"utilitarianism isn't fair" and other myths

[Aranfan]

Formless, define "actual harm".

Edit: Does emotional distress count? If not, then why not?

[Formless]

What, I really need to tell you what pain is? What sickness is? What death is? What depression is? What trauma is? "Actual harm" is so trivial to understand that its not even funny. Just go to any hospital, ghetto, or third world nation and you will see more examples than you ever wanted to see.

[Aranfan]

What, I really need to tell you what pain is? What sickness is? What death is? What depression is? What trauma is? "Actual harm" is so trivial to understand that its not even funny. Just go to any hospital, ghetto, or third world nation and you will see more examples than you ever wanted to see.

So what if there is a society where the mere presence of say, Richard Dawkins, would traumatize a majority of people (its a theocracy). Is Richard Dawkins presence in such a society immoral according to Utilitarianism?

[Formless]

You know what, I'm just going to stop trying to argue with you. You are now repeating Rye's strawman argument in different words, mixed with your previous rhetorical appeals regarding Jack Chic. Your arguments are so absurd or lazy or just plain dishonest its not worth the effort.

[Alyrium Denryle]

What, I really need to tell you what pain is? What sickness is? What death is? What depression is? What trauma is? "Actual harm" is so trivial to understand that its not even funny. Just go to any hospital, ghetto, or third world nation and you will see more examples than you ever wanted to see.

So what if there is a society where the mere presence of say, Richard Dawkins, would traumatize a majority of people (its a theocracy). Is Richard Dawkins presence in such a society immoral according to Utilitarianism?

If people in the theocracy are traumatized so easily, then they are obviously traumatized by a great many things, and in the long term it is better that they get the fuck over it. Even the Amish are not that god damn bad.

[Aranfan]

You know what, I'm just going to stop trying to argue with you. You are now repeating Rye's strawman argument in different words, mixed with your previous rhetorical appeals regarding Jack Chic. Your arguments are so absurd or lazy or just plain dishonest its not worth the effort.

I am repeating Rye's argument because it isn't a strawman.

[Formless]

How about you actually address the argument I made to Rye? Or the argument I made to you about Jack Chic on the first goddamn page? What is it with you and never addressing my arguments? Go to hell, asshole, and don't come back.

[Aranfan]

How about you actually address the argument I made to Rye? Or the argument I made to you about Jack Chic on the first goddamn page? What is it with you and never addressing my arguments? Go to hell, asshole, and don't come back.

Your "argument" was to dismiss Jack Chick as a loony. Which was no argument at all. There really are actual people who would actually be traumatized to meet Richard Dawkins. If those people were to form a society, then would Richard Dawkins' presence be immoral in it according to Utilitarianism?


As to going to hell, that would be very difficult, since I'm fairly sure hell doesn't exist.

[Formless]

Your "argument" was to dismiss Jack Chick as a loony.

Yet another strawman.

1) my argument was that he is an outlier, you lying sack of shit.

2) and that his ideas and beliefs are as full of shit as your own, and ultimately waste his life, our time, and would hurt society if implemented.

3) you have yet to actually explain why dismissing him as a lunatic is a bad proposition. You simply appeal to your own dislike of the concept (I imagine because you know it would apply to a certain randroid we both know whose name starts with an A).

4) you never answered my question of why his beliefs are so goddamn important that they override the suffering of others that would ensue if we let him dictate our moral standards.

5) you completely fail to grasp the importance of using the averages as a method of making priorities. Even the vast majority of christians aren't as insane as he is, and excepting a very loud minority most of them try to distance themselves as much as possible from shitwads like him.

6) you still haven't addressed my point to Rye.

[Samuel]

Why would that be the outcome with the least harm? The outcome with the least harm would be to secure the city against flooding and make sure the residents are aware of the dangers, to my mind. No coercion necessary, and it enables people worried about floods to leave the city.

If I was a gambling man I'd say it was a reference to an episode of Andromeda where AIs took over the running of a colony and a city was leveled because in the long run the resources needed to protect the city were greater than the marginal benefit of having the city.

I don't support that, personally, because I believe that the marginal benefit of a trial does not outweigh, or rather justify, additional dehumanization of prisoners, even those sentenced to death.

That wasn't his point. If you are going to die soon anyways, why shouldn't society try to benefit as much from it as possible? I don't think dehumanization is the real problem- the question ignores the impact on the currently living. Their behavior changes in responce to such incentives. If more death penalty prisoners means more medical advance, more people are going to be sentanced to die.

[Feil]

There really are actual people who would actually be traumatized to meet Richard Dawkins. If those people were to form a society, then would Richard Dawkins' presence be immoral in it according to Utilitarianism?

Most likely not. It would be harmful, yes. But not all harmful things are wrong.

The purpose of utilitarian analysis not to flag everything as immoral which causes harm to somebody (in which case EVERYTHING would be immoral, as a simple fact of physics, for there is no action which does not affect every other person, and it is probabilistically certain that some of the effects will be harmful in some way great or small.)

Utilitarianism, as has been explained to you at some length by others in this thread, is about minimizing harm or maximizing benefit. Those are synonymous, by the way; mathematically speaking they are just a choice of the origin, with marginal benefit being negative marginal harm.

Consider a hypothetical universe composed exclusively of Richard Dawkins and the Anti-Dawkins League. There are no other people in the world who may be affected. Neither Dawkins nor the ADL has forfeited their rights to not be harmed by any means. The Anti-Dawkins league is, as per your condition, discomforted by the presence of Richard Dawkins. Our choice is limited to the two options: Dawkins present; Dawkins not present. We will start by considering the harm done in each case, as if one of the involved parties was the moral actor. Then we will consider a third case, in which the moral actor is a third-party mediator which has the power to choose one of three options: Compel Dawkins to be present; compel Dawkins to be absent; allow an Involved Party to choose with no incentives either way.


CASE ONE: an Involved Party Chooses
First, let us evaluate the harm (positive only) done by Dawkins being present.
+He will make the people uncomfortable.

Now, let us evaluate the harm (positive only) done by Dawkins being not present.
+Dawkins may desire to be present.
+The Anti-Dawkins League might have benefited from the exchange of ideas, despite being made uncomfortable (i.e. they may not know what is good for themselves).

As per your prior, the Anti-Dawkins League will be very unhappy with the presence of Dawkins. Also, there are many of them. Therefore, the unhappiness component of Harm caused by the presence of Dawkins is greater than the unhappiness component of Harm caused by the absence of Dawkins. Taken in isolation, this would lead to your conclusion: it is immoral for Dawkins to go to the Anti-Dawkins League.

However, the unhappiness component does not exist in isolation. It may be vastly outweighed by the exchange-of-ideas component, in which case it is immoral for Dawkins to NOT go to the ADL. Alternately, it may be unclear which side outweighs the other, in which case it becomes a moral null issue, like the choice between Coke and Pepsi.


CASE TWO: Third Party Actor Choice
Force Dawkins to be Present?
+Dawkins has a right to choose where he will go
+He will make the people uncomfortable.

Force Dawkins to be Absent?
+Dawkins has a right to choose where he will go
+Dawkins may desire to be present.
+The Anti-Dawkins League might have benefited from the exchange of ideas, despite being made uncomfortable (i.e. they may not know what is good for themselves).

Allow an Involved Party to Choose (supposing that the Third Party Actor knows which outcome does more harm)?
GREATER OF THE TWO:
+He will make the people uncomfortable.
OR
+Dawkins may desire to be present.
+The Anti-Dawkins League might have benefited from the exchange of ideas, despite being made uncomfortable (i.e. they may not know what is good for themselves).

Allow an Involved Party to Choose (supposing that the Third Party Actor is unable to determine which outcome does more harm)?
+No harm done: this is a moral null issue

Again, we select on the basis of least total harm. Note: In order to morally choose to force Dawkins to be present or absent, +Dawkins has a right to choose where he will go must be less than (GREATER OF THE TWO: +He will make the people uncomfortable. OR +Dawkins may desire to be present. +The Anti-Dawkins League might have benefited from the exchange of ideas, despite being made uncomfortable).

[Aranfan]

First off, thank you Feil for going though the calculation. Secondly, I shall need some time to digest it. Third, the first thing that jumps out at me is: how do we resolve the questions of whether or not the exchange of ideas would give more marginal benefit than Dawkin's presence gives marginal harm? (please let me try to figure this out myself first) Forth, thank you again.

[Formless]

Samuel, that quote was by Bakustra, not me. Just so you know.

[Rye]

And if the majority of people approve of something immoral (anti-homosexuality legislation for instance, or the ill-treatment of sex offenders), we run into the problem of "philosophy fit for swine" territory. How do we factor in the happiness of the majority vs the happiness (or avoidance of suffering) of the minority?

You moron, I'm not talking about what they approve of or what they do not approve of. I'm talking about what actions that effect them or experiences that they might have will make them happy or unhappy? Preferences about what we want society to be like do not take precedence over basic human needs, and they do not give one the right to fuck over minorities just because you happen to be a bigot. That strawman has come up before, and yes it is on my list thank you very much. This is about utilitarianism, NOT democracy.

You never answered the question, though. How do you determine which pleasure is greater; the pleasure that people get from inflicting vengeance on a child molester vs keeping that child molester permanently in a comfortable prison?

This also raises another problem with Utilitarianism, one more fundamental; justice is always subservient to a sufficiently prized outcome. So is everything, ultimately. Under utilitarianism you would massacre your 4 member family to save a family of 10 across the world. Of course, people don't act like that so in practise, while we may hold it up high as a moral theory (and in principle, rightly so), moral aesthetics borne from human nature will overrule it.

Why do our preferences for how society ought to be not take precedence over basic human needs? If that is the case, why are we not slaughtering the entire pet population to feed overpopulated areas of the planet? Do you think we should be doing?

The malthusian problem and the utilitarian outlook do not fit together very well. The utilitarian, sensible position is that people should breed less as to have less mouths to feed with less scarcity. But people breed to a level of acceptable discomfort, even if it's not in their long term interest. And since in theory it COULD mean more pleasure to be had with "proper" resource allocation, (by making wasteful first world life worse) the utilitarian argument to have more kids also has weight. Especially if the hypothetical NWO government will always allocate according to need - why not create more need locally?

What I want to know is why I should care. They might be wildly different in preferences with regards to alcohol, but those people don't have to attend now do they? It only matters if it actually harms them which it does not. At least, assuming that no one drives home drunk and hits a pedestrian. That last part is why we can even have arguments about this rather than laying over and playing dead simply because some people's preferences happen to be different.

It was an example, not an argument.

Apparantly Rye has never heard of consumer advocacy or missed my point about "we don't have to be moral Renaissance Men". The average person has limitations on what he can know, but that doesn't mean he can't listen to his betters.

Talk down to someone else, Rye.

I've heard of it, there's just no easy way to test if it's actually making a difference if you're a utilitarian that should be putting scientific analysis at the forefront of his decision making.

[Formless]

And if the majority of people approve of something immoral (anti-homosexuality legislation for instance, or the ill-treatment of sex offenders), we run into the problem of "philosophy fit for swine" territory. How do we factor in the happiness of the majority vs the happiness (or avoidance of suffering) of the minority?

You moron, I'm not talking about what they approve of or what they do not approve of. I'm talking about what actions that effect them or experiences that they might have will make them happy or unhappy? Preferences about what we want society to be like do not take precedence over basic human needs, and they do not give one the right to fuck over minorities just because you happen to be a bigot. That strawman has come up before, and yes it is on my list thank you very much. This is about utilitarianism, NOT democracy.

You never answered the question, though. How do you determine which pleasure is greater; the pleasure that people get from inflicting vengeance on a child molester vs keeping that child molester permanently in a comfortable prison?

The argument is whether or not certain pleasures should even be considered meaningful morally, and that the commonality of them is one way to ascertain that. If we follow the logic behind revenge based justice we end up with the US prison system, because it entails giving up our virtues as human beings. If we lack empathy for child molesters * why should we ever forgive petty criminals, say poor kids who get inducted into gangs who at worst were forced to steal? Why should we ever let people out of prison? More to the point, why are we letting the needs of the victims override the needs of the criminal? Why should we not balance them, and do so with relation to the overall society as well?

* and by the way, I like how every time this kind of thing comes up the first kind of criminal that comes up is child molesters (and/or psychopaths). Its so emotionally manipulative, its beautiful from a rhetorical standpoint.

This also raises another problem with Utilitarianism, one more fundamental; justice is always subservient to a sufficiently prized outcome. So is everything, ultimately. Under utilitarianism you would massacre your 4 member family to save a family of 10 across the world. Of course, people don't act like that so in practise, while we may hold it up high as a moral theory (and in principle, rightly so), moral aesthetics borne from human nature will overrule it.

The thread is supposed to be about principals, you understand. We aren't in disagreement on this point. We wouldn't have crime and the justice system if people always did what was in principal the right thing.

4 to ten? Under what circumstances? Who are the ten? Its not a calculation I am comfortable with, but we don't always get what we want...

Why do our preferences for how society ought to be not take precedence over basic human needs? If that is the case, why are we not slaughtering the entire pet population to feed overpopulated areas of the planet? Do you think we should be doing?

Yet again, because our basic needs are shared to a higher degree in a measurable way. They are even shared by other animals, though we may consider their suffering to be less than our own. This is the whole point of the averaging argument.

The malthusian problem and the utilitarian outlook do not fit together very well. The utilitarian, sensible position is that people should breed less as to have less mouths to feed with less scarcity. But people breed to a level of acceptable discomfort, even if it's not in their long term interest. And since in theory it COULD mean more pleasure to be had with "proper" resource allocation, (by making wasteful first world life worse) the utilitarian argument to have more kids also has weight. Especially if the hypothetical NWO government will always allocate according to need - why not create more need locally?

So you think we ignore quality of life just so we can increase quantity of life? Overpopulation has many negative effects, both on the currently living and more so on future generations. Climate change, resource depletion, and even just a lack of space are all reasons many of us advocate for greater education about birth control. People tend to have so many kids because their drive for sex * derives itself from evolution, which is blind to future consequences, and the sex drive itself can make people stupid. Particularly if they are from third world shitholes where education of all types, not the least sex ed, is considerably lacking.

* note: the drive for sex is not necessarily the same as the drive to have a family. People want to have sex because it is innately gratifying. People often pursue it without thinking about the fact that it might lead to pregnancy, although obviously others do it because it does. Hence the issue of teen pregnancy.

What I want to know is why I should care. They might be wildly different in preferences with regards to alcohol, but those people don't have to attend now do they? It only matters if it actually harms them which it does not. At least, assuming that no one drives home drunk and hits a pedestrian. That last part is why we can even have arguments about this rather than laying over and playing dead simply because some people's preferences happen to be different.

It was an example, not an argument.

Conceded.

Apparantly Rye has never heard of consumer advocacy or missed my point about "we don't have to be moral Renaissance Men". The average person has limitations on what he can know, but that doesn't mean he can't listen to his betters.

Talk down to someone else, Rye.

I've heard of it, there's just no easy way to test if it's actually making a difference if you're a utilitarian that should be putting scientific analysis at the forefront of his decision making.

Difficulty does not necessarily make a strong argument. It may be difficult to study the effects of any given thing, but if for example it has a strong impact on public health we still might suck it up and attempt it anyway. It is a problem if it is demonstrably a waste of time, effort, and resources, but at the same time even when that is the case it may not stay the case as research methods improve.

For example: the rules of sanitation regarding processing food in the food industry. Its obvious that letting rats shit in it will have an effect on the health of consumers. So we make sure the places where food is processed are clean. Another example would be lead based paint. Its no longer as widely used, because we found out how it can effect children. These are extreme examples, for sure, but they illustrate the point nicely.

[Aranfan]

Feil, I've been trying to finish the calculation for a number of days, and I've run into a problem. Who decides? Dawkins, if he wanted to be present, would say that the community would benefit more from his extra perspective than they would be emotionally harmed by it, and the Anti-Dawkins group would argue otherwise. Without infinite processing power I can't correctly determine who is right or if the benefit of Dawkins' perspective is equal to the harm of Dawkins' presence. So when it comes time to actually make the calculation, the human utilitarian is left in the lurch.

[Formless]

Ghetto edit: Rye, you might also want to take note that in the OP my objection to the criticism wasn't simply that we already have a plethora or research to draw upon when making descisions, but also plenty of personal experience as individuals as well. Although I place greater faith in the reliability of decisions based on the former I don't dismiss the latter as being useful, particularly in situations where time is of the essence or for things that are truly mundane or personal affairs. I honestly don't know what it is you think we disagree on.

[Wyrm]

[Utilitarianism] treats all humans as functionally interchangeable and identical happiness/unhappiness meters.

You know what the most disappointing part of this statement is? It's not even true. Utilitarianism is based on decision theory, and decision theory is the theory of using your knowledge of the world to decide on your actions. That includes your knowledge of other people, both in general and in the specific.

When making people happy, a utilitarian does take into account how they think and feel, and what he knows about those specific people. However, his actions must be in consdereation to all the consequences thereof (as enumerated by Formless). Giving Jack Chick a bible for his birthday and nodding your head in faux agreement to his ramblings will make him happy, but will otherwise be of little consequence to anyone else. Applying his delusions to all society will be of great consequence and detriment to everyone else, and so cannot be justified.

Likewise, pairing up a sadist with a random person picked off the street is unjustified in utilitarianism, because in general people don't like pain, and the happiness given to the sadist does not justify the pain inflicted on the random person. If, however, you pair the sadist with a mastochist (and make sure they follow the usual S&M play rules), then it is quite beneficial to both — the sadist gets to inflict the pain that makes him happy, and the mastochist gets to experience the pain that makes him happy. Win/win.

This is why your notion that utilitarianism "dehumanizes" people, or treats them as interchangable cogs, is bullshit. Treating people you don't know as identical is vital, because you cannot know everyone and therefore make specific decisions about them — as a guide to general policy, you have no choice but to make decisions absent personalized individual knowledge. But you can put people in positions where they can make their own choices about what's best for them, as long as they have the demonstrated ability to do so (like in our S&M play example).

======

This also raises another problem with Utilitarianism, one more fundamental; justice is always subservient to a sufficiently prized outcome. So is everything, ultimately. Under utilitarianism you would massacre your 4 member family to save a family of 10 across the world. Of course, people don't act like that so in practise, while we may hold it up high as a moral theory (and in principle, rightly so), moral aesthetics borne from human nature will overrule it.

Which is precisely the problem with this kind of argument — it is contrived. If you were seriously forced into this situation, where the reality really is that massacring 4 people is the only way save a family of 10 across the world, I fail to see how one would cope with this situation any other way. Deciding not to massacre 4 people to save them is to condemn 10 people to death, which on an individual basis are likely equally horrific, lacking any additional knowledge of the situation.

This does not say that massacring 4 people is not horrific in and of itself. It's simply the lesser of two evils. If we are serious about valuing life, then we'd better be prepared to man up and uphold that principle.

Of course, outside these contrived situations, Utilitarianism gives the obvious answer: address the issue that imperils that family of 10 and solve that problem. Everyone lives.

Why do our preferences for how society ought to be not take precedence over basic human needs?

Why do you pretend that our societal preferences are not ultimately formed to address those needs?

If that is the case, why are we not slaughtering the entire pet population to feed overpopulated areas of the planet? Do you think we should be doing?

Because world hunger is not a problem that will be solved by slaughering your pets, or even helped to any significant degree. There are much better options availible. Again, contrived examples.

The malthusian problem and the utilitarian outlook do not fit together very well. The utilitarian, sensible position is that people should breed less as to have less mouths to feed with less scarcity. But people breed to a level of acceptable discomfort, even if it's not in their long term interest. And since in theory it COULD mean more pleasure to be had with "proper" resource allocation, (by making wasteful first world life worse) the utilitarian argument to have more kids also has weight. Especially if the hypothetical NWO government will always allocate according to need - why not create more need locally?

Because it's not us, precisely, those urges to breed have evolved to benefit. Those urges are operating by a completely differnt utility calculus that is absolutely shortsighted, that is ultimately destructive to us, and we ought to take that into consideration when forming policy.

What I want to know is why I should care. They might be wildly different in preferences with regards to alcohol, but those people don't have to attend now do they? It only matters if it actually harms them which it does not. At least, assuming that no one drives home drunk and hits a pedestrian. That last part is why we can even have arguments about this rather than laying over and playing dead simply because some people's preferences happen to be different.

It was an example, not an argument.

It underlines exactly what's wrong with your argument: again, contrieved examples. You pretend that the only choices availible is for everyone to attend, or for the party to be disbanded. In fact there are 2N choices for N people. Surely somewhere in that space you can find a solution that has a higher maximum than either extreme.

[Feil]

Feil, I've been trying to finish the calculation for a number of days, and I've run into a problem. Who decides? Dawkins, if he wanted to be present, would say that the community would benefit more from his extra perspective than they would be emotionally harmed by it, and the Anti-Dawkins group would argue otherwise. Without infinite processing power I can't correctly determine who is right or if the benefit of Dawkins' perspective is equal to the harm of Dawkins' presence. So when it comes time to actually make the calculation, the human utilitarian is left in the lurch.

The person making the decision decides, obviously. The purpose of the calculation is to help make the decision; we wouldn't be making the calculation if we weren't trying to decide.

the Anti-Dawkins group would argue otherwise.

I point out that this is NOT a condition of your prior. Two rationalists, presented with the same data, should come to the same conclusion. If you imagine that the Anti-Dawkins League hates to be around Dawkins because they are allergic to his cologne, but are otherwise perfectly rational people interested in increasing their knowledge, they might very well be willing to cough and sniffle through Dawkins' lecture in order to gain the benefits of his words. If the ADL and Dawkins disagree, at least one of them is either irrational or in possession of an incomplete set of the relevant data.

For example:

Inquisitor Dick believes that witches are damned to Hell but can be saved by torturing them until they confess, then burning them at the stake. Hell is an eternity of everlasting torture, every moment of which dwarfs the most heinous of earthly agonies. He is therefore morally compelled to torture witches until they confess then burn them alive, by strict utilitarian analysis.

Fortunately for the witches, Queen Jane has reviewed the available evidence, deduced that there is probably no such thing as Hell, and that Inquisitor Dick's mental anguish at not being able to save the witches from Hell is trivial compared to the harm done by heinously murdering innocent people. Therefore, she is morally compelled to prevent Inquisitor Dick from burn witches.

Dick and Jane disagree. However, morality is not quite relative under utilitarian analysis. Any two well-informed rationalists should come to the same utilitarian conclusions. Dick is wrong, not because of some arbitrary assertion, but because he has a demonstrably improbable prior which would be apparent to any well-informed rationalist. That Dick is evil under utilitarian analysis is as objectively true as the statement "witches probably don't go to Hell; or, if they did, probably couldn't be saved by horribly murdering them."

[Aranfan]

So this is based on Kant's Freedom is Rational Moral Choice, and that irrationality cannot be free or moral. Or, more succinctly, "You can pick any color for your Model T that you want, so long as you want black". I reject the idea that someone who is like me in all qualities except that they like chocolate milk more than strawberry milk, is essentially the same as me. Reason can only serve irrational preference, otherwise we really would be interchangeable drones.

I'm afraid I cannot profitably continue this discussion, our starting points and foundations are too different. All we can do is shout past each other.

[Simon_Jester]

Aranfan, that's a load of nonsense. Choices of automobile color, milk preference, and so on, are moral nulls: rationalism does not apply, or need not apply, because there is nothing at stake. Anything Kant may or may not have said is irrelevant.

When there is something of consequence at stake, you owe it to yourself and/or to others to use rationalism, rather than making it the slave of whatever random and arbitrary preferences might pop into your head. "But I don't want to!" is not a license to throw objectivity to the winds.

One great dividing line, I submit, that decides whether there is something at stake is whether you are telling people what to do. When you decide whether Dawkins can go to a place full of people who don't like him (or whether they can decide that question), you are telling Dawkins what to do. Therefore, you owe it to Dawkins, at the very least, to be rational rather than making your decisions by flipping a coin or the equivalent. Life places us at the mercy of random forces enough without people, who have the capability to be nonrandom and to consistently choose good outcomes over evil, deciding to be random as well.

And yes, ideally everyone in the same position to choose between good and evil outcomes would choose the same thing; that's the point. Good things are those that everyone who is thinking about the problem honestly would decide to do; evil things are those that no one who is thinking about the problem honestly would decide to do.

Unless you have a terrible aversion to thinking honestly about problems, I don't see the difficulty with this kind of system.

[D.Turtle]

You know, what I would find a lot more interesting would be looking at everyday or normal situations instead of weird superhypotheticals.

So for example: What role did your moral system play in choosing your profession/university degree? Did you look at various degrees and decide to go for the one that would provide the greatest benefit to mankind?

So my question is: How do you use your moral system in everyday situations? Do you even use it in those situations? Or is it more a matter of trying to change your intuitive non-thinking reactions/actions?

[Aranfan]

When there is something of consequence at stake, you owe it to yourself and/or to others to use rationalism, rather than making it the slave of whatever random and arbitrary preferences might pop into your head. "But I don't want to!" is not a license to throw objectivity to the winds.

The underlined is exactly Kant's position. It is also why we will do nothing but shout past each other. It is premised on the proposition that the not-rational is not an essential part me, that it is only accidentally part of me, which is a position that I reject.

[Bakustra]

When there is something of consequence at stake, you owe it to yourself and/or to others to use rationalism, rather than making it the slave of whatever random and arbitrary preferences might pop into your head. "But I don't want to!" is not a license to throw objectivity to the winds.

The underlined is exactly Kant's position. It is also why we will do nothing but shout past each other. It is premised on the proposition that the not-rational is not an essential part me, that it is only accidentally part of me, which is a position that I reject.

No it isn't. Saying, "don't make random decisions about things that matter, preferably" is not denying that arbitrariness is part of you, but saying that using it to make important decisions has a fifty-fifty chance of making matters worse. Unless you define essential as a synonym of ruling.

You know, what I would find a lot more interesting would be looking at everyday or normal situations instead of weird superhypotheticals.

So for example: What role did your moral system play in choosing your profession/university degree? Did you look at various degrees and decide to go for the one that would provide the greatest benefit to mankind?

So my question is: How do you use your moral system in everyday situations? Do you even use it in those situations? Or is it more a matter of trying to change your intuitive non-thinking reactions/actions?

I can't really predict the future. I chose a career path that I think will allow me to contribute to the world and society for the better. But on the other hand, all of the career paths that I considered seriously would have done so, and I can't well predict whether I would contribute "more" in one or the other.

[Simon_Jester]

When there is something of consequence at stake, you owe it to yourself and/or to others to use rationalism, rather than making it the slave of whatever random and arbitrary preferences might pop into your head. "But I don't want to!" is not a license to throw objectivity to the winds.

The underlined is exactly Kant's position. It is also why we will do nothing but shout past each other. It is premised on the proposition that the not-rational is not an essential part me, that it is only accidentally part of me, which is a position that I reject.

Aranfan, are you under some sort of mystic compulsion to flip coins when making decisions that strongly affect the lives and happiness of other people?

If not, I fail to see how "makes illogical decisions when confronted with high-stakes situations" is an essential part of your nature. Or if it is, how that is different from saying that "idiot" is an essential part of your nature... which is hardly a philosophically defensible position.

One cannot argue "Ah, but I am an idiot, therefore your system does not apply to me because I lack the brains to implement it!"