2008-04-21 - Yeah, I'm okay wit dat ...

[BloodHenge]

You are still assuming that only self-interested behavior is rational, which is equivalent to assuming that only self-interested behavior is intrinsically good[/qutoe]
Not necessarily. Utility, as I understand it, includes personal preference. If an individual has a personal preference for the well-being of others, he will act with that in mind. Likewise, if a person has a personal preference for being outdoors on sunny days, he'll act with that in mind as well.

But that question, which might be shortened to "should I bother to care about other people just for their own sake?", is just the same question as "do other people have any intrinsic value?"

Or, more precisely, "Do believe that other people have any intrinsic value?"

But then, you've already shown that the intrinsic value of another person isn't necessarily the bottom line for whether a decision is altruistic or not. You set forth the assumption that it is wrong to kill one innocent person (whatever "innocent" means) in order to preserve the lives of a multitude of other (presumably equally "innocent") persons. If that's the case, then we must conclude that intentionally ending a person's life is several times more intrinsically bad than allowing a person's life to end accidentally-- it's far more important to avoid killing someone than to keep someone alive.

But then, I keep forgetting that we're discussing a world in which moral laws are just as immutable as physical ones, and all natural laws are perfectly understood-- a state I have difficulty picturing. In that environment, a refusal to conform to known, demonstrable moral laws is as irrational as refusing to conform to known, demonstrable physical laws. Once a degree of uncertainty is introduced, however, things change. If a course of action can't be proven morally correct, then a rational person need not necessarily follow it.

[Forrest]

Or, more precisely, "Do believe that other people have any intrinsic value?"

No, that would be equivalent to "do I (rather than should I) care about other people for their own sake?"

But then, I keep forgetting that we're discussing a world in which moral laws are just as immutable as physical ones, and all natural laws are perfectly understood-- a state I have difficulty picturing. In that environment, a refusal to conform to known, demonstrable moral laws is as irrational as refusing to conform to known, demonstrable physical laws. Once a degree of uncertainty is introduced, however, things change. If a course of action can't be proven morally correct, then a rational person need not necessarily follow it.

Right, which is why I include a category of "wrong action because it wasn't clear to you that that was wrong, but if someone were to point out what you had overlooked you would agree that it was wrong". You are rational because you would be persuaded by a sound argument, if one were presented to you and you gave it a fair hearing, but you were still wrong through simple ignorance (unavailability of information) or inconsideration (inattention to information). You're only irrational if you would not be persuaded by a sound argument, that is, a valid one appealing to cogent premises.

But, backing way up here, there's an apparently intractable problem in deciding what are the ultimately cogent premises to which all arguments ultimately appeal. We call people "irrational" who base their reasoning off fundamental premises different from our own, but since you can't have a rational argument without agreeing on premises, how are we to argue about whose premises are correct? If someone has different fundamental premises than the correct ones, then they are irrational, and we all presume our own preferred fundamental premises to be the correct ones, but how can we be sure? How can we really even ask the question "how are we to ask and answer questions?" without presuming an answer to it?

(For the mathematicians in the audience, consider the axiom-dependent 'truth' of mathematical theorems. Same problem here).

[Boss Out of Town]

I don't like the idea that immorality is a type of insanity, because that implies that immoral people do not have a choice. It feeds into the so-called culture of victimization that's been developing in recent decades, relieving people of the responsibility for their own actions. I just don't like the idea of a world where there's no need to celebrate heroes or punish villains because none of them were capable of acting in any way other than as they did.

The idea that immorality is a type of insanity also makes political mischief in two important ways.

First, if the legal system can declare anyone insane for an act considered immoral, whether or not it violates a specific law, then it has an alternate means of criminalizing and punishing behavior that the government or people of influence find objectionable. Since judgments of this sort are inherently subjective, those with power in the system can use an insanity charge to bypass the more formalized legal process and its safeguards. This doesn't just happen in totalitarian states. It happened often enough in the United States that the political reaction to imprisonment, mutilation (by electroshock, castration, etc.) of undesirables in state institutions led to the closure of most of those institutions a generation or so back.

Second, if immoral behavior is considered insanity, the punishment of individuals for immoral acts (as expressed in law) becomes impossible. In our legal tradition, a mentally incompetent person cannot be punished for a crime he was not competent to judge to be a crime. Again, this is not just a theoretical or philosophical problem. The "temporary insanity" defense was invented by a New York lawyer (Daniel Sickles) specifically as a dodge to avoid being punished for murdering his wife's lover. When "temporary insanity" or "diminished capacity" come up in trials, there is generally a skilled and/or desperate lawyer trying to create a situation where his skills of argument or a judge's or jury's sentiments can be manipulated in ways not possible in the more rational logical process of guilt and punishment.

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[BloodHenge]

But, backing way up here, there's an apparently intractable problem in deciding what are the ultimately cogent premises to which all arguments ultimately appeal. We call people "irrational" who base their reasoning off fundamental premises different from our own, but since you can't have a rational argument without agreeing on premises, how are we to argue about whose premises are correct? If someone has different fundamental premises than the correct ones, then they are irrational, and we all presume our own preferred fundamental premises to be the correct ones, but how can we be sure? How can we really even ask the question "how are we to ask and answer questions?" without presuming an answer to it?

Which goes back to something I was thinking of at work last night: What makes intrinsic good desirable? Especially when it conflict with utility.

And for an example, remember your hypothetical situation in which one must decide whether to kill one person or to allow a thousand other people to die? Suppose the person making the decision is one of the people who's going to die. What makes the inherent bad of killing someone worse than dying?

[mindstalk]

"Second, if immoral behavior is considered insanity, the punishment of individuals for immoral acts (as expressed in law) becomes impossible. In our legal tradition, a mentally incompetent person cannot be punished for a crime he was not competent to judge to be a crime."

OTOH, we can still lock them up, as "a danger to themself and others". Prevention instead of punishment but it's still confinement.

Temporary insanity cases should, arguably, at least merit being publically labelled as being the sort of person with a proven susceptibility to temporary insanity. If someone kills their spouse under extraordinary circumstances, such that people don't think it merits locking them up (i.e. not a threat to the general public) then prospective replacement spouses should at least be warned. Acts will still have consequences, if more nuanced ones than "lock them up".

***

Moral nihilist? I always thought I was a moral relativist. And wikipedia is useless:
"Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that objective morality does not exist... Moral nihilism must be distinguished from ethical subjectivism, and moral relativism, which do allow for moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but do not assign any static truth-values to moral statements."

I completely fail to see the distinction between nihilism and relativism, there. Both deny objective morality. The second part implies that nihilism denies even subjective truths, but that wasn't stated up front.

*reads some more*

Then again moral truth relative to some society seems like a dodgy concept, maybe nihilism or moral skepticism does fit better... I'm not sure my pragmatist self cares about such distinctions.

[Forrest]

Which goes back to something I was thinking of at work last night: What makes intrinsic good desirable? Especially when it conflict with utility.

Utility is one proposed standard of intrinsic goodness. (In fact the founder of Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill, used that term in a sense very similar to my standard of intrinsic goodness: to utilitarians, and to most ethicists since them, even those opposed to them, "utility" means "producing the greatest pleasure and the least pain for the greatest number").

Think back to my hypothetical robot with no imperative programming: why would it care about itself more than anybody else? It's not programmed to care about anything. And even if it is an intelligent fact-learning robot, what mere facts could cause it to care about something when there is nothing it intrinsically cares about for those facts to be relevant to? e.g. if it cares about itself, learning that X will damage it could cause it to care to avoid X, likewise if it cares about others and learns that X will harm others... but if it cares about nothing, no learning of facts will cause it to spontaneously care about something.

And for an example, remember your hypothetical situation in which one must decide whether to kill one person or to allow a thousand other people to die? Suppose the person making the decision is one of the people who's going to die. What makes the inherent bad of killing someone worse than dying?

I could ask the same in reverse: what makes dying worse than killing?

To conduct any kind of argument, you have to have some broadly agreed-upon premises to argue from, otherwise you're just shouting disagreements at each other. I'm basically saying that if someone simply just does not agree with us (and most people, I hope) that harming others is just intrinsically wrong, that something is broken about the way you think and behave if you want to harm others just for kicks, or even if you just genuinely just don't care about the well being of others... then there's no way anyone can persuade that person by an argument appealing to the well being of others, and so if that really is a genuinely justified thing to appeal to, then that person is being irrational.

And it seems like you agree that there is something not functioning properly about such people, but you just want to say that this particular species of not-being-persuaded-by-things-you-should-be-persuaded-by is "badness" or "vice" or some such, rather than "irrationality".

(Also, to be clear about my example, I was specifically thinking of a situation such as, bad-guy B has threatened to nuke major city C unless the dead body of now-living random innocent person P is presented to him; thus, the people of C could be saved by killing P, which may be a lot easier than killing B, but would be wrong. Killing B would not necessarily be wrong and if it were the only feasible way to prevent the death of everybody in C, would in fact be good).

[Forrest]

Moral nihilist? I always thought I was a moral relativist.

[ . . . ]

I completely fail to see the distinction between nihilism and relativism, there.

Yay, I'm glad someone else feels this way. I made an argument much earlier in this thread that everyone who claims to be a relativist is actually, if pushed to consistency, either a classical liberal ("it is wrong to go meddling in others people's private affairs; let people manage their own lives so long as they're not trying to manage others' for them") or a moral nihilist ("nothing is really right or wrong, people just have a lot of false beliefs and opinions that this or that is right or wrong, but they're all equally baseless").

[mindstalk]

Well, I figure I'm both, in a sense: philosophically nihilist, pragmatically liberal. There's no right or wrong, but liberalism is nice all around, and those who don't agree can suck it up. Unless they're strong than us, in which case we're screwed. Both the Culture and Doc Smith's Civilization are good models: for all the Boy Scouts in Space of the Lensmen, the narrative voice said more than once that Civilization vs. Boskone wasn't right vs. wrong, but incompossible ways of living... one of which had fewer internal contradictions than the other, heh.

"here's no way anyone can persuade that person by an argument appealing to the well being of others, and so if that really is a genuinely justified thing to appeal to"

Yeah, in the philosophical sense of justification, I don't think it is justified. It's pragmatically justified insofar as most humans have some empathy for each other, and roughly equal power, so ideas of fairness apply, but it's not a clincher of an argument. Ultimately empathy isn't rational, it just is. Selfishness isn't rational, it just is. Both can rationally serve selfish goals in various senses (selfishness obviously, empathy in payback, or in helping people who share your genes.) Not caring about others (though sometimes faking it) + high talent or luck often results in climbing to the top of society and enjoying high reproductive success; I have trouble with any attempt to call that irrational.

"success is always rational". Or rather, "if anything is truly justified and rational is, success is."

[Forrest]

Well, I figure I'm both, in a sense: philosophically nihilist, pragmatically liberal.

Pragmatically toward what end? Your own well-being? Then you are an egoist, not a nihilist; to you, the only intrinsic good is your own well-being, the well-being of others is only instrumentally good toward that end, and an action is moral or good to the extent that it promotes your well-being (either directly or indirectly).

The true moral nihilist, walking the walk and not just talking the talk, would be completely apathetic about everything. (Of course, I suppose you could be a nihilist in theory and admit, looking upon yourself in the third person, that you irrationally desire things like pleasure and staying alive, but that really, you have no reason to care about those things).

Yeah, in the philosophical sense of justification, I don't think it is justified. It's pragmatically justified insofar as most humans have some empathy for each other, and roughly equal power, so ideas of fairness apply, but it's not a clincher of an argument. Ultimately empathy isn't rational, it just is. Selfishness isn't rational, it just is.

I would argue that by those standards, scientific observations are not philosophically strict justification for beliefs, nor is even straight up logic; arguments appealing to those are just "pragmatically justified" as you say, because most people are inclined to believe their senses and to disbelieve explicit contradictions. So if you go down that road, you're getting into deep nihilism all around... there really is no reality, people just have a bunch of different, equally baseless opinions, and really, there's no justified reason to even think that other people exist at all, so as far as you have reason to be concerned, so it's just you, whatever the hell you are, floating in some metaphysical void, hallucinating, and talking to your imaginary friends. I think most people would agree that that's crazy talk.

"success is always rational". Or rather, "if anything is truly justified and rational is, success is."

But success is a goal-dependent notion. You succeed when you do what you were trying to do. But what were you trying to do?

If by "success" you mean strictly "reproductive success", then you're just asserting reproductive success to be intrinsically good; and the argument is then not about whether being moral (or more neutrally speaking "doing good") is rational or irrational, but over what is moral or good. Morality and altruism don't mean the same thing (even if they in fact are the same thing) - just ask any egoist who considers himself moral.

[mindstalk]

"Pragmatically toward what end? Your own well-being?"

Pragmatically as in that's how I live. Philosophically I don't see a justification for moral truth, but I'll act as if liberal morality is in fact morality, and get exercised about slavery and torture and shit.

"The true moral nihilist, walking the walk and not just talking the talk, would be completely apathetic about everything"

I don't think that follows at all. A denial that objective morality exists or is even well-defined does not entail that preferences do not exist; preferences demonstrably exist, in oneself and others, and apathy is not entailed.

"irrationally desire things like pleasure and staying alive, but that really, you have no reason to care about those things)."

I don't think that's irrational. Arational, perhaps. Such desires are not opposed to reason; they are the axioms one uses reason to satisfy. In fact, given desires, apathy would arguably be irrational. Or impossible, except that we're complex enough to be depressed, thus somehow conscious of both unfulfilled desires and of insufficient energy to do anything about them.

"scientific observations are not philosophically strict justification for beliefs"

AFAIK the justification for induction is indeed still an open problem. We use it nonetheless.

"there really is no reality, people just have a bunch of different, equally baseless opinions"

If you can't know anything for sure, you can't know "there really is no reality". Maybe there is a reality! At any rate, there are consistencies in what we observe, and some of what we observe can hurt or please us, and the consistencies we call other people tend to agree with us about other observed consistencies, as well as doing things we can't predict or control, so questions about whether this is *really* reality are kind of irrelevant. It's reality for us. If people are hallucinations, they're hallucinations that do what they want and can hurt us, especially if we treat them like hallucinations.

"But success is a goal-dependent notion. You succeed when you do what you were trying to do. But what were you trying to do?"

You were trying to do your goals! Duh!
Survival tends to be a goal, either final or instrumental, so it's something most people can agree on, since those who don't, don't stick around for long. That doesn't make it intrinsically good, just useful as a shared (or understandable) value.

Mostly I was making a smack comment, with what I think is a hidden truth about the importance of survival. Note I made a hypothetical, not a full assertion. Edit: or, more than smack, trying to express a feeling that there's something wrong with an argument that concludes highly successful strategies are insane. Alpha males who use people like tools may be unpleasant, but if they've been selected for, "insane" seems unhelpful. That doesn't mean they're good or right, especially as the motivation to resist them is also selected for.