Convince me that your ethical theory is right

[AnthArmo]

I do appear to be in a philosophical dilemma....

Right now I'm having trouble finding a basis for morality and ethics. Looking at Normative ethics there would appear to be three main theories.

Virtue-Based (Based on the Actor)

Duty-Based (Based on the Action)

Consequentialist (Based on the Consequence)

In all honestly, they all sound incomplete and terrible. Virtue based ethics seems to suggest that some people are morally "superior" to other by right of their virtues and that they should thus be given political power and be held up as "Philosopher Kings"

Duty-Based, although nice, has no real basis. for example, if theft is wrong, then is it wrong for a starving person to steal from someone who refuses to give them food? Duty-Based ethics, to me, does not give a person a moral basis for their actions.

Consequentialist ethics is the exact opposite. It provides a realistic basis to base morality off of, but it also justifies horrible things, and it assumes that people will have perfect information. it justifies things such as torture and slavery, all because it creates greater pleasure for others. as horrible as it is for a minority to exploit the majority (as it is under capitalism), I find it just as abhorrent for a minority to be exploited by a majority, which Consequentialism justifies.

Long story short, I'm stuck. So I'm basically asking people to get into a flame war in order to convince me that your normative ethical theory is correct.

[Dean]

I do appear to be in a philosophical dilemma....

Right now I'm having trouble finding a basis for morality and ethics. Looking at Normative ethics there would appear to be three main theories.

Virtue-Based (Based on the Actor)

Duty-Based (Based on the Action)

Consequentialist (Based on the Consequence)

In all honestly, they all sound incomplete and terrible. Virtue based ethics seems to suggest that some people are morally "superior" to other by right of their virtues and that they should thus be given political power and be held up as "Philosopher Kings"

Duty-Based, although nice, has no real basis. for example, if theft is wrong, then is it wrong for a starving person to steal from someone who refuses to give them food? Duty-Based ethics, to me, does not give a person a moral basis for their actions.

Consequentialist ethics is the exact opposite. It provides a realistic basis to base morality off of, but it also justifies horrible things, and it assumes that people will have perfect information. it justifies things such as torture and slavery, all because it creates greater pleasure for others. as horrible as it is for a minority to exploit the majority (as it is under capitalism), I find it just as abhorrent for a minority to be exploited by a majority, which Consequentialism justifies.

Long story short, I'm stuck. So I'm basically asking people to get into a flame war in order to convince me that your normative ethical theory is correct.

Situation Ethics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_ethics

In short: the intent is the fundamental catalyst for judgement, though the outcome may be unintended.

[mikelepore]

In all honestly, they all sound incomplete and terrible.

Why don't you just ask yourself what your reason is for doing the right thing? Suppose you needed some money to buy lunch,and you saw an old blind beggar collecting money in a cup, what would your reason be for not hitting that person in the head with a brick and taking that money? Whatever your reason is, after you put it into words, that's your theory of where morality comes from.

[mel]

I do appear to be in a philosophical dilemma....

Right now I'm having trouble finding a basis for morality and ethics. Looking at Normative ethics there would appear to be three main theories.

Virtue-Based (Based on the Actor)

Duty-Based (Based on the Action)

Consequentialist (Based on the Consequence)

In all honestly, they all sound incomplete and terrible. Virtue based ethics seems to suggest that some people are morally "superior" to other by right of their virtues and that they should thus be given political power and be held up as "Philosopher Kings"

Duty-Based, although nice, has no real basis. for example, if theft is wrong, then is it wrong for a starving person to steal from someone who refuses to give them food? Duty-Based ethics, to me, does not give a person a moral basis for their actions.

Consequentialist ethics is the exact opposite. It provides a realistic basis to base morality off of, but it also justifies horrible things, and it assumes that people will have perfect information. it justifies things such as torture and slavery, all because it creates greater pleasure for others. as horrible as it is for a minority to exploit the majority (as it is under capitalism), I find it just as abhorrent for a minority to be exploited by a majority, which Consequentialism justifies.

Long story short, I'm stuck. So I'm basically asking people to get into a flame war in order to convince me that your normative ethical theory is correct.

I've talked about ethics a lot in this forum, and ultimately I have taken that coming up with a valid prescriptive or normative moral framework is impossible (a sort of moral relativism) but that evolutionarily and societally we have discovered a certain set of "values" which we almost universally hold as morally relevant in any given situation.

The task of any given society is to maximize the expression of these moral values. For instance, there is a very deeply held value that most forms of violence are wrong, and that the only truly valid justification for violence is that of self-defense (I talk about this in my blog post "The Ethics of Revolution"). When all sorts of violence are taken into account, including social, structural, and economic violence, one justifies revolution against the capitalist machinery on that ethical ground. Revolution is self-defense.

Most societies have qualms against theft, and for good reason: the underlying value is that people deserve to keep the product of their labor. If you work hard for something, you deserve to get to keep it. This value finds poor expression in a capitalist society because ultimately, capitalists are engaged in the greatest possible theft of all, they steal the product of the labor of the working class.

Many people strongly and deeply value hard work, ingenuity, and dedication. These ideals and values find poor expression in capitalism because the sytem instead rewards ruthlessness, greed, and theft. The task of any given society ought to be to maximize the ideals which that society holds dear, and the values which are held presently find their poorest expression in a capitalist society.

All of that said, so far I have really only provided a framework for societal ethics and not individual ethics, however the same concept works for determining individual ethical decisions. An individual in any society should work to maximize the expression of their values both in their own lives and in the lives of their society. The society shapes the values of the individual as much as the individual shapes the values of the society. With this in mind, the individual must direct the society towards the expression of their values. This is more of a descriptive framework than a prescriptive one, but I imagine it starts from the assumption that people usually do have a pretty basic idea of right and wrong, which is almost universal. The problem is that many do not know how to allow those values to find their best expression.


Situation Ethics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_ethics

In short: the intent is the fundamental catalyst for judgement, though the outcome may be unintended.

So how do you determine what a "good" intent is and what a "bad" intent is? I see no way to judge moral actions from this. Determining what is "good" and what is "bad" still requires another framework, it simply provides for us to judge a person's intent against those to determine whether their specific action was "good" or "bad" (with categories which must be defined in another manner)

[mel]

Why don't you just ask yourself what your reason is for doing the right thing? Suppose you needed some money to buy lunch,and you saw an old blind beggar collecting money in a cup, what would your reason be for not hitting that person in the head with a brick and taking that money? Whatever your reason is, after you put it into words, that's your theory of where morality comes from.

I just wanted to add that this is pretty much exactly the basis for my understanding that ultimately people already know and understand right and wrong. Most people in most existing societies have a good idea of whether an act is right or wrong, and all efforts to find a secular philosophic framework by which to give a rational basis for this have ultimately failed.

People get a moral sense from a combination of evolution and societal conditioning. A completely material explanation exists for why people feel that the things they do are right and wrong, and no rational framework is necessary to define it. It is best to simply discover these moral goods and then attempt to discover a way in which to best express them through individual actions and the rules and attitudes of the society as a whole.

[MarxSchmarx]

Duty-Based, although nice, has no real basis. for example, if theft is wrong, then is it wrong for a starving person to steal from someone who refuses to give them food? Duty-Based ethics, to me, does not give a person a moral basis for their actions.

Au contraire. Without a sense of duty/obligation, the entire concept of ethics, much less moral theory, is by definition meaningless.

[yuon]

Why do you need a fully fledged, 100% worked out, etc. "basis for morality and ethics"? I suggest, you do what mikelepore suggests. Think about different situations, and think about your response. Think about why you think that way.

What you need to do, ideally, is to take apart your entire world view, and rebuild it again. However, to scrap it all in one go, and rebuild from nothing, that's too hard. Don't do that.

Instead, examine things one at a time. For example, incest, what's wrong with it? If two consenting adults (ignore child/adult relations for now, that's something more complicated) wish to have sex, why shouldn't they? What happens if both are incapable of being parents?

Do that over time, for different situations, try and maintain a coherent, concrete and consistent philosophy. But you don't need to just take something that someone else has created, do your own thinking, take the good bits, and scrap the bad. Make sure though, that everything is rational to the end. That's the most important bit, logical and rational. (Whoops, Christians don't get a look in, bugger.)

[Luís Henrique]

I think that the simplest possible formula is still Kant's: behave in a way that you can wish it was the general behaviour. What you wish would be a general behaviour, of course, is relative (a radical nihilist could justify suicide by believing that everybody should kill themselves). But as long you are not lying to others or yourself, your actions would be moral (not necessarily legal, of course. But being moral includes, sometimes, be willing to go to jail to make a point).

Luís Henrique

[mel]

I think that the simplest possible formula is still Kant's: behave in a way that you can wish it was the general behaviour. What you wish would be a general behaviour, of course, is relative (a radical nihilist could justify suicide by believing that everybody should kill themselves). But as long you are not lying to others or yourself, your actions would be moral (not necessarily legal, of course. But being moral includes, sometimes, be willing to go to jail to make a point).

Luís Henrique

You're talking about Kant's categorical imperative: the first formulation (or maxim), here


Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law

is more or less sound. You have two duties in accordance with this maxim: first what Kant called a "Perfect" duty not to act in accordance with Maxim's which when universalize would result in a logical contradiction. The second, is to act in accordance with Maxims which you would desire to be universalized. While this formulation very well does work out for the simplest of moral decisions even remotely complex ones don't fit particularly well. While Kant mentions that the moral maxim "Stealing is permissible" results in a logical contradiction, because the act presupposes property to be stolen, but if it were universalized, there could be no such thing as property (because everything would necessarily be common) that stealing is not permissible.

However, how do we handle the maxim "Stealing is permissible if you are starving and you need the money for food"? This does not seem to result in the same logical contradiction, but it could be argued either way, again eventually coming down to a personal predisposition whether or not you think that such behavior is okay before the discussion begins. The moral framework is at the mercy of already extant moral convictions.

It also can provide very few answers to social moral dillemmas, such as "Capitalism is permissible". Kantian ethics are often used to defend capital relations on the basis of free exchange and his further propositions, so I'll now return to his 2nd and 3rd maxims for elaboration.

The second maxim is the one most often used to defend capital relations, and it reads thus;


Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.

It has been argued than any form of taxation or wealth redistribution treats people as a "means" rather than ends in themselves, for a good example of such an argument, see Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia". He's more or less a libertarian (in American terms). A free-market capitalist, and he uses Kantian ethics to provide a justification for capitalism. While there are flaws with his application of the logic (and in its practical execution as such, since a worker is always coerced, though sometimes only subtly, into working for his employer in the capitalist system).

Overall, however, there is not much particularly wrong with this proposition in itself. People should always be treated as if they are agents with interests and never as objects to be manipulated, however this does not overcome the failings of Kant's ethics overall: namely their continued subjective nature despite his attempt at creating moral rules which are always objective, and that one cannot sufficiently create universal moral rules for any sufficiently complex moral dillemma.

His third proposition attempts somewhat to rectify this;


Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.

In other words: don't adopt any moral rules which would contradict other rules that might be universalized, if I'm understanding his meaning correctly. Overall, Kant's moral philosophy seems solid, but is subject to the same problems as any other philosophy which does not ultimately take into account that people have different ideas on moral issues and that any sufficiently complex proposition will necessarily have a multitude of valid, possible solutions.

Subjectivism is the only consistent philosophic position on ethics.

[MarxSchmarx]

I think that the simplest possible formula is still Kant's: behave in a way that you can wish it was the general behaviour.
Overall, Kant's moral philosophy seems solid, but is subject to the same problems as any other philosophy which does not ultimately take into account that people have different ideas on moral issues and that any sufficiently complex proposition will necessarily have a multitude of valid, possible solutions.True, that is one limitation of Kantian ethics.

Another limitation is that one could take the skepticism that dogged Kant further and ask why on earth we should obey a categorical imperative at all in the first place, anyway? Kant seems to want to say this is inherent in our understanding of any sort of ethical norm, but so what? Isn't this just restating what the definition of "normative" is?

For all the apparent profundity, there is ultimately a circular trap to Kant's categorical imperative.

Indeed, even if subjectivism were a tolerable price to pay for the Kantian ethical system, one can still ask why a subjective dictum has any moral authority. I don't think Kantians can answer this in any other way except "It just does".

[WhitemageofDOOM]

but it also justifies horrible things

Why are they horrible?
Because people get hurt right? But anytime utilitarian ethics command you to hurt someone, it means that someone else is going to get more hurt if you don't.
A sacrifice to maintain the status quo is still a sacrifice, a man dying in the street from hunger is still just as dead as he would be with a bullet through his head.

At the end of the day people die, people suffer, people live and people are happy. That is what matters.


it justifies things such as torture and slavery, all because it creates greater pleasure for others.Barring hypothetical bizzaro worlds, no. No it does not.
Which brings us back to the why are they wrong question doesn't it? There wrong because they make people suffer.


and it assumes that people will have perfect information.The perfect acts based utilitarian does not exist. Unless your omniscient anyways.
Judging people for being less than perfect is counterproductive, instead they should be judged based on reasonable expectations of consequence.

[More Fire for the People]

I recognize the ideological role of various ethical theories and their relations to the means of production. Every ethical theory has its historically-determined limitations and while some may progressive, every one of them is incomplete.

[mel]

Why are they horrible?
Because people get hurt right? But anytime utilitarian ethics command you to hurt someone, it means that someone else is going to get more hurt if you don't.
A sacrifice to maintain the status quo is still a sacrifice, a man dying in the street from hunger is still just as dead as he would be with a bullet through his head.

At the end of the day people die, people suffer, people live and people are happy. That is what matters.

Barring hypothetical bizzaro worlds, no. No it does not.
Which brings us back to the why are they wrong question doesn't it? There wrong because they make people suffer.

The perfect acts based utilitarian does not exist. Unless your omniscient anyways.
Judging people for being less than perfect is counterproductive, instead they should be judged based on reasonable expectations of consequence.

The problem with utilitarianism is, like all other moral philosophies, that it's awfully subjective. People will assign different utility values to different acts. At the risk of encroaching on Godwin's law here and inevitably turning the discussion for the worse, utilitarian ethics could justify Hitler's holocaust and all sorts of ugly eugenics schemes based on the utility of having a race of humans with fewer genetic defects and lower instances of disease.

There is nothing about utilitarianism which could say that killing the minority for the genetic benefit of the majority is unethical, however we all have an innate sense that eugenics schemes, state murder, and forced sterilization are at the very least morally questionable. Utilitarianism is too subjective to be useful as a framework for coming to moral decisions, and can only be useful in judging whether or not actions taken were moral after-the-fact and after the consequences have been made clear.

Often times it's impossible to tell what the consequences of any given action are beyond the very very immediate, the notion of "reasonable expectation of the consequences" cannot really hold water. For any given action, most likely you cannot even begin to fathom the consequences of that action beyond about a week or a month. In order to have a reasonable expectation of the consequences of an action, you need to be able to see further than that. You need, if not perfect knowledge, much better knowledge than most humans will have in a given situation. "The ends justify the means" only work when the ends can be reasonable predicted, most times they cannot.

[black magick hustla]

I think that the simplest possible formula is still Kant's: behave in a way that you can wish it was the general behaviour. What you wish would be a general behaviour, of course, is relative (a radical nihilist could justify suicide by believing that everybody should kill themselves). But as long you are not lying to others or yourself, your actions would be moral (not necessarily legal, of course. But being moral includes, sometimes, be willing to go to jail to make a point).

Luís Henrique

I like the categorical imperative. However, I think it is completely baseless. It only works if you assume it is true. You cannot compare it to the world and then use that as a basis to prove its truth value. So all ethical systems are pretty much based on nothing.

[WhitemageofDOOM]

The problem with utilitarianism is, like all other moral philosophies, that it's awfully subjective. People will assign different utility values to different acts.

Yes, obviously people assign different amounts of utility to different things. I don't see how this is a valid complaint.


There is nothing about utilitarianism which could say that killing the minority for the genetic benefit of the majority is unethicalYou know other than massive suffering and massive death.


however we all have an innate sense that eugenics schemesI ask the question again, why is it wrong? It's the fundamental question we need to ask ourselves when we discuss morality.


Utilitarianism is too subjective to be useful as a framework for coming to moral decisionsUtilitarianism is the only morality that makes even a token nod to being morally objective, and makes far more than a token nod.


and can only be useful in judging whether or not actions taken were moral after-the-fact and after the consequences have been made clear.That's hardly a problem if your trying to be non-objective.


"The ends justify the means" only work when the ends can be reasonable predicted, most times they cannot.The results justify the means, not the ends. It's an important distinction.

[mel]

Yes, obviously people assign different amounts of utility to different things. I don't see how this is a valid complaint.

It makes utility calculations entirely subjective and allows for the justification of literally anything along utilitarian lines. It means that it's not objective.


You know other than massive suffering and massive death.

Which is offset by the complete elimination of genetic defects for the entire rest of human history. Forced sterilzations and genetic screening could completely eliminate genetic disease and other defects within a few generations. You can weigh the utility of no pain or suffering from genetic diseases for the rest of human existence against the pain caused by forced sterilization and I think you'd could come up with the idea that forced sterilization is a net good.

But the "results" don't justify the means.


I ask the question again, why is it wrong? It's the fundamental question we need to ask ourselves when we discuss morality.

It's wrong because we've decided it is, over a period of thousands of years of human history. As societies we've decided that things are wrong, and overall societies have been morally progressive on this front. All things considered, I think we can trust our instincts on this one. Objectivity is overrated, nobody actually takes into account utility calculations when they decide right and wrong. They consult their own values and beliefs, which are largely influenced by society, and they compare those values to the situation. A system of morality should accurately reflect what people actually do.

People have values, they use those values to judge moral actions, and the task of a society should be to structure itself in such a way that it best expresses and rewards individuals for expressing those values. Why is a false appeal to objectivity necessary? Full recognition of the subjective nature of morality allows us more freedom to shape and change the images of society for the better.


Utilitarianism is the only morality that makes even a token nod to being morally objective, and makes far more than a token nod.

The categorical imperative that we talked about oh...all of 3 posts ago also claims to be morally objective. It fails as spectacularly at it as utilitarianism does.


That's hardly a problem if your trying to be non-objective.

What?


The results justify the means, not the ends. It's an important distinction.

Really now. What's the distinction, because I don't see much difference between "ends" and "results" and neither justifies the means. I've already

[WhitemageofDOOM]

Full recognition of the subjective nature of morality allows us more freedom to shape and change the images of society for the better.

Hey an appeal to utilitarianism, weren't arguing against that?

Allow me to refine the argument.
Were both materialists right? We both hold the fundamental belief that there is only time, space, matter and energy. And we both believe that morality evolved because it benefited those with it, since cooperation is more efficient than competition.

Morality is thus a fundamentally pragmatic construct of rules that we evolved an emotional attachment to for easier enforcement. Utilitarianism is the meta-morality. All other moralities are traditions tacked onto the fundamental core, Utilitarianism is stripping away all the tribal bullshit we've attached to morality and leaving the fundamental notions of cooperation and enlightened self interest.


All things considered, I think we can trust our instincts on this one. Which one, we actually have two sets of instinctual morality.
A basically utilitarian "Everyone deserves equal consideration" set, and a tribal bullshit "people i sympathize with" set.


The categorical imperative that we talked about oh...all of 3 posts ago also claims to be morally objective. It fails as spectacularly at it as utilitarianism does.Categorical imperative is not universally applicable, therefore it does not even make the barest nod to objectivity.


What?Sorry objective.

[Outinleftfield]

I think that both Kant and utilitarianism are right in some ways. I agree you should behave in a way that you wish would be the general behavior. Many problems have been brought up with his "categorical imperatives", but there's nothing to stop a categorical imperative from being very long rather than short and simple. For example, "stealing is not permissible unless it is necessary to save your life or those of others, to prevent permanent damage to health, ..." If you consider every aspect then you can usually imagine what youd want people to generally do in these instances with these aspects.

At the same time the best "categorical imperative" would depend mostly on what would cause the most benefit for people overall and maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain are things most people feel to be good. In fact if you think of "pain" as good then to you it's not really pain and if you think some "pleasures" are bad its generally because you expect those "pleasures" to get in the way of other pleasures or are avoiding them in order to get other pleasures.

Of course we can't predict what is going to happen as a result of our actions down to the tee but we can make an educated guess. So Id say if some choice when you take in all knowledge you know of it would generally cause greater good than bad you should make that choice.

[Luís Henrique]

Overall, Kant's moral philosophy seems solid, but is subject to the same problems as any other philosophy which does not ultimately take into account that people have different ideas on moral issues and that any sufficiently complex proposition will necessarily have a multitude of valid, possible solutions.

Well, there isn't any moral philosophy that tells you what to do in each precise case. What they can do is to give you an algorythm to discover what you should do to be consistent with what you desire. Kant is better than Bentham not because he was morally superior (though probably this was true, too), but because his algorythm is simpler and less dependent on unknown variables.

Should I kill this blind beggar and take his money for myself?

Bentham: well, you would need to calculate how much happiness his money would give you, versus how much suffering you would inflict into the beggar, and how much suffering of third parties would be caused or spared by the beggar's death, etc.

Kant: if you kill the beggar, this is because you believe any person can kill other person to steal? What would the world be if this was the accepted rule? Or perhaps you only believe that beggars are fair game - or only blind people, or blind beggars? In this case, if it was your own fate to become blind, or a beggar, or both, how would you feel about your rule that beggars or blind people can be killed at will?

To me, it is not difficult to choose which of those reasonings is, at least, the less absurd - and it is Kant's.

Luís Henrique

[mel]

Well, there isn't any moral philosophy that tells you what to do in each precise case. What they can do is to give you an algorythm to discover what you should do to be consistent with what you desire. Kant is better than Bentham not because he was morally superior (though probably this was true, too), but because his algorythm is simpler and less dependent on unknown variables.

Should I kill this blind beggar and take his money for myself?

Bentham: well, you would need to calculate how much happiness his money would give you, versus how much suffering you would inflict into the beggar, and how much suffering of third parties would be caused or spared by the beggar's death, etc.

Kant: if you kill the beggar, this is because you believe any person can kill other person to steal? What would the world be if this was the accepted rule? Or perhaps you only believe that beggars are fair game - or only blind people, or blind beggars? In this case, if it was your own fate to become blind, or a beggar, or both, how would you feel about your rule that beggars or blind people can be killed at will?

To me, it is not difficult to choose which of those reasonings is, at least, the less absurd - and it is Kant's.

Luís Henrique

Why choose either arbitrary algorithm? Quite frankly, I know of nobody making a hard moral decision who actually seriously consults any algorithm such as these. If they think about the decision at all, they consult their own deeply held values, and they ask themselves if whatever action they are taking will further those values or contradict them. Most people have pretty damn good moral instincts, why not trust them instead of trying to come up with a magic decision-making formula?

Rational reflection on ones deeply held values will always result in a decision that is best compatible with those values.

[Luís Henrique]

Why choose either arbitrary algorithm? Quite frankly, I know of nobody making a hard moral decision who actually seriously consults any algorithm such as these. If they think about the decision at all, they consult their own deeply held values, and they ask themselves if whatever action they are taking will further those values or contradict them. Most people have pretty damn good moral instincts, why not trust them instead of trying to come up with a magic decision-making formula?

Rational reflection on ones deeply held values will always result in a decision that is best compatible with those values.

Ah, but sometimes it is necessary to question those values.

Luís Henrique

[mel]

Ah, but sometimes it is necessary to question those values.

Luís Henrique

Which ones, when, and why? And does any algorithm provide objective, or even rational answers that can question a value and not simply the individual action?

It doesn't seem to me that Kant's Categorical Imperative can actually assist somebody in questioning whether or not their deeply held value that human life should be preserved is valid or not, so you're back at square one on the ethical formulas... if you rephrase it into terms of maxims, you run into the same problems as I originally pointed out.

Human life should be preserved --> Killing is (not) permissible

Well if killing was permissible then there wouldn't really be society left for very long, so you end up either destroying "killing" in one broad stroke (fuck, there goes our revolution) or coming up with a thousand and one "maxims" to determine in which situations killing may or may not be acceptable, which quickly becomes more difficult to work out than utilitarianism does for any given action, when the truth is they're both flawed. We have a good intuitive sense of when killing may or may not be permissible, and it's where we consult another value:

Violence should only be used in self-defense

And you can see my entire defense of that particular value, and the consequences of rationally reflecting on that value, in my blog post "The Ethics of Revolution", which I feel kinda like a prick for pointing to, but it does a better job explaining than I could by retyping all of its points.

And using Kant's algorithm, there is no guarantee that you will come up with an objective set of rules that everyone agrees on depending (dum dum dum!) on the different values that people bring to the table. I just want to toss out this pretend idea that we can be objective about morality and point out that you know what? That's okay. Predominantly, our moral attitudes are societally shaped. If we shape society along such lines as to best reinforce the values we have, we can also refine and reshape individual values in that society. People feel off in capitalism, alienated from themselves and discouraged because the values that bourgeois society tells them to have find no validation in the society itself. It says you deserve to keep the product of your labor, that human life is special, that freedom is paramount, and turns around to steal, kill, and enslave. By focusing on the values of individuals, and how to best express them in society, we quite quickly realize that not only is capitalism morally unsatisfactory (by simple reflection) but that we can produce a society which isn't. We can be the instruments of change that birth a society which actually rewards the values that we almost universally hold dear, and in which the creative and productive potential of each and every human being on this planet can be realized.

All of this without consulting any nonsense framework or algorithm which pretends to discover or reinforce "objective" moral truths.

[WhitemageofDOOM]

Which ones, when, and why?

My tribe is more important than any other tribe.
I am better than other people.
Murder is acceptable as long as (Excuse).
Human beings can be grouped into good people and evil people.
Evil people deserve to suffer.
My morality is absolutely correct, regardless of circumstance.
Magical freewill.
Non-materialism.

Lots of beliefs need to be examined and dealt with. If humanity never questioned it's beliefs slavery would still be practiced.


And does any algorithm provide objective, or even rational answers that can question a value and not simply the individual action?

Well if we can't rationally discuss morality, we can't really discuss morality at all can we? And if we can't discuss morality we lose one weapon in the fight for socialism. It also means we can't mutually agree on a moral code, which without a unified moral code society will inevitably have problems because of the competing moralities.


All of this without consulting any nonsense framework or algorithm which pretends to discover or reinforce "objective" moral truths.The objectively correct morality is the most efficient morality. Morality exists for humanities benefit.

[More Fire for the People]

What do more knowledgeable folks think about prescriptivism? And folks like Hare and Bernard Williams?

[mel]

Lots of beliefs need to be examined and dealt with. If humanity never questioned it's beliefs slavery would still be practiced.

Did I say humanity should never question its beliefs? That wouldn't make sense considering that I believe that moral positions are almost entirely socially constructed and societies change. What I did say is that there is no obective framework or algorithm or formula that will lead everyone to the same conclusion on any given situation which requires a moral decision to be made. If these frameworks don't lead people to the same moral conclusions that pretty much precludes any objective moral standards, doesn't it?


Well if we can't rationally discuss morality, we can't really discuss morality at all can we? And if we can't discuss morality we lose one weapon in the fight for socialism. It also means we can't mutually agree on a moral code, which without a unified moral code society will inevitably have problems because of the competing moralities.

Most people that live in a society more or less do. Society instills in them values, some societies don't actually deliver on those values, or skew the perspectives that people have on those values. It is our job to point out how, for instance, capitalism fails to deliver on the values which it instills (People deserve to keep the product of their labor vs. labor theory of value) or how socialism could deliver better (freedom in the form of unrealizable "opportunity" vs. freedom from economic tyranny). The basic values that most (western) societies share (human life is important, people deseve to keep the product of their labor, freedom, violence in self-defense is valid) are the product of many many many years of social conditioning and evolutionary factors, and even if those things can change (that's a good thing, means the values can get better) just by changing the society one is raised in that doesnt' mean that they're ultimately wrong.


The objectively correct morality is the most efficient morality. Morality exists for humanities benefit.

"Most Efficient" at what? What types of things "benefit" humanity, and how do you decide that? Do you take future value into account or just present value? What about the past? If you take future value into account, how long into the future? How far into the future can you reasonably predict the consequences? You cannot escape moral subjectivity. You just need to learn that objectivity is overrated and ultimately undesirable. An objective morality is an unchanging morality or it isn't actually objective.

[gilhyle]

I have a moral duty not to convince you that my morality is ethically right.......Im not joking

[Mephisto]

I had the same problem before I became a marxist. Then I realized, that this dilemma can not be solved, because moral and ethical views are developed under the influences of society, personal experiences and so on.

That is why marxism is a complete amoral world-view. You see, as a socialist I can debate with a neoliberal and I can say to him, that I think all people should have the same standard of material wealth, healthcare and political power. Probably he would respond, that he thinks people should recieve exactly what they "earn" to have.

So, who can say who is right? There are no objective indications for the solution of this problem, only different views of how justice should look like.

So marxists do not try developing a moral code which claims to be the right one, everywhere and forever. We only analyze society by it's own laws of motion and from that we deriviate (I hope this is the right word) what will happen (capitalist crisis etc.) and what must be done to solve this problem (revolution theories).

Of course every marxist and too marxist organizations develop their own moral codes and views. But these do not make the basis of our philosophy nor do we think that they are ageless or objective.