Freethought & Rationalism Archive

LordSnooty · 11-24-2002, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tronvillain:
So, you gave ten pounds to charity for no reason whatsoever? I am afraid I don't believe you - you are either lying or deluded. Perhaps you could go into a little more detail about what happened.

I had ten pounds in an online account. I considered what I might spend it on, and then saw the charity listed. I just donated it to them on the basis that it would be better if it were spent on someone that needed it, rather than on some frivolity for myself. I am pretty certain that I got no physical or emotional payoff as a result. I know myself well enough not to be amazed at my own overwhelming generousity upon making a tiny donation to a charity.

I feel entirely indifferent to the contribution. I just did it so that someone might benefit from it.

Maybe I am deluded, but on a conscious level it made not one iota of difference to me.

Paul

99Percent · 11-24-2002, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LordSnooty:


I had ten pounds in an online account.

Seems pretty simplistic to me. Do you understand how you have these ten pounds in your account available? If so please tell us how, fully.

The AntiChris · 11-24-2002, 11:28 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LordSnooty:


I just did it so that someone might benefit from it.

Are you attempting to argue that the thought that "someone might benefit from it" had absolutely no effect on you?

Chris

Ted Hoffman · 11-25-2002, 04:49 AM

Jamie L

Quote:

But suppose murdering someone will benefit the individual. If the individual can get get away with the murder, why shouldn't they?

They shouldnt because going by Kantian categorical imperatives, this act of murder is self-subverting because it thwarts its own purpose: if people started murdering because they can get away with it, this hypothetical person is likely to get murdered in the same way and not get to enjoy his benefits.

Secondly, morality is about maximizing happiness and minimizing unhappiness both for oneself and the society. If this person goes ahead and kills another, he will have the benefits but at the expense of another (pain, violated aspirations etc).
So he will not have acted morally.

In any case, morality is an artifact of civilized society - very soon people will realize that there is one among them who is murdering and they will put in place measures to avoid these deaths. They might even find out who it has been.

Besides, the fact that a murder will benefit an individual materially does not mean it is moral to perform such an act. This, IMHO is an example with amoral variables being examined in a moral light.
Benefit does not ultimately equal happiness. Morality is about happiness - not benefits.

I also object to that island example which has two people and one kills the other. Morality came about when people started to live in societies. It has no utilitarian meaning/ use in the absence of a society.
And it would still be immoral to kill someone even if only two people remain in the world - unless the other person directly threatens the existence of the killer. The survival benefits inherent in being two instead of one should be clear.

I would in conclusion say, one who is interested in being moral would not kill another even if he can get away with it and even if he would benefit from that act.

But of course people don't act morally all the time.

LordSnooty · 11-25-2002, 05:00 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by 99Percent:

Seems pretty simplistic to me. Do you understand how you have these ten pounds in your account available? If so please tell us how, fully.

Because I had worked for it. I don't know what you're getting at.

Paul

LordSnooty · 11-25-2002, 05:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by The AntiChris:

Are you attempting to argue that the thought that "someone might benefit from it" had absolutely no effect on you?

The effect it had was to make me donate the money, and that is all. I don't see how or why it should have any other effect on me.

Paul

The AntiChris · 11-25-2002, 06:50 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by LordSnooty:


The effect it had was to make me donate the money, and that is all. I don't see how or why it should have any other effect on me.

Paul

You seem to be blissfully unaware that you've provided the 'reason' for the action.

Clearly, the notion that "someone might benefit from it" is one that has a positive effect for you (tronvillain's "payoff"). That you haven't analysed the reason for this positive effect in no way justifies your belief that you did it for absolutely no reason at all.

Chris

LordSnooty · 11-25-2002, 06:56 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by The AntiChris:

Clearly, the notion that "someone might benefit from it" is one that has a positive effect for you (tronvillain's "payoff"). That you haven't analysed the reason for this positive effect in no way justifies your belief that you did it for absolutely no reason at all.

I'm not as stupid as you seem to be suggesting. I see no positive effect, in whatever way I look at it. If you'd point it out for me, I'd be very grateful.

Paul

The AntiChris · 11-25-2002, 07:36 AM

LordSnooty

Quote:

I'm not as stupid as you seem to be suggesting.

My apologies. I didn't intend to suggest that you were stupid.

Quote:

I see no positive effect, in whatever way I look at it. If you'd point it out for me, I'd be very grateful.

At a guess, I suspect that donating the money to "someone that needed it" gave you a sense of satisfaction. As for the underlying reasons for this feeling of satisfaction, I'd guess it's a result of environment (social/cultural conditioning) and/or evolution (genetic predisposition).

Chris

bd-from-kg · 11-25-2002, 07:49 AM

Lord Snooty, tronvillain, The AntiChris, 99Percent, et al:

We seem to be getting hung up here because everyone seems to be assuming the truth of an idea which is completely mistaken. The best discussion of this that I�ve ever seen is in the <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~jimpryor/courses/epist/notes/intro-truth.html" target="_blank">lecture notes for James Pryor�s Theory of Knowledge course at Princeton</a> [toward the end]. Since the idea he discusses is so widespread, and since it would be absolutely fatal to any meaningful theory of ethics if it were true, I think it�s worth quoting his discussion of it pretty much in full:

Quote:

Many students � think that most people value only their own experiences; and they assure me that even if they're wrong about other people, they're at least right about themselves. They value only their own experiences. �

When I ask students why they think this, what usually emerges is the following picture of human motivation.

Ultimately, they say, everyone always acts for selfish motives. Whenever we do something on purposes, it's our own purpose that we're trying to achieve. We're always pursuing our own ends, and trying to satisfy our own desires. All that any of us are really after in life is getting more pleasant experiences for himself, and avoiding painful ones. Sometimes it may seem that we're doing things for other people's sake. For instance, we give money to charity, we buy presents for our children, we make sacrifices to please our spouses. But if you look closer, you'll see that even in cases like those, we're still always acting for selfish motives. We only do such things because it makes us feel good and noble to do them, and we like feeling noble. Or we do them because when people we care about are happy, that makes us happy too, and ultimately what we're after is that happiness for ourselves�

Now, I grant that some people may be as selfish as this picture says. But I doubt that many people are. The picture rests on two confusions, and once we clear those confusions up, I think there's no longer reason to believe that the only thing that any of us ever aims for in life is to have pleasant experiences.

The first confusion is to equate "pursuing our own ends, and trying to satisfy our own desires" with "acting for a selfish motive." To call a motive or aim "selfish" isn't just to say that it's a motive or aim that I have. It says more than that. It says something about the kind of motive it is. If my motive is to make me better off, then my motive is a selfish one. If my motive is to make you better off, then my motive is not selfish. From the mere fact that I'm pursuing one of my motives, it doesn't follow that my motive is of the first sort, rather than the second.

Ah, you'll say, but if my aim is to make you better off, then when I achieve that aim, I'll feel good. And this good feeling is really what I'll have been trying to obtain all along.

This is the second confusion. It's true that often when we get what we want (though sadly not always), we feel good. It's easy to make the mistake of thinking that what we really wanted was that good feeling. But let's think about this a bit harder. Why should making someone else better off give me a good feeling? And how do I know that it will have that effect?

Consider two stories. In story A, you walk into a room that contains a marble statue of a sphinx and a golden sphere. You feel this inexplicable and unpleasant itch. Someone proposes the hypothesis that the itch is caused by the sphere being to the left of the sphinx. So you go up and move the sphere to the right of the sphinx, and your itch goes away.

In story B, you walk into the same room, and don't like the fact that the sphere is to the left of the sphinx. For some reason, you would prefer it to be on the other side. So you go up and move the sphere, and you feel pleased with the result.

In story A, your aim was to make yourself feel better, and moving the sphere was just a means to that end. It takes experience and guesswork to figure out what will make you feel better in that way. In story B, on the other hand, no guesswork or experience seem to be necessary. Here you're in a position to straightforwardly predict what will bring you pleasure. You can predict this because you have an aim other than making yourself feel better, you know what that aim is, and usually you feel pleased when you get what you want. Your aim is to have the sphere in a different place. Your feeling of pleasure is a consequence or side-effect of achieving that aim. The pleasure is not what you were primarily aiming at; rather, it came about because you achieved what you were primarily aiming at. Don't mistake what you're aiming at with what happens as a result of your getting what you're aiming at.

Most often, when we do things to make other people better off, we're in a situation like the one in story B. Our pleasure isn't some unexplained effect of our actions, and what we're really trying to achieve all along. Our pleasure comes about because we got what we were really trying to achieve; and this makes it understandable why it should come about when it does.

Once we're straight about this, I think there's no argument left that the only thing anyone ever aims for in life is to have pleasant experiences. Some people do aim for that, some of the time. But many cases of giving to charity, making sacrifices for one's spouse, and so on, are not done for the pleasure they bring to oneself. There's something else that one is after, and pleasure is just a pleasant side-effect that sometimes comes along with getting the other things one is after.

Thus, it doesn�t matter that Lord Snooty probably (in spite of his protestations to the contrary) felt better as a result of his giving money to charity. It would be entirely natural, if his aim was to help some unfortunate people, that he would feel some satisfaction as a result of doing so, just as, if his aim had been to acquire a rare copy of an old Spiderman comic book, he would probably have felt some satisfaction when he managed to do so. The feeling of satisfaction that generally results from accomplishing one�s aim doesnot show that this aim wasn�t really one�s aim after all; on the contrary, it shows that it was.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.