This is fine when the question is, “What’s for dinner?” However, there is nothing wrong with having core principles that aren’t able to be swayed. This is called having integrity. It’s important to understand where these lines fall within yourself and those you are speaking with. Some arguments aren’t worth having in an effort to persuade, but rather they should be discussions aimed at understanding, being vulnerable and finding ways to respect and live at peace among people we have fundamental differences with. Otherwise we are no different than Crusaders and Jihadists.
> This is fine when the question is, “What’s for dinner?” However, there is nothing wrong with having core principles that aren’t able to be swayed. This is called having integrity.
No, it is not the definition of integrity. If you opt to double-down on positions you held in spite of being presented to evidence that contradicts or refutes your prior beliefs, the behavior you are displaying is opposite of integrity, specially the part about honesty and commitment to do what's right.
having integrity: “murder is bad, even if it’s someone i disagree with (tho isn’t murdering)”
lack of integrity: “EU bad, even if you give me evidence to say that it’s the UK’s own politicians that have screwed us for decades.. not the EU necessarily”
Rape is wrong. It doesn't matter what your evidence or positions or logic are, you will not sway me on that point. I suspect that sort of thing is what GP meant.
> Rape is wrong. It doesn't matter what your evidence or positions or logic are, you will not sway me on that point.
Do you believe that you were already presented with evidence that compelled you to change your personal position on rape, and the only reason you didn't changed your position in spite of that was your stubbornness to stick with them in spite of you feeling your belief was already refuted?
Or does the rationale still holds?
I think you tried very hard to find a moral argument to try to refute the argument on integrity, but you unwittingly just proved the point.
But that clearly falls within the parent comment’s definition. Just because you are prepared to change your opinion on something based on evidence to the contrary, it doesn’t mean such evidence exists or may even be possible! I am of the opinion that the Earth is not flat. And I know that no evidence you can present would ever change that because it’s patently obvious that’s the case given the evidence I already have! But I am still theoretically open to a debate. That’s the scientific method.
Why is rape wrong though? "hurr durr rape bad" is just repeating whatever you've been indoctrinated to believe. There's a more fundamental reason rape is bad (and this same fundamental reason underpins the reason we find a lot of other things bad).
It does fall back to "core values" though - kinda' like with math & axioms. The "why" chain of questions will inevitably lead to something like "because there's inherent value in human life", and this is the point where it breaks down because there's no logical reason to say that. You can probably postulate the contrary and end up with a completely different set of morals that may still be internally coherent but would be very alien to you. Just how you can say "in a plane, through a given point not on a given line, there is no line parallel to the given line" and end up with a weird, non-Euclidean but coherent geometry.
Yes. But what happens in practice, both in actual rape trials and the court of public opinion, is a battery of arguments to say that it wasn't "really" rape. Disbelief at the woman's version of events. (Or, for other cases, the socially subordinate person in the interaction). Arguments that various sorts of actions or forms of dress constitute consent. Introducing the victim's previous sexual history to discredit them. And so on.
This is why "#metoo" was so controversial.
> This is why "#metoo" was so controversial.
I always though it was controversial because it did away with the 'innocent until proven guilty' argument...
Much like saying "murder is wrong", the wrongness is a part of the definition of the word. There's no need for evidence or logic, beyond understanding what a definition is.
Neither rape nor murder are inherently, definitionally wrong. There are situations in extremis where murder and rape are considered justifiable: in war, murder is often praised; and in an "everyone else is dead, humanity will go extinct" situation (e.g. the subjective belief of Lot's daughters, according to some traditions, in Genesis 19:31–36), rape might¹ be considered permissible. And both words are used to refer to things which aren't necessarily wrong (e.g. "I'm going to murder this sandwich", or the "forcefully taking" -> "winning in a competition" senses of 'rape' described on Wiktionary and Urban Dictionary).
Rather, central members of the categories of 'rape' and 'murder' are wrong for reasons, and while those reasons may differ depending on your ethical framework, pretty much all ethical systems agree on this point.
"That's immoral by definition" isn't really how words work. Some philosophers would call that a category error, others would call it meaningless, and yet others would call it equivocation.
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¹: For the record: I think the "don't rape" deontological principle is extremely reliable, and if anyone alive finds themselves in a situation where they think they should break it, they're almost certainly wrong about the facts. The dilemma faced by Lot's daughters was a false dilemma: many other options were available, including "talk about the dilemma and thereby acquire either consent, or a good counterargument", or "double-check with the supernatural being who created the otherwise-unlikely circumstance where you have good reason to believe everyone else died in fire and/or conversion to salt, to confirm whether you are in fact the last remnants of humanity". I can't think of a situation where rape is actually justified. Trolley problems don't occur in real life.
You are mistaken.
> in war, murder is often praised;
The killing of an enemy combatant, for example, is usually lawful, praised and not considered murder. Generally speaking, the killing of a civilian is sometimes a war crime and considered a murder.
You also have a lot to say on the nuanced ethics of killing and on sexual violence, but these deal with the underlying concepts themselves and the words don't matter; in fact philosophers frequently give common terms a specialized, ad-hoc definition when they want to discuss these concepts themselves.
I have nothing to say on the "nuanced ethics": as far as I'm concerned, rape is bad and murder is bad. Sufficiently-advanced pedantry always circles back to that. There's no nuance to be had.
If you asked any (non-bloodthirsty) soldier, officer or general whether they'd press a button to magically achieve their military objectives without bloodshed, they'd certainly take that option. Killing enemy combatants is praised as good because it is (considered) a necessary evil, but "necessary evil" is awful for morale. If you take people outside that situation, they tend to hold the view that "killing is wrong", or "killing non-wrongdoers is wrong" at worst.
You've (re)defined the word "murder" to exclude "lawful killings of enemy combatants", but whether we use your or my definition, that doesn't change the morality of the actions. You also observed that philosophers do that kind of (re)definition all the time. That's the point I was trying to make.
If the legal system calls certain morally bad killings in peacetime manslaughter that does not rise to the severity of murder, then I think that murder as is commonly used is a specific kind of killing that does not include your example of a wartime killing. Even outside of the courtroom itself, many are also very careful when using the word "murder" when discussing actual killings, because of its severity, and responsible people will defer to what suspects/convicts are charged/convicted with. Rather, it is you that have chosen a redefinition of the word.
I am not responding to your discussion on the morality of killings, because your argument was primarily about the definition of the word "murder", and I wanted to point that you were not accurate either.
Murder is when you kill someone on purpose, when you had the option of not. Voluntary manslaughter is when you do a violence on purpose, and the target dies, but your intent was not to kill. Constructive involuntary manslaughter is when you take an action that's against the rules, and someone dies as a result, but you didn't realise you were doing violence. Negligence involuntary manslaughter is when you take an action that's not against the rules, and someone dies as a result, but you could've averted it.
Wartime killing of the enemy could be any of these (except probably not the last one), but it's probably going to meet the requirements for murder. The main reason it's not considered murder is that in war, we use a different classification system for violent acts, because the social context of violence in wartime is very different to the social context of violence in peacetime.
If you're taking the perspective that the social context is bundled up in the definition of the word (Later Wittgenstein's "use" theory of language), then killing an enemy soldier in war is not murder. If you're taking the perspective that a word refers to a meaningful proposition, i.e. a family of states of affairs (Early Wittgenstein's "picture" theory of language), then killing an enemy soldier in war is a non-central member of the 'murder' category, and just nobody calls it that. Personally, I'm a "use" theory proponent, so, uh… hm. Guess I was inaccurate.
> Murder is when you kill someone on purpose, when you had the option of not.
Indeed, I think that your original reply would have been more useful and less apparently combative if you had
1. replied with this definition, 2. showed why this commonsense definition that does not definitionally involve morality is useful, and gave examples of it, 3. finally showed marginal cases where murder is not a moral bad according to certain ethical frameworks, 4. acknowledge that it's OK to redefine the word so that it is definitionally morally bad, but since it differs from a commonsense notion, it needs to be signposted,
but I think you had a bit to figure out yourself.
I'll have to study my original comment to see why it appears combative: thanks for pointing that out.
RE 2: I just looked through a few country's English-language laws and cribbed (what I saw as) the consensus definition of "murder". I'm not sure the other definitions I gave actually correspond to any real-world legal system, but many of them have something similar.
RE 4: Defining the word as "definitionally morally bad" means you have to make a moral assessment before using the word – but that takes most people way longer than the language processing of two syllables, so it leaves you open to equivocating rhetoric. Appeals to "common sense" (which, in my experience, is far from common) aren't why I object to that definition (except as signposted technical jargon, narrowly-scoped to a particular context).
The post I originally replied to was equivocating in this way (probably unintentionally), hence the strong objection. Though in my experience, explanations are better than intensifiers: that's something I should look out for in my editing passes in future.
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What if you're a duck
Still bad. They should require consent like rats do. Its much more ethical
based duckposting
When the shitpost so bad it needs its own throwaway
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Does the alcoholic dad who wont stop drinking have integrity? His core principles say he shouldn't back down; he's not a quitter after all.
Silly example, but I find arguments fall apart most at the edges.
I challenge you to develop a better definition of integrity. For me, integrity means I will change my mind when presented with convincing data.
> For me, integrity means I will change my mind when presented with convincing data.
It's not as binary as that.
Each new convincing data point may cause me to re-evaluate my position, but simply re-evaluation may not cause me to change my mind, but may cause me to slightly shift in the direction of the new position.
At some point, I would have ingested and/or seen so many convincing data points that my position is effectively neutral. And some point after that, my position may have actually shifted and not be neutral anymore.
IOW, it's a spectrum, and journeys across this spectrum are:
a) Slow - position moves in tiny amounts, and
b) Not guaranteed to end up on the opposite end - you might get to neutral and remain there for the rest of your life, or you might shift back towards your original position.
> Does the alcoholic dad who wont stop drinking have integrity? His core principles say he shouldn't back down; he's not a quitter after all.
Then yes, he does have integrity. He has his principles and stands by them (however misguided it may seem to others). But all this illustrates is that integrity alone doesn't define a good person.
The problem there though is that data completely breaks down for anything historical, philosophical, cultural, religious, miraculous, or otherwise requiring “faith.”
Anything that is not a repeatable event under a microscope has no “data” and never will.
I am not a "data or it didn't happen" person. I am sure I have magical beliefs that don't play out in reality.
I'm not convinced by the argument that this falls apart for your categories. Logic and reasoning still exists. Philosophy can be argued and principals agreed upon. Historical things leave traces. And I am appalled by blind faith.
At some point, our society and ways of doing things boils down to trust or faith. I trust that people thinking about things, trying to validate those things, and who employ a way to change their minds will move towards "more correct" understandings. People knew not to hang around people with the plague before germ theory.
I used to look at things this way too, but I now see this picture as incomplete, missing a crucial detail. There exist another dimension to our reality, beyond the inanimate, objective one we normally study through physics and life sciences. That dimension is the social dimension. It has its own rules, and for everyone at almost all times, it's more directly relevant to survival and happiness than actual physics.
An example I also posted in another comment: you can be objectively right about the color of the sky, but that won't save you from becoming dinner to wild animals after your people cast you out for believing differently.
We've evolved to navigate this social dimension as much as physical one, because we're social creatures and other people have forever been a part of our environment. Recognizing that, and recognizing that this social reality is more relevant than physical one, is IMO the key to understanding why people behave they do - why they believe obvious bullshit, and refuse to align their beliefs with the truth of physical reality, despite ample and indisputable evidence. It's the key to understand why seemingly smart people say and believe dumb things, especially after they start a career in sales or politics. It's all because, for almost everyone and in almost every case, being seen as in good standing in one's social circles is much more directly relevant to everyday experience and long and happy life, than getting some facts right.
Having that understanding, it becomes more apparent than just about the only way to convince people to change their mind, is to make things relevant to them personally in either dimension, and at a larger scale, to bring those two dimension more in alignment.
In a world where there is no way of knowing whether my blue is the same as your blue, can there be a way to be objectively right about the colour of the sky?
Yes. The color is exactly as you see it.
Irrelevant. You cannot communicate what you actually see, you only communicate labels you assign to incommunicable, inaccessible between humans feelings.
Ergo, there is no “objectively right” about the colour of the sky (or anything). There is only “using the same labels” or “using different labels” compared to everybody.
Sounds about right, until the reality check. How often do you raise the problem of the incommunicability of qualia outside hacker news? With what purpose? How often does that conversation accomplish its purpose?
You know, I've always figured, if our culture was based on an epistemic fundament that acknowledged and properly accounted for the fundamental incommunicability of percepts, it probably would've been a better world. (One where it's much easier for everyone to communicate accurately and effectively; as people would not expect of themselves and of each other to be "objective", just verbalize their current understandings as best as they could, without stressing too much over how understanding can only ever be subjective and incomplete.)
Some of us do envision such a world, but instead find ourselves living in a planetary culture based on the very rejection of the exact distinction that you're trying to point out. Turns out Cartesian dualism offers a lot of leeway along the "is-ought" axis, huh. (Qui bono, et sapienti sat.)
Enough to make the generally accepted standard for "objectively right" to be "the house is always right". (Supposedly, a supermajority of objects does not a subject make - or vice versa. And yet post-Enlightenment history is rife with efforts to scientifically desubjectify subjects in the service of some objectively rational philosopher king.)
And yet it seems to work well enough for most prosocials, you don't see them complaining, now do they? (What's a little mass neurosis between civilized folk?) I think it's safe to say that a member of the general public is cognizant of the labels they've been accultured to, at least to the same extent as they're aware of the physical reality which surrounds them. (If not vastly more so, physical reality being the more predictable of the two.)
This would mean that they have not actually experienced the quale of "incommunicable, inaccessible between humans [qualia]" and therefore the distinction you're trying to point out here is not in fact something they are able to think about; only perhaps to construct sentences about it by example, much like a LLM or a(n M)BA does.
As I'm sure you already know your own subjective version of most of the above, but I'm guessing you maybe view it more like a problematic to be struggled with, rather than a natural paradox and absurdity deserving of a more playful approach, I'd totally leave the celestial color coordination (along with all the worrying about whether people get it) to you - you, personally, and certainly none of the other folks. Not in the least because agreeing with people on how colors are called does not seem to be inherently conducive to being able to fly.
I don’t really understand the point you’re trying to make.
> Sounds about right, until the reality check. How often do you raise the problem of the incommunicability of qualia outside hacker news?
This is HN, and I was replying to a specific thought experiment posted in a comment:
> you can be objectively right about the color of the sky, but that won't save you from becoming dinner to wild animals after your people cast you out for believing differently.
That’s it.
You trying to bring into this people not complaining about it is, again, irrelevant. Most people, unless they are into philosophy, don’t tend complain about the inability to read someone else’s mind or feel what someone else’s feel. People also don’t tend to complain about the inevitability of death, the inability to go back in time, and in fact pretty much any fact of life that they cannot change. Yet, indeed, people absolutely do bring these up on regular basis in relevant philosophy-adjacent discussions and thought experiments, such as when correcting a claim that verbal labels assigned to feelings can be “objectively correct”.
>People also don’t tend to complain about the inevitability of death, the inability to go back in time, and in fact pretty much any fact of life that they cannot change.
News to me. The rest is irrelevant.
your perception of blue might be different than mine, but as a society we have agreed that specific wavelengths of light are blue. those wavelengths are absolutely measurable.
Indeed, so if that particular society has apparently agreed to call “blue” a different wavelength then you are the one objectively in the wrong.
To explain why your comment was received poorly: they're talking about integrity & you somewhat randomly brought in faith
Changing your mind given data isn't going to apply when there's no data to go by, so this concept of integrity isn't related to faith
My feeling is that we should simply not believe in stuff where we will never have data.
> However, there is nothing wrong with having core principles that aren’t able to be swayed. This is called having integrity.
I see what you're saying but I think this is called obstinance...
_I will never vote for a politician that committed an act of rape or pedophilia._
Is that part of my character Integrity or Obstinance?
Most likely neither, as you are presumably not voting for a politician who has committed rape or pedophilia because it is a legitimate, logical argument for not supporting them. Likewise I am rather firmly opposed to being thrown into a woodchipper, not because of some inflexible commitment to an ideology or ethical principle but because I have two braincells to rub together.
Have you ever felt a strong desire to vote for a politician who has committed sex crimes?
If your principles don't stand up to scrutiny, you shouldn't hold them. Some of the greatest evils ever committed were done by people certain they were acting according to upstanding principles. There is a middle ground between forcing all people to adopt your viewpoints and accepting all viewpoints as equally valid. Oftentimes you can agree to disagree, but there are certainly times you can't.
Yeah, I think we agree here.
"However, there is nothing wrong with having core principles that aren’t able to be swayed"
That's called being dogmatic. Sure, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but, in the face of extraordinary evidence you'd be a fool to stay unswayed and adhere to your proven false core principles.
I would venture to say that not all dogma is misplaced, despite the negative feelings that word tends to ignite. I tend to use that word more in situations where it’s clear someone hasn’t reasoned out why they believe what they believe. When I use the word “principles” I think it different than someone who just follows rules they were told to follow.
> However, there is nothing wrong with having core principles that aren’t able to be swayed. This is called having integrity... ...Otherwise we are no different than Crusaders and Jihadists.
And do you suggest a crusader or jihadist or keep this point of view as well? They too might think they are in the right and should keep their (religious etc) integrity, surely?
Everyone/most people always assume they are always in the right; if this was objectively true, there would never be a single debate or argument in the world.
A saying I like, apparently first made by Quine: "I always think I'm right, but I don't think I'm always right."
In other words, for every belief I have, I think it's right. Clearly, otherwise I would have abandoned it already. But I don't think that the set of all my beliefs is 100% free of errors or inconsistencies.
The point is I don’t have to agree with their views. Why would I want them to keep views I disagree with? This isn’t about what I’d want them to do, but rather accepting that people believe things that sound crazy to me, and it’s still up to me to find a way to live with and love them.
> there is nothing wrong with having core principles that aren’t able to be swayed
Well, yes there is.
In fact, that is the central problem of unresolvable divisions. People implicitly making themselves "the decider" by imagining their principles are so great as to preclude any need for revision. (Faith in the primacy of one's beliefs, is inherently the same as faith in one's own primacy to choose beliefs.)
There is nothing wrong with having strong core principles, because your best understanding supports them strongly. But as soon as you discount the possibility of them being wrong, even partially wrong, not the whole picture, framed within a non-tautological assumption, or not supercedable by other wiser principles, ..., you become the enemy of your own progress.
Nobody's knowledge, wisdom, or principles are complete, or have consistent primacy over all others.
Ultimately, principles, ethics and morality are a kind of economics. Decisions are tradeoffs between options. How does one make choices, so that the result is the outcome with the greatest value, and doesn't create other problems that exceed what is solved. That is a decidability problem, which will never have a complete or completely consistent answer.
The landscape for the question "What is best?" and "What is true?" is chaotic, fractal, non-Euclidean and infinitely complex.
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One of the biggest reasons to strong man the arguments of others, is the better at strong manning you become, the more likely you find something worth changing your own views over. Regardless of how explicit, implicit, or non-existent that was in their original argument.
Leveraging others disagreement, to identify misunderstandings and gaps in one's own knowledge, is the most important reason to talk to someone we disagree with.
Persuading them should be second, but is also more likely if we are clearly pushing ourselves to improve first.
There are very few cases where someone who disagrees with us doesn't see something wrong with our side. Or at a minimum, is not convinced because we are not as clear of a communicator as we think we are. Or not as good a listener as to what their question is, as we think. Even when we are "mostly right" and they are "mostly wrong", others rarely can't teach us something more about what we already know in one of those dimensions.
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Finally, don't try to persuade people in real time. Discuss, then move on. Discuss again if they want to.
People don't decide anything big in the moment.
They need time to understand an argument. Time to consider both its strengths and weaknesses. And time to consider ramifications we haven't even imagined. And the freedom to prioritize what is worth going down a rabbit hole for, in their life.
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I have been preparing to persuade a lot of people of something highly contrarian for a long time. This topic lights all the fires in me!
No, I disagree. Not all differences need resolving. Mature adults should learn to respect those differences. It doesn’t mean you have to change your worldview to get along. This is not about how tight or loose your convictions are, but rather how much empathy and grace you’re willing to grant to others. I can vehemently disagree with you while also seeking to understand and love you. Mischaracterizing strong and, yes, even non-negotiable convictions as “hate” or “division” is what keeps us divided.
> And the freedom to prioritize what is worth going down a rabbit hole for, in their life.
I’m not actually so sure that we disagree as much as I originally said. A better way for me to phrase it would have been: there is nothing wrong with certain unswayable convictions. But others can be very problematic.
That said, the point I want to make more is that both of these exist whether we like it or not. So rather than saying there’s no place for those strong convictions I disagree with, it is better to understand and empathize than to debate. That doesn’t mean changing my convictions necessarily. But it does mean I should treat others well regardless of how I think of them. This is the true meaning of “love thy neighbor”. And It is a shame more people who quote such scriptures don’t exercise them.
Even if everyone was flexible, there would be unresolved differences.
So I 100% agree with general (reciprocated) respect.
Strongman argument style here and I agree. If you argue with enough people you will be changed. If you keep arguing you will develop hardened identity around these positions or fold into humility. Only politicians shape their views inside a box. At that point one chose power over progress. They learned power can be leveraged far sooner than wisdom can be applied.
That's all well and good, but when you have to put your trust in someone and person A believes "it's wrong to cheat people" and person B has a whole framework for thinking about the problem on a case by case basis, you just go with A, right?
This reminds me of the Heinz Dilemma [0]. Ideally you want neither person A's rigid social/legal conformity in the face of death, not person B's vague wishy-washy convictions that change each time, but some higher set of ideals. Ones that accept cheating may sometimes be justified but only when the stakes are something really important like a human life, and only when cheating doesn't cause more harm than it prevents.
If person A can't accept or understand that a human life overrides lesser considerations, then no, I don't put my trust in them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma
The older I get the more I hear the exact opposite of what people say when they claim anything absolute about themselves. It's working out well.
"I'm an empath." "I don't like drama." "I never cheat people." "I value honesty."
So, what you are saying is that you found the fountain of youth and are getting younger?
> That's all well and good, but when you have to put your trust in someone and person A believes "it's wrong to cheat people" and person B has a whole framework for thinking about the problem on a case by case basis, you just go with A, right?
Whut?
Surely it would also depend on the situation, and the relevance and reasoning behind B's view.
Are we in preschool with children? Then probably A is right.
But if B is a teacher and explains that the kids love a game in which they all rampantly cheat, and the teacher has given up because they are having an absolute blast breaking the rules and trying to trick each other? I hope you would change your mind too.
Are we talking about an undercover agent in a dangerous country, attempting to get a critical component from a drunk bioweapons scientist, at a card table in a casino?
These are humorous examples, but real world versions are not hard to come by.
Principles that have few or no exceptions tend to be very narrow in scope. Like don't preemptively launch world ending nukes during a stable peacetime.
The sensible approach is have the best principles you can, be willing to improve them, and apply them with care and situational flexibility.
Principles are maps, not the actual moral territory.
Principles are wisdom, not an algorithm.
I feel like people who make such blanket value statements like "I don't cheat people" or "I don't lie" aren't being honest with themselves, or are putting too much faith in the stability of the society they live in.
The easiest retort is Anne Frank. You're hiding her in your attic and a Nazi asks if you're hiding enemies of the state. There you go, a time when you'll definitely lie and cheat!
Someone might answer, "well, fine. I don't cheat or lie unless I'm in extraordinary circumstances." That's fine, they've let go of dogmatism then, now the interesting conversation starts of where the line is, what constitutes extraordinary circumstances. That's a very interesting conversation I believe.
> There you go, a time when you'll definitely lie and cheat!
I don't think this is the win you think it is. Kantians and se deontologists will absolutely say that no, you cannot lie and cheat even in that scenario. You have a moral duty to not lie but also a moral duty to resist tyranny. You cannot sacrifice one to achieve the other, you must choose only options that fulfill both duties.
> You have a moral duty to not lie but also a moral duty to resist tyranny. You cannot sacrifice one to achieve the other, you must choose only options that fulfill both duties.
The universe doesn't respect that viewpoint. There is no mechanism in reality or life that prevents hard tradeoffs from having to be made.
> The universe doesn't respect that viewpoint. There is no mechanism in reality or life that prevents hard tradeoffs from having to be made.
What the universe does or doesn't respect has no bearing on what is or is not right / good.
Are you role playing in a fictional world? Where you can make up whatever ideals you want, and make them happen. Then I am for nobody ever suffering injustice.
That would be good and right, indeed.
Or, making actual choices in reality? Where there are limits to what we can do, but making hard choices well has positive impact.
I am speaking to the latter.
> Or, making actual choices in reality? Where there are limits to what we can do, but making hard choices well has positive impact.
Impact is irrelevant in Kantian ethics, deontological ethics [1] and virtue ethics [2]. A choice is good and right because it the nature of the choice itself in deontology, or because of how it defines one character in virtue ethics, not because of what effects it may or may not have on the world.
Every novice approaching ethics naively assumes a framework of consequentialism [3], where every choice is judged by its consequences, but this framework is deeply problematic and we have literal proofs that not all ethic theories can be reformulated in terms of consequences [4].
The original post I replied to also naively assumed a consequentialist framing, and I replied that this framing is not universal and so his conclusion does not follow. You can continue to double down on "it's obvious that consequences matter for ethical choices", but that doesn't make it true, and thus, it does not support the original argument.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
[3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/
[4] https://philarchive.org/rec/BROCT
> Impact is irrelevant in Kantian ethics
From an arm chair perspective, this is a wonderful shortcut isn't it! Roughly, treat everyone how we would want to be treated - or some other limited formulation, with no horizon of thought about downstream impact past that.
Presumably, inflexible pacifism would get a sympathetic response from Kantians.
A kind of intellectual purity, at the relative cost to others' lives.
Interesting as an idea. Not so great for actual humans.
What exactly is the imagined benefit, that outweighs the well being of others and ourselves? A circular form of philosophical purity? A view that is better because it deems itself better?
EDIT: Just saw this:
> Not unless you can present some proof of this. Your implicit assumption that we should care about outcomes over principles has its own set of moral failures, like the repugnant conclusion.
Well, most people start by caring about other people and themselves. Not as an assumption but as a real status.
Doing so has a particularly interesting and meaningful consequence. By prioritizing better results for human beings, positive impact can better produce more positive impact. Creating a positive spiral where benefits of the ethics of prioritizing impact compound, and compound.
So for those that care about our fellow beings, and nontrivial non-limiting implications of choices, there is solid ground for ethics. Nothing arbitrary or foundationally circular.
Need to make up assumptions.
In contrast, what is the assumption or principle that values principles over people. What is the actual point? How is that deemed better than prioritizing a better world. How is that better or richer than ethics that achieve a higher bar, by continually re-incorporating, navigating and producing an ever more complex enabling future?
I gave you all of the links you need to read if you want to know more. Suffice it to say that all you're describing is what you care about, which is about as logically compelling an argument about what is good as telling me what deity you believe in. Your random foray into philosophy is not going to solve 3,000 years of ethical debates in a simple quip.
You seem to be completely at sea here, for all your knowledge.
Caring about oneself and others' welfare is a direct result of being creatures that must make choices to survive. The compounding positive sums of increasing cooperative behavior are not arbitrary. They pay for themselves, many many times over.
Thus, practical virtue appears naturally, and persists, and grows, regardless of what you want to call it, or alternatives that anyone comes up with.
If you are going to argue about/against that practical impact, at least acknowledge practical virtue has a very special status.
Or you are arguing from (real or posed) ignorance.
The burden us on you, if you want to claim this practical progression should be superseded.
Without that, an appeal to impractical principles over practical good, is very much in the vein of "telling me what deity you believe in".
What "good" is "good" that doesn't reciprocally maximize "good" going forward.
So far your comments lack any grounding beyond itself. Perverse "purity". That relegates virtue to an hermetic aesthetic or OCD tick.
Philosophy has spent 3000 years trying to organize humans well and has apparently failed to solve that problem.
Reframing that reality as "actually it doesn't matter what the consequence is as long as we followed our values to the letter!" is convenient, but in modern terminology, a cope.
I read your links and was already aware of deontology anyway but it was a nice refresher. Yup, you're right, we're describing what we care about! And in doing so we represent the majority of human thinking - maybe not the human thinking that gets written down, but nonetheless.
Why should people care to convince dusty academics what is right and wrong using logical systems and proofs when the dusty academic has lost the ethical debate immediately in the eyes of most when he admits that according to his ethical system, lying to prevent Anne Frank is wrong? This is instinctively wrong to most people, so, why should we care? Rigid logic is worthless when people are looking for something else, and rigid logic alone isn't enough to build a society.
I feel like you got to deontology and stopped. I've never actually met someone who studies ethics who got to deontology and didn't later end up with emergency exit modes, such as the Anne frank scenario. Using ethics to live a virtuous life is well and good, but Nazis don't do that, and you won't convince them using deontology to not round people up. You don't have to go all the way the other way and make "ends justify the means" arguments. Just allow yourself the flexibility to say "in an emergency, of course it's ok to lie," which may not seem logically sound, but society isn't logically nor is it possible to make it purely logical enough to be a valid ground for Kantian ethics to result in actual virtuous people - because the man that gives up Anne Frank telling the truth is not virtuous, he is a selfish monster, sacrificing a human life for his own sense of virtue and preservation of ethical purity, a disgusting trade off.
Have you ever met in real life a person who wouldn't lie to the axe murderer, because of their Kantian values?
If a Kantian can be put into a situation where their morals would require them to say the word that gives up Anne Frank, we can safely say it's a bad moral system.
> If a Kantian can be put into a situation where their morals would require them to say the word that gives up Anne Frank, we can safely say it's a bad moral system.
Not unless you can present some proof of this. Your implicit assumption that we should care about outcomes over principles has its own set of moral failures, like the repugnant conclusion.
Yes yes I'm sure smarter people than me have done lots of interesting logical things to philosophy over the last thousand years.
And I maintain my simple point: if your ethical system doesn't allow the flexibility to not give up Anne Frank, it's a bad ethical system. Unless you believe giving up Anne Frank isn't wrong? Then you're a bad person and shouldn't be considered in conversations about ethics!
Design it in a way to have good outcomes if you're worried about repugnant conclusions. Personally I believe putting it on paper is a fool's errand - vibes based ethics seems to work as good as one can get from an ethical system.
To cheat someone implies there is some obligation owed which is reneged upon, even if that's just the minute obligation owed from one member of a society to another.
In your hypothetical situation, I owe no such obligation to the Nazis who as you'll remember were an occupying force. I entered into no social compact with them.
I put my trust in someone on a case by case basis, unless they're going to cheat someone. Then I don't trust them.
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