Where do you get your morals from?

grasping the after wind said:

Let me restate the question. If you determine that an action you might take is helpful to you but harmful to your neighbor, or lets make it extreme, to everyone else but you. What would be the correct moral course for you to take.

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The one that yields in the net positive.
Since the increase in harm is vastly bigger then the net increase in well-being, it's kind of obvious that the action would be immoral.

And would you be justified if you decide that your moral compass centers around the fact that you are the central most important figure in the universe to yourself and that therefore the action that harms everyone else but helps you is the morally upright action to take.

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We have words to describe such a state of mind: selfish and ego-centric. And maybe also narcistic.

Which are all immoral qualities.

Ken-1122 said:

A different course of action because it goes against my moral beliefs.

Of course not; I’m better than that.

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How would it specifically go against your moral beliefs? Could you explain that to me because that is what I am trying to understand.

By what measure of good have you decided you are better? This answer would seem to me to contradict what you have been saying about the subjective nature of morality. If you determine what is right and wrong solely by a subjective process in which you determine , based upon your own personal calculation of what is helpful or harmful , then whatever you decide must be absolutely morally correct no matter what the end calculation turns out to be. So if you were to determine an action was morally upright because you decide that in your opinion that action is helpful then it would simply be morally upright. There is no objective standard to contradict that determination on your part so no way for you to be better. Since the criteria you set forth is in conflict in my example. helpful to self vs harmful to others. You must choose which is the more important self or others. Neither course , choosing your own over others or others over your own, is intrinsically a better course as you do not adhere to an objective standard that places others or places yourself in the position of most importance. You decide subjectively which is the more important. It should make no difference from a moral standpoint which of the two you choose in the situation I asked about as it is solely your decision to take as to which is the more important and consequently which is the morally superior course of action.

DogmaHunter said:

Ow look, another one who's lying for "the cause".

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Before you accuse me of lying perhaps you ought to first at the very least show that what I have said is false And just what "cause " do you imagine I am promoting?

DogmaHunter said:

The one that yields in the net positive.
Since the increase in harm is vastly bigger then the net increase in well-being, it's kind of obvious that the action would be immoral.




We have words to describe such a state of mind: selfish and ego-centric. And maybe also narcistic.

Which are all immoral qualities.

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And deciding that I am the final arbiter of what is and is not immoral based solely upon my opinion of what yields the greater net positive doesn't constitute being ego-centric, selfish or narcissistic?

grasping the after wind said:

Before you accuse me of lying perhaps you ought to first at the very least show that what I have said is false And just what "cause " do you imagine I am promoting?

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Is slavery still legal in the country you live in?
How about apartheid, does that still exist?
Women, they still can't vote?

You lied and you know it.


And I think you are trying to promote the cause of "all humans are evil and require the bible to be good" or something similar.

It's a bit hard to say, because you primarily seem to simply be challenging differing opinions.

Not that it matters much.

I can't really be serious to someone who pretends that 21st century humans still look at things like slavery, apartheid etc with the same eyes as 400 years ago, as if nothing changed.

grasping the after wind said:

And deciding that I am the final arbiter of what is and is not immoral based solely upon my opinion of what yields the greater net positive doesn't constitute being ego-centric, selfish or narcissistic?

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Well, you sure can't borrow someone else's brain to engage in moral reasoning, can you?
Yes, you necessarily have to come up with your own opinions. You're not a member of the Borg, are you?

And just like with everything, your opinions can be wrong.
And even when someone else gives you his reasoning for some moral judgement, you then still necessarily have to use your own brain to process that argument and then agree or disagree with it.

However, from where I sit, it isn't exactly arbitrary to conclude what consequences of actions are, assuming the required knowledge to discern such is present.

Sure, you could say that you simply don't care about anyone else and that "good" to you is whatever you decide is "good" for you.

But then, I don't see what you can contribute to a conversation about morals or ethics.
Morality and ethics is about how your actions affect others, after all...........................

DogmaHunter said:

Ethnic cleansing would consist of massacring all latino's.

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You mean "genocide". Ethnic cleansing is a broader category, removing or driving people out of a region by any means, with or without killings. Does this help clarify?

It's the opposite of what God commanded Israel about foreigners that came to live among them --

Leviticus 19:34 You must treat the foreigner living among you as native-born and love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

and

17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.19And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. -- Deuteronomy 10

Halbhh said:

You mean "genocide". Ethnic cleansing is a broader category, removing or driving people out of a region by any means, with or without killings. Does this help clarify?

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Ok.

Still isn't all that correct though, since the criteria is "illegal immigrant".
A latino that isn't an illegal immigrant thus would be safe.

With ethnic cleansing, the criteria is the ethnicity, not the legal status.

It's the opposite of what God commanded Israel --

Leviticus 19:34 You must treat the foreigner living among you as native-born and love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

and

17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.19And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. -- Deuteronomy 10

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Now quote the parts where God commanded Israel to go on genocidal and infanticidal killing sprees and explicitly instructs to also kill babies and toddlers and cattle, except for the virgin girls whom they could keep as war booty.

DogmaHunter said:

Ok.....
Now quote the parts where God commanded Israel to go on genocidal and infanticidal killing sprees and explicitly instructs to also kill babies and toddlers and cattle, except for the virgin girls whom they could keep as war booty.

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While those survivors we learn are given a chance to marry into Israel instead of starving to death in an empty city, and given special rights and protections if such marriages did not work for them....

There is a bigger question -- why were the cities destroyed, and what about the innocents in them?

I was just answering that for you actually -- Why would a benevolent god condone slavery? (post #293) so I'll just copy it over:

Read to the end please before responding.


You're missing too many details to piece it together, quite reasonably, because you'd have to read fully through several books to get all of the situation/context, to actually know what's happening, the why.

Here's why, and one only learns the full picture in scriptures usually, such as from finding sections like this, because they are reading through fully --

29 “When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, 30 take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’

[Why are they being destroyed? --]

31 You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods."


The special extreme evil of burning children in fires as sacrifices -- ongoing, routine, permanent as part of their culture -- led to the total destruction of such cities. [and we can learn more about this in other books also]

They were wiped out, with all in them sent on to the Day of Judgement (where all will go in their time) -- where the innocent will be separated out from the guilty. The unrepentant guilty going into the "second death", and the innocent into Life.

You have to use the full picture from the same Bible you quote trying to make a point. You can't point to my shirt and claim it means I have no shoes, but have to look to see. The same collection of scripture we learn of the total destruction of these cities (which you referred to) also says all will face the Day of Judgment and the innocent and the redeemed and the forgiven will gain Life. Ergo, the children that were killed, all of them, will live forever.

This all goes to your fundamental assumption. If you assume there is no afterlife, it's the same as assuming the scripture is wrong and that there is no God. With an assumption like that, then of course many things in the scripture don't make sense. Using an assumption that fundamentally contradicts the fundamental basis for a text leads to conclusions that are going to involve a self-proving system (i.e. 'circular reasoning'; e.g. -- God cannot exist because look how unfair He would have to be and that contradicts what He's claimed to be in the text .
(which conclusion comes from using the presumption there is no afterlife, that is, that God doesn't exist, as one's beginning assumption....)).

Halbhh said:

While those survivors we learn are given a chance to marry into Israel instead of starving to death in an empty city, and given special rights and protections if such marriages did not work for them....

There is a bigger question -- why were the cities destroyed, and what about the innocents in them?

I was just answering that for you actually -- Why would a benevolent god condone slavery? (post #293) so I'll just copy it over:

Read to the end please before responding.


You're missing too many details to piece it together, quite reasonably, because you'd have to read fully through several books to get all of the situation/context, to actually know what's happening, the why.

Here's why, and one only learns the full picture in scriptures usually, such as from finding sections like this, because they are reading through fully --

29 “When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, 30 take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’

[Why are they being destroyed? --]

31 You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods."


The special extreme evil of burning children in fires as sacrifices -- ongoing, routine, permanent as part of their culture -- led to the total destruction of such cities. [and we can learn more about this in other books also]

They were wiped out, with all in them sent on to the Day of Judgement (where all will go in their time) -- where the innocent will be separated out from the guilty. The unrepentant guilty going into the "second death", and the innocent into Life.

You have to use the full picture from the same Bible you quote trying to make a point. You can't point to my shirt and claim it means I have no shoes, but have to look to see. The same collection of scripture we learn of the total destruction of these cities (which you referred to) also says all will face the Day of Judgment and the innocent and the redeemed and the forgiven will gain Life. Ergo, the children that were killed, all of them, will live forever.

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This is what I call the "William Lane Craig excuse":

It's okay that God had all those innocent babies and toddlers brutally killed, because they are all in heaven jumping in rain puddles.

It renders "earthly life" meaningless.

This all goes to your fundamental assumption. If you assume there is no afterlife, it's the same as assuming the scripture is wrong and that there is no God. With an assumption like that, then of course many things in the scripture don't make sense. Using an assumption that fundamentally contradicts the fundamental basis for a text leads to conclusions that are going to involve a self-proving system (i.e. 'circular reasoning'; e.g. -- God cannot exist because look how unfair He would have to be and that contradicts what He's claimed to be in the text .
(which conclusion comes from using the presumption there is no afterlife, that is, that God doesn't exist, as one's beginning assumption....)).

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Here's where you are dead wrong.
I do NOT assume that at all. I hold NO assumptions about concepts of "afterlife" at all.

YOU (theists) have assumptions about that.
I don't know if there is such a thing. At best, I'ld say that I see no reason to assume that there is such a thing. There could be, but I just have no reason to believe it.

To say that it's okay that these innocents are brutally killed "because they have eternal life now", is something that only makes sense when you DO assume such an afterlife exists. AND that it is the afterlife that your particular religion dictates as opposed to some other religion.

As for me, I just value life without any assumptions of what does or doesn't exist "beyond life".

DogmaHunter said:

It renders "earthly life" meaningless.

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Not so fast there.

This earthly life is where we can learn or change to begin to truly love others (even as well as a little child might), or fail to.

Where we can accept or find the one who taught: "Love one another", and who can truly change us on the inside, for the better. If a person truly comes to Christ, and learns from Him and follows Him (which isn't the same as merely being in a church or thinking one is Christian).

Here, in this life. So, this life is very meaningful.

DogmaHunter said:

Ok.

Still isn't all that correct though, since the criteria is "illegal immigrant".
A latino that isn't an illegal immigrant thus would be safe.

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Are you sure about that?

It's not just people in the U.S. illegally — ICE is nabbing lawful permanent residents too - Los Angeles Times

DogmaHunter said:

This is what I call the "William Lane Craig excuse":

It's okay that God had all those innocent babies and toddlers brutally killed, because they are all in heaven jumping in rain puddles.

It renders "earthly life" meaningless.




Here's where you are dead wrong.
I do NOT assume that at all. I hold NO assumptions about concepts of "afterlife" at all.

YOU (theists) have assumptions about that.
I don't know if there is such a thing. At best, I'ld say that I see no reason to assume that there is such a thing. There could be, but I just have no reason to believe it.

To say that it's okay that these innocents are brutally killed "because they have eternal life now", is something that only makes sense when you DO assume such an afterlife exists. AND that it is the afterlife that your particular religion dictates as opposed to some other religion.

As for me, I just value life without any assumptions of what does or doesn't exist "beyond life".

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16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.


----------
A metaphor I sometimes think of for this whole situation of this temporary life:
It's like we are each individually sinking in quicksand, fast or slow, individually.
And He comes and offers His hand, to pull us out.

He respects us so much He does not force us to take His hand, and we are certainly allowed to refuse and merely die a final death, the 'second death'.

But it's a miraculous rescue so often, because one could be in the quicksand up to their neck, or even their nose, yet He can pull one right out.

grasping the after wind said:

How would it specifically go against your moral beliefs? Could you explain that to me because that is what I am trying to understand.

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As I said before, for me morality is about the ability to understand the consequences of actions and how they affect me and my neighbors. You provided a scenario where I am a villain causing harm to everybody in the process of helping myself. I am not a villain; that’s what I meant when I said I was better than that.
In a situation where am helped but someone else is harmed; or where I am harmed but someone else is helped, these actions will be judged on a case by case basis.

grasping the after wind said:

By what measure of good have you decided you are better?

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By my measure.

grasping the after wind said:

This answer would seem to me to contradict what you have been saying about the subjective nature of morality. If you determine what is right and wrong solely by a subjective process in which you determine , based upon your own personal calculation of what is helpful or harmful , then whatever you decide must be absolutely morally correct no matter what the end calculation turns out to be.

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No; if the end calculations turns out to be what I consider “bad”, then obviously I’ve made an error! I’ve made mistakes before, and I’m sure I’ll make plenty more in the future.

grasping the after wind said:

So if you were to determine an action was morally upright because you decide that in your opinion that action is helpful then it would simply be morally upright.

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I would BELIEVE it to be morally upright.

grasping the after wind said:

There is no objective standard to contradict that determination on your part so no way for you to be better.

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Not quite; there is no “objective standard” but there are subjective standards that other people have that may contradict my own and we can have a discussion. The discussion may cause me to change my mind on the issue, or it may cause the other person to agree with me. The point is, we are having a discussion unlike those who believe morality is objective with the attitude of “my way or the hi-way.

grasping the after wind said:

Since the criteria you set forth is in conflict in my example. helpful to self vs harmful to others. You must choose which is the more important self or others.

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No; I determine what is fair! Big difference

grasping the after wind said:

Neither course , choosing your own over others or others over your own, is intrinsically a better course as you do not adhere to an objective standard that places others or places yourself in the position of most importance.

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As I said before, most moral issues are determined on a case by case basis. Now if you want to give me a scenario of a moral case, I can explain how I would judge it and we can go from there.

Slavery in 2018 - Bing

If you prefer ignorant bliss to factual correctness then go ahead and continue to claim I lied without showing that what I said was false and continue to deceive yourself about the condition of morality in the 21st Century. I find proving myself innocent to be not only tedious but something that one might find to be expected in the middle ages but certainly ought not to be required for the supposed morally evolved of the 21st Century.

DogmaHunter said:

Well, you sure can't borrow someone else's brain to engage in moral reasoning, can you?
Yes, you necessarily have to come up with your own opinions. You're not a member of the Borg, are you?

And just like with everything, your opinions can be wrong.
And even when someone else gives you his reasoning for some moral judgement, you then still necessarily have to use your own brain to process that argument and then agree or disagree with it.

However, from where I sit, it isn't exactly arbitrary to conclude what consequences of actions are, assuming the required knowledge to discern such is present.

Sure, you could say that you simply don't care about anyone else and that "good" to you is whatever you decide is "good" for you.

But then, I don't see what you can contribute to a conversation about morals or ethics.
Morality and ethics is about how your actions affect others, after all...........................

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Is it not difficult to have a conversation about morals and ethics if you have no common standard and those you are conversing with only give very vague platitudes about net increases to explain how they arrive at specific moral judgements that might affect others? If I am to interact with people in the world that may do things that affect me how do I do so confidently if those others refuse to elucidate specifically the yardstick they would use to judge the moral uprightness of actions they would take? If it is my stance that I can decide the rightness or wrongness of my actions based upon a formula of net increase of benefit to the wide world yet I do not reveal the
details of that formula that I would use to my fellow travelers to the grave, how confident do you suppose those fellow travelers ought to be that that formula will not be weighted very much in my favor and to their detriment? If you were baking a cake from a recipe I gave you and instead of saying put X amount of baking powder in it I said put the amount of baking powder in there that maximizes the rising effect in the correct way, how satisfied would you be with my instructions?

Ken-1122 said:

As I said before, for me morality is about the ability to understand the consequences of actions and how they affect me and my neighbors. You provided a scenario where I am a villain causing harm to everybody in the process of helping myself. I am not a villain; that’s what I meant when I said I was better than that.

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I have assumed from the start you are no villain. I do not agree that in the scenario I gave the one making the decisions must be judged a villain. That is a moral judgment you you have decided to
come to not one that is necessitated by the scenario. One of the things I would like to know is the reason you think that the actor in the scenario must be judged a villain. By your stated standard , the actor would seem to me to be very possibly but not necessarily acting morally upright. HE, we'll assume it is a male, has concluded that he is the central figure in the universe. I would p suggest that that is not an uncommon conclusion for human beings to come to whether they would even admit it to themselves . Whether objectively correct on this or not that is his honest assesment of the situation. He then calculates that there will be a bit of harm to everyone affected by his action but a great benefit to himself. As he weighs the benefit/arm a calculation he decides that the benefit to himself is so great that it outweighs the small harm it causes others. I do not think that makes him a villain. Now maybe the action is embezzlement of millions of dollars from a charitable organization or maybe it is stealing a per clip from work. So the calculation might be different depending upon which action he is considering but the basic template would be the same and depending upon what weight he gives each piece of the puzzle he may decide to act in a different way. He may well weigh things in a completely different manner than I or you and we may differ from each other so that no one would be sure how the other would act in any given situation.
With that in mind, judging anyone to be morally upright or morally reprehensible ,no matter what they did, would simply be a matter of saying I am better than you because you do not weigh things the way I weigh them. That being said, in order for me to understand how you come to a moral judgement , I need to know exactly how you weigh things. So my question is how do you specifically decide what weight you place on things in order to calculate what is a net benefit
and what is a net harm? For example , is the harm done to the rest of humanity in terms of global CO2 concentration enough to outweigh the benefit to one person in driving to a vacation spot? The answer depends upon how much weight one gives each of those things. If one doesn't find CO2 concentration to be very important at all the calculation is extremely easy but if one finds CO2 to be the major cause of some future catastrophe then it becomes more difficult unless one finds vacationing to be of very little benefit to oneself. Unless I know what one thinks about things in detail , I will have no idea what one will find moral or immoral. As I do not know what you think about things in detail. I do not know why you have decided to call the actor in the scenario a villain and I do not understand how you could do so on such flimsy evidence as I have not given you enough detail to do so. What if the thing he is contemplating doing is the pilfering of the paper clip? would that make him a villain? If he has calculated that the possession of that paper clip is so beneficial to him that it outweighs the very tiny harm it causes to the company he works for and all the people involved with that company in any way, then he is acting morally upright, but if he , despite calculating that the benefit to him pales in comparison to the harm to others, still takes that paper clip, then he is acting immorally. Nonetheless whether acting immorally or morally upright in this one situation, I do not see that the word villain is appropriate.

grasping the after wind said:

I have assumed from the start you are no villain. I do not agree that in the scenario I gave the one making the decisions must be judged a villain. That is a moral judgment you you have decided to
come to not one that is necessitated by the scenario. One of the things I would like to know is the reason you think that the actor in the scenario must be judged a villain. By your stated standard , the actor would seem to me to be very possibly but not necessarily acting morally upright. HE, we'll assume it is a male, has concluded that he is the central figure in the universe. I would p suggest that that is not an uncommon conclusion for human beings to come to whether they would even admit it to themselves . Whether objectively correct on this or not that is his honest assesment of the situation. He then calculates that there will be a bit of harm to everyone affected by his action but a great benefit to himself.

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Sounds like a villain to me! What do you think?

grasping the after wind said:

I As he weighs the benefit/arm a calculation he decides that the benefit to himself is so great that it outweighs the small harm it causes others. I do not think that makes him a villain.

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How much of a small harm are we talking about?

grasping the after wind said:

I Now maybe the action is embezzlement of millions of dollars from a charitable organization or maybe it is stealing a per clip from work. So the calculation might be different depending upon which action he is considering but the basic template would be the same and depending upon what weight he gives each piece of the puzzle he may decide to act in a different way.

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Stealing millions from charity is not the same as stealing a paper clip from work. The paper clip probably won’t hurt anybody

grasping the after wind said:

I He may well weigh things in a completely different manner than I or you and we may differ from each other so that no one would be sure how the other would act in any given situation.
With that in mind, judging anyone to be morally upright or morally reprehensible ,no matter what they did, would simply be a matter of saying I am better than you because you do not weigh things the way I weigh them.

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Not quite; most who do wrong KNOW they are doing wrong and are acting against their own morals. So we probably weigh things the same, but he is going against mine and his moral principles.

grasping the after wind said:

I That being said, in order for me to understand how you come to a moral judgement , I need to know exactly how you weigh things. So my question is how do you specifically decide what weight you place on things in order to calculate what is a net benefit and what is a net harm?

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As I said before; it’s done on a case by case basis, because each situation is different and is judged differently

grasping the after wind said:

I For example , is the harm done to the rest of humanity in terms of global CO2 concentration enough to outweigh the benefit to one person in driving to a vacation spot? The answer depends upon how much weight one gives each of those things. If one doesn't find CO2 concentration to be very important at all the calculation is extremely easy but if one finds CO2 to be the major cause of some future catastrophe then it becomes more difficult unless one finds vacationing to be of very little benefit to oneself. Unless I know what one thinks about things in detail , I will have no idea what one will find moral or immoral. As I do not know what you think about things in detail

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That’s why I asked you to give a scenario. I can’t say (for example) that you should always tell the truth, because there are ties when telling the truth is wrong because it will cause harm.

grasping the after wind said:

II do not know why you have decided to call the actor in the scenario a villain and I do not understand how you could do so on such flimsy evidence as I have not given you enough detail to do so. What if the thing he is contemplating doing is the pilfering of the paper clip? would that make him a villain? If he has calculated that the possession of that paper clip is so beneficial to him that it outweighs the very tiny harm it causes to the company he works for and all the people involved with that company in any way, then he is acting morally upright, but if he , despite calculating that the benefit to him pales in comparison to the harm to others, still takes that paper clip, then he is acting immorally. Nonetheless whether acting immorally or morally upright in this one situation, I do not see that the word villain is appropriate.

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The way you phrased it gave me the impression he was doing a lot more harm than taking a paper clip. Perhaps I misunderstood you because I don’t believe taking paper clip makes thou a villain. But like i said, I can’t give you an objective rule that applies in every situation, each action must be judged on a case by case basis.

Ken-1122 said:

Sounds like a villain to me! What do you think?

How much of a small harm are we talking about?

Stealing millions from charity is not the same as stealing a paper clip from work. The paper clip probably won’t hurt anybody

Not quite; most who do wrong KNOW they are doing wrong and are acting against their own morals. So we probably weigh things the same, but he is going against mine and his moral principles.

As I said before; it’s done on a case by case basis, because each situation is different and is judged differently




That’s why I asked you to give a scenario. I can’t say (for example) that you should always tell the truth, because there are ties when telling the truth is wrong because it will cause harm.

The way you phrased it gave me the impression he was doing a lot more harm than taking a paper clip. Perhaps I misunderstood you because I don’t believe taking paper clip makes thou a villain. But like i said, I can’t give you an objective rule that applies in every situation, each action must be judged on a case by case basis.

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I'm not looking for an objective rule. What I am seeking is a way to predict what you would do by knowing what your particular subjective yardstick is. When you judge on a case to case basis what makes you decide how much harm or benefit is being accrued? You seem to think that the benefit or harm done is somehow self evident and that everyone measures such things fairly similarly. I do not think that is a good reading of the situation. In my experience there are very real differences in how much benefit or harm people will consider is accrued by an action they take. You suspect that in those circumstances they are being disingenuous but I do not have any evidence to suggest that must be the case nor do I read minds so I must assume that there is a good possibility that people are sincere when they have a different idea about how harmful or how benficial something might be. Deciding the moral uprightness of government mandated social programs for example is a very difficult calculation. there are so many negative, harmful unintended consequences of what would seem to be a benevolently intentioned thing that I am unable to decide whether such programs are morally upright or morally bankrupt. Is the financial well being of the recipients enough of a benefit to outweigh the use of force to appropriate funds for that benefit and the dependence upon the system that financial well being forces upon the recipients. Add to that the possibility that such programs contribute to social instability by encouraging anti social behavior such as cheating to receive benefits one is not entitled to or encouraging single parenthood as government takes the role of provider and renders the second parent not merely superfluous but an obstacle in acquiring government largesse. Yet with all those negatives, having some kind of income for those truly unable to fend for themselves rather than resorting to panhandling or public begging seems an obvious benefit. So the decision of whether or how to provide that income is one that is hard to calculate from a moral standpoint and I can see two very sincere people coming to opposite conclusions.

grasping the after wind said:

I'm not looking for an objective rule. What I am seeking is a way to predict what you would do by knowing what your particular subjective yardstick is. When you judge on a case to case basis what makes you decide how much harm or benefit is being accrued?

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There are lots of things about me that come into play that influences such decisions; my political beliefs, whether they be left leaning or right, the environment I grew up in, the way my parents raised me, am I a natural skeptic, my views on religion etc. basically in order to know my yardstick, you would have to know me on a personal level.

grasping the after wind said:

I You seem to think that the benefit or harm done is somehow self evident and that everyone measures such things fairly similarly

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Most reasonable people agree on the basics, it's the details that we disagree on

grasping the after wind said:

I I do not think that is a good reading of the situation. In my experience there are very real differences in how much benefit or harm people will consider is accrued by an action they take.

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Yeah' those would be the details that they disagree on.

grasping the after wind said:

I You suspect that in those circumstances they are being disingenuous but I do not have any evidence to suggest that must be the case nor do I read minds so I must assume that there is a good possibility that people are sincere when they have a different idea about how harmful or how benficial something might be.

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Most reasonable people will know stealing is wrong that's why when they do it they do it in secret; they know it is wrong yet they do it anyway

grasping the after wind said:

I Deciding the moral uprightness of government mandated social programs for example is a very difficult calculation. there are so many negative, harmful unintended consequences of what would seem to be a benevolently intentioned thing that I am unable to decide whether such programs are morally upright or morally bankrupt. Is the financial well being of the recipients enough of a benefit to outweigh the use of force to appropriate funds for that benefit and the dependence upon the system that financial well being forces upon the recipients. Add to that the possibility that such programs contribute to social instability by encouraging anti social behavior such as cheating to receive benefits one is not entitled to or encouraging single parenthood as government takes the role of provider and renders the second parent not merely superfluous but an obstacle in acquiring government largesse. Yet with all those negatives, having some kind of income for those truly unable to fend for themselves rather than resorting to panhandling or public begging seems an obvious benefit. So the decision of whether or how to provide that income is one that is hard to calculate from a moral standpoint and I can see two very sincere people coming to opposite conclusions.

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Most people will agre helping someone in need is good. The details that they will disagree on i what constitutes "real need"? Where is the line drawn between helping the needy vs allowing someone to remain lazy. They agree on the basics, but disagree on the details.