Things I believe for no reason Vol II, Chap II (rewritten to incoporate the philosophy meme)

[jack]

If you've been paying attention to memes recently, you'll see one that tries to classify people into utilitarians, hedonists, etc.

However, when you read desriptions of these philosophies, they're almost always paired with hypothetical examples where the philosophy doesn't apply, is contradictory, or contradicts what we innately feel is the right answer[1].

(1) I propose that instead of being a fault in the individual philosophy, this is because no described philosophy can in fact always agree with what we innately feel is the right answer[2]. They can be a good approximation to it though, as shown by most philosophies agreeing with each other most of the time[3].

I say accept that no fixed rule will suffice, and instead have a number of rules[4] which different people place different weights on. Then most of the philosophies mentioned are a statement of one rule, and attempted derivations of the other rules from it.

In most cases only one rule applies so most people agree, and any philsophy is fine. In awkward situations two rules conflict, and different people and different philosophies choose different ways.

(2) Secondly, I'd go further and say our innate feelings of what is right don't form a consistent or complete system. I'd like it if they did, but feel they don't for two reasons.

Firstly, I see no reason it should, as I don't have any reason to believe in a universal morality or a god who might dictate one. Of course, many of you will disagree with this.

Secondly, some of the *very* awkward and contrived hypothetical examples seem to have no good answer[5] even without trying to apply a philosophy, which suggests to me that some situations genuinely don't really have a best answer, so no system is complete and we have to work round that.

End note. In contrast to the last chapter, I expect this one to be controversial. Though knowing fate's sense of irony probably everyone will agree and not bother to post :)

[1] Eg. Utilitarianism: it might be for the greatest good to hang an innocent man as an example, which most people would object to. It's possible to get round this by including the chance of discovery and the ensuing disatisfaction, but it's not really possible to *quantitatively* compare goodnesses in that way.

[2] *Should* it agree? I'd say yes -- how else do you decide what philosophy to adopt? OTOH, some people would object: (1) The philosophy might illustrate consequences you hadn't forseen. Or (2) If you make 100 measurements of a physical quantity and 99 fit a simple equation, you say the 100th is wrong, and the same should apply to 100 hypothetical ethical questions. However for the moment, I'll assume they should agree.

[3] Which is also why we can all live together. Though the more cynical might reverse that statement and say we evolved/were created to to live socially, and any philosophy we come up with has to produce that as it's result.

[4] The initial list will be expounded tomorrow. Sneak preview: Hapiness is good; Sadness (normally pain) is bad; Killing is bad; Justice is good; Intentions matter; Results matter; I am more important than other people; My family and friends are more important than other people; People closer are more important than other people; Children are more important than other people; Good people are more important than bad people; Causing badness is worse than allowing badness. (NB: a true utilitarian might weight the first 100% and the rest 0%, but I think people like that are in enough of a minority that the general view is better.)

[5] For me, an example is "if a run away mine cart with ten people in is heading for a cliff, and the only way to stop it was to push a bystander under the wheels killing him, would you?" The rules "an active act is worse than a passive one" and "more deaths are worse than fewer deaths" conflict. Of course, you're probably ok with this but have a different problematic question, whether you've thought of it or not. Or do you disagree?

Comments

[mair_in_grenderich]

what about jumping under the wheels yourself? that would be *heroic*, so that's ok.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Obviously that *would* be better, but the problem states that the only way is to push the other guy. The reason for that is irrelevent :)

[mair_in_grenderich]

is it a specific bystander then? maybe they're well-shaped or something.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Or maybe you're a ghost and they're the only one. Or maybe you're chained up and they're blindfolded. It is *hypothetical* :)

[mair_in_grenderich]

but if he's particularly fat, say, then it's more ok to sacrifice him because he was going to be a drain on the NHS already ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. That's logic, that is :)

[mair_in_grenderich]

well, according to your rule-based things with weights, the issue is only a dilemma if

(weight_of_passive_evil*sum_of_worths_of_people_in_cart) = (weight_of_active_evil*worth_of_bystander)

proposing that the fatter the bystander gets the less his worth is may be unfair; at least he'll be good for ice cream store profits...

however, I don't believe that that was really what you meant - it's more an example of some balance of the size of the evils and the confidence you put in the estimates and the way people will treat you and - with the ultimate result that you don't *want* to do either even if you think one may be (objectively, in as much as morals are)*better*. One thing is, the people falling over the cliff doesn't affect you, unless any of them are related to you. So if you back away and pretend you didn't see it happening, you have only your guilt to live with, and no *real* consequences such as being taken over by the germans and having all the trains run on time.

(by contrast, I think the thing about your children being shot does try and set up an equality on that evil equation)

I don't know what my point was any more ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't know that the combinations of rules are linear, merely that they are well approximated by linearity in non-singularity places.

:)

[mair_in_grenderich]

well, you can wrap the various components in non-linear functions, approximate the whole thing by a neural network, I still say that you're looking for equality in the final computations of the "badness" of the two actions.

I guess what I'm saying, is that it seems to me that what I think the "right" thing to do may be clear, but I might not want to do it anyway.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That I'd agree with, and hadn't thought of. There's what someone thinks they should do, and what they know they would actually do. Hmmm.

[mair_in_grenderich]

not that that makes any difference to your post, since the buncha rules you mentioned can include those things.

I want to include a "dither factor" in there, where I don't do anything, just in case everything works out after all ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Dither might be covered under the active v passive thing. It's actually a big problem because if I'm not careful I could spend my entire life dithering and never do *anything* good.

[mair_in_grenderich]

well, in my mind there's a distinction between the belief (if you hold it) that passive badness is less bad than active badness, and dithering over actions on the small chance that someone will leap out of nowhere and solve everything. so I want two factors in my set of rules, please...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but I'm not convinced that the reason passive badness is seen as less worse *isn't* just because of that not-thinking-about-it and hoping-it'll-be-ok-somehow factor you mention.

[mair_in_grenderich]

well, you have one factor in your rules, and I'll have two in mine ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, of course that does happen.

But I wasn't sure if you *did* think there was an active/passive distinction, or just thought I did.

[mair_in_grenderich]

there's a related question to do with whether you think it's ok for other people to do things which you wouldn't feel able to do yourself (now moving towards vegetarianism as an example) (and I don't mean physical competence). if you couldn't kill a pig, is eating pork ok? if you couldn't kill a man, is war ok? er, there must be examples besides murder.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I really don't know, despite much thought. I've come to the tentative conclusion that to live in society you have to accept that when something's prevalent enough there's nothing you can do, and in some cases X's rights trump Y's for some reason... but I'm not really happy with it, I just can't see what I should do.

[mair_in_grenderich]

when something's prevalent enough there's nothing you can do

if everyone thought like that, we'd still have a slave trade...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I know, I know :( It's another case of the person not living up to their own ideals. OTOH, maybe some things *are* too prevalent. Maybe if fruitarians devoted every moment to converting people, they still would have zero success, and if you can see that it might be more worthwhile to chase acheivable improvements. I don't know :(

[mair_in_grenderich]

I've been reading http://www.livejournal.com/~spacefem/ with interest, about her fighting the marriage amendment *knowing they won't win*.

http://www.livejournal.com/~spacefem/312972.html

There's the story of the man on the beach, throwing stranded starfish into the ocean, and someone asks him, "There are millions of these things on the beach. What difference does this make?" He threw another one in and said, "It makes a difference to that one."

can't really comment, very not-active here.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Seriously, the problem with hypothetical questions is that to make them simpler they require absolutes. I could say "you can save the people with 80% probablity by sacrificing the bystander, with 40% probability by persuading him, etc" but while more realistic that obscures the underlying dilemma.

I am implicitely assuming that because this extreme hypothetical example is morally paradoxical, there are similar more complicated example that also are, but it's harder to see that. If you don't think so, um, I don't know.

[mair_in_grenderich]

the one I've usually heard is along the lines of, you have two children, you love them both equally, if you pick one to be shot then you and the other one go free, otherwise the gunman shoots both.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

"And you can't choose randomly."

[mair_in_grenderich]

dunno, you're the parent, *could* you?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I would say it was less bad than all the other options, if you were allowed to.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I could, but then I don't know if I could throw myself infront of a minecart either :(

Debate

[lockymclean.livejournal.com]

Do most philosophies agree with each other most of the time? I'll accept that for the majority of everyday transactions (is it right to brush my teeth, pay for my coffee, etc.) the issues are uncontroversial, but do you mean to say that most philosophies will agree on most situations where there is some morality in issue?

Anyway, what do you do when two rules conflict? My suggestion is that universally (or popularly at any rate) accepted laws must apply, even if they are secular and not religious, in order to prevent total social breakdown. For example, in the situation you gave in fn[5], English law would not condemn you for standing by and doing nothing, but you would be very hard pressed to justify pushing the person under the wheels. The only time in the history of English law where it was accepted as an argument was in the Siamese twins case ("Re: A (conjoined twins)") and that was pretty exceptional because the weaker twin was going to die anyway and the obvious utilitarian answer was very strong.

Interestingly enough, in French law you would possibly face prosecution for failing to throw yourself under the wheels as they have a doctrine of enforced altruism towards victims of misfortune!

I suppose the point of those last paragraphs is that at some stage laws have to be formulated prior to the event, and they inevitably have to be general in nature, or at least applied by analogy from existing cases, so you have to sit down beforehand with a general governing philosophy or series of weighted principles which will prevail whenever there is a conflict.

If you want to know why a law has to be formulated in advance, it is because it is a fundamental principle of law and punishment that a person can only be punished according to a law where they had an opportunity to know about it beforehand and modify their behaviour accordingly. In civil law cases where only money is at stake it is possible to be more flexible and result-orientated, but there must be some degree of certainty with criminal law where a person's liberty or life is at stake.

Well you said you wanted controversy...

Re: Debate

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

If they don't, that only strengthens my assertions, doesn't it? I was mainly referring to uncontroversial decisions with that 'most of the time'.

Re: Debate

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I agree obeying the law is a good rule of thumb: most of the time you should automatically obey it because it's (1) normally for the benefit of the majority more than the alternative and (2) gets you put in jail less.

So it might tip the balance. However, while fascinated by the different legal responses to the situation, I can't bring myself to subsume my morality in *anyone* else's entirely.

My intent was that almost all the time one rule would turn out to carry more weight, either by being more relevent, applying to a person you care about more, or being more important, and in other situations there basically wasn't any right answer. But I was going to expound upon that at length in my next chapter.

Re: Debate

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

PS. Hello, it's very nice to meet someone else commenting on my thoughts. If you don't mind, out of curiousity, can I ask how did you come across my journal?

Re: Debate

[lockymclean.livejournal.com]

I was reading chess's LJ, and was seeing how many friends she had so as to respond to a comment she made about losing track of everyone's LJs. Your post looked interesting.

Oh, and thanks for reminding me about what I was meant to be doing!

Re: Debate

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

Oh, and thanks for reminding me about what I was meant to be doing!

LOL. And I'm flattered to have been distracting :)

[mair_in_grenderich]

The initial list will be expounded tomorrow.

tomorrow's taking its time coming

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oops. I got distracted. And I wasn't sure if the response to this one undermined the other one. I'm working on it.