Rusting Car Bumper

Please comment:

Analyze.. Discuss..

DC

Clutch

This definition assumes some sort of utilitarianism, or at least consequentialism. Not all moral principles need have that character.

[ November 01, 2002: Message edited by: Clutch ]</p>

Rusting Car Bumper

Explain. please?

DC

Clutch

sorry. consider, for example, a rights-based moral principle like: Respect people's rights.

This may well not be a way of maximizing happiness. (In particular, actions respecting minority rights might make most people unhappy.)

Still, it's a moral principle.

Rusting Car Bumper

but the definition says, "...with the purpose of..."

I would think that "Respect people's rights" does have this purpose.

DC

Primal

For me it's a moral value that one wishes to generalize and follow over a long period of time, or a practice which promotes moral-values.

DigitalDruid

DC,

I think this by itself is not a moral principle in the usual sense- it’s a principle about moral principles. It’s a principle for assessing moral principles. I would call it a meta-principle.

My analysis:

At first sight, it looks like it requires good moral principles to be Utilitarian in nature, but not so. In standard Utilitarianism an action is good solely by its effect of producing greatest happiness for the majority, whatever might be the motive (a weakness in Utilitarianism that critiques exploit).

But this principle emphasizes primacy of motive or purpose - it is enough to have a purpose for maximizing happiness for a principle to be moral - whether that effect is achieved or not . This part seems OK to me. A surgeon who operates upon a patient and kills her through a mistake is not morally blamed. We might call him a bungler, but we do not call him an immoral person merely because he failed. But we would call a surgeon immoral if he kills a patient with malicious motive.

It seems to rule out absolutist moral principles (such as that of Plato). Plato’s ethics does not depend on motive or purpose. A Platonist holds that an action is right or wrong absolutely and independently of anyone’s opinion as to any happiness or suffering it would cause. But the "happiness" in the meta-principle can be interpreted to have a wide scope: happiness is just what one desires. From your reply to Clutch it appears that you are using happiness in that sense. So, A Platonist should maximize for the group whatever it is Platonists desire. So interpreted thus, the meta-principle is compatible with Platonism too.

My comment is that by being too general now the meta-principle is compatible with all conceivable specific moral principles: Platonism, Aristotelianism, Hedonism, Stoicism, etc. With "happiness" defined with a broad brush, the meta-principle now can be read as:

A moral principle is one that purports what one ought or ought not to do with the purpose of maximizing whatever is desirable and minimizing whatever is undesirable; especially amongst a group of people

I think the meta-principle now is a tautology; it is true - but trivially so. It is true "by definition".

DD

Ted Hoffman

"...with the purpose of maximizing happiness..." whose happiness?
If 100 people would be happy if you became a christian while you would be unhappy to be a christian, what would be the moral thing to do?

Your description seems teleological (from Kantian Ethics) rather than deontic. The problem with that is that the agents intentions are excluded from the picture - and yet morality is all about motives.
If I murder you because I think you are dangerous, then during the murder investigation, it is found that you were about to blow up the whole city and you were torturing some six year old children in your basement, I will have maximized happiness and minimized suffering.
But categorical imperatives state that Killing is wrong. For me to be moral, I would have to put my needs aside and not kill you.

This whole concept of maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering is shaky because its arbitrary and allows individual actions to be dictated by what they perceive to be happiness - you haven't stated whose happiness (so that we can evaluate whether we are talking Fascist kinds of morality or subjectivism).

What I am saying is that moral principles should not just purport to be the route map to happiness - because there are many - but the guiding principles during that journey.

I hope that makes sense?

Rusting Car Bumper

"especially amongst a group of people."

I think you missed that part. Society or a direct community is not composed of just 100 Christians.

No. That is why I included the word "purpose." "Purpose" notes "intention" inherently.

Again you didn't account for purpose. At the time you killed me you didn't know about the city or the children. Indeed at that time it was immoral and didn't serve the purpose of maximizing happiness and reducing suffering.

Well I'm not arguing Kant so I have no comment here.

I don't see that as a problem because moral action neessarily occurs in a world of conflicting interests and people ALWAYS take actions based on limited information. Further, different people have different information available to them so they might necessarily make different conclusions. That is true regardless of what moral principles are picked.

It may not be clear what action will minimize and maximize. In fact this ambiguity seems to be confirmed by our experience because, as a matter of fact, the right or wrong thing in many situation is not clear.

I do but I think your objections mix confirmable facts of the world which are uncomfortable with the proposed principle. I think everyone is subject to those facts as they are simple and intractable conditions of human experience.

DC

Rusting Car Bumper

Sure. That is why the title of the thread is "Definition of moral princple" and not "A moral principle of content." I think you simply misunderstood.

Well no. I made it up by looking at what people called "moral principles" and said to myself "What do they have in common"?

So I actually I decided it in a pseudo-empirical way.

BTW, I just made it up, thought about it, and decided to throw it out here to see what people say. I am not necessarily saying I am staunchly in favor of it. Two heads are better than one as they say.

DC