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Determining What's Moral

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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:

--- Quote from: SVoid on May 17, 2012, 08:24:08 AM ---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.

--- End quote ---

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):


--- Quote from: G.E. Moore ---"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.
--- End quote ---

TalkingBook:

--- Quote from: Caffiene on May 16, 2012, 08:26:13 PM ---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?

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: SVoid on May 17, 2012, 08:24:08 AM ---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.

--- End quote ---

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

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