Alonzo Fyfe

I think the confusion here comes from your use of "self-interest". Self-interest is typically understood as any interest that takes the self as an object. Your definition seems to apply to any interest that a self has as a subject -- even those interests where the object of the interest is something external.

If you were to drop the "self" part out of your term, and talk about a person's interests, your point may be clearer.

Furthermore, I would agree with you.

tronvillain

Well, ultimately every interest has the self as an object.

Alonzo Fyfe

This sounds sufficiently close to the second of the two options I presented. You seem to be saying that if Smith's assailant (let's call him Jones) had a sufficient knowledge and understanding of Smith's death that Jones would not desire to kill Smith. This, to me, sounds magical. My next challenge to you is to ask that you prove that you are talking about something real -- that these causal relationships really exist.

Because it is entirely comprehensible to me that Jones can have a perfectly good knowledge and understanding of killing Smith and have no hesitation in pulling the trigger.

Within your demonstration, I would ask that you include some account of other relevant issues.

What counts as "sufficient" knowledge and understanding. I have too much respect for your intellectual capacity to think that you would define "sufficiency" in terms of "that level which causes Jones not to kill Smith?" That's circular. But if not this, then what is it?

How did this mental function evolve? It seems more reasonable to believe that we have evolved a disposition to desire that which replicates our genes, than that we evolved a disposition to desire that which is good in itself -- unless there is a surprising coincidence between that which replicates our genes and that which is good in itself. Which means that, if it were to be the case that something that was "good in itself" caused a person to desire that which ended his or her capacity to reproduce, we would have evolved a disposition to hate that which is good in itself.

What if it were to turn out that you are wrong -- that sufficient knowledge and understanding would cause Jones to kill Smith and anybody like him under similar circumstances. Are you, then, willing to hold to your moral theory and say that Jones morally ought to kill Smith, or would you say that this implies a problem with your moral theory?

What is it about a particular pedigree that gives a desire its value? Why is a desire caused by sufficient knowledge and understanding 'better' than a desire caused by years of evolution, or a desire caused by a genetic mutation which simply structures the brain in a particular way?

Actually, I agree with a part of this -- that moral ought is intimately connected to an agent's potential desires. But the potential desires that I am concerned with are those that are in harmony with the desires of others. The pedigree of the desires is irrelevant.

I take it that you would have to add an additional clause to this that says "for all possible situations, a rational agent with a full understanding of the situation would never shoot Smith for his money."

I regret to report that I rank this statement with the statement that it would never be in a person's self-interest to kill Smith. To me, it seems quite possible for a rational agent to shoot Smith for his money. The calculation would be no different than that for any other decision a person may make.

Person A wants to make some money, and is trying to decide if he should by a few shares of FUNDX. He gathers all of the evidence, learns all of the risk factors, measure the upside potential and the downside potential, and plugs it into an equation, and it yields a conclusion. Depending on the facts, there will be cases where it is rational to purchase FUNDX, Under a different set of facts, it would be rational not to purchase FUNDX.

Person B wants to make some money, and is trying to decide if he should kill Smith for his money. He gathers all of the evidence, learns all of the risk factors, measure the upside potential and the downside potential, and plugs it into an equation, and it yields a conclusion. Depending on the facts, there will be cases where it is rational to kill Smith, Under a different set of facts, it would be rational not to kill Smith.

To say that, "For all possible situations, a rational agent with a full understanding of the situation would never shoot Smith for his money." sounds as false to me as the statement that "For all possible situations, a rational agent with a full understanding of the situation would never purchase FUNDX."

(Of course, it would be true if we begin with the assumption that FUNDX has lost an average of 20% of its value for each year of its existence, but if we limit ourselves in this way, then we are not looking at all possible situations.)

I'm afraid that you need to explain to me what it is about killing Smith which gives it relevantly different causal properties than purchasing FUNDX.

Alonzo Fyfe

Um, no.

A desire is a propositional attitude (a mental attitude toward a proposition). A proposition is a sentence, capable of being true or false. A desire is the attitude that the proposition should be true.

In other words, if person P desires that "Smith have a new car," then P has a mental attitude that the proposition "Smith has a new car" should be true. Indeed, P is moved to make it the case that "Smith has a new car" is true proportional to the strength of the desire.

To say that every interest takes the self as an object is to say that all of the propositions about which all agents in fact have an attitude are propositions reference the person having the desire.

"P desires that Smith have a new car" does not take the self as an object. It takes Smith and car as an object.

The thesis that all desires must have the self, not only as the subject, but actually as the object of desire has been repeatedly proved to have weak explanatory and predictive capability. Proponents of the self-interest thesis have demonstrated great creativity in coming up with complex sets of self-referencing desires to explain every action, but in the end they sound like the epicycles upon epicycles that ancient astronomers needed to keep the earth at the center of the solar system.

Ultimately, just as there is no limit to the propositions that can be the object of beliefs (P believes that Smith has a new car), there seems to be no limit to the propositions that can be the object of desires. And the simplest, easiest account that can be provided as to why P is buying Smith a new car is nothing more complex than P desires that Smith have a new car.

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

99Percent

Well, obviously a fundamental premise in my argument is that reality objectively exists. If you are going to want me to actually prove this, of course it is not going to be possible. Likewise my "proof" is simply a "reasonable" proof, that it is based on common sense and logic and discards subjective variables such as empathy or emotions that would undermine an argument for objective morality. I cannot of course really rigorously prove it scientifically.

OTOH, if you are going to deny that there objective reality, why are you even arguing with us?

Alonzo Fyfe

Well, he might not do it.

Your statements are not actually logically equivalent, even though you use the phrase 'in other words'. You shift from saying 'will' to 'might'. I take it that 'will' is what you are really after.

Jones might take Smith's reasons not to be killed as reasons for him not to kill Smith, if Jones had a desire to do what he ought, and took 'ought' to refer to calculations based on all of the reasons that exist for him not killing Smith regardless of who had those reasons.

But I suspect that this will not answer your challenge.

Your challenge is that my definition does not satisfy the internalist condition that moral facts must be tied in some way to the agent's motivation. My account does not do that, I admit it. But I reject internalism.

Internalism came about because of a traditional belief that moral properties were some sort of mystical force of nature that had the power to affect people who became aware of them, to cause properly-function people to avoid doing that which had a property of ought-not-to-be-doneness and to guide them to do that which had 'ought-to-be-doneness."

This mystical property is a fiction. We keep looking for something that can have this great power, and that can be found in actions such as not murdering Smith for his money or taking the cash out of my desk drawer. We keep looking for properties somehow linked to our desires. And we keep coming up empty.

To me, it is like looking for particles of gold and iron and oxygen that are without parts -- because the word 'atom' originally meant 'without parts'. Unfortunately, they don't exist. They never did.

In the case of atoms, we had three options.

Option(1), give up the search for particles of gold and iron without parts, call 'atoms' a mythical substance, invent a whole new language to discuss these mintute particles of gold and the like that did have parts.

Option(2), we could preserve that part of the meaning of the term "atom" that meant "without parts" and conclude that these particles of gold and such are not atoms -- though perhaps the parts that these particles contained (electrons, neutrons, protons) are atoms (that is, they are without parts). (We would have eventually learned that this is wrong as well.)

Option(3), we could continue to use the term 'atom' to refer to these particles of gold and iron and the like, and give up the idea that atoms do not have parts. This may confuse some people, who would assert that 'atom means 'without parts' and those who hold that atoms have parts are simply abusing language.

Now, there is no law of nature that dictates which of these optioins we select. Flip a coin, it is entirely arbitrary. Once we agree on a convention, we can move on.

Morality is the same thing. By tradition, we have long used moral terms to refer to acts such as killing Smith or taking the money out of my drawer at work as being immoral, and held that morality somehow had a necessary link to our desires. Somehow, God or nature put an intrinsic 'ought to be doneness' or 'ought not to be doneness' in these actions and any person who properly understood and perceived these states would be moved to do or forbear from the activity as appropriate.

But that's a myth. Nothing like this ever existed. So, we have three options.

Option(1). We can say that morality is a myth, invent a whole new language, and move on.

Option(2). We could preserve that part of the meaning of the term "moral" that meant "linked to the agent's desires and motives," and conclude that these acts such as murdering Smith and taking the money out of my desk drawer at work are no longer immoral -- though actions that promote the interests of an agent regardless of who else may be harmed can then properly be called moral.

Option(3), we could continue to use the term 'moral' to refer to things such as Jones murdering Smith and the act of taking money out of my desk drawer at work, and give up the idea that morality is necessarily tied to the motivation of the agent performing the action.

I select Option 3 (moral externalism). However, this is really a coin toss. There is no law of nature that dictates 3. I cannot argue that 3 is the only right, acceptable, and proper choice to make. Somebody else (e.g., PB) can just as easily assert option 2 and I cannot say he is wrong in doing so.

I can express some fears and apprehension over accepting Option 2. For the person with a sufficiently strong desire to do what he morally ought, if he accepts Option 2 for his definition of 'moral ought', then he will kill Smith and he will take the money out of my desk drawer. If he accepts Option 3 as his definition of 'moral ought' then he will not kill Smith and he will not take the money out of my desk drawer.

I can offer other arguments of the form that: We already have the concept of 'practical ought' referring to everything that exists under Option 2 and do not need two different terms with the same reference.

But these are the only types of arguments available, because now we are talking about language.

(Oh, yes, one can continue to insist on a necessary link between an agent's desires and such actions as not killing Smith or not taking the money from my drawer, just as one could have continued to argue that these smallest pieces of gold and iron did not, in fact, have any parts. But I hold out as much hope for the former as I do for the latter.)

In which case Jones killing Smith and the person who took the money out of my desk drawer did nothing wrong. Because I have no reason to suspect that they failed to fully understand the situation. And even if they did suffer from such a failure, I have even less of a reason to believe that a full understanding of the situation would have caused them not to perform the action. Indeed, their ability to understand the fact that they would not get caught was likely a significant contributor to the fact that they performed the actions they did.

One of the things that I can expect from the word 'wrong' is that it necessarily applies to such actions as Jones killing Smith and the person taking money out of my desk drawer. You can't provide this, because you make the wrongness of these actions contingent upon what a person with perfect understanding would do.

And this is where the problem lies. There is nothing on Earth -- nothing real -- that can do both of these jobs. It takes something supernatural, something mystical, to do this. It takes something like an unsplittable piece of gold or iron, something that we invented in our pre-scientific development that now turns out to have been a mistake.

This, I do not do. I distinguish moral ought from practical ought, hold that practical ought has to do with the reasons that an agent has for doing or refraining from an action, while moral ought pertains to the reasons that exist (including reasons that the agent does not have, but which other agents do have) for an agent doing or refraining from an action. I hold that practical-ought sometimes says 'do X' while moral-ought says 'do not do X'.

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

99Percent

I know intuitively why killing is wrong, I am exploring why it is objectively so. I believe in rational self interest as the only way to prove objective morality so I cannot incorporate emotions in my argument.

(to bd-from-kg)So, do you just deny it, or can you show how a full understanding would necessarily make it irrational for a rational agent to shoot Smith for his money? Say shooting Smith will get me ten million dollars - what exactly would I need to understand about the situation for me to realize that doing so would be irrational?

I think I showed it quite conclusively. Please point out exactly were I am wrong in my argument.

tronvillain

99Percent

:Alonzo Fyfe:
A desire is a propositional attitude (a mental attitude toward a proposition). A proposition is a sentence, capable of being true or false. A desire is the attitude that the proposition should be true.

But where is the desire coming from but from the self? You can never know the desire of others.

In other words, if person P desires that "Smith have a new car," then P has a mental attitude that the proposition "Smith has a new car" should be true. Indeed, P is moved to make it the case that "Smith has a new car" is true proportional to the strength of the desire.

And can be objectively be determined because a new car in this case is a material good produced by human effort which has come from the self that has the desire of producing this good. How much energy and effort are he going to invest in producing the car? This is when the proposition objectively becomes true or false.

99Percent

tronvillain: Nothing about lying about where you got the money requires you to lie to yourself, and there is nothing intrinsicly irrational about lying to others.

How can you be rational if you are not being truthful? Once you enter a situation that is based on lie, the whole foundation of your reality starts to crumble. A lie leads to another lie that leads to another lie ad infinitum.