John M3

What is happyness? Its satisfaction. Whats that? I think it is fulfillment. Fulfillment of what? Wants.

A moral principle is: A rule that regulates the behaviour of one or more agents such that they may reach a given goal.

If there is an ultimate goal, then there is an ultimate morality. If not, morality is relative and everything is worthless (in my oppinion).

DigitalDruid

My reason for pointing out that it is not a moral principle by itself was to characterize it and take that as the starting point of my analysis. I didn't mean to say you positioned it is a moral principle by itself.

You came up with an interesting meta-principle. It's a good exercise to grapple with it for anyone who likes to think about such things.

Ted Hoffman

Some define hapiness as "getting what we want"
Some define happiness as lack of desire.
Moral principles dont just involve the means to the goal of happiness, but ensuring the means does not make others unhappy.
It's about the welfare of others as we take care of our own happiness.

DC: "especially amongst a group of people."

I think you missed that part. Society or a direct community is not composed of just 100 Christians.

Intensity : If its a social construct that is governed by a group of people, then it is a law, NOT a moral principle. Morality's strength depends on the acceptance by an individual.

Who is it that decides morality is "...with the purpose of maximizing happiness..."? the group of people or the individual? If its a group of people, then we are talking law, NOT morality.

I think its misleading and incorrect to conflate the happiness of an individual and that of a group of people.

DC: No. That is why I included the word "purpose." "Purpose" notes "intention" inherently.

Intensity : Purpose is NOT synonymous with Motive. You know this. Redress my response please.
I can shoot you with the purpose of killing you. My motive might be to eliminate the threat you create, or to (using the earlier hypothetical situation) rescue the kids you have been torturing in your basement.

Later...

Ted Hoffman

The motive is the [primal] driving force that compels one to perform a certain action which gives the individual a certain stasis or satisfaction.

DC : Again you didn't account for purpose. At the time you killed me you didn't know about the city or the children. Indeed at that time it was immoral and didn't serve the purpose of maximizing happiness and reducing suffering.

Intensity : So would it be an immoral act nevertheless? Because if it were, that would be inconsistent with your definition since the act has created happiness and reduced pain - dont you agree?

DC : I don't see that as a problem because moral action neessarily occurs in a world of conflicting interests and people ALWAYS take actions based on limited information. Further, different people have different information available to them so they might necessarily make different conclusions. That is true regardless of what moral principles are picked.

Intensity : So can a set of principles still qualify as moral principles even if they dont minimize pain and minimize pain? If intent is the major criteria?
Of what utilitarian or practical value then would moral principles be in such a case? (I am now moving toward Ayn Rand)
It would make morality a state of mind - an "ought" that completely engulfs and overrides an "is". It would also make morality static.

DC : It may not be clear what action will minimize and maximize. In fact this ambiguity seems to be confirmed by our experience because, as a matter of fact, the right or wrong thing in many situation is not clear.

Intensity : Your definition/ description doesn't address this human fallibility factor thats why I brought it up because it seems to hold purpose not results as the driving force behind morality.

DC : I do but I think your objections mix confirmable facts of the world which are uncomfortable with the proposed principle.

Intensity : They were meant to. Perhaps I am trying to say that your definition is not "practical" - ie it makes morality elusive. Its self-subverting: it obfuscates what its meant to elucidate. In that sense, it fails because it fails to capture the actual definition and application of moral principles.
Or perhaps morality is just a slippery filed?

Rusting Car Bumper

Ahh. I Grok.

DC

Rusting Car Bumper

Yes but morality concerns interactions between individuals. If there was only one person then there would be no morality worth speaking of.

You are simply implying something that is not stated in the principle I proposed. Simply because the judgement of what might constitutes happiness is made neccesarily by an individual does not mean that the individual cannot consider what happiness is with regard to a larger scope of people.

Of course individuals make decisions. Thats a trivial fact.

I don't know what this means. I was simply proposing the principle. I wasn't conflating anything.

I think you merely equivocate the word "purpose" as used.

DC

[ November 06, 2002: Message edited by: DigitalChicken ]</p>

John M3

Yea, that’s funny isn’t it... to want to not want and then claim that one doesn’t want. I think a Buddha would have to agree that they derive pleasure in their freedom from it.

Yea, I never said that the goal was happiness. I was, in fact, also pointing out the inadequacy of using the term when morality applies to much more. It is the ethical code that propitiates the achievement of a goal. From this, satisfaction CAN come.

Yet the above does not speak to whether or not there is a universal ethic to which all sentient beings of similar stature must abide. That’s another argument.


We could easily switch that statement around and it would still work:

"I can shoot you with the motive of killing. My purpose might be to eliminate the threat you create..."

Rusting Car Bumper

No. Where did I say "the act has created happiness or reduced pain"?

I didn't use the word "pain". You are equivocating frequently.

Since I didn't make that claim I wouldn't know.


Forgive me for not bringing up trivial facts.

On the second part certainly you can't say results are the judgement of whether an action is moral?! We can dredge up thousands of scenarios where actions turned out quite horribly but our impressions are that nobody did anything wrong. Poor outcomes are often a matter of circumstance beyond the control of the individual.

Morality is somewhat elusive. That doen't make it impractical necessarily. The principle doesn't make it that way. It is that way and as such the principle accounts for what we observe in the world.

However, morality *is* at times impractical. War for example. Taking actions in war often result in the individual having no good options. For example, he either dies or he participates in killing which may result in the killing of innocents.

Nonsense. The purpose was to make sense of what we experience in the world.

Part of discussing morality is deciding what the definition actually is. If were a clear and crisp definition then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Thus, critisizing it for not accounting for "the actual definition" is circular because the defintion is what is at issue.

DC

Ted Hoffman

&lt;Chuckle, chuckle&gt; Okay folks, okay. Gotta go. Perhaps I will post again later.

[ November 06, 2002: Message edited by: Intensity ]</p>

Ted Hoffman

Okey-dokie.
DC :Yes but morality concerns interactions between individuals. If there was only one person then there would be no morality worth speaking of.

Intensity : This still doesn't address my concern. I think you are prevaricating. I asked "whose happiness?" - the individuals or the groups' happiness? You answered "especially amongst a group of people" - happiness doesnt exist amongst a group of people. A group of people can be happy and an individual can be happy but to say there is happiness amongst a group of people doesn't make sense.

Intensity stated earlier : Who is it that decides morality is "...with the purpose of maximizing happiness..."? the group of people or the individual? If its a group of people, then we are talking law, NOT morality.

DC's response : You are simply implying something that is not stated in the principle I proposed. Simply because the judgement of what might constitutes happiness is made neccesarily by an individual does not mean that the individual cannot consider what happiness is with regard to a larger scope of people.

Of course individuals make decisions. Thats a trivial fact.

Intensity : In Fascist governments and in dictatorships, individuals make decisions and people get unhappy (irrespective of the decision makers' intentions). Its not a trivial fact. The way the decision is made, and whose interest it serves is of great importance.

Intensity :I think its misleading and incorrect to conflate the happiness of an individual and that of a group of people.

DC : I don't know what this means. I was simply proposing the principle. I wasn't conflating anything.

Intensity : You said "happiness especially amongst a group of people".

I ask again, 'whose' happiness? (as opposed to 'where' is that happiness - to which you would respond "amongst a group of people")
And on the same point, do you agree that it doesnt follow that if a group of people is happy, not all individuals within the group are happy?

DC : I think you merely equivocate the word "purpose" as used.
John M3 : We could easily switch that statement around and it would still work:

"I can shoot you with the motive of killing. My purpose might be to eliminate the threat you create..."

Intensity : Now about motive and purpose. Our motives are our feelings, desires, emotions and natural inclinations. Motive is goal-creating and goal-propelling and purpose is goal-achieving. The motive is the one that provides a driving force that will activate/ compel/ necessitate action towards a purpose. The motive is the desire to achieve a need. It bubbles from within then one must act externally and "purposefully" to fulfil that desire. The motive is the one that propels a man enjoying his sleep to cut it short and rise up with the purpose of going to work.

Need I say more?
Going by that shooting example: the purpose of shooting a man through the head is always to kill. But the motives are not always the same. A soldier shooting another in a battlefield has totally different motives from a hired murderer shooting a man in a hotel room and that murderer also has very different motives from a kid who shoots his father after being abusd by him all his life. But the purpose is the same: to kill.

The purpose is goal-orientedness of an act devoid of emotions. If I start chocking (action) you someone will cry "Oh my God he is killing him!" (purpose). After my hands have been pried from your neck I will be asked "why were you trying to kill him?" (motive).
Most actions achieve certain known purposes. Though our motives propel us to choose certain lines of action, those actions do not always achieve the intended purpose/desires so motive does not equal purpose.

For example, I might kill my (ex)GF's BF hoping (motive) that she will then come back to me. If she hates me more instead, or commits suicide, then that act will have achieved an unintended purpose. It will not have acieved the desired purpose.

DC : No. Where did I say "the act has created happiness or reduced pain"?

Intensity : Isn't unhappiness pain? Are you denying that if I kill a man who was torturing children in his basement and was planning to blow up a town, I have not maximized happiness (Oh, the family reunions of the lost and found kids, the tearful reliefs of the lives of the towns people, the relieved sheriff who doesnt need to keep the "Missing" files open anymore...me, getting a medal for valour etc) and minimized unhappiness (ten little girls, malnourished, scared, kept from their families...)?

You can't mix intention with results. Unless this is a new kind or morality. Your morality is either results driven, or intention-driven. They dont have to be mutually exclusive, but its important to note that you cant be guided by both in making moral decisions because the moral agent would be locked in dilemmas many times and will have to resort to arbitrary means for arriving at moral decisions.

PS:
A rational agents actions(linked to purpose) must ultimately derive from his motives/ desires.

On this same desire/ motive topic, moral acts are supposed to be carried out in response to the demands of an agents moral principles regardless of the agent's feelings or inclinations.

For example, Mother Teresa, moved by her deep empathy and sympathy for the poor, will not be acting morally by helping the poor (though I understand she only did it because she beleived God wanted her to do so and that she only prayed for them), but if she acts out of a moral obligation and sense of duty, then her acts would be truly moral.
This is what distinguishes moral reasoning from prudential (rationality of self-interest) and natural (emotional, empathic, desire-based) action or "morality".