Logic AS morality.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

When I read it I thought he like...made up words. The "will" is pure reason, and all morality should be duty, consequences irrelevant.

SOme things made sense though. like the idea of noncontradiction in maxims, but he said that nothing should be hypothetical imperitives. The book seems to like him, for they praise him a good deal, and they say his philosphy of deontology is perhaps THE most strong and superb, yet incomplete, of all the theories.

Most of it, however, seemed babbly, but then I took time to think...he WAS a professor of logic..so maybe I am just too stupid to understand it.

[Kuroneko]

I wonder. Can LOGIC itself be used as a moral theory? Do what is most logical? I was looking through my book at the different philosophies, and I just wondered

Logic is a means, not an end. You have to have pre-determined standards and criteria in which to use that logic...

Not necessarily so. In the virtue ethics models, logic can conceivably be an end and not merely the means. Aristotelean virtue ethics is one example of this. Virtue ethics differ in flavor, but they concern themselves with the idea of function; Aristotle simply used this idea slightly differently (and with different baggage) than is usually done in modern revisions. In any case, with the observation that mankind was the only species with a faculty of reason, he concluded that the use of reason is the function of mankind, and the highest virtue. I'm oversimplifying his argument by far, so feel free to ask for clarification or reference if interested.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

yes. I really didn't get the whole "only humans have reason, and the will is pure reason."


It seemed odd. And is it proovable?

[Bugsby]

Of course its not provable! Nothing in ethics is. Ethics is about making sophistry look like its not sophistry. But it still is. Take a look at the major branches of ethics. Virtue ethics boils down to "its good to be good." J.S. Mill never shows exactly why happiness is good. His argument violates Hume's Law at least once. Kant sticks to some weird conceptions about the human will, none of which have any observable basis. It's just kind of sick that people regard these as absolute truth, rather that just creative arguments made to reassert beliefs that they were raised on.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

His argument violates Hume's Law at least once.

Which one of Hume's laws was this?


And I at least think Mill was better than Kant. I would have to disagree that he didn't say why happiness was the primary moral goal. HE did give a reason, for what it's worth.

He said most people, from observation, want happiness, and that is the primary goal. People want to flourish, survive, and be "merry."

I mean..it kinda makes sense. Who would WANT to be miserable and depressed.

[Kuroneko]

As I recall, his argument boils down to "because it is our human intellect that can conceive of good and evil, the only true good is humanity. Therefore, we can do nothing to act against another person, because to do so would be to show a lack of respect for their inherent humanity, which is wrong." That sounds really nice, but on a logical level it makes so little sense its laughable.

Only if one completely fails to understand Kant. The `true good' is not humanity but the will. I can quite understand questioning his use of the categorical imperative, and whether his various incarnations of it (of which there are many) are really as equivalent as Kant claims, but, up to his first enunciation of it, his argument is valid.

Please raise one of your hands.

Why did you do that? If you didn't, why did you refuse my request?

The most basic answer is not because I asked you to, but because you decided your action. You willed it. Kant's observation is remarkably simple: there is nothing unconditionally good except a good will, since every other faculty of the mind (intelligence, sense of humor, etc.) can be set to mischief or outright evil if willed so. A parallel argument demolishes finding morality in material things. With the will being demonstrated as the most fundamental of capacities, there seems to be little problem with using it as a basis for morality.

When I read it I thought he like...made up words. The "will" is pure reason, and all morality should be duty, consequences irrelevant.

Indeed. "If you do this, this will be the reward; if you do that, that will be the punishment." For Kant, that's pretty much what consequentialism amounts to, and he does not like it one bit. Morality should be categorical, and not riddled with hypotheticals.

yes. I really didn't get the whole "only humans have reason, ...

Take it in the context of the time it was written. I'm sure Kant would have allowed any sapient alien race if he had conceived of them.

and the will is pure reason."

It seemed odd. And is it proovable?

Well, the good will is pure reason. I think Kant holds this as an ideal to strive for, not as an unequestionable fact. As for proof, well, Kant spends some time demolishing alternative conceptions of morality--consequentialism obviously; typical religious morality is classed under 'morality by imitation', which he finds especially flawed. For Kant, there is simply nothing left but pure reason to offer us guidance on this matter.

[Bugsby]

Right. That's what I dislike about Kant, the fact that he says the will is the only part of us that does good. When we act in accoradance with our will, we do good. When we do something that is not good, we are letting outside influences guide us, not our will. This is an interesting idea, but it is hideously self-serving. People can will to do good things just as much as will to do bad things. Kant can say that the will is being muddied by baser concerns whenever it does "evil," but isn't it just as likely that the will is set to do evil and is being muddied by other concerns whenever it does good? And who is to say what is evil and what is not? Like virtue ethics, he's getting into the "it's good to be good" spiral, but not as heavily. What aspects of human thought are good and pure? And how do you know? Kant fails to answer these questions in a concrete way.

In response to what law Mill violates, it's Hume's Law, which says you can't derive "ought" from "is." Basically, Mill says that each person desires his happiness. That means that happiness is DESIRABLE, which can be defined as "worthy of desire." So by using the word "desirable" and attaching two definitions to it, he can move from "humans desire happiness" to "humans OUGHT TO desire happiness." Bad Mill. No cookie.

After that, he makes a basic summation mistake. He says that because each human desires happiness for themselves (ie. happiness is good to a person), the greatest aggregate of happiness is good for the greatest aggregate of people. This is not necessarily true.

[sketerpot]

I haven't read anything by Kant or Mill or any of those other people, so forgive me if this is a ethics-newbie question, but does anything practical, that we can actually apply to our lives, come from all this muddled contemplation and debate? Or an I missing the point?

[Bugsby]

I haven't read anything by Kant or Mill or any of those other people, so forgive me if this is a ethics-newbie question, but does anything practical, that we can actually apply to our lives, come from all this muddled contemplation and debate? Or an I missing the point?

Yes and no. Philosophy doesnt try to come up with practical things, it tries to answer questions. It also tries to find answers to questions that you usually don't know exist. Ethics is just as much about how we know whether or not something is moral as it is about what is moral. You yourself probably have a lot of ideas about what is right and what is wrong. Why do you feel that way? Are you tapping into some greater moral compass that guides all humanity? Or is it a product of your conditioning? What is the justification behind the way you feel? Can you use solutions to simple ethical problems to solve complex moral dilemmas? Are there even any simple ethical problems?


If you find these questions uninteresting, philosophy is not for you.

[sketerpot]

I haven't read anything by Kant or Mill or any of those other people, so forgive me if this is a ethics-newbie question, but does anything practical, that we can actually apply to our lives, come from all this muddled contemplation and debate? Or an I missing the point?

Yes and no. Philosophy doesnt try to come up with practical things, it tries to answer questions. It also tries to find answers to questions that you usually don't know exist. Ethics is just as much about how we know whether or not something is moral as it is about what is moral. You yourself probably have a lot of ideas about what is right and what is wrong. Why do you feel that way? Are you tapping into some greater moral compass that guides all humanity? Or is it a product of your conditioning? What is the justification behind the way you feel? Can you use solutions to simple ethical problems to solve complex moral dilemmas? Are there even any simple ethical problems?

I don't believe in any source for a higher, objective morality, but I do have evolved instincts and social conditioning. I've mainly distilled morality into promoting happiness and not harming others without damn good reasons, which is why I'm against such things as the war on drugs, and I regard "because that's how I feel" to be a perfectly good reason for all this. Is there a term for this position?

If you find these questions uninteresting, philosophy is not for you.

It's not so much that the questions are uninteresting as that I've already got fairly decent answers and that so much of the discussion on philosophy seems to be dominated by fuzzy thinking and verbal obfuscation.

I mean, would it really be so hard for someone to list assumptions like "I want people to be happy, in the short and long run, myself especially" and go from there, working out the conclusions that follow from the assumptions, rather than trying to come up with a universal morality based on abstract (and it seems to me arbitrary) concepts like "will", to which labels like "good" are assigned in an arbitrary (but supposedly universal) way?

Or am I missing something again? Thanks, by the way, for your thoughtful answer. I appreciate it.

[Bugsby]

You say you want people to be happy, but are your wants what is RIGHT? Hitler wanted to kill all the jews in the world. So what you want can't possibly be a law by which you determine your actions. Any way you phrase what you think is good, you will inevitably run into problems. Now you might just say "I dont care" and leave it at that. But the search for what is truly good continues in the minds of ethical philosphers everywhere.....

In terms of philosophy's reliance on abstractions..... yeah, it sucks. But normal language is ususally inadequate to explain the concepts philosophers deal with. We don't use big words and "vague terms" because it makes us feel good. And if you get into it, these vague terms aren't so vague at all. They are just terms that are matched up imperfectly to complicated concepts. Kant's idea of will is more comlicated than that word suggests.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

In response to what law Mill violates, it's Hume's Law, which says you can't derive "ought" from "is." Basically, Mill says that each person desires his happiness. That means that happiness is DESIRABLE, which can be defined as "worthy of desire." So by using the word "desirable" and attaching two definitions to it, he can move from "humans desire happiness" to "humans OUGHT TO desire happiness." Bad Mill. No cookie.

After that, he makes a basic summation mistake. He says that because each human desires happiness for themselves (ie. happiness is good to a person), the greatest aggregate of happiness is good for the greatest aggregate of people. This is not necessarily true.

I was doing some research, and it seems like many philosophers of Ethics and even many professors are really looking into the Naturalist Fallacy itself and evaluting it. THey say that it's not even really a fallacy, and that it's useless in morality. I thought it was interesting that they say this, because it seems to make sense

Normative ethics = what ought, and that's speculation-- Speculation based on no scientific data and fact. That means it's unprovable and largely up in the air. THey are now saying that the naturalist fallacy doesn't really apply as a criticism to Subjective Ethics, much like the Relativist fallacy.

I even read that objectivists are hypocrits, since many of them also use what they would call the Naturalist fallacy.

Interesting read.

[Rye]

Yea. I like to make trouble in the class, but I know when it's time to just agree and shutup. Plus, I like this teacher, caue I had her in philosophy. But oh well.

I agree with your idea Rye, but the book bashes the premise of Cultural Diversity as a factor for why ethics would be subjective. Something about how you can't go from what is the case and what the majority believe tow what is morality. Just because they change, doesn't mean they were always right." Just look "at the Nazies." You can't possibly say they were moral.

I am like..fuck it. That's a bait question, and if I answer it, I know I won't make it out of the classroom alive. Since I believe in subjectivism, she said, I would have to agree that the Nazis were acting moral, just not by my moral standards, but moral nonetheless.

You don't have to go that far. You could jsut say "they believed they were being moral, and i believe they weren't." The trouble with making post hoc deliberations of (im)moral decisions is that you're already required to have a sense of morality that would be subjective. So imagine it without emotion, and all the deaths and motivations are irrelevent, the only way you can make a moral decision/interpretation is by going by your own feelings, not by being objective.

It makes no sense, since finding what OUGHT to be is impossible to say outside of a social context or specific wants. I still think they think morality comes from magic.

What I don't get about these "objective immorality" ideas is why the universe/our will would allow them to happen if they were intrinsically contradictory to an objective moral law. I mean, it's not like you can go faster than light simply because you want to is it? Whereas you could go out and butcher some babies if you really wanted to, and if you were one of those sick individuals with empathy missing from their behaviour.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I don't get it either. I think they have selective understanding an analysis. THey wack subjectivism for most of the same thing Objectivism does, and then they ignore their own unique problems.


At least my athropology teacher thinks it's bogus too.

[Kuroneko]

Right. That's what I dislike about Kant, the fact that he says the will is the only part of us that does good. When we act in accoradance with our will, we do good. When we do something that is not good, we are letting outside influences guide us, not our will.

You still misunderstand me. Whenever we comply with the categorical imperative, we do good. It is quite possible to be autonomous and still will an evil deed.

This is an interesting idea, but it is hideously self-serving. People can will to do good things just as much as will to do bad things. Kant can say that the will is being muddied by baser concerns whenever it does "evil," but isn't it just as likely that the will is set to do evil and is being muddied by other concerns whenever it does good?

No, it isn't. At least, not without major clarification of your statement. I think what you mean is (correct me if not), is what if a person wills an evil act, which would either be good if done for different reasons, or and its results are good according to some other system of morality... for example, what if a person saves someone's life, not because of any actual care for life, but for the need of recognition for the act (or even worse, motivated by greed, to seek some sort of reward). In deontological ethics, of course, this act cannot be good. However, whether this is actually evil in the Kantian framework is very questionable. There is nothing within Kant's work that would support such a conclusion; I think Kant would call this act amoral rather than immoral. Incidently, years ago I had a disagreement with my professor's interpretation of Kant, which was directly related to this very sort of situation.

And who is to say what is evil and what is not? Like virtue ethics, he's getting into the "it's good to be good" spiral, but not as heavily. What aspects of human thought are good and pure? And how do you know? Kant fails to answer these questions in a concrete way.

He does answer them: those aspects that are consistent with the categorical imperative. There is much controversy on just how many categorical imperatives there are in Kant's work (he claims there is only one, of course, but it is not clear whether his many restatements of it are as equivalent as he claims), but that's another kettle of fish.

In response to what law Mill violates, it's Hume's Law, which says you can't derive "ought" from "is." Basically, Mill says that each person desires his happiness. That means that happiness is DESIRABLE, which can be defined as "worthy of desire." So by using the word "desirable" and attaching two definitions to it, he can move from "humans desire happiness" to "humans OUGHT TO desire happiness." Bad Mill. No cookie.

Yes, but I see that not as an argument but simply as reasons for accepting it as axiomatic. Also, although this doesn't have anything to do with Mill, but it should be noted that Kant's metaphysics was designed partly as a responce to Hume. Some of its features, such as the existence of synthetic a priori propositions, make him immune to many Humean concerns, although it does open him to metaphysical squabbles.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

hmm isn't metaphyscis a bunch of lunacy, however? Extra realities? Magical realms?

[Kuroneko]

I don't believe in any source for a higher, objective morality, but I do have evolved instincts and social conditioning. I've mainly distilled morality into promoting happiness and not harming others without damn good reasons, which is why I'm against such things as the war on drugs, and I regard "because that's how I feel" to be a perfectly good reason for all this. Is there a term for this position?

Subjectivism. What kind depends on the precise extent of your position.

It's not so much that the questions are uninteresting as that I've already got fairly decent answers and that so much of the discussion on philosophy seems to be dominated by fuzzy thinking and verbal obfuscation.

On the contrary, I find philosophers are often second only to lawyers in exacting the most precision they can out of their language. I suspect your real issue with philosophy is the opposite--you see this squabbling over the exact meaning and implications of this and that as unnecessary. The reason behind this is that philosophers expect their ethical systems to apply even in the most extreme of situations, not just in everyday "this-sounds-about-right" kind of way. More on that in a bit.

I mean, would it really be so hard for someone to list assumptions like "I want people to be happy, in the short and long run, myself especially" and go from there, working out the conclusions that follow from the assumptions, rather than trying to come up with a universal morality based on abstract (and it seems to me arbitrary) concepts like "will", to which labels like "good" are assigned in an arbitrary (but supposedly universal) way?

I strongly disagree. A hundred devout Nazis and a single Jew suddenly finding themselved isolated from the larger society could be made very happy overall by actions many would find highly unjust. A not very realistic scenario, perhaps, but those kinds of extremes can illuminate the weaknesses of a moral system. Such objections to utilitarianism (essentially what you proposed above) led many to decide that morality based on the consequences of an action as fatally flawed.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Yes. I agree. I really like utilitarianism, but it seems like it can become quite unjust, unfair, and downright bad from a certain perspective. It also kinda commits the naturalist fallacy (despite the unrealistic nature of the fallacy in ethics), by stating that people want the most happiness, therfore it is what's moral.


I don't think they will EVER find the true answer, becaues they are looking in the wrong places for it.

[Kuroneko]

hmm isn't metaphyscis a bunch of lunacy, however? Extra realities? Magical realms?

Of course not. For example, science typically uses the concepts of cause and effect. What does it mean for an event to be caused by something? That's metaphysics.

Suppose you have a car which you gradually replace the parts of with new ones. Most people would say that even after this kind of replacement, it is, in some sense, still "the same" car. Now, supose that after you replaced every single parts, you take the old ones and reassemble them into a complete car. Can either one of the two cars be considered the car you started with? Yes, no, maybe, whatever your answer, it's a problem of identity. That's metaphysics.

Your mathematics professor states after an arduous proof, "therefore, a solution exists." What does he mean, it "exists"? However you choose to interpret him, that's metaphysics.

More interesting metaphysical questions exist, but I tried to pick examples which would be the most sensible to one without study in this area. The last one in particular has a very common-sense answer, but that's frequently not the case for other metaphysical questions.

[Kuroneko]

I don't think they will EVER find the true answer, becaues they are looking in the wrong places for it.

I agree, but for different reasons. Evaluating these ethical systems, seeing their successes and failures, and attempting to amend them, seems to me a good way to develop an understanding of one's own moral compass. The act of looking for it is more important than the finding. Of course, one could easily be isolated in an ivory tower, but hey... nothing is perfect.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I wish they would come up with a good, truely objective moral theory without problems. THen I would like it.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Bah. My teacher today just said that subjective eithics makes a fundemental contradiction.

THey say basically:

1. One opinion is just as good as another.
A. THe book and she said, "If one opinion is just as good as another, that that forms a contradiction. Just as good equates to just as correct. IF their opinion is the opposite of your opinion, you have to accept their opinion as just as correct as yours.

IE. Killing is immoral. A Killing is moral B.

Killing is immoral and killing is moral would be just as good as eachother, and therofre you would have to believe both A and B.



-------------------------------------------


This makes no sense though, since in Morality there is no objective fact, there is no contradiction right? Relativistic fallacy doesn't apply. It only applies in circumstances where there is outside objective fact by which one can judge an opinion.

I gave this example in class of why there is no contradiction.

1. Empirical Contradiction: A. I say that tree exists. B. He says that tree doesn't exist.

Opinion A is just as good as onother. That's false because through science and reason we can test that the tree exists.

2. Subjective example. A. Orange juice tastes fantastic. It's the best drink.

B. Iced tea taste fantastic, and it's the best drink.

A is as good as B. I think THIS would be true, since they are purely matter's of neutral opinion and taste. They can both be true, but for the individual. Also, you don't have to agree with B, just because you say they're equally good, do you? Now apply this to morality.

No objective standard, no visible, tangeable, testable evidence to support it being objective.

It's immoral to wear white at a funeral A. It's not immoral to wear white at a funderal. B.

A is just as good as B. What POSSIBLY could be the objective reason for them not to be equally good? I bet the book would say they are both objective because they are following the principle of moral respect.... It
s.

[Morilore]

To me, morality is just a set of rules I apply to the way I view events as either positive or negative. Why? Well, I know I have an empathy drive, and I have absorbed several cultural values that qualify what should evoke that drive's responses. That is about as deep as I am willing to go with it.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

It's just aggrivating. My teacher basically called me stupid without actually saying it.

[Bugsby]

It's ludicrous. The argument is "if A is good and B is good, how can they both be good?" In saying this, your teacher COMPLETELY MISSES THE POINT. Good to whom? Because thats the issue with subjectivism: "good to whom?" So A and B are NOT both good, because each person has their own opinion. Trying to equate the two is stepping back and comparing to some greater moral imperative, which is not the point. OF COURSE subjectivism doesnt make sense from an objective standpoint. It makes sense from a subjective standpoint!



Basically, your teachers argument boils down to "if you're an objectivist, you don't believe in subjectivism." No shit.