I apologize, it’s been brought to my attention that the two polls were not about the same thing, so I have split them off again and I retract my last note in this topic.
Of course. Posts 35-38 do not belong here and they should be removed.
The majority of votes opt for consequentialism, a choice that, in practice, leaves room to a lot of unsolved problems.
If there’s a moral system without troubling thought experiments and logic bombs, I missed it.
To me it’s like trying to assemble a huge list of ways to make a good movie. But what makes a good movie is subjective and is barely related to logic. You could follow the list perfectly and make a horrible movie. Or you could flout them all and still make a good one. It’s a case by case basis. I guess that makes me a moral skeptic.
Moral relativism gets a bad rap, but I think it makes good points. That convo always seems to go to extreme examples like slavery or some horrible tribal practice. But individuals are constrained by the systems around them, factually speaking. What’s the moral way to act in an amoral job, like if you’re a CEO or work at the Pentagon or something. Just quit and let some other cog move up? Try to change it from within? But that’s a common justification for staying pat. It’s understandable why people wouldn’t want to buck the system and take the heat. It’s a conundrum.
Speaking of unpleasant thought experiments, I’ve always been rather fond of the human extinction argument as the best way to end human suffering. Most moral systems place more value on ending suffering than creating happiness. Of course we in the present don’t want to die, but that’s our bias. And we’d be doing a big favor to the future population, which most likely outnumbers us by a huge margin (especially if we ever colonize the galaxy, it could be trillions of humans).