Yes it is. But I don’t see any other way to explain how it is that we ALL know that “Red is evil, Blue is good” is a bad moral system. We don’t even have to hear the details or arguments. We know it’s wrong because we all have a certain moral background information that it violates.
Also, consider that the prevalence of moral reductio ad absurdum arguments. It’s a common thing to criticize a moral point of view by saying something like “Well yes, but if your principle is that, then you are saying that rape is acceptable in situation X” If there was no intuitive/pre-knowledge aspect of morality, then the appropriate response would always be “Yes, rape is acceptable in situation X according to my view, so what?”
So this is one of those times where “well being” is an important distinction from the simplistic notion of “pleasure”… It’s easy to argue why SOME painful truths are better known… For example knowing that you have cancer allows you and you loved ones time to come to terms with it, work out any differences and make peace so no one is left with regret and generally make preparations that soften the blow on your family when your time comes (financially as well as emotionally)…
But then there are other times where it seems obvious that you ought not tell people the truth… for example after you reject some girl you think is hideous and she asks you why you’re not interested, you don’t say “because I find you repulsive”… you say something less horrible… “it’s not you it’s me… I just got out of a long term relationship” or some shit because you only see harm and can’t see any possible good resulting from telling the truth.
Isn’t that exactly what happens when people disagree about what “feels” moral? You can’t “feel” the difference between intrinsic values and conditioned responses… so for example in the case of the burqa that leaves us in a strange predicament… would he be right in dismissing any moral system that didn’t take that intuition into account? It seems the only way we could deny this is by fiat alone…
Might I Instead I suggest we appeal to the role and purpose of morality in our lives and in society… and what that role and purpose implies about what morality should concern itself with?
Perhaps even bring science into the equation and what we know about the human mind etc…
Well, it’s not, is it? Licking an exposed copper wire without knowing whether or not it’s live isn’t courageous, even though it risks personal suffering, and neither is punching your wife in front of a policeman. There has to be a positive upside to the risk, and generally to the welfare of others besides yourself. Although not always - in many cultures, following one’s dream can demand courage. But it’s a risk you take to obtain another, more fundamental good, that’s how we differentiate courageous acts from foolhardiness.
Why was being courageous the right thing to do, if it only caused suffering without any ancilliary benefits of pleasure, truth, beauty, power? If you have to provide a reason why you thought you were being courageous and not foolish or spiteful or negligent, you can’t say “because courage is good”.
Politics is very often about point-scoring and preaching to your own crowd - as I said, working towards a political end is posited as a good in itself for political reasons.
I think if you take a poll of people whose opinion you respect, on whether they would rather find out that their spouse is cheating on them or live on in blissful ignorance as the only person in town who didn’t know that, almost all if not all would choose the former. Unless they were philosophy graduates, then it might split 50/50 Similarly, if you ask Sam Harris what conclusion he’d draw if scientists discovered that God doesn’t exist and that evangelical fundamentalist Christianity leads to the happiest societies, I don’t think he’d go the happy-clappy route.
I’d argue that disgust and immorality are separate issues that may merely influence each other and complicate reasoning. But agreed that #2 can be excruciatingly bad.
True, but I suppose the utilitarian can hold that people are emotionally invested in certain things such that it causes distress if they’re harmed or changed.
But we don’t, except in particular difficult cases. There’s a large enough body of what everyone or nearly everyone thinks is moral, that we can derive systems based on it.
That’s exactly the same thing. In some screwed up Muslim country, ‘the role and purpose of morality in our lives and society’ is to praise God and chop off clitorises or whatever. Your “Greatest happiness for the greatest number” has nothing to do with how they think about morality, and will just sound like some crazy crap a decadent Westerner thought up. This is the problem I’m pointing out in this thread. You can’t crap all over moral intuition, and the conclude “Instead of relying on intuition, let’s rely on the role of morality in our society”. They aren’t different.
Like I said- why isn’t “Blue is good, Red is evil” a good moral system? Because everybody rejects it on the grounds of what they already intuit to be right and wrong.
Well, the first is probably covered by the increased suffering of the family taken by surprise. Take the example in my other response: would you rather find out that your spouse is cheating on you or live on in blissful ignorance as the only person in town who didn’t know? How does wellbeing relate in concrete ways, or is it an intuitionist trap to go with the gut feeling that wellbeing is greater in the former case? Is the priest who’s lost his faith but keeps preaching to comfort others with a lie acting morally? All we’ve done is shifted the question from “what is moral?” to “what is wellbeing?”, because wellbeing has a moral component, a relation to society and the world. But we’re no closer to answers.
I disagree. I think both of those acts are courageous, they're just also stupid and pointless and evil for other reasons. We could imagine some convoluted scenario in which both of those acts would be, on the balance, the right thing to do. In such scenarios, I think we'd have to admit that the acts were courageous. So I conclude that they are courageous in general, and the goodness of the courage is just, in normal circumstances, overruled by other things. It's entirely possible for a non-utilitarian to conclude that an act shouldn't be performed because it causes pointless suffering.
I don’t think I differentiate. I think a courageous act can be foolhardy.
If the ancillary benefit is truth, beauty, or power, then we're talking about some other kind of consequentialism. I have problems with consequentialism, but this particular argument doesn't really apply.
But if the courageous act was not foolish or spiteful or negligent, then “because courage is good” is a sufficient reason to do it, and nobody will even ask.
Agreed on both counts!
Also agreed.
The entanglement is complex at any rate.
Yes. There's always going to be a form of utiiltarianism that is unfalsifiable- "if you are defending it, you must like it, therefore..." Interestingly, the equal and opposite selfish egoist can make the exact same argument- if you do it, it brings you pleasure, therefore the only good is selfishness.
C’mon dude… aborting a 3 week old fetus or conducting stem cell research being the equivalent of murder is not a “particularly difficult case”… It seems to me the only thing we DO have in common are a handful of simple things like… rape is bad, murder is bad, stealing is bad (although even with this one we first we have to agree on when and how something becomes someone’s rightful property)…
I’m sorry… i expressed that in an easily misunderstood way… by role and purpose I meant “look at what morality is to that society in terms of it’s effects on the individual’s life and in their society” independent of their justifications for it… you also ignored the part where I suggested we use our scientific findings about the human psyche to determine what our intrinsic intuitions really are and how divergent they really are… etc.
I mean… claiming something is an intrinsic moral intuition and not some arbitrary cultural influence is one thing… but denying evidence to the contrary is something else.
You could easily imagine a culture where “red is evil and blue is good” was something people were indoctrinated with and thus became a moral intuition… hell working on some arbitrary day people decided to call the sabbath was so immoral so as to be considered worthy of being stoned at some point… “Red is evil and Blue is good” seems trivial to pull off by comparison… There would be no real motivation for it, except perhaps if you wanted people to buy the ingredients for blue paint and put people who produced red paint out of business… I read something about a church that did that with fish at some point… the fisherman were not able to make a living so they decreed that on some random day of the week that everyone ought to eat fish… that eating land animals and plants on that day, was immoral.
There are no shortages of peoples that held beliefs about morality that are RADICALLY different from what you and I might find intuitive… I mean you and I who share a significant amount of cultural similarities are likely to agree on allot of things, but let’s not pat ourselves on the back and celebrate too much… that doesn’t necessarily mean we have the “right” intuitions.
In fact this was the first thing I admitted to in the other thread when I decided to try and defend utilitarianism… Utilitarianism gives us a goal, but no clear path to that goal… in fact there might be several equally valid paths to that goal…
What I would argue is this: If someone acts with a genuine concern for the well being of all parties involved attempting to make the best of the situation for as many as possible… then that person cannot be said to have acted immorally… misguided, perhaps… naive perhaps… foolish even… but not immoral!
This is still extremely obtuse to me, can you give an example? It STILL sounds like you’re saying we set up a moral theory based on what people believe about morality before we state our theory, which still mires utilitarianism in my criticism of it.
And how do you determine this? Ask a bunch of people and take a head count? You’re still in the realm of justifying your conclusions based on people’s pre-existent moral beliefs before you set up your theory.
And you think I can't imagine a culture that doesn't idolize suffering, or place little to no value on individual pleasure? The idea isn't that "Red is evil and Blue is good" is added to a list of moral decrees about things like rape and murder. The idea is "Red is evil and Blue is good" is the cornerstone of moral theory, in place of 'greatest good for the greatest number'. Which, by the way, is a moral intuition people have because they live in a culture where they hear it all the time. I don't know how you can deny it: "Red is evil and Blue is good" is stupid, and "Harm is evil and pleasure is good" is not stupid, because we already knew they were true/false before we heard them. Utilitarianism only makes sense because people who hear it for the first time have a background in enjoying pleasure and avoiding pain. You don't think of this as a moral intuition because it's so universal and you want to call moral intuitions flighty, cultural things...but that's what it is, nevertheless. A universal moral intuition that there's something bad about pain, and good about pleasure.
But pain and pleasure aren't the only things we feel this about. Go on, find me a culture that thinks honesty is bullshit or promises have no value. I'm not talking about things like 'don't each fish on friday' here. Whatever it is you think 'harming people is immoral' or 'pleasure is a good' are, they aren't the only ones.
Similarly, if you ask Sam Harris what conclusion he’d draw if scientists discovered that God doesn’t exist and that evangelical fundamentalist Christianity leads to the happiest societies, I don’t think he’d go the happy-clappy route.