First principles

First principles:

1. Utilitarianism: Maximise well-being. Minimize harm.

2. Self-Determination: People should be in control of their own lives. (From this, we get ideals of Freedom, Democracy, Equality and Truth.)

Usually these ideals are in harmony; when they do conflict, you have a judgement call. Obviously, there's always room for dispute within them anyway; without an Omniscient Morality License, there are always conflicts. I wouldn't trust any first principles that didn't have them.

Have you read much of history? I agree that we have an instinctive moral apparatus that works fairly well... in a small, democratic, tribal society in which every individual knows every other individual. As soon as you get larger than that... Our instinctive empathy is suddenly useless: you simply can't fit a city of people into your heart, let alone a nation, or a world.* You need ideals to guide your morality, and if they aren't based on empathy and equality, you end up with rules that do vastly more harm than good.

Think about homophobia. The harm it has done, the lives it has ruined... and yet, people believe it is right; that homosexuality is wrong. Why? Becuase they base their morality on their feelings, and, living in a homophobic society, their "ew" overwhelms any feelings of empathy they may feel for a group they have never (knowingly) encountered. Or they base their morality on arbitrary rules with no visible logic or rationality behind them, so to them, "NO HOMO" is just as important a rule as "NO MURDER-RAPE". Morality without a rational, empathic basis is a dangerous thing.

Think of the endless sexism and racism of history; the baseless bigotry believed to be right, simply because that was the way things were; those were the rules. We need ideals. That said, "Empathy" is a good ideal; really, it's the basis of utilitarianism. I disagree with the idea that we don't need first principles; but I largely agree with yours.

* Also, the power structures of civilised life tend to pervert our inherent need for equality, neutralizing a huge part of our instinctive morality. But this throws of the rythm of my argument, so I decided to put this down here.

edited 30th Mar '11 1:29:55 PM by HughMan

Rott, I'm still waiting for an answer. Are you a pacifist? I don't want to assume.

Rott, if I were in your hypothetical scenario, I would probably organize peaceful protests. If they were violently cut down, I would try to secretly ship out those people who want out. If we were caught and attacked, I would defend myself, and encourage others to do the same.

By the way, I'm not a Marxist, so I don't see what listing the body count of Marxism is supposed to do. I could sit here and list the body count of Christianity. What's the point of this?

The Marxists held progressive ideologies, and as a progressive you're associated with them by default.

Rott: no I have not, and I can't read it yet because the link isn't working. -_- Summary or citation so I can look for it myself?

I bite into Situational ethics for the most part, but since that is something of an amalgamation, I'll have to deconstruct it into my personal interpretation (by interpretation, I mean that it may be very different from the original form).

Positive utilitarianism is nice, but maximizing pleasure or happiness is a heavily complicated thing, and it paves a way for much disorder. For example, you have ten people. Next we have a happiness scale.

Now, two situations are possible. Either every member will rank in at 4, OR, nine people will rank in at 10, while the last person ranks in at 2. The latter has more cumulative happiness, but also cuts one person short. Now imagine this in the real world, made much more complex - far more so than any ruler or even individual can easily handle.

Negative utilitarianism is nice, but I feel it is a huge waste, and is ultimately flawed. If everything could cease to exist right now, no one would ever suffer again. However, I for one much prefer to be alive right now, and I'm sure many, many people agree with me on that.

And of course, these are subject to a number of problems, such as moral luck and whatnot. However, practicality vs rightness, the "right" philosophy is better to know, I think. Of course, it's good to have the former as well.

Utilitarianism in general seems obvious enough (make everyone feel good and not feel bad), but is incredibly complex, and requires lots of exceptions and rules to fix; so much so that it is a nearly pointless ideal - it tells us what to aim for, but nothing of how to get there. Useful in some respects, but not fully.

Deontology is nice, because it gives one a solid set of principals to work by, and is not so easily subject to moral luck. However, its weakness is how hard it is to define those rules - such that even if you follow, say, the Bible, you will still have trouble squaring things off. Hence, it essentially turns into a set of guidelines and thus becomes only somewhat useful. Still a little useful though.

Consequentialism in general seems about right, but it puts a lot of pressure on the individual to get lucky, and throws in a slew of "justification".

Contrasting Deontology and Consequentialism, you can basically sum things up like so: "The ends justify the means", OR "The means justify the ends". Problem is, there shouldn't be any need justification if we are on target. If an exception is necessary, then either your premise is wrong, or you executed it in a flawed manner.

Where do I really stand? I'm not sure, which is why I rather gather what little truth I can from each ideal, and dissect real life situations to see where each stands. So until I somehow stumble upon divine inspiration, I'll have to work with the somewhat fuzzy ideal of maximizing love (not just romantic, but kindness, compassion, and all that jazz). I follow scriptures as much as possible, and try to defend the holiness of God. Everywhere else, I have to think rather than rely on a catch-all morality.

1)HUMANITY IS TO GO ON. NO MATTER THE COST. WE SHALL DEFEAT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE. AND 2) HUMAN LIVES ARE ENDS IN AND OF THEMSELVES. 3)THE GOLDEN RULE IS TO BE RESPECTED: RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM. 4)WHILE LIVING, SAVING 1) and 2), HUMANS SHOULD SEEK MAXIMUM FUN FOR THEMSELVES AND EACH OTHER AND THEIR DESCENDANTS.

In order to achieve this result, I'm betting on international socialdemocracy, a world with sustainable, optimized economies. That means no militaries. And lots of transhumanism and homo-optimization. And SPACE DOMINATION. IN THE CLEAR BRIGHTNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE, THERE IS NO LONGER WAR. THERE IS ONLY HARD WORK, FUN, AND THE GREAT LAUGHTER OF THE THIRSTING HUMANITY!

Some clarification as to why this one holds the principles she does.

• Merely being alive is not always preferable over death. Taken to it's logical end, a world in which people are in constant torment but noone is killed, ever, is better than the one in which people are relatively happy but homicides happen. And that is something this one could only see in a nightmare, and not the good kind of nightmare.
• So, it's not merely "life" as physical existence but a certain measure of wellbeing that should enter the equation
• But thing is, people are different. What makes one happy sends another in despair. Not to mention that we simply cannot know all the consequences and repercussions of our actions. So it is not possible to "make" people happy against their will - first, your idea of happiness might be a Fate Worse than Death to them, and second, even if your ideas match, your well-meaning interference might lead to an opposite result
• But there is one thing we can know - our own preferences, and preferences of other people if we ask them. We know what is and what isn't our will. Of course, people might be mistaken, and their will might be towards things that in the end will not bring them joy, but again, it remains a possibility regardless of whether people follow their own will or that of another. So if people are going to suffer, let it be due to their own choices rather than those of another. We do not know the outcome, we do not know with absolute certainty what is right, but our preference is the only thing we can know.
• Murders wrong for one simple reason - a victim does not want to be murdered. Rape is wrong because victim does not want to be raped. Stealing is wrong because victim does not want to be stolen from. But obviously perpetrators want to do so anyway, which leads to...
• Due to conflicting preferences, an absolute freedom for everyone is unachievable goal. Freedom without any restriction ends up with the will of the strongest being enforced upon everyone else. In effect, it becomes a tyranny of one
• So the result to strive for is a maximum possible freedom to everyone. Each person should have as much freedom as at all possible without infringing upon other people. Golden rule and "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose starts" seem to be good ways in this direction
• Of course, there are people who couldn't careless about preferences of others and of denying others their freedom. In this case, it is their preference that preferences can be overridden by the stronger, so there is no reason to protect their preference.

I like your system Beholdress; it's more comprehensive than mine. You not only stated that happiness should be maximized and suffering minimized, but you stated how it would be done.

I fully subscribe to everything Beholderess said.

I agree that there cannot be any guarantee for our instinctive setup to work in modern society. I think there is a lot of work to be done.

I think, though, that your argument can be reversed rather easily. Every society held up some ideals, but it's obvious that those did not keep the nazis from coming about. One might argue that even the best-thought-out ideals are never good enough to avoid the most horrendous atrocities. The problem with "first principles" is that you can never make sure that everyone agrees - calling them the "first" principles is always an unjustified claim.

So neither abstract ideals, nor the reliance on our instinctive setup will cut it on their own.

And also, some people seem to be very good at following rules, while for others it's much easier to have some vague guiding line and make up the actual decisions along the way. Some people might rather vote for abstract values, like honesty or peacefulness, while others might prefer direct instructions, like "If a friend asks for help, don't refuse it unless something extremely urgent is going on".

So, a) I don't think that one kind of ethics fits all, and b) I personally root for a mixture of different kinds. That is, I wouldn't outright reject general rules as guidelines, but I wouldn't hold them as firm laws that can govern each and every situation either.I wouldn't trust my intuition in all cases, but I think that it works pretty fine for virtually everything that will probably pop up in my own daily life.

As for empathy, I think it isn't something that you "just have". I think we all have the biological prerequisites and the basic ability, but it's necessary to refine it for all of one's life.

edited 31st Mar '11 5:40:30 AM by vijeno

I am honoured.

But I'm afraid the question of "How?" is far from being answered. After all, the order of importance of various freedoms, and which should thump which in which circumstances is yet to be decided, and that's where the trouble usually starts.

@Beholderess:

Exactly... or worse, they won't just be ignorant of the consequences of their will, but have a will divided against itself.

Which side of Leontius' will would be acknowledged? The side that rushes to see corpses, or the side that damns his own eyes for wanting to see them?

"The accused, however, has a unique defence: that his victim actually agreed to be killed and eaten."

I don't know about you, but I prefer an ethic where this is defined as an objectively evil act regardless of consent.

Even though this was most probably intended as a joke, the mere fact that one CAN state something like this in all seriousness does prove its own self-refuting character, doesn't it?

edited 31st Mar '11 7:53:34 AM by vijeno

edited 31st Mar '11 8:20:13 AM by Beholderess

There are obviously circumstances in which even an adult is incapable of giving consent. So under these circumstances, any act that cannot reasonably be assumed to get that consent by the victim, would be considered evil How we define those and determine whether someone was able to give consent in a specific case, and what exactly those acts are, is of course a totally different question.

But if you base good/evil only on consent, then how about nature? Are acts on/against an animal, a plant, the whole earth implicitly beyond good and evil?

edited 31st Mar '11 8:57:08 AM by vijeno

Determining consent can be very difficult in some situations, and there are indeed situations in which people can be deemed unable to give consent, that is true. But that does not mean that for some reasons it doesn't apply. And I think that it is better to determine circumstances under which consent cannot be given rather than actions themselves.

As for the actions against nature/animals, consent applies only between sapient creatures capable of holding preference. Towards non-sapient creatures avoiding needless suffering will do.

edited 31st Mar '11 9:07:53 AM by Beholderess

@Rott: Why would the cannibal's acts be evil?

The victim consented, out of his own free will. That makes it nobody else's business.

To be honest, this one would be quite wary around such person, because this one doubts that someone so...disturbed...is not going to disregard consent next time. So I'd have him examined by medics. But not charged with murder.

edited 31st Mar '11 9:10:53 AM by Beholderess

Well, I would be wary too, but that doesn't mean a person should be charged with murder if the victim consented.

The German cannibalism case is probably the weirdest ever example of Conveniently Common Kink.

Absolutely. They even dug out some ancient piece of law just to get the case through. It was bitterly hilarious.

Oh and Beholderess, just for clarity, I wasn't arguing against you. Just expanding on your thoughts.

To resolve the problems with clouded or divided wills, I rephrase the consent principle thusly:

If you were all living things at the same time, and you would will something should happen, it is moral. Or phrased another way, if you had perfect empathy for all beings you would act perfectly morally.

Proof: I'll assume you're all familiar with the trolly problem. The reason, now, that it isn't moral to push the fat man off the bridge is that if you were all the involved parties you would want the fat man to jump off himself. If you are somehow everyone but the fat man, you can't make moral judgements about him.

(But having said this, I also suspect that morality is more complicated than any singular maxim, because for any maxim you can produce a situation the maxim approves of that is obviously immoral.)

It's true that almost any moral system conveived by humans will have exceptions, but the consent principle, coupled with the principle of minimizing suffering for those that can't consent, covers much of the situations we might encounter in everyday life.

"the principle of minimizing suffering for those that can't consent" is possibly the most abstract I've ever heard in my life.

Ought I go around doping children on painkillers? Lock up wolves so they don't make deer die in terror? What, exactly?