7thangel

Concept of Morality

I am puzzled by the arguments about morality. My observation is that they debate morality on the basis of mere existence. Thus came the argument, truth is relative; we do not differ from animals, therefore killing chicken is considered as murder; what is true to you is not true to me. In such case, I would say that the true concept of morality does not really even exist.

Morality is assigning a value of anything in proportion to a good objective. In our objective of peace, we say it is not good to kill. But it is good to kill those who destroy peace. Because the objective of living in peace can only be achieved in those who promote in themselves the objective of peace. In this case, the morality is the objective of living in peace, not the killing of men. The concept of morality is valuing a good end, not valuing a thing. So, evil men are of no value according to morality.

Wisdom, if it is not the morality itself, is probably the parallel of morality. Wisdom is the use of knowledge to the best end. The “best end,” IMO, is what morality is about, and which, I believe, is objective.

The dilemma in promoting morality is understanding morality itself. And to enforce morality is somewhat absurd to those ignorant of it. And though we find people who are ignorant of morality, morality itself dictates that we should hope that somehow, someway, they come to understand its concept. But when the inevitable comes unto hopelessness of a person to be bearable, and become threat himself to the objectives of morality, we extinguish him.

Any thoughts?

sweep

so all persons are worthless, unless they adhere to the objective of peace, in which case our true value depends on our contribution to peace. But, if something is worthless, it doesn't mean that it is good or bad, only that we don't care about it. I don't like someone who destroys my family, they have no value to me, but they do affect me to the extent of altering my objectives.

But, not in all cases is peace the objective, nor can I explain why peace is good, other than the fact that life cannot exist without care. So care is the objective, and life can be good, life feels good, otherwise you will die. Destruction is not the objective, otherwise life moves backwards, in the sense that growth takes time and energy. If that time and energy are wasted, it is neither good nor bad, but it doesn't help those involved to feel good about life or living.

If someone kills your child, try telling yourself that it isn't bad. Of course, someone else comes along and tells you it is good, and the facts show that people have eaten babies and destroyed ones that might be disabled (defective products) but in general, it is bad to destroy life, where growth improves life and investment in life produces the potential for further investment.

I cannot think of a case, other than instances in which the destruction of life prevents wasted time and energy, insofar as supporting an idle life (non-reciprocal altruism as opposed to reciprocal altruism) where destruction for the sake of destruction is good, in terms of creating the potential for the extension of life: If I use the analogy of a fire eating fuel as it travels, you can see that the fire grows and my logic becomes void. But the fuel is a limited resource, and the fire eventually dies. In the long run, the proportion of energy consumed compared with the energy given- (lets say that the fire makes the land more fertile)

In a case where famine is averted by destroying some of the population, in the long run a great deal of suffering is avoided, making the kill 'good'. Death isn't a 'bad' thing, it is natural, so killing can serve a higher purpose, not one dictated by an external power, yet external to our perception. Perhaps we envy those who exist outside of our time frame: "I'm not going anywhere, so I'll make sure no one else does"

In conclusion, if the energy spend yields no long term benefits, or the input outweighs the output, then life goes backwards, which is not productive and, thereby, not good for life or living.

long winded fool

Interesting paper. Is it logical to risk doing something definitely "evil" (makes life go backwards) for the sake of a long term benefit that may or may not come to pass? Killing a large portion of a population could conceivably relieve famine and save millions in the future, but what if it doesn't? What if it results in a bloody revolt which strips the land of life? Then this moral thing becomes immoral. On the other hand, how long term do the benefits have to be? Even ground zero of a nuclear explosion in the middle of a populated city might one day fill with water and become fertile with life again. It would seem that, since humans can't predict the future with absolute certainty, doing a temporary "evil" on the assumption of a greater good would never be a moral thing to do. Wouldn't any good that comes from it technically be incidental if you can't know for sure?

The Nazis have taught the world the value of human life and the silliness of racism and religious intolerance. It is conceivable that if Hitler had never commited genocide, that we might not have learned this lesson and that a parallel situation would have arisien in modern times with the widespread availibility of weapons of mass destruction. In this scenario, Hitler did the moral thing. His energy spend yeilded long term benefits for life with the sacrifice of a smaller chunk of life. (Assuming that the addition of modern nukes and chemical weapons to the Nazi war machine would have killed far more humans than did the concentration camps alone.) A smaller number was sacrificed for a larger number in this case.

Since I don't know what course history would have taken without the Nazis, and since I don't know what course history will take if I attempt to solve a problem with a temporary evil, doing evil of any kind regardless of motive and regardless of outcome seems to be immoral.

sweep

the insights you raised, LWF, are equally interesting, and you considered exactly as I did, that we don't know the future. As much as I tried to offer a umbrella formula that encompasses behaviour in its essence, as right and wrong, or forward and back, it doesn't change individual views on what is good or bad.

Right- doing a temporary evil, on the assumption that a grand apocalyptic event is evil, wouldn't be a safe bet. That was one of the points I raised, using uncontrolled fire as an example of invested energy. But if the energy invested upon a single life, is vast, and the long term output barren (take, for example, a child murderer such as ted bundy) then the effects might only be, as you put it, incidental. Then we ask what good can come of it, and you raise the point of history as a teacher to future generations.

If I use the analogy of a nuclear event, then the exchange of energy [looking at the time spend on building the population, the families, the gene pool, the culture etc] is vastly disproportionate as a measure of time: In a moments madness, ten years work can be ruined <Just when I deleted a sentence a moment ago that took four minute to create. Not comparable but less extreme to make a point Here; you can see that morality seems, at least to me, out of the question. Perhaps some would agree that it would be bad or foolish to burn ten years work in a few seconds> That is what child sex offenders do, they take many years of investment and burn it for the sake of a quick fix. Sadly, child investment is lacking- the input is low and the output lower still, which, I suppose, means that life is going backwards to some extent.

having said all this, perhaps I will go have a multiplayer shoot up and twoddle my knob for a while *ahem*, and before I know it: "damn! I've been watching the monitor for so long, and where did it take me. Am I wasting my life: YES. Am I having fun: YES. Am I being creative: NO"

Just so that everyone who reads this knows- the happiest I ever was <writing my book> Creativity is life (IMO) - writing IMO in full is a waste of time which is why shorthand rocks. *zip*

7thangel

LWD and Sweep:

I guess the interesting things you both said is very much apt to my last paragraph. Because if everyone knows morality, we would have a certain desired outcome of the future. The very least is that working together to achieve a good desired outcome is moral itself, though we may fail.

Starboy

Hi 7thangel,

It appears that morals are a classification of behaviors and outcomes into categories of “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “bad”. This begs the question, good or bad for what? Such a classification implies a social agenda. I say this because if they only applied to outcomes of concern for individuals only, they would not exist. If this is so, then one should only expect to find moral codes in animals that are social creatures. I suspect that morals form a kind of regulating connective tissue for the social body. If so then they exist to serve the purposes of the social body even to the exclusion of the needs of individuals. My guess is they are a direct byproduct of evolution and that humans are probably not alone in having and practicing morals. If this is so then they can be studied scientifically and perhaps compared. Models could be constructed that might predict what morals social groups of animals would have based on the particular circumstances of that species in its environment. Viewed this way morals would appear to be relative, however from the point of view of a particular individual in a group, if the group culture worked well then they would appear to be absolute. In the case of Christians, group culture appears to work very well.

Starboy

sweep

perhaps this ties in with what you are saying insofar as social agenda, starboy: the following passage from Stephen Pinker, The blank slate:

[Tetlock ponts out that it is in the very nature of our commitments to other people to deny that we can put a price on them: "To transgress these normative boundaries, to attach a monetary value to one's friendships or one's children or one's loyalty to one's country, is to disqualify oneself from certain societal roles, to demonstrate that one just 'doesn't get it'-one does not understand what it means to be a true friend or parent or citizen." Taboo trade-offs, which pit a sacred value against a secular one (such as money), are "morally corrosive: the longer one contemplates indecent proposals, the more irreparably one compromises one's moral identity."

Unfortunately, a psychology that treats some desiderata as having infinite value can lead to absurdities. Tetlock reviews some examples. The Delaney Clause of the Food and drug act of 1958 sought to improve public health by banning all new food additives for which there was any risk of carcinogenicity. That sounded good but wasn't. The policy left people exposed to more dangerous food additives that were already on the market, it created an incetive for manufacturers to introduce new dangerous additives as long as they were not carcinogenic, and it outlawed products that could have saved more lives than they put at risk, such as the saccharin used by diabetics. Similarly, after the discovery of hazardous waste at the Love Canal in 1968, Congress passed the Superfund Act, which required the complete cleanup of all hazardous waste sites. It turned out to cost millions of dollars to clean up the last 10 percent of the waste at a given site - money that could have been spent on cleaning up other sites or reducing other health risks. So the lavish fund went bankrupt before even a fraction of its sites could be decontaminated, and its effect on Americans' health was debatable. After the Exxon Valdez oil spil, four-fifths of the respondents in one poll said that the country should pursue greater environmental protection "regardless of cost." Taken literally, that meant they were prepared to shut down all schools, hospitals, and police and fire stations, stop funding social programs, medical research, foreign aid, and national defense, or raise the income tax rate to 99 percent, it that is what it would have cost to protect the environment.]


In line with my previous comments on input and output, it would seem that the greater good comes at a great cost, in particular to short progress, and it would mean the sacrifice of some kinds or progress in favour of others.

During the second world war, there were many different kinds of inputs occurring, and initially, I could see that the input meant more violence. But then I considered the different kinds of outputs, in terms of agricultural and industrial production and, despite the fact that the war machine grew, technological progression was at it greatest. The violence itself was not the progression; in its wake materials and life fell apart. If our objective is not to frown, which essentially means life is worth living then peace must be the ultimate objective. Pursuit of war has increased efforts and created variety in some ways, such as aviation and food output, yet at the cost of life (less variety of wildlife, due to pesticide and its accumulative poisonous effects -see the "great food gamble" (I'll find the author/publisher If anyone asks). Violence feeds other violence, but it relies on other sources to perpetuate itself. Violence doesn't make people smile, which means that life isn't good- perhaps one objective measure of morality; if you aren't smiling it isn't good Violence doesn't create anything but more violence, which extents to our sense of retribution or punishment. Essentially violence reduces variety at a great cost.

women get childbirth, men get war; life and death

Starboy

sweep, your post brings up the question of interaction of social valuation systems. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you understand that there are claims made by moralists that ethical valuation does not allow the use of other systems of valuation such as economics. But your example clearly points out that moral valuation systems do indeed interact with other valuation systems such as economics. I suspect that all socially based valuation systems interact and that there is no such thing as a purely moral valuation.

Starboy

sweep

yes, that is one of the issues in the passage, and that it is difficult to make choices solely on a moral evaluation system without bringing economical and political considerations into the fray:

"Tetlock obseves that these fiascoes came about because any politicians who honestly presented the inexorable tradeoffs would be crucified for violating a taboo. He would be guilty of "tolerating poisons in our food and water," or worse, "putting a dollar value on human life." Policy analysts note that we are stuck with wasteful and inegalitarian entitlement programs beacuse any politician who tried to reform them would be committing poitical suicide. Savvy opponents would frame the reform in the language of taboo: "breaking our faith with the elderly," "betraying the sacred trust of veterans who risked their lives for their country," "scrimping on the care and education of the young."

again from my current fave book: Stephen Pinker, the blank slate.

Starboy

sweep, I think that your quote does bring up the issue of the difference between the task of evaluation (moral or otherwise) and the task of social decision. The example you cite illustrates how evaluation systems come into conflict and as a result a social decision may not be made. It seems to me that only those social decisions where the decision makers agree the decision must be made can overcome any conflict that may exist between the evaluation systems. So in the examples you cite, because we as a society live in relatively "fat" times, there is not enough sentiment to support decisions that would make better economic use of our resources. It has been my experience that we all tend to behave this way, so it is not surprising that it should manifest itself at a national scale.

Starboy