An argument for a new normative theory (and a PhD thesis)

I am a PhD student who is working on an entirely new normative theory and, as part of that, I am looking for people to point out any problems with my arguments or any objections I should deal with to my theory. Previously I have posted links to chapters but that is quite a lot to read in order to contribute so instead I’m going to make some abridged versions of my case for my normative theory in this post. If you disagree with anything I say, or can think of an objection to the theory that comes out of it, please let me know. If you make good points I will respond to them in my thesis and reference you however you prefer.

To be clear, this is a very short summation of the arguments present in my first thesis chapters, if you would like to read them in more detail, I can link you the chapter itself.

So, let’s dive straight in to the arguments:

I take as my starting assumption that morality, if it exists at all, is the way in which persons (by which I mean free, rational, conscious agents) ought to be or act, where ought is understood in a categorical and universal sense. With this assumption in hand, we can begin to ask what that way might be, or to put it another way, what is of moral value, by considering what it is to be a person. As a way in which persons ought to be or act would apply to all potential persons, not merely us as humans, we cannot use contingent facts about ourselves as humans as the basis for moral value. So moral value cannot be grounded in something like happiness, as we can imagine persons that do not experience happiness. What then could be a basis for moral value? We can consider what is shared by all persons in order to come up with possible candidates and what we find is that all persons have free will, so the capacity to make choices, and also understanding, the capacity to understand their choices. This joint capacity for both understanding and making choices, which I will from now on be referring to as freedom, is not only shared by all persons, it is also not shared by anything that is not a person. There are no things which are not persons, free, rational, conscious agents, which can understand choices and make them freely. This capacity is, in a very real way, what it means to be a person, a moral agent. For this reason, this seems to be our best candidate for moral value. Though it is possible there are other candidates and indeed other things that are of moral value, they will not be discussed here as I do not know what they could be.

So, our candidate for moral value is freedom, but freedom over what? As this morality is objective and universal, it is presumably not the case that it makes conflicting recommendations, or made no recommendations at all, in almost all practical situations, which would seem to be the case if all choices were of equal value. However, if the freedom that matters is the freedom to make one’s own choices, the choices that relate to those things that belong to the person; their mind, their body and their property, then morality would be functional. Also, there is something conceptually odd about the idea of being free to make someone else’s choices for them, against their will. For these reasons we can say that what is of moral value is the freedom of persons over those things which already belong to them; their mind, their body and their property. As a quick note on property, I should say that I have not yet seen a really good justification for how we come to own unowned property in the first place. If it turns out we cannot truly own property, and it is instead just a useful construct, then we can remove it from our list of things that our ours and treat it purely instrumentally.

So, we have our candidate for moral value, but we don’t know what form our moral theory should take. To determine this let us first consider whether we ought to be concerned with the actions people perform or the character traits they exhibit. We might well want to be virtue ethicists of a kind, but many of the traits we might want to consider desirable in persons can’t be shared by all potential persons, and those that can, such as being free and rational, are already shared by all free, rational agents, so it isn’t clear how we could say a person ought to be. So instead we ought to focus on actions, but do we focus on the consequences of our actions or the form our actions take? We may want to be deontologists and say that people ought to only act in certain ways or according to certain maxims. But the problem with this is that maxims are always arbitrarily defined, in that a maxim that says “don’t kill” could be made better if it included an exception for when the person you are killing is trying to kill you and you are defending yourself, but it could be made even better by including an exception for cases where killing that person prevents the death of five others who are in morally similar circumstances, and so on and so on until our maxims describe the situation we are in and what to do in it perfectly. This of course leads to the distinction between acting and letting happen, and it isn’t clear how we can draw a clear distinction between something that happens because you did something and something that happens because you stood by. Without having a strong way to morally distinguish action from inaction, it seems we ought to be consequentialists.

So, we have a consequentialist theory with the ability of persons to understand and make their own decisions as the measure of moral value. This means that when acting we ought to ensure we do not violate the freedom of others over their own choices, unless we must do so in order to prevent a greater violation of freedom which could not be prevented without at least this much of a violation occurring, and we have some degree of obligation (which I discuss in it’s own chapter but won’t get into here) to prevent or reduce such violations. What this means in practice is that determining what to do in a moral situation is not a matter of weighing happiness, following strict and unchanging rules or considering what kind of person acts in a certain way, it is a matter of allowing persons to make their own choices. To give a few examples of practical implications:

• Lying can be wrong in some circumstances such as fraud where it denies the person the ability to understand the choice they are making, but it is not wrong in most circumstances.
• Adultery (assuming there aren’t any STIs involved) is a personal issue, not a moral one.
• Parents do not have a right to decide what happens to their children, rather they have an obligation to protect their child until it is capable of making its own choices and to act in its best interests when they must make decisions for it in the interim.
• The role of a government is to first protect its people and then to act in their interests especially when making decisions regarding shared property.
• Nothing can ever be offensive enough that we ought to violate the freedom of a person to say it.

… a good way to approach the subject on this kind of medium.

Merely a technical detail: that is an issue of definition, not assumption. So given that to be your lexicon entry…

Emmm… “persons, not humans”??
Could you provide an example of a person who isn’t human?

That would be your premature and extraordinary theory … one with which I would have to disagree. One must have an understanding of what happiness is in order to constructively approach that subject.

What about the rather hefty and long sustained arguments against the notion of free will? Are you proposing that we merely scratch off the centuries of debates without even a notice?

The bottom line of the free-will issue is that there are kinds and degrees of “free-will”. So any morality based on free-will must in some way, address and compensate for the variations because the morality, by its very essential definition, cannot vary.

??? Did you mean “not only not shared by all persons…”?
Obviously all people do not have the same education nor the same decision making capacity.

I would advise that you leave out the issue as to whether such agents should be referred to as “persons”. That can be a distractive issue. Your higher intent is concerned merely with “free-to-decide agents”, whatever one might wish to call them.

So your theme is that morality should be designed around the notion and value of free agency, perhaps that morality should be whatever it is that supports or enhances free agency - whatever enhances free agency is inherently moral.

I think that you have already explicated that issue.

??? That comes across as a somewhat conflated, confused, presumptuous, and a bit meaningless sentence. Could you possibly rephrase that because I can’t deduce what your intent was supposed to be?

What is or is not one’s own property is itself a moral question. One cannot reference a moral value as the defining issue of moral value. That would be circular and tautological and lead to nothing but argument and abandonment (the last thing desired for a moral code).

That declaration undermines a very significant portion of your own thesis. On one hand you say that property is of fundamental significance, but on the other hand, you state that it is dubious and can be dismissed. One should not include any such issues within any dissertation.

I can’t say that your reasoning is well founded. You state your conclusion is that morality should be based upon consequences, presumably consequences relating to free agency. I think that was pretty obvious from the beginning, given that morality is to be designed around enhancing free agency.

Okay. That probably could have been stated in merely a few sentences.

…synoptic repetition.

That is contradictory. A moral code is a set of fundamental rules regarding behavior. How can you claim to set up moral rules and yet not strictly follow them? And if they are going to be changing all of the time, why bother to even make them in the first place? And if everyone is merely allowed to make their own choices, then how can there be rules at all? A rule restricts free choices by its very nature. It is somewhat of a nonsense procalmation.

In most circumstances, lying is NOT wrong???

Ummm… So lying to a grand jury should be acceptable (such as Bill Clinton’s case)? Why have a court at all if everyone is merely going to lie?

Unsupported non-sequitur, and obviously wishful, conclusion.

Who does have “the right to decide what happens to their children”? Such decisions are being made every day with every child, with or without parents. So who has the moral right? If “no one” is your answer, then your moral code cannot be followed at all.

Again, far too unsubstantiated proclamations.

I have to say, this is not at all PhD material.

Echoes of Carleas and his idea that pain is not a legitimate part of moral calculus.

I don’t know what the cat is thinking but it seems to be making a choice to drink the Christmas tree water instead of the clean water that I put out for her. I don’t punish her when she does it so it seems to be a free choice.

If lying was accepted and routine, then what kind of society would it produce? I suspect a crappy one full of stress, frustration and resentment.

That’s included for my benefit since I brought up sexual morality in the other thread. Sexual conduct seems to be a big test of a morality based on ‘freedom’ because the typical situations do not involve a loss of freedom.

…Inspires one to wonder what the liberals are pushing now (“you have no right to be happy”).

James: Are you suggesting you have a right to be happy? Not merely to pursue your own happiness, but to actually be happy? I think you may want to consider the implications of that.

Persons are free, rational agents. I don’t know of any others that exist, but it could certainly apply to various possible alien forms of life. There might even be a case to be made that there are some non-human animals that are persons here on our own planet.

I can provide my argument in defense of believing in free will if you like. I was just mindful that the post was already quite long.

No I meant shared by all persons. Anything that is rational has the capacity to understand choices, anything that is free has the capacity to make them. People may be more educated and know more and the ability to make better choices, but being able to understand choices in that one can understand and respond to reasons to make them is required to be a rational agent.

No I wouldn’t say that whatever enhances free agency is inherently moral. I would say what I in fact said.

If we can own property, it is morally significant. If we cannot, it obviously isn’t.

Regarding the strict or unchanging rules thing: good point. That was poorly phrased. I supposed what I should have said was “following specific maxims such as “do not kill” or “never lie”” What I was trying to communicate here is the difference between a consequentialist system that will condone any behaviour so long as the consequences are good enough, and a deontological system which condemns actions based on whether they conform to a specific rule of action.

Yes, lying is not wrong in most circumstances. A grand jury is, quite obviously, not most circumstances, though I can certainly imagine cases where it would be permissible or even obligatory to lie to one.

Not unsupported and not wishful thinking. Who a person goes to bed with being their own choice and not the choice of their partner is fairly obvious, and that persons should be able to understand and make their own choices is rather the whole point of what we are talking about.

My answer is that the “right” in question is that of the child, and that parents have an obligation to protect those “rights” until such time as the child is capable of understanding its own choices with regards to them.

Phyllo: Are you suggesting that lying is not accepted and routine now?

The various “moral systems” that compete for our support, such as utilitarianism, deontology or virtue ethics, are where the real truth of morality is. Morality is a broad term meant to represent a whole bunch of stuff that are often mutually exclusive and contradictory to each other. “Morality” is basically a made-up concept meant to capture all this “stuff”, so we don’t need to look at it and can just use a single word or concept to lump it all together as if that meant we understood it.

We don’t like when certain things occur, for example sexual assaults or theft or murder or lying or any number of stuff. But no God somewhere is crying that these things occur; the universe doesn’t give a shit what we do to each other. Nature is a huge orgy of death and violence, life eating life. The bottom line is that only life itself, a given life, cares what happens to it. Whether as individuals or species.

Granted that human apes are able to care about other species, we are somewhat unique like that. But then again we also enslave and eat other animals too. Again, it’s contradictory stuff.

Living things value themselves, or at least act as if they value themselves. Humans care about other humans, to a limited extent, because other humans are alike to ourselves. The moral calculus degrades the value of other things and other living things to the degree that such others are distant from or unlike to ourselves. That’s just the way it is, Singer’s expanding circle of compassion notwithstanding.

Bottom line, morality is an idea we made up to try and explain some things to ourselves and each other, about ourselves and each other. That doesn’t make morality “bad” or “unreal”, but it does mean there is no possibly perfect or universal, uncontroversial moral system. And it also means we have a lot more work to do unpacking the real substance and content of what is truly meant by the idea “morality”. Philosophy should be doing that difficult and deep work, rather than trying to pick sides among the contradictory and partial elements.

In my personal ethic, everyone has the freedom to choose happiness, depending on prior agreements. But then, I have a rather seriously deep understanding of happiness.

That one proclamation is itself an entire thesis in need of grand defense. It most certainly shouldn’t be a mere footnote to be taken for granted and used as premise to more general concerns.

Well, what do you think, Phyllo? A guy professes to be writing a “PhD thesis” who;

1. Clearly has grammar issues,
2. Clearly has serious education issues concerning the topic, “morality”,
3. Doesn’t seem to have any comprehension of logical architecture, and
4. Proclaims that he is morally obligated to lie (the inherent default of not being wrong while providing for more “freedom”).

Is one of those unspecified “most cases” wherein lying is not wrong, the case of lying about when it is okay to lie? Is it also not wrong to lie in answering that question? How would anyone know if he was lying about that? Or anything else? What about lying on his “PhD thesis”?

Frankly, it reminds me of a couple of other posters with a similar claim that lying is perfectly okay (the only morality being to never get caught by the wrong people). Other than a little play with abnormal psychology, what would be the point in even discussing anything with such people? I would ask him that, but …

.

I don’t know about some of those issues but his theory has at least two huge problems.

1. By basing the theory on ‘persons’ instead of humans , he is ignoring the specific needs and concerns of humans.
   It’s like writing a thesis about the care and nutrition of cats and defining cats as animals. A cat does not have the same needs as a snake, cow, snail, etc. By ignoring the unique characteristics of cats, it’s almost useless as guide to taking care of cats.
   He did because of the way he defines the word ‘objective’ … he thinks that it has to be separated from humanness, when in fact, it does not.
   There is an objectively right way to care for a cat so that it thrives and an objectively wrong way.

2. He tries to fit reality to the theory instead of fitting the theory to reality. That’s why he says that lying and sexual conduct are not moral issues … they are not easily explained by his theory.
   I think that he will have a tough time during his defense. They are bound to ask why he excludes moral questions which have been addressed extensively by other moral systems. I suspect that “people were wrong” won’t sound very impressive.

Wyld: We are most certainly talking about different things when we use the word “morality”. But the fact that you are claiming that what I am talking about is not morality is a reasonable objection and one that I discuss in my thesis. I will Pm you asking how you would like to be referenced and reference you as one who has put this objection if you don’t mind.

James: When you talk about happiness, do you mean it as an emotion or a general attitude towards life? One objection that has come up before is that my theory ignores emotional pain and loss of happiness, and if you are making a similar point I will reference you as having said it as well if you like?

I have a chapter dedicated to lying not being wrong in most circumstances, but it is worth noting that the moral status of lying, according to the theory I am postulating, falls out of the fundamental principles of that theory. So while it is revisionist in the sense that it is claiming that people have rather the wrong end of the moral stick when it comes to lying, it is not claiming that they have gotten the implications of their moral theories or positions wrong.

I’m going to leave the snarky remarks alone as I can’t see a way to answer them that doesn’t involve either me boasting about myself or making personal attacks on you, but I will deal with this issue of not being able to trust someone who claims it is morally permissible to lie:

Essentially, you are implying that one who professes that it is morally permissible to lie is untrustworthy as they may be lying about anything. But let’s flip that on it’s head for a moment. If you claim that it is morally impermissible to lie and therefore you would not do it, then we might be inclined to think you more trustworthy, but what do we have to base that on besides your word? If you were a deeply untrustworthy and dishonest person, you might recognize that it is in your best interest to lie about this fact in order to better deceive people. You could claim that you aren’t doing such a thing, but that is exactly what you would claim if you were lying about your position on lying in the first place. Conversely, someone who thinks it is permissible to lie but says so seems to have less interest in deceiving you, possibly in this case because I have absolutely nothing to gain by doing so. If you knew someone to have a reputation for lying and they told you they needed to borrow some money and they would definitely pay it back, then you would have good reason to be sceptical and something to lose. If however someone says they are writing a PhD thesis and want to include a section where they tackle objections that have been suggested by people and they want your permission to reference them, what exactly could that person be up to? Are they seeking to get your permission to reference you through deception? I suppose it’s possible, but why would such a dishonest individual bother asking for permission in the first place? Do they think it is more likely you will answer them if you claim it is for a PhD thesis? Perhaps, though my experience, certainly in this thread, has been that is more likely to invite people to make comments about whether your grammar in forum posts qualifies you to be a PhD candidate.

Also, to be clear I didn’t say I was morally obligated to lie, I said that it can be morally obligatory to lie, such as in the case of the murderer asking if your neighbor is hiding at your house.

Phyllo: I am not ignoring the specific needs of humans, I am just treating them as instrumental to the moral value of their freedom as persons. For example, there is nothing about freedom to make one’s own choices that means that persons need to have contact with other persons, however in the case of humans, at least while children, if they do not have such contact their minds do not develop properly and they often develop mental disabilities and, in extreme cases, do not develop the ability to properly understand their decisions.

To use your analogy, I have a thesis about caring for animals that says they need to eat, sleep, excrete waste and exercise their muscles, but the particular foods, environments and behaviours of each animal, such as a cat, are going to be specific to that animal. That doesn’t mean you don’t have the same broad goals, but they are achieved differently from species to species.

I am indeed trying to fit my theory to reality, I just don’t see any reason to treat popular moral intuitions as indicative of objective moral facts.

First it might help if you come to understand the difference between a thesis and a dissertation. A thesis, especially a doctoral thesis, requires seriously and fully documented authoritarian reference evidence or experimental evidence for any claims being made other than your final conclusion - the precise theoretical statement, claim, or hypothesis of the thesis. On the other hand, a dissertation, although still requiring supporting evidence, is far more about your opinions, possibly those of others, and associated reasonings. The support for a dissertation is largely that of reasoning. Dissertations seldom require authoritarian references. It seems obvious that if anything, you are writing a dissertation, not a thesis.

I define “joy” as that sensation one gets when he perceives progress toward a subconsciously accepted effort or goal, unless it is outweighed by an alternate cause and opposing sensation. The goal can be anything and the perception need not be accurate to reality. The feeling will be an upsurge of serotonin and/or dopamine communicating throughout the brain that progress has been detected. Just the opposite occurs when feeling sadness, misery, or depression. Of course there are a variety of drugs that can cause those same sensations artificially, circumventing the brain’s method for detecting good from bad situations.

Due to the fact that joy can be established by either good or bad situations from misperceptions and/or drugs (even EMR waves these days), joy cannot be the entire priority of life without life soon dying out. But then neither can joy be totally left out of the priority due to its inherent and natural indicator of progress toward life supporting instincts. Joy is a part of the natural decision making mechanism. When a nation senses progress toward a new social movement of its choosing, the nation, not merely the people within, is experiencing “joy”. The nation strengthens its efforts in that direction due to perceiving its progress as fruitful.

With that in mind, my personal ethic (or “moral”, if you like), maintains a particular highest priority goal referred to as “MIJOT”, Maximum Integral of Joy Over Time. That priority mathematically infuses the priority of sensing progress, joy, with the more well known priority of survival. In order to maintain the maximum integral (the maximum sum of the infinitesimal bits) over time, one must survive for the greatest length of time and do so with the greatest degree of joy manageable.

A joyous longer life is more assured by those with such a moral priority. All resultant “ought” or “should” behaviors can be rationally deduced and socially integrated with certainty of sanity. There is no longer need for mystery prophets, but rather of high quality thinkers ensuring that moral codes, ethics, and laws are aimed at ensuring the longest and most joyous life of the populous. The end result is that societies and their governments also survive much longer and far more in harmony (required for that perception of progress issue). Waring gets minimized and eventually completely eliminated, along with a great many social conflicts, diseases, and corruption.

All of that is merely a result of a great deal more fundamental reasoning that leads to the concept of MIJOT, of “SAM”, and others. And that is why I claim that “a person has the right to be happy” (using “joy” and “happiness” as synonymous). Happiness or joy must be a part of the highest priority of one’s efforts and thus of one’s ethic or moral code. If one is to make their own decisions and have any rights at all, joy and survival must be their foundation in order to avoid misery and death for a great portion of the society, if not all of it.

If I was to include into the previous explanation, all of the supporting rationale stemming literally from “scratch”, the result would be a “dissertation”. Note that no references have been made to what any authority proclaims. The support is entirely that of rationale, although examples of historical events can serve as added supporting, empirical evidence.

What you are somewhat youthfully suggesting is that if a man tells you that he lies whenever he feels like it, you should trust him more than the man who says that he avoids lying at every opportunity. One man tells you to not trust what he says. The other man tells you to trust what he says. So You trust the one who said to NOT trust him???

Yes, you “might”. On the other hand, the other man has not only recognized that he is going to lie, but has openly confessed to it.

Can you trust a man so incredibly stupid as to actually tell you that he lies whenever he feels like it? Merely being so stupid as to admit it makes the man untrustworthy, not merely due to the lying, but his ability to be rational. Why would a sane liar tell you that he is lying? The whole point in lying is to deceive: “I lie, but not such as to actually deceive anyone. So you can trust me.”

And realize that one must be able to take pride in being morally good. You are suggesting that women should marry the men who not only lie the most but also boast that they are lying. You are suggesting that people vote for the greater liar who also openly tells them with pride that he is lying to them. You are suggesting that people read only fiction that doesn’t admit to being fiction even though the author has openly said that it is fiction. You are suggesting that the public media proudly boast on the fact that all they say is a lie. And actually you are proposing that everyone lie about whether they are lying even while being proud of lying (tell them that you are lying even when you are not).

You are proposing a permanent era of total darkness and ignorance, not merely a fleeting era of great darkness and ignorance.

… wow…
… "if he was lying, he would tell me so" …

Using your limited rationale, I could also suggest that because you trust the person who tells you that he lies, when I want to deceive you, I should tell you that I lie … “but not this time”.

The deceiver is always going to use what you trust most against you. That is what being a deceiver is. It doesn’t matter what it is that you trust. If you trusted that the man was lying, and he knew that, he simply tells you a truth in order to deceive and manipulate you.

The only thing that you would accomplish by promoting that lying is not wrong is a “free get out of jail” pass for liars. If a man says that he does not lie, but he is caught at a lie, he can be convicted. But if a man says that he lies and does lie, he cannot be convicted because he was honest. The used car dealer told you that he lies, thus whatever rolling can of junk he sells you is okay because he told you in advance that he lies. And since all sales and marketing people boast that they lie, none of them can be convicted regardless of whatever trick they pull on the population: “Buyer beware at all times, in all situations, regarding all people. Be suspicious always. Trust no one … ever.”

[list]“Power to the Deceiver”[/list:u]
You are seriously promoting that the Christian Devil should rightfully and pridefully govern all societies. All people in power should lie … endlessly and always, thus keeping the people as ignorant as can be … no technical progress, no science progress, no social progress, no perception of progress … no joy … no happiness … eternally (aka the Christian Hell).

Of course you also promote that no one should be happy anyway, thus be incapacitated from being able to make rational decisions. Instead you promote that people should do anything to be more free … which is another term for anarchy, nihilism, disintegration … societal death and dissolution.

You didn’t say that you “are obligated” but rather that you “can be obligated” … ???

Isn’t it obvious to you that there are times when lying will better serve some higher purpose, even at times, for everyone involved? And what that means is that in extraordinary situations (such as the one you have mentioned), lying is permissible and perhaps even mandatory. But you have stated that “in most cases”, without being at all specific, lying is not wrong and thus by default, preferred. I can’t see that “most cases” has any sane rationale supporting it.

His example is based on the complex situation which arises when a person is making a statement about lying. Sure, a person might be lying when he says that he does not lie. But that misses the main point about the morality of lying.

A system which says that lying is morally acceptable, places little value in the truth.

Which truth? Any and every truth … scientific research, historical facts, food packaging, building standards, credentials of job applicants, medical evaluations, etc … all potentially false.

If we take this to his theory … accepting lying does not even make sense there. He talks about understanding choices and making decisions, but how can you understand choices when they are based on false or potentially false information?
Although there will be error and falsehood in a “truth-based” system, the available choices and your understanding of them, must be closer to reality than in a “lie-based” system.

Exactly.

And I imagine that empirically proving that point with small sample groups would be pretty easy. Form one group which knows the objective truth about some issue and others that have been lied to about the same issue. Arrange a maze such that those who know the truth will easily find their way out but those misled or ignorant take longer. Try that with a variety of types of control group people (young, women, orientals, whites, blacks, browns…), thus eliminating the “type of person” issue involved.

The end result should empirically indicate that decision making, progress, and freedom depend upon objective truth and knowledge. Thus in order to establish greater freedom, lying must be inhibited, although not necessarily totally forbidden.

The problem would seem to be relating freedom and choice. If you have 3 choices which are all based on true information versus 3 choices which are all based on false information … in what way do the true choices give you more freedom? What if you have 3 “true” choices and 10 “false” choices … do 10 choices give you more freedom even if they are false?

So how is freedom related to reality?

Somewhere you have to introduce the idea that truth is good.

I would think that freedom is more related to being free to accomplish a chosen goal rather than merely having more goals to choose. False information doesn’t actually give freedom to accomplish (or very rarely), but rather freedom to become entrapped by being misled toward an illusion.

An example is the USA is the recent student loan program wherein students are loaned money from the government on the implication that jobs will be available, when in fact, extremely few jobs exist. Now millions of people are entrapped by debt for the rest of their lives. In such a state of debt, freedom is all but entirely removed.

The government provided another choice. They offered loans, as if they were a bank. They deceived the population such as to create impoverished enslavement, removing will power from the masses while shifting blame to the students for their choices (the whole point to the exercise).

Freedom to be deceived is not freedom to accomplish.

Yes, but that Introduces the concept of fulfilling human needs and desires, which he has already pooh-poohed in the other thread.

James: I am saying that if one person tells you they think lying is morally permissible, that is not the same as saying they should not be trusted and that if someone tells you they never lie, that is a person immediately worthy of distrust.

I am absolutely suggesting none of that whatsoever. I am suggesting that claiming that lying is morally permissible is not the same as claiming that one spends much of their time lying and that I would find anyone who claims not to lie at all to be very suspicious. Also, you seem to be under the impression that presently there is a serious taboo against lying and anyone found to be doing it under at least the significant majority of cases (not merely things like fraud which I have already said I think is immoral) will be seriously distrusted and perhaps scorned. I am not sure where you live so I can’t say for sure that this isn’t the case there, but this certainly isn’t the case in most of the Western world. When we tell people they look great though they don’t, or tell annoying acquaintances that it would be good to catch up, though it wouldn’t, we are not seen as terrible villains, we are seen as ordinary people. You may say that lying is permissible in some circumstances and not others, and I would agree with you, but then we are only having a discussion about which circumstances are acceptable and which are not. To claim that lying is never permissible is truly bizarre.

No, I would suggest that you use what you know of a person and their conduct to determine whether they are trustworthy or not… just as everyone does now. If a used car salesman tells you he sometimes scams his customers, shop elsewhere! I think you might employ a bit of sense when deciding whether to believe someone, and be proportionally more suspicious if they are known to deceive you, have something to gain by deceiving you or their claim is highly dubious.

No I am not promoting anything of the sort. I am promoting the idea that sometimes people should lie. That isn’t the same as promoting the idea that everyone should lie always and without end. I am certainly not promoting the Devil, as I don’t think there is any such entity.

Obligatory and permissible are different things. In most circumstances it is permissible to lie. When someone asks your name in a bar you are permitted to tell them it is “Harry” though it isn’t. In some circumstances it is obligatory to lie such as when the person shows up at your door, when your neighbor is hiding inside from someone trying to kill them, with a bloody axe as asks “is your neighbor in there? I’m going to murder him with this axe”.

Phyllo: I’m glad you asked how we can understand choices based on false information. I have written an entire chapter on essentially that issue as it is very important to lying being often permissible. I can link it if you wish. Beyond that, the examples you gave are not most circumstances and truthfulness would be obligatory in those contexts because of the consequences of lying, such as buildings falling on people or ingesting poison when one thought it was water. Further, it does not diminish the value of truth to say that one is not entitled to the truth from another in most circumstances.

I fully realize that is what you are saying. What I am saying is that such a thought is irrational, if not fully psychotic.

A) If someone tells you that lying IS morally permissible, they ARE saying that nothing that say is trustworthy.

B) If someone tells you that they never lie, they MIGHT BE lying, thus should be suspect.

In the case of (A), the person flat out tells you that he is not to be trusted. In the case of (B), you suspect that the guy might not be trustable. The insanity on your part is that you trust the guy who just told you to not trust him and distrust the guy who you merely suspect might lie one day.

Perhaps if you thought of it in terms of a thief:

A man tells you that he is a thief (not much different than a liar). Because he told you that he is a thief, you trust him with your valuables. Another man who told you that he never steals, you distrust with you valuables because he might be lying about being a thief.

Can’t you see the insanity in that? It is true that either might be lying. But which is more likely to be lying, the one who tells you that he is, or the one whom you merely suspect?

If everyone thought like you suggest, then everyone should always say that they are lying, whether they really are or not, merely to gain your trust. But then who are you going to trust? If after you got used to everyone saying that they are lying, a man told you that he really doesn’t lie, wouldn’t he inspire trust merely for the courage to be so different as to state that he doesn’t lie?

Donald Trump won trust and hope by being boldly different than the known liars. That doesn’t make him altruistic nor another liar. It merely made him different than the known bad and thus worthy of more trust than they. But what if he had said, “I am going to lie to you whenever I feel the need”? Would you trust him more than the others who never admitted their lies? You are saying that you would in fact trust Trump more if he told the people that he is going to lie to them regularly. Hillary never admitted to being a liar, so obviously she should never be trusted.

You are equating suspicion with guilt.

One man is suspected of guilt.
The other man admits guilt.

So you convict the one you suspect, not the one who admitted guilt.
That is insanity.

Sorry to be the one to inform you, but that is exactly what is referred to as “sociopathic”.

For your consideration, during the Presidential debates (you can review them on youtube if you didn’t watch them live) whenever either candidate claimed that the other was lying, a defense against the accusation was expected by both the debaters as well as the audience. But what you are saying is that there wouldn’t have been any need for defense and thus no need to accuse of lying because lying is fully accepted by the population. The reality is that there really was accusations and also attempts to defend to the audience against the accusation of lying. That provides direct, empirical evidence that “The West” does NOT [openly] accept lying. Why would an adversary accuse you of lying if no one cared whether you were lying?

You are very much misinformed.

The feminine regime accepts lying for sake of good feelings, because everything is about feelings. The masculine regime accepts lying in times of war because everything is a war (or love … they seem to have a hard time telling the difference). But if a woman discovers that you have lied to her about anything else, she will scorn you to no end. And if a man finds that you have lied for any other excuse than love or war, he too will scorn you (although males tend to temper their scorn).

You appear to be totally ignorant of these facts about modern day society.

But you have claimed just the opposite. According to you, one should trust that man more than the used car salesman who said that he is a square shooter.

Yet if they tell you that they are a liar, you discount that as any evidence of deception, but rather as evidence of trustworthiness. Their own admission of guilt is not counted as evidence against them. What the hell is that??!??

[list]“Yes, I murdered the man.”
“Well okay then, you must be innocent.”[/list:u]

What you appear to not realize, despite the examples given, is that once you say that lying is permissible “in most cases” along with the priority of seeking the most freedom, you have mandated lying “in most cases”. And if most cases is accepted, then the telling of when those cases are, is itself suspect of being a case worthy of lying about. The limits of when to lie are themselves suspect of being a lie. And from there, ALL situations have to be suspected of being a case for lying, regardless of whatever anyone is saying about anything. ALL speech becomes suspect of being lies because the limits of lying was not actually specified before the lying began.

[list]Exactly when is lying NOT permitted?[/list:u]

And how do I know that you are not lying when you answer that?

Since there is nothing wrong with “scamming”, then why would you be motivated to go elsewhere? What is the salesman doing that’s bad? Is it just bad for you or is it also bad for the other customers?

Now we come to his definition of “most circumstances”.
My examples were apparently not “most circumstances”. I don’t see how product packaging can be seen as an exceptional case that obligates truth. What’s wrong with selling tap water which is labelled as “spring water”? Nobody is going to die from consuming it.
Lower grades of meat sold as top grade? Products diluted with cheap fillers?

What’s the harm?

.
Speaking of deception and its effects upon freedom and democracy:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QVqwNLJb7s[/youtube]

Phyllo: There is absolutely something wrong with scamming. The salesman defrauds the customer and essentially does not live up to their end of the bargain. They say “this car is very reliable, has only had one previous owner and has only been driven a thousand kms” and you pay them money for a car like that. What you drive away with is a car that has had several previous owner, has had its odometer rolled back and is prone to exploding. The harm in the product labeling cases is the same. The person is paying you money for one thing and you are giving them another. You are failing to fulfill your end of the deal and, unless you provide them what you have agreed to, you are essentially stealing their money.

James:

A) No they aren’t. Telling someone lying is morally permissible is not telling them not to trust you.

The thief is very different from being a liar, but to point out the flaw in your metaphor. Saying “I am a thief” is not the same thing as saying “stealing is often morally permissible” or “property is only instrumentally valuable” or “property cannot be justified philosophically”.

You are equating claiming something to be morally permissible with claiming to be practicing it often and notoriously. I think as a general rule that taking recreational drugs is morally permissible, depending on the consequences for others of you doing so of course, but I have never done so for entirely different reasons than that I think it is morally wrong. I also think that the selling of recreational drugs is morally permissible as a general rule (though again, it depends on the specifics of the case), but that doesn’t make me a drug dealer.

The West doesn’t like lying in it’s politicians because they represent the public and are elected on the basis of promises that are then expected to be kept. That isn’t the same as not wanting anyone to lie at all.

Your characterization of men and women is… inaccurate.

I have claimed nothing of the sort. I have claimed that if you go to a car dealership and ask the salesman if he ever lies and he says “no, never. I’ve never once told a lie and I never will.” you should be very suspicious of them. If he says “Yeah, sometimes. I lie to my wife about how good her favourite dress looks and I lie to my kids about how smart they are. But I’ve never lied about the quality of a car I’ve sold” then I would be more inclined to believe them.

Lying is wrong when it deceives a person about the nature of the choice they are making, when it is an exercise in fraud by telling the person you are providing one thing and then actually providing another, when it contravenes an obligation for a person to tell the truth, such as a contractual one, or, like any action, when it causes a violation of a person’s freedom for other reasons.