- May 22, 2015
- 7,379
- 2,641
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Agnostic
- Marital Status
- Married
Can I get a confirmation that I didn't change your argument beyond a little cleanup? It is a valid argument now.
Upvote
0
Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
Perhaps your only real preference is group conformity and non-confrontation.
First, let's clean it up.
You're not trying to prove that you believe something, you're trying to prove your belief is true.
You don't need the "therefore" either.
Premise 1-I believeperforming ones job well can be described morally good
Premise 2-I believethings exist which are too small to see with the naked eye
Premise 3-I believemicroscopes allow very small things to be seen
Conclusion-therefore I believeusing a microscope at work is morally good
Now look at the bolded part. You have two entirely different propositions.
No....I made a premise of a type of behavior I could morally describe. I then I floated two premises that created the circumstances for fulfilling the first premise.
Then I satisfied the first premise.
Not sure why you and Zippy think I'm some moral objectivist.
It would be like relating "runs" and "reads". You'll need to change "can be described" to "is".
Nope. I simply claimed it could be described as a moral statement.
You're the one trying to force me into a claim about morality I haven't made.
Then you write long stories about how you'll make a really good argument.
Which is sad....since you can't even describe the causal relationship between preferences and morals you're imagining.
P1 Performing one's job well is morally good
P2 Things exist which are too small to see with the naked eye
P3 Microscopes allow very small things to be seen
C Using a microscope at work is morally good.
Now the hidden premise is that microscopes are used at work, ya? So to really make it work we need to add one more premise so it looks like this:
P1 Performing one's job well is morally good
P2 Things exist which are too small to see with the naked eye
P3 Microscopes allow very small things to be seen
P4 Some work requires very small things to be seen
C Using a microscope at work is morally good
Everything right so far? Just a little cleanup, ya? Still no mention of preferences. If you're going to fight me every step of the way, we might as well take it one step at a time, ya?
I don’t see the utility in categorizing all “should” statements as moral statements, at least not when the only overarching goal is maximal individual pleasure. I think that goal can lead one to a moral lifestyle, as in epicurean hedonism, but it seems to me that when everything’s a moral decision… nothing is.No, you're safe, that's the majority position. But let me put it to you this way... Morality is about "right and proper behavior". Sure, there's no objectively true "right" or what have you, but in essence it seeks to make a guide for how we should act. It seeks to answer the question, "What should I do?" Right?
Well I looked at my freezer and asked, "Should I eat ice cream or should I eat Brussel sprouts?", so I'd say I asked a moral question. We're leaving out considerations to other factors like my health for simplicities sake.
If it is moral to choose things that cause happiness, it's possible to choose things that make ourselves unhappy, and therefore act immorally against ourselves. Just because I chose something seeking a bit of pleasure, doesn't mean I rationally should have expected to achieve any sort of state of happiness.
And now you're back in the minority with me, lol. I don't think altruism is really possible, and it's especially clear when people realize morality is built on preferences. Your preference that the world work together to maximize pleasure and minimize pain sounds sweet, but it's your preference, so it's you satisfying a desire for yourself if it's achieved. I have the same preference, but a lot of the reason why is because I don't like how I feel when I'm surrounded by grumpy people, lol.
On that note, I saw your discussion with Ana. I'd say that it will be a zero-sum game once we achieve maximum efficiency, but we aren't maximally efficient right now, so we can change things in ways that increase pleasure more than they increase pain. Obviously we can increase taxes on Jeff Bezos by .000000001% and give that extra $100 to person who is just shy of paying their rent and getting evicted and say definitively that Jeff's mild irritation (at best) is a less dramatic change than that poor person's elation. But at some point, there is only so much pleasure that a person can experience, right?
Really? You're accusing me of trying to fit in and avoid conflict?
Can I get a confirmation that I didn't change your argument beyond a little cleanup? It is a valid argument now.
I was drawing a parallel between the impossibility of altruism and the impossibility of a self-contained behavior not to be self-serving.At some point in there you switched from talking about "self-contained behavior" to talking about "self-serving behavior."
For the same reason this is invalid:You changed an entire premise. I don't see why it was wrong before.
I don't see any direct utility either. Just describing things accurately. What's the utility in drawing arbitrary lines between different kinds of behavior?I don’t see the utility in categorizing all “should” statements as moral statements, at least not when the only overarching goal is maximal individual pleasure. I think that goal can lead one to a moral lifestyle, as in epicurean hedonism, but it seems to me that when everything’s a moral decision… nothing is.
That's where my middle ground comes in. It isn't a zero sum game while we're making pleasure increases and suffering decreases more efficient. But utopia will hit a wall... But who cares? It's utopia!Pleasure as a zero-sum game sounds dystopian to me, not utopian. Rather than organizing the distribution of pleasure into a balance of compromises from which any deviation results in a win-lose situation, optimal distribution is win-win. Instead of taking turns winning wars against each other, we can all make love instead. Lol
I was drawing a parallel between the impossibility of altruism and the impossibility of a self-contained behavior not to be self-serving.
Your mother and I are.
If it’s impossible for a self-contained behavior to be immoral, why assign moral value to it at all?But you opened #494 with the claim, "I don’t see morality as something that concerns self-contained behaviors." I didn't see arguments for that claim in the post.
If it’s impossible for a self-contained behavior to be immoral, why assign moral value to it at all?
I was drawing a parallel between the impossibility of altruism and the impossibility of a self-contained behavior not to be self-serving.
The problem he's talking about is that folks we call good, do nice things and feel good about it. So we can't say that they did it and got nothing in return. That good feeling is something they get out of it.Cant someone serve others without realizing they’re being altruistic or without caring that they’re being altruistic?
If it’s impossible for a self-contained behavior to be immoral, why assign moral value to it at all?
I think many would say that there are things which cannot be immoral and yet are moral. Love would be a common example.
Formal formatting just makes fudges easier to spot. All it does is organize things so the argument is clearer to see.I didn't need this argument in formal form either...
If you’re defining a word with different boundaries than most people, surely you can point to the utility of doing so, right? The utility in differentiating between actions with and without social consequences is obvious — you can expect to answer to someone other than yourself for doing thing that affect others, and that can entail consequences different from what you’re capable of imposing upon yourself on your own. It’s useful to be able to predict what might happen in the future.I don't see any direct utility either. Just describing things accurately. What's the utility in drawing arbitrary lines between different kinds of behavior?
That's where my middle ground comes in. It isn't a zero sum game while we're making pleasure increases and suffering decreases more efficient. But utopia will hit a wall... But who cares? It's utopia!
No, no utility needed. I just don't see any rational reason that these boundaries are anything other than arbitrary and defined themselves by preferences.If you’re defining a word with different boundaries than most people, surely you can point to the utility of doing so, right?
Different consequences are different, they aren't special. I predict what might happen to me when other folk aren't involved too. I watch a movie trailer and judge whether I'm going to enjoy myself or not if I were to watch it. We're doing all the same things in predicting how a person feels and the consequences to us because of those actions.The utility in differentiating between actions with and without social consequences is obvious — you can expect to answer to someone other than yourself for doing thing that affect others, and that can entail consequences different from what you’re capable of imposing upon yourself on your own. It’s useful to be able to predict what might happen in the future.
Sure. That makes sense. A perfect system is going to implement acts that don't alter pleasure:suffering at a 1:1 ratio, and that beats the zero sum game. I think it's pretty obvious we can do that.The only limit to pleasure under such a utopia would be life itself, right? Even then it’s only changes in the system that would be zero sum, simply because any change to a perfect system would be to its detriment.
If we define “immoral” as something that we decide to do which serves no purpose in pleasure and actively brings about displeasure, I don’t think that’s something we’re actually capable of committing against ourselves. At least not on purpose. The very act of making a decision satisfies something psychologically that makes total self-denial impossible.I think many would say that there are things which cannot be immoral and yet are moral. Love would be a common example.
In any case, why think it is impossible for a self-contained behavior to be immoral? At the very least there must be some premise in #494 that I am not perceiving.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?