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Morality - I think this guy is a douchebag what do you think

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Mazzy:
If you need more details as to what the person i am debating is trying to argue I can post them but basically his argument is that all morals are based on self interest and therefore all morality is relative. He is using this argument to stay that the preservation of the environment is no more right than the destruction of it. God i hate post-modernists. This is his most recent post. What do you guys think?


--- Quote --- So, we agree that morality is socially created, and thereby arbitrarily defined by humans. So, as you seem to be suggesting, and as I wholeheartedly agree, morality is created in order to serve group utility, for example, living in a world where people do not kill and steal from each other is preferable to the alternative. But if we break it down even further, what is the individual's stake in the moral system? It's basically applying the Adam Smith's logic to the individual, our stake in moral codes only exists to the point where those moral codes benefit us. In terms of empathy, true, by all means, many people are empathetic, we are evolutionarily determined to care and have concern for other people.

But, here is the crux, our concern and empathy for others is really only a product of our concern for ourselves. That is to say, caring and showing charity for others is really only a way for us to care for ourselves through what I hesitantly call 'the feel good factor', or is more aptly called by psychological egoists, as the self-regarding desire. You desire to feel happiness, but sometimes that feeling of goodness comes from a desire to have your neighbor feel happiness. Even though you desire their happiness, the desire is ultimately your own. As we are inclined to feel this way by behavioral genetics, our own self-desire is the ultimate goal we are interested in, irrespective of whether we are acting to help others or not. By logical extension, it seems that any action that maximizes my own self-happines is the correct one for me, regardless of how it affects others. Call is psychopathy if you wish, but my care and concern for others is limited to the extent to which their happiness also benefits me.

So, to re-expand that back to a moral codes, when we consider society in general, we maximize happiness through actions that serve group utility above all else. However, on a personal level, my only moral stake is my own happiness, which goes on to suggest that it makes perfectly rational sense for me to act in a selfish way, even if that hurts others, provided that the rewards to myself outweigh all the implicit costs, including my empathetic pain at others feeling unhappiness.

The point is not that every morality is just as valid, but rather that every morality is just as invalid. Prisons serve a purpose of protecting me, and so I desire them to exist. That being said, I do not think that any action committed by criminals is in itself innately right or wrong. In a sense, prisons detriment others for my own benefit, their freedom vs. my safety. It's not a matter of whose morality is 'right' because nobody's is, it's a matter of who has the power to impose their preferences upon others. Same logic of slavery, it is neither right nor wrong. If it served my self-interest more than its existence caused me empathetic unhappiness, then I would be fully in favor of it.

Despite your illusions, every human acts in exactly this way, the only difference is the value we ascribe to the happiness of others in maximizing our own happiness. Desires to protect the environment and desires to destroy it are both logical self-interested desires, we're merely trying to fulfill our own preferences in different forms. The fact that your metric also helps others is irrelevant, as their happiness is only an instrument for you to achieve your own so to speak. In that manner, yes, environmentalism is just as selfish and my loot and plunder approach.

Do I believe in climate change? Well, I've seen a lot of persuasive arguments and science on both sides of the debate, and I like to think that I know enough to know that I don't have enough information to decide. Definitely it's not as self-evident to me as it seems to the Perth left-wing hipster kid demographic. But that's ultimately irrelevant. The real question at the root of the topic is, "given that I value my own happiness foremost, and my personal empathy does not extend to future generations (call me a psychopath if you will, I just call it good economics), if climate change is real, why should I care?"
--- End quote ---

Caffiene:
Pretty much agree with him. Do you have counter-arguments?

Id say he is correct that concern and empathy can be at some point traced back to a positive feedback mechanism within the person who has the empathy.
Id say he is correct that there is no objectively correct morality.

I have a minor quibble with his statement that "any action that maximizes my own self-happines is the correct one for me" because its largely tautological. "Correct for me" is simply a statement of personal desire unless he is (hypocritically) trying to imply an objective correctness, so the sentence is essentially "the actions that I desire are the actions I desire". Its unnecessary.

And to answer his final question, "why should I care?" I would say he doesnt need to... so long as he takes into account that pro-environmentalism advocates are just as subjectively acting in their self-interest in getting on his case, calling him a douche, or even threatening him with or actually carrying out physical violence (in the case of extremist environmentalists). If he takes into account all of those things that might happen to him, and that his subjective desires are not a reason that others cant call him out (since calling him out is in service to their own subjective desires) and he still thinks its worth it, then so be it. He has a rational and logically coherent viewpoint, imo.

Other people can carry out their desire to browbeat him into submission just as much as he can carry out his desire to trash the environment.


edit: I wouldnt call it post-modernist. It is a simple fact that for the time being, your desires and internal thoughts are pretty much by definition subjective. Post modernism, and the problem with it, comes from trying to extend that idea to claim that objectively observable data that exists outside of the mind is also subjective and can be ignored. You cant objectively observe an abstract concept like morality - it would only be post-modernist if you gave certain objective facts as a basis for a morality and he rejected those underlying facts as subjective.

Mazzy:
I guess my question to keep my post short is that if it only comes down to what you value verse what other people value then what decision making process are you using to find that value? I think that his view is extremely short sighted. How does he know that he is truly maximizing the pleasure he can get out of life?

Ansalem:
Every action a person takes is, at the most fundamental level, a selfish one. That's true for even the most altruistic of people.

I don't really see anything to disagree with, there.

I think the problem people tend to have with that is that it seems like "selfish" and "altruistic" are mutually exclusive terms. They're not. Rather, altruism is a subtype of selfishness.

As to objective morality, there can be no such thing. Right and wrong are inherently subjective terms, even if they were to be attributed in the same proportions to all things by all sentient beings in the universe. Objective morality would require that morality be some form of physical law, because it would have to remain true even if everyone disagreed with it or even in the absence of sentience (which is a self-contradictory thought).

Caffiene:

--- Quote from: Mazzy on Aug 01, 2012, 03:11:24 AM ---if it only comes down to what you value verse what other people value then what decision making process are you using to find that value?
--- End quote ---

He is saying (and Im agreeing) that at a basic level your emotional reaction forms part of those values. The human brain isnt predictable enough for a decision-making process to have a significant and predictable impact on those emotional reactions. At best, you are using simple logic to narrow down a list of potential values based on which circumstances you think you react to.


--- Quote from: Mazzy on Aug 01, 2012, 03:11:24 AM ---How does he know that he is truly maximizing the pleasure he can get out of life?
--- End quote ---

I doubt he does. Id suggest very very few people do.


To turn the questions around: Its up to you to show that other people have better decision making processes, or are closer to some objective maximum pleasure that they can achieve from a system of values. What situations do you think fit those criteria?

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