Taking lives: Fill in the blank

FSTDT · Feb 21, 2006

levi501 said:
fruitless discussion... around and around we go.
Are you merely playing to the crowd, because I doubt anyone is seriously reading our exchange or is interested.
The empathy I have for animals is much less then for humans.

On what basis? In the scenarios I describe, the particular humans and non-human animals have equal capacities, so its not clear what basis you're using to distinguish them.

As I find nothing wrong with eating them, forcing them to perform labor, ripping out their reproductive systems and animal testing. You know this, but you still haven't bridged the gap as to why my moral system is inconsistent because it doesn't include animals.

The problem with your moral system is that it breaks down when the principles you use for excluding animals are applied equally for humans, however you behave as if nothing was out of the oridinary. And there are ways to take your system to its logical ends which yield frightening results, but are consistent with everything you've said.

The most striking example is when you flipped your own system on its head when you appealed to empathy to account for beings who cannot possibly value your own life. Not only does this contradict the egoist principles you had in the first place, but its precisely the same argument that animal rights activists use to explain why ripping out the reproductive systems of non-human beings is morally wrong.

You just don't have a moral system at all. It makes no moral prescriptions, defines no obligations, explains no moral constraints on behaviors, nothing. Its perfectly amoral. At best, it explains circumstances where you would or would not value another person's life, but it doesn't explain why should be morally obligated to value others' lives.

As far as theistic morality comparison, you convienently snipped off the rest of my answer. The obvious reasons not to kill someone is punishment. The reason I don't do it whenever I can get away with it is because I buy into this system that puts value on other humans lives including mine. I have strong empathy that fuels this compliance. Rationally though, I support this system because if I and other's did not society would fall apart and thus my life and the lives of people I care about would be in greater danger. So I'm simply doing my part in this system I support.

Nonsense, its possible to support a system that puts value on your life but excludes certain humans. I mentioned this in one my last posts, and you had non-response to it "Empathy... spare me the race, religion white supremacist garbage". You don't seem to understand that not every person empathizes as you do, and more the point there is no reason why your particular way of empathizing with others defines moral rules for people who don't empathize like you. If someone were a racist and felt no empathy or compassion with non-members of their race, it would be fundamentally no different from your lack of compassion for non-members of species.

Theres a reason why people grow out of egoist morality by the time they're 25.

Its not obvious to me whether you're actually familiar with social contract theorists or the arguments of rational egoists. However, there are more sophisticated versions of the social contract that exist, and probably the best one has been developed by John Rawls. I wrote a post about Rawls on IIDB:

The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy essay "Contemporary Philosophy in the United States" (p 10):

The conception of moral philosophy in the positivist and post-positivist phases of analystic philosophy was extremely narrow. Strictly speaking, acocording to the positivists, moral philosophy could not either be true or false, so there is nothing that the philosopher could say, qua philosopher, by way of making moral judgments. The task for the moral philosopher was to analyse moral discourse, to analyse the meaning and use of moral terms, such as, 'good', 'ought', 'right', 'obligation', etc. It is important to see that this conception of moral philosophy was a strict logical consequence of the acceptance of the distinction between evaluative [moral] and descriptive [factual] utterances. For if evaluative utterances cannot beeither true or false, and if first-order moral discourse consists in evaluative utterances, and if the task of the philosopher is to state the truth, it follows that a philosopher, qua philosopher, cannot make any first-order moral judgments. As a philosopher, all he or she can do is the second-order task of analysing moal concepts.

Some philosophers of the postivist and post-positivist preiods rejected this narrow conception of mroal philosophy, and there were a sereies of attacks mounted on the distinction between evaluative and descriptive utterances, including some attacks by myself in the mid-1960s (Searle, 1964). It remained, however, for John Rawls to reopen the traditional conception of political and moral philosopher with the publication of his booik A Theory of Justice in 1971. For the purposes of the present discussion, the important thing about Rawls work was not that he refuted the traditional dichotomy of descriptive and evaluative utterances, but that he simply ignored it and proceeded to develop a theory of political institutions of a sort that has a long philosophical tradition and which the positivists thought they had overcome. Rawls, in efect, revived the social contract theory, which had long been assumed to be completely defuct; but hedid it by an ingenious device: He did not attempt, as some traditional theorists had done, to show that there might have been an original social contract, nor did he try to show that the participation of individuals in society involved a tacit contract. Rather, he used the following thought experiment as an anlytic tool: Think of the sort of society that rational beings would agree to if they did not know what sort of position they themselves would occupy in that society. If we imagine rational beings, hidden behind a veil of ignorance, who are asked to select and agree on forms of social institutions that would be fair for all, then we can develop criteria for appraising social instiutions on purely rational grounds.

Click to expand...

I rather like that line of thinking, and I think its sufficient to bridge the gap between logical and moral thinking. Of course, I would make a small change to Rawls theory: although his rational society is behind a veil of ignorance, they seem to know in advance what species they are going to belong to and I think this fact undermines his thought experiment (it doesnt make sense to say they can know what species they belong to, but they have no knowlege of what sex or nationality they'll belong to); to revive the thought experiment, the group must be assumed to have no knowledge of what species they'll belong to in a society. In that sense, talking about the value of animals can have the same rational basis as talking the value of humans.

levi501 · Feb 21, 2006

FSTDT said:
On what basis? In the scenarios I describe, the particular humans and non-human animals have equal capacities, so its not clear what basis you're using to distinguish them.

fun and games... go back and read social contract and quit being dishonest by asking what you already know my answer to.

FSTDT said:
The problem with your moral system is that it breaks down when the principles you use for excluding animals are applied equally for humans, however you behave as if nothing was out of the oridinary. And there are ways to take your system to its logical ends which yield frightening results, but are consistent with everything you've said.

Impressive but with zero substance.

FSTDT said:
The most striking example is when you flipped your own system on its head when you appealed to empathy to account for beings who cannot possibly value your own life. Not only does this contradict the egoist principles you had in the first place, but its precisely the same argument that animal rights activists use to explain why ripping out the reproductive systems of non-human beings is morally wrong.

I've explained this to you. You just don't like it. And if you're attempting to point out the contradiction you are doing a terrible job because I don't see it.

Empathy fuels compliance into my moral system where although there are individuals that can't enter into this contract I would hope they would value my life if the roles were reversed. Our social system is built around valuing human life whether it be empathy or fear of punishment. It's what allows society to function.

FSTDT said:
You just don't have a moral system at all. It makes no moral prescriptions, defines no obligations, explains no moral constraints on behaviors, nothing. Its perfectly amoral. At best, it explains circumstances where you would or would not value another person's life, but it doesn't explain why should be morally obligated to value others' lives.

Because it supports a system that puts value on my life.
Spare me your emotional rants.

FSTDT said:
Nonsense, its possible to support a system that puts value on your life but excludes certain humans. I mentioned this in one my last posts, and you had non-response to it "Empathy... spare me the race, religion white supremacist garbage". You don't seem to understand that not every person empathizes as you do, and more the point there is no reason why your particular way of empathizing with others defines moral rules for people who don't empathize like you. If someone were a racist and felt no empathy or compassion with non-members of their race, it would be fundamentally no different from your lack of compassion for non-members of species.

So you're asserting that in my culture there isn't a basic moral principle of the golden rule and isn't fueled by socially conditioning people to be empathetic? I'm sorry but this is my perception of my reality. And nothing you've said suggests differently. Yes the details may be different but there is an underlying moral consistency in which society is built and in which I support.

FSTDT said:
Theres a reason why people grow out of egoist morality by the time they're 25.

appeal to popularity.
an unimpressive argument.

FSTDT said:
Its not obvious to me whether you're actually familiar with social contract theorists or the arguments of rational egoists. However, there are more sophisticated versions of the social contract that exist, and probably the best one has been developed by John Rawls. I wrote a post about Rawls on IIDB:

Let me clear the confusion...
I haven't taken my ideas from anyone on this matter. It's simple honest self reflection. This is why they aren't neatly packaged. I consider myself very openminded and when faced with an inconstitency in my views I reevaluate it.

This is where I'm at right now....

You haven't shown me why valuing those that can value me is an inconsistent moral system.

All your objections have been addressed with..
1. "a potential contract"
2. "if I was in the same situation I hope they'd do the same"
3. "the fact that our culture mirrors this basic moral precept."
4. "and that empathy is strong emotion in me that fuels this respect for my species and those that can enter into this contract."

If I have the time later I might go back and read the link, but I find it unecessary to our discussion.

Taking lives: Fill in the blank

FSTDT

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levi501

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