bd-from-kg

99percent:

This is a somewhat belated reply to your June 20 post. A lot of new issues were raised and many existing ones weren’t resolved, so this is pretty long. I doubt that I’ll have time for another long one for a while.

1. I still don’t know what you mean by “objective morality”. When I asked you this question directly, you replied:

This isn’t very helpful. Let me rephrase the question. What conditions would have to hold in order for the statement “there are objective moral truths” to be true? Is it logically possible for there not to be an objective morality? If so, how would you go about determining whether such a thing exists? Are there any tests, observations, etc., that would have any bearing on this question? in other words, how does one go about finding out whether there is something that “determines the wrongness or goodness of human actions independent on what one might feel it is”.

2. You seem to make a distinction between objective moral judgments and other, presumably non-objective ones. this can be seen in the following exchange:

Unfortunately, although you quoted this entire exchange, you didn’t reply to it.

Based on this exchange alone it would seem possible that you are making a distinction between the objectivity of a moral judgment about the rightness of an act and the objective rightness of the act. But this interpretation seems to be ruled out by your answer to one of my questions:

So I remain baffled: are there both objective moral truths and subjective moral truths? Are the latter true for some people but false for others? If not, in what sense are they subjective?

This whole issue is closely related to the following one.

3. You seem to believe that being able to determine with certainty whether a proposition P is true is a necessary condition for P’s being relevant to the question of whether an action is right or wrong. For example, you point out again and again that one cannot know whether a given act will make someone happy; that we cannot know whether another person is suffering intense pain; that we cannot know what a person desires if he is unable to communicate. And in each case you conclude that this makes the thing in question irrelevant to the rightness of an act, or at least to the “objective” rightness of it.

I have no idea why you think that the one thing implies the other. Why does the fact that I cannot know whether Smith is suffering intense pain make the question of whether he is suffering intense pain irrelevant to the question of what I ought to do with respect to Smith? As I tried to point out, inherent uncertainty about the truth of a proposition is not thought to make it irrelevant to any other question; why should it make it irrelevant to moral questions?

It’s not as though we have no evidence whatsoever about such questions. There are often very good grounds to suppose that an action will make someone happy (or miserable), or that someone is suffering intense pain, or that someone desires something even though he is unable to express this desire.

You argue that being able to communicate is vital to making objective moral judgments:

Three points:

(1) The statement “ouch, that really hurt” is evidence that it really hurt, but it’s hardly proof. People have been known to lie.

(2) There are other kinds of evidence as to whether someone is experiencing pain. Some of them are more reliable than the say-so of the person involved.

(3) You don’t really have to be told that hitting someone on the finger with a hammer will hurt. You are culpable for doing it the first time, regardless of whether the victim has ever told you that it hurt or asked you not to. So communication is hardly so all-important as you seem to imagine.

You ask:

Yes, they are. In fact, practically all decisions about what to do are made in the face of uncertainty. This is part of the human condition. If this rules out the possibility of objective morality, there is no such thing as objective morality. Of course, in that case there is no such thing as objective science either.

4. It appears that you still don’t seem to understand what a consequentialist moral theory is. A moral theory is consequentialist if it holds that the moral status of an act depends on its consequences. That’s it. It does not mean that its moral status depends on how it affects the agent. That’s egoism , a different kettle of fish entirely.

[Note: Many of your statements imply that there is no real difference between the two; that the “morally correct” choice will always be in the self-interest of the agent. This is so ridiculous that it is not worth discussing. This is just an attempt to evade the most basic moral issues by pretending that they don’t exist. ]

The best-known version of a consequentialist moral theory is classic utilitarianism. The most common alternative to consequentialist theories are deontological theories, which hold that the rightness of an action inheres in the intrinsic nature of the act.

Since deontological theories inherently require the existence of an intrinsic property of rightness (or “ought-to-be-doneness” as Alonzo calls it), and since no one has ever been able to give a plausible or even logically coherent account of the nature of this supposed property, most non-theists have abandoned deontological theories. Of course it is possible to have a theory which is neither consequentialist nor deontological. In fact, Alonzo’s theory seems to be in this category: it is certainly not deontological, and it seems clear to me that it isn’t consequentialist either. But I am unable to grasp why anyone would consider such a theory remotely plausible.

I still don’t know whether your moral theory is consequentialist or deontological, or neither. I tried to pin you don on this by asking:

But your answer was either confused or evasive:

But what “knowledge and understanding” are you referring to? If it’s knowledge and understanding of the consequences, it would seem that you’re a consequentialist.

On the other hand, clearly believe that humans have some innate faculty (a “conscience”) that allows them to discern some innate difference between right acts and wrong ones. This is a standard component of deontological theories, but it makes no sense for a consequentialist theory: no one imagines that there is a innate faculty that allows us to know which act will have the “best” consequences. But it’s a fantasy in any case. There is no such innate faculty. Certainly most people have a “conscience”, but it is hardly an oracle or “sixth sense” informing us of the presence of an otherwise undetectable intrinsic property of “ought-to-be-doneness”. The terrorists who flew planes into the WTC would have been troubled by their consciences if they had failed to go through with the plan.

So I ask again: you think that the “rightness” of an action depends ultimately on its consequences, or on its intrinsic nature, or on something else. In other words, is your theory consequentialist, deontological, or something else?

This is not a trick question. You should be able to give a simple, straightforward answer.

5. Even when you seem to be saying that the rightness of an act depends on consequences in some sense, you continue to equivocate between the position that the rightness depends on actual consequences and the position that it depends on intended or anticipated consequences. When I pointed out that these are different moral theories, your only comment was:

Well, if it was the morally wrong choice, your position is that “moral rightness” depends on actual consequences, not intentions.

As I said last time, no one questions that intentions are relevant to whether the agent should be praised or blamed. But this is not the same thing as saying the rightness of an act depends on the agent’s intentions or expectations. Saying that the rightness of an act depends on the expected consequences, or the intended consequences, or the actual consequences, are all very different things. Unfortunately all of them lead to somewhat paradoxical results. But it would be nice if you would at least make clear which of these, if any, is your position.

6. Your rejection of the idea that empathy might have a legitimate role in objective moral judgments seems inconsistent with your position that happiness is self-evidently “good”.

I think that empathetic understanding can provide knowledge of the likely effects of one’s actions on other people, which IMO is highly relevant to whether a given act is right or wrong. But if an act is right wrong, it would be so in most cases regardless of whether one had any such empathetic understanding.

I’m not sure whether you mean that happiness itself is subjective, or that the beliefs about how a given action will affect someone else are subjective opinions.

If you mean the former, all that I can say is that I can’t see how the effects of one’s actions on the happiness of oneself and others can be irrelevant to morality. On the contrary, it seems to me that nothing else can be ultimately relevant to morality. Indeed, as you say later:

You base your entire argument against slavery on this “self-evident” truth. so I don’t see how you can consider it to be “fallacious” to suppose that objective morality can be based on the effect of an action on the happiness of others. And if so, how in the world can empathetic understanding, which is by far the best available method of estimating what this effect will be, be ruled “out of court” as a basis for making moral decisions?

I also found the following exchange on this subject completely mystifying.

This doesn’t really answer the question of why we should completely eliminate empathy as a consideration in determining whether an act is right or wrong. If it is self-evident that happiness is good, surely it’s self-evident that producing happiness is good and that producing misery is bad? Doesn’t saying that an act is right mean that it produces a greater balance of “good” things over “bad” ones than any alternative? If not, what does it mean? What significance does calling something “good” have if it does not signify that it is right (other things being equal) to produce it? Wasn’t this the point in your slavery example: that slavery is wrong because it has a deleterious effect on the happiness of the slaves?

Now as to “commitment”, “trust”, etc.: the problem here is that there has to be some way to gauge the seriousness of a violation of a trust or the breaking of a commitment. If you loan me a nickel so that I have enough change to buy a get a drink from the Coke machine and I fail to pay it back, that’s a violation of a trust. If I fail to pick meet you at the station to drive you home after promising to do so, that’s a violation of a trust. If I repeatedly have sex with your five-year-old daughter when I’m supposedly babysitting her, that’s a violation of a trust. But surely these actions are not all equally wrong.

We normally judge the seriousness of a violation of a trust by looking at the harm done, or the risk of harm that someone was exposed to, as a result of the violation. This is especially important if one is faced with a choice of breaking a commitment to A in order to avoid having something undesirable happen to B, or if you have to break some commitment and have to decide which one.

Now in the case of child molestation, what is the harm done? Yes, the parents will be upset. But why will they be upset? Surely not just because I broke a commitment. They would probably not be quite so upset if I had promised to have the child eat some of the leftovers in the fridge but had then decided to order pizza instead. Obviously they’ll be upset because I would have done irreparable psychological harm to the child. Yet apparently this rather salient fact does not even register on the radar screen in your moral philosophy.

Besides, child molestation is not always a violation of the parents’ trust. In many cases the molester is one of the parents; in a few cases, the only living parent. What trust is being violated is this case? If none, does that mean it’s OK?

7. As we saw above, your moral philosophy seems to have difficulty dealing with people, like children, who are not competent to take care of themselves. In fact, one of your strangest replies was this one:

It’s not clear what you’re saying, but if this is actually meant as a response to my question I would have to interpret it as follows: No, beating your one-year-old daughter nearly to death is not objectively wrong. However, it would make me unhappy to se a father doing such a thing, so I’d probably try to stop him.

Have I got it right? If not, what did you mean? Is beating your one-year-old daughter to within an inch of her life objectively wrong? If so, on what grounds? (Needless to say, I’d have no trouble answering this question in the affirmative an giving very good grounds.)

When I asked whether we should respect the wishes of a madman who doesn’t want to be treated on the basis of obviously insane beliefs, you said:

In other words, we should let him die, or by extension, give treatment that is sure to kill him if that’s what he wants.

When I replied:

you responded:

This is an evasion. The case I cited was of a man who had a life-threatening condition for which he would ordinarily be treated, but who refused treatment because he thought the doctor was a space alien. The question was whether he should be treated anyway.

(1) You’re making a lot of assumptions about a situation you know next to nothing about. Why do you think you can divine the feelings and motives of the people involved?

(2) I take it that your position is that it was not objectively right to help my aunt regain her will to live. In fact, it appears that your position is that it is never objectively right to help anyone in any way unless they have expressed a specific desire for such help. Is this correct? If not, could you give an example of an exception?

(3) Your comments have nothing to do with morality. You’re just making guesses about the feelings and motives of the people involved. I cited this story originally in response to the following exchange:
The point was that your insistence on being able to “objectively determine” a person’s psychological state had led you to conclude that the “right” thing to do when someone was suicidal was to stand by and let him (or her) do it, or perhaps even to help them out. After all, a person is the best – no, the only - judge of his own best interests, isn’t he? Or at any rate, even if he isn’t we have no business trying to second-guess other people.
8. You seem to think that there is some intimate connection between morality and law. Thus:

Yes, psychological torment is subjective. Just the same it’s illegal in many cases, e.g., stalking, making harassing phone calls. And psychological torment of children is considered a form of child abuse. The reason it isn’t illegal in many cases is simply that such a law would be very difficult to enforce and would lead to an avalanche of lawsuits.

But what really troubles me is that you seem to conclude from the fact that psychological torment is subjective not only that it shouldn’t be illegal, but that it isn’t objectively wrong. Similarly lying isn’t illegal in general (and it certainly shouldn’t be), but does that mean that it’s not objectively wrong? Surely you understand that whether an act is wrong and whether it should be illegal are entirely different questions? And that morality covers a lot more human behavior than the government has any business trying to regulate?

Actually the question of what laws we should have is just another moral question; it is not the central question around which all of morality revolves.

[ June 28, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

dk

dk: People aren’t privy to doomsday because the event voids being human. To intentional set off a doomsday device is an irrational response to any threat because there’s no silver lining or second chance, nobody left to ask “How do you know?”.

bd-from-kg

Hello all:

Had company this weekend and will be visiting relatives until the Fourth. Won't be able to post more until then. See ya!

bd-from-kg

To all:

The time has finally come for the second half of my moral theory.

As we saw before, a very plausible interpretation of “X should do Y” when
“should” is used in a common non-moral sense is that X would do Y if he were perfectly rational and had enough knowledge and information.

I am going to argue that what a perfectly rational person would do if he had enough knowledge and information is to act altruistically, or as Alonzo would put it, to take the “all things considered” point of view.

This seems implausible at first sight; in fact, a number of people have pointed out that it seems more likely that the result of having more K&U would simply be to cause us to pursue our goals more efficiently. There is no obvious reason why it would be expected to cause us to pursue different goals. And this is true of the kind of knowledge that comes to mind first: abstract knowledge that certain propositions are true. But there are other kinds of knowledge, and it is not hard to see why knowledge of these kinds could change our goals.

For example, suppose that I have never had a chocolate malt until I was 21 years old, and when I tasted one I found it extraordinarily delicious. I would then acquire a new goal: the goal of enjoying a chocolate malt from time to time.

As another example, suppose that Whitkins is the son of a plantation owner who owns hundreds of slaves. He is brought up to believe that slavery is natural and just. He expects to inherit the plantation and plans on a pleasant life. However, he happens to get to know some slaves personally, and comes to understand what the life of a slave is really like. He realizes that slavery is a horrible institution and plans to free all of his slaves as soon as he inherits. Clearly Whitkins’ goals have changed as a result of increased knowledge and understanding.

Were these changes in goals logically entailed by the new K&U? No. But neither were they random, totally unpredictable results, Here there is a logical relationship between the new knowledge and understanding and the new goals. Thus it seems reasonable to say that such changes in goals are rational in a sense in which acquiring a craving for peanut butter and live spider sandwiches as a result of learning about the mating habits of sea slugs is not rational.

There is a common element in the examples above: in each case the person involved comes to understand a kind of human experience that he had not understood before. When the experience in question is someone else’s, this is often called empathy. Since empathy plays a significant role in my theory, it deserves a section of its own.

The role of empathy

Now empathy can mean different things. One meaning is identification with another person; another is understanding of that person at an intimate level. The meaning that I have in mind is the second. But it is telling that these meanings are quite commonly confused or lumped together as if they were the same thing. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary defines empathy as “Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.” The one does not logically entail the other, yet it quite commonly causes it. And this seems every bit as reasonable as the fact that seeing a green shingled house next door every day that one has stepped out the front door for twenty years causes one to expect to see it today.

But the empathy which people are commonly capable of is a pale shadow of the empathy which is theoretically possible. To illustrate, suppose that I have watched people hang gliding for hours on end and have read about it extensively but have never actually done it. Now today at last I actually hang glide. The experience is thrilling, overpowering, joyous – nothing like anything I’ve ever experienced before. The difference is that I am now experiencing hang gliding first hand. As a result, I understand what hang gliding is like in a far deeper sense than I did before.

Similarly, to actually understand another person’s situation, feelings, and motives, one would have to experience them first hand. This would be the maximum amount of knowledge and understanding that I could have of another person.

Now I submit that, if one were to attain this degree of knowledge and understanding of another person – total, perfect communion with his soul, so to speak – one would identify with his situation, feelings, and motives, and would take his interests into account equally with one’s own.

At this point it is important to understand that my claim is not merely that one should take another person’s interests into account if one happens to have a strong empathetic understanding of him. It is that one would do so if one had such an empathetic understanding, and that therefore it is rational to do so even in the absence of such an understanding, on the basis of the sixth principle of rational action described earlier: “Always try to do what you would approve of if you had sufficient knowledge and understanding.”

This is the “argument from empathy”. Now I want to buttress the claim that increased knowledge and understanding will lead to altruistic behavior with a second argument, based on what I call:

The Principle of Equality

One of the remarkable things about even a very modest amount of empathy is that it produces disproportionate results – often enormously disproportionate results – in causing the person experiencing it to take the needs and desires of the “empathee” into account. This cannot be purely the natural result of a radical increase in understanding of the other person of the kind described above, because this “primitive” level of empathy cannot be seriously said to represent any deep understanding of the person involved. What it does do is to make one far more aware than one would be otherwise of the empathee as an fellow sentient being. This awareness alone, even if there is a near-total lack of real understanding of that person, seems to cause one to take his needs and desires into account to a far greater extent than one would otherwise. Why should this be?

It is also striking that increased intelligence and understanding of other people seems to be strongly correlated with more altruistic behavior. Even more interesting is the fact that huge majorities of people regard such behavior as admirable, even though there is clearly nothing in it for them.

It is possible, of course, to explain this as merely instinctive behavior. But there are two problems with this. First, there is simply no advantage in terms of natural selection to being indiscriminately altruistic – quite the opposite - so there is no apparent explanation for why such an instinct should exist. Second, in the case of other instinctive behavior, such as a desire for vengeance, the instinct becomes considerably weaker when we recognize it for what it is, and realize that it is not to our advantage to follow it. But in this case realizing that it is not advantageous quite often does not affect the behavior, and it certainly does not cause us to regard people who “obey” this supposed “instinct”, even to the point of death, as fools or lunatics. On the contrary, most of us continue to admire them.

What could explain this seemingly irrational tendency to take the needs and desires of other sentient beings into account even when it is obvious that this is not to our advantage? I think it is because, as (somewhat) rational beings we apprehend, even if only dimly at times, the principle of equality: that it is irrational to prefer the good of any sentient being over that of another for any reason other than objective differences between them. This is the principle of “love thy neighbor as thyself”, of the Golden Rule, and of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. I submit that this principle is self-evident to a perfectly rational being, and that it is not always self-evident to us at times only because we are far from perfectly rational.

Although the facts cited above provide some evidence for the existence of such a principle, I think that it can be derived from the fundamental nature of things. But first I want to point out how nearly we already accept this principle.

It seems clear that practically everyone accepts the principle of equality so far as it applies to everyone but themselves. It is true that nearly all of us desire the good of some people other than ourselves, but it seems clear that in all such cases it is because we have more of an emotional attachment to the people whose good we favor than to those whose good we are indifferent or hostile to. Obviously doing good to those we have such an attachment to pleases us in a way that doing good to others does not; in fact, this is pretty much what it means to have an emotional attachment to someone. So in favoring their good we are really furthering our own, again in a sense in which we are not doing so when we further the good of those we are indifferent to. This is clear when we consider how we decide what to do when no one we know or care about, including ourselves, is going to be affected by a decision we have to make. In such (rare) cases we apply the principle of equality without giving it a second thought, as being the “obviously right” thing to do.

So the only real exception that we make to the principle of equality is in our own favor: we prefer our own good to that of others. And the question is whether or not it is rational to do so.

Now in a sense it is perfectly rational. First, we know our own situation better than anyone else’s, so we tend to have much more knowledge of the effects that our actions will likely have on us than the effects they will have on others. Second, we know our own needs and desires better than anyone else’s, so again we are (in general) in a much better position to know whether a given choice will do us good than we are to know whether it will do other people good. But these reasons are all based on differences in the amount of knowledge and understanding that we have about ourselves as compared to other people, and thus will tend to disappear as our knowledge and understanding (especially of other people and their situations) increases.

So the question remains: if the relevant knowledge and understanding of everyone affected by our actions were equal, would it be irrational to prefer our own good to those of others? I think that it can be cogently argued that it would. But this argument requires a bit of foundation.

When we drop a stone into the water, it makes a series of ripples. We can follow each ripple as it spreads outward until it disappears. But what is a ripple, anyway?

The water that “constitutes” a ripple is constantly changing. The water itself does not move outward, but up and down. So a “ripple” is really just a pattern, not a “physical thing”. It exists only in our minds, which is to say that it is a “mental construct”.

But human beings are just like that ripple. The matter that “constitutes” us is constantly changing; all that persists is a pattern – and even that pattern is constantly changing. In a very real sense, “I” do not exist as an entity that persists from birth to death. Or rather, “I” am a pattern, and a constantly changing one at that. And if “I” am identified with my “mind”, this is even clearer: the pattern changes much more rapidly than the mere physical constituents of my body.

Now when one pattern changes continuously to another, it is arbitrary whether we identify the pattern at time A with the pattern at time B. Think of a kaleidoscope: after a full turn it seems absurd to say that the pattern we observe is the “same” as the one we saw initially. If it is convenient to our purposes (i.e., to conceptualizing what is going on) we say that they are the “same” pattern, but has changed; otherwise that they are “different patterns”. Neither statement is “objectively true”.

In fact, from the point of view of strict logic, there is an objectively right answer, and that is that A and B are always different patterns. The only thing that relates them is that one can trace a continuous sequence of “in-between” patterns, all of which existed for an instant, with the earlier ones more closely resembling A and the later ones B.

Now in identifying the Joe Smith of 6 PM today with the Joe Smith of 11 AM tomorrow we are not recognizing an objective truth but engaging in a convenient fiction: creating a mental construct that helps us to conceptualize reality. When today’s Joe Smith thinks of tomorrow’s Joe Smith as “himself” he is merely organizing his perceptions in a way that helps him to make sense of things: basically, to predict his future perceptions more accurately. Tomorrow’s Joe Smith is, in a strict objective sense, no more “him” than I am. And therefore it is irrational for him to prefer the good of this Joe Smith of tomorrow over my good, other things being equal.

Of course, things are almost always not equal. But we quite often know enough to know that, of two choices, P and Q, P will do more good overall to those affected while Q will do more good to the future “me”. Since it is irrational (because it is based on mistaking a mental construct for an objective reality) to prefer the good of the future “me” to the good of (future) others, choosing P is rational while choosing Q is irrational. That is, the more altruistic choice is the rational one.

Of course, the fact that a choice is rational does not imply that the person in question will make it, even if he has enough knowledge and understanding to see that it is the rational choice. People have been known to act irrationally. But a person who does not even want to act rationally – i.e., to do what he knows is rational, or at least avoid doing what he knows is irrational, cannot be regarded as rational himself; we would rightly consider such a person insane.

This concludes the argument that a fully rational person with sufficient knowledge and understanding will always act altruistically. I submit that it is impossible to imagine a fully rational person who is conscious of other people’s needs, desires, and motives to the same degree as he is of his own, and who understands that the identity of his present and future self is just a convenient fiction rather than an objective reality, but who nevertheless fails to take an “all things considered” point of view in deciding what to do.

Finally we are in a position to answer the key question:

What does “should” mean when used in a moral sense?

Even though, as I have argued above, with enough knowledge and understanding any rational person will act altruistically, that does not mean that all rational persons would always make the same choice. What this means is that it is not always true that there is a well-defined “morally right” thing to do. Let’s consider this in a little more detail.

Suppose for simplicity that there are just three choices, Y1, Y2, and Y3. In some cases anyone (or any rational person) with enough knowledge and understanding, in exactly the same position as X, with exactly the same available choices with the same consequences, will choose Y1. In that case it would be true that X should do Y1 in the moral sense. But in other cases not all such people would make the same choice. If for each choice there are some such people who would make it, none of the choices is right or wrong; nothing can be truly said about what he “should” do. In still other cases some such people would choose Y1 and others Y2, but none would choose Y3. In that case we can say that X should not do Y3, but cannot say what he “should” do.

This is more than enough for now. There are further refinements to my moral theory, but this is the essence of it.

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

dk

Hey bd-from-kg:
Here’s a problem. My son Sam and his friend Frank share the same goal, to attend Harvard. They get a copy of the SAT and cheat. I discover Sam and Frank have cheated. I compel my son Sam to retake the test and use the new (lower) scores; and likely inform Frank’s parents. I empathize with my son and Frank equally, but my concentric relationship with my son directs my actions, not empathy. How can I do for my son Sam, what I am unwilling to do for Frank my son’s friend, yet in every aspect I empathize with both. What should I do?

Koyaanisqatsi

You mean no human left to ask that question. What possible difference would that make to the objective quality of the decision?

The AntiChris

bd-from-kg

Apologies for taking so long to respond, but it's taken me a while to feel I have a reasonable understanding of your theory.

For what it's worth, I find your theory a very plausible attempt to identify and explain "traditional" morality. Your use of rationality, empathy and Principle of Equality to explain what motivates us morally certainly tallies with my experience and observation of human nature.

The only area of doubt I have (and this is quite fundamental to your theory) is your conclusion that "sufficient K&U" necessarily includes a high degree of empathy. Is it truly rational to want to "feel another's pain"? On the face of it, to "seek ignorance rather than knowledge" is clearly irrational. However, empathy does appear to be a special kind of K&U which, by your own admission, has the potential to profoundly change ones desires and goals and I can't help feeling that it may not always be rational to seek this type of K&U. I'm afraid I can't back this "feeling" up with any rational arguments but I suspect that it is an element of your theory which is likely to attract the most criticism.

Objective or Subjective?

The reason I started this thread was not so much because of an interest in objective morality, but more because I wanted to find out what alternatives there might be to the standard subjectivist view as typically presented here. In particular I was interested to know how it might be possible to formulate a theory which acknowledged (at least what I perceive as) the universal nature of human morality. Your theory certainly appears to fit the bill.

I'm sure the subjectivists here wouldn't consider your theory "objective". Personally, it makes no difference to me but I'm still not sure how important it is to you that your theory is accepted as "objective".

Chris

dk

The decision to set off a doomsday device is objectively wrong because it is both irrevocable and irrational.

Koyaanisqatsi

Let's look at those two and see if your subjective opinion on what is or is not to be considered "objectively wrong" is tenable, shall we?

First, irrevocable. What are your personal reasons for why this is any kind of standard for what is or is not a moral action?

I would like to read your subjective opinion on that since, of course, it is impossible for you to simply mandate that "irrevocability" is an objective standard. You can only do what everyone else is doing in this thread, offer their own personal argument and reason behind it, thereby incontrivertably proving the necessary subjective quality to what is or is not considered moral and why.

I so enjoy laying out standards and arguing for their acceptance. It proves so eloquently exactly what morality is; an agreement between humans regarding what is or is not considered to be moral and why agreeing to those standards are subject to the better argument, instead of anything intrinsically moral (or immoral) within the actions themselves.

For example, the death penalty according to your standard would be considered immoral only to those people who agree with your standard, thereby proving there is no such thing and can be no such thing as an objective morality; the ultimate oxymoron.

In fact, a very good argument can be made that the death penalty is moral for precisely that reason--that it is irrevocable, thus inducing the maximum amount of fear in society to deter any future would be murderers from even thinking about committing such a crime.

And then again, another very good argument can be made that the deterrence quotient is not sufficient enough to outweigh the possibility that the State has executed an innocent man, thus the fact that it is an irrevocable action establishes convincingly enough that the death penalty is immoral.

And then again, a further counter argument--equally good as the others--can be made that the possibility of an innocent man being sentenced to death has decreased significantly due to advances in forensics and therefore does not outweigh the societal and familial demand for justice as expressed so eloquently in the Bible, "an eye for an eye," and that the reasonable doubt standard safeguards and justifies the availability of the death penalty, at the very least, should certain communities so desire such a sentence to be available to their local jurisprudence.

And then another argument can be made--such as the overall one being made here--that a certain group of people just have the arrogance to believe that whatever they say goes and that they have the ability to see outside of their own heads in order to simply mandate what is or is not "morally correct" and then have the audacity of conceit to declare it "objectively" true, even though every single thing they post is nothing more and can never be anything more than their own personal standard that they are simply arguing to be accepted (by consensus) as "objectively true," regardless of the fact that no such state is possible due to the inherent subjectivity of morality; aka, the true nature of morality.

As for irrational, none of the scenarios I presented were irrational uses of a doomsday device in the slightest. They were, in fact, highly rational and readily morally justified; the morality of the greater good.

[ July 11, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

bd-from-kg

dk:

It sounds to me as though you did the right thing. It’s not clear to me how your actions differ from what you think you would have done if you had sufficient K&U. It’s not my position that you actions should be dictated by emotions generated by an intimate understanding of other people, but that they should be informed by such an understanding. Or more precisely, that we should make our best guess as to what we would do if we had such an understanding.

What you can and should do for your son is different from what you can and should do for someone else’s son.

The term “empathize with” suggests that you’re confusing what I call empathy with the emotional identification with another person which this term is often used to refer to. The empathy I’m talking about is only an intimate understanding of another person; I am not referring to any emotional attachment any other kind of attitude toward the other person.

It also seems clear that you don’t understand the depth of understanding that I’m talking about. Perfect empathy with another person would involve feeling and thinking exactly what that person is feeling and thinking at every moment (while remaining aware that these are his thoughts and feelings, not yours). Even more: it involves thinking and feeling what he has thought and felt and would think and feel under various possible conditions. Obviously this degree of empathy is impossible for humans; no one even has this degree of understanding of himself, much less of others. Just the same, there seems to be no reason in principle why we can’t know any specific bit of this information, so it makes sense to talk having enough such information that more would not change our decision. In the same way, you can’t possibly know everything about every atom in an apple, but just the same you can know (with reasonable certainty) that it’s a nice, juicy, delicious apple that you’d enjoy eating.