Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhc!hpsemc!jat From: jat@hpsemc.HP.COM (Joe Talmadge) Newsgroups: alt.individualism Subject: Re: Moral blindness Message-ID: <9440032@hpsemc.HP.COM> Date: 16 Jan 90 17:51:15 GMT References: <7788@unix.SRI.COM> Organization: the Airborne Toxic Event Lines: 112 Michael Ellis writes: > Joe Talmadge writes: > >When we see the original act, there is no good or bad inherent in its > >percepts. We often judge acts by their effects, but again, good or > >bad can't be judged of the effects through the senses. > > I can't quite tell whether I agree or not. Pain and pleasure are > directly sensed, and even if they are hardly the last word on good > and evil, they are certainly part of the story. Just as I not only > see falling trees, but I also see that a tree has fallen down, so > I also see that someone has harmed another on purpose. I agree > that we don't properly speaking have percepts of all this, but how > we come to see such things is not exactly clear to me or anyone else. I agree that pleasure and pain are a (significant) part of the story in understanding ethical judgements. But already we seem to be getting into subjective considerations. Different acts are judged ethical or not by different people partly because of the varying amounts of pleasure or pain an act gives us. > If I own something, I interpret it as rightfully mine and so, > it is hoped, do my neighbors. An essential part of this > interpretation is a historical claim, that I acquired ownership > in accordance with prescriptions historically understood in my > community, and ideally I can provide evidence to substantiate my > historical claim to ownership. And it's important that this claim not only be consistent with historical prescriptions, but that it fit in with the current ethical feeling as well. The land I'm living on was taken from some Native Americans many years ago using means that today probably wouldn't be considered ethical. However, the time in between is great enough that no one much cares anymore, and there isn't much of a feeling that I'm doing something wrong. I would expect that an attempt to take my land away and give it back to the heirs of those native Americans would give rise to uneasy feelings ("what if they take mine, too?"), and cries of "unethical!" Yet there's a feeling that stealing for any reason is always wrong, and should be rectified. > These interpretations themselves > are as much real world facts as the shining of the sun, although > we know these different facts in different ways. I'm not sure what you mean. It may be a fact that you hold such an interpretation. The best certainty I can obtain is by asking you and believing your answer. > The fact that my body moves a certain way and causes certain > physical effects is just not enough to get to the ethical issue. > What did I intend my body to do? How did the results of my actions > affect the self-interpretations and 1st person responses of others? > Ought a reasonable person have to have known that such actions > would have affected others this way? How would you feel if > somebody did that to you accidentally? What if it were on purpose? > What if his action didn't bother you? What if it did? Certainly, ethical judgements take into consideration the reasons for, and results of, actions. I don't see how such considerations provide an objective basis for an ethical judgement; they are more subjective judgements. It may be that the effects of your act cause differing judgements of pleasure or pain, and differing judgements of good or bad, in different people. But we still come back to subjective judgements. > >Where does this judgement of good or bad come from then? I'm not > >sure. I think from us, or rather, from our emotions. > > I don't think that goes far enough, although I agree the emotions > ought to take their proper place. Need, I would say, is to desire > what knowledge is to belief. Now we certainly have more than > emotional needs. Some needs are built into us at birth, others > given by the requirements of living in our society. The raw data > of ethics is the lore which has evolved as these needs evolved, > end ethics itself is the deliberate application of reason to > perfect this lore. Our capacity for exercising this virtue is the > highest moral capacity we have. Here, you're basing ethics on evolving needs. It would seem, though, that if these human needs can and do evolve, then what is ethical will change at different times, and may even be different at the same time at distinct locations. > as opposed to, say arts or skills ("techne"). Given the extent to > which technological science has become the religion ("scientism") > of the technological consciousness, it has many followers > ideologically committed to denying the validity of heretical > sciences like ethics. > > So whatever weaknesses O'ism may have, I think their application of > the term "science" to ethics is justified. Ethics just isn't an > empirical science. From the above, I think your view is a bit too broad. Studying the intricacies of the bible is a discipline whose end (it is hoped) is the disclosure of Truth, but we would hardly consider it science [actually, studying the bible to find out the truth *about the bible* may well be a science; studying it as a source of Truth probably isn't]. It would seem the method of discovering truth is an important consideration when determining what is a science. Michael, I agree with a fair amount of what you say. However, I'm missing the link that binds your premises to "there's an objective basis for ethics". I don't see what objective basis we have to derive 'ought'. Good doesn't seem to be an object of the senses; rather it seems to be based on subjective reactions, or conformity with principles which themselves are subjectively chosen. Joe Talmadge jat@hpsemc.hp.com hplabs!hpda!hpsemc!jat jat%hpsemc@hplabs.HP.COM