Wiploc
Veteran Member
Can you provide evidence for this claim?Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths
Which part are you challenging?
Can you provide evidence for this claim?Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths
... chimps are living breathing proof that you can have moral intuitions without language ...
Can you provide evidence for this claim?Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths
Which part are you challenging?
Can you provide evidence for this claim?Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths
Which part are you challenging?
The second sentence. The first was left in merely as context.
In other words, the concern for other people's happiness isn't there.Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others.
a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
random web page said:Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities.
random web page said:Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause.
random web page said:do not usually care about other people. They think mainly of themselves
random web page said:lack of moral sense
random web page said:Sociopaths are incapable of feeling shame, guilt or remorse. Their brains simply lack the circuitry to process such emotions. This allows them to betray people, threaten people or harm people without giving it a second thought. They pursue any action that serves their own self interest even if it seriously harms others. This is why you will find many very "successful" sociopaths in high levels of government, in any nation.
random web page said:Lacks empathy - doesn't care about hurting others; and/or
Unbeatable said:But while I'm at it, how precisely do you operationally define "agreeing with that goal"?
In part. This is about me getting side-tracked (by my pet peeve about people misusing terms like "sociopath" to pathologize/dismiss my perspective) from the fact that my main objections are on a semantic level, to this whole business of you defining moral discussion as being about X and only X. A more reasonable reaction would've been to just ignore people like you and Harris, as I'm not opposed to you lot trying to figure out how to increase human well-being, but it doesn't seem that we necessarily have anything to offer one another.But I'm not a doctor, and don't even play one on TV, so I'm happy to concede that my usage is a layman's usage. Is that what this is about?
Then we're definitely talking about different things, because I am sure as hell not talking about survival instincts and gene propagation. I'm talking about moral intuitions; what are you talking about? You appear to have an idee fixe that morality has to be goal-oriented; you're keyword searching to find a clue as to what goal I must think morality is the pursuit of; and you picked survival instincts and gene propagation because I used the keyword "chimp". I said "chimp" not as a codeword for Darwinian evolution but because chimps are living breathing proof that you can have moral intuitions without language, which means moral intuitions are not founded on statements and conditionals.They're intuitions! They're not founded on statements at all. ... People don't say it because they have a problem with unnecessary pain. People say it because they feel hyperprotective of children, and if you hurt one they'll feel a strong urge to dish out some unnecessary pain on you. Moral imperatives are categorical. You're trying to reinterpret them as hypothetical because that's something you know how to analyze; but when you do that they aren't moral imperatives any more.They are founded upon value-laden statements <snip>
In this case, contrary to my reply to Wiploc, I think we are truly talking about different things. I don't disagree that the origins of morality are rooted in survival instincts that have evolved to propagate our genes. I just don't think that's a relevant determinant of what we ought to do.
"Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above." - The African QueenTo me, the central defining feature of morality is going beyond our Darwinian predispositions, taking advantage of the ones that serve a shared purpose and subjugating those that are contrary to it.
The trouble with that viewpoint is that Katharine Hepburn was playing a religious wacko. There isn't any god defining what's above nature; and even if there were, his holding the opinion that X is above nature wouldn't make it so; there's a current thread on that topic. What the heck makes you think when you pick a purpose and find someone to share it with you're "going beyond" anything? Where are you going to get this purpose? Pure Reason? As Hume pointed out, reason is the slave of the passions. Your choice of a purpose to which you'll subjugate some of your Darwinian predispositions is driven by how others of your Darwinian predispositions react to your environment, same as the reactions of that angry chimp.
Why is that the important part? Why does it need a purpose at all? That sounds like a recipe for a "The end justifies the means" morality.But the important part is that there's a purpose, which requires dialogue, a hashing out of options, etc.
At its best? At its best by what standard? A moral standard? Is "Don't hurt that kid if you want to avoid unnecessary suffering." morally better than "Don't hurt that kid."?Morality at its best is indeed advice, particularly when informed by evidence.
I don't disagree; the question isn't whether to stop at that point, but where to go from there. Talking ourselves into believing categorical imperatives are hide-and-seek-playing hypothetical imperatives is a dead end.Again, I don't disagree that there is a strong emotional component to it, or that we evolved to be nice to little kids. I just recognize that we can't stop at that point, because it's not enough to meet the demands of our evolved brains, which are capable of reasoning, planning; our genes are not.
In part. This is about me getting side-tracked (by my pet peeve about people misusing terms like "sociopath" to pathologize/dismiss my perspective)But I'm not a doctor, and don't even play one on TV, so I'm happy to concede that my usage is a layman's usage. Is that what this is about?
from the fact that my main objections are on a semantic level, to this whole business of you defining moral discussion as being about X and only X.
A more reasonable reaction would've been to just ignore people like you and Harris, as I'm not opposed to you lot trying to figure out how to increase human well-being, but it doesn't seem that we necessarily have anything to offer one another.
In part. This is about me getting side-tracked (by my pet peeve about people misusing terms like "sociopath" to pathologize/dismiss my perspective)But I'm not a doctor, and don't even play one on TV, so I'm happy to concede that my usage is a layman's usage. Is that what this is about?
Well that wouldn't be fair. Would you share more about your perspective?
from the fact that my main objections are on a semantic level, to this whole business of you defining moral discussion as being about X and only X.
But that's the point, the key issue, the essence of this thread. I'm not blocking other opinions; I'm inviting discourse.
If you say that you think honesty is more important than happiness, then I can ask whether you would still believe that if we knew that honesty generally has a strong tendency to cause unhappiness. If you say that obeying a god is more important, then I'll ask if that isn't --- at least in part --- because we'd be happier if more of us obeyed god.
I'm trying to start a discussion, not to dismiss other viewpoints.
A more reasonable reaction would've been to just ignore people like you and Harris, as I'm not opposed to you lot trying to figure out how to increase human well-being, but it doesn't seem that we necessarily have anything to offer one another.
Maybe before you go you could offer another viewpoint. And maybe, if you don't want to discuss it yourself, I'll wind up discussing it with someone else.
I can't speak for Unbeatable, but I personally think that suffering, not happiness, is the currency of morality. It explains why most people feel a stronger sense of obligation to avoid harming somebody than to increase their happiness. As a quick example, most people would agree they have a responsibility not to smash my iPod, but very few people would presumably agree they have the same degree of responsibility to buy me the newest model of iPod. Maybe they would have some responsibility for the latter in the context of a prior agreement, or in special cases, but the duty not to smash what I already have (not to harm) is more universal. This is my personal opinion, of course, and I can't prove it's correct. But it certainly leads to a different conclusion than a happiness-maximizing moral philosophy. And to the extent that I believe myself to be a fairly compassionate person, I am probably not a sociopath. I think that's what Unbeatable may have been getting at; that there are ways of thinking about morality that don't boil down to happiness. At least in my perspective, happiness is instrumental, not an end in itself. It's a great feeling that dispels suffering for a period of time, and to that extent it should be promoted, but I put more emphasis on minimizing/preventing suffering, a goal that is not necessarily always served best by promoting happiness.
If we eliminated all unhappiness, the job wouldn't be over. We'd still want, wouldn't we, to increase happiness?But it certainly leads to a different conclusion than a happiness-maximizing moral philosophy.
Not much there to disagree with. I talk about happiness, you talk about suffering or unhappiness, Dan Barker talks about flourishing, and Sam Harris talks about well-being. We're all approaching a subject that we'd rather represent with one word than a dissertation.
The only thing you wrote that I'm not comfortable with is this bit:
If we eliminated all unhappiness, the job wouldn't be over. We'd still want, wouldn't we, to increase happiness?But it certainly leads to a different conclusion than a happiness-maximizing moral philosophy.
Or, if we maximized happiness first, shouldn't we want to then reduce unhappiness, or redistribute any remaining unhappiness so that we each had only a little bit?
And I have no problem at all with wanting to weight unhappiness as counting, say, four times as much as a similar degree of happiness, or with saying that the happiness scale only goes up to 100, while the unhappiness scale goes down past ten thousand.
The movie Dogma may have made the point that it is better to have no people at all than to than to have a single person suffer in Hellfire.
Can you provide evidence for this claim?Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths
I agree with Dogma, and I would extend it to any degree of suffering. This is what I mean about wildly different outcomes. Starting from the idea that unnecessary suffering should always be avoided when possible, I can't escape the conclusion that a universe with no sentient beings would be the ideal outcome. If maximizing happiness were the primary focus of my ethics, then that universe may not be as appealing, because it wouldn't have any happiness either. I therefore have to rely on my subjective intuition that suffering is worse than happiness is good. I can't point to anything that would objectively justify that intuition.
I agree with Dogma, and I would extend it to any degree of suffering. This is what I mean about wildly different outcomes. Starting from the idea that unnecessary suffering should always be avoided when possible, I can't escape the conclusion that a universe with no sentient beings would be the ideal outcome. If maximizing happiness were the primary focus of my ethics, then that universe may not be as appealing, because it wouldn't have any happiness either. I therefore have to rely on my subjective intuition that suffering is worse than happiness is good. I can't point to anything that would objectively justify that intuition.
I have to think you are alone or nearly so. Think how many people enjoy fistfights, or voluntarily get tattoos, suffer needle pricks for a heroin rush, or otherwise endure some suffering for a greater (in their opinion) happiness.
But, even so, that doesn't put us at loggerheads. We both care about other people, and favor something in the line of increasing happiness and decreasing suffering. Our major goal is the same, even if we disagree on details.
To those people, it's not suffering though. I'm not talking about physical pain.
To those people, it's not suffering though. I'm not talking about physical pain.
I watched a woman give birth. I know it was suffering. Or maybe I don't have any idea what you're talking about.
I object to the idea that there is any way to derive a normative statement from a factual one. Hume covered this, and Sam Harris doesn't really advance the discussion much. Moral intuitions are only debatable when the conditional upon which they are founded is something all parties agree about ahead of time.
Is Diamond talking about those experiments where Washoe and some others were taught a few hundred words from American Sign Language? They don't show chimps in the wild have language. Be that as it may, there's quite a gulf between being able to say you want grapes for lunch and being able to say you want to avoid causing pain unless absolutely necessary or you want others not to have anxiety and depression. PyramidHead proposed that moral intuitions are founded on abstractions. What's a chimp capable of saying that could serve as such a foundation?... chimps are living breathing proof that you can have moral intuitions without language ...
I haven't read it yet, but I believe that The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond, disposes of the notion that chimps are without language.
It's true, though, that they don't have a future tense: If you ask what a chimp will want for lunch tomorrow, he can answer; but if you ask him to go find out what those other chimps will want for lunch tomorrow, he'll be at a loss. (He won't be at a loss if you ask him to find out what they want for lunch today.)
You appear to be assuming that the only two options a person has are either to not give a rat's ass about people's well-being, or else to regard their well-being as the entire essence of morality. There are other possibilities. For instance, you could consider their well-being to be one among many important considerations in moral judgment; or you could want people to be happy but think that's a non-moral goal you get to pursue when moral considerations don't require you to deprioritize it. Kant said morality isn't about how we can make ourselves happy but about how we can make ourselves worthy of happiness.That, increasing happiness, is the realm of moral discussion.
Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths, and we are happy to label them that, and continue with our discussion.
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Most of us want people to be happy. You hypothetically don't. That's not a disagreement about facts. The rest of us are discussing morality, how to achieve a higher level of happiness, and you are talking about something else.
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It is clear that mere failure to care about the well-being of other people is not the only requirement to be technically diagnosed as a sociopath. But it does seem to be a common denominator, a sine qua non, the essence of the thing.
You appear to be assuming that the only two options a person has are either to not give a rat's ass about people's well-being, or else to regard their well-being as the entire essence of morality.
There are other possibilities. For instance, you could consider their well-being to be one among many important considerations in moral judgment; or you could want people to be happy but think that's a non-moral goal you get to pursue when moral considerations don't require you to deprioritize it. Kant said morality isn't about how we can make ourselves happy but about how we can make ourselves worthy of happiness.