HiiroYui Wrote:IceCream, I’m really happy with your response. You made points that might seem obvious to you, but very few people know how to point them out. You’re starting to understand me more and more. Soon they’ll be calling you crazy, too. You and Tzadeck are the first ones to push back against what I’m doing. I want to be sure that I’m right, so I actually want to find people who might be able to point out flaws in my thinking. I learn nothing when people respond with silence.

oh, i've always been crazy But better that than boring, eh?

Yeah, well, this is something i've thought quite a lot about in the past. It's really good to have people to bounce your ideas off sometimes i think, so if i can do that for you i'm glad ^_^

HiiroYui Wrote:I believe it is morally good for a person to work hard at work. I don't know how to give a more basic moral statement in terms of a scientifically observable human action. The best I was able to do was to give an anecdote explaining why working hard is beautiful in itself, but I can't say "it is morally good to do something beautiful" because beauty is not scientifically observable. I mentioned benefitting someone, somewhere, but "it is morally good to benefit someone, somewhere" does not capture what I am aiming for because any action that helps another person would have to be morally good. I mentioned helping society, but "it is morally good to help society" doesn't capture it either because any actions that help the whole (or the majority of) society would have to be morally good. My goal is to get everyone to work hard, which can't be worded in terms of “society”. A person by himself on a deserted island is doing something beautiful if he works hard to build a shelter that protects him from the weather long enough to build a spear he can use to catch enough food to keep himself alive long enough to build a rain collection tank on a hill that he can then use as an energy source to help him build better tools that will help him make..., and so on. Any efficiencies he finds to accomplish more work in less time don’t give him a reason to work less hard. I'm not in a position to do this kind of stuff outside of work right now, so I limit my statement to "at work".

Ok, so, you don't think that doing something beautiful is necessarily morally good. So morality and beauty are seperate things, though linked. Let's summarise this as "what is moral is beautiful", but not "what is beautiful is moral".

Now, you say that working hard is beautiful in itself, and i agree. But why is it that you think it's moral? Since beauty and morality are seperate things, it could just be that working hard is beautiful, but not moral. There's many examples in the world of things that are beautiful but amoral, just think of literature or music.

HiiroYui Wrote:As for dopamine rewards, I don't care what is going on in people's brains as long as the outcome is hard work. I won't say "it is morally good to work hard while thinking about how much you're helping other people" and "it is morally bad to work hard while thinking about the reward you may get" because I don't believe these actions can be observed.

Ah, sorry, i didn't explain my point very clearly here. It is thought that the dopamine system in the brain controls the feeling of being rewarded for working at something. The harder you work, the more dopamine is released, meaning the better you feel and the more you get out of working hard, the more inherently meaningful you find what you are doing, etc. It's basically that rush you were talking about before. It's probably why we see working hard as inherantly beautiful too. So, my point was, why is this a moral thing? Ok, it makes me feel good to work hard, and it seems beautiful, and that's a really good reason to do it. But that doesn't make it a moral act.

(ultimately, i think there is something moral about it, but that's too complex for this discussion & will only lead to getting sidetracked, so let's leave it at that for now.)

HiiroYui Wrote:It would be hypocritical of me to criticize someone for working hard and bringing about a bad outcome. Even slaves should work hard because it’s beautiful. If that brings about the prosperity of their slave master, I can’t criticize the slaves. In fact, at this stage in my views, I won’t even criticize the slave master (unless he is lazy) because that would mean changing my moral views again. Only when I’m sure I’m ready to take on the full burden will I change my views.

I am forced to be silent on many moral issues because I’m not ready for the burden.

See, i just find this to be cheap. I think morality should be deeper than just "whatever i am willing to admit". I think building a system of morality that changes based on whether you can fulfill those burdens or not is pretty base and disgusting. I think the same about the coherence of a system too.

Look, let's take the example of eating meat, like in the other thread. I do still eat meat, though i think it's not moral. But my moral will just isn't strong enough in this case to stop eating meat entirely, my selfish will to enjoy the taste is stronger than my moral will.

Now, i have some options here. I could just decide to think there is nothing wrong with eating meat. I could build a whole coherent system of how eating meat is perfectly fine and moral, and there will be no contradictions in my reasoning, so nobody will ever find out that i really intuit eating animals as immoral.

I could withold judgement, say that i cannot carry that burden, and pretend i have no moral intuition whatsoever about eating meat, and i will consider it at some later date when i have the energy to take on another burden.

Or, i can simply admit that i am not acting morally when i eat meat and deal with the cognitive dissonance that brings until my will is strong enough to change that, and work on strengthening my will.

In my opinion, only the last way is valid. The other 2 ways use cheap tricks to wriggle out of what is my actual intuition about morality.

So when you say to me that you will not judge a slaveowner or a concentration camp guard because it would result in you being found hypocritical, i just think that's pretty pathetic. You should stand up for what is right, even if you can't follow though on it yourself. The morality of the situation doesn't change just because you can't handle it yourself.

HiiroYui Wrote:“If you're stuck working a 60 hour week doing robotic tasks just to scrape by, you aren't going to be able to contribute to the development of society through cultural or artistic means.” Create a company.

realllllllly? Is creating a company the pinnacle of human existence to you? The highest a human can achieve in life? Because it's certainly not to me. It's good that we have people who do believe that in the world, for sure. But, ugh.

HiiroYui Wrote:“You're not going to be able to spend the time you might like with your children…”. Don’t have children you can’t afford to raise.

I don't think your right to have children should be based on your wealth, and i don't think that your wealth is something you have total control over, so...

HiiroYui Wrote:“If everyone were fairly paid…, more of us could work part time and enjoy our lives more fully, and work hard to contribute to society in more individual and personal ways.” Back to the deserted island where there is no such thing as money. Don’t you see that if all ten people work part time, less work will be done? What if one of them was that guy I mentioned earlier who built a shelter, a spear, a water tank on a hill, and good tools? If he builds shelters for the other nine, catches their food, provides their energy and makes tools for them, they would have more time to enjoy their lives more fully. The presence of money obscures the fact that this is what you are proposing.

There isn't some set amount of work to do in the world, after which we can all have a holiday. The system we have means that we have to create enough work for everyone to find the money to live, even if that does mean that plenty of people spend their lives designing, marketing, and selling:

guardian Wrote:a solar-powered waving queen; a belly-button brush; a silver-plated ice cream tub-holder; a "hilarious" inflatable Zimmer frame; a confection of plastic and electronics called Terry the Swearing Turtle; or – and somehow I find this significant – a Scratch Off World Map.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...esent-junk
Just a small selection of the, frankly, crap that people spend half their lives in mind crushingly boring jobs working to be able to buy. It's actually, literally, insanity, in my opinion. If we can't find a better way of providing everyone with the necessities than this, we maybe ought to just give up.

HiiroYui Wrote:“So yeah, i think that working hard is good, but not morally good. And i think if you really think about it, you will too...” When I gave examples of me getting people to change their views, you said it was only because I forced them to reduce their views to silly statements, and that the contradictions I found were not real ones. If I change my mind about working hard, will you say the contradictions you (thought you) found were not real and that my actual views are too complicated to be reduced to simple statements? Many people actually do make such simple moral statements, sometimes even without you asking them to. How can you not take their word when they say those are their views? Why don't you believe they can simply act hypocritically?

I do think that having a coherent moral system is a good thing. I don't think it's totally pointless. I think it helps people understand their own views a lot more fully. But i do think that language and logic are not necessarily the best tools in the world for understanding morality. And it can't give you any kind of basis for morality. So yes, it's fine, but within limits, and don't expect to solve many problems with it.

What i do think is kinda pointless is trying to convince people of it. I think it has to be a personal endeavor. Because look, i gave you a perfectly good contradiction to show why you don't really think that working hard is moral, and rather than changing your view, you stick solidly to the one you have, and claim that you will withold judgement from slave owners. I assume you do this because, again, there is something more important than coherence in your beliefs.

HiiroYui Wrote:“But a system can be totally coherent but false.” A person can hold a coherent set of views that you completely disagree with. In cases like this, you compete to convince more people of your own views while trying to catch him acting hypocritically.

On what basis should you try to convince someone whose morals are completely coherent, and they never act hypocritically? How are you going to convince someone their system is immoral if it is totally coherent?

HiiroYui Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:

HiiroYui Wrote:...there is room in the system for people like you. Just say you won’t decide on the morality of actions until you see the evidence of the results of those actions. While waiting for that evidence, however, it would be strange if you praise/criticize people for taking those actions.

I disagree….Best evidence is often good enough.

There is currently no evidence from scientists that burning toenail clippings causes more rain in the deserts of Africa and allows more food to grow there and reduces hunger. If you praise someone for burning all the clippings he can find, you will not be performing evidence-based decision making.

Exactly... best evidence is not the same as no evidence.

HiiroYui Wrote:“To give another example, think of a christian who believes that abortion is morally wrong, but supports the right to choose as a social good.” I have only heard of people who don’t want to pass a law while the majority of the people don’t support it. Is a “social good” a moral view shared by the majority of the people?

No. A social good is something that is good for society as a whole, regardless of whether the individual members of society believe it is morally good or not. Consider the rehabilitation of offendors, for example. If rehabilitating offenders brings the crime rate down, that is a social good. But the majority of individual members of society could still believe that criminals should be punished harshly. Whether something is a social good or not is something that can be determined by agreeing goals and then figuring out what the evidence we have points towards as a course of action.

HiiroYui Wrote:“If your army of climate change deniers actually have the evidence and sound rational argument to back up their arguments, they should be able to change the minds of real scientists.” So, you will only listen to your favorite (so-called “real”) scientists even when they are in the minority? Sounds like what deniers do now. “I learnt that much in GCSE science. And yes, that is exactly how low level those objections are.” I had no official science or math education beyond the Advanced Placement level (introductory college physics) in high school, yet I can spot problems in what experts say. I think you are capable of more than you think.

You think you can spot problems in what experts say. The question is, do those experts think that they are problems, or have they considered those possible objections already and have answered them. Most of the climate science deniers are not even intellectually honest, and their objections are in the realm of ridiculous.

You seem to think that scientists are just broadcasting their opinion, but that is not what happens in science. Again, it is based on evidence + rational principles. You can't just make it up as you go along, or interpret data any way you please. The scientific method certainly is a long way from perfect, but it's the best way we can explain the world currently.

I only mentioned beauty in an effort to describe what I feel when I see people doing morally good things. I didn’t mean it’s beautiful in the artistic sense. It’s partially emotional and hard to put in words. I’ll try again next time.

I think I already understood what you meant by the dopamine reward. The reason I’m not willing to say “it is morally good to work hard at work while thinking of how much you are helping other people” (besides the fact that thoughts are not scientifically observable) is because even I don’t always do that. I’d be acting hypocritically if I said that (even though no one would be able to prove it). On some days, I probably need that dopamine rush to keep me motivated, so I can’t criticize others for doing the same.

I said “it is immoral to act hypocritically”, but you seem to disagree. This is a big deal and probably explains why we have been misunderstanding each other. As a person who believes eating meat is not morally bad, I’d be upset with a fellow meat-eater telling me not to eat meat. If you can’t handle the burden of not eating meat, why would you criticize me for not being able to handle it? [angryrant/]Don’t you dare blame your hypocrisy on the chemicals in your brain. You have free will. You choose to eat meat of your own free will. Don’t tell me “I’m forced to feel sadness because a brain chemical is released whenever I think of the animal that had to die, but another chemical is forcing me to continue eating meat anyway”. Don’t tell me “I was born with weak willpower so I can’t resist the taste of meat, but you have strong willpower so you are morally obligated to do what I can’t, even though you don’t think eating meat is bad”. Don’t say “I care very deeply for the lives of animals because I’m a good person and the rest of you don’t care because you are all evil, so I’m the only one allowed to eat meat”. Don’t say “My goal is to reduce the amount of meat eaten by people, so let’s ask scientists and economists ‘what’s the best way to reduce the amount of meat I eat?’”.[/angryrant] If you were a vegetarian, I would be less angry about your attempts to get me to stop eating meat because I’d know you were sincere and understood the weight of the burden you’d be pushing on me. Generally, if your opponent criticizes you for not doing something difficult, you should make sure he’s doing it himself. If he acts hypocritically, there will be no connection between his words and his actions, so even if you get him to say he agrees with you, his actions may stay the same.

What you’ve been calling a moral view, I’ve been calling an emotion. Yes, I feel emotions when I think about certain things. As a black guy, when I think about the slavery that occurred in America’s past, I feel sadness and anger towards white people for letting it happen. When I think about all the white people that helped to end slavery and segregation, the anger is replaced with happiness. These are all emotions. They are fleeting and not consistent or logical. If I feel anger when I think about the enslavement of black people, why don’t I feel anything when I imagine black people enslaving white people? I need to add logical thought to supplement my emotions so I can be more consistent. So I say “If white people enslaving black people is wrong, black people enslaving white people must also be wrong because a person’s race doesn’t matter”. I will then hold the moral view that it is morally bad for anyone to enslave anyone. This has to apply to me as well. I would be committing the very evil I condemn others for if I enslave someone, so this moral view amounts to a promise: no matter what emotions I may feel in the future, no matter what chemicals are released into my synapses, no matter what my parents taught me as a child, I will never enslave anyone. This is what I call a moral view, logical thought combined with emotions to ensure that I will always act a certain way in certain situations. You say I’m rationalizing and trying to escape what my brain is teaching me as if it’s cowardly, but this is strength. It’s easy to feel emotions and act on them. It takes effort to resist them and constrain your actions. Of course vegetarians like the taste of meat. Of course the idea of getting revenge on white people by enslaving them has crossed my mind. Of course priests think sex feels good. People try not to give in to temptations because they believe no one should do those things.

When I ask you to agree that acting hypocritically is morally bad, I’m not asking “when you think about hypocrisy right now, does a slight negative feeling come over you?” I’m asking you to promise never to do it, even if it’s a convenient way to achieve another goal. I need to get you to understand this before we can discuss other issues.

...I can't resist. A scientist's job and the scientific method are different things. Is there an internet forum I can sign up to where I can challenge the ideas of a scientist or economist? I'll go there, find something I disagree with, argue with them and show you that I'm better at this stuff than they are.

HiiroYui Wrote:A scientist's job and the scientific method are different things. Is there an internet forum I can sign up to where I can challenge the ideas of a scientist or economist? I'll go there, find something I disagree with, argue with them and show you that I'm better at this stuff than they are.

Better at what than they are?

Ok, sorry, but i don't think i can really carry on this discussion at this point, as i don't know how to write things much clearer than i already have.

HiiroYui Wrote:What you’ve been calling a moral view, I’ve been calling an emotion.

Yes, i know you have. But as i've already explained a number of times, "act based on emotion" is nothing like what i'm saying. I've also explained that empathy isn't the same thing as emotion in general to begin with. I don't know what else I can say to help you understand this.

There is no conflict because your anger towards slave owners has nothing to do with empathy. Empathy (since you don't want to talk about what actually goes on in the brain, i'll give the more common conception...), is kind of like walking around in someone elses shoes and trying to understand how they feel. And so, you understand that being someone's slave feels undignified, like you are barely even human. You are trapped, you're treated disrespectfully. etc. You understand that it would feel horrible.

Now, when you consider someone treating someone that way, you feel angry, and so you feel angry that white people have treated black people that way. That anger isn't empathy. And because you are angry, you turn off your empathy towards white people. If you used your empathy towards white people, you would figure out that being a white slave would feel exactly the same as being a black slave. And so, you would know that it was wrong.

HiiroYui Wrote:I said “it is immoral to act hypocritically”, but you seem to disagree.

Hmm. No, i don't necessarily disagree, i just think the statement is kind of meaningless. You are essentially saying "it is immoral to act immorally". Well yes, of course it is. "you should do x" where x is moral is never anything more than a tautology, as long as the "should" is a moral "should". I don't think morality has any absolute basis in that way. I do think that it has a human basis though. So it's a matter of balancing conflicting wills, in a way. (again, it's more complex than this i think, but i can't really be bothered to get into it).

My point was that i think it is fairly disgusting to change what you think is moral based on whether you can fulfill it or not, not that you shouldn't strive to act morally (again, that's "should" in the tautological sense). But to do that, you have to accept something outside of coherence as the basis for morality.

I see acting morally more as a process than an act, so i'm not criticising people for being hypocritical. They'll figure things out in their own way in their own time, as will I. Someone calling me a hypocrite is not going to change how i act. More often i would criticise someone for lying to themselves, pretending that some act is justifiable when it doesn't seem to be at all, misunderstanding / misrepresenting what the evidence is saying, or not using empathy. And i hope that others would criticise me on the same mistakes if i make them.

So no, sorry, i don't really do moral promises, i think they are rather pointless. I don't think an absolutely moral person can exist, if only because there are so many morally conflicting situations in the real world. And i think you only become moral through a process, like, your actions are a consequence of who you are at a certain time. So, if you want to become moral, you have to make yourself the type of person who would act morally when faced with a given situation. I don't think that has much to do with whether you have "promised to" be moral or not. It's something more fundamental to your character than that.

HiiroYui Wrote:...I can't resist. A scientist's job and the scientific method are different things. Is there an internet forum I can sign up to where I can challenge the ideas of a scientist or economist? I'll go there, find something I disagree with, argue with them and show you that I'm better at this stuff than they are.

This just comes across as incredibly arrogant, but i will give you the benefit of the doubt.
So let's see. How are you going to prove scientists wrong? Are you planning to do it with actual evidence + accepted rational principles? Or are you going to try and do it with thought alone? Because if you can do it with the first you are a scientist. If you can only do it through the second, it is going to be pretty much irrelevent to any specific decision making process, particularly with respect to physical phenomena. The social sciences are much easier to criticise in a useful way.

I have more free time now, so I’ll be able to respond more quickly.

Tzadeck, welcome back. I think I’m better at the scientific method than some scientists and better at logical thought than some economists (deserted island examples). Specifically, I’m good at creating plausible theories when given adequate data, but I currently don’t do scientific experiments. It costs money to do experiments, but interpreting the results of other people’s experiments is free.

IceCream,
"…i don't know how to write things much clearer than i already have." What are you talking about? You just did make things clearer. It’s true that I keep thinking I understand you and then you keep saying I misunderstood you again, but we have made progress. I don’t think we are where we were at the beginning, so let's continue talking. I’m not used to thinking of empathy as separate from emotions, but I’ll try. When discussing slavery, I’m usually imagining scenes from movies and books about slavery in America. When talking about concentration camps, I imagine scenes from Schindler’s List and other holocaust movies. It would help if we could discuss a similar situation that currently exists somewhere in the world so I can tell you more accurately how I feel about it. It’s kind of mind twisting to be told that I’m not feeling empathy towards imaginary white slaves of imaginary black slave owners.

Can you tell me how much of this empathy response is under my voluntary control? I mean, people say “treat others how you would like to be treated”, and when I intentionally try to do this, I can imagine being the other person and having some action performed on me and try to think about how I would feel in that situation. You said your selfish will and your moral will compete against each other, but what about free will?

"So no, sorry, i don't really do moral promises, i think they are rather pointless." Yeah, let’s call it making moral promises (and encouraging others to do the same). I make certain promises about how I will act in the future based on how I think humans should act and whether or not I think I can keep those promises. I promise to not act hypocritically, to work hard at work, etc (and I promise to encourage others to do the same). When I get other people to make moral statements, they understand them as promises, as well. That’s why people stop talking when I catch them breaking their own promises. The more promises people make, the harder it is to keep them and the harder it is to prevent contradictions between them. You think there are many morally conflicting situations in the world because everyone is making promises they can’t keep, then they’re all forgiving each other. If you limit discussion to only the promises people can keep and criticize people who don’t keep them, the world will seem rather simple. If you break your promise, it’s not the end of the world. You just have to do some soul-searching and determine if you can really continue to make such a promise (and not praise/criticize others in the meantime). You are the only person I’ve met who says he doesn’t make such promises at all.

“This just comes across as incredibly arrogant,…” Good thing I say I don’t promise to not act over-confidently/arrogantly/full of myself. “…but i will give you the benefit of the doubt.” This is great. You were able to overcome your revulsion and see that I’m offering to prove myself. As I said in Reply #418, vix86 gave the right answer to my question about my army of deniers. You have to concentrate on the scientific method and the strength of the evidence, not on the scientists themselves. Scientists are people and are fallible like the rest of us. They make mistakes sometimes. What’s worse, scientists regularly ridicule people they disagree with and prevent their opponents from getting funding for experiments, as if that is science. The scientific method does not start with “get a degree in a science”. Everyone can do science (and they do, to an extent). I want to show you that if I could somehow debate scientists, I can get them to say “you’re right, I hadn’t considered that possibility” or “you are not a scientist, so stop telling me the theory I worked so hard on is flawed”. I do my best work when I’m theorizing based off evidence available to me and seeing the scientists’ thought processes. I can’t go into the field and gather evidence and do experiments (yet). And you’re right about the social sciences.

I hope to convince you that trusting what the majority of scientists say and entrusting the decision making to the majority of experts based on what the majority of people’s goals are isn't the best way to go. I want people to examine the evidence, think logically/scientifically, and vote for the laws they want.

Some loose ends:
I promise to work hard at work and promise to encourage others to work hard at work because, when you think about it in general, it’s hard to help lots of people. It’s hard to build a homeless guy a house, for example, and you want someone to be the kind of person who would be willing to do what’s hard and not expect the homeless guy to pay him a “fair” wage. The kind of people who work hard at work are the ones who would pour their energy into helping those who can’t help themselves (which can be a beautiful, touching sight). If you’re going to be shipwrecked on an island, they are the ones you want to be shipwrecked with. People aren’t necessarily born with this trait, and I believe it can be fostered in people who don’t currently have it, so I want to get as many people as possible to change into this type of person.

“Is creating a company the pinnacle of human existence to you? The highest a human can achieve in life?” Did you return all the belongings you bought from companies? You paid for that stuff with money, right? Think of paying for something as voting in favor of the people who made it available to you. If you don’t think the CEO’s of those companies deserve your money, don’t give them your money. Entrepreneurs get rich because people give them money. You mentioned you want to contribute to the development of society through “cultural or artistic means”, but I’m not the kind of person who values art (paintings, music CD’s, colorful things) highly enough to pay you for your contributions, and I think “culture” is an unnecessary and illogical concept so I wouldn’t mind if those “contributions” stopped. The stuff mentioned in that Guardian article that you call crap could easily be of cultural or artistic significance to the people who choose to buy them. If you make a company and other people value your contributions, they will give you enough money to survive and thrive. If not, how can you call what you are doing “contributing to society”?

I have a right to have children? Sweet. I choose not to have children. Where can I sign up for cash instead? The people who choose to have children have the right to receive money from the government, right? Where’s my money? Actually, when I said "don't have children you can't afford", I meant "create a company and see if people think you deserve enough money to afford children", but maybe you knew that.

“There isn't some set amount of work to do in the world, after which we can all have a holiday.” I was trying to say that the improvements in people’s lifestyles will slow if everyone works less. Electricity would be a huge convenience on a deserted island, so if everyone works less it won’t be created as quickly, meaning there will be no light at night, for example. In the real world, the sun emits huge amounts of energy that never comes to Earth. Imagine all the conveniences we would have if we could harness that energy. If everyone slows down, we won’t reach that stage for thousands of years. And why stop at the sun? There’s a whole universe out there so there’s no time to waste.

“On what basis should you try to convince someone whose morals are completely coherent, and they never act hypocritically? How are you going to convince someone their system is immoral if it is totally coherent?” I’m not sure what you mean by coherent anymore. To me, coherence is when your promises don’t contradict themselves. If there are no contradictions within neither your promises nor your opponent’s and neither of you ever break your promises, you can still debate over the logic and the reasons for your views. It’s impossible for you to think his promises are the logical ones to hold if you think your promises are the logical ones to hold. Besides, he will be trying to change your mind, too, so it won’t be like talking to a wall.

vix86, somehow I failed to respond to what you said in Reply #407. “Just to go back to the abortion example, its pretty difficult to argue with someone on their view that "life starts at conception therefore abortion is murder, and wrong," when their moral basis in life is guided by a book that they believe was written by a figure that no one can proves exist[s/ed].” Ask him if murder is immoral (feel free to word this as a promise). If he says yes, you trapped him. He is not being careful with his words. Is it immoral to kill someone no matter what the circumstance is? Does he oppose war? Does he oppose the death penalty? Why does he care about the unborn child, but not care about helping to feed and clothe the child after birth? If abortion is made illegal, will he promise to adopt unwanted children? Look closely at his sentence. “Abortion is morally bad because life starts at conception”. Isn’t it possible to agree that life starts at conception and still disagree that abortion is morally bad? This is an example of that fallacy I was talking about. By refusing to acknowledge that fertilized eggs are alive, you are holding a strange (but, unfortunately, not rare) view of the science.

HiiroYui Wrote:It would help if we could discuss a similar situation that currently exists somewhere in the world so I can tell you more accurately how I feel about it. It’s kind of mind twisting to be told that I’m not feeling empathy towards imaginary white slaves of imaginary black slave owners.

it shouldn't matter. people can feel as much empathy towards fictional characters as real people. in fact, i think reading books is one of the best ways to increase your ability to empathise.

HiiroYui Wrote:You said your selfish will and your moral will compete against each other, but what about free will?

free will is in the process of balancing them.

HiiroYui Wrote:I make certain promises about how I will act in the future based on how I think humans should act and whether or not I think I can keep those promises.

So where you think you can't keep a promise, you think it's fine to act immoraly? I said this before, but this is such a weird, horrible view of things. Something is either immoral or it isn't. It has nothing to do with whether you can keep a promise about it. That's completely irrelvent.
Why would it make a difference whether you made a promise about it or not, either way you are doing something immoral. I don't see how doing something immoral when you promised not to is worse than doing something immoral in general. (unless you consider lying to be immoral, but that's a seperate issue).

Suppose you have a girlfriend that cheats on you repeatedly. Do you want her to promise you that she won't do it again? She doesn't think she can fulfill that promise. Do you accept that, and say "ok, well it's ok for you to cheat on me as long as you aren't hypocritical about it"? Does it really make it any worse if she promises never to cheat again, and then does? Or, rather, is it the cheating itself that is the problem, and not the promise at all?

If you want your girlfriend to really change, i don't think it'll happen just because she's made a promise. She'll change because she changes her character, or at least avoids the kind of situations where she's prone to cheat until she has changed her character.

I don't have to promise to not enslave anyone, or kill them. I don't do those things because i am the wrong person, in the wrong place, time, and culture to do those things. It's no effort for me. When someone is really moral, that is what it is like. The struggle to become moral is the struggle towards making yourself into the type of person for whom anything other than morality is unthinkable. Nobody really gets there. But it's better than making pointless promises about things. If you're finding it really tough to be moral, you're doing something wrong, and need to change in a much more fundamental way, i think.

HiiroYui Wrote:You think there are many morally conflicting situations in the world because everyone is making promises they can’t keep, then they’re all forgiving each other.

No, i think that there are morally conflicting situations in the world because there actually are. The famous example is of a train that's heading down a track towards 5 people. You have the option of flipping a switch to send a train down a side track, but there is one person on that track who will die. Do you flip the switch?
Another famous one: do you torture a child to find information that would save 100s of people from a bomb blast?
I don't think there is a right answer to these. Whatever you choose, you are doing something immoral. Sometimes life is like that.

HiiroYui Wrote:If you limit discussion to only the promises people can keep and criticize people who don’t keep them, the world will seem rather simple. If you break your promise, it’s not the end of the world. You just have to do some soul-searching and determine if you can really continue to make such a promise

It might seem simple, but that's only because you are oversimplifying it. Again, you should criticise someone insofar as they are doing something immoral, not whether they can keep a promise about it. Do you care if i go around torturing and murdering children for fun? Or do you care about whether i can keep a promise about it or not?

HiiroYui Wrote:As I said in Reply #418, vix86 gave the right answer to my question about my army of deniers. You have to concentrate on the scientific method and the strength of the evidence, not on the scientists themselves.

Then we agree, since i've been saying exactly what Vix did. Again, please do try to really consider what i'm saying without just jumping to conclusions. I think i've actually been quite clear on this. I said that if your army of climate change deniers could use the scientific method well enough they should be able to convince real scientists. Otherwise, they were politicians in disguise. Remember?

HiiroYui Wrote:I hope to convince you that trusting what the majority of scientists say and entrusting the decision making to the majority of experts based on what the majority of people’s goals are isn't the best way to go. I want people to examine the evidence, think logically/scientifically, and vote for the laws they want.

And i hope to convince you that the vast majority of the population neither have the time nor the level of understanding required to evaluate science to even a reasonable level, let alone the level required to be able to make a good judgement on it. If they want to understand it for themselves, they should go ahead. But I don't care if the majority of men-down-the-pub think climate change isn't real. They don't have the skills to evaluate it. They come up with criticisms that have been refuted 100's of times already. If any of them has an objection that is actually plausible, they should be able to convince scientists to investigate it. When the real scientists say that that objection holds, i will listen to them.

The population should be asked about the morality of the proposed solution to a problem, not about the evidence whether that problem exists. Suppose we find that the most efficient method of dealing with climate change would actually be to exterminate a few billion people. Of course the population should be able to object to that!!! Because it's a moral decision, it's not down to experts. Everything preceeding the moral judgement should be down to experts though.

HiiroYui Wrote:The kind of people who work hard at work are the ones who would pour their energy into helping those who can’t help themselves.

Sorry, i don't see the correlation. There are lots of people who work hard at work and care about nobody but themselves and their own money. There are lots of people who do not care about their work but are kind people who would not turn anyone away in real life.

HiiroYui Wrote:“Is creating a company the pinnacle of human existence to you? The highest a human can achieve in life?” Did you return all the belongings you bought from companies? You paid for that stuff with money, right? Think of paying for something as voting in favor of the people who made it available to you. If you don’t think the CEO’s of those companies deserve your money, don’t give them your money. Entrepreneurs get rich because people give them money. You mentioned you want to contribute to the development of society through “cultural or artistic means”, but I’m not the kind of person who values art (paintings, music CD’s, colorful things) highly enough to pay you for your contributions, and I think “culture” is an unnecessary and illogical concept so I wouldn’t mind if those “contributions” stopped. The stuff mentioned in that Guardian article that you call crap could easily be of cultural or artistic significance to the people who choose to buy them. If you make a company and other people value your contributions, they will give you enough money to survive and thrive. If not, how can you call what you are doing “contributing to society”?

I don't think the true value of a thing is represented by how much people will pay for it, because how much someone will pay for something varies depending on so many other factors, like cuture, time, what other needs are, etc. Dostoyevsky will always have more value than some trashy novel like 50 shades of grey, no matter how many more people buy the latter, or how much richer that author becomes (i can't believe i even just compared them, sorry ><). That's because the value of Dostoyevsky lies in it's depth, and how much it can enrich your thinking. 50 shades, just like those christmas presents, fulfills a social purpose, it is temporarily entertaining (i guess, i've never actually read it), but never really means anything. Once someone finsihes it, it's cast aside, and never really thought about again.

Anyway, it's not only art and culture, but all kinds of social and charity projects also have this thing where they are valuable, but often can't make money because the people who use their services also are the people who often can't pay for them. Just because they don't make money doesn't make them unvaluable things to do in the world.

Still, i don't think everyone needs to be the same. It's fine by me if the pinnacle of some people's existance is making a company. Just don't expect it to be everyone's, or pretend that nobody who does something that doesn't make money isn't valuable in other ways, that's all.

HiiroYui Wrote:I have a right to have children? Sweet. I choose not to have children. Where can I sign up for cash instead? The people who choose to have children have the right to receive money from the government, right? Where’s my money? Actually, when I said "don't have children you can't afford", I meant "create a company and see if people think you deserve enough money to afford children", but maybe you knew that.

ugh.
no.
what an ugly thing to say.
The children of course should not suffer for their parent's decisions, and that's why people get money from the government.
And i think whether you should have kids or not has nothing to do with whether or not other people give you enough money so that you "deserve" them. If someone can give their kids the love and affection they need to turn them into good, happy adults, they deserve to have them. Otherwise they don't. The only reason most people can't afford kids on their own in the first place is because their employer makes them work god knows how many hours just to scrape by and takes all the profit for themselves. But anyway, not everything in your life is in your control. Just wait til you get in a situation you never intended to be in, then you'll see...

HiiroYui Wrote:“There isn't some set amount of work to do in the world, after which we can all have a holiday.” I was trying to say that the improvements in people’s lifestyles will slow if everyone works less. Electricity would be a huge convenience on a deserted island, so if everyone works less it won’t be created as quickly, meaning there will be no light at night, for example. In the real world, the sun emits huge amounts of energy that never comes to Earth. Imagine all the conveniences we would have if we could harness that energy. If everyone slows down, we won’t reach that stage for thousands of years. And why stop at the sun? There’s a whole universe out there so there’s no time to waste.

It depends if you think the entire point of human existence is to make life as convenient as possible or not. I don't, necessarily. I mean, sure, it's nice and everything, but...

Regardless, once you have all the necessities in life, i think it is more incovenient to spend your entire existance doing excrutiatingly boring and meaningless tasks just so someone somewhere has terry the swearing turtle as a christmas present. But whatever, obviously we disagree.

Besides which, none of this gives any good justification for not paying people fairly for the work they do, which was the original point. If you're going to try to force everyone to work hard just so you can have a life that's more convenient then that's not that much different to slavery. If people are paid fairly they can choose freely what it is in life that is important to them.

IceCream’s process: 1. Consider any human action. 2. Imagine yourself in the shoes of the person on the receiving end of that action. 3. If you feel a positive feeling, that action is morally good. If negative, morally bad. 4. Try to become the type of person who would do good actions and never do bad actions, and criticize people who don’t do good actions and do bad actions.

HiiroYui’s process: 1. Consider a scientifically observable human action. 2. Imagine a world in which everyone does that action to each other. 3. If you feel a positive/negative feeling that is so strong you promise to do/not do that action and carry the full burden associated with that promise, you think the action is morally good/bad (my definition of morality is different from yours, so I will avoid using my version from here on). 4. Encourage others to make the same promise. If you don’t feel strongly enough to make a promise, don’t praise/criticize anybody.

IceCream’s process: 1. Cheating. 2. I, HiiroYui, have never been in a romantic relationship, but I watch plenty of movies so…I’ll imagine I’m a movie character and have a girlfriend who cheats on me. 3. I would feel negatively (“she must not love me as much as I love her” nante). Cheating is morally bad. 4. I’ll try to become a person who would not cheat while criticizing people who cheat.

HiiroYui’s process: 1. Cheating. 2. If everyone cheated on each other, they would be acting like dogs who give in to their urge for sex whenever the urge arises. They would not get married. 3. There’s no logic behind marriage anyway, so that’s no big deal. Sex feels good, so it sounds kind of fun to give in to those urges all the time. On the other hand, who’s going to work to feed all the babies that would be born? How much less would people work and how much will all this fun delay our harnessing the sun’s energy and terraforming Mars? I don’t feel strongly enough about cheating to change my current list of promises. 4. I’ll encourage others to adopt my current list of promises. I won’t praise/criticize anyone who cheats (unless he promised and encouraged others to promise not to cheat and then cheated, because that would be hypocritical).

IceCream’s process: 1. Flipping a switch or not flipping it so a train kills one person or 5 people. 2. I’ll imagine myself as one of the five on the track when the switch is not flipped, and I’ll imagine myself as the one person on the side track when the switch is flipped. 3. I feel negatively in both situations. Both actions are morally bad. 4. I’ll try to become a person who would not do either action, and criticize people who do either.

HiiroYui’s process:1. Flipping a switch or not flipping it so a train kills one person or 5 people. 2. When faced with a choice, what if everyone takes the action that saves the most lives? Maybe the one person on the side track is a hard worker and the others aren’t. Maybe that one person knows more about how to design technology that will allow us to harness the sun’s energy. Then again, maybe those 5 people are the harder workers. What is everyone doing on the tracks in the first place? They are practically killing themselves. 3. I don’t feel strongly enough to promise to take the action that saves the most lives, nor the action that saves the hard workers. 4. I will not praise/criticize anyone for choice they make (unless they promised to save the most people, then didn’t flip it, etc.).

IceCream’s process: 1. Torturing a child to save hundreds of people and not torturing, killing hundreds. 2. I’ll imagine I’m a child getting tortured, then I’ll imagine I’m one of the hundreds who will die. 3. I feel negatively in both situations. Both actions are morally bad. 4. I’ll try not to do either action, and criticize people who do either.

HiiroYui’s process: 1. Torturing a child to save hundreds of people and not torturing, killing hundreds. 2. If everyone chooses to torture the kid, I’ll have more lazy people to feed. They’ll be voting to tax my company so they can eat, but they won’t be motivated to build the large solar panel arrays we’ll need in outer space to capture sunlight not headed towards Earth. Or maybe it’s the kid that’s lazy….Then again, why does the kid have information on a bomb in the first place? Whatever. 3. I don’t feel strongly enough to promise to take the action that saves the most lives, nor the action that saves the kid from torture. 4. I will not praise/criticize anyone for choice they make (unless they promised to not torture, then tortured the kid anyway, etc.).

“Again, you should criticise someone insofar as they are doing something immoral, not whether they can keep a promise about it. Do you care if i go around torturing and murdering children for fun?” I criticize people for making promises, talking as if they are superior to me and those who don’t make those promises, then end up not being able to handle the burden associated with those promises. If you say “I promise to torture and murder children and encourage others to do the same”, people might vote to have people like you arrested/rehabilitated. If I say “I don’t promise to not torture and murder children and I don’t promise to criticize people who do”, people won’t vote to have people like me arrested/rehabilitated. These promises are not useless.

“…the vast majority of the population neither have the time nor the level of understanding required to evaluate science to even a reasonable level, let alone the level required to be able to make a good judgement on it. If they want to understand it for themselves, they should go ahead.” Yeah, let them decide for themselves if they want to believe the majority of scientists, or not. Sometimes I agree with the majority of scientists, experts or journalists, too. It's time-saving. I just want people to have a choice.

You never really responded to the situation I created where one person on an island is building things and working hard to feed nine other people who are working much less (making sandcastles, maybe). What does your empathy tell you?

It’s your responsibility to convince people to buy Dostoyevsky. The happiness you feel when you read it doesn’t feed the author (copyright holder, whatever). He needs your money. He needs you to convince other people to buy it. Why aren’t you motivated to debate people to convince them to buy Dostoyevsky so he can send his kids to college? Think of it like a charity: “Please donate $10 dollars to the Dostoyevsky Fund so his kids can go to college. If you donate now, we’ll send you one of his books!” If there are social and charity projects that are valuable to you, send them money. Your feelings about how valuable they are don’t help the people who created them.

Creating a company is hard, but if you do it and it makes profit, you can use that money to teach Africans to build solar panels and stuff. That’s the pinnacle. Or you’ll be able to filter CO2 out of the atmosphere on a large scale, or something. That’s what you want, right?

I’m saying people should save up money ahead of time before having children. Don’t have children, then see if other people buy from your company. As a person who chose not to have children, it’s unfair to me that those who did have children get money from the government. As a person who chose not to use credit cards, it’s unfair to me that those who did use them get their debt forgiven by the government and get to keep what they bought. As a person who rents an apartment, it’s unfair to me that those who tried to buy a house get money from the government to keep them from being foreclosed on.

“It depends if you think the entire point of human existence is to make life as convenient as possible or not. I don't, necessarily. I mean, sure, it's nice and everything, but...” Make up your mind. Think of the advances in medicine. That’s a convenience that saves lives.

“If you're going to try to force everyone to work hard just so you can have a life that's more convenient then that's not that much different to slavery.” That’s the beauty of it: I’m trying to convince people to work hard of their own free will. I’m not forcing my coworkers. If they work slowly and complain about how little they make, aren't they are as greedy as the CEO’s you complain about?

By the way, I'm also willing to join a religious debate of your choosing and show you how powerful my way is.

It seems like we're getting to understand each other's positions much better now.

Just a few small points:

When you walk around in someone else's shoes, you have to make sure you're trying to think about how they feel, not how you feel. Otherwise you end up with weird situations like "I think that sleeping with people other than my girlfriend / boyfriend would be fun. I wouldn't be hurt at all in that situation if they did that to me. Therefore it's not immoral." The trick is to see things from the other person's perspective. If they are the kind of person who would be hurt by that, then you need to look at what you're doing. If they're the type who also wants an open relationship then it's completely fine.

Also though, empathy doesn't always tell you what you should do in a given situation, only that something isn't as it should be. If your girlfriend doesn't like you sleeping with other people, and is hurt by it, you can either: 1.) try to figure out what is making them hurt and change that so you can sleep with other people. 2.) respect that it just hurts her, and don't sleep around. 3.) break up and find someone who fits your character better. So, it's not like empathy can determine what course of action to take.

I probably wouldn't criticise someone where there was never an option to act morally, it seems silly to do that. It doesn't change the fact that what they did was morally wrong, but it's not like they could have chosen a better option either so criticism is a bit pointless here.

So. Where do we go from here? It seems like i should criticise you based on your view of morality, and you should only criticise me if i go against mine. Yet, i think that my view of morality is much less arbitrary than yours, and will lead to less problems, so i still want to convince you that my way of looking at morality is better than yours.

For example: under your form of morality i come to the conclusion that being a taxi driver is immoral. If everyone in the world was a taxi driver, nobody would be growing food, and i wouldn't have anything to eat. This gives me a strong negative feeling. Therefore being a taxi driver is immoral. I promise i will not become a taxi driver. Or a shopkeeper. Or a doctor. Or a solar engineer. In fact, now i can't do anything at all in the world. This sucks.

HiiroYui Wrote:“…the vast majority of the population neither have the time nor the level of understanding required to evaluate science to even a reasonable level, let alone the level required to be able to make a good judgement on it. If they want to understand it for themselves, they should go ahead.” Yeah, let them decide for themselves if they want to believe the majority of scientists, or not. Sometimes I agree with the majority of scientists, experts or journalists, too. It's time-saving. I just want people to have a choice.

Of course people should have a choice to try and understand it for themselves. I just don't want politicians making decisions based on people in general's opinions (as opposed to evidence), that's all.

HiiroYui Wrote:You never really responded to the situation I created where one person on an island is building things and working hard to feed nine other people who are working much less (making sandcastles, maybe). What does your empathy tell you?

My empathy tells me that it very much depends on which nine people we have involved. If 9 people find that their most favourite, meaningful activity is building sandcastles, and 1 person finds that their most favourite, meaningful activity is providing others with food, then we have no problem.
Supposing all 10 people's favourite, most meaningful activity is building sandcastles, then i don't want to force 1 person to do it. We can just share the work then build our sandcastles.
Supposing all 10 people's favourite, most meaningful activity would be to harness the energy of the sun and terraform mars, then they should all work together to achieve that.
Supposing only 7 think that's good, and 3 just wanna build sandcastles, the 3 should work for their share of the food and anything else that they want, then enjoy themselves building sandcastles while those others go off to terraform mars.

In none of these circumstances should 1 person become the dictator and tell everyone that they are not allowed to build sandcastles, pay them a pittance in food and force them to work all hours while that 1 person takes all the profit from the work they do and everyone else has to carry on working just to get their food scraps. That's the kind of society we currently live in.

HiiroYui Wrote:It’s your responsibility to convince people to buy Dostoyevsky. The happiness you feel when you read it doesn’t feed the author (copyright holder, whatever). He needs your money. He needs you to convince other people to buy it. Why aren’t you motivated to debate people to convince them to buy Dostoyevsky so he can send his kids to college? Think of it like a charity: “Please donate $10 dollars to the Dostoyevsky Fund so his kids can go to college. If you donate now, we’ll send you one of his books!” If there are social and charity projects that are valuable to you, send them money. Your feelings about how valuable they are don’t help the people who created them.

ahahah, i think Dostoyevsky's kids might be a bit past college age by now, and he's, well, a bit dead, so i think he can probably live without my money. (umm, wait. no, that doesn't make sense, does it? oh, you know what i mean.)

i don't think the amount of money he's collecting is a good representation of "value", and the same with social projects, and so on. In fact, even if we talk about consumer goods, i don't think it is. Terry the swearing turtle might cost the same as my food for a week. But my food for the week is definitely more valuable. An iPod probably costs more than food for an entire 3 months!! But which do you think i'd choose, if i had neither? How much something costs, and how much money someone makes is only to do with the supply and demand for their product. It has nothing to do with it's real value, or the relative worth that you are contributing to the world by creating that company.

HiiroYui Wrote:Creating a company is hard, but if you do it and it makes profit, you can use that money to teach Africans to build solar panels and stuff. That’s the pinnacle. Or you’ll be able to filter CO2 out of the atmosphere on a large scale, or something. That’s what you want, right?

Is it? I mean, it's not a bad thing to do, by any means. Certainly it's good for some people. It's kind of funny the way you put it though, because i was going to Africa so the people there could teach me to build solar panels, rather than the other way round It's something i'd like to do, and spread and teach other people, but still, i'm not sure that's the pinnacle either, at least for me. I think i might rather do something creative after all. And i can't even go now. >< so... hopefully i'll try both at some point anyway.
If making a company means exploiting people who work for me so i can then take the money that should be theirs and spend it on what i want, i want no part of it, even if what i want does happen to be something good like more solar panels.

HiiroYui Wrote:“It depends if you think the entire point of human existence is to make life as convenient as possible or not. I don't, necessarily. I mean, sure, it's nice and everything, but...” Make up your mind. Think of the advances in medicine. That’s a convenience that saves lives.

ok, well, i don't really want to get into a conversation about whether medicine is good or not (it reduces human suffering, but in exchange worsens animal suffering, so i don't think there's a lot to choose, except from a personal level), so i'll just agree to make life easier. But medicine is one thing, and a tshirt with a built in flashing neon game another. Some conveniences save lives and enrich human experience. Others simply pollute the world and cheapen reality into some kind of shiny hell wearing a big micky mouse smile. There's a huge difference between the conveniences i'm willing to work for and those i'm not.

"For example: under your form of morality i come to the conclusion that being a taxi driver is immoral." Not quite.

HiiroYui's process: 1. To act like a taxi driver (let's define this as waking up, showering, breakfasting (I just made this word up), getting in your car and driving around until you find someone who needs a ride so you can take him to his destination and charge him accordingly). 2. If everyone did this, there would be no one to pick up. No one would be growing food or producing gasoline or anything else. 3. This is illogical. I won't promise to act like a taxi driver and I won't promise to encourage others to act that way. 4. I will not praise/criticize people who act like taxi drivers.

Using my definition of morality, I consider acts like this to be morally neutral = not morally bad and not morally good. I don't know what to call it in your system.

HiiroYui's process: 1. To work hard at work (in this case, on an island). 2. If all 10 people work hard at work (and the definition of "work" is kept vague enough), there will be enough food and shelter for everyone. If a storm damages the roof, everyone will do what they can to help repair it. They will be constantly using the tools and knowledge currently at their disposal to make better tools and gain greater knowledge. When some of them finish their work for the day and want to relax and be entertained, others will put on a play or let them read the Dostoyevsky-like book they've been working on. 3. This is a utopia. I feel a very strong, positive feeling about the idea of work being equally shared and everyone helping each other as they improve technologically and intellectually. 4. I am capable of carrying the burden, so I promise to work hard at work and I promise to encourage others to do the same.

I believe in free time, which is another reason I limit my statement to "at work". On my free time, I want to do what I think is fun (memorizing Japanese dictionaries!), so I don't want to put too many restrictions on people's free time. But when I mentioned making sandcastles (feel free to change this to "making Terry the swearing turtle"), I was saying those nine consider stuff like that to be work. They make sandcastles and consider that to be their contribution to the group. They say to the guy catching their food, "as payment for the food and shelter you work hard to provide us, we worked hard to improve the beauty of the landscape. Keep up the good work." The guy providing the food and shelter may accept those sandcastles as payment because they are beautiful, and maybe he considers that an equal sharing of the work on the island. But what if he doesn't? Sure, building giant sandcastles may be hard work, but it can't count as "working a job" unless the other guy considers the result to be a contribution. This is where money is useful. If the one guy accepts sandcastles as a contribution, he will pay money to those who make them in proportion to how much of a contribution he thinks they are. They can then pay the guy for the food in proportion to how good the food is. I do hate the idea of money, though, and I don't want people to care about how much value they get in return for their work.

"If making a company means exploiting people who work for me..." If I were that one guy, and I convince one of the others to contribute something to me in return, and he goes and makes a Dostoyevsky-like book, I'd be angry. I don't like reading fiction. If he says, "but this is all I know how to do", I'll make a proposal. I'll teach him how to help me catch food. This is a company. I'm the CEO.

This is where things might get tricky. Together, we can catch more food than I could alone, so maybe my helper deserves half of the catch. Then again, I was the one who taught him the efficient way to catch food in the first place, so maybe I won't give him any more of the food than I was giving him before he started helping me. Remember: the only reason he is helping me is he agreed to contribute something to me in return for what I was already providing him.

HiiroYui Wrote:Using my definition of morality, I consider acts like this to be morally neutral = not morally bad and not morally good. I don't know what to call it in your system.

I didn't really understand what you mean here. On what basis can you distinguish between which things are morally neutral and which things are morally bad under your system then? Because it seems like you are calling one action morally bad and another morally neutral but making the same argument for both.

HiiroYui Wrote:This is where things might get tricky. Together, we can catch more food than I could alone, so maybe my helper deserves half of the catch. Then again, I was the one who taught him the efficient way to catch food in the first place, so maybe I won't give him any more of the food than I was giving him before he started helping me. Remember: the only reason he is helping me is he agreed to contribute something to me in return for what I was already providing him.

If we share those kinds of ideas, we can all benefit by making less work for ourselves and using the time how we feel has the most meaning. You can go off and make all the swearing turtles you like (within reason though please, because you are polluting the world for everyone), or terraform mars or whatever, and i'll try to write something even 1/10th as good as dostoyevsky. If you don't want to share your idea, then that's contradicting your other morals, because now you aren't working for the benefit of humanity at all, you just want to exploit others for your own gain. It's not like you lose anything by sharing an idea, apart from the ability to exploit others anyway.

When I say an action is morally good (like working hard at work), I promise to do it and promise to encourage others to do it, and that may include praising those who do it. When I say an action is morally bad (like acting hypocritically), I promise to not do it and promise to encourage others to not do it, and that may include criticizing those who do it. When I say an action is morally neutral, I don't make any promise about it and I neither praise nor criticize those who do it.


Many of the actions we discussed so far fall under the morally neutral category for me because I don't make many promises in the first place. The more I make, the bigger the burden and the harder it is to avoid acting hypocritically.

But how do you distinguish which actions are morally neutral and which are morally bad? What criteria would you use?

Or are you saying that basically whatever you think goes morally? You couldn't possibly ever be doing something morally wrong without realising it because it's only whatever you decided it to be in the 1st place? In which case, if someone does decide they think torturing others is fine, there's nothing you can really say to them about it. Since morality is totally subjective their choices about morality are as valid as yours.

Because to me, that is totally unacceptable. When i ask you to treat myself or others morally, i'm not asking you to treat me however you feel like depending on what you think you can make promises about. I'm asking you to consider other people's feelings before you act, and try not to hurt them or do anything damaging to their lives. Isn't this the consideration you would also want from others?

“But how do you distinguish which actions are morally neutral and which are morally bad? What criteria would you use?” It depends on whether or not I’m willing to take on the burden associated with the promise. If I say “I promise to not torture anyone and I promise to encourage others to make the same promise”, I would be obligated to not torture and go around telling others not to torture. I’ll have to define torture and defend my position against people who define it differently. I’ll have to defend against fellow Americans who say I’m empathizing with terrorists. This takes time and effort I’d rather spend undermining a larger group of people: those who think they are morally superior to me. Therefore I think torturing someone is morally neutral. You are mixing my usage of morality with yours again, so let’s not mention mine anymore.

Read this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec...struck-off . Define torture. Imagine you are an Iraqi being tortured by a British soldier. Imagine what it feels like to have your ribs and nose broken during a beating that lasts 36 hours. Now, imagine how the British soldier felt as he was torturing the Iraqi. Empathize with how much fun he had. Remember what you said before: “When you walk around in someone else's shoes, you have to make sure you're trying to think about how they feel, not how you feel.” Maybe the soldier thought this was the best way to protect his country. If you criticize him for torturing, you will hurt his feelings. Turn on your empathy and try to become the type of person who will not hurt his feelings.

Making a promise about a scientifically observable human action is a provable action. Keeping that promise is also provable. Feeling empathy towards someone isn't. In order to defeat your type of argument, all I really need to say is "prove it" when you say you feel empathy towards someone.

This just seems to be veering off into the realm of ridiculous now. I can't be bothered to continue. It's not possible to convince you of anything because no matter how absurd the consequences of your moral system, rather than change your moral system, you just accept them.

Any moral system that can't even cover the basics of our moral intuitions like not torturing, murdering, raping, etc. just isn't a moral system in the sense i'm talking about. You can't really call it a moral system, it's something else entirely. It may be useful for something, but not morality.

The British soldier would not have been having fun if he was using empathy towards the guy he was torturing. He would have felt like he was also being tortured. The soldier should accept responsibility for he has done, regardless of whether he thought it was the "best way" to protect his country or not. I can't remember him ever asking me if i wanted him to torture someone on my behalf. So he must accept moral responsibility for what he did, which includes feeling that responsibility, not hiding behind an excuse. Yes, i empathise with his hurt feelings, just like i empathise with criminals in jail having lost their freedom. But if i want to help resolve their pain, it wouldn't be about setting all the criminals in the world free or just trying to make this guy feel better by lying to him, but rather by helping them to accept and move on from what they've done. Remember i said that empathy alone can't tell you how to respond in all cases, it just tells you that something isn't right? Well, here's a case where i think the most obvious solution (avoiding hurting his feelings) isn't the best one.

The "prove it" thing is completely irrelevent, because i'm not saying it's fine to torture people as long as you are feeling empathy at the same time.

Thanks for the discussion though.

HiiroYui Wrote:Maybe the soldier thought this was the best way to protect his country. If you criticize him for torturing, you will hurt his feelings.

Of course he did. That's how propaganda works. Maybe that soldier should have thought for themself or not enlisted if they didn't want their feelings hurt.

HiiroYui Wrote:Making a promise about a scientifically observable human action is a provable action. Keeping that promise is also provable. Feeling empathy towards someone isn't. In order to defeat your type of argument, all I really need to say is "prove it" when you say you feel empathy towards someone.

No, that doesn't defeat an argument. That just makes you look silly. The way an argument works is that each side states their position and uses supporting evidence to make their case. Asking someone to prove an emotion is equivalent to a Christian asking an Atheist to prove god doesn't exist. It's moronic.
(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance)

IceCream Wrote:This just seems to be veering off into the realm of ridiculous now. I can't be bothered to continue.

You're making the right choice.

I can’t not try to get the debate to continue. If I don’t get the last word, it’ll look like I gave up.

IceCream,
You still don’t agree with me. Therefore the debate should continue. I took a look at the thread about the food industry and was surprised to see you call for people to pledge not to have more than two biological children. Why do you believe in pledges, but not promises?

I think I know how to get you to agree with me once and for all. You want people to praise/criticize others for actions they think are good/bad. I want people to praise others only for actions they themselves are going to take, and criticize others only for actions they themselves are not going to take. You want people to say certain actions are bad. I want people to say certain actions are bad, pledge not to do them, and then never do them (it’s not enough to just criticize). You intuit that eating meat is bad, yet you eat meat anyway (whether reluctantly or not). You’d consider it to courageous for you to criticize others for eating meat. I’d consider it hypocritical.

You intuit that torture, murder, and rape are bad, yet you are not willing to pledge not to do these actions. In other words, you might torture, murder or rape in the future. You’d consider it to courageous for you to criticize other for these actions. I’d consider it hypocritical because you are criticizing others for actions you might take in the future.

Only after making these pledges can the real debate (and praise/criticism) begin. Can you defend your position in logical debate? You said it would be easy to make logically coherent views so that no one can find contradictions, but I don’t think you understand how hard it really is. Start by trying to define torture, murder, or rape and don’t say “I don’t need to define them because most educated people already agree on the definitions”. I want the definitions you, specifically, believe in.

“Remember i said that empathy alone can't tell you how to respond in all cases, it just tells you that something isn't right?” In your view, empathy tells you to praise/criticize others in all cases concerning human actions. When I basically said “I feel negatively when I imagine myself being tortured” but then concluded that I won’t criticize others for torture, you criticized me.

Prink,
“Asking someone to prove an emotion is equivalent to a Christian asking an Atheist to prove god doesn't exist. It's moronic.” First of all, IceCream doesn’t think empathy is an emotion. Second of all, debates about whether god exists or not is a distraction from debates about how people should act in certain situations. Again, point me to a religious debate online and watch me kick butt. Third of all, it does make sense to ask for some type of evidence that IceCream is feeling empathy because he is criticizing others for not feeling it (as if he has evidence they aren’t).

Or you could respond to my post in context.

Sometimes you look at the first post of a thread, then skip to the last few replies and just wonder. How the ***** did we get here.

[Zgarbas]

I know right? Been wondering why people were still discussing Romney.

I'm a bit tempted to close the thread since it went to that "so offtopic and in full debate (but not really a debate so much as 2 distinct views arguing) mode that nothing good can come off it". Can someone just PM me when a flame war ensues?

Twelve and half hours from now by my clock. I support a preemptive lock.

Huh? For a long time now this has just been HiiroYui and IceCream having some sort of meta discussion about ethics and a few other topics, and they seem to sometimes have breakthroughs where they understand each other a bit better.

Nobody else is really participating--probably because it's such a long discussion that most people wouldn't find all that interesting--so how exactly is it going to sink into a flame war? It's two people having a discussion that they have chosen to participate in, and they seem to be genuinely interested in understanding each other.

So, I'd say, there is no indication of a flame war. It is, however, off-topic and not about Japanese, but to close the thread based on that would be a bit strange since that's never stopped a thread before, and anyway it's not like it's getting in the way of others talking about Japanese in other threads.

[Zgarbas]

^^' well to be fair flame wars don't really happen on this forum anyway. Endless discussions do, though. I just skimmed the past few pages and it seemed that way to me. Partiall since I ran into the

Quote:This just seems to be veering off into the realm of ridiculous now. I can't be bothered to continue.

which is always a sign that maybe the debate dragged off a bit too much.

Actual discussion ended a long while ago. HiiroYui revived a two week old thread to respond to someone who already said they had enough and has been using logical fallacies to troll.

It's just me getting frustrated, as i seem to have often lately, there's no need to take it especially seriously. I'm frustrated because, tbh, like most of the discussions i've entered into here recently, this isn't really a discussion that is at a level that i could find interesting. If it's something like history or statistical economics, i'm forced to speak at a low level due to my own lack of depth of knowledge and analysis, so it's acceptable to me, but not really here. Now, as long as i have nothing better to do, and Hiiro was getting something out of it, it doesn't necessarily matter. But neither of those conditions seems to be fulfilled, and frankly, i'm bored of trying to speak to people who aren't actually interested in examining their ideas. I'm better off just discussing stuff with my friends, who do not cling dogmatically to their beliefs, and can speak to me at a level that actually challenge mine. Otherwise, i'm probably better off just reading and thinking for myself.

I do think that's perhaps a bit selfish, especially because at a guess Hiiro is quite young, and at least is trying to think about stuff. Still, it's much much much less frustrating, and won't keep putting me in the position where i just end up snapping at people all the time or being excessively rhetoric-y if i just back away from discussing things here.

Hiiro, if what you want is the last word, then by all means, take it. I've tried to draw out the implications of your views, to show you where their weaknesses are. Simply repeating those same views without addressing the points i made isn't going to convince me of anything.

* I tried to question you on your belief that it is morally good to work hard at work, by showing that the consequences of holding that belief leads to conclusions which should contradict your intuitions. (the concentration camp guard / slave owner, overproduction, harm to social and personal goals etc). However, rather than change your moral view about working hard at work, you stick with your original view, and try to force everything else to cohere with that, and end up saying absurd things as a consequence (slave owners shouldn't be criticised, etc.). Even when i give you a way out of your contradiction... that working hard is something beautiful, but not something moral in itself, you ignore that way out and cling to your original view.

* Your view of what morality is is very confused. I've tried to point this out to you in a number of ways. Half the time you seem to collapse "what is morally good" down into "what promises i feel i can make". The other half, like in that last post, you say that whether something is morally bad is decided prior to what i do or don't make promises about. When i question you further on what constitutes what is good or bad, your answer at best seems to be that it is just whatever you happen to have decided it to be; i.e. it's totally subjective, and therefore the only thing that is criticisable is whether someone is hypocritcal or not (thereby again, collapsing the concepts into each other). At one point you brought in something resembling the categorical imperative, but you dropped it again in favour of pure subjectivity of morality when i pushed you a little on the consequences of that. The consequences of having a completely subjective moral system are again absurd. You may as well simply annihilate the concept of morality completely. And again, rather than examine your views about what constitutes morality, you simply stick with your original view and accept consequences like, if someone comes and tortures your family tomorrow, slices them into pieces, you watch them die in utter agony, then you cannot say one word about how the torturer should not have done it, was wrong to do it, because he never promised not to.

* The idea of what is criticisable morally is the same as the idea of taking moral responsibility for your actions. Under your conception of this, there is an unfillable gap between how you should act and what you are willing to assent to, as discussed above. If you don't act in accordance with what is good, you should take responsibility for that, just as i should for eating meat. You shouldn't be able to wriggle your way out of that responsibility by claiming that you never promised to be good, or that you can't find a way to make being good in this situation cohere with the rest of your beliefs, so you're going to ignore it. That is avoiding responsibility. Socially, or politically, there are times when hypocrisy itself is important, such as when it involves a betrayal of trust or authority. But when talking about morality, it's just irrelevent, basically. Either the action you are taking is good, or it is not good. Whether i promised to be good or not is completely irrelevent to whether i am responsible or not.

* I don't refuse to make promises in order to leave the door open for me to torture, rape or murder someone in the future and reject the responsibility for that. Those things are wrong regardless of whether i have made any promise about them or not, and i would have to accept the responsibility for them no matter what. No saying "sorry, i never promised not to". In fact, i have no need to make promises like that, because i would simply never do those things. Someone in a different social context might have a tougher time with that. For example, it is difficult for me to not eat meat in the social context i live in now. It is not difficult for me to not enslave anyone. If i were a white land owner in America at a certain time in history, it would be a lot more difficult to not enslave anyone. That doesn't absolve me, or the slave owner from responsibility, but can help you direct action in a certain way. Promises are useful to the extent that they direct action, but i find them pretty ineffective in actually changing the causes of people acting badly. If someone gets aggressive when they are drunk, rather than promising to stop being aggressive, they should simply stop putting themselves in situations where they are going to get drunk, and / or sort out whatever psychological issues they have that causes them to be aggressive in the first place. A pledge to have no more than 2 children is a tool for raising awareness of a social issue, it's not meant as a literal thing. If you want to make a promise that would actually be worthwhile, you are better off promising that you will have your tubes tied after 2. But then, i just think, why would i bother making a promise like that? Who would care? I'll just go and do it if that time comes (or whatever the procedure is for women), then i can't be in a position to have more than 2 children.

* i don't see how you can possibly hope to have a coherent moral will if you don't even understand what your moral will consists of. That is why you are having such problems with logical definitions and coherence. The thing is, i have no need to define torture, or murder, or rape because it is not those actions themselves that are wrong, but the hurting someone. If someone gains pleasure, say, sexual pleasure, from being tortured, and that to them outweighs the pain, i have no problem with it. They willed it, so there isn't the type of pain that results from having someone do something to you that you did not will either. It's a result of your own lack of a coherent moral system that such logical definitions become important. Empathy doesn't always tell you how to act, but it does tell you that if you've acted in a way that's hurt someone, that's wrong. And to the extent that someone has done that, of course those actions are criticisable.

* Again, whether empathy is observable is completely irrelevent. Suppose someone was incapable of empathy itself, but could make a shortcut to the same conclusions as someone else through using logic (in fact, i think this is actually what most people do a fair amount of the time, based on their memory of past empathic events). Then the fact that they don't feel empathy itself is irrelevent. It is acting in accordance with it that is important. Nobody is being criticised for not feeling empathy, only for not using it as the moral faculty it is.

* Now, if you wanted to have a discussion about morality that was actually interesting, you could have questioned why my idea of moral responsibility falls outside of my concept of normativity, and what that implies about whether one "should" accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. That's the best criticism of my argument that i can see. I do have some semblance of an answer, but it's at a level where there are many things that i'm not sure of, so there's plenty that could be discussed. That's the level of what it takes to be "a good PERSON" rather than "a GOOD person", which is what we're discussing here. To that extent, even discussing the interrelations between the moral, social, selfish, and other wills could have been interesting. And at that level, coherence as a concept is much more interesting too, because it's not only about definitions, but building a coherent overall will. But we can't even seem to get off the ground...

and now i'm going to retreat to some good books for a while, so i shan't respond again. I hope this has helped summarise some of the ideas we've been discussing and the weaknesses in your position so you can think through it more fully now... if not, doesn't matter, you can take the last word.

In any case, for people who are not involved in that meta-discussion, do you think the leaked video of Romney's comments will negatively affect his election chances or will Obama remain a one-term president?