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How about the case of the dog above?

Yes, they can get it wrong. People are motivated to ethics by self-interest. But there are conflicts even within individuals. Long-term and short-term goals can conflict. Morality is not atomic. Moral systems are just that - full of interrelations. So, even if we are deciding just for ourselves, we can work at cross-purposes. We can devise systems that work, that don’t work, that work well or poorly.

These are but a few ways in which we can err.

Because you do not think a human being should render a dog in such a condition.

If we can suggest wrongly, doesn’t that mean it’s something more than a suggestion?

In the case of the dog, I really like dogs and my heart goes out to the dog. i am not above presenting a moral argument in favor of punishing the person who did this. Even if I don’t really believe in the argument. Tough shit. In the end, it just makes me angry. Because i really like dogs. I get a little less excited about chicken factories.

And why did they disagree?

I get pretty excited both about dogs and chicken factories. Especially since the chicken factories are not necessary for us to have eggs. I regularly eat eggs and those chickens are treated very well.

Did who disagree? The person that did that?

No. This is the part you just don’t get. it’s not the act of suggesting itself that is wrong - it would be what we suggest that would be wrong - but not morally wrong. It would be counterproductive to the object of the endeavour. It would be like dialing a wrong number. that’s not the same as a prank call.

You said I didn’t agree with someone about the dog case. That someone suggested otherwise than I did. You tell me…?

I know, I know. I’m trying. My GF is trying to educate me. She’s made some progress.

What’s the object of the endeavour?

To devise a usable moral system.

A moral system guides people in tough life choices. By what criteria would it guide? And why is that the criteria?

No, I didn’t. I said that you don’t think that a human should treat a dog like that. I didn’t say that any specific person disagreed with you in that regard, even the person that treated the dog like that may not disagree that a dog should not be treated like that.

Are you saying not a soul would disagree with me? Of billions of people, what an unlikely coincidence. What’s’ so good about my “suggestion”?

I think I should just let you pretend that you are me and have this discussion with yourself in my place. I did not say that nobody would disagree, I said that even the person that did that might not disagree. In other words, it is possible for an agent to act in a way that the agent believes to be immoral.

Mo - The answer to that is complex, Mo. The simplest way to answer is with a chosen model. The model can be adjusted. But let’s imagine that there is a group of people wherein everyone has the same amount of power. In that case, the moral system is designed to achieve a certain balance between individual claims and behaviors in several ways. One way is to balance the short term and long term interests of the members of the group - between each other and also between individuals and the group at large.

I’ll give you an example. For the ancient jews. “Thou shalt not kill”. Of course, this means that individuals may not kill each other. But the “state” could. There were several offenses for which the punishment was death. So personal vendettas were forbidden, and killing was formalised through a series of rules. Now, jewish tribes were not democratic, so in this case, the leaders were the ones who benefited the most. But so did individuals, because it took more than a pissed off neighbor to do them in. The pissed off neighbor had to go to the bosses, and the offense he described had to apply to the rules.

It would be tempting to say that good was maximised, but it did depend upon whose good we are talking about. Overall, a tolerable balance was struck, since we know of no open rebellions. In the end, morality is abut coercing behavior of the members of the group towards a tolerable balance between competing claims and behaviors.

There are many other ways to analyse this - in terms of mutual trust, for instance. People benefit when others trust them and they can trust others - individuals benefit and the group at large does. But there are no ultimate goods - there are workable systems that produce enough benefit to enough centers of power - the benefit is “weighted”, because the group’s power is. And then there are those systems that don’t work that well.

You said that before that I’m not right to think the dog ought not to have been beaten—that it was just “my suggestion”. Why do you think my suggestion is neither right nor wrong? Does someone with the opposite “suggestion” miss nothing?

Do I have a claim to my neighbour’s dog?