tronvillain

Jamie_L:
What criteria are we using to judge moral systems? I would think that being true should be a big consideration, and since there does not appear to be a consequence for the person who knows they can kill and escape legal punishment...

[ November 21, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

ManM

Jamie_L,
I don't have a problem with subjective reasons. My issue is with consistency.

That makes sense, and I generally agree with it. But what happens when there is a conflict between the good of society and the good for the self? In the specific case of the murder problem, we both seem to agree that the individual should pursue the good of society even if it means denying what is good for the self. This directly contradicts the idea that it is always moral to pursue what is good for the self.

You are proposing that a person adopt a set of general rules based on self-interest, and then ignore the reason for adopting them. If the rules were adopted based on self-interest, why would you say the rules should not be broken if it were in an individual's interests to do so?

This is true, but it really does nothing for the moral theory. If a person would feel guilty for murder, then murder is immoral. If a person would not feel guilty, murder is acceptable? This does not address whether a person should feel guilty for murder. It also presents a strange circular scenario. The theory supplies the guilt through indoctrination, but the guilt is necessary for the theory to work. Unfortunately, a skeptic would easily see through the guilt artificially induced by the theory.

We act morally when we relate to others in the same manner as the persons of the Trinity relate to each other. That is my theistic vision of morality.

99Percent

Fortunately murder in our modern times is pretty much accepted intersubjectively as wrong although different people say so for many different reasons, most of them religious.

But the problem arises when these same reasons, religious or not, are applied forcefully on to other moral aspects of our society such as prostitution, adultery, pot smoking etc, acts which are turned into crimes because the majority of people say it is immoral according to their subjective individual values. However if you apply nontheistic objective morality these are not immoral. And I am not saying this just because its my "version" of subjective morality of which I am just arbitrarily saying its objective. The proof lies on the fact that these examples are consensual victimless crimes.

Jamie_L

Hmmm...

Good responses all.

It's clear to me that what I'm trying to say is not clear to me, much less to others. But that's the point of philosophizing, I suppose. To work through the muddle in one's head, and how it relates to the muddle in other people's heads.

I guess, the answer to my OP is that YES, a moral system does need an answer to all these moral situations. And furthermore, the system I described DOES have such an answer, although argueably perhaps an inadequate answer, or one that I haven't explained clearly enough or thought about long enough.

Off to ponder morality further...

Jamie

99Percent

The result is the same. You are still hiding what you did. The point is that if you do something of which you would need to later lie about it then its something that is not valid to do, you cannot keep on doing it, just like stealing, or cheating. If you get away with it, you keep on doing it and eventually you will get caught, with all the gains lost.

Its not certain that you will lose, in fact it might look very certain in some situations that you can get away from it, which makes the act very ponderable but thats the point of having an objective moral code - to guide you on these uncertainties.

bd-from-kg

Jamie_L:

On rereading your OP I think that I may have misinterpreted it. Originally I read it as asking whether a moral system needs to give a motive for not murdering. But actually you seem to be asking whether a moral system must show that doing wrong will always have negative consequences for the agent. Thus:

But this is definitely wrong. It’s not the business of a moral system to “provide a negative result” for every wrongful act; that is, to show that it is always in the individual’s self-interest to “do the right thing”. The only possible ways to do this, so far as I can see, are (1) invent an imaginary “enforcer”, such as God, who will supposedly “set things right” whenever a wrongful act seems to benefit the agent (presumably by punishing him secretly), or (2) invent an imaginary “cosmic principle” whereby all wrongful acts somehow ultimately cause harm to the wrongdoer in this life, even though this harm is often completely invisible to everyone else. For example, it is sometimes argued that wrongful acts harm the wrongdoer by corrupting his “character”, where “character” is defined as a metaphysical entity that actually exists in some sense, as opposed to merely being a convenient name for the individual’s propensities. (I think that this is the sort of thing that 99percent really has in mind, since, as tronvillain points out, it is utterly implausible that the effects of lying are necessarily harmful to the liar on net balance if they are assessed in any sort of “normal” way.)

Neither of these approaches is at all convincing, for the obvious reason that they both depend on the assertion that the universe is fundamentally different from the way it appears to be, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is so.

But I think that your version of the question involves a misunderstanding of the point that is usually being when someone poses the question you cite. I think that the question that is almost always meant is: “[If there is no objective morality,] if murder will benefit someone, what reason (in the sense of motive) does he have not to do it?” (Which is why I interpreted it this way in the first place.) Now if the only possible rational reason for not doing something is that it’s not in one’s self-interest, there is no possible answer to this question, since it stipulates that murder is in the self-interest of the person in question. And the assumption is that absent an objective morality, there can be no rational reason for acting against one’s own self-interest.

But this assumption is simply false. (Listen up, tronvillain!) There is absolutely no reason to suppose that it is more rational to act on one’s self-interested impulses than on one’s more altruistic ones. And if anyone cares to dispute this, I challenge him to give one single reason for supposing that it is.

Thus, let’s ignore (for the moment) your assumption that society has erected a moral system of some sort, and suppose simply that society has set up an environment for its children which tends to strengthen the more altruistic, compassionate, outward-looking sentiments and impulses and discourages an excessive concern about personal self-interest; that it encourages empathy and concern for others, etc. Can this “work”? In principle, yes. And we may legitimately hope that such a system will someday be found that actually produces “moral” behavior for the “best” of reasons – by nurturing the “best that is in us” and bringing out the “angels of our better natures”. Unfortunately, no society has yet been able to make this kind of system work without an additional component: a “moral law” that is supposed to be obeyed, typically for some completely irrational reason such as the supposed existence of a “cosmic enforcer”.

It would seem that (at this point in human history at any rate) our “outward-looking” impulses are not nearly strong enough to outweigh the more selfish ones. So in order to produce at least a minimal level of social harmony, it is necessary, besides strengthening our more altruistic impulses, to create every possible self-interested motive for taking into account the effects of our actions on others.

But these are practical concerns. So far as a moral system is concerned, it is not charged with creating a perfect society, or even an orderly one, but it does have to give a good reason for “doing the right thing” – one that a rational person can reasonably be expected to find persuasive. And this means that the reason must be such as to provide a rational motive for doing what one should. It’s not good enough merely to point out that everyone is safer, or society “works better”, if everyone refrains from murder, because this does not, in itself, supply a motive for refraining from murder. (Or rather, it supplies a self-interested motive of sorts: one is better off living in an orderly society, etc.. But this is far weaker than the self-interested motive that a person will have for killing someone in many cases, and it offers no reason to act on the weaker motive rather than the stronger one.)

The problem is that no reason is offered as to why a rational person would find the fact that murdering someone is “bad for society” or produces “bad” effects on other people that outweigh the “good” effects for himself, to be a motive for refraining from murder. The usual recourse at this point is to argue that (usually) given the way things are, murder will have bad effects on the murderer that outweigh the good effects. In other words, there are often self-interested reasons for “doing the right thing”. The problem here is that the self-interested reasons for doing the wrong thing quite often outweigh the self-interested reasons for doing the right one. And it seems clear to me that most of the people who take this approach vastly underestimate how often this is true.

A much better approach (IMHO) is to show that there really are, after all, convincing reasons why a sufficiently rational person with enough knowledge and understanding would find the bad effects on other people to be a compelling motive in itself to refrain from murder. In other words, I think that the key is to show that a sufficiently rational person with enough knowledge and understanding would choose not to murder (and more generally, to “do the right thing”). Thus we can forget about the self-interested reasons for acting morally; the altruistic reasons for doing so will be compelling to a sufficiently rational person. Or in other words, ultimately the reason for acting morally is that it is rational to do so, and irrational to do otherwise.

99Percent

Lets forget about society for minute. Lets suppose you live in a desert island with a fellow man, just like yourself. You must share the resources of this island with that man in order to survive. The most immediate enticing thing to do would be to murder the man and then you will have the whole island by yourself right? But on second rational thought you stand to gain a lot more if you actually share the island. Both of you can produce and mine the resources and make 1+1 greater than 2. Also to consider are the social gains. Life can be a lot more bearable if you can share stories, exchange ideas, play chess with each other, etc.

The other possibility is that the other man is much more productive than you are. He in a very short time gains a lot more economic resources than you did, so it becomes even more enticing to murder the man and take away these resources right? Wrong again because you actually eliminate a source of wealth of which you will no longer be able to benefit indirectly yourself.

The third possibility is that the other man is much less productive than you are, he in effect seems to be a leech. Here the question is finding the redeeming feature of a person. And no person is worse than nothing, we all can think and reason and create something. Perhaps he is not so good at fishing, but maybe he can entertain you with good jokes or some philosophical discussions? Its a matter of communicating desires and reasoning out between each other.

The fourth possibility is that the other man is not as reasonable as you and in fact decides to take over the whole island and to kill you after all. Here you have no recourse but to kill him before he kills you. This is the principle of defeating the initiation of force.

You can then apply this pure anology in real life, and this is what I mean by rational self interest as a valid moral code. No need to use altruism or even empathy as a reason for not commiting murder.

bd-from-kg

99Percent:

I won't bother to deconstruct your example. Let's just focus on this one thing. What's wrong with using altruism or empathy as the basis for a moral code? Why do you, like so many people, seem to think that "rational" and "self-interest" go together like "Cheech" and "Chong"? What's especially rational about acting self-interestedly? What's irrational about acting altruistically? And don't waste my time by replying that acting altruistically is sometimes in one's self-interest. That's not my point. My point is, why do you think it necessary to "justify" altruism by showing that it can be in one's self-interest? In fact, how does this serve to "justify" it at all?

MadMordigan

What's especially rational about acting self-interestedly? What's irrational about acting altruistically?

I agree. I hope you will rationally and altruistically send me your life savings.

There is absolutely no reason to suppose that it is more rational to act on one’s self-interested impulses than on one’s more altruistic ones. And if anyone cares to dispute this, I challenge him to give one single reason for supposing that it is.

Keeping your own money to yourself FEELS better to you than altruistically giving it to me. I am quite happy to be proven wrong.

Jamie_L

bd-from-kg:

Do you have convincing reason why a person should find it rational to do the altruistic thing? I ask this seriously, as it's not something I've seen frequently 'round these parts. If you've already gone over them in a past thread, feel free to point me to it. I would be very interested.

Jamie

[ November 22, 2002: Message edited by: Jamie_L ]</p>