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.
I know, this is why I'm comparing me being constructed (against my will, involuntarily) and how I run on autopilot with ethical faculties or with being a gun, as opposed to using your ethical faculties or shooting the gun.
Which is oversimplified. You can't be separated from your construction and thus neither can your ethics.
Evolutionary consequences permeate your very being, so we can not simply disregard them as illegitimate as if you, the rational, sentient you is somehow separate from how you were constructed.
I'm not saying a person is. There's your construction and there's your action based on this construction. Credibility comes when you make the action rather than rely immediately on your construction; apropos our discussion, anyone who just lets his cuteness faculty push him involuntarily to action doesn't deserve credit for this action, because it's immediate and therefore he didn't work for it, i.e., put forth effort beyond his construction.
I'm not disregarding them.
I don't care if the impetus for action comes from his most rational faculties or his basal lizard brain, it comes from him.
Your point that he doesn't deserve credit for the latter is incorrect, he absolutely does, his very humanity made the decision.
You are definitely disregarding them as ethically illegitimate goals.
I am saying they should be judged on their own merits, regardless of whether they come from your rational mind or your instincts.
A person's human making a decision = him not making it. Him = he's acting in such a way where it's against the grain of immediacy in choosing, i.e., is work. Me sneezing involuntarily isn't the same as me choosing to walk an old lady across a street. The former is involuntary whereas the latter is voluntary, and to equate both as relating to our humanity fails to notice this distinction, which is where ethical credit lies.
Now I suspect you are making some sincere assumptions about how voluntary your motivations are in general.
Let's apply this to a differn't ethical issue and see how well it holds up eh?
How about choosing sexual partners? Where do my instincts end there and I begin? Only when I am fighting my instincts?
I feel very skeptical that my rational ethical framework can be so easily liberated from my biological ethical framework, and this is by no means simple in my estimation.
Now the question isn't about helping cute kitty cats and babies but instead choosing a biological mate, is it still not ethical to weight aesthetics in my decisions?
I think we could simplify this whole thing by reducing it to talking about voluntary behaviors and involuntary behaviors which might be an expression of our nature. So choosing sexual partners means voluntary behavior insofar as I'm weighing pros and cons about a person and choosing the person who is more difficult to choose (e.g., someone who doesn't put out easily but is an overall better person), and involuntary behavior insofar as I'm attracted to this person and (to some degree) find myself looking at more attractive people, smiling at them, etc.
In these cases, the considerations comes into play with voluntary behaviors, such as with choosing a partner when I really "want" to be with someone who puts out; insofar as it's difficult for me to choose is how much I'm responsible. But because this is a pretty basic example of what I like and not about what's good or bad for a person to do, your example with sexual preference is purely aesthetic insofar as it involves things I like.
Now, I could make this situation ethical if in an ethical context I choose something related to sex, e.g., if I choose not to have an affair with someone who I really would like to on some immediate level. Here ethical credibility refers to those actions that are voluntary insofar as they involve a sense of work or difficulty rather than immediacy and "can't help but doing it"-ness.
I think if you use this assumption, you see that a whole freaking lot of what people do really isn't ethically motivated, because it isn't motivated by doing the right thing, but rather because, if something that's cute involuntarily invites our supportiveness, it therefore means we have no credit for actually ethically "working" for it.
What does it mean to ethically "work" for something? To do the right thing against the grain; doing the right thing ethically always means some degree of work or unpleasantness. How do we respond to things that are cute? Involuntarily with a sense of support; we can't help but support, and couldn't live with ourselves if we didn't support, the cute thing.
Aesthetics is an important and often irrational part of human ethics, so it's not that it's not a good enough justification, it's just that it isn't a very rational one.
Okay, I'm considering all this, but for now let's try this:
I have a disease that makes me randomly stick out my leg. A burglar is chasing a woman trying to take her purse. They pass by me and at a totally random moment (because I'm in shock and don't know what's going on), my disease acts up and out goes my leg, causing the burglar to trip and the woman to run free.
Do I deserve (ethical) credit for this?
The philosophy of aesthetics is very much rational. "Aesthetics," by definition, is the rationalization of the nature of beauty.
It's not a problem at all. I'm talking about ethical credit, though. You can only get ethical credit for doing something that has ethical repercussions that involves work. Work is what confers credit, be it physical or intellectual. Credit is important because it's what allows a person to gain legitimacy as being ethical at all.
Says who about any of this? Who is handing out this "ethical credit?" What can I buy with it?
How is the credit value of an act determined? Merely by its level of difficulty? So then a given act done by a person who is otherwise a "good person" is less ethical than the same act done by a hoodlum?
Okay, I'm considering all this, but for now let's try this:
I have a disease that makes me randomly stick out my leg. A burglar is chasing a woman trying to take her purse. They pass by me and at a totally random moment (because I'm in shock and don't know what's going on), my disease acts up and out goes my leg, causing the burglar to trip and the woman to run free.
Do I deserve (ethical) credit for this?
You're missing the point. The evolutionarily derived action is not random, it's purposeful. It can even be considered a perfect expression of Utilitarianism.
And that's your criterion, by the way: something has ethical credibility in proportion to how much will power is exerted.
That's not my criterion, that's your criterion, and I've challenged you to provide a logical proof of that assertion.
Moreover, you have yet to define terms like "ethical credibility" and "ethical credit."
Received said:And that's your criterion, by the way: something has ethical credibility in proportion to how much will power is exerted.
The bottom line is that you're upset because "the cute" have a privilege advantage over the plain and you're trying to find some way to claim that's unethical.
But first you have to prove there is something inherently unethical about an action that advances human survival--and at least within both Utilitarianism and Hedonism, you'd be proven wrong.
Let's modify the Trolley Problem a bit. You've got a runaway trolley car full of people heading for a certain doom collision with a freight train crossing on another track. You stand at a rail switch able to divert the car to one of two safe tracks, but on one of the safe tracks is a homeless crack addict and on the other safe track is...your own daughter.
The constraints of the problem are such that you have absolutely no options other than:
1. Take no action and let the trolley full of people strike the freight train and be killed.
2. Divert the trolley to the safe track that will kill the homeless crack addict.
3. Divert the trolley to the safe track that will kill your daughter.
Now, according to your reasoning, the most ethical option is to divert the train to kill your daughter simply because it's the "most difficult" option.
And you still have to define what "ethical credit" means. I'd suppose it means "how close to a moral agent's desired 'end good' a particular action moves that moral agent," but you haven't told us yet what that "end good" might be.
Received said:And that's your criterion, by the way: something has ethical credibility in proportion to how much will power is exerted.
I'm not talking about ethics, but about ethical credibility; you're speaking about the content of an ethical problem, and I'm speaking metaethically about the psychological aspects needed to fulfill credibility.
Actually, you've simply assigned value to the amount of willpower it takes to take an action rather arbitrarily. This would need some further justification.
Exertion of will power can not be in and of itself good or the train problem does indeed work itself out as RDkirk said it would.
This gives the odd conclusion that people who are naturally good at making ethical decisions without psychological exertion (talented for goodness) are less ethically credible? How would that ever follow?
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?