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| Thread: Morals; Ethics; Philosophy; Religion, Science, Law, Organisms, and Rights |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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mvassilev
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posted October 21, 2014 12:44 AM |
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Stevie said:
If I'm born with a powerful predisposition to murder
That's a pretty big "if". First, the important thing is to distinguish between a predisposition to do X and a nature that makes X the right thing to do. You can be predisposed to do plenty of things that don't make you happy - for example, some people are predisposed to alcoholism, but that certainly doesn't mean that they should become alcoholics! But let us suppose that human nature were different and humans were like Caligula-aliens. If humans were Caligula-aliens, they should act like Caligula-aliens. But in the real world, humans aren't Caligula-aliens. What's more, there's an additional reason for humans to judge murder to be wrong, because if it is wrong and those who commit it are punished, then we can live in a civilized society in which we're much less likely to be murdered (a huge benefit) and enjoy the benefits of peaceful interaction (also a huge benefit).
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artu
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posted October 21, 2014 12:51 AM |
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Edited by artu at 01:02, 21 Oct 2014.
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fred said:
psychopathy and sociopathy are the same thing. sociopathy is the newer term for psychopathy.
Professionals use the term anti-social personality disorder for all (I directly had a long conversation with a psychologist about this) but there is a difference in everyday usage of the terms psychopath and sociopath. Where as the first ones refer to people who are having problems understanding and adjusting to reality, such as hearing voices, believing aliens are following them etc etc, sociopaths have no problem with that. They just lack feelings of empathy, affection, conscience guilt. For example in the BBC show, Sherlock, Holmes refers to himself as a "functioning sociopath" because although he has no trouble comprehending reality, he can not relate to anybody's feelings.
And a general reminder, the normative suggestion for something to be wrong is not necessarily or sorely based on the criteria of happiness.
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fred79
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posted October 21, 2014 06:47 AM |
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hearing voices and prominent paranoia are traits of schizophrenia, not sociopathy. sociopathy only deals with differing degrees of distance from other people(emotional detachment); and the like. it doesn't even deal with violence necessarily; it merely means that a sociopath lacks(in varying degrees) the wiring needed to feel compassion, or to relate to other people(hence, if they ever were put in a situation where they could be inclined to commit an act of violence, it would be much easier for them).
of course, there are varying "special" breeds of all kinds of people that any psychologist could try and catagorize. such is the problem when trying to pin down mere clusters according to behavior, instead of individuals based on thought that might not be more easily discernable. not everyone acts out their fantasies. for some, they never leave that stage.
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artu
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posted October 21, 2014 07:26 AM |
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Although they are not exactly clinically distinctable, because modern psychiatry states that certain anti-social personality disorder symptoms can transfer into each other, the words psychopath and sociopath have a difference in nuance due their associations. Yes, hearing voices etc is psychosis caused by schizophrenia, it's delusional loss of connection from reality but it can result in or be part of psychopathic behavior also, such as the famous Ed Gein, who had clearly lost his touch with reality, where as when someone says sociopath, a person more like Richard Kulinski comes to mind, who is planning and cold-blooded, rather than impulsive. Ed Gein, unlike Kulinski, couldn't have turned his anti social personality disorder into a job as a hitman. Or once again, Holmes wouldn't have said "I'm a functioning psychopath" instead of "sociopath," the association would be significantly different.
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kayna
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posted October 21, 2014 07:37 AM |
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Hearing voices can also be caused by mini speakers inserted in the walls of your home. Might happen to you if you re the only witness of something you weren't supposed to see. A great way to destroy someone's credibility.
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fred79
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posted October 21, 2014 07:59 AM |
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@ artu: that's what i meant when i mentioned "special" breeds. ed gein is an example of a crossbreed. you don't have to link any of them, btw. i am well read on this subject matter, along with the people who might or might not fall under the category. this is a subject i've been involved with for 20+ years.
there are many people who would fall under the category of "sociopath" by a layman. herbert mullin could be classified as such, but only in a broader sense; seeing as how he is actually a paranoid schizophrenic.
david berkowitz, for example, falls under the same category. but because both were serial killers, they tend to be lumped with the psychopaths/sociopaths. most people don't realize that killers come in every shade, and every mental color of the rainbow, so to speak.
kuklinski, for instance, was a family man. so was dennis rader(btk), at least for a while. sociopaths come from every race/religion/mentality/social status/etc. the variations among their kind are just as complicated.
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mvassilev
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posted November 02, 2014 07:31 AM |
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Some collected thoughts.
I think the moral skeptic has a good case against the existence of morality as it is commonly conceived of in popular discourse. The skeptic’s argument is that there is a variety of problems with the foundations of morality. For example, if morality is based on our intuitions, what happens when my intuition clashes with yours? If I have the intuition that women should cover themselves up and wear a veil, and your intuition is that they should be free to wear whatever they want, that difference may be irresolvable if we can't appeal to anything besides intuitions, which is a significant problem for something that claims to be universally correct. More generally, the skeptic can ask why we should be moral in the first place. The skeptic can acknowledge that there is some body of internally consistent rules that can be called "morality", but can be consistent in saying that he has no reason to follow these rules, and can break them if he can get away with it. A successful argument for morality must be able to survive the skeptic’s objections.
(I'm not going to address the theistic argument for morality here, because I don't want this to go off-topic based on a small part of my argument. Let's assume atheism and metaphysical naturalism here.)
I think the skeptic has many good points in his argument against traditional notions of morality, but he's wrong to dismiss it altogether. Morality based on intuitions fails to be universal, so in order to be correct, it can't be based on intuitions. We can indeed rationally reject many rules of internally consistent systems and not have them bind us, so those systems are mistaken as well. This paints a bleak picture for the collection of intuitions that people consider to be "morality", as well as for more consistent and academic frameworks such as utilitarianism, but that's okay because my goal is to argue for some form of morality, which need not be widely accepted.
Let's start by addressing the skeptic's objections head-on. Morality can't be based on intuitions, so those aren't available to us as a source of the content of morality. We must have a reason to be moral in order to successfully respond to the skeptic, so whatever morality turns out to contain, we must have a reason to do/be that. Fundamentally, what do we have reasons to do? To fulfill our preferences, whatever those may be. We may not always succeed in fulfilling our preferences, and we may even not always act in a way that produces the greatest expected value for ourselves, because we may be inconsistent or irrational in some other way.
("Value" here is to be understood in a broad sense - it's not necessarily physical goods, and it can be other-regarding. For example, parents often value their children's well-being.)
Here, an objection can be raised along the following lines: Our preferences certainly give us reasons to act, but that isn't enough for morality, because if that were all that was to it, then there would be no point to moral disagreements - everyone would just do what they want. My answer to this objection is that sometimes people should do something they don't want to do, so moral discourse is possible. This may seem inconsistent with what I said above about our preferences grounding our reasons, so I’ll explain. People aren't always rational and may act suboptimally, such that they get less of what they value. Sometimes they even hold beliefs that prevent them from getting as much of what they value. Thus, someone may have a desire to do something that they shouldn't do (or lack a desire to do something they should do). Rather than doing what they have an impulse to do, they should do what they'd want to do if they successfully underwent a process of rational deliberation. They can't reject this principle because if they did, it would mean that they'd be getting less of what they value, which would be contradictory because then whatever it is wouldn't be what they value.
(When I say "rational" here, I am talking about instrumental rationality, i.e. effectively achieving your values. Don't confuse it with Straw Vulcanism.)
So, now we've established that we have reasons to do what we'd do if we were rational. From here, what one should do varies with the specifics of what one would if one were rational. For example, imagine a very powerful Caligula-alien that gets great pleasure from torturing other beings. This Caligula-alien definitely has a reason to torture. Would it be moral for it to engage in torture? That depends on what you mean by "moral", but whatever the case, it would be rational for it to engage in torture, which presents somewhat of a dilemma. One response is that, yes, it would be moral for the Caligula-alien to engage in torture. This may seem like a strange response, but it has the advantage that it preserves the universality of morality - even the Caligula-alien has a reason to be moral. However, the obvious disadvantage is that with this response, the content of morality becomes potentially excessively inclusive. Another response is to restrict morality to what humans should do. Then it's possible to say that it would be immoral for the Caligula-alien to engage in torture. With this response, it seems like we've salvaged the content of morality and prevented it from varying as wildly as in the other response. However, the problem is that in doing so, we've defined our terms such that the Caligula-alien can rationally reject being moral, so we lose moral universality. To put it more briefly: either it is moral for the Caligula-alien to torture, or the Caligula-alien shouldn’t be moral.
Whichever choice of definitions you go with in the case of the Caligula-alien, the problem was that there are many possible beings for whom what they should do varies significantly. When we restrict our analysis to humans, this is much less of a problem because humans have a shared human nature. Of course, there is variance in individual preferences - some are more risk-tolerant and others more risk-averse, some like vanilla and others like chocolate, and so on - but despite that, there are some commonalities that shape what it is that humans should do. It's important to understand the interaction between human nature and what one should do, which is that human nature shapes what causes humans to feel pleasure and pain, for example, that eating some foods is pleasurable and eating grass isn't. Thus, human nature shapes what is entailed by the fulfillment of a particular human's values. However, it doesn't mean that any impulses that human nature causes should be fulfilled. Sometimes human nature causes people to be irrational and gives them impulses that are counterproductive with regard to the maximization of the fulfillment of their values. Human nature shapes what causes humans to be happy, which is why it's relevant, but not every behavior and attitude that is caused by human nature is good.
One important human commonality is that we can get great value from cooperating with each other, and also that we lose an immense amount of value by being murdered. For this reason, it is rational for humans to agree to interact with each other peacefully, and to agree to a rule of not murdering each other, and this is the origin of the right to not be murdered. More generally, rights are determined by what humans would rationally accept as self-restrictions in a state in which they don’t exist, so in the case of murder, they restrict their exercise of their ability to murder in exchange for others doing the same, because such an agreement is advantageous to those involved in it. (If it weren't advantageous, they wouldn't rationally agree to it.) For a right to be established, it must be justified to those that would be agreeing to establish it, meaning that they would agree to it if they were rational. It's possible for humans to fail to properly establish rights - they're not always rational, and also if there are well-established rules, it is often difficult for even a rational person to change them. There is an interesting parallel here - just as failures to be instrumentally rational in general result in suboptimal outcomes for the person in question, so do failures to be rational in the rights-establishing process result in suboptimal governments that don't always respect rights.
(Incidentally, I think this answers most of Elodin's questions in the first post, which I hadn't answered before.)
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JollyJoker
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posted November 02, 2014 08:52 AM |
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Mvass, all nice and well, but shouldn't you start with what morality actually is?
First consider Predators. Predators do not live in any kind of society. Instead, only the individual counts, and each "individual" makes its own laws, which basically says, "my laws in my territory", and "I take what I can get".
On the other side of the spectrum, there is a insect hive. There is no right of the individual, but only the hive mind - the Queen. Individuals will sacrifice themselves willingly for the "common good".
Humans are in the middle. They are individuals on one hand, but need a society as well.
Morals are simply defining the line between rights as an individual and duty as part of a society (or: where do I have to forego my )predator) individual rights for the "common good".
Obviously, there is nothing absolute here. Your example about muslim tradition of veiling women is a good one to illustrate. There is some unspoken assumption here that men will lust after women if you see too much of them, and that will have detrimental effects on common good, so the solution is to rob women some of their individual rights (to clothe the way they want as an individual).
Of course there is no defined "line" between individual rights and common good in an absolute sense, and there is also no natural form of society or body of laws that will automatically ensure some form of stable equilibrium. A working morale must lead to TRUE "common good" in the sense that everyone benefits. If too many people live too miserable a life, then there is no common good, and consequently the morals don't apply.
That's all there is to it.
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mvassilev
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posted November 02, 2014 09:04 AM |
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A being's nature is a determinant of what's good for it. If there were rational beings who are predators, what they should do would be different from what humans should do and even more different from what the hive animal should do. If the animal in question isn't capable of deliberative choice, then it's a moot point, because a moral agent has to be able to reason and then choose between alternatives. If there were rational bees, they would be willing to do more for each other than humans do for each other, and much more than rational wolves. But the point is that the rules would still have to be justified to the individual wolf/human/bee for it to accept (if it's in its benefit) or reject (if it's contrary to its benefit). It has to be justified to the individual because it is the individual that chooses what to do, and is thus making the moral choices. The only thing that changes between (deliberative) predator, human, and (deliberative) bee is what the individual benefits consist of.
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artu
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posted November 02, 2014 09:22 AM |
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Edited by artu at 09:25, 02 Nov 2014.
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Basing morality on human nature (which does not necessarily indicate justifying impulsive behavior) is partially correct. But "human nature" is a very vague term and it is not something that never ever changes, if you put aside the very basic sociobiological tendencies.
If one thinks of morality like a geographical map, our sociobiological traits such as not to kill other group members without justified reason, protecting the young and providing for them for the specie to continue, not to waste away valuable resources such as food and water etc, these would be like lands shown in brown/yellow and the sea shown in blue. The distinction between good and bad on such matters is usually very obvious, both in terms of rationality and intuition. (Intuition is not something metaphysical either, it derives from subconsciously stored experience.) Since they are the very basic foundations of human beings to survive as a specie that functions as a social entity, they can be traced in almost every culture's moral teachings. The "universality" (I'd rather call it similarity) of such basics comes from the fact that the abstraction we are capable of, called constructing a moral conduct, had it roots on a common ground: The specific way our specie exists. Yet, when you look closer to the map, you will start to distinguish rivers, valleys, mountains: The moral solutions they come up with will have variation. This does not mean all the solutions are equally effective or valuable, yet, it is certainly descriptive enough to show us that, there is no single optimum morality regardless of conditions and social context, which is the one true morality ever. Say, a meteor is about the hit the earth, we build a spaceship to survive and all human race is living in that ship: Every moral foundation based on the virtues of private property will go down the drain.
Of course, up to a point in history, the many moral conducts were presented and believed to be caused by something higher than human nature, something supernatural, when in fact, it was the collective experience trying to regulate impulsive aspects of individual behavior. (That's why in almost every language, immoral behavior is associated with "acting like an animal or a beast") But morality is no exception in this regard, on the contrary, so was everything else believed to be caused by something supernatural including the sun rise, the rain, diseases or even pregnancy. When it comes to things such as psychopathic murder and anti-social disorder, your ideological or theological background is quite irrelevant, since you will rationalize your impulses according to whatever you believe in, not the other way around.
Btw, basing morality both on happiness and a strictly applied rationality is also quite groundless, since there is nothing that indicates humans are happiest when they constantly engage themselves in a series of deliberate, rational choices. On the contrary, it creates a fatigue. Someone in search of a normative recipe for happiness (will most likely fail but whatever) should never underestimate that we also NEED to be impulsive to a degree, to be able to feel comfortable.
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JollyJoker
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posted November 02, 2014 09:30 AM |
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mvassilev said:
A being's nature is a determinant of what's good for it.
The problem is, that "good" isn't defined for beings capable of intelligent thought, and abstraction. Because "good" is relative and not absolute - there may be a "better". It gets complicated when you have to weigh the advantages of maximum individual power against the benefits of what a group of individuals is capable of.
With humans, our "nature" is what we make it - our existence is the story of expanding the limits of it, iosn't it?
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mvassilev
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posted November 02, 2014 09:38 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
With humans, our "nature" is what we make it - our existence is the story of expanding the limits of it, iosn't it?
Not really, it's more the story of achieving our values better and better. What's good for us hasn't changed, so in that sense, our nature has stayed the same. Because we're beings capable of deliberation, it's up to us to discover what's good for us - but it's a process of discovery, not invention. We can't just declare something to be good, because we can be wrong about that.
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JollyJoker
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posted November 02, 2014 10:56 AM |
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You assume something that isn't actually there: What's good for us isn't defined or absolute, because no one knows, since it's a cross-reference between what's good for us INDIVIDUALLY and what's good for the WHOLE. The strong is strongest alone, is a well-known saying, but also, society can be more than the sum of its parts, obviously. This is further complicated by offspring which are somewhat the icon of the synergy between individual and society.
You might also say, there is a what's good for us in the short run, and what's good for us in the long run, what may be good for us, IF... and so on.
Which is why you are completely reversing what morals are used for. BECAUSE no one knows, there are morals - they are telling us, based on the (economical, life-and-death) realities of life what's good for us and what-not, which is different from the law, because for a society to be more than the sum of its parts it needs more than a willingness to follow the law.
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artu
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posted November 02, 2014 01:07 PM |
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Edited by artu at 13:36, 02 Nov 2014.
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Yes, all of that and more importantly JJ, it's definitely not true we haven't changed much (or wont), settlements and agriculture, writing and storing knowledge, industrialization and urbanization, finally the digital age that we are witnessing the birth of... All of these caused revolutionary change in our social life and what we understand from morality and common good. They were all (sets of) inventions that also brought forth the rise of their own moral ramifications. Again, if you put aside the very basic and general sociobiological tendencies, what's good for us is directly dependent on the conditions we are technologically and economically capable of producing.
Plus, we are not exactly objecting to an unknown "what's good for us" here, are we, considering, in the past, the "objective optimum" was claimed as the libertarian principles of absolute individualism and the slogan of free trade's kind(!) invisible hand that will somehow regulate everything wonderfully. Even greed (not ambition) was presented as a virtue. Of course, the historical/philosophical limitations and the sociological utopianism of such a claim is quite clear.
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JollyJoker
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posted November 02, 2014 06:18 PM |
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Not sure we agree or not... 
Anyway, he says, human nature hasn't changed.
The thing is, though, that even if you concede that's true - morale has nothing to do with human nature, has it? Because morale is about the ambivalence of individual and social side of the coin, and human nature doesn't regulate that, as hstory is showing.
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artu
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posted November 02, 2014 06:28 PM |
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Yes and that's exactly what I disagree with. Human biology and its psychological extents hasnt changed much but human mindset changed significantly many times, which is the part that counts regarding the foundations of morality and its normative ramifications.
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JollyJoker
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posted November 02, 2014 08:22 PM |
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Right, which is why morale changed.
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mvassilev
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posted November 02, 2014 08:35 PM |
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JJ:
There's no such thing as "good for the whole" except as a sort-of sum of many instances of "good for the individual", and something (e.g. a moral rule) needs to be good for a particular individual for them to have sufficient reason to accept it. Because if a rule is good for others but bad for the individual in question, then that rule is bad for the individual in question (regardless of whatever other benefits it may have) and therefore he should reject it.
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artu
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posted November 02, 2014 08:44 PM |
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And by that logic, a factory owner with no kids can decide to pollute the air instead of spending money on regulations, if the effects of the pollution will not be significant in his life time. He practically and genetically has nothing to lose. Of course, the outstanding achievement is actually trying to PR this as the objective moral value.
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xerox
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posted November 02, 2014 09:00 PM |
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To be fair the libertarian principle of property is an excellent de-facto regulation against enviromental pollution. To bad it's rarely enforced due to corporate welfare...
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