gaining material wealth will benefit everyone in the end, there's little (to my mind) ethical debate on this but individual morals are more and more starting to wonder if they agree with the moral / ethical repercussions of capitalism and it is the individual understanding and agreement which would be most potent in having an influence on the way capitalism applies itself globally.
There's a mechanism at work here where we appear to detract from the potency of this mechanism. (peer pressure combined with the human capacity for understanding ...or something like that...)
Not acknowledging how (un)conscious consent works in enabling things to grow out of hand (capitalism) or enabling a regress of moral values (religion). Failing to recognize this detracts from our human capacities in this point in time in my opinion, I feel it's more relevant to make people see this for themselves then discuss it meta-ethically. (Where meta-ethics could help a lot in clarifying what I'm saying).
By claiming that we must become slaves to either the compulsive or reflective desires you are limiting the scope of freedom. If we are freely choosing, in every case whether to follow compulsive desires or our own reflective (or intuitive) sense of what is right, then, in that moment of choice, we are not slaves to anything. Although in principle we may be said to freely choose compulsive desires, I would say that in practice there is no freedom in that, and that freedom only begins where we choose to go against being controlled by compulsive desire. I would say that the choice is not that between two alternative forms of slavery at all, but that between slavery and freedom.
Yes, of course I value it. I think that everyone does, really (that is, everyone with anything like a normally functioning brain, at least), whether they would be comfortable putting it in those terms or not. People care a lot about interpersonal behavior that they approve and disapprove of.
Quoting Gooseone
I'm extremely Libertarian/laissez-faire on stuff like that. I don't want to restrict who can live where. In fact, I'd completely get rid of immigration laws. What I'd do in a nutshell is simply make it so that folks live voluntarily under whatever limitations they'd like to live under. So a bunch of Muslims wanting to live under Sharia law can move wherever and do that--in a community with other people who voluntarily want to live under those limitations. I'd simply disallow trumping a constitution that prohibits legislative changes that would force someone to live under such limitations.
I'd also ideally change our socio-economic structure overall if I were king. I mention above that I'm extremely Libertarian/laissez-faire on issues like immigration, but overall, I actually call myself a "libertarian socialist" for want of a better term. Economically, I'm in favor of a very idiosyncratic socialist system (that also incorporates some libertarian principles).
Aside from that, I don't quite understand everything in your comment, but I suppose I get the gist of it.
It's just a little bit deeper than your thinking I think. And I don't mean that arrogantly. I I just think if we are being honest we don't chose either our reflective desires or our compulsive desires. It's the chosing of which we indulge in that I think is free. It takes a lot more work to indulge the reflective desires.
Those living under such a law in some sort of separate community would not likely want to keep to themselves.
If "we don't chose either our reflective desires or our compulsive desires" then we don't choose " which we indulge in", which means we are not free at all. I think you need to think a little deeper yourself, or else give a coherent account of the purported distinction between what you apparently think we don't choose and what you apparently think we do choose.
The desires are there. Each give some level of satisfaction when fulfilled. It's up to us which to fulfill because they often come in conflict.
-Romans 6:18
I'm not Christian anymore, but I think that Paul was on to something.
OK, I think I get your distinction now. You are saying that we don't choose which particular compulsive and reflective desires are there.. I would say you are somewhat right about the compulsive desires and wrong about the reflective desires. Compulsive desire will weaken and even disappear if we do not strengthen them by indulging them; so to some extent we do choose what compulsive desires are there.. The "reflective desires" are not so much desires as dispositions that we have chosen, through our freely chosen reflections, to adopt or not to adopt. Having adopted a set of dispositions then we are faced with the task of acting on them rather than giving in to compulsive desires.
I was mainly trying to show how a difference / discrepancy between 'is' an 'ought' might show. Basically there are laws for the ought and there's peer pressure for the is. If there's a complete lack of understanding of any ought or there are many petty patronizing laws needed to make people act civil I think there's something wrong and I feel it's of no use to make "understanding" a legal obligation.
And concerning immigration laws, I live in the Netherlands, it's a small social welfare state with a pension fund based on solidarity (all employees are obliged to contribute to a pension fund and it works with a reserve as well as those working now paying for those retiring now, most European pension funds work without a reserve). If anyone would be able to come and get a free lunch (labour participation among immigrants is generally a lot lower then native inhabitants) there wouldn't be much left of the country quite fast.
Maybe not. But nevertheless, there would be a non-trumpable law in place, and a police/militaristic force in place to enforce it, that would disallow forcing others to live under other limitations like that which they have not voluntarily chosen to live under.