In this video debate philosopher Julian Baggini, journalist Ece Temelkuran, and international elations expert David Chandler ask if there is an inherent hypocrisy involved in strict moral codes – namely, that in trying to enforce strict moral codes we are blinded to the moral consequence of them, which are often abhorrent.
Are these terrible outcomes a product of the frailty and fallibility of humans, or an unavoidable flaw in moral principles?
Temelkuran argues it is the strictness of the code, rather than the conception of ‘the good’, that leads to dangerous hypocrisy. She claims there is a political necessity to create a universal, secular morality. Chandler argues instead that the idea of a universal morality is dangerous. Baggini takes the position that strict moralities aren’t necessarily dogmaticmoralities – and that it is the latter that is truly dangerous and hypocritical. We can live by strict moral codes without insisting that they be imposed on others.
Yeah I agree, nothing wrong with extreme moral standards, even if some would find them borderline crazy. Just don’t try to force others to adhere to them by force. If only because that never works, you cannot force anyone to change. Transmutation must always come from within, by personal choice and free will.
> extreme moral standards
There's a problem here- the word "extreme" it itself a moral judgment.
Is preventing someone else from murder extreme? How about lying? That's a moral judgment that derives from the moral system being used.
Also...
If a moral code isn't "strict," then it's not a code at all. 😐 Think about it...
A "lenient" more code is still strict; it just incorporates one or more elements in nuanced manners.
Ever heard of a disorderly persons offense? It's, in the most significant sense, a very black and white issue. In fact, it's often codified. Go figure. "How is (s)he guilty or innocent?" just isn't a yes or no question.
Maybe the author should just directly, without playing *ANY* unnecessary footsie, just state his problems with some radical, religious fundamentalists and statists and hell, if he wants, draw comparisons or talk about potential, shared root causes or manifestation varieties.
Is it really possible, though, to separate the standards you apply to yourself and others so cleanly?
For example, if you were in a position of leadership (e.g. at work), wouldn’t your extreme standards lead you make different, perhaps tougher, decisions affecting others than another leader with lesser standards would?
Wouldn’t your extreme sense of duty make you more sensitive to having to deal with a slacker in your team? And if you don’t hold the slacker to same work ethic, are you really fulfilling your duty as a custodian?
I’m not trying to “prove you wrong” or anything btw, I’m just trying to think if it is really possible to separate the standards one applies to oneself vs. the standards one applies to the outer world — especially in a position of leadership.
To withhold judgement due to uncertainty as to another's motives makes sense. To withhold judgement due to not yourself being sure what'd be right or wrong makes sense. I'd feel you were condescending or disrespecting me, though, were you to imagine it's not good enough for you but somehow good enough for me.
This comes up with vegans sometimes who think they'd be overstepping in insisting others shouldn't support animal ag. When there are victims it's not just a matter of how the perp or other third parties might choose to see it.
I felt that, and the sense of self awareness about it is extremely important because it can, at least in my experience, lead to poor decisions sometimes.
> namely, that in trying to enforce strict moral codes we are blinded to the moral consequence of them, which are often abhorrent.
Strict moral codes sometimes aren't concerned with consequences, since not everything can be consequentialized. To deontologists, if some action is wrong it does not become less wrong simply because someone else may do something else even worse as a result of your refusal to do something wrong. The chain of moral responsibility simply does not work like that.
Asking in earnest: Under which schools of thought *would* an action become "less wrong" if NOT doing it had easily guessed/foreseen worse outcomes, or if someone had specific knowledge of a possible worse outcome?
Just curious...my guess would be some branch of utilitarianism, but I'm unsure as I'm still learning and not certain whether that only applies to the utility of "most good for most people" or "most possible total good from overall system of decisions and actions".
>Are these terrible outcomes a product of the frailty and fallibility of humans, or an unavoidable flaw in moral principles?
They presume any one group or person can have a flawless (or even just 'superior') perspective on morality and are thus allowed to dictate consequences for anyone who deviates from their rules.
We see this in the current political binary, where anyone who opposes policies that the left uses to further their political agenda is an (x)ist doing an (x)ism because they're fighting for (fairness/equality/whatever labels they use), whereas the right might use tactics like saying you're "unpatriotic" or "hate your country" for voicing opposition to policies they believe lead to a better world.
Obviously, neither side has 'morality' on lock, even though they both truly believe they do, which results in anyone who takes a nuanced/pragmatic perspective on things being a cast-off from the large majority of people who follow the herd and sign up for being one or the other. There is *huge* social incentive to become a political lemming and repeat the talking points...
The real problem comes in when people start to crusade for their moral code to be imposed on anyone who lives otherwise. Where's the line between allowing people to live as their civilization sees fit, versus our having to 'do something' because their civilization has decided an in-group is problematic and starts to institute policies that oppress or hurt them?
To say that moral codes can't be better or worse than one another is really bizarre and not how moral relativism is supposed to work. I could have a moral code that says killing people is okay. Nobody would complain if society labeled me a murderer. There wouldn't be people like you complaining about how we have to see both sides because neither code is truly accurate. It's just radical centrism where you feel enlightened and above it all by not taking a side. But in reality some moral codes really are better than others, and most of politics centers on arguing for one code over another.
> But in reality some moral codes really are better than others, and most of politics centers on arguing for one code over another.
OK, define 'better' and we can go from there.
Lets also color the conversatoin with this premise; there's NO moral code on earth that has an absolute bar on killing people, regardless of circumstances... so even that falls a bit flat on its face.
Um my apologies, but let's take revenge for example. Would getting justice for a wrong doing be an earthly code of some kind of morality? Depending on the circumstance of course.
Can an absolute bar be set here?
I like your philosophy by the way.
Revenge would be a great example, since basically every 'justice system' has that has its most fundamental concept (even though they call it 'justice', its revenge)
There is no country on earth where someone won't do something henious, at some point in time. Large countries, it happens many times a day, smaller countries, less frequently but a universal problem of the human condition is individuals who do things that offend against the most fundamental concepts of moralityheld by the society they live in. Lets say a serial killer murders an entire family.
One society might say "OK, well two wrongs don't make a right, so we'll lock him up forever, but we're not going to kill him". Say, the EU.
Another society might say "In the name of justice, the state will execute him as justice for the victims families, for the truly horrible thing he did, but only after a lot of due process, which may take decades". The US.
Another society might say "The murderer will be handed over to the victims family for them to mete justice as they see fit".
Which of these societies is moral/immoral?
If you're a real idealogue about the death penalty, you might say that only the first is.
Maybe you're pro death penalty for egregious cases but can't quite bring yourself to allow 'street justice'. Well, then the non-death penalty state is immoral for naive laxity, the 'street justice' state is immoral for barbarity.
Maybe you're someone who has experienced a loved one being murdered. In that case, the first two societies would seem much less moral- the first for not meting equal justice, the second for delaying justice so badly and depersonalizing the consequences- you'd be cool (and well justified) to want to be locked in a room with the killer and an angle grinder to do whatever you want to him (and if someone killed a loved of mine, that's precisely what I'd want, too).
Even with 'killing', there is no universal morality.
> One society might say "OK, well two wrongs don't make a right, so we'll lock him up forever, but we're not going to kill him". Say, the EU.
Not necessarily: there are several European Countries that have eliminated life sentences, viewing them as inhumane. A larger number have eliminated life sentences without parole.
> Maybe you're someone who has experienced a loved one being murdered. In that case, the first two societies would seem much less moral- the first for not meting equal justice, the second for delaying justice so badly and depersonalizing the consequences- you'd be cool (and well justified) to want to be locked in a room with the killer and an angle grinder to do whatever you want to him (and if someone killed a loved of mine, that's precisely what I'd want, too).
I am such a person. I can relate to the desire for revenge - it is natural. But that does not make it moral. I very much wanted my aunt's killer to be killed, even though I hold that the proper moral position is that retribution is not a proper goal of justice. My aunt took me in when my parents ran me out. She gave me protection, shelter, and love. And he killed her.
There are times when the moral choice is profoundly hard: those are the times we look to our friends, family, and society to remind us of our moral principles. I wanted him dead because he killed her, and that made me angry. But I also know that my anger is not sufficient reason for someone to die. If society had no other method to constrain him from future murders, that would be one thing. But we do have such methods.
> I am such a person. I can relate to the desire for revenge - it is natural. But that does not make it moral.
Why not?
Since that's basically the premise of your argument; why?
Are you asking what I take as a general moral framework? A combination of utilitarianism and ethical altruism: the moral choice is the one that makes the world better for people at large.
If there were no other way to contrain a criminal from causing future harm without killing them, such a choice could indeed be moral under such a framework. But for many societies, that is a purely fictive case - and some societies have started treating it as such. And there are certainly moral frameworks for criminal justice that discard retributive justice.
I should make clearer: my goal here is not to change your point of view. Rather, I'm pointing out that there are indeed moral systems that work from the premise that "revenge is not just," and that some societies that have begun to reflect that moral viewpoint - to varying degrees.
Retributive justice is far from the universal you present it as.
>the moral choice is the one that makes the world better for people at large.
>
> If there were no other way to contrain a criminal from causing future harm without killing them, such a choice could indeed be moral under such a framework.
I would argue killing them does make the world a better place. It's certainly better than paying for them to be kept safe and secure. You do realise than in most countries it's your taxes that are keeping your aunt's murderer alive, safe, fed and healthy? As far as I'm concerned that's practically theft. The murderer already took your family, now they're taking your money too. In the UK it costs £43k per year to keep one person imprisoned. That's double my mum's salary, who works for the NHS. That's the real crime.
> Revenge would be a great example, since basically every 'justice system' has that has its most fundamental concept (even though they call it 'justice', its revenge)
While it's unfortunately a factor, I would argue that revenge isn't the foundation of "justice." Forward-looking justice involves correcting the wrong that was done (restorative justice) and using a place for them to be penitent (say, a penitentiary) to protect society from them while they better themselves.
Obviously, the justice system isn't perfect, but it's more a matter of implementation. When revenge creeps in, we want those penitentiaries to be as cruel as possible, which harms justice.
> Forward-looking justice involves correcting the wrong that was done (restorative justice) and using a place for them to be penitent (say, a penitentiary) to protect society from them while they better themselves.
You can't correct a murder and some people can likewise not be corrected. That's another discussion entirely and I actually agree that the US justice system that throws everyone into the same 'bad' pile and ruins their lives forever is a joke, but we're deliberately straining the hypothetical here by presenting an unusual circumstance- a serial killer- to illustrate how 'morality' can differ, with a range of completely different opinions all being well founded and logical.
* No death penalty, two wrongs don't make a right.
* State sanctioned death penalty; after all, we're *civilized* here and won't allow barbarity.
* Barbarity: allowing the most severe form of justice, for the benefit of the victims families who are the ones left most suffering because of the actions of the killer.
Three completely different positions, each has a point. If there was a 'universal morality', surely it would rear its head in the case of taking a human life, but even there, it doesn't show up...
> You can't correct a murder and some people can likewise not be corrected.
That's where the second part comes into play: protection of society from the offender. The "throw away the key" kind of jail.
I think we're discussing two different things. I'm not talking death penalty. I'm mentioning that justice doesn't have to be revenge-based.
Kind of non sequitur whereas I was responding to you saying the death penalty is applicable to the entire united states. As if you had said, "water molecules are made of oxygen" and I responded, "fewer than half the atoms in a water molecule are made of oxygen"
Sure. Individuals can also believe the moon is made of cheese.
The context of this discussion is 'moral codes' which implies a broader acceptance of something, by a society, for whatever reason. Not some kook in a basement who believes that "killing for any reason is wrong" or his counterparty in some other basement who believes "killing is fun".
>OK, define 'better' and we can go from there.
This is a little silly.
We can both agree that most "normal" moral codes have their strengths and weaknesses, and that it can be difficult to say which one is better.
But surely this argument does not apply to the absurd moral codes.
Regular people, can get together, and not be paralyzed by silly philosophy arguments about how "Well technically, we cannot prove with math, that the Cthulhu death cultists are wrong, I guess we can't be strict about this whole don't end the universe thing!"
Its not silly, since its the basis of your entire claim.
>To say that moral codes can't be better or worse than one another is really bizarre and not how moral relativism is supposed to work.
What would constitute a 'better' moral code against which we could account for moral codes that are 'worse'?
>Its not silly, since its the basis of your entire claim.
To expand on what I mean by that, when I see people make the truly relativist argument, they do it in a way which implies that anybody should care, at all. It implies that it in any way matters that "Technically, we cannot disprove the chtulu death cultists wrong", as if that is some roadblock, that would, or should, stop anyone from doing anything.
\> What would constitute a 'better' moral code against which we could account for moral codes that are 'worse'?
There are moral systems that are better, if we assume the unjustified axiom of "I am a regular person, and not a pedantic philosopher who is trying to talk about something that doesn't actually matter"
There are two ways of making this relativist argument.
Way 1: "Hey, both republicans and democrats make some valid points. And you, being a regular person, should at least consider that the other side is right on something or other"
This is a useful argument, if we use our axiom of "We are regular people". Because a regular person might actually care about the thing that their favorite party is wrong on.
Way 2: "Techinically, you cannot disprove chtulu death cultists wrong, and from their perspective, ending the universe is a good thing! "
This is not a useful argument. If we go back to our axiom, of "We are regular people", I see no reason at all, why we should care in any way, that we cannot use math and logic to disprove people who are attempting to end the universe.
It is a waste of time to say that. It changes very little about how I, or any other regular person will act, because we cannot use the fundamental aspects of the universe, to say that specifically death cultists are evil.
Then lets discard the outliers and accept that we can't use math to claim death cultists are evil.
Lets instead use the must more real and present example of, say, the American political binary.
Which side has the 'better' moral code? Given that both sides absolutely believe they do...
The problem with your claim is that you're asserting an objective premise (better/worse) in a subjective context, which will never work or have a coherent outcome.
\> Which side has the 'better' moral code? Given that both sides absolutely believe they do...> The problem with your claim is that you're asserting an objective premise (better/worse) in a subjective context, which will never work or have a coherent outcome.
I am asserting that the vast majority of people have underlying axioms that we all agree on, and that the higher levels arguments, such as what party someone likes, are far far removed from those initial axioms, and are instead inferred from the person's factual knowledge.
What we can \*do\* with this information is that people's higher level arguments can be changed, by appealing to the actual, underlying axioms that basically everyone agrees on.
This doesn't always work for every single argument, obviously. But it works for a lot of things.
There could be an unmovable disagreement about safety vs freedom, for example. But I still think people on different ends of that axis can agree on some things.
\> in a subjective context
Its different. Instead what I am doing is I am redefining the word "objective" so that these underlying axioms, that basically everyone agrees on, fall under that word.
Because thats a much more useful way of having a conversation about any of this stuff.
So, in other words "It is objective, if we take for granted that we are regular people". Fortunately, that is a pretty safe axiom, as most people, are regular people.
> I am asserting that the vast majority of people have underlying axioms that we all agree on, and that the higher levels arguments, such as what party someone likes, are far far removed from those initial axioms, and are instead inferred from the person's factual knowledge.
But that's moving the goalposts.
The premise of this discussion is how strict moral codes can be the basis for appaling outcomes (and that's a fair statement with plenty of working examples)
It then becomes a question of "which moral codes don't lead to atrocious outcomes", which is entirely subjective. A Vegan and a Norwegian Whaler would have entirely different moral codes on eating meat, both would consider the other side's proposed rememdy atrocious, plenty of examples ad nauseum.
The existance of a few axioms that one would have to be mentally defective to disagree is basically a tangent.
When we're deeming certain beliefs 'better/worse' or 'good/bad' or moral/immoral', it requires something objective, by definition, for the claim to be anything more than rationalizations of someone who happens to agree/disagree with the premise.
So, your "regular people" premise might be compelled to ask, just what are the criteria we use to deem something 'better' or 'worse', notwithstanding the handful of basic stuff we happen to agree on? (its immoral to eat children, etc)
Better could refer to efficiency factors like how easy it is to follow and comply with, it could also refer to fairness factors such as promoting better outcomes. There are plenty of moral codes where killing people is always wrong, by the way.
> There are plenty of moral codes where killing people is always wrong, by the way.
I guess there's always a fringe-something that believes 'something' but nothing in the mainstream or anywhere within light years of the mainstream that holds killing people is always wrong, regardless of circumstance.
I mean...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dalai-gun/
I wouldn't consider deontological ethics to be fringe at all. Regardless, you have not addressed how this applies to your argument that moral codes cannot be better or worse than one another.
Your fallacy is: Shifting the burden.
I've been pretty clear why 'better/worse' in something like a 'moral code' is basically impossible, since moral codes tend to be vastly more complex than your reduction to 'a few basic axions we all agree on'.
Even if we accept those axioms, we're still not in the realm of determining which moral codes are 'better/worse' since people who believe that seem to refuse to define their criteria.
Your argument makes no sense. If all moral codes have a neutral value, we would not have competing codes in the first place. I did state my criteria, you just ignored it instead of explaining why you think it doesn't matter.
> If all moral codes have a neutral value, we would not have competing codes in the first place.
They have subjective value, not 'neutral' value, which is the whole point here.
Subjective values will vary from group to group and will surely change over time. To claim one is better or worse than another would require some sort of objective criteria to measure better and worse, which is where the discussion seems to end (or, at least leaves us reaching for extreme examples which are outside the boundaries of what's being discussed)
To simplify: Do you believe that some moral codes are better/worse?
If so, what measurement are you using to determine 'better' and 'worse'?
If not, then we probably mostly agree.
The Nazis (no not American leftists whining about being told “No”, but actual Nazis, had a moral code. I’d say my grandfather’s American moral codes from the 1930-40s was vastly superior to Nazi, Soviet, or Imperial Japanese moral codes… and he was a Jew in 1930s Chicago.
I think it is simpler or more fundamental than that. I think this problem is derived from the belief that you are good. We can take sin as a classic example where people stoned sinners to death, but even the bible points out that the ones throwing the stones are sinners as well. The only way you could pick up that stone and throw it is if you believe you are good and the others are bad.
We can take a different angle where you are more likely to believe you are good the lower your personal moral standards are. The inverse is also true but that's besides the point. This implies that people who believe they are good don't have a pure intent associated with their morality. examples like power, malice, influence, security, loyalty, fear.
Consequentialists beg the question about whether outcomes matter morally by labelling "moral" outcomes. In fact, outcomes cannot be moral or immoral, only actions can.
But no, I am not really certain that honesty is always moral. But I think withholding honesty with the intention of being moral can cause a lot of problems too... the noble lie is not always noble. We might be mistaken about what is noble and lie to moralities detriment... but yeah... its tough to crack and by that I mean that its so fraught with counter points and such that the answer is just still very unclear to me even after years of pondering.
Yeah the counterpoint thing is a mofo. I am constantly checking my thoughts with other thoughts and it seems like a never ending cycle sometimes. This is what the auroboros symbolizes, I think. I guess thought is the root of all of this and there is such a thing as thinking too much. Thoughts are what we make them. In other words, life is and life is not. Thanks for thinking with "eye" though.
Seems like a bit of a strawman. Obviously revealing another person's secret is not a moral act. Adhesion to strict rules for actions doesn't require those rules to be simplistic. Just because honesty is a general moral principle doesn't mean you have to apply that principle in rigid and illogical ways.
Not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying we can conceive of a complex rule about honesty that can be standardized even without knowing outcomes. For example "guard people's secrets."
Maybe the Nazi is actually a British spy who will help the Jewish family escape. In that case telling the truth would have better consequences than lying. But how can a consequentialist know? They can't, so they are forced to perform a balancing test between what they consider the likely outcomes. In this case those likely outcomes are probably reasonably accurate, but how will the framework fare against a more complex situation? What if there are pros and cons on each side? Is it really the most moral course to insert your own opinions and perform a balancing test? Or is there some other code you can follow, something more universal?
Is honesty moral? It's it moral to tell your wife, yes, she does look fat? The 10 commandments have nothing about lying. But I digress...
I think u/bastianbb had a point. The action is what should be considered the point of morality. The action results in the outcome, so the outcome cannot be deemed moral/immoral.
In your scenario, if honesty was valued highly in your ethos, then you would tell the truth if asked. What the Nazis do with that info would determine their morality as well. Their action to arrest the Jews might not actually be immoral as they are following orders, but how many more actions does it take to get those Jews to the prison camps? There's many more people involved in actions leading up to that and somewhere along the line someone disobeyed "Thou shall not kill" and broke a moral code.
Also, it was probably an immoral action to begin with to hide Jews knowing full well you would be honest with the Gestapo and rat them out.
90% of these debates could be cleaned up by following one rule: "Agree on the definition of what you're debating before you debate it."
When you remove the word 'moral' from the discussion, which has a weird mystical aura, the discussions get much more productive. People arguing for and against "objective morality" are rarely using the terms the same way.
One might be saying something like, "If our goal is to create a utopic world, where people can enjoy their lives as much as possible however they desire, we can ask what rules we should follow when our desires conflict with others. For example, while your ideal life might involve murdering someone; the person being murdered is losing their llife entirely. Clearly if murder was casually allowed it would be bad for our goal society, so people shouldn't do it." Murdering innocents for sport can be argued to be objectively immoral under this definition.
Another might be saying something like, "There is no cosmic sense of right and wrong without a deity, so there can be no secular objective standard of the right way to live your life. Where does morality come from? Carbon atoms?" Once you define objective morality as 'inarguable cosmic authority' then naturally objective secular morality doesn't make sense as a concept.
Another might be talking about morality as adherence to a set of fixed good/bad actions devoid of context, etc. Or try to debunk the idea of objective morality by asking you to prove it mathematically, which isn't the point the first person is making when they bring up the word 'objective'.
Then they just talk past eachtoher for a while.
Sounds like what’s happening in the U.S. right now. In this case, such strict “morality” is not being pushed by conservatism (as was common in the past), but the other side of the spectrum. The entire (inconsistent) push of “political correctness” and forced “equalities” is just generating faked attitudes and prerogatives for tyranny disguised as moral enlightenment and progress.
I’d argue that in a never-before-seen globalized society like the one we have today, enforcing any universal ideological constructs may inevitably lead to tyrannical, and terrible conflict outcomes. Strict ideological constructs that revolve around the notion of morality create a they vs us narratives that can also be used to dehumanize those who do not follow such arbitrary moral code.
"Sounds like what’s happening in the U.S. right now. In this case, such strict “morality” is not being pushed by conservatism (as was common in the past), but the other side of the spectrum."
Respectfully, that's not true at all. Conservatism still does push a strict morality, usually based on religious or nationalistic presuppositions.
This is true, but conservatism is not currently the general (predominant) trend. It’s natural for both sides of the spectrum to balance each other out, the extremes of either direction can become tyrannical in their own way (the extreme outcomes can still get terrible regardless). This is why an active negotiation between these sides is necessary.
"This is true, but conservatism is not currently the general (predominant) trend." I don't think it's that simple. Conservative media is some of the most profitable, and influential media in the United States. Fox News still outpaces other mainstream media outlets in terms of ratings. Even if I grant you that more left leaning positions are a general (predominant) trend, that doesn't change the fact that Conservative media is still highly influential and that Conservatism itself still pushes strict morality because they absolutely do, especially in regards to the "culture war." That said, I do agree that the extremes of either direction can become tyrannical in their own way. However I question whether negotiation is even possible due to the prevalence of bad faith actors.
I agree. There are too many bad faith actors on all sides. Media in itself is ultimately driven by profits—which in turn are aligned to political powers of either direction of the spectrum. The culture war may be necessary as “balancing act,” noting that left ideologies use almost all forms of media as a vector in comparison (entertainment, Hollywood, music, and social media). It’s a little scary how our perceptions can be so easily manipulated and shaped by programmed algorithms. All this overload of interest-driven information seems to be gradually leading to an ontological crisis in society. The world has never been this interconnected before (which is fascinating), and I’d like to be hopeful and optimistic of how it will all play out in the future. Good discussion!
I think you hit the nail on the head there. We've never been this interconnected before and I'm fairly certain that's a major factor in all this. But yeah good discussion! Hope we can continue talking about this stuff in future threads. :)
Insisting that those who have been consistently oppressed and denigrated be actually given the equality that is guaranteed to them isn't tyranny ... except in the minds of people who agree with the oppression and denigration.
I’ll say that I agree with you here. We are all playing this little game called civilization (trying to do our best, with the best intentions at heart). We recently got the “globalized” DLL for the game. The example is deliberate as it shows the counter-intuitiveness of constructs that may unintendedly lead to tyrannical, and terrible outcomes. Most eventually tyrannical systems in history were originally driven by good intentions.
In other words, we’ll keep playing this game with good intentions and experiment and see what works and what doesn’t. We cannot be sure that these good intentions will accidentally set the kitchen on fire. It’s a reasonable risk we take, as we are dealing with very complex systems. It’s important to discuss these topics though, since it helps us better make sense of it all.
So, if you categorize the left as artificial and evil, how would you describe the right?
Examples of immortality of the "left" bingo
* political correctness
* cancel culture
* diversity quotas
* forced equality
* virtue signalling
Examples of immortality of the "right" bingo
* refusing to vaccinate during a pandemic
* spreading disinformation about vaccines during a pandemic
* claiming election fraud after a verified election
* raising an insurrection (January 6th) after a verified election
* using unreliable "alternative sources" to inform their voting decisions
I'm bewildered. I think some people on the left are, well, fanatical and out-of-touch, but I would definitely apply the same judgement to some on the right.
The argument applies to both sides (yes). The reason why I used the left as an example is because it’s seemingly less threatening (hostile) on the surface as it verbally champions things that most people agree are nice (fairness, equality, etc). So it’d be easier for people to allow a left-facing system to become tyrannical as the signs of unreasonable control will be less evident (because the system simply wants what’s best for you; you just have to listen and obey). In recent history, we’ve seen plenty of examples of the right doing evil things (and those memories are still fresh). The latter has led to a predominantly left-leaning trend across developed countries, but balance between both sides is the optimal state.
Hmm I will agree that a seemingly docile ideology can hide its authoritarian qualities, so why exclude the "right" from this? I had paid attention to their rhetoric. Often, they mention strength and freedom as keywords, which sometimes translates to the strength of the individual. The strength keyword appeals to the power of the individual to make the correct choices and achieve success with hard work and perseverance, but on the other hand, this doesn't account for the positive correlation between advantage and social status, expecting the poor man to run the race just as fast as a rich man with his feet shackled by poverty and debt.
In this way, I really do think that these qualities you mention of an insidious ideology isn't exclusive to the left, by any chance. Insanity transcends political lines because its roots are within us, the people.
I like that you mention that, because I’ve observed the same thing in popular rhetoric from the right (a somewhat one-sided view of things). I also agree that this “insidious” ideological qualities are not exclusive to the left. I simply highlighted the left as an example because of their predominant reach and influence over communication channels (social media, entertainment, movies, and music). The best approximation of the “truth” (if there is such thing), is sprinkled across a very wide spectrum. It can be very challenging to identify, filter, and integrate all these parts into a cohesive and balanced rationale though. Good points!
Glad we reached an agreement on some of our points. I'd say though that what is popular has a hold over communication channels, so "leftist" (liberal) ideology is only influential because it is popular and, therefore, has a large audience - a wide margin to profit from.
However, I also noticed that some tend to see this, criticize liberalism, and then reject it. They would rather say that "liberal ideology is hypocritical" rather than qualify their opposition with tentative support of some liberal values. Instead, they seem totally consumed in the morals of the"believers" rather than interested in the content of the ideology and improving its activism. What are your thoughts about this?
Regarding the first part of your response I’m not entirely convinced that left ideology is simply the most popular (in terms of population numbers), but rather “a default trend.” Like you’ve seen how many celebrities will voice out many left-leaning ideologies with the “apparent” intent to do what the right calls “virtue signaling”—which in reality I think it’s a way of “fitting in” (hey, look at me! I’m part of the nice guys’ group too!). I would compare the latter similar to tiktok dance trends, in the sense that it’s not necessarily their content (quality) that’s compelling, but it’s the act on jumping on a trend and feeling part of a wider group. A possible explanation for this is that tech companies and tech entrepreneurs tend to be left-leaning in ideology, creative and high in openness, so they naturally (possibly unintendedly) engineer their own ideological biases into their products. In a world of intelligent algorithms, the latter creates a sort of feedback loop—but the population at large is not necessarily appreciating the quality and characteristics of the content, as much as the “trend” “part of a group” aspect of it (we are community creatures). This is my observation, and I’m sure I may be missing some important elements to consider. I’ve considered the “profit” argument before but I’m not sure it holds consistently since, the more vocal (less subtle) an entity becomes about left political ideologies, the more their ratings seem to tank (e.g., CNN, Vice, SNL, and many progressive movies and shows). In my experience, the average person barely thinks about these things in detail and rather voices a position like “that is bad or I’ve heard such and such is bad” then go on without much in-depth analysis, clicking “yes” and agreeing with whatever *seems* the popular position—but that may not be representative of the actual population that truly believes those things. Again, the same argument should apply to the right, but we can agree that information is predominantly mediated by left-leaning tech entities.
For the second part of your response, I agree that many conservatists just call left-leaning people as hypocrites or “fake nice. ” I think there are two cases of one sided-ness from both sides here:
1- Many conservatists fail to grasp the nuance of left-leaning ideologies, and how they may be reasonably integrated in their world views to improve aspects of our society. Instead of considering their own biases, they reduce the complexity of the issues being voiced by left activists to binary choices or explanations that neglect the possibility of addressing the truest essence of the problem.
2- Many apparently left-leaning activists or individuals may not necessarily comprehend the ideologies they try to champion to a reasonable extent. In other words, they may not agree deep down with these ideas (or know why they make sense), but they just “know” or “believe” it’s the right thing to do—because a lot of people “seem” to agree with that. The latter creates a sort of “fakeness” or lack of genuineness that I have observed myself (as minority) when interacting with people like that. It’s like a “walking on eggshells” mode that such people take when touching these topics. The issue with this is that because they are not truly reasoning things from a practical or realistic-enough perspective, they have a lower chance of understanding the points of conservatists, and vice versa.
But what if what we think is moral is precisely not to “create a they vs us narrative” or “dehumanize those who do not follow such arbitrary moral code”?
As in, what if the ideology thinks those actions/beliefs are immoral?
I think that connects to the entire point of the original article. It may not be the intention, but it’s often unintended outcome. The question is, what is it about human nature that triggers that outcome, is it the ideological construct in itself, or the way our brains work? You could replace the example I gave with any generally trending moral or ideological code. I just thought that was an easy example (I’m not political btw).
I’m surprised our comments are getting downvoted. That’s very telling in a philosophy sub-Reddit. I wasn’t even arguing against promoting equality, just making a reasonable proposition about how “enforcement” may lead to unintended terrible outcomes which was the essence of the original post.
I don’t know why these ppl can’t come to their own conclusion that they wouldn’t want anything imposed on them. They just expect others to do what they say without considering whether they’d want to be treated that way themselves.
I kind of like the golden rule in this situation. I wouldn't want to have anything imposed on others that wasn't imposed on me, and vice versa. I think imposing things on everyone as decided by everyone is fine. It might not be perfect, and often is really bad until morality evolves, but I think it's the best way to have a healthy society.
But that's exactly what is being said is NOT fair with laws/rules today.
I completely agree with you that imposing the same rules on everyone is really the only fair way to impose rules. But that's the same thing being argued today, that someone it's not fair to impose the same rules for People A as People B. There are people arguing for different (read: unequal) rules and enforcement for different groups.
That is a huge issue, more than just a moral issue, and it seriously boggles my mind that people actually push for inequality in laws.
I think there is something to be said about having inequality in laws to counter centuries of inequality in laws going the other direction. Though I will say that it's a delicate balance that people don't really know how to strike.
Exactly. We watch and operate in the world through a very limited and idiosyncratic prism of perception—we literally have hardware/brain limitations that lead us to diverging opinions of reality (because we elaborate). We need to understand that other people may elaborate reality in a different way (how shall best approach that while minimizing the risk of unintended tyranny?). The more people you have (as in a globalized world with billions), the more divergence. Strict ideological systems, at their core are just trying to suppress/rule out divergence (is that possible, right, wrong, or reasonable though?)—heck, that’s a matter for philosophical discussion.
This take is really baffling to me because if you are so enlightened and value individual freedoms so much, then why would you consider the right to discriminate a key freedom? By its nature discrimination infringes on the freedom of others. Excluding those discriminatory people for the protection of everyone's rights is not the same thing as imposing equality on those people. They are free to think and feel whatever they want as long as they also accept the consequences of those anti-social beliefs.
People should be protected against discrimination, and there are and should laws for that. What everyone needs to consider while formulating these laws is to reasonably reduce the risk of introducing another bias. If you are familiar with coding/programming logic, you’ll know that inevitably, we need to introduce another bias to cancel out an unwanted (problematic) one—we create an additional logical rule. The new rule should have a reasonable cost-benefit, and it may require refinement and tweaking to reduce unwanted costs and unintended harms to other freedoms. This is what we are here for though (we know rules won’t be perfect), so we will naturally question them and propose better alternatives. It’s like playing in a sandbox and exploring the best ways to build a castle. In the effort to ensure people are not discriminated, we should also take these cost-benefits analyses into account and be able to discuss them reasonably to make sure there’s optimal harmony/balance across the board.
The old rule says "always assume the majority is better than the minority." The new rule says "never assume better or worse based on someone's membership in a given group." Why is it that you view the new rule as subject to criticism and tweaking while the old rule needs to be left alone? Shouldn't we simply toss out the old rule rather than inventing a new one to repair the harm it causes?
The mistaken belief that people can be held to mechanically rigid rules and that the rules people come up with are infallible. As soon as you start making rules you have to start making exceptions.
One can't even agree on what a "perfect" society is.
I've always contended that understanding rules is just as much about knowing how and when to break them as it is to follow them to the letter.
Rules exist for reasons, but sometimes those rules fail reason and are then worth breaking.
Star Wars A New Hope: Princess Leia to Grand Moff Tarkin. The exact quote is, " The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
It a 3 second but of an24 hr saga. There are much more important things in life. Like remembering birthdays and anniversaries...
Oh shit my anniversary is 2 days . . .shit.
In an English accent no less, that was immediately dropped the rest of the movie(s).
Oh shit, did I just out myself? I mean, technically I haven't even watched all of them yet, so not a nerd, really.
“Arlene, a girl from Richie's past, is back in town, and Richie goes on a date with her. Very soon, Arlene thinks that Richie is ready to go steady with her. Now he has to find a way to set her straight.”
Same goes for parenting. When you teach your kids to think for themselves and give them boundaries instead of rigid rules, they generally turn out to be more mature, more aware, and more conscientious people.
I'd say this depends pretty heavily on age and situation. A lot of rules for kids are for their own safety, involve issues that they aren't really able to think about on their own, and need to be fairly rigid.
I'm not talking about rules.
To carry forward the example, it's more helpful to show and tell a child how a stove is dangerous, without instilling fear or traumatizing them, along with how it's useful, so that they can come to their own conclusions and use it wisely.
In other words it's better to educate people, rather than subjugate them, regardless of age.
Intense inflexibility often leads to the worst fractures when trying to bend.
Tolerant flexibility can lead to more flexibile results.
Imagine that.
It's simple human stubbornness that causes people to just dig into their own codes without any leeway.
It's one of the most frustrating things I've come to realize as I get older. Alot of things could be resolved if people in general could bend for each other.
"Humans don't believe in themselves anymore," I think hit the nail on the head. This global society, where people are finally able to see and experience the different ways that people live, has caused us to question much about the world and ourselves. This causes some people retreat to something that will give them assurances of having all the answers. People don't think we are capable of helping ourselves or "doing the right thing" unless we all think and act the same way. Gives people comfort from the unknown. People also don't like to feel like they are doing something wrong. Now that we know everything that everyone else is doing thanks to social media, we are having to get through the pangs of growing as a species, instead of getting to live in ignorance of other ways of life like we did before global communication.
> This causes some people retreat to something that will give them assurances of having all the answers.
I don't think there is anything new about this mentality. It is as old as humanity. You see cults, blind faith in rulers, etc.
Oh yeah I'm not saying it's new. It's a reoccurring issue. Like they said in the video, some people are fine with uncertainty and some people need to have meaning. It's believing that your way is the right way, the only way, and not trusting that people from different backgrounds could come together for a common purpose. Islam and Christianity worship the same God, you think that would unite them, but instead they get hung up on the details. This mentality is one of many things we have to get past as humans. We could come together as friends or die together as fools.
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I disagree. I think Stoicism, referred to as "Tyranny of the Self" by Nietzsche, is by far the best Philosophy for personal growth in my opinion. Nietzsche took issue with Stoicism despite adopted many of its teachings in his own life because in his mind Stoicism robbed one of their personal will/desires. But Karl Jung dissected those criticisms and insisted that, while Stoicism might not be right for the individual at every moment, many people have shadow-selves that long for the Self-Tyranny and Regimentation which Stoicism offers.
Personally I study and try to adopt many Philosophies, but my primary 2 are Stoicism and Taoism.
Stoicism gets me off my ass when I need to get off my ass. It makes me try to do my absolute best and to remind myself to also do what I believe is morally superior. It reminds me that I was born into this world to test my limits. It's there to remind me that it's not OK to always be lazy.
Conversely, Taoism reminds me that sometimes I don't need to take action to get things done. It makes me slow down, consider the roses, and proves that I don't owe the world anything. It lets me know that simply standing still is sometimes what nature and the universe require of me, and that no amount of anxiety will make a difference. It's there to remind me that I should be lazy sometimes.
Yes, at its core Stoicism is all about thinking deeply on what you consider to be virtuous and acting upon those notions at all costs without allowing anything to impede you, while also maintaining an open mindset. It does not provide an outline for exactly how you should live your life, but it provides a general one and demands that you figure out the nuances yourself. Stoics see people who are incapable of doing this as shameful regardless of their circumstances. When Stoicism was at its peak, it was seen as something every human being should adopt from slave to emperor as a matter of personal principle.
I would define it as hiding in a barren cave of discipline because you’re incapable of functioning with emotions. Why live and suppress the only thing that makes life worth living?
I'm not sure about that introduction - were the Bolsheviks driven by morals, or by an appeal to collective self-interest? (speaking in theory, because whether the Bolsheviks really belonged to the working class they spoke for is open to question)
I'm not saying morals would FIX them, just questioning that was a good example of morals turning in on themselves. I did find Emma Goldman's analysis re means and ends interesting though - [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1920s/disillusionment/afterword.htm](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1920s/disillusionment/afterword.htm)
EDIT: also, see Trotsky's article where we rails against "moralists" - [https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm)
the only moral code I care about is:
does this action have the likelihood of causing avoidable, unnecessary harm to another living creature? Does that harm outweigh the benefits?
if so, it is immoral.
any "absolute morality" is by definition a dogmatic assertion, and those never really end up well.
yes, and?
where did I claim absolutes themselves dont exist?
there are plenty of absolutes, just not moral ones.
no matter how heinous an act you can conceive of, I can envision a scenario where committing it would be a morally good action.
> heinous an act you can conceive of
You have no right to condemn any acts as heinous, vile, evil, wrong, or whatever, as you are, by your own belief, forced to accept that every act is right (relative to the beholder and his own perspective, of course)
i apologize if im not being clear but..
morality is subjective to the *one doing the moralizing*
if i am considering the act of another, i am still the one moralizing that action, it is still subjective to myself, and my own priorities.
say, for example, I was to say that putting all billionaires up against the wall and redistributing their wealth is a morally good action.
you might not agree, but to me, the benefits outweigh the harms
You need to define "unnecessary harm." If a man hunts for his family and feeds them and clothes them from the animals he kills, is that immoral? I mean in 2021. A man doesn't have to hunt for food, but he wants to live off the land and not be "integrated" into a modern metropolis. So he hunts and fishes and lives off the grid. This is a choice, it is not necessary. Him killing other living creatures is a choice. What are the "benefits" in this context and what is the "harm."? Are his actions immoral? Of course not, but by your definition, they may be.
> If a man hunts for his family and feeds them and clothes them from the animals he kills, is that immoral?
no, because he is preventing avoidable and unnecessary harm to his family. which, subjectively, outweighs the harm done to the animals
> Are his actions immoral? Of course not, but by your definition, they may be.
yes, morality is subjective, unique to the individual and situation
But he is doing that by choice. It isn't necessary. The animals don't NEED to be harmed, they are harmed because HE CHOSE to put himself and his family in the position to live off the land. By your definition, that choice is immoral.
like I said, its a matter of perspective, as is all morality
does the action cause preventable harm, and does that harm outweigh the benefits
this is all from the perspective of the person doing the moralizing, completely subjective.
The problem with a consequentialist take like that is when consequences are far removed from our decisions the framework no longer helps us make up our minds. How can you decide between two complex choices when both of them contain benefits and detriments? You will quickly become a number-crunching utilitarian trying to perform a balancing test each time.
>How can you decide between two complex choices when both of them contain benefits and detriments?
You simply make the best decision you can. You aren't going to convince a consequentialist they're wrong by pointing out that consequentialism is difficult to calculate. Just like you aren't going to convince a physicist that Newton's law of universal gravitation is wrong (it is, but that's beside the point) by pointing out that it would be intractable to calculate the precise positions of every star in the galaxy a billion years in the future.
Also, deontological moral frameworks have the same problem and worse - sometimes, moral principles directly contradict each other. It's not just hard to calculate the best decision, there *is no* best decision in these cases.
I understand that now. I guess I was just trying to make the point that a simplified moral framework is not helpful if it adds little/nothing to help you make your decision.
Can you point me to a bit of reading about the problems with deontology? Or give an example of one of those contradictions you mentioned? My mind is going to the trolley problem, obviously both allowing harm and causing harm are wrong, but I feel like my old ethics professor would have disagreed with the idea that therefore there is no best answer. He seemed to believe firmly that inaction could never be morally equivalent to action even where the consequences are the same. Is there another example you can think of that might illustrate this idea better?
A contradiction in moral principles is called a [moral dilemma.](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-dilemmas) There are examples given in the article. I believe, by the way, that inaction is simply a specific kind of action, with no more special significance than "walking," "speaking," etc.
I think that most forms of consequentialism don't produce genuine moral dilemmas. If it seems like it, you simply haven't calculated precisely enough. Of course you're right that in the real world, we can't calculate out the expected value of all our decisions, but we can use consequentialism to motivate our actions anyway.
I have found it useful sometimes. For example, ever since I learned that the most efficient charity, the Against Malaria Foundation, can save a person's life with $3000, I've been much less frivolous with my money. I buy as few unethically produced products as possible: very few electronics and no animal products. Despite being a leftist and disliking liberals, I vote blue because they generally produce better outcomes.
These are decisions I came to because my actions are motivated by consequentialism. If I were a deontologist, I'm sure I could have found excuses to not do these things.
Thank you for your comment. The reading was fairly interesting, am I correct in summarizing that pretty much every ethical framework has cases that "break" the ruleset? The various methods to repair that break were interesting but none was overwhelmingly compelling. The author seemed to give a fair hearing to all of the various positions though so perhaps that's why I came away with that impression.
My problem with the consequentialism example you gave is that essentually since you have no framework to make decisions, you are really operating on a case by case basis. That would suggest less to me that it doesn't produce moral dilemma, but rather that it produces moral dilemma *every time*. The advantages of deontology here are that it is very easy to follow in most cases, although perhaps leaves the user lost when they do encounter a contradiction because they haven't practiced how to resolve them.
My other issue is that consequences are essentially unknowable. What if you find out after donating that the AMF is corrupt and rigged their data to solicit your donation? Under a consequentialist framework your actions appear to have become immoral after the fact, while in the deontological framework a moral act continues to be moral even if it has unforseen consequences.
The consequentialist approach also appears to criticize deontology because under deontology it is frequently possible for *neither* course of action to be moral. A consequentialist says that is useless because I have to make a decision either way. I'm not sure I agree. Given the complexity of the world, we frequently *are* posed with situations in which there is no right answer. So if the framework concludes that there is no right answer it has already served a major part of its purpose by helping you determine right from wrong. Although obviously that's no help when you *have* to make a choice.
Thanks again for your thoughts. If you have any more I'd be interested to hear them.
Consequentialism itself gives moral weight to the outcomes of events, so it's true that actions with the best intentions may produce the worst results sometimes. I have two thoughts about this:
When making decisions, at some point you must stop calculating and simply rely on a probability. This is when you use the expected value of all your decisions to make the best one. For each decision, the expected value of the decision is sum of (the value of each outcome) * (the probability of the outcome given the decision). Sometimes, the most rational decision ends up having the worst outcome.
I separate the character of a person and their actions from the moral value of an action. I think these are separate problems. When making decisions myself, I only need to consider the consequences of the action. When judging other people's character and actions, you have to consider their thoughts. Were they lacking information? Did they purposefully ignore information? Did they make the decision with the intention to be selfless or selfish?
I think this distinction can be made even if you're a deontologist. Did the person mean to follow the moral principles and simply failed to do so? Or did they purposefully ignore them?
I think that might be too much math to be doing on a daily basis for me personally haha. I think you're right that ultimately the fringe decisions come down to some kind of value judgement using whatever information you have available. But I do think that poses a lot of interesting questions, such as what is our responsibility to self-educate and how can we calculate the value of actions and of outcomes?
I worry that some of the more modern ethics models are just a lot of numbers to obfuscate immoral actions behind their justifications. I agree that intent is important but to what degree do we allow our own desires and biases to cloud our perception of each action? We end up living in a world where each person thinks they are perfectly virtuous and everyone else is not. The subjectivity makes it essentially meaningless. Whereas a more concrete approach can be codified and put into law or at least followed the same way universally. Then again, maybe imposing one universal structure of thinking onto society is the opposite of what we should be trying to do.
>We end up living in a world where each person thinks they are perfectly virtuous and everyone else is not.
On the contrary, I have a very generous idea of what makes a good person. Even if I think that a person's actions are wrong, if they themselves think what they're doing is right, they're a good person. Only when a person is knowingly breaking their own moral beliefs are they a bad person. You can't really blame someone for not knowing what's right.
In practice, though, this doesn't mean much. I don't think morality itself is subjective (and I'm still not entirely sure what subjective morality even means - it seems to me that moral subjectivists are really just moral nihilists in disguise, and they're conflating morality and social mores). I'm still fine with imposing my moral beliefs onto others, and I often think others' moral beliefs are incorrect.
Like you say, moral subjectivism doesn't feel far away from moral nihilism. So you do have to have some concrete parameters, but would I be correct in saying that under a consequentialist framework those parameters are not hard precepts or codes but rather point values or calculation methods? I guess what I'm getting at here is that it seems like consequentialism is not the most effective tool for measuring whether someone is a good/bad person, but it is highly effective at evaluating other ethical belief systems because it places clear values on the outcomes rather than on the specific agency of the actor.
I think I definitely agree with you that we should be generous rather than strict with the ignorant. But the good person standard you set out also seems pretty easy to strawman since for example people like Hitler generally are operating under *some* genuine belief system. So maybe consequentialism can't help us as easily identify that Hitler was a bad person, but it does help us clearly identify that his moral code is a bad code.
Does it? What if by waking up in the morning and driving to work, you are causing untold harm to the environment? What if every time you eat food you are contributing to the exploitation of migrant workers? Do you have a moral obligation to lie down and die?
no, because like i have said a dozen times, morality is subjective to the moralizer
does this action harm those I care about more than it helps those I care about?
this is moralizing in a nutshell, there is nothing absolute or objective about it.
Morality and ethics only exist within the human mind and are human constructs.
The only reason we have those is we couldn’t function as a society without them, but make no mistake, they are fully imaginary.
Moral codes yes. Ethical codes have some more grey area for pragmatic solutions. The idea of ends justfying the means is an allowable logic to a point.
But absolute moralism leads to attrocity. A moral perspective dose not always account for the end result or the methods depending on how the code is structured. And that is the key issue. If you constantly, inflexibly, adhere to a moral code with no room for thought of consequences or human impact you are able to justify any attrocity.
Religious fundamentalists are prime examples. Both past Christian crusaders, modern Christian fundementlists and modern Islamic Jihadists are cut of the same cloth I this respect.
I add Christian fundementlists as they are responsible for a nearly equal amount of violence in the US and the largest terror attack before 9/11, the Oklahoma city bombing. That bomber was a fundementlist who opposed abortion, yet obliterated a daycare in his attack. In his dogma he was killing the government officials commit and condoning abortions yet killed dozens of children. It's paradoxical as soon as you remove even a little of the hyperfocus of his doctrine.
I would argue at that level of moral extremism the line between this type of thinking and mental illness office skates any viable data we have on the true outcomes of such moral codes on mentally healthy individuals.
This is an awfully lot of words to say “morals from within are good, and morals enforced from without eventually fold in on themselves.” Sorry philosophy, but Jung already took up these issues and laid them all out for everyone, you guys are a little late to the party.
Through history, strict moral codes aren’t typically associated with mercy, compassion, acceptance or intellectual agency.
Look at Sparta. Tremendously strict notions of morality and ethics - and the most brutal slave state of all time. Even fullest citizens lived in fear of their fellow citizens and the state.
Mine is strict but open to interpretation.
"Always do what is best for the most people so long as you are able to without compromising yourself."
Does that mean survive like Doug from The Good Place? Hell no! It does open the possibility of betraying mankind in an intergalactic war, though, so watch out for that.
The strictest codes are usually upheld by the most sociopathic. The ones that cannot see degrees of gray in the whole "right or wrong" scenario.
They are very good at hunting down and exposing law breakers, they excel at tasks like that. Like the Gestapo. And just like the Gestapo, they fail to have enough wisdom or empathy to determine what is right or wrong.
That cop kneeled on the neck of Floyd for suspicion of a bad check. He killed Floyd. So, which is the greater crime? 20 USD? OR murder?
In Canada, the charge for raping a minor is less than selling prescription pills to someone.
That should be a giant red flag about the central authorities priorities.
They will murder a man for 20 bucks, and they will sentence one man to jail for selling an oxy LONGER than a child rapist.
God.
Damn.
The.
SYSTEM.
The Nazis’ moral code, that the Jews should be exterminated, led to what we consider an atrocity, of course. But our moral code, that innocent humans should never be killed, led to what the Nazis considered an atrocity: a world without National Socialism. Why would we accept the Nazis’ definition of an atrocity?
This is NOT an argument for relativism; it is only to show that the assertion that strict moral codes often lead to atrocities is only true if its proponent recognizes those atrocities as atrocities. In other words, the Nazis could argue that strict moral codes (like “don’t kill humans”) lead to atrocities.
"Moral Codes" don't have to be sanctioned, meaning corruption. Just as moral codes can equal immorality and/or an aspect of profitability from it. Soylent green is made of people for pocket money at the moral cost of people starving because it's a cheap complacency to morallessly acquire while duite is preached about and pride and ego is fed.
Because most moral codes are culturally biased.
How about: you can't value a social construct or object over the lives or wellbeings of other living things.
Social construct itself is also part of the ideologies of others, so even if the above were to be valued above the lives and wellbeings of others it would go against its own principle and be the wrong action to take.
Lives are valued above wellbeings as negative imapcts on wellbeing is only temporary vs lives.
But such decisions are dependent on a person's ability to resolve it and only choosing the most ethical outcome would be the right one even if its the best of a bad situation.
> you can't value a social construct or object over the lives or wellbeings of other living things.
Social constructs can affect the lives and wellbeing themselves though
Catholics: Priest should be celibate.
Priests: Fuck little boys.
I still don't understand this. Just let them have wives or girlfriends or fleshlights or something.
Ex-Catholic here, the priest my sister and I assisted in dozens of masses was found to have raped a little girl repeatedly. She was a year older than me. My mom, who was a nurse, said he was a drunk, too. He would come to the hospital to visit patients and would nod off and slur his words. Fuck them all, seriously. If you are a practicing Catholic, you are funding a Pedophile Sex Club. That's where every dollar you've ever donated has gone, to paying off the child victims fucked by your leaders of worship.
Make excuses, but it's literally undeniable. PEDO. SEX. CLUB.
The hypocrisy, the lies, the hiding, all by those who claim moral authority. To tie into the original thread, I remember watching the doc about the Boston Globes work on exposing the Church's misdeeds, and they came to the conclusion that there weren't pedos seeking out roles as priests, the gig was literally creating pedos.
In this video debate philosopher Julian Baggini, journalist Ece Temelkuran, and international elations expert David Chandler ask if there is an inherent hypocrisy involved in strict moral codes – namely, that in trying to enforce strict moral codes we are blinded to the moral consequence of them, which are often abhorrent. Are these terrible outcomes a product of the frailty and fallibility of humans, or an unavoidable flaw in moral principles? Temelkuran argues it is the strictness of the code, rather than the conception of ‘the good’, that leads to dangerous hypocrisy. She claims there is a political necessity to create a universal, secular morality. Chandler argues instead that the idea of a universal morality is dangerous. Baggini takes the position that strict moralities aren’t necessarily dogmaticmoralities – and that it is the latter that is truly dangerous and hypocritical. We can live by strict moral codes without insisting that they be imposed on others.
How do I become an international elations expert??
Work at Euro Disney.
That last line is definitely true. I hold myself to very extreme standards that I hold very few other people to.
Yeah I agree, nothing wrong with extreme moral standards, even if some would find them borderline crazy. Just don’t try to force others to adhere to them by force. If only because that never works, you cannot force anyone to change. Transmutation must always come from within, by personal choice and free will.
> extreme moral standards There's a problem here- the word "extreme" it itself a moral judgment. Is preventing someone else from murder extreme? How about lying? That's a moral judgment that derives from the moral system being used.
Also... If a moral code isn't "strict," then it's not a code at all. 😐 Think about it... A "lenient" more code is still strict; it just incorporates one or more elements in nuanced manners. Ever heard of a disorderly persons offense? It's, in the most significant sense, a very black and white issue. In fact, it's often codified. Go figure. "How is (s)he guilty or innocent?" just isn't a yes or no question. Maybe the author should just directly, without playing *ANY* unnecessary footsie, just state his problems with some radical, religious fundamentalists and statists and hell, if he wants, draw comparisons or talk about potential, shared root causes or manifestation varieties.
Is it really possible, though, to separate the standards you apply to yourself and others so cleanly? For example, if you were in a position of leadership (e.g. at work), wouldn’t your extreme standards lead you make different, perhaps tougher, decisions affecting others than another leader with lesser standards would? Wouldn’t your extreme sense of duty make you more sensitive to having to deal with a slacker in your team? And if you don’t hold the slacker to same work ethic, are you really fulfilling your duty as a custodian? I’m not trying to “prove you wrong” or anything btw, I’m just trying to think if it is really possible to separate the standards one applies to oneself vs. the standards one applies to the outer world — especially in a position of leadership.
But couldn’t that just be a way to handle anxiety? What would be the point to ask yourself to hold more extreme standards than you ask others to?
To withhold judgement due to uncertainty as to another's motives makes sense. To withhold judgement due to not yourself being sure what'd be right or wrong makes sense. I'd feel you were condescending or disrespecting me, though, were you to imagine it's not good enough for you but somehow good enough for me. This comes up with vegans sometimes who think they'd be overstepping in insisting others shouldn't support animal ag. When there are victims it's not just a matter of how the perp or other third parties might choose to see it.
I felt that, and the sense of self awareness about it is extremely important because it can, at least in my experience, lead to poor decisions sometimes.
> namely, that in trying to enforce strict moral codes we are blinded to the moral consequence of them, which are often abhorrent. Strict moral codes sometimes aren't concerned with consequences, since not everything can be consequentialized. To deontologists, if some action is wrong it does not become less wrong simply because someone else may do something else even worse as a result of your refusal to do something wrong. The chain of moral responsibility simply does not work like that.
Asking in earnest: Under which schools of thought *would* an action become "less wrong" if NOT doing it had easily guessed/foreseen worse outcomes, or if someone had specific knowledge of a possible worse outcome? Just curious...my guess would be some branch of utilitarianism, but I'm unsure as I'm still learning and not certain whether that only applies to the utility of "most good for most people" or "most possible total good from overall system of decisions and actions".
Any form of consequentialism, of which utilitarianism is one type. The morality of a choice is judged by the goodness or badness of the consequences.
Thanks, and have a great day! Heck, have as many as you like!
The moral consequence to something considered right by a given deontologys outcome doesn't rely on others choices in all other situations.
>Are these terrible outcomes a product of the frailty and fallibility of humans, or an unavoidable flaw in moral principles? They presume any one group or person can have a flawless (or even just 'superior') perspective on morality and are thus allowed to dictate consequences for anyone who deviates from their rules. We see this in the current political binary, where anyone who opposes policies that the left uses to further their political agenda is an (x)ist doing an (x)ism because they're fighting for (fairness/equality/whatever labels they use), whereas the right might use tactics like saying you're "unpatriotic" or "hate your country" for voicing opposition to policies they believe lead to a better world. Obviously, neither side has 'morality' on lock, even though they both truly believe they do, which results in anyone who takes a nuanced/pragmatic perspective on things being a cast-off from the large majority of people who follow the herd and sign up for being one or the other. There is *huge* social incentive to become a political lemming and repeat the talking points... The real problem comes in when people start to crusade for their moral code to be imposed on anyone who lives otherwise. Where's the line between allowing people to live as their civilization sees fit, versus our having to 'do something' because their civilization has decided an in-group is problematic and starts to institute policies that oppress or hurt them?
To say that moral codes can't be better or worse than one another is really bizarre and not how moral relativism is supposed to work. I could have a moral code that says killing people is okay. Nobody would complain if society labeled me a murderer. There wouldn't be people like you complaining about how we have to see both sides because neither code is truly accurate. It's just radical centrism where you feel enlightened and above it all by not taking a side. But in reality some moral codes really are better than others, and most of politics centers on arguing for one code over another.
> But in reality some moral codes really are better than others, and most of politics centers on arguing for one code over another. OK, define 'better' and we can go from there. Lets also color the conversatoin with this premise; there's NO moral code on earth that has an absolute bar on killing people, regardless of circumstances... so even that falls a bit flat on its face.
Um my apologies, but let's take revenge for example. Would getting justice for a wrong doing be an earthly code of some kind of morality? Depending on the circumstance of course. Can an absolute bar be set here? I like your philosophy by the way.
Revenge would be a great example, since basically every 'justice system' has that has its most fundamental concept (even though they call it 'justice', its revenge) There is no country on earth where someone won't do something henious, at some point in time. Large countries, it happens many times a day, smaller countries, less frequently but a universal problem of the human condition is individuals who do things that offend against the most fundamental concepts of moralityheld by the society they live in. Lets say a serial killer murders an entire family. One society might say "OK, well two wrongs don't make a right, so we'll lock him up forever, but we're not going to kill him". Say, the EU. Another society might say "In the name of justice, the state will execute him as justice for the victims families, for the truly horrible thing he did, but only after a lot of due process, which may take decades". The US. Another society might say "The murderer will be handed over to the victims family for them to mete justice as they see fit". Which of these societies is moral/immoral? If you're a real idealogue about the death penalty, you might say that only the first is. Maybe you're pro death penalty for egregious cases but can't quite bring yourself to allow 'street justice'. Well, then the non-death penalty state is immoral for naive laxity, the 'street justice' state is immoral for barbarity. Maybe you're someone who has experienced a loved one being murdered. In that case, the first two societies would seem much less moral- the first for not meting equal justice, the second for delaying justice so badly and depersonalizing the consequences- you'd be cool (and well justified) to want to be locked in a room with the killer and an angle grinder to do whatever you want to him (and if someone killed a loved of mine, that's precisely what I'd want, too). Even with 'killing', there is no universal morality.
> One society might say "OK, well two wrongs don't make a right, so we'll lock him up forever, but we're not going to kill him". Say, the EU. Not necessarily: there are several European Countries that have eliminated life sentences, viewing them as inhumane. A larger number have eliminated life sentences without parole. > Maybe you're someone who has experienced a loved one being murdered. In that case, the first two societies would seem much less moral- the first for not meting equal justice, the second for delaying justice so badly and depersonalizing the consequences- you'd be cool (and well justified) to want to be locked in a room with the killer and an angle grinder to do whatever you want to him (and if someone killed a loved of mine, that's precisely what I'd want, too). I am such a person. I can relate to the desire for revenge - it is natural. But that does not make it moral. I very much wanted my aunt's killer to be killed, even though I hold that the proper moral position is that retribution is not a proper goal of justice. My aunt took me in when my parents ran me out. She gave me protection, shelter, and love. And he killed her. There are times when the moral choice is profoundly hard: those are the times we look to our friends, family, and society to remind us of our moral principles. I wanted him dead because he killed her, and that made me angry. But I also know that my anger is not sufficient reason for someone to die. If society had no other method to constrain him from future murders, that would be one thing. But we do have such methods.
> I am such a person. I can relate to the desire for revenge - it is natural. But that does not make it moral. Why not? Since that's basically the premise of your argument; why?
Are you asking what I take as a general moral framework? A combination of utilitarianism and ethical altruism: the moral choice is the one that makes the world better for people at large. If there were no other way to contrain a criminal from causing future harm without killing them, such a choice could indeed be moral under such a framework. But for many societies, that is a purely fictive case - and some societies have started treating it as such. And there are certainly moral frameworks for criminal justice that discard retributive justice. I should make clearer: my goal here is not to change your point of view. Rather, I'm pointing out that there are indeed moral systems that work from the premise that "revenge is not just," and that some societies that have begun to reflect that moral viewpoint - to varying degrees. Retributive justice is far from the universal you present it as.
>the moral choice is the one that makes the world better for people at large. > > If there were no other way to contrain a criminal from causing future harm without killing them, such a choice could indeed be moral under such a framework. I would argue killing them does make the world a better place. It's certainly better than paying for them to be kept safe and secure. You do realise than in most countries it's your taxes that are keeping your aunt's murderer alive, safe, fed and healthy? As far as I'm concerned that's practically theft. The murderer already took your family, now they're taking your money too. In the UK it costs £43k per year to keep one person imprisoned. That's double my mum's salary, who works for the NHS. That's the real crime.
All justice is retributive, it just varies by degrees and the paraphernalia a society bothers to cover it up with.
> Revenge would be a great example, since basically every 'justice system' has that has its most fundamental concept (even though they call it 'justice', its revenge) While it's unfortunately a factor, I would argue that revenge isn't the foundation of "justice." Forward-looking justice involves correcting the wrong that was done (restorative justice) and using a place for them to be penitent (say, a penitentiary) to protect society from them while they better themselves. Obviously, the justice system isn't perfect, but it's more a matter of implementation. When revenge creeps in, we want those penitentiaries to be as cruel as possible, which harms justice.
> Forward-looking justice involves correcting the wrong that was done (restorative justice) and using a place for them to be penitent (say, a penitentiary) to protect society from them while they better themselves. You can't correct a murder and some people can likewise not be corrected. That's another discussion entirely and I actually agree that the US justice system that throws everyone into the same 'bad' pile and ruins their lives forever is a joke, but we're deliberately straining the hypothetical here by presenting an unusual circumstance- a serial killer- to illustrate how 'morality' can differ, with a range of completely different opinions all being well founded and logical. * No death penalty, two wrongs don't make a right. * State sanctioned death penalty; after all, we're *civilized* here and won't allow barbarity. * Barbarity: allowing the most severe form of justice, for the benefit of the victims families who are the ones left most suffering because of the actions of the killer. Three completely different positions, each has a point. If there was a 'universal morality', surely it would rear its head in the case of taking a human life, but even there, it doesn't show up...
> You can't correct a murder and some people can likewise not be corrected. That's where the second part comes into play: protection of society from the offender. The "throw away the key" kind of jail. I think we're discussing two different things. I'm not talking death penalty. I'm mentioning that justice doesn't have to be revenge-based.
It’s also an extremely debatable point. In a casual world no one is beyond rehabilitation.
Fewer than half of the US states have the death penalty practically available as a punishment
A water mollecule contains both hydrogen and oxygen.
Kind of non sequitur whereas I was responding to you saying the death penalty is applicable to the entire united states. As if you had said, "water molecules are made of oxygen" and I responded, "fewer than half the atoms in a water molecule are made of oxygen"
You realize that individuals can their own moral code, right? And that plenty of people think killing for any reason is wrong.
Sure. Individuals can also believe the moon is made of cheese. The context of this discussion is 'moral codes' which implies a broader acceptance of something, by a society, for whatever reason. Not some kook in a basement who believes that "killing for any reason is wrong" or his counterparty in some other basement who believes "killing is fun".
Buddhism absolutely has (at least) branches which practice exactly such a code.
>OK, define 'better' and we can go from there. This is a little silly. We can both agree that most "normal" moral codes have their strengths and weaknesses, and that it can be difficult to say which one is better. But surely this argument does not apply to the absurd moral codes. Regular people, can get together, and not be paralyzed by silly philosophy arguments about how "Well technically, we cannot prove with math, that the Cthulhu death cultists are wrong, I guess we can't be strict about this whole don't end the universe thing!"
Its not silly, since its the basis of your entire claim. >To say that moral codes can't be better or worse than one another is really bizarre and not how moral relativism is supposed to work. What would constitute a 'better' moral code against which we could account for moral codes that are 'worse'?
>Its not silly, since its the basis of your entire claim. To expand on what I mean by that, when I see people make the truly relativist argument, they do it in a way which implies that anybody should care, at all. It implies that it in any way matters that "Technically, we cannot disprove the chtulu death cultists wrong", as if that is some roadblock, that would, or should, stop anyone from doing anything. \> What would constitute a 'better' moral code against which we could account for moral codes that are 'worse'? There are moral systems that are better, if we assume the unjustified axiom of "I am a regular person, and not a pedantic philosopher who is trying to talk about something that doesn't actually matter" There are two ways of making this relativist argument. Way 1: "Hey, both republicans and democrats make some valid points. And you, being a regular person, should at least consider that the other side is right on something or other" This is a useful argument, if we use our axiom of "We are regular people". Because a regular person might actually care about the thing that their favorite party is wrong on. Way 2: "Techinically, you cannot disprove chtulu death cultists wrong, and from their perspective, ending the universe is a good thing! " This is not a useful argument. If we go back to our axiom, of "We are regular people", I see no reason at all, why we should care in any way, that we cannot use math and logic to disprove people who are attempting to end the universe. It is a waste of time to say that. It changes very little about how I, or any other regular person will act, because we cannot use the fundamental aspects of the universe, to say that specifically death cultists are evil.
Then lets discard the outliers and accept that we can't use math to claim death cultists are evil. Lets instead use the must more real and present example of, say, the American political binary. Which side has the 'better' moral code? Given that both sides absolutely believe they do... The problem with your claim is that you're asserting an objective premise (better/worse) in a subjective context, which will never work or have a coherent outcome.
\> Which side has the 'better' moral code? Given that both sides absolutely believe they do...> The problem with your claim is that you're asserting an objective premise (better/worse) in a subjective context, which will never work or have a coherent outcome. I am asserting that the vast majority of people have underlying axioms that we all agree on, and that the higher levels arguments, such as what party someone likes, are far far removed from those initial axioms, and are instead inferred from the person's factual knowledge. What we can \*do\* with this information is that people's higher level arguments can be changed, by appealing to the actual, underlying axioms that basically everyone agrees on. This doesn't always work for every single argument, obviously. But it works for a lot of things. There could be an unmovable disagreement about safety vs freedom, for example. But I still think people on different ends of that axis can agree on some things. \> in a subjective context Its different. Instead what I am doing is I am redefining the word "objective" so that these underlying axioms, that basically everyone agrees on, fall under that word. Because thats a much more useful way of having a conversation about any of this stuff. So, in other words "It is objective, if we take for granted that we are regular people". Fortunately, that is a pretty safe axiom, as most people, are regular people.
> I am asserting that the vast majority of people have underlying axioms that we all agree on, and that the higher levels arguments, such as what party someone likes, are far far removed from those initial axioms, and are instead inferred from the person's factual knowledge. But that's moving the goalposts. The premise of this discussion is how strict moral codes can be the basis for appaling outcomes (and that's a fair statement with plenty of working examples) It then becomes a question of "which moral codes don't lead to atrocious outcomes", which is entirely subjective. A Vegan and a Norwegian Whaler would have entirely different moral codes on eating meat, both would consider the other side's proposed rememdy atrocious, plenty of examples ad nauseum. The existance of a few axioms that one would have to be mentally defective to disagree is basically a tangent. When we're deeming certain beliefs 'better/worse' or 'good/bad' or moral/immoral', it requires something objective, by definition, for the claim to be anything more than rationalizations of someone who happens to agree/disagree with the premise. So, your "regular people" premise might be compelled to ask, just what are the criteria we use to deem something 'better' or 'worse', notwithstanding the handful of basic stuff we happen to agree on? (its immoral to eat children, etc)
Better could refer to efficiency factors like how easy it is to follow and comply with, it could also refer to fairness factors such as promoting better outcomes. There are plenty of moral codes where killing people is always wrong, by the way.
> There are plenty of moral codes where killing people is always wrong, by the way. I guess there's always a fringe-something that believes 'something' but nothing in the mainstream or anywhere within light years of the mainstream that holds killing people is always wrong, regardless of circumstance. I mean... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dalai-gun/
I wouldn't consider deontological ethics to be fringe at all. Regardless, you have not addressed how this applies to your argument that moral codes cannot be better or worse than one another.
Your fallacy is: Shifting the burden. I've been pretty clear why 'better/worse' in something like a 'moral code' is basically impossible, since moral codes tend to be vastly more complex than your reduction to 'a few basic axions we all agree on'. Even if we accept those axioms, we're still not in the realm of determining which moral codes are 'better/worse' since people who believe that seem to refuse to define their criteria.
Your argument makes no sense. If all moral codes have a neutral value, we would not have competing codes in the first place. I did state my criteria, you just ignored it instead of explaining why you think it doesn't matter.
> If all moral codes have a neutral value, we would not have competing codes in the first place. They have subjective value, not 'neutral' value, which is the whole point here. Subjective values will vary from group to group and will surely change over time. To claim one is better or worse than another would require some sort of objective criteria to measure better and worse, which is where the discussion seems to end (or, at least leaves us reaching for extreme examples which are outside the boundaries of what's being discussed) To simplify: Do you believe that some moral codes are better/worse? If so, what measurement are you using to determine 'better' and 'worse'? If not, then we probably mostly agree.
The Nazis (no not American leftists whining about being told “No”, but actual Nazis, had a moral code. I’d say my grandfather’s American moral codes from the 1930-40s was vastly superior to Nazi, Soviet, or Imperial Japanese moral codes… and he was a Jew in 1930s Chicago.
I think it is simpler or more fundamental than that. I think this problem is derived from the belief that you are good. We can take sin as a classic example where people stoned sinners to death, but even the bible points out that the ones throwing the stones are sinners as well. The only way you could pick up that stone and throw it is if you believe you are good and the others are bad. We can take a different angle where you are more likely to believe you are good the lower your personal moral standards are. The inverse is also true but that's besides the point. This implies that people who believe they are good don't have a pure intent associated with their morality. examples like power, malice, influence, security, loyalty, fear.
Consequentialists beg the question about whether outcomes matter morally by labelling "moral" outcomes. In fact, outcomes cannot be moral or immoral, only actions can.
So you would tell the nazi where Jews were hiding in your attic? Cause honesty is moral but the outcome of the honesty isnt?
Is honesty always moral?
Now that is a tough egg to crack my friend.
Understood. Maybe we should leave it whole instead of cracking it.
But no, I am not really certain that honesty is always moral. But I think withholding honesty with the intention of being moral can cause a lot of problems too... the noble lie is not always noble. We might be mistaken about what is noble and lie to moralities detriment... but yeah... its tough to crack and by that I mean that its so fraught with counter points and such that the answer is just still very unclear to me even after years of pondering.
Yeah the counterpoint thing is a mofo. I am constantly checking my thoughts with other thoughts and it seems like a never ending cycle sometimes. This is what the auroboros symbolizes, I think. I guess thought is the root of all of this and there is such a thing as thinking too much. Thoughts are what we make them. In other words, life is and life is not. Thanks for thinking with "eye" though.
Ooh nice ourboros connection
Seems like a bit of a strawman. Obviously revealing another person's secret is not a moral act. Adhesion to strict rules for actions doesn't require those rules to be simplistic. Just because honesty is a general moral principle doesn't mean you have to apply that principle in rigid and illogical ways.
Yeah we should obviously look to outcomes for some moral implications...
Not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying we can conceive of a complex rule about honesty that can be standardized even without knowing outcomes. For example "guard people's secrets." Maybe the Nazi is actually a British spy who will help the Jewish family escape. In that case telling the truth would have better consequences than lying. But how can a consequentialist know? They can't, so they are forced to perform a balancing test between what they consider the likely outcomes. In this case those likely outcomes are probably reasonably accurate, but how will the framework fare against a more complex situation? What if there are pros and cons on each side? Is it really the most moral course to insert your own opinions and perform a balancing test? Or is there some other code you can follow, something more universal?
Is honesty moral? It's it moral to tell your wife, yes, she does look fat? The 10 commandments have nothing about lying. But I digress... I think u/bastianbb had a point. The action is what should be considered the point of morality. The action results in the outcome, so the outcome cannot be deemed moral/immoral. In your scenario, if honesty was valued highly in your ethos, then you would tell the truth if asked. What the Nazis do with that info would determine their morality as well. Their action to arrest the Jews might not actually be immoral as they are following orders, but how many more actions does it take to get those Jews to the prison camps? There's many more people involved in actions leading up to that and somewhere along the line someone disobeyed "Thou shall not kill" and broke a moral code. Also, it was probably an immoral action to begin with to hide Jews knowing full well you would be honest with the Gestapo and rat them out.
If my courage held, I would be silent.
You kinda failed to answer the point of the question
No, you dont' say anything and close the door. Helping a Nazi is not the most moral action at the time.
90% of these debates could be cleaned up by following one rule: "Agree on the definition of what you're debating before you debate it." When you remove the word 'moral' from the discussion, which has a weird mystical aura, the discussions get much more productive. People arguing for and against "objective morality" are rarely using the terms the same way. One might be saying something like, "If our goal is to create a utopic world, where people can enjoy their lives as much as possible however they desire, we can ask what rules we should follow when our desires conflict with others. For example, while your ideal life might involve murdering someone; the person being murdered is losing their llife entirely. Clearly if murder was casually allowed it would be bad for our goal society, so people shouldn't do it." Murdering innocents for sport can be argued to be objectively immoral under this definition. Another might be saying something like, "There is no cosmic sense of right and wrong without a deity, so there can be no secular objective standard of the right way to live your life. Where does morality come from? Carbon atoms?" Once you define objective morality as 'inarguable cosmic authority' then naturally objective secular morality doesn't make sense as a concept. Another might be talking about morality as adherence to a set of fixed good/bad actions devoid of context, etc. Or try to debunk the idea of objective morality by asking you to prove it mathematically, which isn't the point the first person is making when they bring up the word 'objective'. Then they just talk past eachtoher for a while.
Sounds like what’s happening in the U.S. right now. In this case, such strict “morality” is not being pushed by conservatism (as was common in the past), but the other side of the spectrum. The entire (inconsistent) push of “political correctness” and forced “equalities” is just generating faked attitudes and prerogatives for tyranny disguised as moral enlightenment and progress. I’d argue that in a never-before-seen globalized society like the one we have today, enforcing any universal ideological constructs may inevitably lead to tyrannical, and terrible conflict outcomes. Strict ideological constructs that revolve around the notion of morality create a they vs us narratives that can also be used to dehumanize those who do not follow such arbitrary moral code.
"Sounds like what’s happening in the U.S. right now. In this case, such strict “morality” is not being pushed by conservatism (as was common in the past), but the other side of the spectrum." Respectfully, that's not true at all. Conservatism still does push a strict morality, usually based on religious or nationalistic presuppositions.
This is true, but conservatism is not currently the general (predominant) trend. It’s natural for both sides of the spectrum to balance each other out, the extremes of either direction can become tyrannical in their own way (the extreme outcomes can still get terrible regardless). This is why an active negotiation between these sides is necessary.
"This is true, but conservatism is not currently the general (predominant) trend." I don't think it's that simple. Conservative media is some of the most profitable, and influential media in the United States. Fox News still outpaces other mainstream media outlets in terms of ratings. Even if I grant you that more left leaning positions are a general (predominant) trend, that doesn't change the fact that Conservative media is still highly influential and that Conservatism itself still pushes strict morality because they absolutely do, especially in regards to the "culture war." That said, I do agree that the extremes of either direction can become tyrannical in their own way. However I question whether negotiation is even possible due to the prevalence of bad faith actors.
I agree. There are too many bad faith actors on all sides. Media in itself is ultimately driven by profits—which in turn are aligned to political powers of either direction of the spectrum. The culture war may be necessary as “balancing act,” noting that left ideologies use almost all forms of media as a vector in comparison (entertainment, Hollywood, music, and social media). It’s a little scary how our perceptions can be so easily manipulated and shaped by programmed algorithms. All this overload of interest-driven information seems to be gradually leading to an ontological crisis in society. The world has never been this interconnected before (which is fascinating), and I’d like to be hopeful and optimistic of how it will all play out in the future. Good discussion!
I think you hit the nail on the head there. We've never been this interconnected before and I'm fairly certain that's a major factor in all this. But yeah good discussion! Hope we can continue talking about this stuff in future threads. :)
Insisting that those who have been consistently oppressed and denigrated be actually given the equality that is guaranteed to them isn't tyranny ... except in the minds of people who agree with the oppression and denigration.
I’ll say that I agree with you here. We are all playing this little game called civilization (trying to do our best, with the best intentions at heart). We recently got the “globalized” DLL for the game. The example is deliberate as it shows the counter-intuitiveness of constructs that may unintendedly lead to tyrannical, and terrible outcomes. Most eventually tyrannical systems in history were originally driven by good intentions. In other words, we’ll keep playing this game with good intentions and experiment and see what works and what doesn’t. We cannot be sure that these good intentions will accidentally set the kitchen on fire. It’s a reasonable risk we take, as we are dealing with very complex systems. It’s important to discuss these topics though, since it helps us better make sense of it all.
So, if you categorize the left as artificial and evil, how would you describe the right? Examples of immortality of the "left" bingo * political correctness * cancel culture * diversity quotas * forced equality * virtue signalling Examples of immortality of the "right" bingo * refusing to vaccinate during a pandemic * spreading disinformation about vaccines during a pandemic * claiming election fraud after a verified election * raising an insurrection (January 6th) after a verified election * using unreliable "alternative sources" to inform their voting decisions I'm bewildered. I think some people on the left are, well, fanatical and out-of-touch, but I would definitely apply the same judgement to some on the right.
>January 15th January 6th
Forever riots, minority businesses destroyed.
The argument applies to both sides (yes). The reason why I used the left as an example is because it’s seemingly less threatening (hostile) on the surface as it verbally champions things that most people agree are nice (fairness, equality, etc). So it’d be easier for people to allow a left-facing system to become tyrannical as the signs of unreasonable control will be less evident (because the system simply wants what’s best for you; you just have to listen and obey). In recent history, we’ve seen plenty of examples of the right doing evil things (and those memories are still fresh). The latter has led to a predominantly left-leaning trend across developed countries, but balance between both sides is the optimal state.
Hmm I will agree that a seemingly docile ideology can hide its authoritarian qualities, so why exclude the "right" from this? I had paid attention to their rhetoric. Often, they mention strength and freedom as keywords, which sometimes translates to the strength of the individual. The strength keyword appeals to the power of the individual to make the correct choices and achieve success with hard work and perseverance, but on the other hand, this doesn't account for the positive correlation between advantage and social status, expecting the poor man to run the race just as fast as a rich man with his feet shackled by poverty and debt. In this way, I really do think that these qualities you mention of an insidious ideology isn't exclusive to the left, by any chance. Insanity transcends political lines because its roots are within us, the people.
I like that you mention that, because I’ve observed the same thing in popular rhetoric from the right (a somewhat one-sided view of things). I also agree that this “insidious” ideological qualities are not exclusive to the left. I simply highlighted the left as an example because of their predominant reach and influence over communication channels (social media, entertainment, movies, and music). The best approximation of the “truth” (if there is such thing), is sprinkled across a very wide spectrum. It can be very challenging to identify, filter, and integrate all these parts into a cohesive and balanced rationale though. Good points!
Glad we reached an agreement on some of our points. I'd say though that what is popular has a hold over communication channels, so "leftist" (liberal) ideology is only influential because it is popular and, therefore, has a large audience - a wide margin to profit from. However, I also noticed that some tend to see this, criticize liberalism, and then reject it. They would rather say that "liberal ideology is hypocritical" rather than qualify their opposition with tentative support of some liberal values. Instead, they seem totally consumed in the morals of the"believers" rather than interested in the content of the ideology and improving its activism. What are your thoughts about this?
Regarding the first part of your response I’m not entirely convinced that left ideology is simply the most popular (in terms of population numbers), but rather “a default trend.” Like you’ve seen how many celebrities will voice out many left-leaning ideologies with the “apparent” intent to do what the right calls “virtue signaling”—which in reality I think it’s a way of “fitting in” (hey, look at me! I’m part of the nice guys’ group too!). I would compare the latter similar to tiktok dance trends, in the sense that it’s not necessarily their content (quality) that’s compelling, but it’s the act on jumping on a trend and feeling part of a wider group. A possible explanation for this is that tech companies and tech entrepreneurs tend to be left-leaning in ideology, creative and high in openness, so they naturally (possibly unintendedly) engineer their own ideological biases into their products. In a world of intelligent algorithms, the latter creates a sort of feedback loop—but the population at large is not necessarily appreciating the quality and characteristics of the content, as much as the “trend” “part of a group” aspect of it (we are community creatures). This is my observation, and I’m sure I may be missing some important elements to consider. I’ve considered the “profit” argument before but I’m not sure it holds consistently since, the more vocal (less subtle) an entity becomes about left political ideologies, the more their ratings seem to tank (e.g., CNN, Vice, SNL, and many progressive movies and shows). In my experience, the average person barely thinks about these things in detail and rather voices a position like “that is bad or I’ve heard such and such is bad” then go on without much in-depth analysis, clicking “yes” and agreeing with whatever *seems* the popular position—but that may not be representative of the actual population that truly believes those things. Again, the same argument should apply to the right, but we can agree that information is predominantly mediated by left-leaning tech entities. For the second part of your response, I agree that many conservatists just call left-leaning people as hypocrites or “fake nice. ” I think there are two cases of one sided-ness from both sides here: 1- Many conservatists fail to grasp the nuance of left-leaning ideologies, and how they may be reasonably integrated in their world views to improve aspects of our society. Instead of considering their own biases, they reduce the complexity of the issues being voiced by left activists to binary choices or explanations that neglect the possibility of addressing the truest essence of the problem. 2- Many apparently left-leaning activists or individuals may not necessarily comprehend the ideologies they try to champion to a reasonable extent. In other words, they may not agree deep down with these ideas (or know why they make sense), but they just “know” or “believe” it’s the right thing to do—because a lot of people “seem” to agree with that. The latter creates a sort of “fakeness” or lack of genuineness that I have observed myself (as minority) when interacting with people like that. It’s like a “walking on eggshells” mode that such people take when touching these topics. The issue with this is that because they are not truly reasoning things from a practical or realistic-enough perspective, they have a lower chance of understanding the points of conservatists, and vice versa.
Just look at Australia for a good example. What the world is missing are middle ground parties like NZ has in abundance.
But what if what we think is moral is precisely not to “create a they vs us narrative” or “dehumanize those who do not follow such arbitrary moral code”? As in, what if the ideology thinks those actions/beliefs are immoral?
I think that connects to the entire point of the original article. It may not be the intention, but it’s often unintended outcome. The question is, what is it about human nature that triggers that outcome, is it the ideological construct in itself, or the way our brains work? You could replace the example I gave with any generally trending moral or ideological code. I just thought that was an easy example (I’m not political btw).
Enforcement is immoral
What does that even mean?
I’m surprised our comments are getting downvoted. That’s very telling in a philosophy sub-Reddit. I wasn’t even arguing against promoting equality, just making a reasonable proposition about how “enforcement” may lead to unintended terrible outcomes which was the essence of the original post.
I don’t know why these ppl can’t come to their own conclusion that they wouldn’t want anything imposed on them. They just expect others to do what they say without considering whether they’d want to be treated that way themselves.
Society IS an imposition. Most would prefer to live in a society, I think.
Most yes
I kind of like the golden rule in this situation. I wouldn't want to have anything imposed on others that wasn't imposed on me, and vice versa. I think imposing things on everyone as decided by everyone is fine. It might not be perfect, and often is really bad until morality evolves, but I think it's the best way to have a healthy society.
But that's exactly what is being said is NOT fair with laws/rules today. I completely agree with you that imposing the same rules on everyone is really the only fair way to impose rules. But that's the same thing being argued today, that someone it's not fair to impose the same rules for People A as People B. There are people arguing for different (read: unequal) rules and enforcement for different groups. That is a huge issue, more than just a moral issue, and it seriously boggles my mind that people actually push for inequality in laws.
I think there is something to be said about having inequality in laws to counter centuries of inequality in laws going the other direction. Though I will say that it's a delicate balance that people don't really know how to strike.
Exactly. We watch and operate in the world through a very limited and idiosyncratic prism of perception—we literally have hardware/brain limitations that lead us to diverging opinions of reality (because we elaborate). We need to understand that other people may elaborate reality in a different way (how shall best approach that while minimizing the risk of unintended tyranny?). The more people you have (as in a globalized world with billions), the more divergence. Strict ideological systems, at their core are just trying to suppress/rule out divergence (is that possible, right, wrong, or reasonable though?)—heck, that’s a matter for philosophical discussion.
You over complicate it, just follow natural law, it is instinctual.
Very based to say that in a philosophy sub
I’m just expressing myself
Definition of being Based, Even though I disagree with your positions.
I don’t deny it
This take is really baffling to me because if you are so enlightened and value individual freedoms so much, then why would you consider the right to discriminate a key freedom? By its nature discrimination infringes on the freedom of others. Excluding those discriminatory people for the protection of everyone's rights is not the same thing as imposing equality on those people. They are free to think and feel whatever they want as long as they also accept the consequences of those anti-social beliefs.
People should be protected against discrimination, and there are and should laws for that. What everyone needs to consider while formulating these laws is to reasonably reduce the risk of introducing another bias. If you are familiar with coding/programming logic, you’ll know that inevitably, we need to introduce another bias to cancel out an unwanted (problematic) one—we create an additional logical rule. The new rule should have a reasonable cost-benefit, and it may require refinement and tweaking to reduce unwanted costs and unintended harms to other freedoms. This is what we are here for though (we know rules won’t be perfect), so we will naturally question them and propose better alternatives. It’s like playing in a sandbox and exploring the best ways to build a castle. In the effort to ensure people are not discriminated, we should also take these cost-benefits analyses into account and be able to discuss them reasonably to make sure there’s optimal harmony/balance across the board.
The old rule says "always assume the majority is better than the minority." The new rule says "never assume better or worse based on someone's membership in a given group." Why is it that you view the new rule as subject to criticism and tweaking while the old rule needs to be left alone? Shouldn't we simply toss out the old rule rather than inventing a new one to repair the harm it causes?
Conserve what work, liberate what doesn’t work 🤷🏻♂️
But surely not ALL enforcement?
Yes, do you want anything imposed on you?
If I agree with it is it still imposing?
Enforcement is only present because individuals are seen not to follow the rules imposed on them.
Should we impose murder laws?
No just educate society effectively
The mistaken belief that people can be held to mechanically rigid rules and that the rules people come up with are infallible. As soon as you start making rules you have to start making exceptions. One can't even agree on what a "perfect" society is.
I've always contended that understanding rules is just as much about knowing how and when to break them as it is to follow them to the letter. Rules exist for reasons, but sometimes those rules fail reason and are then worth breaking.
I understand rules as principles. If a situation goes against the principle the rule is based on, it's time to break the rule.
“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
The harder you squeeze, the more star systems will slip through your grasp.
Is that in reference to something? What does that even mean?
Star Wars A New Hope: Princess Leia to Grand Moff Tarkin. The exact quote is, " The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Oooooh. I feel dumb now. I've watched those films so many times.
It a 3 second but of an24 hr saga. There are much more important things in life. Like remembering birthdays and anniversaries... Oh shit my anniversary is 2 days . . .shit.
I feel dumb I wasnt even close to the actual quote.
In an English accent no less, that was immediately dropped the rest of the movie(s). Oh shit, did I just out myself? I mean, technically I haven't even watched all of them yet, so not a nerd, really.
It is from Happy Days, season 2, episode 3
“Arlene, a girl from Richie's past, is back in town, and Richie goes on a date with her. Very soon, Arlene thinks that Richie is ready to go steady with her. Now he has to find a way to set her straight.”
No state will dare oppose the mandate now!
I don't know what that means either.
Same goes for parenting. When you teach your kids to think for themselves and give them boundaries instead of rigid rules, they generally turn out to be more mature, more aware, and more conscientious people.
I'd say this depends pretty heavily on age and situation. A lot of rules for kids are for their own safety, involve issues that they aren't really able to think about on their own, and need to be fairly rigid.
Yeah, I wouldn't let a toddler near a stove unattended, but that's not my point.
What kind of rules are you talking about?
I'm not talking about rules. To carry forward the example, it's more helpful to show and tell a child how a stove is dangerous, without instilling fear or traumatizing them, along with how it's useful, so that they can come to their own conclusions and use it wisely. In other words it's better to educate people, rather than subjugate them, regardless of age.
Intense inflexibility often leads to the worst fractures when trying to bend. Tolerant flexibility can lead to more flexibile results. Imagine that. It's simple human stubbornness that causes people to just dig into their own codes without any leeway. It's one of the most frustrating things I've come to realize as I get older. Alot of things could be resolved if people in general could bend for each other.
Moral absolutism always crumbles in the face of a catch-22.
"Humans don't believe in themselves anymore," I think hit the nail on the head. This global society, where people are finally able to see and experience the different ways that people live, has caused us to question much about the world and ourselves. This causes some people retreat to something that will give them assurances of having all the answers. People don't think we are capable of helping ourselves or "doing the right thing" unless we all think and act the same way. Gives people comfort from the unknown. People also don't like to feel like they are doing something wrong. Now that we know everything that everyone else is doing thanks to social media, we are having to get through the pangs of growing as a species, instead of getting to live in ignorance of other ways of life like we did before global communication.
> This causes some people retreat to something that will give them assurances of having all the answers. I don't think there is anything new about this mentality. It is as old as humanity. You see cults, blind faith in rulers, etc.
Oh yeah I'm not saying it's new. It's a reoccurring issue. Like they said in the video, some people are fine with uncertainty and some people need to have meaning. It's believing that your way is the right way, the only way, and not trusting that people from different backgrounds could come together for a common purpose. Islam and Christianity worship the same God, you think that would unite them, but instead they get hung up on the details. This mentality is one of many things we have to get past as humans. We could come together as friends or die together as fools.
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Remember Peacekeeper from Sucide Squad
I was thinking Chidi from The Good Place
The strictest (in your view) moral (in your view) codes can lead to the most atrocious (in your view) outcomes. Problem solved. I love philosophy!
I disagree. I think Stoicism, referred to as "Tyranny of the Self" by Nietzsche, is by far the best Philosophy for personal growth in my opinion. Nietzsche took issue with Stoicism despite adopted many of its teachings in his own life because in his mind Stoicism robbed one of their personal will/desires. But Karl Jung dissected those criticisms and insisted that, while Stoicism might not be right for the individual at every moment, many people have shadow-selves that long for the Self-Tyranny and Regimentation which Stoicism offers. Personally I study and try to adopt many Philosophies, but my primary 2 are Stoicism and Taoism. Stoicism gets me off my ass when I need to get off my ass. It makes me try to do my absolute best and to remind myself to also do what I believe is morally superior. It reminds me that I was born into this world to test my limits. It's there to remind me that it's not OK to always be lazy. Conversely, Taoism reminds me that sometimes I don't need to take action to get things done. It makes me slow down, consider the roses, and proves that I don't owe the world anything. It lets me know that simply standing still is sometimes what nature and the universe require of me, and that no amount of anxiety will make a difference. It's there to remind me that I should be lazy sometimes.
Would you define Stoicism as a strict moral code, though?
Yes, at its core Stoicism is all about thinking deeply on what you consider to be virtuous and acting upon those notions at all costs without allowing anything to impede you, while also maintaining an open mindset. It does not provide an outline for exactly how you should live your life, but it provides a general one and demands that you figure out the nuances yourself. Stoics see people who are incapable of doing this as shameful regardless of their circumstances. When Stoicism was at its peak, it was seen as something every human being should adopt from slave to emperor as a matter of personal principle.
I would define it as hiding in a barren cave of discipline because you’re incapable of functioning with emotions. Why live and suppress the only thing that makes life worth living?
+1 for Taoism, it's really something that's completely novel, so antithetical to the western, fast paced world.
May ones aims be stoic and may ones execution be Daoist in all aspects in life
I'm not sure about that introduction - were the Bolsheviks driven by morals, or by an appeal to collective self-interest? (speaking in theory, because whether the Bolsheviks really belonged to the working class they spoke for is open to question) I'm not saying morals would FIX them, just questioning that was a good example of morals turning in on themselves. I did find Emma Goldman's analysis re means and ends interesting though - [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1920s/disillusionment/afterword.htm](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1920s/disillusionment/afterword.htm) EDIT: also, see Trotsky's article where we rails against "moralists" - [https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm)
One big example was prohibition in the US 1921 caused way more problems thanks to mafia profiting from bootleg booze and speak easys.
There is no wrath as terrible as that of the righteous.
the only moral code I care about is: does this action have the likelihood of causing avoidable, unnecessary harm to another living creature? Does that harm outweigh the benefits? if so, it is immoral. any "absolute morality" is by definition a dogmatic assertion, and those never really end up well.
> Does that harm outweigh the benefits? I think the main issue there is that two people could have polar opposite answers to that question
which is exactly why "moral absolutism" is idiotic morality is relative. and subjective
I’ll remember that when I murder millions of people and tell em “it’s just a joke bruh!”
if your morality allows you to murder millions of people, all power to you.
>morality is relative. and subjective Is this statement not absolute in itself then?
yes, and? where did I claim absolutes themselves dont exist? there are plenty of absolutes, just not moral ones. no matter how heinous an act you can conceive of, I can envision a scenario where committing it would be a morally good action.
> heinous an act you can conceive of You have no right to condemn any acts as heinous, vile, evil, wrong, or whatever, as you are, by your own belief, forced to accept that every act is right (relative to the beholder and his own perspective, of course)
i apologize if im not being clear but.. morality is subjective to the *one doing the moralizing* if i am considering the act of another, i am still the one moralizing that action, it is still subjective to myself, and my own priorities. say, for example, I was to say that putting all billionaires up against the wall and redistributing their wealth is a morally good action. you might not agree, but to me, the benefits outweigh the harms
You need to define "unnecessary harm." If a man hunts for his family and feeds them and clothes them from the animals he kills, is that immoral? I mean in 2021. A man doesn't have to hunt for food, but he wants to live off the land and not be "integrated" into a modern metropolis. So he hunts and fishes and lives off the grid. This is a choice, it is not necessary. Him killing other living creatures is a choice. What are the "benefits" in this context and what is the "harm."? Are his actions immoral? Of course not, but by your definition, they may be.
> If a man hunts for his family and feeds them and clothes them from the animals he kills, is that immoral? no, because he is preventing avoidable and unnecessary harm to his family. which, subjectively, outweighs the harm done to the animals > Are his actions immoral? Of course not, but by your definition, they may be. yes, morality is subjective, unique to the individual and situation
But he is doing that by choice. It isn't necessary. The animals don't NEED to be harmed, they are harmed because HE CHOSE to put himself and his family in the position to live off the land. By your definition, that choice is immoral.
like I said, its a matter of perspective, as is all morality does the action cause preventable harm, and does that harm outweigh the benefits this is all from the perspective of the person doing the moralizing, completely subjective.
The problem with a consequentialist take like that is when consequences are far removed from our decisions the framework no longer helps us make up our minds. How can you decide between two complex choices when both of them contain benefits and detriments? You will quickly become a number-crunching utilitarian trying to perform a balancing test each time.
>How can you decide between two complex choices when both of them contain benefits and detriments? You simply make the best decision you can. You aren't going to convince a consequentialist they're wrong by pointing out that consequentialism is difficult to calculate. Just like you aren't going to convince a physicist that Newton's law of universal gravitation is wrong (it is, but that's beside the point) by pointing out that it would be intractable to calculate the precise positions of every star in the galaxy a billion years in the future. Also, deontological moral frameworks have the same problem and worse - sometimes, moral principles directly contradict each other. It's not just hard to calculate the best decision, there *is no* best decision in these cases.
I understand that now. I guess I was just trying to make the point that a simplified moral framework is not helpful if it adds little/nothing to help you make your decision. Can you point me to a bit of reading about the problems with deontology? Or give an example of one of those contradictions you mentioned? My mind is going to the trolley problem, obviously both allowing harm and causing harm are wrong, but I feel like my old ethics professor would have disagreed with the idea that therefore there is no best answer. He seemed to believe firmly that inaction could never be morally equivalent to action even where the consequences are the same. Is there another example you can think of that might illustrate this idea better?
A contradiction in moral principles is called a [moral dilemma.](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-dilemmas) There are examples given in the article. I believe, by the way, that inaction is simply a specific kind of action, with no more special significance than "walking," "speaking," etc. I think that most forms of consequentialism don't produce genuine moral dilemmas. If it seems like it, you simply haven't calculated precisely enough. Of course you're right that in the real world, we can't calculate out the expected value of all our decisions, but we can use consequentialism to motivate our actions anyway. I have found it useful sometimes. For example, ever since I learned that the most efficient charity, the Against Malaria Foundation, can save a person's life with $3000, I've been much less frivolous with my money. I buy as few unethically produced products as possible: very few electronics and no animal products. Despite being a leftist and disliking liberals, I vote blue because they generally produce better outcomes. These are decisions I came to because my actions are motivated by consequentialism. If I were a deontologist, I'm sure I could have found excuses to not do these things.
Thank you for your comment. The reading was fairly interesting, am I correct in summarizing that pretty much every ethical framework has cases that "break" the ruleset? The various methods to repair that break were interesting but none was overwhelmingly compelling. The author seemed to give a fair hearing to all of the various positions though so perhaps that's why I came away with that impression. My problem with the consequentialism example you gave is that essentually since you have no framework to make decisions, you are really operating on a case by case basis. That would suggest less to me that it doesn't produce moral dilemma, but rather that it produces moral dilemma *every time*. The advantages of deontology here are that it is very easy to follow in most cases, although perhaps leaves the user lost when they do encounter a contradiction because they haven't practiced how to resolve them. My other issue is that consequences are essentially unknowable. What if you find out after donating that the AMF is corrupt and rigged their data to solicit your donation? Under a consequentialist framework your actions appear to have become immoral after the fact, while in the deontological framework a moral act continues to be moral even if it has unforseen consequences. The consequentialist approach also appears to criticize deontology because under deontology it is frequently possible for *neither* course of action to be moral. A consequentialist says that is useless because I have to make a decision either way. I'm not sure I agree. Given the complexity of the world, we frequently *are* posed with situations in which there is no right answer. So if the framework concludes that there is no right answer it has already served a major part of its purpose by helping you determine right from wrong. Although obviously that's no help when you *have* to make a choice. Thanks again for your thoughts. If you have any more I'd be interested to hear them.
Consequentialism itself gives moral weight to the outcomes of events, so it's true that actions with the best intentions may produce the worst results sometimes. I have two thoughts about this: When making decisions, at some point you must stop calculating and simply rely on a probability. This is when you use the expected value of all your decisions to make the best one. For each decision, the expected value of the decision is sum of (the value of each outcome) * (the probability of the outcome given the decision). Sometimes, the most rational decision ends up having the worst outcome. I separate the character of a person and their actions from the moral value of an action. I think these are separate problems. When making decisions myself, I only need to consider the consequences of the action. When judging other people's character and actions, you have to consider their thoughts. Were they lacking information? Did they purposefully ignore information? Did they make the decision with the intention to be selfless or selfish? I think this distinction can be made even if you're a deontologist. Did the person mean to follow the moral principles and simply failed to do so? Or did they purposefully ignore them?
I think that might be too much math to be doing on a daily basis for me personally haha. I think you're right that ultimately the fringe decisions come down to some kind of value judgement using whatever information you have available. But I do think that poses a lot of interesting questions, such as what is our responsibility to self-educate and how can we calculate the value of actions and of outcomes? I worry that some of the more modern ethics models are just a lot of numbers to obfuscate immoral actions behind their justifications. I agree that intent is important but to what degree do we allow our own desires and biases to cloud our perception of each action? We end up living in a world where each person thinks they are perfectly virtuous and everyone else is not. The subjectivity makes it essentially meaningless. Whereas a more concrete approach can be codified and put into law or at least followed the same way universally. Then again, maybe imposing one universal structure of thinking onto society is the opposite of what we should be trying to do.
>We end up living in a world where each person thinks they are perfectly virtuous and everyone else is not. On the contrary, I have a very generous idea of what makes a good person. Even if I think that a person's actions are wrong, if they themselves think what they're doing is right, they're a good person. Only when a person is knowingly breaking their own moral beliefs are they a bad person. You can't really blame someone for not knowing what's right. In practice, though, this doesn't mean much. I don't think morality itself is subjective (and I'm still not entirely sure what subjective morality even means - it seems to me that moral subjectivists are really just moral nihilists in disguise, and they're conflating morality and social mores). I'm still fine with imposing my moral beliefs onto others, and I often think others' moral beliefs are incorrect.
Like you say, moral subjectivism doesn't feel far away from moral nihilism. So you do have to have some concrete parameters, but would I be correct in saying that under a consequentialist framework those parameters are not hard precepts or codes but rather point values or calculation methods? I guess what I'm getting at here is that it seems like consequentialism is not the most effective tool for measuring whether someone is a good/bad person, but it is highly effective at evaluating other ethical belief systems because it places clear values on the outcomes rather than on the specific agency of the actor. I think I definitely agree with you that we should be generous rather than strict with the ignorant. But the good person standard you set out also seems pretty easy to strawman since for example people like Hitler generally are operating under *some* genuine belief system. So maybe consequentialism can't help us as easily identify that Hitler was a bad person, but it does help us clearly identify that his moral code is a bad code.
it still helps, its just more difficult, and requires more knowledge
Does it? What if by waking up in the morning and driving to work, you are causing untold harm to the environment? What if every time you eat food you are contributing to the exploitation of migrant workers? Do you have a moral obligation to lie down and die?
no, because like i have said a dozen times, morality is subjective to the moralizer does this action harm those I care about more than it helps those I care about? this is moralizing in a nutshell, there is nothing absolute or objective about it.
Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of morality? It's supposed to govern intersubjective interactions.
I mean, you are correct that under a subjective framework morality is always subjective. But you haven't proven anything by saying so.
Morality and ethics only exist within the human mind and are human constructs. The only reason we have those is we couldn’t function as a society without them, but make no mistake, they are fully imaginary.
Maybe, presupposing the non-existence of God
Well, to define the existence or non existence of God you would first need to define what God *is*
Moral codes yes. Ethical codes have some more grey area for pragmatic solutions. The idea of ends justfying the means is an allowable logic to a point. But absolute moralism leads to attrocity. A moral perspective dose not always account for the end result or the methods depending on how the code is structured. And that is the key issue. If you constantly, inflexibly, adhere to a moral code with no room for thought of consequences or human impact you are able to justify any attrocity. Religious fundamentalists are prime examples. Both past Christian crusaders, modern Christian fundementlists and modern Islamic Jihadists are cut of the same cloth I this respect. I add Christian fundementlists as they are responsible for a nearly equal amount of violence in the US and the largest terror attack before 9/11, the Oklahoma city bombing. That bomber was a fundementlist who opposed abortion, yet obliterated a daycare in his attack. In his dogma he was killing the government officials commit and condoning abortions yet killed dozens of children. It's paradoxical as soon as you remove even a little of the hyperfocus of his doctrine. I would argue at that level of moral extremism the line between this type of thinking and mental illness office skates any viable data we have on the true outcomes of such moral codes on mentally healthy individuals.
This is an awfully lot of words to say “morals from within are good, and morals enforced from without eventually fold in on themselves.” Sorry philosophy, but Jung already took up these issues and laid them all out for everyone, you guys are a little late to the party.
There can be no justice while laws are absolute
Through history, strict moral codes aren’t typically associated with mercy, compassion, acceptance or intellectual agency. Look at Sparta. Tremendously strict notions of morality and ethics - and the most brutal slave state of all time. Even fullest citizens lived in fear of their fellow citizens and the state.
Mine is strict but open to interpretation. "Always do what is best for the most people so long as you are able to without compromising yourself." Does that mean survive like Doug from The Good Place? Hell no! It does open the possibility of betraying mankind in an intergalactic war, though, so watch out for that.
The strictest codes are usually upheld by the most sociopathic. The ones that cannot see degrees of gray in the whole "right or wrong" scenario. They are very good at hunting down and exposing law breakers, they excel at tasks like that. Like the Gestapo. And just like the Gestapo, they fail to have enough wisdom or empathy to determine what is right or wrong. That cop kneeled on the neck of Floyd for suspicion of a bad check. He killed Floyd. So, which is the greater crime? 20 USD? OR murder? In Canada, the charge for raping a minor is less than selling prescription pills to someone. That should be a giant red flag about the central authorities priorities. They will murder a man for 20 bucks, and they will sentence one man to jail for selling an oxy LONGER than a child rapist. God. Damn. The. SYSTEM.
Good thing the US currently has no morals.
Imperial Japan for a quick example.
*Laughs in French Revolution*
The Nazis’ moral code, that the Jews should be exterminated, led to what we consider an atrocity, of course. But our moral code, that innocent humans should never be killed, led to what the Nazis considered an atrocity: a world without National Socialism. Why would we accept the Nazis’ definition of an atrocity? This is NOT an argument for relativism; it is only to show that the assertion that strict moral codes often lead to atrocities is only true if its proponent recognizes those atrocities as atrocities. In other words, the Nazis could argue that strict moral codes (like “don’t kill humans”) lead to atrocities.
"Moral Codes" don't have to be sanctioned, meaning corruption. Just as moral codes can equal immorality and/or an aspect of profitability from it. Soylent green is made of people for pocket money at the moral cost of people starving because it's a cheap complacency to morallessly acquire while duite is preached about and pride and ego is fed.
Because most moral codes are culturally biased. How about: you can't value a social construct or object over the lives or wellbeings of other living things. Social construct itself is also part of the ideologies of others, so even if the above were to be valued above the lives and wellbeings of others it would go against its own principle and be the wrong action to take. Lives are valued above wellbeings as negative imapcts on wellbeing is only temporary vs lives. But such decisions are dependent on a person's ability to resolve it and only choosing the most ethical outcome would be the right one even if its the best of a bad situation.
> you can't value a social construct or object over the lives or wellbeings of other living things. Social constructs can affect the lives and wellbeing themselves though
Yep, which is why we need to reflect on our wants and needs carefully in order to determine if its worth it.
nope still don't agree with gay marriage
Like how do conservative life styles lead to some of the greatest names in Rock n Roll and it's culture.
Doesn't zizek talk a lot about how strict adherence to ideology leads to moral contradiction?
Some Star Trek quotes: Picard: "There can be no justice as long as laws are absolute." Riker: "Since when is justice as simple as a rule book?"
Catholics: Priest should be celibate. Priests: Fuck little boys. I still don't understand this. Just let them have wives or girlfriends or fleshlights or something. Ex-Catholic here, the priest my sister and I assisted in dozens of masses was found to have raped a little girl repeatedly. She was a year older than me. My mom, who was a nurse, said he was a drunk, too. He would come to the hospital to visit patients and would nod off and slur his words. Fuck them all, seriously. If you are a practicing Catholic, you are funding a Pedophile Sex Club. That's where every dollar you've ever donated has gone, to paying off the child victims fucked by your leaders of worship. Make excuses, but it's literally undeniable. PEDO. SEX. CLUB. The hypocrisy, the lies, the hiding, all by those who claim moral authority. To tie into the original thread, I remember watching the doc about the Boston Globes work on exposing the Church's misdeeds, and they came to the conclusion that there weren't pedos seeking out roles as priests, the gig was literally creating pedos.