Well, I’m basically trying to get at the root of practiced morality.
So often in these threads we come to many posters (including myself) making sweeping proclamations which declare whole specra of actions AND consequences bad. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t agree.
If the ends NEVER justify the means, then what exactly does? Or is it that the ends alone do not justify the means?
It is all well and good to say that “Human life is precious and should not be destroyed.” But what does that mean when applied to daily personal and social activities? We don’t look at ends alone, we don’t look at means alone. Even using both of them together doesn’t seem to give the whole picture.
Considering my “bull” example, we find that the bull could clearly gore or otherwise maim its “pleasurer” if things were not going so well. So the bull doesn’t mind, even if it can’t “consent” (don’t get me started). So the end is ok, if a little gross to some. The means is simple hand manipulation which, if properly washed, will also co nothing detrimental to man or beast. So the means are also ok.
Is it the intent that causes people to freak out about bestiality? But the intent isn’t ill-will either. But as I’ve (hopefully) shown, intent alone does not justify neither the ends nor the means.
jmull"…although not sure at fist if I cud answer this one." Superb.
Is it possible you are missing the point that means that aren’t wrong don’t require justification?
You shouldn’t ever try to group sex moral laws in with other moral laws and then try to reverse engineer one argument to the other. They are a category unto themselves.
Besides, you said there was nothing wrong with masterbating a bull in your moral scheme, right? But if you get a zooph to do it, you are commiting the sin of scandal. Bull semen is the ends, but you are using improper means.
Christianity basically teaches that intent is an illusion created by evil people to conceal the evil that they do. What matters is what is ultimately done. A good tree produces good fruit, etc.
And I, so often, have countered that such blanket generalizations are inadequate bases for an ethical code. Perhaps this illustrates what I was trying to show above: your question is only “interesting” if one accepts the underlying assumptions as valid.
Since I do not consider an action, devoid of context, to have an attributable moral value, I trivially answer “no”. The ends do not justify the means.
Moreover, it makes no sense to dicuss the morall quality of an act as an entity separate from the intent and forseeable consequences. Likewise, it makes no sense to include unforseeable consequences in assigning a moral value to a decision since said consequences could not have been a factor in making the decision.
Brian
We do seem to be saying something similar. I do not understand your distinction between a pragmatic proposition and a theoretical proposition, though. Pragmatism is a philioshpical school. Its tenets are every bt as “theoretical” as thse of hedonism, objectivism, etc.
Actually, pragmatism is by no means monolithic, and I shouldn’t imply that all pragmatists would agree that the end justifies the means. Let me rephrase: Using the end results or an action to determine the ethics of said action requires an objective evaluation process characteristic of mpragmatic philosophy.
Damn – that’s an ungainly mouthful. How about, “If there isn’t an end, you can’t evaluate the end results.” The end justifies the means might be a good ethical standard in theory, but humans lack the perspective necessary to practice it.
So far we have not the ends but the context in which the means are used.
When we decide that something is wrong, we condemn the person for the action. Why do we do this? We all “know” that murder is wrong, but it isn’t, of course. Is it the intent of the actor? Is it the circumstances? Is it both?
Can we flat out ignore the ends? I am not looking to build any particular morality. I don’t want to argue what we consider to be wrong, but how we come about considering that.
I submit that morality is based purely on the play between intended end, actual end, and the means used. I find context–if by context you mean “setting”–to not be part of the equation.
I am not sure how I can be more clear about this. It seems I simply repeat myself and we gain no understanding.
Still, when have I ever let that stop me.
(1) Actions do not carry a moral value. Radioactive decay is an action. Sneezing is an action. Falling down is an action. Decisions are the “active” element of an ethical system. A decision can be moral or immoral, ethical or unethical. When we judge an “action”, we are judging it as a manifestation of a decision.
(2) Intent, forseeable consequences, state-of-mind, social and cultural conditioning, etc. represent the context of a decision.
(3) Unforseeable consequences play no part in a decision, by definition. Therefore, they can shed no light on the ethical status of that decision. In a more general sense:
We can play the “what if” game forever. What that shows us is that attempts to codify ethical behavior with rigid precepts will inevitably run across cases where the codified behavior conflicts with out innate sense of “what is right”. This is an inevtiable conclusion of attempting to fully describe a system of infinite complexity with a finite rule set.
There are three rational responses to this: subordinate your innate sense to the rigid code or decide that a rigid code cannot fully anticipate all ethical quandries or continually modify the rigid codes in an effort to satisfy each exceptional condition as it is discovered. This results in a more complex system of less rigid codes, and is the “compromise” that is represented by many legal systems. Comromise is fine, so long as we understand what it is. We musn’t delude ourselves that at some point our system will be “complete”. Most people understand this with regards to law, so they do not confuse “legal” with “ethical”. But many people fail to kep that distinction clear in other ethical systems. To be fair, some people feel rigid ethical systems have been revealed by mystical beings of unquestionable authority. Usually, tough, those people fall into case 1, not case 3.
…where people are given dilemmas or scenarios, like “Should we torture the person last seen with your kidnapped daughter?” And then people spin the wheel or whatever, and the guy is innocent afterall, and they lose brownie points, or maybe find their daughter, but get sued, another spin of the wheel. Or, better yet, a very important website could be made to allow one to ask a question like to Dear Abbey, but instead of getting the opinion of some prude, you actually get a logical answer, or failing that, an arbitrary one. The question, is what is the logical answer to a given dilemma? There is alot of debate about some of it, but not all of it, meaning that much of it could be programmed.
This is vaguely Zeno-like to me. I agree that actions do not carry a moral value in themselves. I also agree that the results do not carry a moral value in themselves. Perhaps what I am missing is where you feel the moral value comes in at. You say, “context” here…
Ok, now I really don’t know what you’re saying. Intent (inteded end), forseeable consequences (probably side effects), state-of-mind which I assume to be “mood” and its intensity, social and cultural conditioning…
In other words, no action is moral or immoral. The factors that are at play are, at least in part, out of control or possibly uncontrollable. Since I know you don’t believe in absolute morality, it would seem that morality itself disappears in a wash of particles. However, I know there are things you feel that are wrong, and quite strongly I’m sure. I am at a loss here.
3 is not seperate from 2, as a nitpick. I am also at a loss at what this “innate sense” is…of right and wrong, and how our rigid code fails to describe it?
Ah, another difference between you and I. If I find something acceptable, realize I do not possess that trait, then I find the flaw is with me, not the trait. This system presumes that the flaw is with the trait, not the man.
Other words? I suppose. Was “Actions do not carry a moral value” unclear? You both quoted it and agred with it just a few short lines above.
Since you know I do not believe in absolute morality, why would you imagine that I require absolute control of all factors influencing a decision in order to ascribe moral weight to the decision?
I do not understand your confusion. Are you of the opinion that ethical responsibility only pertains to those situations which are entirely under the control of the individual?
Hmmm, consider (2) to include a concommitant rejection of the rigid code. I should have made that distinction more clear.
The “innate sense” is exactly that which compels us to launch hypoethitcal situations at rule like, “Thou shalt not kill” What if someone is about to rape your wife?
What if someone is in great pain and wants to die
What if someone os a godless heretic and doing Satan’s bidding?
What if . . .
If any such hypothetical creates a conflict between what “feels right” and what the code says is right, that feeling is what I am talking about.
Well, I presented no system. I offered three alternative approaches to a phenomenon. Apparently, you fall into the first, in which innate objections to a rigid ethic are considered flaws in your self. This, of course, raises the question of how you decide which rigid ethic to follow. Usually, I find adherents of this approach to argue from authority (almost universally religious authority). Since I know you are an atheist, I am curious as to how you manage to decide which rigid code is the one to which your “flaws” should be realigned.
Not long ago, I had a discusison with Jodi about some of these issues. If you are actually curious about the basis for my own ethics, I suggest you look there. If you want a brief summary:
Attempts to codify morality through actions (either through denial or requirement) are doomed to eventual failure for two reasons: A finite code cannot adequately describe the infinite problem space (think Godel) and the improper focus on actions as the basic unit of morality. An alternative to such a systematic approach is to instead concentrate on the process of decision making and determine a method/set of principles to guide that process.
No, it wasn’t. “In other words: [insert flow of thought here, including sentences after the period].”
Anyway…
Until you mean it, or at least until I find how it is non-contradictory. You then go on to say, “Are you of the opinion that ethical responsibility only pertains to those situations which are entirely under the control of the individual?” So, morality comes from the decision, the intended result as a function of the situation, and yet the situation itself can somehow now manifest itself into an ethical responsibility for an event on which no ethical standard may be imposed since actions aren’t good and bad and no conscious decision was made about them. What?!
I understand the idea of a few holes, but this [feels] is downright contradictory.
Me:
I am of a line of thought around a semi-rigid morality, yes. I don’t find set theory useless simply because Godel showed that all systems sstrong enough to derive arithmentic are incomplete or inconsistent or whatever; similarly, just because there are cases where a rigid moralitly fails does not imply that morality is whimsical or even subjective. It is still rigid, simply like a taught string instead of a stiff metal rod.
So to speak
I’ll check out that thread later this evening, sounds fun…
Yes. Yes! it’s Friday afternooon. I still have my sense of humor. [sub]hey–I never said it was a good one.[/sub]
THE DECISION. I mean it!
Is anyone else reading this thread? Have I really been so vague in my responses? Is anybody else as confused as arl? Let me say it again. Decisions have a moral value. Not “morality comes from decisions”. Not the convoluted nonsense of your penultimate sentence (no wonder you say “What?!” So did I. I can’t begin to follow the tortuous path of that thing.) Decisions have a moral value. Actions don’t. When we evaluate others, though, we might be forced by necessity to interpret actions as manifestations of their decisions [sub]except for the telepaths hidden among us, of course. they’re special.[/sub]
The passage of mine you quoted was a direct response to your observation that: “The factors that are at play are, at least in part, out of control or possibly uncontrollable”. In essence, it can be boiled down to, “so what?” Human beings are not in absolute control of anything. Does that mean morality never applies to human beings?
How you go from this to a contradiction of the position that decisions are the appropriate object for moral evaluation is beyond me. How you turned it back into a question of, “ethical responsibility for an event on which no ethical standard may be imposed since actions aren’t good and bad . . .?” Well, do you mind if I start calling you Daedalus?
Oh yeah. Before I forget. Decisions are the appropriate object for moral evaluation.
So, you have a system which you know fails under certain circumstances yet you continue to adhere to it? Why? Those who argue such a position from a religious base at least have an argument from authority (usually buffered by the Job argument). What keeps you satisified with an answer that you know doesn’t fit the problem? How do you handle situations where your “semi-rigid” code provides the wrong answer? How do you recognize them? How did you decide which “semi-rigid” string with which to bind your ethics?
Pedantic post:
My understanding is that utilitarianism is considered a subset of consequentialism as well. Some define utilitarianism and consequentialism as essentially identical.
I don’t know too much about pragmatism, but my philosophy dictionary says that, “Pragmatic ethics is naturalistic, pluralistic, developmental and experimental… and proposes as ultimate criteria for decision making the value of life as growth, determined by all those affected by the actual or projected outcomes.”
That seems to me to be less than clear: I’m not sure whether the muddiness lies in the doctrine, the reading or the reader.
This concern for actual outcomes (not just projected) is why I mentioned pragmatism in response to “end justifying the means.” You are correct that the same would also seem to hold true for utilitarianism. I’m afraid I have no exposure to consequentialism (as distinct from utilitarianism) but the name certainly seems to indicate a similar focus.
Bernard Williams defines utilitarianism as eudaimonistic consequentialism.
eudaimonistic: It is people’s happiness that we should be concerned with.
consequentialism: roughly, the doctrine that the moral value of any action lies in the consequences; laws, institutions and practices are to be justified in terms of their consequences.
Note that utilitarianism is concerned with right and wrong rules, institutions or behaviors. It sets itself up as a sort of method (a calculus even) for determining the right course of action.
If I understand it, questions relating to the moral worth of people are typically not posed within a utilitarian framework. But if they were, I suppose that a moral person would be someone whose actions would probabilistically promote good results. If I’m correct in this, the focus would indeed be moved back to the decision process.
I hit a man in the head with a hammer. This is an action. To anyone watching it could seem to be either beneficial or harmful. But it has no more moral value than using the same hammer to drive a nail.
The moral value lies in why I hit the man. Did I crack his skull because he cursed at me, or because I wanted to take something from him? Or did I do it because he was harming, or about to harm someone who was defenseless?
I don’t understand the previous line of text but then again I’m totally at a loss as to understanding this whole thread so felt I should add my own bit of gobblededook.
For anyone else that is confused let me just say ’ You are not alone’!
Firstly, I stick to it the same reason you stick to logic same reason physicists use math, even though Godel crushed those: because it works. the existence of faulty cases does not invalidate use, it advises caution and consideration. How hard do I need to pluck this string for it to be able to stretch here?
What I want is one of the starting points for morality. Because I also accept other people’s existence, I add in that I should neither force them or be forced by them to like or do something I don’t currently like or want to do. Here is where we often disagree: I don’t like that. I find it immoral. There may be a practical reason for doing such a thing. I may even support that reason, but that doesn’t remove its immoral status in my mind.
Anyway, enough about me…
You have been ultimately clear about your stand: intent is all that matters. Decisions have a moral value; morality comes from decisions. Yes, the latter is not contained in the former in a general sense; in the context of this post, however, which is considering the situational context, the means of an action, the ends of an action, and the decision/intent of the actor about the action, where does the moral judgement get placed? In this context, morals come from the decision. We can shortly say, “That[action] was simply immoral.” What you are saying is that that statement means, “The motivation behind that action was immoral.” I understand that, really, I do. What I don’t understand is how you mentioned that the results had nothing to do with it, or how things not under the actor’s control can still affect this judgement, which (if it is decision-based) are irrelevant.
That is, and let me say it more clearly, actions are irrelevant, and the ends completely ignorable. A person is immoral if they thing immoral thoughts. Am I interpolating you correctly, or does a person need to act in order to be immoral? If so, how can you say the ends and means are irrelevant? Am I making any more sense at my confusion?
your stuff
I think we still aren’t quite communicating. My question to you was not meant to be interpreted as a personal challenge. (Defend your morals!) I was trying to se where you understand the limits of your “semi-rigid” code to be. Godel’s approach was simply a metaphor. There is no particular reason to decide that an ethos should have the capabiity for self-reference.
Usually, the limits of a rigid morality are demonstrated by creating a contradiction between the behavior the code demands and an internal sense of what is “right”. (Think “killing Hitler” or “Sacrificing children” types of hypotheticals.) Now, you have said that you place no credence on such an innate sense, and where it conflicts with your system you would determine the flaw to be in yourself. So my questions become:
How, since you subjugate your internal sensibility to your system, did you ever decide upon the system in the first place? (This truly puzzles me. Again, I generally see this approach from those relying upon a religious authority. Do you use some other authoritarian basis? If not, how do you establish a criteria for evaluating competing ethical systems?)
Do you think your system is perfect?
If not, how do you determine where your system might fail?
When you reach a boundary condition (a place where the rigid system fails to provide the best answer, under whatever criteria you have established to identify such a case), what do you do?
My stuff
Not quite. More things enter a decision than simply intent. I might intend a “good” result yet fail to act ethically. (Focusing on a single element of a problem, for instance, without considering all factors involved.) Good intentions do not absolve me from my responsibly to seek a full understanding of a situation before acting upon decisions that affect others. Intent is one contextual element of a decision; it is not the only one.
In the decision. (not the intent) As bounded human beings, we often must extrapolate the nature of a decision based upon our understanding of a person’s actions, internal state, external influences, etc.
Results have nothing to do with it. Firing a gun into a crowd carries the same moral weight whether the bullet kills someone, wounds someone, or passes harmlessly through the group.
Factors beyond our control do have an effect upon our decision making process. We are bounded beings. We do not and cannot exercise ultimate (or even arbitrary) control over our minds. If we were capable of such control, then we might reasonable expect ethically perfect decisions from ourselves. Those limitations are not irrelevant, they are inherent. For an extreme example: imagine that I laced your water with a powerful psychotropic agent. Would your ability to make decisions be affected? Should I ignore that in determining the morality of said decisions? If you became aware that the qgent was affecting you (though still unable to control said effects) should you factor that into any ethical decisions you make?
Yes, although a decision which implies no action and yet can be judged immoral would seem to be a rare (perhaps even “degenerate”) case. Certainly, if I decide to torture you for my own amusement, that decision is immoral even if I am prevented from enacting my plan. this is distinct, however, from just “thinking” about torturing you for my own amusement.
Really, from my political and economic views you wonder where my moral system breaks down? Why, once it leaves(upward) the level of personal interaction. The actions of a society as a whole, to me, cannot be justified just because of the size of a society. When I consider societal actions, it also(unfortunately) doesn’t help to consider the society as a single entity (in other words, to map society onto the idea of an individual). It fails miserably on all counts. This is why I sort of reject, almost instantly, anything “we” “need” to do (seperate quotes for seperate connotation). This may be economics (which I’d like to touch on in a moment), this may be criminal regulation. This is why I am, ideally, an anarchist. I find government–any government–to be the first compromise. Perhaps this sheds more light on the Ayn Rand thread of yore. At any rate, any decision which needs to be made on a large scale requires a thought process which in no way forgets that society is almost a nonexistent creature, and to try and instead use, of course, some sort of statistical/democratic ideal behind it. Largely, you might note, I feel that such questions have no solutions, and so any decision reached is pretty much immoral.
As far as where it comes from if indeed I am flawed, I don’t necessarily argue from a position of authority in a religious sense. I instead define man as a creature with certain traits. Because of those traits, how does this creature best survive? Easy to do for a parasite, for example. We can clearly say that it needs some moral principle guiding its own reproduction IF survival is a goal (else it reproduces until it actually kills the host). For a human things might get a ton more complicated, but that doesn’t mean man isn’t a determinable biological animal. I guess that’s where things start: my reduction of the human animal to a creature with inherent wants and needs.
As far as this decision goes… the decision to act has the moral value, but not the intent (not the result the actor hoped to gain by deciding to perform this act)? On what could this be based? My problem here is that we’ve divorced actor from action, metaphorically, by divorcing decision from intent. Deciding to, for example, kill another person may be more or less moral, in self defense for example. I feel it is a much more subtle play, now that we’ve been hashing it out, between intended end, decision, and means (means, in their own way, help reveal what the intent is in some circumstances).
Let me say this. I’ve decided to [do this] because [it will have this effect] and I want [this effect]. If we were to place a moral value here, I agree 100% that the action itself can carry no moral implication. Only thing left seems to be the decision and the desire. Interesting what either of us would choose, since I seem to be arguing against the “decision.”
NOW, way back when I first joined the SDMB you, collounsbury, and I got into it over, IIRC, everything. One of them was how economics does not include morality. The main problem there was that, as you saw it, the study of economics involves no decisions, and so cannot include morality. To me, however, economics implies the study of wants and needs of man, which of course includes morality. That is, there can in fact be a moral economic system–a system which addresses what I noted to be the “inhrent” wants and needs of man.
I think you and I tend to run in circles so often because we are both interested in many of the same questions and approach those questions from radically different angles. I’m not talking about philosophy; I’m talking about focus. To me, when you discuss issues such as ethics it is extremely important o establish your most basic propositions first. This leads me, for instance, to take some care in drafting questions which are specific and intended to focus very narrowly. From such beginnings, I then extrapolate to the parger view. You tend to see everything from a very high level and respond to my questions with broad pronouncements that I am sure you feel are “on point” but which leave me dissatisfied and wondering “why can’t he answer simple questions?”
In other words, after your last post I still have no idea:
**How, since you subjugate your internal sensibility to your system, did you ever decide upon the system in the first place? ** What, other than an innate moral sense has guided you to this particular code of ethics above all others. You seem to be arguing for a Utilitarian ethos, but how do you determine that such is a proper guide?
**Do you think your system is perfect? ** Actually, you did answer this. At least, I take your discussion of where your ethos breaks down to be an implicit statement of imperfection. But this was really just a lead in for the more interesting . . .
how do you determine where your system might fail?Please note: How? What, if you value the ethical system above any personal moral sense, allows you to determine when the system breaks down? What value system trumps your ethical code? Why?
When you reach a boundary condition, what do you do?When your semi-rigid code breaks down, what guides your actions? How did you determine that this substitution was the ethically correct course?
The reason I ask questions like this is because I think they shed great light on what are often unexamined assumptions underlying the “grand ideas”. Which, in turn, illuminates the grand ideas themselves.
on to specifics
Well, it is based upon the fact that decision and intent are separate things. They are related, since intent is one factor in forming a decision. I have “divorced” them in exactly the same way I “divorce” action from consequence. Ex: You have a beer. I want a beer. My intent is to get the beer. My decision might be: ask you for the beer, attemot to buy the beer, steal the beer when you aren’t looking, convince you that I deserve the beer more than yourself, kill you and take the beer, etc. [sub]Damn, I’m thirsty now.[/sub]
My intent is certainly an important factor in each of those decisions, but it is far from the only factor.
Interesting indeed, since you have also expressed conflict at the idea of placing moral value on an element (decision) in which any factors are outside of the individual’s control. Do you think that people are more in control of their desires than of their decisions?
Well, I’m afraid this seems to be another case of cross-communication. I argued that economics and morality whose union was not a subset of either and whose intersection was not empty (the classic Venn diagram of intersection). In your terms: not every want and need of man is economic in nature; not every branch of economics deals with human desires (thought they might deal with the consequences of those desires). In my terms: not every decision is economic; not every branch of economics is concerned with human decisions (though they might deal with the consequences of those decisions).
One of them was how economics does not include morality. The main problem there was that, as you saw it, the study of economics involves no decisions, and so cannot include morality. To me, however, economics implies the study of wants and needs of man, which of course includes morality. That is, there can in fact be a moral economic system–a system which addresses what I noted to be the “inhrent” wants and needs of man.