Heya - sorry to disregard with the rest of the post, but its at this point here I think where I’d want to make a fundamental objection - its not that I’m claiming that there can’t be pleasure without truth. I’m claiming that truth is valuable in its own right, no matter the pleasure, pain or whatever it caused.
(and, by the way, in that particular example I’d probably be perfectly happy for the girlfriend who cheated if she simply never brought up the subject of the affair to the partner. As I think I’ve probably said above, just because I don’t think you should lie doesn’t mean you always have to automatically volunteer the truth.)
He knew that one pill would lead to the truth and the other would lead to something other than the truth. Correct? What does that mean to you?
Well, I’m using the Matrix to illustrate a point, just as you used the situation with your mother and family members to make a point, and others have used Nazis to make a point. I don’t understand your confusion.
Why? It brings as much revelance as anecdotes about family get-togethers and wives with fat asses in unflattering clothes.
Isn’t that what gives any thing of value its value? This contant refrain is meaningless, and I’m amazed you are still using it. It’s like saying money has value because we can buy things with it. Well, yeah. That’s why it has value.
It’s still important to distinguish “truth has value because its promotes happiness” from “we should only be truthful if we can tell that it will produce positive, ‘happy’ consequences”. The latter argument is what I have problems with, not the former.
ywtf:
Because in my opinion, by default we should tell the truth. It is only at extreme situations where personal feelings should get in the way of honesty. These situations occur when my following the honesy rule conflicts with me following other moral/ethical rules and guidelines. By default, I tell the truth (unless I’m being a badass). Circumstances have to meet certain criteria before I deviate from that. Nazis at my door meets those criteria. Normal, day-to-day things, don’t usually meet those criteria. That’s why I don’t structure my ethical beliefs around those extreme case.
Well, less say that the record was falsified so that no one would know. What then?
ywtf:
Priceguy
I thought it was pretty clear in my post that I was expressing an opinion (just as you opined the opposite earlier in the thread). If you would like, add “IMO” to the last sentence.
According to whom or on what basis? If it doesn’t lend itself to practical application, what good is it?
Because the presumed consequences of following the rule don’t always govern whether or not I will follow it. Only in extreme situations where following the honesty rule clashes against with other morality rules (like not aiding and abetting murder, assault, or needless suffering) will I weigh the value of truth against the prudence of lying. But in the absence of those situations, I tend to put my trust in truth and don’t feel it is necessary to self-rationalize why honesty is better than being deceptive. Like I said earlier, it is the default standard.
There is no confusion; I just consider the movie references to be meaningless, as they do not stem from reality.
It might, if you phrased it like “What would you choose in Neo’s position, and what do you think others would choose?”, but referring to what characters in a movie did is pointless.
Ah, we agree. Great.
Then I have misunderstood you, and apologize.
Anyway, we agree that truth has value because it promotes happiness. Do we agree that truth does not have value when it does not promote happiness?
I hesitate to say we are in agreement because, in our position as fallible actors, we really have no idea when something promotes the most happiness, especially in the long-term. If, as an objective observer, I watched a society of people being honest for the sake of honesty, and nothing good came out of that policy, then I would agree that the truth had no value because nothing good came out it. But I have a hard time imagining that. It’s like imagining a car with all working parts, plenty of fuel, and a competent driver, but not expecting the car to run. Why would I expect to find nothing good in a society where people accept without cynicism what other people say, because the concept of lying is so foreign? One doesn’t have to search hard to see the good in that.
Imagine saying that science has no value unless it promotes happiness. Is the individual scientist supposed to trouble himself with the question of happiness when he is looking for life on Mars or trying to debunk the theory of relativity? I hope not, because the question of whether or not science will cause happiness has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not there is life on Mars or whether there are holes in the theory of relativity. There will always be some people who prefer to not know the truth because they don’t see the value in it, but that doesn’t mean that the truth is meaningless, or that it needs to be falsified.
So, we agree that truth has value because and if, and only because and if it promotes happiness? If so, we are in agreement. You seem to consider it rather more difficult to ascertain the probable consequences of telling the truth versus lying than I do, but apart from that, we agree.
Good to who, I think is the important question. Even if we might personally find it abhorrent, it is perfectly logical to maximise my own good or, if you like, pleasure. Why do we find that abhorrent is the real question.
In the sense that I’m using the word, yes it does.
To me that sentence reads: “Yes I agree. That doesn’t mean I agree.” :rolleyes:
Because you’ve already said it. You’ve already claimed that even though I claim that I have an instinctive value for things other than pleasure that my subjective instincts are wrong, and that your subjective instincts are right.
Different people value different things - why should we share identical tastes?
But if you want, I’ll say it again:
I find pleasure for its own sake enjoyable, yes, but ultimately empty and meaningless. I want some sort of meaning, some sort of purpose, to exist for more than existence’s sake. Any animal can live a short term life of seeking out short term amusement. Any programme can reach its conclusion, just as I can follow my biological instincts.
But that’s not enough. I want to be better than that. To defy the forces of nature. To be something above, beyond and separate from it.
And I accept that if I lived this ideal it may well lead to a life of hardship. Who knows? Maybe even dying young. That it could probably live to more pain than pleasure.
And I don’t care. Because pleasure isn’t the only thing valuable.
I had a hard time deciphering that last part but let me say this.
In a relationship other than the vows of marriage I don’t think revealing a fling is required by truth unless you are asked a direct question.
Do I think it’s possible for one partner to live in ignorence of an affair and be relatively happy. Yes. As you said your significant other might have a fling and realize he or she made a huge mistake. It might cause them to apreciate you even more.
In that case we have no way to measure the degree of “happiness” that the truth might bring. As discussed before. Sometimes pain now leads to greater good later.
If the offending spouse tells the truth with honesty and contrition it might lead to an even better realtoinship. It might mean they go their seperate ways to find happiness with others. There’s no way of knowing. One thing we can be pretty sure of is a lie leaves us on the edge waiting to be discovered with our happiness always in jeopardy. The truth leads us to growth.
I don’t. The variable of who experiences the pleasure never enters the picture.
So you would rather live a horribly painful and harsh life filled with truth, than an ecstatically happy life where you knew you couldn’t trust anybody or anything, but were still ecstatically happy? I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t believe that. I believe you’d pick the lying happiness in a heartbeat.
We do, in fact, appear to have run into a brick wall. As parting words, I wish to say that I have all along maintained that my philosophy would not hold up to the scrutiny of anybody who didn’t agree that pleasure is good and pain is bad, and I have also constantly admitted that I cannot in any way show or prove that pleasure is good and pain is bad. You did agree that pleasure is good and pain is bad, but you also wished to place value in other things such as truth and nobility, on the same grounds on which I placed value in pleasure, which must mean that your philosophy does not hold up to someone who does not agree that truth and nobility are good. That someone is me.