You 'ought' to behave this way

[2dimes]

I don't want to read the whole thing. Is it like when you get fries and find out they don't have mayo?

[crispybits]

It depends. It's not as simple as saying 'pain always matters' or 'pain never matters'.

To the individual, achievement of their own desires will be important, and someone preventing them from achieving those desires will be felt as bad to them. You seem to tend towards a system in which aggregate good is the objective (even if that's not really possible to properly specify). Such a system necessarily entails at least some people having their desires restrained or even deliberately denied, and the effect of the system on those people as individuals would be to have an aggregate negative effect on them. Is that not then a system which is only good to some people, and not a universally good system?

Not if every person is restricted in the same ways. To say "you should not kill just because you want to" is not singling out the people who desire to kill others and discriminating against them. When we say "you shouldn't kill just because you want to" we're also saying "you shouldn't kill murderers just because you want to". When we say "you shouldn't steal just because you want to", we're also saying "you shouldn't steal from thieves just because you want to". The vast majority of murderers demonstrate their desire to remain alive through their own self-preservative actions. The vast majority of thieves demonstrate their desire to retain the property they have acquired because they don't leave their front doors wide open when they aren't at home.

Yes we can then go into self-defence situations for murder or Robin Hood type scenarios for theft, but those conversations are only possible because we establish a baseline and they are nuanced around that baseline.

[mrswdk]

It depends. It's not as simple as saying 'pain always matters' or 'pain never matters'.

To the individual, achievement of their own desires will be important, and someone preventing them from achieving those desires will be felt as bad to them. You seem to tend towards a system in which aggregate good is the objective (even if that's not really possible to properly specify). Such a system necessarily entails at least some people having their desires restrained or even deliberately denied, and the effect of the system on those people as individuals would be to have an aggregate negative effect on them. Is that not then a system which is only good to some people, and not a universally good system?

Not if every person is restricted in the same ways. To say "you should not kill just because you want to" is not singling out the people who desire to kill others and discriminating against them. When we say "you shouldn't kill just because you want to" we're also saying "you shouldn't kill murderers just because you want to". When we say "you shouldn't steal just because you want to", we're also saying "you shouldn't steal from thieves just because you want to". The vast majority of murderers demonstrate their desire to remain alive through their own self-preservative actions. The vast majority of thieves demonstrate their desire to retain the property they have acquired because they don't leave their front doors wide open when they aren't at home.

Yes we can then go into self-defence situations for murder or Robin Hood type scenarios for theft, but those conversations are only possible because we establish a baseline and they are nuanced around that baseline.

Let's say my desire is to try and screw over my business partner, and my accompanying desire is not to be screwed over by him or her. I would not welcome a code which forbids screwing over your business partner - I would welcome a code in which screwing business partners over is allowed, and within that I would just fend for myself.

[crispybits]

It's not just about your desires though, it's about the business partner's desires too. You're not considering the full scope of the action you're talking about. It's like me saying "I want to take this car" and ignoring that someone else owns the car and desires for the car to be where they left it in the condition they left it in when they come back to it. Sure my desire to take the car is denied and if we were just talking about some ownerless car sitting on a street somewhere my desire would trump the nothing you've put on the other side of the equation, but once you put in the owner of the car suddenly that changes the moral character of the act.

It's like me throwing a punch is neither a moral nor immoral act. I just did it in fact. It stays a morally neutral act until that punch connects (or seriously threatens to connect) with another living thing or their property, and then we have to include the desires and experience of the other living thing about the punch into account. That punch may still be morally justifiable, even if it kills someone, but we cannot know that either way until we take into consideration all of the different actors and their desires, intentions and experience.

(By the way, how quickly do you want to end global trade and push us back into the stone age? In fact earlier than that because people were trading in the stone age. If you got your way in that example and the moral code of society said it's fine to screw over business partners, how could global trade survive? If my contract with you that says you'll give me X in return for Y is worthless, the whole thing is impossible and we go back to hunter-gathering)

[mrswdk]

We're getting away from the original question that needs to be resolved. Mets asked if pain matters, not about the morality of the pain. What you're talking about is the morality of certain actions. Can you actually declare that an action is immoral based on the fact that some people will perceive the action resulting in negative consequences for themselves?

[crispybits]

Not really, you asked this question:

Such a system necessarily entails at least some people having their desires restrained or even deliberately denied, and the effect of the system on those people as individuals would be to have an aggregate negative effect on them. Is that not then a system which is only good to some people, and not a universally good system?

The last few posts have been me trying to explain why a system can be a good system even when it restricts some desires. And it's by showing that it's not only the person with the desires that counts, it's also all the people that acting on those desires would affect. Desirability on the part of the first person subject is only a part of what makes an action moral or not (and I would argue only a very small part of the equation in so far as being able to do what you want to do will have an effect on well being or flourishing or happiness or lack of suffering or whatever larger metric we're using).

[Metsfanmax]

You're defining innate worth in a way such that your conclusion is tautological. But in doing so, you're just answering the wrong question. It is clearly true that without some sort of rule being applied by a higher power, there's no reason why humanity has to exist from the point of view of the universe. But here I'm not interested in answering the question of whether the existence of humanity is somehow a good thing. (There are people who discuss that, but we don't have to go all the way there.) Humans do exist, and they have desires. As long as they do, it is a good thing if they can achieve those desires. If you want a strong argument, you have to dispute that latter claim: you have to show why it doesn't matter if other people feel pain (say). Do you believe that?

It depends. It's not as simple as saying 'pain always matters' or 'pain never matters'.

To the individual, achievement of their own desires will be important, and someone preventing them from achieving those desires will be felt as bad to them. You seem to tend towards a system in which aggregate good is the objective (even if that's not really possible to properly specify).

I do tend towards that system, but I recognize that we have not worked out all the kinks yet. The specific form of the system is not so important, though. What matters is that a moral system guides actions in such a way that they conform with particular beliefs we have about the way the world ought to work. The decision for whether something is right or wrong may be according to whether it maximizes pleasure, or minimizes pain, or something else entirely like a deontological system. But ultimately it's attempting to do the same basic thing.

Such a system necessarily entails at least some people having their desires restrained or even deliberately denied, and the effect of the system on those people as individuals would be to have an aggregate negative effect on them.

The first part is true, but the second part is not. For example, consider pedophiles. Most extant moral systems restrain pedophiles from engaging in actions they desire to, namely sexual activities with children. But can we truly consider from this that the moral system has a net negative effect on them? I do not think so. There's many other facets of their life that are preserved by the moral system. For example, they probably do not want to be tortured; a moral restriction against torture helps keep them happy. The only way for the moral system to have a net negative effect on them is that it restricts so much of what they want in life as to remove all of their main needs (like eating good food, having a warm place to live, etc.). Even if that were to occur, one must still ask: would these people be better off in a state of anarchy without any rules at all? The answer is no, in most cases. Thus the system of morals is preferable to the alternative.

[nietzsche]

I don't want to read the whole thing. Is it like when you get fries and find out they don't have mayo?

More like boiled potatoes without salt or mayo or ketchup.

[nietzsche]

Mets:

You discuss philosophy and you decide which are the important questions. You disregard perfectly valid and unresolved matters of philosophy because, you want.

That you say something in a clearly matter and you have an edge on the discussing method doesn't make you right. I know you know it's not all there is to discuss and you clearly move the discussion to the plane where you want so that others think it's all there is to it. That is fucked up. I'd rather have an honest discussion than a debate I know I will win because my opponent doesn't know about a flaw in my arguments.


What you're saying is well thought, but it's not all there is about the topic. And I fucking know you know that.

The real big picture here is not that there's a solution that is being worked out by inteligent people and that others are not smart enough to catch up. The real big picture is that the more you ask, the deeper you go, the more baffling issues emerge, paradoxes and questions we don't have an answer yet, because the complexity surpases our ability to come up with a general answer to it.

It's of better use to identify the questions and make them clear so people can make decisions after an assesment, than to side with the one author that "intellectuals" point as being on the right because he's like them and talks like them and thinks in a linear manner like them.

I understand the value of thinking something has a solution, because it empowers one to find one instead of staying wandering in our heads. But the best you can achieve is a framework that works for a certain scope, a certain group of people. But if what you aim for is real understanding, to think this matter is solved already is shortsighted.

[Metsfanmax]

Mets:

You discuss philosophy and you decide which are the important questions. You disregard perfectly valid and unresolved matters of philosophy because, you want.

That you say something in a clearly matter and you have an edge on the discussing method doesn't make you right. I know you know it's not all there is to discuss and you clearly move the discussion to the plane where you want so that others think it's all there is to it. That is fucked up. I'd rather have an honest discussion than a debate I know I will win because my opponent doesn't know about a flaw in my arguments.


What you're saying is well thought, but it's not all there is about the topic. And I fucking know you know that.

The real big picture here is not that there's a solution that is being worked out by inteligent people and that others are not smart enough to catch up. The real big picture is that the more you ask, the deeper you go, the more baffling issues emerge, paradoxes and questions we don't have an answer yet, because the complexity surpases our ability to come up with a general answer to it.

It's of better use to identify the questions and make them clear so people can make decisions after an assesment, than to side with the one author that "intellectuals" point as being on the right because he's like them and talks like them and thinks in a linear manner like them.

I understand the value of thinking something has a solution, because it empowers one to find one instead of staying wandering in our heads. But the best you can achieve is a framework that works for a certain scope, a certain group of people. But if what you aim for is real understanding, to think this matter is solved already is shortsighted.

*yawn*

Yeah yeah, we can't know anything at all, the world is too complicated to understand yet. I know your shtick. But if someone comes and rapes your sister, I hope you do better than throw a philosophy book at him.

[mrswdk]

*yawn*

Yeah yeah, we can't know anything at all, the world is too complicated to understand yet. I know your shtick. But if someone comes and rapes your sister, I hope you do better than throw a philosophy book at him.

If someone attacked me I would fend them off. Are you suggesting that in doing so I would be making some sort of moral statement?

[Metsfanmax]

*yawn*

Yeah yeah, we can't know anything at all, the world is too complicated to understand yet. I know your shtick. But if someone comes and rapes your sister, I hope you do better than throw a philosophy book at him.

If someone attacked me I would fend them off. Are you suggesting that in doing so I would be making some sort of moral statement?

No. Actions are not themselves moral beliefs.

[mrswdk]

Not really, you asked this question:

Such a system necessarily entails at least some people having their desires restrained or even deliberately denied, and the effect of the system on those people as individuals would be to have an aggregate negative effect on them. Is that not then a system which is only good to some people, and not a universally good system?

The last few posts have been me trying to explain why a system can be a good system even when it restricts some desires. And it's by showing that it's not only the person with the desires that counts, it's also all the people that acting on those desires would affect. Desirability on the part of the first person subject is only a part of what makes an action moral or not (and I would argue only a very small part of the equation in so far as being able to do what you want to do will have an effect on well being or flourishing or happiness or lack of suffering or whatever larger metric we're using).

I said it in response to what Mets was saying, which was based on a couple of assumptions that we hadn't actually resolved anyway. For your system to be 'moral', aggregate positive impact on all people as a whole (or whatever measure you're using) would have to be some sort of universally required end goal. Required by whom? I'm not asking for that sort of system to be in place. As long as the system is as good for me as possible, I'm satisfied.

[mrswdk]

*yawn*

Yeah yeah, we can't know anything at all, the world is too complicated to understand yet. I know your shtick. But if someone comes and rapes your sister, I hope you do better than throw a philosophy book at him.

If someone attacked me I would fend them off. Are you suggesting that in doing so I would be making some sort of moral statement?

No. Actions are not themselves moral beliefs.

So why the suggestion that the probability of nietzsche defending his sister and his philosophical views are somehow related?

[Metsfanmax]

I said it in response to what Mets was saying, which was based on a couple of assumptions that we hadn't actually resolved anyway. For your system to be 'moral', aggregate positive impact on all people as a whole (or whatever measure you're using) would have to be some sort of universally required end goal. Required by whom? I'm not asking for that sort of system to be in place. As long as the system is as good for me as possible, I'm satisfied.

What do you mean by "good for" you? Does that mean that the system results in actions that benefit you? If so, does it benefit you to do a nice thing for a stranger at very little cost to yourself? If not, do you perhaps mean that the system is generally in line with the way you think people should behave?

I think the clarification here is important. For example, we could envision a hypothetical scenario where the moral rule is that everyone has to treat mrswdk well, and other than that there are no rules. But a society that lived by that standard would collapse pretty quickly, and mrswdk's quality of life would deteroriate in kind. So I don't think mrswdk would actually want that particular system. The system that would most consistently respect mrswdk's desires is the one we're talking about anyway. So even if you just consider the pragmatic issues, you should still come out in favor of something like universal moral rules.

So why the suggestion that the probability of nietzsche defending his sister and his philosophical views are somehow related?

Because if he does defend his sister, it's because he cares about her welfare. If he cares about her welfare, that means people other than him matter in his moral system. If other people matter in the moral system, then rape of those other people (an action that diminishes welfare) is wrong. The action doesn't imply the moral belief; in this case, it is the moral belief that implies the action.

nietzsche will just come back and say that he'd defend his sister for some sort of deep irrational reason that we can't apply this type of logic to. And that'd be fine except that most of us would find it horrific when anyone is raped. We intuitively think it's wrong, even if we have no reason at all to care specifically about the person that got raped. Why is that? Is it really because of some massive coincidence across cultures and time? I think not. I think it's not so much of a stretch to say that rape generally violates values that most of us hold. That's why it's not such a crazy idea to believe in the possibility of some sort of universal value system worth defending.

So this is why nietzsche's response kind of misses the point. Most of modern ethics isn't about trying to discover some sort of deep moral truths and then convincing people of their truth by pure reasoning. The useful stuff is the part that points out -- hey, here are your values, why are you doing things that obviously don't respect those values? If we didn't have that ability to reflect carefully about our actions, we'd still be engaging in chattel slavery. No one should accept such an off-hand dismissal.

[mrswdk]

I said it in response to what Mets was saying, which was based on a couple of assumptions that we hadn't actually resolved anyway. For your system to be 'moral', aggregate positive impact on all people as a whole (or whatever measure you're using) would have to be some sort of universally required end goal. Required by whom? I'm not asking for that sort of system to be in place. As long as the system is as good for me as possible, I'm satisfied.

What do you mean by "good for" you? Does that mean that the system results in actions that benefit you? If so, does it benefit you to do a nice thing for a stranger at very little cost to yourself? If not, do you perhaps mean that the system is generally in line with the way you think people should behave?

I think the clarification here is important. For example, we could envision a hypothetical scenario where the moral rule is that everyone has to treat mrswdk well, and other than that there are no rules. But a society that lived by that standard would collapse pretty quickly, and mrswdk's quality of life would deteroriate in kind. So I don't think mrswdk would actually want that particular system.

I don't really care what the system is. As long as I do well within in then that's good enough for me. But that is a separate issue to morality.

So why the suggestion that the probability of nietzsche defending his sister and his philosophical views are somehow related?

Because if he does defend his sister, it's because he cares about her welfare. If he cares about her welfare, that means people other than him matter in his moral system.

That's like saying that eating when I am hungry shows that my hungriness matters in my moral system.

nietzsche will just come back and say that he'd defend his sister for some sort of deep irrational reason that we can't apply this type of logic to. And that'd be fine except that most of us would find it horrific when anyone is raped. We intuitively think it's wrong, even if we have no reason at all to care specifically about the person that got raped. Why is that? Is it really because of some massive coincidence across cultures and time? I think not. I think it's not so much of a stretch to say that rape generally violates values that most of us hold.

Maybe that's true of the people you know, but there are many, many men out there who have no such concerns about rapes. Surely you are aware that there are lots of men (and some women) in lots of societies who believe that rape victims deserve it and have nothing to complain about?

That's why it's not such a crazy idea to believe in the possibility of some sort of universal value system worth defending.

Believe what you want. Believe in Jesus just because lots of other people do. For me, however, it's going to take a bit more than collective superstition.

[crispybits]

I said it in response to what Mets was saying, which was based on a couple of assumptions that we hadn't actually resolved anyway. For your system to be 'moral', aggregate positive impact on all people as a whole (or whatever measure you're using) would have to be some sort of universally required end goal. Required by whom? I'm not asking for that sort of system to be in place. As long as the system is as good for me as possible, I'm satisfied.

It doesn't have to be universally required, it just has to be universally beneficial. When talking about morality we're not talking about individual systems, we're talking about social systems. To say X is moral purely because X gives good results for any given individual is to ignore what morality is. So to be consistent with that to say "as long as the system is as good for me as possible" within an accurate understanding of morality is the same as saying "as long as the system is as good for everyone as possible". If you separate yourself or anyone else from this calculation you're no longer talking about morality, you're just talking about optimising conditions for that individual.

[mrswdk]

To say X is moral purely because X gives good results for any given individual is to ignore what morality is.

And what is morality? Any definitions you can find for 'morality', 'good' and 'right' are totally circular (most dictionaries seem to define 'good' as 'that which is morally right', 'right' as 'that which is moral' etc.). Morality is a poorly defined word, hence the ease with which 'morality' and 'good' are used as fall backs for people who have run out of logical support for whatever they are advocating.

I guess that's my main problem. Morality's just a fairly useless word which clouds the bigger, much more complex issue of attempting to find a way for all of us to live together in a way that we can generally accept.

[crispybits]

To say X is moral purely because X gives good results for any given individual is to ignore what morality is.

And what is morality? Any definitions you can find for 'morality', 'good' and 'right' are totally circular (most dictionaries seem to define 'good' as 'that which is morally right', 'right' as 'that which is moral' etc.). Morality is a poorly defined word, hence the ease with which 'morality' and 'good' are used as fall backs for people who have run out of logical support for whatever they are advocating.

I guess that's my main problem. Morality's just a fairly useless word which clouds the bigger, much more complex issue of attempting to find a way for all of us to live together in a way that we can generally accept.

How about: Morality is the codification of our attempts to find a way for all of us to live together in a way that we can generally accept.

I don't like mathematics, it's a useless word which clouds the bigger, much more complex issue of attempting to find a way for us all to use numbers together in a way we can generally accept...

[mrswdk]

How about: Morality is the codification of our attempts to find a way for all of us to live together in a way that we can generally accept.

I don't like mathematics, it's a useless word which clouds the bigger, much more complex issue of attempting to find a way for us all to use numbers together in a way we can generally accept...

Not the same thing.

[crispybits]

How are they different? (by which I mean the morality stuff, not the maths example that was just there to illustrate a point)

[mrswdk]

How are what different?

[crispybits]

Morality and our attempts to find a way for all of us to live together in a way that we can generally accept.

[mrswdk]

Morality and our attempts to find a way for all of us to live together in a way that we can generally accept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

In its descriptive sense, "morality" refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores. It does not connote objective claims of right or wrong, but only refers to that which is considered right or wrong. Descriptive ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense.

In its normative sense, "morality" refers to whatever (if anything) is actually right or wrong, which may be independent of the values or mores held by any particular peoples or cultures. Normative ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense.

[crispybits]

So lets just pretend I'm totally stupid for a moment and spell out the difference between them instead of just giving me the wikipedia definition of morality...