Magic Poriferan
^He pronks, too!
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2007
- Messages
- 14,081
- MBTI Type
- Yin
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- One
- Instinctual Variant
- sx/sp
No one defined what good actually is. I admit, I believe in the existance of a metaphysical good and this is what I refer to when I discuss the subject. Honestly, I'm still working on the concept. But, the character of what I consider is good, is not just confined to what benefits me personally.
As far as I can tell the most definite good is letting other people achieve their own goals as long as they are not at others expense, which is why harmlessness is more important in my mind than active do-gooding. And arbitrary morals make for more damage when actively enforcing them than when your focus is not trying to infringe.
But deciding you must not act is an arbitrary moral, too, and it certainly does harm when you have the power to relatively easily prevent murder, or starvation, or something like that. Those people having their lives cut short are certainly having the chance to achieve their own goals taken away from them, and I can blame you in part for not saving them when it was in your power.
I myself don't assume letting someone achieve a goal is inherently good (unless we extremely vaguely take the other person's goal to be achieving happiness, not at the greater expense of the happiness of others). I try to go by a kind of quantitative happiness principle.
There's little that is certain in life. You can give a hobo $20 and he could use it to buy everclear and drink himself to death. You can murder someone in cold blood and stop the multi-lane multi-death traffic accident that he would've caused tomorrow. Suffering can create art, pleasure can blind. Judging by outcomes is flawed, at what link do you stop judging? The first in the chain, the second, the third? Which effects take precedence?
Everything is flawed. This gets back to why I say moral behavior shouldn't be judged like it's boolean. It may not be satisfying to a lot of people, but my answer is that you do the best you can. You try to encompass the broadest scope of time, space, and degrees of separation that you can. The better our knowledge and rationality, the better a job we'll do on that front. And as flawed as our minds typically are right now (and may always will be) I do believe, in a general sense, that the odds of getting something done becomes a lot higher where there is a rationale and knowledge driven attempt to do it. No where near perfect, but better than nothing at all.
The effects that take precedent would relate to a kind of philosophical number crunching, if you will. If you go buy a typical mantra like the most happiness, for the most people, for the longest period of time, then you have something of an outline (my thoughts get more complex than those words left in their own vagueness). Sometimes a prediction is very difficult to make, but then sometimes, not so much.
The obvious one being that if you know everyone is going to die, you know about as well as you can know anything that they aren't coming back, that the human race is done, and there won't be humans appreciating anything anymore. It's a prediction I can make into eternity. That prediction can then be factored into a moral analysis whenever it might come up (blowing up the earth is bad, mm'kay?). I know most predictions won't be that easy, but rather than being the basis for getting rid of what is probably the most functional approach to morality, it should instead just be more incentive to gain insight.
In the end, I know that I want to live, so I will not impede others from the same. Goodness is not something that I enforce on other people's actions, but is something that only I can truthfully exercise. I do good if, with the knowledge I have, I know that no one was dimished by my actions. If I was mistaken, I take warning on my next decision. Goodness is being able to live with my own decisions. It's an internal process.
There are some people that want to die, and they may be justified in that. Would you not do them the kindess of killing them? And would you still stand idle as those who want to live are killed by others? Isn't your decision inevitably going to be interpretable as the allowance of a person's death one way or the other? Is it okay if someone is diminished by your inactions?
And how would you know? You say you would with the knowledge you have. How is that much easier than trying to know what I say you should try to know in moral matters?
If goodness is ultimately that internal, based that much on how you feel about yourself, then it really is of no relevance to anyone else and I think it qualifies as sort of a solipsistic ethic.
I was being imprecise.
/unpardonable INTP crime
Of course by us, I meant sentient life via the mechanism of evolution. Altruism isn't limited to homo sapiens.
Nahh, you're pardoned.
Gosh, don't go all aspie on me!
The "natural" (or default, whatever you want to call it) response to any threat is to preserve self. Even seemingly cooperative societies - like ants and bees - are self-serving when you do the genetic math (all individuals in a unit are closely related). One of the hardest things for evolutionary psychologists to explain has been 'from whence, altruism?' or kindness to unrelated individuals. And we have game theory to thank for the solution, as you suggest. Competitive altruism, etc. Everything reduces to self-interest - if only at the level of the gene. Morality and altruism are illusory. We value them in ourselves because society values them. And society values them because it means this person might sacrifice themselves for ME. It's ultimately selfish to love goodness.
Hmm. But often not even at a human level, but the gene like you say. In this case both the impact is ultimately one that you could think of as a greater good and the intention and self-awareness of the persons involved is not consciously calculating or selfish. In the sense of the selfish gene, is self-interested behavior, but it almost falls off the human radar. From a similar level of analysis it would be true to say that ego and will are also illusions. I'm not exactly sure how to put this, but it's sort of like these things are beneath the grasp of human thinking, not even capable of entering into a consideration of how to actually try living.
I wish I could come up with a better way of putting that.
Sometimes I hate being a Rational.
It was one rational to another in a philosophy discussion. The power of persnicket compels you. Or frustrates and stifles you. Pretty much the same thing, right?
I often regret entering lengthy discussions on this forum, too. This time, I'm not the one. I still have time yet, however.
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