Preference morality

[rousseau]

snip

Valid, but if we're forced to play the game anyway, why not look for a realistic moral system? Convincing a species that by it's nature likes to propagate, to not propagate, is obviously not realistic, so why not work toward a better way for them to live together?

I'm of the opinion that moral systems aren't a construct of human will, but of physical reality. At any point in history there could have been no other way, and at any point in the future the same will be true. What ought to be is usually what happens eventually. For instance, slavery and violence is on the decline, democracy is on the rise, and so on. Society tends toward increasingly morality, and that's all that really matters.

 

[rousseau]

Ok, to some this type of existence is absurd, but let me ask you this: what alternative is there to this type of existence? For there to be an experiencer, this is what you get.

Well, there it is. I don't know if 'absurd' is the term I would use, but you nailed it: to be an experiencer is to find oneself with no alternative but to experience.

My point was more along the lines of: experiencing organisms are contingent on a world that looks like the one that we live in. So if you enjoy your life at all, you should recognise that the world you live in is the only place we can be for our life to be possible.

In that way the 'absurdity' is a bit more bearable, because realistically things are exactly as they should be, and the only way they can be.

 

[another1]

that was posted on the wrong thread oh nooooo but still shoplifting is not a crime and morally I prefer to continue doing it

 

[PyramidHead]

snip

Valid, but if we're forced to play the game anyway, why not look for a realistic moral system? Convincing a species that by it's nature likes to propagate, to not propagate, is obviously not realistic, so why not work toward a better way for them to live together?

Much of what humans naturally like to do is destructive and harmful to others, and yet we see fit to convince each other to stop. We naturally like to form tribal associations and prejudge people by their membership or lack thereof, often with violent results. But nobody says we should just let it be since that's what humans evolved to do (well, nobody worth paying attention to). I fully agree that we are unlikely to ever stop reproducing. But that's a question about practicality and real-world feasibility, not morality.

I'm of the opinion that moral systems aren't a construct of human will, but of physical reality. At any point in history there could have been no other way, and at any point in the future the same will be true. What ought to be is usually what happens eventually. For instance, slavery and violence is on the decline, democracy is on the rise, and so on. Society tends toward increasingly morality, and that's all that really matters.

So how do you know that future people won't come to a moral conclusion that favors extinction? If they do, it would have to be a case of discovering something that was always morally true, according to your reasoning (after all, it's not like slavery only started being wrong when society came around to realizing it). To say that we are working toward a future morality that will be more accurate than the current one is not to say anything about what that morality will look like.

 

[rousseau]

Valid, but if we're forced to play the game anyway, why not look for a realistic moral system? Convincing a species that by it's nature likes to propagate, to not propagate, is obviously not realistic, so why not work toward a better way for them to live together?

Much of what humans naturally like to do is destructive and harmful to others, and yet we see fit to convince each other to stop. We naturally like to form tribal associations and prejudge people by their membership or lack thereof, often with violent results. But nobody says we should just let it be since that's what humans evolved to do (well, nobody worth paying attention to). I fully agree that we are unlikely to ever stop reproducing. But that's a question about practicality and real-world feasibility, not morality.

I'm of the opinion that moral systems aren't a construct of human will, but of physical reality. At any point in history there could have been no other way, and at any point in the future the same will be true. What ought to be is usually what happens eventually. For instance, slavery and violence is on the decline, democracy is on the rise, and so on. Society tends toward increasingly morality, and that's all that really matters.

So how do you know that future people won't come to a moral conclusion that favors extinction? If they do, it would have to be a case of discovering something that was always morally true, according to your reasoning (after all, it's not like slavery only started being wrong when society came around to realizing it). To say that we are working toward a future morality that will be more accurate than the current one is not to say anything about what that morality will look like.

I guess it's possible, but I don't think the majority of people living, or who have ever lived, favour or will favour extinction of our species at any point. Propagation is built in to who we are, it's quite literally what we are. If that weren't the case extinction would take care of itself.

 

[PyramidHead]

Much of what humans naturally like to do is destructive and harmful to others, and yet we see fit to convince each other to stop. We naturally like to form tribal associations and prejudge people by their membership or lack thereof, often with violent results. But nobody says we should just let it be since that's what humans evolved to do (well, nobody worth paying attention to). I fully agree that we are unlikely to ever stop reproducing. But that's a question about practicality and real-world feasibility, not morality.

I'm of the opinion that moral systems aren't a construct of human will, but of physical reality. At any point in history there could have been no other way, and at any point in the future the same will be true. What ought to be is usually what happens eventually. For instance, slavery and violence is on the decline, democracy is on the rise, and so on. Society tends toward increasingly morality, and that's all that really matters.

So how do you know that future people won't come to a moral conclusion that favors extinction? If they do, it would have to be a case of discovering something that was always morally true, according to your reasoning (after all, it's not like slavery only started being wrong when society came around to realizing it). To say that we are working toward a future morality that will be more accurate than the current one is not to say anything about what that morality will look like.

I guess it's possible, but I don't think the majority of people living, or who have ever lived, favour or will favour extinction of our species at any point. Propagation is built in to who we are, it's quite literally what we are. If that weren't the case extinction would take care of itself.

I agree.

 

[PyramidHead]

I'll resurrect this thread with one more comment. It can be correctly assumed that morality evolved for some fitness-related purpose. Morality can be regarded as a phenotype of whatever genetic elements working in concert gave rise to it, and as such is no different in kind than any other phenotype. There is a behavior or set of behaviors resulting from some combination of genes that provided an adaptive advantage, such that more copies of those genes ended up in the population after many generations of competition with other genes.

The history of moral ideas after the genetic dispositions toward morality had been ingrained into our DNA is a different story. The genes of people who accepted the subjugation of women and people of other races were not different in any relevant way from our genes. Moral progress of the sort that has led to democratic institutions and egalitarianism is not a genetic phenotype, in other words. It does not confer any survival advantage in a genetic sense to regard slavery as immoral and women as the equals of men. In fact, if the propagation of genes were the concern of moral developments in the last thousand years or so, both slavery and misogyny would be regarded as morally permissible, if not obligatory. It's not hard to imagine how conquering others, enslaving the able-bodied among them, and using their women to make babies could be an excellent gene-propagating strategy compared to treating others with dignity and respect.

All of this is just to say that we cannot appeal to evolutionary concerns such as species survival when looking at the positive moral developments of recent centuries. As civilized people, we decided to ignore our genes when they tell us to do things that cause avoidable harm. Going forward, that is likely to remain the way we treat our evolved tendencies. Thus, there is nothing contradictory about favoring a moral perspective that limits or curtails propagation of the species, as we've been doing that all along, ever since we extended kinship to people who aren't our direct family members.

 

[Treedbear]

I'll resurrect this thread with one more comment. ...

I'm sorry to keep you waiting. I've been thinking about your response to my last post but haven't had the time or the proper frame of mind to address all the issues that it brings up. Life is full of conflicts at the moment. I can see though that we have very different philosophical outlooks on some very basic concepts that I'd like to be able to summarize without simply addressing every sentence. That usually seems to go nowhere. Gotta go.

 

[PyramidHead]

Please take your time with whatever life is throwing at you in this moment, and reply when you are in a state of leisure! An excellent quote from Julio Cabrera to get you thinking:

"Asking, in the ethical field, how to live is admitting ab initio there is not and there cannot be any moral problem in the very fact of being; that all moral problems arise "afterwards", in the domain of how. If the initial ethical question is how to live, it is assumed beforehand that living has not, in itself, any moral problems, or that living is, per se, ethically good, or that, for some motive that should still be clarified, the matter of good and evil does not concern being, but only beings. [...] But what is the philosophical-rational justification of living as ethically good (valuable) per se, and of the idea the only thing that ethically matters is how to live, that is, how to turn into ethically good this or that ontic human life, excepting life itself from any questioning whatsoever?"

 

[ronburgundy]

The OP highlights why rational thought is actually a requirement for moral decisions.

What all those poorly worded rules are trying to get at is the idea that you should not cause consequences to a person that they do not desire.

The two underlined parts entail questions of objective fact, namely what are the objective consequences and what in fact does the particular person desire. Since accurate knowledge of facts depends of evidence-based rational thought, all morality depends upon it.

Of course, if you make every honest effort to understand reality and the answers to these factual questions, but happen to be wrong because of limited information or limits of human cognition outside your control, then the harmful consequences become an accident, analogous to one's breaks failing despite reasonable upkeep, leading you to hit another car.

However, if your beliefs about the consequences or desires of the other person are wrong due either lazy disinterest in trying to apply reason or willful ignorance and emotionally biased thinking to selfishly preserve preferred beliefs, then the harmful consequences range form immoral negligence to deliberate harm.

Knowing a person's desires is difficult, unless they directly express them to you. But usually they must be inferred and predicted, and the route to doing that most accurately is to combine honest introspective self-awareness with as scientific approach as possible to understanding human beings more generally.

My favorite poet in my early 20's was Kenneth Patchen, who wrote:
"The one who comes to question himself has cared for mankind."

The resonated with me, because it spoke to this idea that doubt and questioning, especially about the self and one's own assumptions (which is the foundation of reasoned thought) is critical in either trying to actually help or avoid harming others.

Note, this perspective is NOT a form of moral objectivism, which I reject as incoherent nonsense that ignores the is/ought distinction. Rather, it is merely recognizing that almost all "oughts" are inferred from a combination of more basic, purely emotional "oughts" is various assumed "is". Thus, getting the "is" correct, is essential is whether any specific "ought" actually serves the more basic "oughts" it is assumed to.

 

[untermensche]

"Do unto" means to serve.

Serve others as you would have them serve you.

But all service is done with consent first.

The key to the morality is to be the one who serves, not the one receiving service.

 

[ronburgundy]

"Do unto" means to serve.

Serve others as you would have them serve you.

But all service is done with consent first.

The key to the morality is to be the one who serves, not the one receiving service.

On what basis are you confining the meaning of "do unto others" to "serving others"? There is no reason to think that is the intended meaning in the Bible or anywhere else. In fact, "unto" means "to", while your interpretation is essentially changing "to others" into "for others", which is what one would say if the implication was about serving others. "To" has a broader meaning in that context than "for", and mostly applies to actions that impact the other but are not intended to directly serve their needs or requests.
For each thing I could do "for" you, there are countless things I could do "to" you. If morality was all about service, then it would fail to cover most of the actions that actually matter and affect other people. Morality is mostly about what not to do to others, which is entailed in the Golden rules via the implication to avoid doing unto other that which one would not wish to have done to themselves.
If I apply that rule and thus change my irrigation plan so that it doesn't divert all of your water and kill your crops, then I have acted morally, and yet I have merely avoided harming you rather than attempted to "serve" you.

Note that the only 4 of the 10 commandments with any validity to secular morality (i.e., that are not about authoritarian obedience) have nothing to do with serving other but are all about what NOT to do unto others (not kill, not steal, not commit adultery, not lie about others).

 

[untermensche]

"Do unto" means to serve.

Serve others as you would have them serve you.

But all service is done with consent first.

The key to the morality is to be the one who serves, not the one receiving service.

On what basis are you confining the meaning of "do unto others" to "serving others"? There is no reason to think that is the intended meaning in the Bible or anywhere else. In fact, "unto" means "to", while your interpretation is essentially changing "to others" into "for others", which is what one would say if the implication was about serving others. "To" has a broader meaning in that context than "for", and mostly applies to actions that impact the other but are not intended to directly serve their needs or requests.
For each thing I could do "for" you, there are countless things I could do "to" you. If morality was all about service, then it would fail to cover most of the actions that actually matter and affect other people. Morality is mostly about what not to do to others, which is entailed in the Golden rules via the implication to avoid doing unto other that which one would not wish to have done to themselves...

I am giving it a slight twist.

But I think I am coming out with something better.

And if one's moral duty is to serve others I fail to see the conflict.

You need to give an example where somebody is faced with a moral question and they are not helped by this.

If I apply that rule and thus change my irrigation plan so that it doesn't divert all of your water and kill your crops, then I have acted morally, and yet I have merely avoided harming you rather than attempted to "serve" you.

A life of service would mean shared irrigation plans. Plans that serve all equally.

 

[braces_for_impact]

"Do unto" means to serve.

Serve others as you would have them serve you.

But all service is done with consent first.

The key to the morality is to be the one who serves, not the one receiving service.

So what you're saying is it's better to be the pitcher than the catcher huh?

 

[ronburgundy]

On what basis are you confining the meaning of "do unto others" to "serving others"? There is no reason to think that is the intended meaning in the Bible or anywhere else. In fact, "unto" means "to", while your interpretation is essentially changing "to others" into "for others", which is what one would say if the implication was about serving others. "To" has a broader meaning in that context than "for", and mostly applies to actions that impact the other but are not intended to directly serve their needs or requests.
For each thing I could do "for" you, there are countless things I could do "to" you. If morality was all about service, then it would fail to cover most of the actions that actually matter and affect other people. Morality is mostly about what not to do to others, which is entailed in the Golden rules via the implication to avoid doing unto other that which one would not wish to have done to themselves...

I am giving it a slight twist.

But I think I am coming out with something better.

And if one's moral duty is to serve others I fail to see the conflict.

You need to give an example where somebody is faced with a moral question and they are not helped by this.

If I apply that rule and thus change my irrigation plan so that it doesn't divert all of your water and kill your crops, then I have acted morally, and yet I have merely avoided harming you rather than attempted to "serve" you.

A life of service would mean shared irrigation plans. Plans that serve all equally.

If me and 3 other people do all the work to dig the irrigation channels because you don't care enough to bother, then how is it my moral duty to ensure that you benefit from my work just as much as we do. There isn't such a duty in any defensible moral system. Our duty is not to ensure you benefit equally from our work, but that we do not wind up harming you while doing things we desire that you do not.

Only if every single person actually always wants to and acts to "serve others", does your rule work out and result in moral fairness. But that does not occur, and so a viable system cannot depend upon all people acting equally in service of others. Instead, we have a system where people are free to act in their own interests or choose to collaborate with a subset of others, so long as people not included in those actions are not harmed by them. This achieves the ends of people getting what they want enough to act to achieve, but unlike your rule (which requires authoritarian communism) it allows people freedom to chose what they want and does not require the patently false assumption that all people will equally collaborate in that effort.

 

[untermensche]

"Do unto" means to serve.

Serve others as you would have them serve you.

But all service is done with consent first.

The key to the morality is to be the one who serves, not the one receiving service.

So what you're saying is it's better to be the pitcher than the catcher huh?

One can serve by being a catcher.

But I was not looking at sex.

That is more a matter of consent than service. Just about everybody wants to have sex.

What is a leader? A real leader?

If not somebody doing others a service?

When they start exploiting others to serve themselves they are no longer leaders.

 

[untermensche]

If me and 3 other people do all the work to dig the irrigation channels because you don't care enough to bother, then how is it my moral duty to ensure that you benefit from my work just as much as we do. There isn't such a duty in any defensible moral system. Our duty is not to ensure you benefit equally from our work, but that we do not wind up harming you while doing things we desire that you do not.

Only if every single person actually always wants to and acts to "serve others", does your rule work out and result in moral fairness. But that does not occur, and so a viable system cannot depend upon all people acting equally in service of others. Instead, we have a system where people are free to act in their own interests or choose to collaborate with a subset of others, so long as people not included in those actions are not harmed by them. This achieves the ends of people getting what they want enough to act to achieve, but unlike your rule (which requires authoritarian communism) it allows people freedom to chose what they want and does not require the patently false assumption that all people will equally collaborate in that effort.

You're asking why you should have to serve anybody but yourself. That is the current morality we live under.

And it creates a horrible society with all kinds of problems. Prisons overflowing. Poverty everywhere. Want and hunger all around.

You serve others to create a better society to live in.

And that better society will less likely create people who do not want to serve others.

 

[PyramidHead]

The reason I tend towards the negative interpretation of morality is to contend with issues such as these. We have a much greater moral obligation NOT to do harm (which equates to not violating others' preferences) than we are obliged to do good (which equates to fulfilling others' preferences). Simple example: it's morally incumbent upon me not to break your iPhone, but it's not morally incumbent upon me to buy you a brand new iPhone--unless it's to replace the one I broke. Thus, I think it's best to say "do not do unto others as they would not have you do unto them."

 

[ronburgundy]

If me and 3 other people do all the work to dig the irrigation channels because you don't care enough to bother, then how is it my moral duty to ensure that you benefit from my work just as much as we do. There isn't such a duty in any defensible moral system. Our duty is not to ensure you benefit equally from our work, but that we do not wind up harming you while doing things we desire that you do not.

Only if every single person actually always wants to and acts to "serve others", does your rule work out and result in moral fairness. But that does not occur, and so a viable system cannot depend upon all people acting equally in service of others. Instead, we have a system where people are free to act in their own interests or choose to collaborate with a subset of others, so long as people not included in those actions are not harmed by them. This achieves the ends of people getting what they want enough to act to achieve, but unlike your rule (which requires authoritarian communism) it allows people freedom to chose what they want and does not require the patently false assumption that all people will equally collaborate in that effort.

You're asking why you should have to serve anybody but yourself. That is the current morality we live under.

And it creates a horrible society with all kinds of problems. Prisons overflowing. Poverty everywhere. Want and hunger all around.

You serve others to create a better society to live in.

And that better society will less likely create people who do not want to serve others.

People having the free choice to serve others and choosing whom to serve and when is what makes for a better society. People being forced to serve others who selfishly do nothing to help themselves or anyone else makes for a terrible society and contributes to all the problems you mention.

And even this positive type of service is only a tiny fraction of morality, not all of it as you stated. It fails to cover the majority of situations where the wrong is that someone is being harmed and not that someone is being served by others.

 

[untermensche]

You're asking why you should have to serve anybody but yourself. That is the current morality we live under.

And it creates a horrible society with all kinds of problems. Prisons overflowing. Poverty everywhere. Want and hunger all around.

You serve others to create a better society to live in.

And that better society will less likely create people who do not want to serve others.

People having the free choice to serve others and choosing whom to serve and when is what makes for a better society. People being forced to serve others who selfishly do nothing to help themselves or anyone else makes for a terrible society and contributes to all the problems you mention.

And even this positive type of service is only a tiny fraction of morality, not all of it as you stated. It fails to cover the majority of situations where the wrong is that someone is being harmed and not that someone is being served by others.

Morality is just for people who want a better world. For people who want to improve present conditions.

Not for people who for some reason are keeping score on their fellow man and grading the contributions of others continually.

Morality is a mode of action.

And you do it because it is right even if other people are not doing it.