Topic: Determining What's Moral

[TheIrreverend]

I haven't found a moral system that doesn't benefit people. I'm not saying there isn't one. But to my knowledge that's the way things are.

That may be the case, but is that what defines the morality of the system, or is that simply a consequence of moral actions?  Stating it that way is working backwards and judging whether an action is moral by its outcome, which fails to be normative (and I already raised this as a critique of utilitarianism in the linked thread).  You seem to believe that consequentialism is the only moral system, which simply isn't the case.

[teethering]

I agree with TheIrreverend, by the way, you seem to assuming your conclusion, SVoid.  I agree with your conclusion, but you've got to do the heavy lifting to get there.  You have to actually make an argument that utilitarian ethics is the best way to deal with the question of morality from the philosophical point of view.

Not having read Sam Harris's book and only having seen his talks I think that's also Sam Harris's weak point.  It's totally natural to assume this conclusion for skeptics, as we look at the human society as a system to be optimized and morals arising from biology trying to optimize *something*, but when you're dealing with ethics you're dealing with an abstraction that arises from that picture.  Within the rules of that abstraction you have to make the argument for utilitarianism from the front end.

[Caffiene]

It was also claimed that if there is a moral disagreement you can't say they are factually wrong. But I argue you can. If you study the effects you can determine if you society is encouraging human flourishing or not. I.e., preventing people who want to learn and can learn from learning leads to stagnation at best. Take power away from people leads to depression and a devaluation of their current life. I believe that tyranny is wrong. Someone might say that tyranny is good but we have actual facts we can look at.

I think this comes back to the point superdave made at the beginning of the thread, that determining the "best" outcome becomes impossible once you move past the trivial examples.

For example, lets look at a situation that contrasts your two scenarios. Say we have a situation where the options are either preventing people from learning or taking power away from people (eg, say the democratic majority want to ban independent learning - you have to either ban learning or take away the majority's democratic power). Which type of flourishing is objectively better - avoiding stagnation, or avoiding depression?

It still comes down to subjective judgements at the end. "Human flourishing" is not a well defined term that can be used to sort through the scientific knowledge. Do we value happiness, for example, or do we value persistence and survival? What if you have to choose between everyone being happy for their lifetimes and then the human race ending, or everyone being less than fully happy but the human race continues into the next generation? Can you say that someone is factually incorrect to value the survival of the species over happiness?

And even if you do objectively define flourishing you still have separate but equivalent situations such as flourishing at maximum rate for 5 years and then stopping, or flourishing at half rate for 10 years. Can you say someone is factually incorrect to value one over the other?

[Grognard]

The best way to determine what's moral is to have it delivered to you from On High from the intergalactic dictator.

You can then tell everybody what is moral and what is immoral.

The downside is that when asked "why?", you have to rely on the Argument from Authority.
I.e. you say "It's moral because the boss says so!"

However, this is a tried and tested method and has worked for thousands of years! (oops, another logical fallacy)

The best elucidation of this method was done by Dan Dennet during an interview with Bill Moyers.

Bill Moyers was arguing for objective morality handily provided by God.

Bill Moyers made one more statement of morality, at which point it went something like this....

Dennet: "Well, Lucy would disagree with that. Lucy says you're wrong about that."
Moyers: "Who's Lucy?"
Dennet: "She's a good friend of mind and she's never ever wrong."
Moyers: "I don't know who Lucy is."
Dennet: "Well since you don't believe in Lucy and I don't believe in God, we will have to have our discussion about morality without reference to those third-party entities."

[SVoid]

I have to take the other side here, sir.

So I just made up Divine Command theory?

Yes, consequentialist ethics are really common, in religions and otherwise. But this is an example of a moral system which works differently. Browse through an overview of ethical theories to get an idea of how broad the spectrum of moral systems is, and then tell me why they are all false, not just wrong, if they aren't a variation of consequentialism.

I think I am not understanding your position. I do not believe that I am saying they are all consequentialist or utilitarian. I'm saying that every moral system that has even been put forth has been done so by proponents that think life (here or hereafter) would be a better place because it. Moral imperatives and divine command are not that different in the end goal the person was trying to achieve.

As far as I know a consequentialist practice tends to meet the objectives of all those moral system: making life better. Or maybe it's contextual/situational. The idea that some things are always right or always wrong grates on me. I think the situation matters.

Am I missing your point, or am I continuing the dialogue here?

[SVoid]

Ting-bu-dong I did not see your post about the 10 commandments. I am sorry. I missed it somehow. Or just most of it. Though I think I addressed it anyway. By following the 10 commandments you get rewarded. Hence, increases your well-being. The fact that people believe condoms send you to hell is a problem because they think that by remove condoms they can get more people in to heaven. If they were right, it would be the best thing they could do because this life would be meaningless. But they aren't.

Their heart is in the right place. They believe the best way to achieve maximum human flourishing is to do whatever God says under thread of hell fire. So, following divine command will either get you to human flourishing 'cause God's like sooooo smart. Or it will lead to human flourishing 'cause God will reward those who follow it. Either way, it's a win.

IF CORRECT.

[TheIrreverend]

I think I am not understanding your position. I do not believe that I am saying they are all consequentialist or utilitarian. I'm saying that every moral system that has even been put forth has been done so by proponents that think life (here or hereafter) would be a better place because it. Moral imperatives and divine command are not that different in the end goal the person was trying to achieve.

Well, I think you are arguing for consequentialist ethics, intentionally or not.  From my understanding of your position, it would not be possible for a person to perform a moral action that would reduce "human flourishing".  A contrived example: a crazy billionaire has a man tied up on a chair and has given you a gun.  You are told that if you kill this man, the billionaire will reward your country with huge amounts of prosperity.  If you do not kill the man, then he will release a deadly neurotoxin which will wipe out half of the population of your country.  You have no reason to believe that either of these promises will not be upheld and either way, you will be free to leave.  Some systems would say that it is never moral to kill the man (Kant), some would say it is moral to kill the man (Bentham), and some would say that it depends on your definition of utility (Mill, and pretty much any subsequent utilitarian).  As a result, it is possible for a deontologist or a contractarian to perform an action which is moral under their philosophy but which leads directly to the death of hundreds of thousands of people (of course the action/inaction distinction is important here).

As for goal-oriented, I don't think that that describes any deontological ethics at all.  Sure, the axiomatic framework from which such moral philosophy is built is premised on the fact that morality and ethical behavior is superior to immoral/unethical behaviour, all the way back to Hobbes and the state of nature.  However, once the axioms have been agreed upon, for a deontologist morality becomes an end unto itself; you are moral because you have a duty to be moral.  If it so happens that this leads to positive outcomes, then huzzah, isn't that wonderful, but the system is developed as a logical system of action out of a set of "incontrovertible" axioms (scare quotes intentional).

EDIT: I found the section of Principia Ethica which I think expertly rejects the position you have taken (and similarly that of Sam Harris):

"Good," then, if we mean by it that quality which we assert to belong to a thing, when we say that the thing is good, is incapable of any definition, in the most important sense of that word. The most important sense of "definition" is that in which a definition states what are the parts which invariably compose a certain whole; and in this sense "good" has no definition because it is simple and has no parts. It is one of those innumerable objects of thought which are themselves incapable of definition, because they are the ultimate terms of reference to which whatever is capable of definition must be defined. That there must be an indefinite number of such terms is obvious, on reflection; since we cannot define anything except by an analysis, which, when carried as far as it will go, refers us to something, which is simply different from anything else, and which by that ultimate difference explains the peculiarity of the whole which we are defining: for every whole contains some parts which are common to other wholes also. There is, therefore, no intrinsic difficulty in the contention that "good" denotes a simple and indefinable quality. There are many other instances of such qualities.

Consider yellow, for example. We may try to define it, by describing its physical equivalent; we may state what kind of light-vibrations must stimulate the normal eye, in order that we may perceive it. But a moment’s reflection is sufficient to shew that those light-vibrations are not themselves what we mean by yellow. They are not what we perceive. Indeed, we should never have been able to discover their existence, unless we had first been struck by the patent difference of quality between the different colours. The most we can be entitled to say of those vibrations is that they are what corresponds in space to the yellow which we actually perceive.

Yet a mistake of this simple kind has commonly been made about "good." It may be true that all things which are good are also something else, just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of vibration in the light. And it is a fact, that Ethics aims at discovering what are those other properties belonging to all things which are good. But far too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties they were actually defining good; that these properties, in fact, were simply not "other," but absolutely and entirely the same with goodness. This view I propose to call the "naturalistic fallacy" and of it I shall now endeavour to dispose.

[TalkingBook]

It still comes down to subjective judgements at the end. "Human flourishing" is not a well defined term that can be used to sort through the scientific knowledge. Do we value happiness, for example, or do we value persistence and survival? What if you have to choose between everyone being happy for their lifetimes and then the human race ending, or everyone being less than fully happy but the human race continues into the next generation? Can you say that someone is factually incorrect to value the survival of the species over happiness?

And even if you do objectively define flourishing you still have separate but equivalent situations such as flourishing at maximum rate for 5 years and then stopping, or flourishing at half rate for 10 years. Can you say someone is factually incorrect to value one over the other?

Aside from all the other practical objections, this theoretical one is for me the crux of the issue. Try all you will, you cannot define 'flourishing', 'well-being' or, as Moore puts it, the 'good' purely on the basis of scientific investigation. This doesn't mean you can't (theoretically at least) use science to help determine which actions will lead to whatever you proclaim the 'good' to be, but the definition itself is a judgment value. Unfortunately it's not easy to agree upon the nature of 'flourishing', otherwise the entire field of ethics wouldn't exist, and we'd probably live in a much more peaceful world (unless of course everybody agreed that the 'good' is the incredible adrenaline rush one receives after dispatching a foe in mortal combat - but at least we'd be in agreement).

[ting-bu-dong]

I think I am not understanding your position. I do not believe that I am saying they are all consequentialist or utilitarian. I'm saying that every moral system that has even been put forth has been done so by proponents that think life (here or hereafter) would be a better place because it.

The main thrust of my position is that 'better place' is not identical to 'place in which people flourish'. In many cases it is, but in others people do things because it's the right thing to do, in their estimation. And the choice of what is right and what is wrong is subjective and any one particular choice is not correct or incorrect. I actually agree with most of what Harris and you are saying. Once an ought is identified, we can make objective statements about which is will facilitate that ought. But the choice of ought is subjective. Which means that science, and rational inquiry in general, can inform our moral decisionmaking. It can tell us how we can get to where we want, but it cannot tell us where we ought to go.

[kakaydin]

For anyone interested in a quick (20min) primer on Sam Harris' position:

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[SVoid]

TheIrreverend, I responded to your other thread to ask you questions to better understand your point of view, so I will let this part rest for now.

It still comes down to subjective judgements at the end. "Human flourishing" is not a well defined term that can be used to sort through the scientific knowledge. Do we value happiness, for example, or do we value persistence and survival? What if you have to choose between everyone being happy for their lifetimes and then the human race ending, or everyone being less than fully happy but the human race continues into the next generation? Can you say that someone is factually incorrect to value the survival of the species over happiness?

And even if you do objectively define flourishing you still have separate but equivalent situations such as flourishing at maximum rate for 5 years and then stopping, or flourishing at half rate for 10 years. Can you say someone is factually incorrect to value one over the other?

Aside from all the other practical objections, this theoretical one is for me the crux of the issue. Try all you will, you cannot define 'flourishing', 'well-being' or, as Moore puts it, the 'good' purely on the basis of scientific investigation. This doesn't mean you can't (theoretically at least) use science to help determine which actions will lead to whatever you proclaim the 'good' to be, but the definition itself is a judgment value. Unfortunately it's not easy to agree upon the nature of 'flourishing', otherwise the entire field of ethics wouldn't exist, and we'd probably live in a much more peaceful world (unless of course everybody agreed that the 'good' is the incredible adrenaline rush one receives after dispatching a foe in mortal combat - but at least we'd be in agreement).

Well, trivially, total nuclear Armageddon with every human being dying would not be flourishing. (Though, might be a utilitarian paradise as there is never any suffering). A 1984 or Animal Farm would also not be flurishing as the clearly the characters in those stories, especially those in the background, where not mentally healthy, emotionally stable, physically provided for people. I.e., in order to flourish people a confluence of factors including sufficient mental stimulation, a sense of control over their own life, a sense of safety, physical healthy, freedom from disease, sufficient sleep, contentment, and probably a bunch of other stuff.

I.e., you could construct a society where most people were in despair, exhibit learned helplessness and were malnourished. This is not human flourishing. But, we know the things that inhibit well-being: violence, lack of control of your life, not enough physical stimulation. But here is the kicker. We are starting to be able to tell how these map on to brain development and brain chemistry. So you can physically tell if someone's needs are being met or not by running them threw a battery of tests. My point in bringing this up is to say there is an answer that is objective. (Also, note, that these are different for different people. Some people need more intellectual stimulation than some, while others need to work with their hands more than most.

If it sounds like I'm talking about society's rather than people, you are right. But here's the kicker: If we organize a society a certain way the individual actions flow from it.

Eg., if you think you need to always work for the greater good, and that causing a little harm is okay if it leads to a huge benefit, you could kidnap random people off the streets to do trials of drugs or to find cures or new procedures for medicine. But we lived in that society people would be constantly in fear and it would not be leading to a proper chemical balance.

Your outlandish example would be a tragedy. But if he had a society that lead to this sort of situation often that would also not be a flourishing society. Maybe one day we will figure that out. And may one day we will have a grand unifying theory of physics. But that's not today.

[TalkingBook]

It is certainly the case that we learning quite a bit about neurology and how it relates to the various 'factors' you refer to. However, this has nothing to do with the question of whether or not those factors are necessarily part of 'flourishing', and if so, to what degree they determine if a person or society is 'flourishing'. There is objective information available, but not about this necessarily normative question of how to define 'flourishing'.

Obviously, (almost?) everybody can agree that nuclear annihilation is not flourishing. But, as I said in my last post, the existence of the field of ethics, and of widespread disagreement on moral issues, shows that this is hardly the case in general. You've started to do the heavy lifting of presenting your case for what you think should be construed as flourishing with this list:

in order to flourish people a confluence of factors including sufficient mental stimulation, a sense of control over their own life, a sense of safety, physical healthy, freedom from disease, sufficient sleep, contentment, and probably a bunch of other stuff.

However, when you try to move on from this part of the discussion, you start relying upon words like "well-being", "needs" and "proper chemical balance" to make your argument, taking for granted that we know what they mean. However, this is exactly the problem at hand - the question about what "needs" are actually needs, and about which chemical balance is the "proper" one, is exactly the question of what 'human flourishing' is. Therefore, before using the idea of a "proper chemical balance" to define flourishing, you have to make a case for which balance is the 'proper' one. If you try to define 'proper' with another ostensibly descriptive trait, you'll find yourself in the same situation - try as you may, you'll always be led back to the normative realm and a value judgment.

[Caffiene]

Your outlandish example would be a tragedy. But if he had a society that lead to this sort of situation often that would also not be a flourishing society.

I assume youre referring to my "survival vs happiness" example.

I think it is indeed fair to say that the society that lead to the situation might not be flourishing. But I also think thats another relevant problem... We have a society currently. I would say that it certainly isnt a society that we can guarantee will lead to maximum flourishing. We have to consider the other eventualities. To me, I would say that an example like that one is the most important type of example - determining the right course of action from a sub-optimal starting point.

If the example can only be addressed by saying that the scenario must start from the optimal position of being a flourishing society, that leads back to the point that this system of morality is (so far) only useful for trivial situations.

[SVoid]

Thank everyone for your replies. I'll be reformulating some stuff and will come back with more solid ideas because of what all of you in this thread have said.  Maybe I'll start a new thread this summer.

However, when you try to move on from this part of the discussion, you start relying upon words like "well-being", "needs" and "proper chemical balance" to make your argument, taking for granted that we know what they mean. However, this is exactly the problem at hand - the question about what "needs" are actually needs, and about which chemical balance is the "proper" one, is exactly the question of what 'human flourishing' is. Therefore, before using the idea of a "proper chemical balance" to define flourishing, you have to make a case for which balance is the 'proper' one. If you try to define 'proper' with another ostensibly descriptive trait, you'll find yourself in the same situation - try as you may, you'll always be led back to the normative realm and a value judgment.

I both agree and disagree. I agree that as we find out more information we will develop a better and/or different idea of well-being and all the examples quoted here.

Consider health. What is healthy changes over time. Today there are active, fit, healthy 70 year olds in far better condition than some 30 year olds 100 years ago. 100 years from now a 70 year old not being able to run a marathon could be unhealthy because the definition of health surges forward.

Also, as we find out more about the things that make up health we have to fine tune it. For example, anti-bacteria soap is good because it kills bad bacteria, they say. But their definition of health is wrong. Because there are needed bacteria. It's healthy.

For that reason health is usually defined by what it doesn't have. Why put an upper limit on health? 200 years ago dying around 30 was acceptable for healthy, regular people. Now people would ask 'what's wrong'?

We know what unhealthy is. We not was something destroying well-being is. That is a key thing to focus on.

As to the other claim about the field of ethics having disagreements within, I hope to address this in the other thread I posted in about consequntialism that turned in to deontology.