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After the storm created by the Meyer article and its rebuttals, I think it might be time for us to sit down and actually do an ethical anylysis of free software rather than just assert moral principles.
It seems to me that moral arguments generally go nowhere. One side asserts its moral principles while the other throws back its own without any progress really being made on the matter. What we really need is a solid theory of ethics followed up by some strictly scientific analysis.
For a few months now I've been trying to do this and think I may now have reached a point where my ideas are usefull. I've also tried to apply the moral theory to free software, but have quickly discovered that the issue is far too complicated to be tackled by a single person.
So in the Free Software/Academic tradition I've decided to beg for criticism (constructive, destructive or flaming - I don't care). With good criticism from others we can all create a strong theory of ethics that can be presented to other companies, governments and, most importantly, the media.
My two papers can be found at
The "who cares where the rockets come down" quote is by Tom Lehrer.
I'm puzzled by your assertian that software should be judged as an economic activity, rather than a personal liberty issue. I have a couple of specific gripes with what you say:
Software is the same [as pharmaceuticals] in that most of the expenses are incurred before the product is completed.I think that most programmers would dispute this. The fact is, you write it, get people to use it, and then you sink a great deal more time and effort into supporting, improving, and rewriting it.
I will assume in this study that the production and supply of software is too heterogeneous to be planned and therefore that software production and supply must be controlled by a complex system. Now to say that it requires a complex system is not the same as saying that it requires capitalism, but capitalism is the only complex system we have.Well that's not exactly true. For example, ESR has done rather well at arguing that if free software is an economic system, the system it is closest to is a gift culture.
However it should be noted that by placing the issue under the capitalist paradigm we are ignoring those software products that are developed for non-economic reasons, such as academic research, hobbies, philosophical beliefs etc. In the case of academic programmes they do still come under the field of economic ethics, as it is a production and supply of software, but are controlled by the state subsidy paradigm.Interestingly, if you look at free software as a gift culture, you do not run into this problem of excluding quite so many legitimate reasons for which people have been known to write free software. Even ESR's gift culture analogy, though, missed valid reasons I and others have written software. For example, I sometimes code for the sheer pleasure of the mental state that induces. I sometimes code to learn something, or for the feeling of independance of being able to solve a problem on my own.
I have a general comment and a specific comment. Let's start with the specific.Specific
Ethics applies only to homo sapiens.This axiom would be objected to by many people nowadays, but if ethical analyses are extended to animals we end up with contradictions. If for example lions are allowed to kill and eat other animals then so am I. And further, if a lion is allowed to start eating an animal before it is dead then I am allowed to do that too. Or if a domesticated cat is allowed to kill kittens because they are not its offspring the I am allowed to kill children that I did not father. No interaction between two animals could be described as moral or immoral, so therefore no interaction between homo sapiens and those same animals could be described as being either moral or immoral.
You're speaking too broadly when you refer to ethical analyses "extended to animals". One way to extend ethical analyses to animals is to suggest that humans and other animals (henceforth "animals") are bound by the same general moral laws. Another way is to suggest that the moral laws to which humans are subject include obligations toward other animals. These two extensions are quite different, but you've confused them in your argument: "If for example lions are allowed to ... then I am allowed to do that too" (i.e. if ethical analysis involves obligations toward animals, then ethical analysis also require that the obligations of animals will be the same as the obligations of humans). I have found this unconvincing.
Another way of saying this is that "moral reasoning involving animals" can mean "saying that animals are moral agents", or it can mean "saying that moral agents can engage in moral reasoning about animals".
So a position you don't address is that other animals aren't moral agents and don't have moral obligations (or, if they do, that their obligations are different from those of humans), but that they are at least potentially proper subjects or moral concern or moral reasoning.
Some people don't accept the idea that entities which aren't moral agents could have rights (or moral significance in your preferred framework). If a lion isn't acting immorally by trying to kill me, some people say, how can it be that I could be acting immorally by trying to kill the lion?
But you and the lion have different capacities -- and what can meaningfully be attributed to you might not necessarily be meaningful when attributed to the lion. How can this discrepancy be taken to mean that it's intrinsically nonsensical to try to make moral statements about your behavior toward lions?
I've talked to people like Rob who seemed to think that ethics only made sense as between moral agents. That's far from clear to me. Specific obligations need not be reciprocal -- or at least, in many cases, the reciprocal part of an obligation would be nonsensical.
If I can have specific moral obligations which aren't reciprocated (a common example is toward babies, who not only may not understand right and wrong, but may be completely incapable of doing certain kinds of things that are wrong), then why should I assume that none of my moral obligations could be to entities which can have moral obligations to me?
The argument that "[n]o interaction between two animals could be described as moral or immoral, so therefore no interaction between homo sapiens and those same animals could be described as being either moral or immoral" is strange; it seems to rest on an analogy that views ethics as necessarily reciprocal, almost a sort of bargain or contract. As I said above, I do know people who think of ethics in those terms explicitly. But I don't see it.
General
Trying to produce a rational a priori theory of ethics is a very worthy and respectable goal, which has never managed to produce any consensus that it's succeeded.
There are some arguments that there will never be a completely a priori theory of right and wrong which can actually prove anything about right and wrong in the world. (Remember what Einstein said about mathematics and reality? So completely a priori moral theories are probably very akin to mathematics.) Those arguments are pretty strong. I think I'm starting to lean toward a suggestion I've heard in a few places, that descriptions of right and wrong should use logical argument to build and refine theories based on moral intuitions.
The idea there is that moral intuitions aren't automatically trustworthy (especially because perception of them might be distorted, for instance, by strong emotions, or cultural habits or norms). But, on the other hand, moral intuitions may suggest that a moral theory is desirable, and provide information that could be used to refine or discuss attempts at it. (That's one reason why a lot of debates about right and wrong use so many hypothetical examples. They let you compare the implications of a theory with your own intuition.)
I've been a moral realist for as long as I've thought about ethical questions, but of course moral realists have a really big epistemological problem: how can we find correct moral principles?
David Friedman actually made the intuitionist argument very clearly, and I found what he said very interesting: "Think of moral intuitions as playing the same role in our knowledge of normative propositions that sense data play in our knowledge of positive propositions."
It is more important that the ethics of free software be judged on a "freedom" level, than economics level. Software controls:
- what hardware we buy.
- what other software we use, and how we use it.
- how we communicate: in particular, it directs us to use particular methods or services (eg: internet vs something else) which are encouraged by what is "well supported" or the "default service".
- what we can do with our computers, in general
Therefore, having software free (in the GNU sense) allows us to have more control over how we use our computers, and how we communicate.
This freedom issue is an ethical issue which is central to many people's views regarding free software, IMHO.
Engineering ethics is already a pretty big field, granted it deals with a different set of problems than the ones presented in the recent set of articles. A starting place for browsing is here: http://www.ieee.org/organizations/committee/ethics/ec-resources.htmlOne of the big concerns in engineering ethics is how to deal with real-world situations where you may be asked to do stuff like cut back on the quality of a system in order to get it to market quicker or cheaper. If the cut back in quality causes safety risks, or you don't tell your client about the cutback in quality, then you have an ethical problem.
With this in mind, it may be useful to try to create a theory of software ethics that starts with the basis that buggy software is ethically wrong, since you don't know what bugs will somehow lead to lose of life or a threat to the public welfare. It's one thing if your stupid metric conversion bug leads to a robot crashing on Mars - it's another if it leads to a crashes in midtown Manhattan. So knowingly shipping buggy software is ethically wrong, and hiding your source where qualified debuggers can't fix it is also ethically wrong.
Anything you do to cut down on the bugginess of code (like making it freely available for peer reviews) is a step in an ethically good direction. Anything you can do to make sure patches are available as soon as possibile is also ethically positive, which is another mark for the bazaar style development.
However, there may be risks with making your source available. Perhaps everyone who gets a hold of your source isn't qualified to use it, and they end up implementing it in some unsafe manor, leading to some catastrophe. How ethically responsible are you for letting them have the source in the first place ? Also, perhaps problems in freely available code are exploited rather than fixed. Perhaps the exploit brings down a website that keeps someone from getting information they need to have in a life-and-death situation. How ethically responsible is the author of the original code in that case ?
So, to summarize, a theory of free software should be based around efforts to cut down on bugs and to provide safer, higher quality systems. If anyone wants to help me flesh this approach some more, send me your ideas.
On the Homo Sapiens axiom, this is a good point. I think I may be able to reformulate it in terms of utility, but we'll see.On your general argument: I was trying to avoid all of the deductive moral theories as they have all struck me as being rather pointless. My suggestion is that we should take our moral intuition and use induction to try and get at the assumptions that underly that intuition. This would allow us to make more rational arguments than ones that only involve our intuition.
The real difference is that I'm trying to avoid a grand unified theory of ethics and instead get us to examine the principles that already underly our judgements. This is a field by field task rather than holy grail one.
On the gift culture (Joey): In the hacker world I think that esr has a good point about the importance of qudos, but when you look at software as a whole I think economics is the driving force behind most software development. I'm not saying that the hacker way of doing things should be ignored, just that the issue of whether we should use capitalism or the hacker system for software development is a much larger issue that I didn't want to tackle. For esr to be right then the hacker way of doing things has to be correct in all cases, but I doubt this will be the case. Even if it should be the case the safer route is to use economic ethics and try to get governments to impliment some of our ideas (such as source code access) and then move on to discussions of the other issues.On personal liberty (Clausen): The issues on hardware choice and so on are cluded at the moment by the Microsoft monopoly. I think that when Microsoft is reduced to just another player we will see these sort of issues being dealt with by the market.
The real difference between prose/verse and source code is that prose and verse often has political implications, so it clearly is best dealt with by personal liberty ethics. This isn't the case with most software, although there is some software that has political implications through its ability to facilitate sharing of ideas. In this small (but increasingly important) set of applications I think you might be right that using personal liberty is the appropriate choice. But the majority of software is just purely economic.
gazook: I don't think one is responsible (ethically or in any other way) for when people misuse (whether intentionally, through neglect or lack of knowledge) free software one has released.
Just like no car manufacturer can be held responsible for that drunk driver that killed someone with the car that manufacturer has, well, manufactured ;-}
Now, if someone uses a bug in my free software for some illegal deed (as in your website example)... this is close. But it depends on how much work I've put into making sure it is bug-free, and how I represented the software (if it was not that stable and I knew it) to the entity that used it (and was hurt by that).
But that is similar to when commercial developers "don't tell [their] client about the cutback in quality,", making them instead think the quality is top-notch, and they get hurt in the process.
I tried to email you, but sourceforge.net said you didn't exist. I have access to a listserve, would you be interested in helping to get a mailing list on this topic up and running? You can reach me at mettw@bowerbird.com.au.
Mettw has some serious flaws with his ethical framework. It is an interesting scientific attempt at attacking the problem of deriving an ethical framework, but he fails to grasp how ethics really works. First of all, all ethical frameworks contain the following three concepts: The Right, the Good, and the Character. His paper fails to do so. However, he does seem to latch onto Utilitarianism for his ethical framework. Utilitarianism has several theoretical problems with it. To fully enumerate these, Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons is an excellent book to read. Basically, the root of these problems is establishing Good before Right. In claiming that ethics is about promoting happiness, and ethical rules should be judged on their ability to promote happiness, mettw opens himself up to several counter examples.I can accept mettw's claim that ethics can only apply to actions. However, I cannot agree that their outcomes are the only basis for what is right. I also cannot accept the claim that ethics can only be applied to humans, as we relate to each other. It is an easy argument to prove that harming the environment for no good reason is morally wrong. It is easy to show that torturing an animal is wrong. These are wrong in of themselves. They are not wrong because one can relate them back to how one should treat other humans. And just as these can be wrong, there does not need to be an object to create an ethical or unethical action. A reliance on utility is once again found.
Furthermore, fundamentally, mettw's concept of "more right" rather than absolutely right (as it relates to utility) is wrong. There are moral absolutes. One can formulate them. Ethics is not a science, nor is it subjective. The last time ethics was modelled after science, it was shot down. Interestingly enough, this was done by Jeremy Bentham, father of Utilitarianism. Ethics cannot be a science. The rules of mathematics cannot be applied to it. However, this does not mean that ethics is rhetoric. Ethics is a branch of philosophy. Rhetoric is the mainstay of sophistry. That is akin to equating astronomy with astrology. Ethics, like all of philosophy, is strongly grounded in Logic. Rhetoric has not concept of structured reason. Mattw makes several flawed statements about what ethics is.
Ethics is not sociology. It is not about explaining the status quo. Ethics is about what is Right, what is Good, and what makes a good person. Ethics is not a science, nor can it ever be. Ethics is a branch of philosophy: that means it follows a rigorous process of structured thinking. Ethical frameworks are not about coming up with punishments: they are about determining what is Right, and what is Good. As a result, they also tell us what is Wrong, and what is Bad. They do not tell us how we should punish someone who has done something wrong. Mattw demonstrates his lack of knowledge of ethics in his piece. It is an interesting effort, but is fundamentally riddled with theoretical problems.
I think it was bentham who justified utillitarianism by saying `What else can we use?' Various other ethical theories may sway our actions in the short term, but in the long term we always return to the utillitarian principle to make decisions.If we take the environment as an example, people rarely argue that it is simply morrally wrong to damage the environment because they know that such arguments make little impact on people. If you claim that it is an axiom that damaging the environment is wrong then someone else can merely claim thet they disagree with your choice of axiom and there is nothing you can do to sway them. The only way you can sway them is to contruct an argument in favour of your principle, usually by the impact it has on people. But if you do this kind of deductive argument for your `axiom' then, by definition, it is not an axiom.
Logically, the only way you can convince others of your axiom and reach consensus is through induction. This is what I have argued in favour of. The problem with induction is that it is not a conclusive form of logic, so we can not make true or false statements, only better or worse ones. That then raises the question of by which measure we should make these better or worse judgements. You may object to the Utillitarian principle being used as the measure, but what else could we use?
Bertrand Meyer's claim to fame is that he's the inventor of the Eiffel programming language, and co-owner of a company that sells nonfree Eiffel compilers and tools.Reading his essay in the most generous possible way, I think he was trying to point out that while freedom is an ethical issue, quality is an ethical issue as well. Software can have consequences to people's health and well-being, through controlling for example robots and financial or medical systems.
The Product F and Product P thought experiment is a straw man, but it points to a more serious question:
- Is freedom of speech and thought more important than health, livelihood and safety?
- Do open source methods improve safety, quality, and so on?
The first is probably impossible to answer universally, and seems like a bona-fide question of ethics. I suppose in practice societies and people reach some kind of tradeoff: not being able to shout `Fire' in a crowded theatre being the most practical example.
The second question is as yet unanswered, though I think there is some evidence that free software is more reliable.
In particular, free software projects seem to achieve good quality without a lot of methodology, but more by good sense, by responding to user feedback, and by deciding through open debate, not politics. Meyer's a leading proponent of the other approach -- design by contract, and so on. It's a valuable idea, but for whatever reason has not been widely adopted. (Perhaps they're not really very practical? I don't know.) My impression is that most free software projects do a bit better at quality than most nonfree projects. This has been discussed elsewhere at length; I won't recapitulate it here.
Accountability is a different question: Meyer criticizing the GTK developers for their volunteer work shows a gaping hole in his understanding of the term `volunteer'. Where there's a commercial relationship, there should be recourse for inadequate quality -- and the intention of UCITA to rule this out for proprietary software is worrying. I hope that Linuxcare and other service companies will help people get the best of both worlds: somebody who'll pay attention when they call, but also the freedom to see the source and choose the best service provider.
Utilitarianism is perhaps seemingly more practical to use at first glance. I will grant you that. However, when you examine utilitarianism as a theory (as Parfit does a wonderful job of in his book), you can see that it fails. Justifying an action based on whether or not it makes people happy is a mistake. The reason for this is that there is no sense of higher laws guiding us. If we all were happier if we killed an innocent person for sport, Utilitarianism says that we should kill that person, and the action is Just. Bentham states that in Utility, "poetry is the same as a pushpin" - meaning that anything that gives us pleasure is equivalent. If Utility is supposed to be the most practical of choices, can we honestly say that an intellectual pleasure, such as writing elegant code, or reading an enlightening book, is fungible with something like eating ice cream? It is not. Utility, in that it establishes the concept of the Good before Right, opens itself up to many counter-examples (see Rawls' arguments about Telishment versus Punishment). With Utility, one could justify slavery, animal torture, cheating, lying, or any number of clearly wrong, injust acts. It may be simpler to understand, but it does not mean that it is a good framework to work under.
Alternative views to Utilitarianism that are viable are Deontological theories like that of Kant, and his Categorial Imperative (which is readily applicable to the issue of Free Software). My guess is that this is closest to how RMS views Free Software. Personally, I would lean more towards Aristotle's Practical Syllogism. It is the only theory that I have come across that I cannot kind a theoretical problem with. It is very much based on inductive logic, and only requires that you can accurately describle the ethical problem that you wish to solve. It does not have as strict a sense of moral absolutes like Kant does, but it does focus on character, and establishes the Good and the Right together, which prevents all (that I can find) counter examples from being effective. However, Aristotle has a more rigorous process of reasoning that does not find "better" or "worse" - it finds whether or not an action is right or not. The only gradients come in when considering character.
Utility is easy to apply, but fundamentally flawed. When dealing with ethics, we should not seek to find *something* and resign ourselves to it. We should seek to find a framework in which we can always come upon the Right action. Aristotle's views (Nichmachean Ethics, and his other works on Ethics outline them very nicely) probably are most cohesive with the goals of the Free Software Community. A side benefit of Aristotle's practical syllogism is that it is a simple process to present axioms and a full logical flow for how one derives the ethical merit of Free Software, rather than saying "it increases our happiness". Justifying liberty in terms of utility is dangerous - as soon as it is no longer useful (and Meyer and similar people could probably argue that for most people in the world, they do not necessarily gain from source code's liberty), it can be taken away. We need a framework which does not allow conditions on our rights. Utility is not the answer.
In medieval times in Europe, the laws applied to animals as well as to humans. There is a famous 14th Century trial where a pig belonging to some gypsies was put on trial, and acquitted.
This is mainly a reply to RyanMuldoon's argument that utilitarianism doesn't make sense.Now, I know virtually nothing about the various Official Ethical Theories, but I have one of my own, which I would normally call utilitarianism, but in case that has some technical meaning I don't know, let's call it Ave's Global Happiness Maximization Algorithm.
There are about two axioms (hey, it's not a formal theory, I haven't really counted) in AGHMA: first, that we want to maximize the average per capita happiness of humans as an optimization goal - this is what makes it an algorithm - and second, that human happiness is based on some sort of physiology that we don't completely understand.
AGHMA easily refutes RyanMuldoon's "counterexamples" to utilitarianism, as I expect utilitarianism probably would if it were expressed properly.
If we all were happier if we killed an innocent person for sport [...]
Some of us would indeed be happier in this case. However, if we accepted that randomly killing people was okay, we would all live in fear; the killers would have a happiness advantage in the short term, but the average per-capita happiness (APCH) would decrease because we would all live in fear that we'd be the next target.
Likewise with dictatorships, etc. Just because it makes the dictator happy doesn't make it okay, even if the dictator is me.
"If we all were happier..." will never be true in this case, so the conclusion is irrelevant.
can we honestly say that an intellectual pleasure, such as writing elegant code, or reading an enlightening book, is fungible with something like eating ice cream?
We can't. Eating ice cream makes only you happy; writing good code or reading a good book makes you a more intelligent person, which could end up being a net benefit to society - you might use that new knowledge to increase APCH. (For example, you might sell or release your code, both of which will help others and probably also yourself.)
With Utility, one could justify slavery, animal torture, cheating, lying, or any number of clearly wrong, injust acts.
Slavery decreases APCH quite a lot among the slaves, and probably increases it significantly among the masters; there are usually more slaves than masters. Also, your slaves might be a larger benefit to society if they were allowed to do something else.
Animal torture makes people think of human torture, or at least dulls their objection to it; this leads easily into the actual act of human torture, decreasing APCH. Objectively, violence simply tends to result in more violence, and eventually that decreases human happiness. Leave my cat alone.
Cheating benefits only you, and hurts everyone else who might play the game. Lying is tricky but a society of liars would not be a happy one.
...
All that said, axiom 2 of AGHMA says that we don't really know what influences human happiness, or at least not perfectly. Furthermore, the world is a complicated place and measuring or predicting APCH is definitely not an easy thing. You can argue both for and against free software using AGHMA, which makes it inconvenient for zealots, but much more realistic.
One of the closest measures I can find for APCH is in economics. If you can successfully argue that the world's economy will be richer with free software, you can probably argue that we'll have higher APCH; if the economy will collapse when all information is traded freely, then you can expect APCH to fall too... unless you replace the market-driven economic system with a new one, which might be possible but hasn't really worked in the past.
Have fun... but be nice :)
This is in reply to apenwarr's post. Apenwarr essentially rehashed what utilitarianism is.....at the very least, his ideas fall under consequentialism. As I've said before, the fundamental problem with anything that defines Good (or, as people have been saying, Happy) before Right, is that it is far more subjective than a theory should be. Technically, an ethical theory should work given ANY situation. The idea behind counter examples is that you attempt to find one situation in which the ethical framework fails. If it can fail in any area, it doesn't work. We all have a basic ``gut feeling'' of Right and Wrong.....ethics is meant to provide a system that explains why something is right, and why something else is wrong. Now that I've stated what the point of counter examples are, and how a theory has to work with all potential examples, I will point out a couple theoretical problems with AGHMA. Then I will present a couple possible counter examples that we can discuss.
First, from the way it has been described, I am assuming that AGHMA is an Ethical Hedonistic Consequentialist theory, and that you are assuming that we are psychological Hedonists as well. In doing so, you are stating the Principle of Right in terms of your Principle of Good. You never explicitly say what Good is. I am assuming that Good (or Beneficial) is what increases pleasure. I am unclear as to whether you think that pleasures are equivalent or not, or there is more to happiness than just pleasure. You hint at the idea that intelligence is good for a person, but you don't give it a place in your theory. Bertrand Russel suggests that one should always assume the best of the theories you read, so I will do so, and assume that your idea of Good is what makes a person more able to get pleasure. The final problem that you somewhat avoid, and I can't make an assumption about is how you measure the Good. Since your theory infers that the Right action is that which maximizes happiness, we need a way to tell 4 things: how many people this affects, the likelihood that they will be affected, the intensity of pleasure/pain, and the duration of pleasure/pain. Doing so also leads to a problem, in that you turn pleasure into an object. Objects need to be consistent. But pleasure isn't. Your idea needs to assume that I get as much pleasure from watching ``Gladiator'' as you do, and that amount of pleasure will always be constant, whenever one watches it. That is simply not true. There are a host of other related problems, but for brevity, I'll only point out the one. Now on to some counter examples.
Imagine that we are suddenly thrust into a world that some Dark Power controls. Accordingly, whenever we do something that a gut feeling would say is right, everyone suffers some kind of pain. Whenever we do something that we would normally call wrong, we get pleasure. So, with your theory, we should all kill each other, hurt, maim, steal, lie, and do anything that we can think of that is wrong, because we want to maximize pleasure. This may seem strange, and far out there. However, consider Sadists and Masochists. Hurting someone gives sadists pleasure, and masochists like begin hurt. But should this make it right? If the world consisted of 10 sadists and one person that is ``normal'', the average pleasure would go up if they hurt the 11th person. But we can clearly see that such an act is not right, although your theory would claim it is right.
You claim that a society of liars is not a happy one. But what about those lies that DO make people happier? Say that someone cheats on their wife. They then lie about it and cover it up. Everyone is happier, because the wife is not hurt, and the husband and lover are saved embarrassment. But is this right? No. But your theory claims it is. I could make a few more counter examples, but I think that my posts have a tendency to be very long....I don't want to bore people with their length. Anyway, those are just a few things to think about. I certainly hope that I am not coming off as attacking anyone....I simply find utilitarianism to be flawed. And, I can never resist good discussion.
the fundamental problem with anything that defines Good (or, as people have been saying, Happy) before Right, is that it is far more subjective than a theory should be.
Perhaps this is the root of the problem: you're looking for an objective theory of right and wrong. I think that the world is much too complicated for that. If we could measure happiness objectively, we could use AGHMA to maximize it; since we can't, we resort to generalizations that usually make things better in the majority of cases. But generalizations are always subjective (including this one).
The final problem that you somewhat avoid, and I can't make an assumption about is how you measure the Good.
I avoid this on purpose, because it's such a difficult problem... and that's what makes ethics a difficult problem.
It would be nice to simplify ethics. Back on the topic of free software, I would like to be like RMS and be absolutely certain: Non-free software is evil. Free software will make everyone happier, because it's the Right Thing. Sharing information with your neighbour, when it doesn't cost you anything, is Obviously the Right Thing to Do.
But life isn't actually that simple. I admire RMS because he believes in a particular code of ethics, and lives his life by it - few people manage that. I don't, because my code of ethics is too complicated. I don't know what actions will cause the maximal APCH, so I guess. I'm not self-righteous about it; I know it's a guess. The best I can do is educate myself before making a guess, so that I do the best I can at maximizing APCH.
People with a simple code of ethics - It is always wrong to lie, always wrong to "horde" software for yourself, always wrong to hurt someone else - are living by a set of generalized rules that have evolved over centuries, but they're generalized rules, not objective ones. Most of the time they work, but sometimes it's better to lie (Son, our dog has gone to the great big fishbowl in the sky), sell software (the commercial world _has_ been known to innovate), or hurt others (many people have died in space shuttle missions, and engineers are at fault).
Thus, your counterexamples are too simplistic. In your Dark World, is there a chance of escape? If so, perhaps we should sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term APCH (our moral generalizations tend to help co-operation, which would tend to help people escape from this Dark World more successfully). If there is really no chance of escape, then fine -- do what it takes for everyone to be happy. Why shouldn't we kill and maim each other if everyone enjoys it? My AGHMA extends easily to your Dark World; your moral principles will result in everyone being miserable in the Dark World, with no hope of recovery (as we have assumed) until they finally die anyway. To me, that's not ethical.
Have fun.
Why shouldn't we kill and maim each other if everyone enjoys it?First of all, in my example, the person being killed/mained *didn't* enjoy it....only those that were doing the harm. If more people enjoy it, does that make it right? No. What about the single person that is very much hurt by their actions? Since, when we apply a convenient formula, happiness outwieghs suffering, does this make it right? I don't think so. I think that one of the greater mistakes in the discussion of ethics is that there is relativism. There can't be...it just doesn't make sense. Ethics isn't necessarily about what actually happens - it is about what SHOULD happen. For that reason, and the others that I have said before, utilitarianism can't work.
As you've said yourself, there is no real way to measure happiness...if utilitarianism is meant to compare different actions by their possible outcomes, we NEED a way to determine which produces more happiness. Also, is being happy always the best thing? No. Sometimes it is good for us to experience pain. As John Stuart Mill (a modified Utilitarian) stated, "I would rather be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." Utilitarian theories do little to account for character. RMS is someone that can be respected because he is a man of character.
You bring up the point of ethics being too complicated, and so utilitarianism forms a set of general rules, and a set of exceptions to these rules. This came from John Rawls, stating that we can pretty much guess what will happen nine times out of ten if I kill someone, so I shouldn't kill. However, this is too vague and incomplete a notion of how to live your life.
As I have said before, Aristotle provides a clean model for figuring out whether something is right or not. You always get the right answer, as long as you follow the proper steps. It doesn't say "never lie" or "never have proprietary software", but it takes the full situation into account, as well as possible consequences. It also is based on what makes up a good character. Utilitarianism is appealing because it is simple, but that doesn't mean it is good. Aristotle's practical syllogism (which has one or more universal premises, one or more conditional premises, and then the resultant conclusion) is more complicated, but has no theoretical problems. It considers consequences, but also considers the agent, his character, and the events leading up to the event. These are important parts of any ethical dillema. Utilitarianism ignores most of them.
Perhaps seeking an ethical framework that is more rigorous than others takes more effort, and seems impractical at times, but I think that it is worth it. Why choose a system that basically works, but could have some problems later on, just because it is easier? It is like using Utilitarianism to justify Liberty. When Liberty is no longer "useful" or adding any happiness, should we then take it away? No. Liberty is something that we should place above utility. There are some things that cannot and should not be taken away.
It seems to me that Eric Raymond is more of a utilitarian, and RMS is more in line with Aristotle (or perhaps Kant). ESR justifies free software because it can produce better software. RMS doesn't even think of that - he cares about our fundamental liberty. I have to agree with him. It is not an issue of creating better software. It is about having freedom. Utility can never make that argument, and I think that is why it fails.
It seems that Utilitarianism has not been well defined here, so it would probably help this discussion to do so. Here goes:
According to my views of Utilitarianism, an action is is moral in that it increases the total level of happiness in the world, and immoral in that it decreases said level.Some definitions. The total level of happiness is measured by pleasure alone. I agree with Bentham (the original Utilitarian) that "Other things being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry." Of course, other things usually aren't equal.
It often helps to think of these things with the concept of a utile (a funny word, I know). A utile is the fundamental unit of happiness. If action A produces more utiles (or destroys less, in the case of a bad situation) than action B, then A is more moral. It is possible to take this further, as GE Moore (and I) would, and say that the only moral action is that action in particular that would produce the most utiles in a given situation. However, this isn't neccessary.
Naturally, some actions produce more happiness than others. This can then be measured (if crudely). We see that if one person tortures and kills another, this produces some happiness for the sadist, but far greater negative utility for the victim. Therefore, the net outcome is negative, and the action is immoral. That's the easy case.
In the case of a sadist torturing a masochist, the utility for both is positive. Therfore, the action is moral. Simply because you don't like s+m does not make it immoral. You further make the following claim:
You claim that a society of liars is not a happy one. But what about those lies that DO make people happier? Say that someone cheats on their wife. They then lie about it and cover it up. Everyone is happier, because the wife is not hurt, and the husband and lover are saved embarrassment. But is this right? No. But your theory claims it is.
However, you give no justification for this claim. In the abscence of other information (which might or might not be persuasive) the situation you describe is moral according to utilitarianism. However, that does not make utilitarinism wrong. It merely means that it is in conflict with your moral intuiton, which without futher evidence is not a strong argument. (I'm not trying to criticize you personally, or your morals, but just point out the holes in your argument.)
Finally, as for the Dark World you posit, the negative utility of the people you hurt is likely to be far greater than the positive utility you experience. Additionally, everyone killing everyone else rapidly leads to total societal breakdown, which is clearly bad for everyone, and is non-utilitarian.
There are lots harder cases (should you kill one innocent person to save several lives) but you haven't posed them. I don't know about Ave, but I'm willing to go the distance with utility.
Finally, while I agree with utilitarianism, I do also agree that metw made a poor case for it, and I disagree greatly with most of his 'axioms.' More on that later.
I've rewritten parts of my `Theory of Ethics' paper based on some of the criticism I've received here. It's at the same address as the old one.
The problem with a mere human-being trying to determine a "theory of ethics" is that it assumes that human-beings are possibly capable of doing so. The record is not very encouraging. Humans kill each other frequently. Humans support the killing of other humans even more frequently. Humans haven't proven they can control their own population growth without doing so. And then humans tend to argue that killing is "not right". For the record, I am such a human. I argue that killing is not right (please don't kill me - I don't want to die), but I pay taxes that support armies that fire missles at trains that carry humans who don't want to die.Suppose that humans are extraordinarily gifted animals and that some human or group of humans is capable of coming up with a meaningful "theory of ethics". Could that theory in anyway justify the killing of another human as being "right?" If the answer is "no," then there are very few of us who could ever hope to be judged ethical (good). If the answer is "yes," then that would assume that some humans are capable of deciding which other humans should live or die, regardless of their wishes. This decision would be based upon the "theory of ethics" that was arrived at or adopted by the deciding humans. The theory would necessarily allow for at least one of "killing humans for pleasure" or "killing humans for violation of this ethical theory". Note that the justification for killing another human-being does not depend on the killed human-being adopting or agreeing with the particular "theory of ethics" that is used to justify killing him/her.
Suppose for a moment that humans are just animals who really aren't capable of coming up with a "theory of ethics" that is meaningful (in any universal sense). Then what is it we are doing? I argue that we are trying to survive and live under the least possible amount of stress. One reason this is difficult for humans to do without some sort of "written" or "agreed-upon" ethical framework is that one of our supposed unique abilities, a certain amount of empathy, seems to be unequally distributed or in some cases, entirely absent in some of our members. Unfortunately, these frameworks are often used to "permit" the killing of entirely innocent and sufficiently empathetic humans.
So what does this have to do with free software? Nothing. But that's sorta the point (if there is one). Any "theory of ethics of anything" will only be applied by those who create or adopt it. Those who don't adopt it aren't necessarily unethical (bad) - they just don't subscribe to your way of doing things. What are you going to do, kill them?
FWIW, I think the "ethics" of the free software community are generally very "good." Give away my code and let other people help me make it better. What needs fixing?
I wanted to say something about dolphins and some virii possibly being higher life-forms than humans, but I'm not going to argue the point now...
First of all, I disagree with your idea that you cannot judge the conclusions of an ethical theory. If you can't do that, how can you compare theories to decide which one is better? I think a few situations can be pretty clear as to what is right and what is wrong. When an ethical theory gives the wrong conclusion, then it does not work. I disagree with any claims that there is moral relativity.
On to theoretical problems with utilitarianism. For brevity's sake, I will not bother considering practical problems....they aren't damning, and every theory has similar ones. First, Bentham claimed that Utilitarianism is a moral science. For it to be a science, it needs to follow the laws of mathematics. Of course, it does not. Let's examine a few instances why it does not:
- Fungibility: This claims that if a pleasure has equal utiles with another pleasure, they can be swapped. However, this doesn't work. If I go out to dinner, then to a movie, I get a certain amount of pleasure. If I swap going out to a movie with riding a bike, the pleasure is not equal. Why? I would get a cramp from eating right after. Or, I would be too tired to ride my bike. Or, I just don't feel like it right then.
- Communitivity: In terms of pleasure, a + b != b + a. If I eat steak, then I eat ice cream, I get a certain amount of pleasure. But if I eat ice cream, then steak, it wouldn't be the same. I wouldn't enjoy my steak as much. There are any number of similar examples for this.
There are other problems besides it attempting to be a science. Consider the concept of utiles. This implies 2 things that I think are pretty clear that they are untrue. It forces pleasure to be reified (turned into an object). Objects much be consistent. So, there rises the problem of interpersonal consistency, and intrapersonal consistency.
- Intrapersonal: The problem is that the same action can give you differing amounts of pleasures at different times. Eating food when I am starving is much more pleasurable than eating food when I am full. Resting when I am tired is much more pleasurable than resting when I am energetic.
- Interpersonal: The same action gives different people different amounts of pleasure. I can go watch "The Usual Suspects" and think it is an amazing movie, and get a lot of pleasure from watching it. But my friend hates the movie, so will get no pleasure. Same with eating foods, playing sports, or any activity. People enjoy things in varying amounts. Utilitarianism says that they like everything the same amount.
These are several fundamental theoretical problems that utilitarians cannot rectify. They are part of the foundation of the theory. They are wrong. There are other theoretical problems, but I don't think that they are quite as clear-cut. Countless counter examples to utilitarianism can be generated based on these problems. I would be happy to offer more if someone is interested.
Hi Ryan,
...your idea that you cannot judge the conclusions of an ethical theory. If you can't do that, how can you compare theories to decide which one is better?
Simply that you would like to be able to compare them, doesn't mean it is possible. I argue that it isn't, or not directly. You need to judge an ethical theory based on your personal theory of ethics. Oops.
It's like trying to judge whether 1+1 should be 2, or 3. You can't. However, if you decide arbitrarily that 1+1=2 and 1+1+1=3, a few theorems later you'll know for certain that 2+1=3.
When an ethical theory gives the wrong conclusion, then it does not work.
But what is the "wrong" conclusion? Is it the one not supported by your moral intuition? Different people have wildly different moral intuitions. Is an ethical theory then sometimes right, and sometimes wrong, depending on the person? (Hmm, actually, I can see an argument for that anyway.)
For it to be a science, it needs to follow the laws of mathematics.
Simply for something to be mathematical, it needn't follow a certain set of specific mathematical laws like your examples (comparability, commutativity). In Engineering we have things called Linear Time-Invariant systems; with those, an input at one time is equivalent to the same input at any other time, and a twice the same input will cause twice the output. Almost nothing in nature is actually linear time-invariant, though we often approximate it as such. But just because nature isn't LTI doesn't make it impossible to examine scientifically.
It's quite clear that watering your plants next month is not the same as watering them tomorrow; it's the same action, but the time has a large effect. If your plant is dead, watering it won't make the plant happier. It's the same with your fungibility and "communitivity" examples for ethics.
Objects must be consistent [...] The same action gives different people different amounts of pleasure.
The idea of "consistent" objects is another convenient engineering simplification, but nothing in nature is consistent. Imagine a row of five blue balls, all alike. Ha! I fooled you. They can't be all alike. At a minimum, there'll be tiny microscopic variations caused by scraping against the table as you arranged them in a row; or maybe the light reflecting off them has ionized some electrons... they're not the same. No two people are the same. No two plants are the same. If I have two watermelon plants, one that I watered yesterday and another that I watered two weeks ago, and I only have enough to water one of them, my choice of action could make a big difference.
That said, most of the time my plants are "sufficiently alike" that I'll just decide to water them all. This is a simplification, which is the only thing that makes ethical behaviour (utilitarian or otherwise) possible.
Speaking of which, I need to go water my plants.
Your reply makes the following mistakes:
First of all, I disagree with your idea that you cannot judge the conclusions of an ethical theory. If you can't do that, how can you compare theories to decide which one is better? I think a few situations can be pretty clear as to what is right and what is wrong. When an ethical theory gives the wrong conclusion, then it doesnot work. I disagree with any claims that there is moral relativity.I never stated that you cannot judge the conclusion of a moral theory. What I did say was that unargued-for statements of moral intuiton did not amount to argument. It is certainly possible to judge moral theories. It isn't, however, reasonable for you to say that utilitarianism must be wrong, since it disagrees with your moral intuiton. Moral intution is a notriously flawed guide.
First, Bentham claimed that Utilitarianism is a moral science. For it to be a science, it needs to follow the laws of mathematics. Of course, it does not.This makes three claims, all of which are false. First, merely because I agree with Bentham on some points does not mean that I must agree with everything he ever wrote. I think the concept of moral science is not that meaningful. Second, that which is scientific does not neccessarily follow the rules of mathematics. Consider anthropology, a social science. Or biology. Can cells commute? Merely because physics and CS follow mathematical rules, does not make this an absolute criterion for science. In fact, from dictionary.com, we have the following 3 useful defintions of science:
2.Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing a suitcase down to a science.The first defintion deals with experimental investigation of phenomena, and is therefore irrelevant here. None of these defintions require mathematics.
3.An activity that appears to require study and method: the science of purchasing.
4.Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.
The third claim is that utilitarianism does not follow the rules of mathematics. I will deal with your two instances.
Fungibility: This claims that if a pleasure has equal utiles with another pleasure, they can be swapped. However, this doesn't work. If I go out to dinner, then to a movie, I get a certain amount of pleasure. If I swap going out to a movie with riding a bike, the pleasure is not equal. Why? I would get a cramp from eating right after. Or, I would be too tired to ride my bike. Or, I just don't feel like it right then.This is claiming that two context-dependent quantites can be swapped, something that is never claimed by mathematics (as it is impossible). I never claimed that there was some invariant happiness present in particular actions, which seems to be the position you attribute to me. Certainly, riding your bike when you would rather go to a movie is less utilitarian, even if in other circumstatnces you prefer biking. For a mathematical comparison, what you are suggesting is like saying that since x is present in both x = y**3 and log(y) = x this means that for all y, log(y) = y**3. This is an absurd claim, since it fails to realize the context-dependence of x. The same is true about your claims about utilitarianism.
Communitivity: In terms of pleasure, a + b != b + a. If I eat steak, then I eat ice cream, I get a certain amount of pleasure. But if I eat ice cream, then steak, it wouldn't be the same. I wouldn't enjoy my steak as much. There are any number of similar examples for this.This makes the assumption that combination of pleasure is a commutative operation. That assumption is false, as you nicely demonstrate. Nothing in mathematics requires commutativity of operators(see divison, subtraction, etc). Of course, there might be situations where summing up total pleasure was commutative. But clearly, how much pleasure a particular person recieves from a set of actions is not commutative.Next you claim that since reifies pleasure, that pleasure must therefore be context-indepent. You then provide several counterexamples to the idea of pleasure being context-indepent, which kill that straw-man quite dead. However, nothing requires the context independence of pleasure. My watching The Usual Suspects, one of the great movies of all time, produces some quantity of utiles. Someone else, who doesn't like the movie (heathen :-), would not produce as many utiles watching the movie, and might prefer to watch golf on televion instead. That would be the utilitarian thing for them to do. (Although it would demonstrate lack of taste.) The same reasoning, (which I also applied above) deals with the idea of intrapersonal context-sensitivity. In fact, every one of your thoretical problems were premised on assuming that I thought there was a context-independent happiness associated with particular actions. This is untrue. I see no reason to interpert utilitarianism as saying something foolish, when a logical justification is easy to find.
I think that I can sum up the problems that people have been having with what I have been saying like this: I am oversimplifying, and I am assuming that utilitarianism is not context-sensitive. To some extent, this is absolutely true. I am simplifying the matter. I have to, if I want to be able to talk about anything as complicated as ethics. In the dialogue that we have, I don't think it is very good ettiquette to write a ten page response to everyone. Secondly, I am basing my comments on Bentham's writings, and what I have read that refutes what he has to say. Since none of us has fully explained the ethical frameworks that we are supporting or attacking, I felt that I should base what I say on a fulsome theory.
As for the refutations to science not needing mathematics, that is an absolutely valid claim. However, Bentham explicitly states that he is creating a moral science, called Hedonic Calculus. It is all based on applied math. So, I feel as though my comments on its failure to follow the laws of math are perfectly reasonable. Apenwarr spent a good deal of time telling my that I was foolish in assuming that we can simplify things down to the point where we can say things are the same, and the context should not matter. He is absolutely right, and I agree with him. That is why I find fault with Bentham claiming the opposite.
Apenwarr also suggests that ethics is relative and arbitrary. This is a valid claim, but as my ethics prof told several students in my class when they made this statement at the end of the course, "if you still think that, you should fail this class." The discipline of ethics is based on the idea that there ARE moral absolutes that are above the laws and ideas of men. Philosophy is not sociology, nor is it opinion. There is no room for relativity. If something is wrong, it is wrong. How do we arrive at these answers? We are forced to formulate theories based on a few morals that are easy to derive. Killing someone for no reason is wrong. Stealing for no reason is wrong. Intentionally harming people in various ways for no good reason is wrong. From these, we try and form theories to help us out with the gray areas.
Samth is basically agreeing with most of my refutations (except for the math problems which I probably explained better this time around), but claims that I am doing a disservice to utilitarianism by assuming the worst. I agree that when reading any given theory, one should attempt to assume the author is smart, not stupid. I think that I did assume Bentham knew what he was trying to say. However, how can we measure these utiles for a group of people if pleasures are not context- independant? Bentham goes a pretty long way to claim that, in fact, we experience the same pleasure for each act. If quotes would be better, I can try to dig them up for you. So I think that our main disagreement lies not in whether or not utilitarianism can follow math, or if pleasure can be treated like a constant object, but whether Bentham claims it does or not.
Perhaps foolishly, I will add one more problem I have with Utilitarianism. Bentham (and one of you) claims that the only moral act is that which is most likely to produce the most utiles. All other acts are wrong. This is far too demanding of people. It also leaves no room for courageous or heroic acts (or in ethical terms, supererogatory acts - those which are above and beyond what is necessary). For example, if I run into a burning building, I have to save EVERYONE in there - even the cats and fish. If I save all the people, but in order to make sure I don't get hurt, don't go back in for a cat, I committed a wrong act. This is a little rediculous. Or, if I can save my best friend, or 2 strangers, I have to save the strangers. This is hard to accomplish. Several of you have suggested that ethical frameworks are just arbitrary ideas, and they should be framed to make most of us happy or good people. If you think that, utilitarianism claims that you are not ethical unless you do everything possible to make the most happiness that you can, or you are not acting justly. That is pushing it a bit.
The discussion in this thread seems to be overly concerened with personal ethics. Personal ethics is a pointless activity because no-one ever pays any attention to it. You can wish all you want that they would, but they never will. Humans are really little more than complicated versions of Pavlov's dogs. People don't make decissions, they have reflexes. But our reflexes are affected by the environment so the work of ethics must be to shape our environment to get more of the reflexes we want. Ethics is about deciding what reflexes we want people to have and then about how we can encourage those reflexes.On the matter of mathematical ethics, no amount of human study will create a theory that will allow us to create equations where we put in the utile of different things and find the moral choice. At best we can induce what we want and then try different methods to get those results. Ethics will always be an experimental science because the behaviour of society is too complicated to be mathematised.
The discussion in this thread seems to be overly concerened with personal ethics.It is hard to discuss general ethical principles on a large scale right away. As a result, we talk about ethics on a personal level, in order to make easy to understand situations. Once we arrive at an ethical principle that seems to work on a small scale, we can then use it on a large scale. I would say that ethics isn't a science. It is philosophy. It is applied logic. It is most certainly not rhetoric though, as your paper still claims.
It is easy to make generalised ethical decissions as we already do this every day that a parliament sits. I'm not interested in creating some be all and end all theory of ethics as that has been done many times already and never had the least effect on history over the long term.What I want to do is get away from these pure philosophy theories of ethics and look at how we already make ethical decisions. The point of doing this being that it will better allow us to sort out the wheat from the chaff in ethical discussions. If we can identify those principles that we always return to in the long term then we will have a firm foundation for conducting productive ethical analyses.
When I said that ethical arguments at the moment are just rhetoric, what I was refering to was the sort of chaff that people often use in ethical arguments. They find that their gut reactions contradict what the common good would dictate, so they sprout rhetoric dressed up as ethics.
When I said that ethical arguments at the moment are just rhetoric, what I was refering to was the sort of chaff that people often use in ethical arguments. They find that their gut reactions contradict what the common good would dictate, so they sprout rhetoric dressed up as ethics.Who is they? I am worried by this comment of yours. I think that far too often, people fail to understand what philosophy actually is. It is a rigourous and structured methodology. It is not sophistry. Perhaps you have heard people rant off on something, and then declare that the conversation is philosophy or ethics....that doesn't make it so. I really don't see much grounding for your slam on the tradition of trained philosophers.....all real philosophy is scrutinized, debated, published, and very much based on reality. Philosophy does not allow for "I think...." without a methodology behind it. It does not allow for relativity. Anything beyond philosophy 101 will teach you that.
As for suggesting that we should look to how we have always been solving our ethical problems, and essentially keep solving them that way, I disagree with you. Why do we solve things in a certain way now? Because a given ethical framework became enculturated. Does it make it right? No. Does it mean that it has always been this way? No. It just means that the current framework was given favor by a given institution (like jewish/christian belief systems). Nietzche goes into great detail about this in A Geneology of Morals. Looking to the status quo, or how things "always have been" is a fairly major error in ethical reasoning. It is reasonably easy to see that such a method can be used to say that "slavery has always been there.....that means it is how it should be" or any number of similar things. I can't accept that.
I'm not misunderstanding the philosophers, I'm just not interested in what they have to say. What concerns me is the moral arguments we have in society, not those that occur in philosophical journals.Look, my training as a physicist didn't just teach me mathematics it tought me scientific method as well. This is something that grows even stronger in my mind even after having finished my physics days. Science has a very well defined idea of what constitutes knowledge and I outlined that theory in the second chapter of my paper. When thinking about ethics it occurred to me that, like the natural sciences, ethics revolves around inductive knowledge. This neccesarrily means that ethics should use the same theory of knowledge as that used in science - ethics is a science.
This view of ethics is, it seems to me, entirely novel so I am discounting the details of other theories because they use a false theory of knowledge. This is the real crux of what I am trying to say - Ethical knowledge is the same as scientific knowledge.
I am not saying that we should just blindly accept the norm, I am saying that being a science we must be carefull not to extrapolate beyond the limit of our data. This requires that we begin with what is already used, but does not require that we maintain it. With scientific knowledge we can not answer a right or wrong question, so to say that the current system is right would be wrong(!). But the limits of our data requires that we start with what we know.
First, RyanMuldoon:You make essentially two criticisms of my arguments (I'm leaving aside your criticisms of apenwarr). First, that although I have categorically stated that ethical judgements (and therefore judgements about happiness) must be made in context, you claim that Bentham disagrees. I don't recall this in the Bentham I've read, and would be personally interested in a cite. However, this is not an attack on my argument per se, since I have not taken a context-independt position. If Bentham actually said what you claim, then he is wrong, and failed to understand key aspects of his own theory (sort of like Kant). But this doesn't make the theory wrong, and you provided no further attacks on my presentation of the theory. You did claim that I failed to fully specify my beliefs, so here goes.
1.: Actions are moral in that they produce happiness, and immoral in that they produce unhappiness.
2.: The happiness of all people affected, however indirectly, by an action, must be taken into account, and judged equally. A utile (defined in previous post) is a utile, no matter who it belongs to.
3.: No other criteria can make an action moral or immoral.
4.: The most moral action is that with the largest positive change in total utiles. Mathematically, it is the action that produces the largest delta in the following equation:
H_after - H_before = deltaWhere H is total happiness (for the whole world) measured in utiles.
Now, I would add a fifth point:
5.: The only acceptable action is that which is the most moral (as defined by 4).
However, this fifth point is not necessary to utiliatarianism. Mill did not believe it, and I don't think Bentham did either. I get it from GE Moore, a considerably more recent philosopher. Disbelief of this point (which you obviously have) does not negate the other 4 (cf Euclid :-).
That being said, let me argue for it. My argument is pretty simple. If there is an action which is more moral than the one you are taking, how can your action be the right one to take? Just because utilitarianism is extremely difficult does not make it wrong, merely impractical. I fully concede that I do not live my life according to this point, but that doesn't make it false either. As an additional argument, how do you decide what is an acceptable action otherwise? It's easy if some actions have a negative delta, and some positve. But if all are negative, say, then where's the cutoff between moral and immoral?
I hope that outlines my position clearly enough.
Mettw, since you aren't really interested in either considering the 2500 year tradition of western philosophy, or in attempting to get beyond the systems we have currently (such as capitalism), I'll just make a couple points.
I am not saying that we should just blindly accept the norm, I am saying that being a science we must be carefull not to extrapolate beyond the limit of our data. This requires that we begin with what is already usedThis is simply false. We have no need to start any place in particular, either in science or in philosophy. As an example, Aristotle, (whom you cite favorably) rejects practically everything written about science previoulsy, and pretty much starts from scratch.
Second, your critique of math as applied to ethics amounts to a flat statement of "that's impossible." As I have just defined a theory of ethics, dependent on mathematics (although it could be expressed without them), I beg to differ.
I think Samth did a good job telling mettw what is wrong with some of his ideas, so I will leave it as sufficient. So, I will move on to his comments.
As for a citation on Bentham claiming that all pleasure is equal for everyone, during a cursory glance at the Bentham I had on-hand, I couldn't find one. I found it in ethics lecture notes, but not a direct citation from Bentham. Take that as you will.
I still hold that it is fundamental flaw to claim that morality only stems from happiness. What about those really difficult exams that you take in college that cause you great pain, and have no direct cause of happiness for you? Are thy immoral? Hardly. Sometimes pain is good for a person. Utilitarianism (especially Bentham's take on it, as well as yours, as it seems) has nothing to say for character. Mill at least considers character development as something important. Sometimes doing things that are hard and painful helps to build your character. You don't really get any happiness from it, per se, but it it makes you a better person. Those acts should not be deemed immoral.
If you buy a dog for your child, and the next day it gets run over by a car, and so your child becomes very sad, was it immoral for you to have bought the animal, as it ended up hurting your child? No. You didn't intend to cause pain, and you had no way to know that it would cause more pain than happiness. Likewise, if someone close to you dies, you become very saddened. Is their death immoral? No. People die. But according to Utilitarianism, it is immoral to die. That is rediculous.
As for your comments on utilitarianism and its black-white view on morality, I have a hard time accepting that. I don't think that ethics can be simplified down to just Right and Wrong. Ethics, as a broad discipline, has a gradient of morals....from Supererogatory, to Morally Right, to Morally Permissible, to Morally Impermissible, to Wrong, to Morally Atrocious. I think that these levels are a good thing to maintain. Claiming that saving five people's lives instead of ten falls under the same category as genocide is a little far-fetched. Mill at least grants the ethical gradient. I think that saving ten people is more right than saving five, but I don't think that saving five people is wrong. I have no problems with ethical systems that end up saying that we are more likely to be immoral than moral...(like Aristotle's...), but to claim that there is only one right action in any situation, and everything else is wrong is hard to accept. I have been accused of oversimplifying ethics in this discussion.....but I think that this is an instance of Bentham (and Moore) oversimplifying.
First, as to Bentham, I think we can both agree to leave arguments from authority behind, and continue arguing this on the merits.You provide essentially three attacks on my exposition of utilitarianism. I'll deal with each seperately.
Sometimes doing things that are hard and painful helps to build your character. You don't really get any happiness from it, per se, but it it makes you a better person. Those acts should not be deemed immoral.Your example of this was a really hard exam (believe you me, I know about those :-( ). Now, I see four potential outcomes here.
First, this test is hard and painful, but provides you with some benifit. A good example would be the calculus placement test during orientation here at the U of C. The test kicked my ass a good long way, but it demonstrated what I know, and ended up putting me in the right math class, with a great teacher. This significantly improved my happiness. Second, this test could have no immediate benifit, but it could improve your character. Then, later in life, you face an actually important test' (of whatever type), and you succeed because of your improved character. We still see the benifit in terms of utility. The third option is that it doesn't benifit you at all, but benifits someone else significantly. An example of this would be the various tests to see if you can be a Secret Service agent. Sure, they suck for you, and you probably fail, but they create increased utility by protecting the president's life. Fourth, we have the case where you take the test, and it 'builds character', a la Calvin and Hobbes, but never benifits anyone. I would argue that it was wrong to make you take the test in the situation.
If you buy a dog for your child, and the next day it gets run over by a car, and so your child becomes very sad, was it immoral for you to have bought the animal, as it ended up hurting your child?Now we have to get into some important distinctions.
Right Action: Action that produces the most utility (maximizes delta in equations from before).
Rational Action: Action that would be rationally expected to produce the most utility.
To illustrate this, here's an example (stolen from R. Eric Barnes' book about Lincoln-Douglas Debate).
We have a patient who is a diabetic, about to die of lack of insulin. However, someone has mislabeled the insulin and adrenalin syringes. But the doctor has rushed out just before the patient went into shock. So the nurse grabs a random syring (he's new). By accident, this is the insulin, labeled adrenalin. This saves the patient's life. If the doctor had been there, she would have administered the adrenalin, (labeled as insulin) and killed the patient.
Now the doctor's action would have been wrong, but rational. The nurse's action was right, but maybe not rational. How do we decide what to do? So now we introduce two new concepts, praiseworthy and blameworthy actions. An action is praiseworthy if praising it (and thereby presumably encouraging others to act similarly) contributes to utility, and blameworthy if blaming it (in the sense Plato uses blame, meaning criticize) has this effect. Right actions are often praiseworthy, but not as often as rational actions.
Now, the doctor's action, even if it killed the patient, would be praiseworthy, as would your buying a dog for your child. Utilitarianism in no way requires clairvoiance, merely taking into account the consequences that you could possibly be aware of.
As for someone's death, if they could not avoid death (as is the case in most instances) then there was no choice, and therefore no action. You cannot be faulted for the inevitable (provided it is truly inevitable). However, in the case of suicide, if you are only temporarily unhappy (even if you feel really bad right now) and your death will cause lots of people lots of pain (and prevent you from experienceing lots of future happiness), then your action in commiting suicide is probably immoral.
Claiming that saving five people's lives instead of ten falls under the same category as genocide is a little far-fetched. Mill at least grants the ethical gradient. I think that saving ten people is more right than saving five, but I don't think that saving five people is wrong.I have two responses to this (I'm sounding way to much like a debater : -).
First, we can use the distinction of praiseworthy and blameworthy here. Saving five people from a burning building is obviously praiseworthy. So utilitarianism has a gradient also, that goes sort of like this:
right - praiseworthy - non-action - blameworthy - wrong
Now, course, this hierarchy is not exact, since sometimes the wrong action is praiseworthy, or the praiseworthy action 'better' than the right action. But this might give a rough idea in most situations.
Second, if you have time to save the rest of the people, how can you justify not doing it? Say you have 100 seconds to save the ten people. I would consider it unacceptable to stop after 50 seconds, saying you had done 'enough.' Maybe it would be right not to go back for the last person, as it might be rationally expected that you would be more likely to die than save them. But other than that, I can see no possible justification for not doing everything you could. But saving only five people certainly is not in the same category as genocide. It is, in the sense that they are both not 'the moral action' in the situation, but it should be clear the utilitarianism is capable of much finer distinctions than that. Is it just me, or are my posts getting progressively longer? But I'm enjoying myself.
I think Samth did a good job telling mettw what is wrong with some of his ideas, so I will leave it as sufficient.You could have fooled me.
We have no need to start any place in particular, either in science or in philosophy. As an example, Aristotle, (whom you cite favorably) rejects practically everything written about science previoulsy, and pretty much starts from scratch.
First of all, Aristotle did not practise science. His views about the nature of reality and inductive knowledge are radically different from that of a scientist so no parralell can be drawn here. Second of all, there is a requirement that we start where we currently are. All of modern physics began with the aristotlean views but has since evolved into something radically different. You may be a great programmer, you may even be a decent philosopher, but you're a lousy scientist.
Second, your critique of math as applied to ethics amounts to a flat statement of "that's impossible." As I have just defined a theory of ethics, dependent on mathematics (although it could be expressed without them), I beg to differ.
And I suppose that you can then go on to create equations that can handle the multitude of variables that occur in real life situations? In science, unlike philosophy, intuition has value in and of itself because it can direct research into areas where it would not normally have gone. So making a flat statement of "that's impossible" is a perfectly valid expression of intution for a scientist.
Mettw, since you aren't really interested in either considering the 2500 year tradition of western philosophy, or in attempting to get beyond the systems we have currently (such as capitalism)[...]
How many times do I have to repeat myself? Just because we start at a particular point does not mean that we are justifying it. Physics started with a slight modification of aristotlean physics but is now radically different. Ethics, if ethical knowledge is the same as scientific knowledge, must follow these same procedures that are used in science.
On the matter of there being 2500 years of philosophy: That philosophers have being dealing with ethics for this long and are yet to come up with an entirely satisfactory and agreed upon theory ought to tell you something. I'm sure you enjoy your arguments immensely, but that doesn't mean that you are actually acheiving anything. I'm not interested in hearing the sound of my own voice as I pound out more and more drivel that only results in us agreeing to disagree - I actually want to acheive something.
(AOL) I agree exactly with samth. I was starting to think I wouldn't say that about anyone in this discussion :) (/AOL)
[I really screwed up the HTML! - Here it is again]I think Samth did a good job telling mettw what is wrong with some of his ideas, so I will leave it as sufficient.
You could have fooled me.
We have no need to start any place in particular, either in science or in philosophy. As an example, Aristotle, (whom you cite favorably) rejects practically everything written about science previoulsy, and pretty much starts from scratch.
First of all, Aristotle did not practise science. His views about the nature of reality and inductive knowledge are radically different from that of a scientist so no parralell can be drawn here. Second of all, there is a requirement that we start where we currently are. All of modern physics began with the aristotlean views but has since evolved into something radically different. You may be a great programmer, you may even be a decent philosopher, but you're a lousy scientist.
Second, your critique of math as applied to ethics amounts to a flat statement of "that's impossible." As I have just defined a theory of ethics, dependent on mathematics (although it could be expressed without them), I beg to differ.
And I suppose that you can then go on to create equations that can handle the multitude of variables that occur in real life situations? In science, unlike philosophy, intuition has value in and of itself because it can direct research into areas where it would not normally have gone. So making a flat statement of "that's impossible" is a perfectly valid expression of intution for a scientist.
Mettw, since you aren't really interested in either considering the 2500 year tradition of western philosophy, or in attempting to get beyond the systems we have currently (such as capitalism)[...]
How many times do I have to repeat myself? Just because we start at a particular point does not mean that we are justifying it. Physics started with a slight modification of aristotlean physics but is now radically different. Ethics, if ethical knowledge is the same as scientific knowledge, must follow these same procedures that are used in science.
On the matter of there being 2500 years of philosophy: That philosophers have being dealing with ethics for this long and are yet to come up with an entirely satisfactory and agreed upon theory ought to tell you something. I'm sure you enjoy your arguments immensely, but that doesn't mean that you are actually acheiving anything. I'm not interested in hearing the sound of my own voice as I pound out more and more drivel that only results in us agreeing to disagree - I actually want to acheive something.
First of all, try to restrain yourself from criticizing my personal abilities as a scientist, about which you know nothing.
First of all, Aristotle did not practise science.This is so patently ludicrous that a response is unnecessary.
His views about the nature of reality and inductive knowledge are radically different from that of a scientist so no parralell can be drawn here. Second of all, there is a requirement that we start where we currently are. All of modern physics began with the aristotlean views but has since evolved into something radically different.First of all, these are contradictory. Second, the fact the 'modern physics' (a very narrow discipline) evolved from a particular starting point (granting that you are right about this), proves nothing about the general case. Finally, I would be interested in seeing the path from Aristotlean physics to QED. :-)
And I suppose that you can then go on to create equations that can handle the multitude of variables that occur in real life situations?I find it remarkable that you criticize this position, given that as a utilitarian you are committed to it. But no matter. I thought I had explained fairly clearly that the only important equation was the one I presented a few messages up. It is clear that calculating the exact utility of any given action is impossible. But calculating the exact value of pi is impossible, also, and that doesn't make pi useless. You just need to get an approximation that is good enought to allow you to make the decision.
In science, unlike philosophy, intuition has value in and of itself because it can direct research into areas where it would not normally have gone. So making a flat statement of "that's impossible" is a perfectly valid expression of intution for a scientist.Funny, I was under the impression that discussion about ethics was philosophy. And while it is certianly true that intuition may direct research into important new area, that does not make your intuition valid as evidence. You have to actually do the reasearch for that. Therefore, you can't just state "that's impossible" and expect me (or anyone else) to take it as evidence of anything other than your personal beliefs.
Just because we start at a particular point does not mean that we are justifying it.You say things like this, but in your papers you talk about juding capitalism within its 'paradigm', suggesting that if a capitalist system provides risk == return, then it moral. This smacks of both apology and relativism, to me.
Ethics, if ethical knowledge is the same as scientific knowledge, must follow these same procedures that are used in science.This statement is totally false. First, it is impossible to conduct experiments in ethics, and experimentation is required by science. Second, you have no evidence that ethical knowledge is the same as scientific knowledge. Your evidence consists of the statement
This is a claim that would need substantial proof, yet you offer none. Therefore, we are not bound to accept conclusions derived from this claim.With ethics, unlike mathematics, we cannot simply pose a set of axioms and then see whether they are useful or not, it requires inductive reasoning to establish that the axioms posed are worthy of our consideration. Ethics must therefore be considered an inductive science.
On the matter of there being 2500 years of philosophy: That philosophers have being dealing with ethics for this long and are yet to come up with an entirely satisfactory and agreed upon theory ought to tell you something. I'm sure you enjoy your arguments immensely, but that doesn't mean that you are actually acheiving anything. I'm not interested in hearing the sound of my own voice as I pound out more and more drivel that only results in us agreeing to disagree - I actually want to acheive something.Substitue physics and physicists into that paragraph to see why it is completely foolish. Also, you might have missed a few points here. Maybe you neglected to consider that ethics is hard? Maybe there is no definitive empirical evidence in ethics? If I sound sarcastic, it is because of your total disregard for the philosophers who previously provided every single idea you have in your paper. You even cite some of them yourself.
That's enough ranting for now.
First of all, try to restrain yourself from criticizing my personal abilities as a scientist, about which you know nothing.Sorry about that. Feeling as though someone is trying to dismiss me tends to make me hot under the collar.
This is so patently ludicrous that a response is unnecessary.
Science is primarilly a theory of knowledge. Everything else, the procedures and so on, come from that theory. Aristotle did not subscribe to those theories of knowledge so he did not practise science - he practised natural philosophy. This is something else entirely and gets at the root of what I am trying to do. I want to get away from ethical philosophy and move towards scientific ethics. As far as I am concerned philosopher == logician. From my experience the other fields of philosophy, such as the defunct field of natural philosophy, acheive little because they do not subscribe to the scientific theory of knowledge.
First of all, these are contradictory. Second, the fact the 'modern physics' (a very narrow discipline) evolved from a particular starting point (granting that you are right about this), proves nothing about the general case.
Scientists thrive on `metaphors'. That is, they take the ideas used by a similar field and use it in their own. They construct exceptions to the other field's metaphor untill they have sufficient knowledge to construct their own metaphor. Pavlov for example used the procedures of physiology, the behaviourists those of Pavlov and the cognitivists those of the behaviourists. Freud on the other hand drew up his own set of procedures and created something with no theraputic value. The procedure borrowing used by the scientists may have taken 80 years as compared to the five of Freud, but the scientists acheived something whereas Freud did not. This is an extreemely important point in science, as generally the greater the departure the greater the chance of error. The theories of Aristotle may not have been scientific, but the first physicists needed a metaphor to start their studies, so ofcourse they used those of Aristotle.
I find it remarkable that you criticize this position, given that as a utilitarian you are committed to it.
I am not a utilitarian. To say that I am a utillitarian is like saying that Aristotle was a utilitarian because he thought happiness was the purpose of man.
And while it is certianly true that intuition may direct research into important new area, that does not make your intuition valid as evidence. You have to actually do the reasearch for that. Therefore, you can't just state "that's impossible" and expect me (or anyone else) to take it as evidence of anything other than your personal beliefs.
To return to the behaviourists. They stated that one should not study subjectivity because it is not possible to study it scientifically. They gave no evidence for this assertion boyond pointing out the failures of everyone else who had tried to study it. By following this largely baseless assertion the behaviourists created a scientific psychology that allowed the cognitivists to revisit this assumption and create a scientific thoery of subjectivism. By asserting that it is impossible I was merely trying to imply that no one has yet created equations for psychology so to suggest that we could for ethics is hopeless. Now, maybe I'm wrong - I don't know. But I can make an extreemely safe bet that no such theory will be created without us first assuming that it is impossible. We must know more before we can even contemplate it and to get that knowledge to contemplate it we must treat it as though it is impossible.
suggesting that if a capitalist system provides risk == return, then it moral. This smacks of both apology and relativism, to me.
If we already use the capitalist system then we must surely beleive that it is better than the other systems. If this is so then it must be moral to use it rather than the other theories known to us. But this does not rule out that human creativity may create something better than capitalism. Personally I don't beleive we ever will, but I can't claim to know that.
it is impossible to conduct experiments in ethics, and experimentation is required by science.
We suggest a new policy and impliment it. Psychologists then measure people's reactions to the new policy and find that they have become more dissatisfied with the new policy's introduction. The psychologists have just conducted an experiment showing that the original policy was more ethical than the new one.
Substitue physics and physicists into that paragraph to see why it is completely foolish.
You would be hard up to find a physicist who doubts the efficacy of QED, yet ethicists come in all shapes and sizes: Utillitarian, Kantian, Nietzchean, Character based theories, and so on ad nauseum.
I was away from my computer for a little too long, and so I don't think that I can fairly jump back into what samth initially was saying, and so I will just focus on mettw's comments. My apologies, samth. If it becomes topical again, I'll happily delve into it.
I think that my problems with mettw's ideas are similar to samth's. First, I think that Mettw is overly harsh on the tradition of ethics. To say that it has failed because there are a number of theories is foolish. Has linguistics failed because there is still not a universal language? Has physics failed because we don't know everything about it yet? Has biology failed because we can't cure all diseases yet? Obviously not. Biology, has a rigourous study, began with (suprise) Aristotle. It has had nearly the longevity that ethics has had. So has it failed? Of course not. Sometimes the strength of ethics is that there are many viewpoints. As John Stuart Mill advocated, we should allow for as many ideas as possible, so we can then "sift and winnow" to ultimately choose the best option. If we want to pretend utility is valid, then we can say that it will increase happiness if we have more viewpoints to consider, since we will arrive at a more educated solution.
Ethics is simply not a science, nor will it ever be. It is philosophy. The scientific method is great, mettw. It is not useful for everything though. You very clearly are proud of your scientific training, as you should be. However, have you ever heard the phrase "when you have a hammer, all the world seems like a nail?" Naturally, you will seek to solve problems using the skills that you have. But that does not mean that those are the right tools for the job. I think that you have a poor view of what the practice of philosophy really is. I like to consider myself both a scientist and a philosopher. A hard thing to accept is that neither way of doing things is universal.
You use the example of Freud versus Pavlov in Psychology. You also relate psychology to ethics. First, what about Abe Maslow? Pavlov did make a few interesting discoveries in behavioral studies, but if you do any work in psych, you quickly discover that his ideas were extremely simplified - something that you seem to want to get away from. Also, if you are trying to suggest that everyone follows Pavlov over Freud now in treating patients, you are simply wrong. Maslow's practice is probably one of the more popular (non-medical)treatments used now. Is it based on scientific method? No. It works rather well though, because it recognizes some of the basic concepts that Freud found (varying stages of mental development, etc), and applies them in a human way. Of course, according to your previous statement, psychology has failed - there are different viewpoints in it. What fools they all are.
As I suggested before, ethics is not psychology. In the study of ethics, this become clear. Ethical frameworks can have psychological assumptions, and ethical assumptions. For example, a psychological assumption is that people naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain. The ethical part is to decide whether we SHOULD seek pleasure or not. I argue that raw pleasure should not be the ultimate goal in life. Should we not seek knowledge? Should we not try to raise ourselves up from the pigs? However, sometimes, knowledge is pain. Knowledge can be overwhelming. However, that does not mean it is immoral to seek knowledge. Psychology would say that we will naturally avoid the pain that it brings.
Also, I disagree with samth on one point: you can experiment with ethics. It is just not what mettw thinks of experimentation. Our entire discussion serves as experimentation. Counter-examples to theories is theoretical experimentation. Of course we can't put a group of people in a room and give them an ethical framework and see what happens, but we can try and theorize about what would happen given a certain set of circumstances. That is the backbone of ethical comparisons.
Mettw does have an interesting perspective that I have not come across before, but I think that it is fundamentally flawed. Samth and I, I think, are coming from similar backgrounds in philosophy. Perhaps we are not explaining ourselves adequately. If Mettw outlined exactly why philosophy has failed, I would be happy to address it. But saying that it is taking a while (even though I would argue that Aristotle basically got it right) is a practical problem at best, not a theoretical one. If mettw wants to examine the status quo, he should spend his time looking at sociology, not ethics. Ethicists don't worry about how things are....they worry about how things should be.
First, RyanMuldoon, I hope you will respond to my (admittedly lengthy last post about utility). I am definitely interested in what you have to say.Second, Mettw, Ryan has done a good job responding to the points you brought up (and you ignored several of mine). So I will just respond to a few.
Science is primarilly a theory of knowledge. Everything else, the procedures and so on, come from that theory. Aristotle did not subscribe to those theories of knowledge so he did not practise science - he practised natural philosophy.Now, from your paper, it seems that you define this "theory of knowledge" as the idea that it is not possible to know the axioms of science exactly. This claim has two problems. First, it is false. For example, we know that the laws of physics (and the speed of light) are invariant. This is an absolute axiom. QED.
Second, you have offered no evidence that Aristotle (whom you rely upon for your theory of knowledge) disagrees with your theory.
I am not a utilitarian. To say that I am a utillitarian is like saying that Aristotle was a utilitarian because he thought happiness was the purpose of man.From your paper:
Where the object consists of moral agents the measure is `that paradigm which produces the most happiness.'For an earlier post of yours
I think it was bentham who justified utillitarianism by saying `What else can we use?' Various other ethical theories may sway our actions in the short term, but in the long term we always return to the utillitarian principle to make decisions.From another earlier post
On the Homo Sapiens axiom, this is a good point. I think I may be able to reformulate it in terms of utility, but we'll see.After making those statements, you cannot now claim not to be a utilitarian.
If we already use the capitalist system then we must surely beleive that it is better than the other systems. If this is so then it must be moral to use it rather than the other theories known to us.I realize that you may not formal training in philosophy, but these fallacies are pretty bad. I am a participant in the capitalist system, and I believe it to be hightly and necessarily immoral. Further, the fact that humans, no matter how many, believe something does not make it moral. The examples should be obvious.
You would be hard up to find a physicist who doubts the efficacy of QED, yet ethicists come in all shapes and sizes: Utillitarian, Kantian, Nietzchean, Character based theories, and so on ad nauseum.First, my point was that the fact that no one has come up with a GUT does not prove that physics has been a waste of time, which was the claim you made about philosophy. Second, Einstein (a rather famous physicist) disagreed with many of the ideas in Quantum Mechanics. Third, we have no idea if we have discovered everything. They thought they had in 1890, and they were very wrong. Fourth, a little less than 100 years ago, there was lots of disagreement in physics, yet many have now come to agreement. Maybe we are nearing that breakthrough in ethics (but I doubt it).
We're obviously not getting anywhere with these arguments, so I'll try to get to what seems to be the bottom of the matter. I have an extreem atheist view of the world where Humans are really no more than one of many self catalytic chemicals. I see nothing special about humans or anything else in the world, infact it could be argued that memory metals and superconductors are more unusual than a chemical that catalyses itself.With this kind of extreemist view it is just not tennable for me to beleive that philosophy is anything more than a form of communication that has resulted from our evolution and holds no more value than that it has allowed this subset of self catalytic chemicals to better compete for input chemicals whilst catalysing itself. With this type of view it is not possible to rule out that on another planet there may be another self catalytic chemical that has an analogue of `logic' that is beyond what our brains can comprehend, and visa versa. That is, logic is primarily an artefact of our brain - not an externally valid object.
Following on from this you should be able to see how I can not accept such concepts as `correct or incorrect' questions, but can only work with `better or worse' questions. Since I can't accept that logic is more than a part of our evolution I can't claim to know the answer to any other type of question than `better or worse' ones.
First, I don't see why you don't think we are getting anywhere.As to your claims
- You claim that humans are nothing more than self-catalytic chemicals. This is true, but uninteresting. Ameobas fall into this class also, and there are clearly important distinctions between humans and ameobas.
- If we consider humans as self-catalyzing chemicals, we clearly have properties that lots of self-catalyizing chemicals do not. For example, we are both intelligent and posess conciousness. Therefore, we are able to do things (such as philosophize) that other such chemicals are unable to do.
- From these points, you deduce that the only things of value are those that help our evolution. This does not follow from the premises, nor is it correct.
- First, it should be obvious that merely being chemicals does not bind us to evolution. So you are assuming an implict premise (a true one), namely that we are products of evolution. This does not prove that the only things that have value are those that promote evolution. This fallacy is known as the is-ought fallacy, which comes from assuming that those things which happen are necessarily the things that are valuable.
- It should be clear that the human race has passed beyond the limits of evolutionary necessity. For example, consider:
Since I feel sure you do not believe these to be morally wrong or completely illogical, you do not therefore believe that evolution is the be all and end all. Finally, for being capable of making choices, there is no necessary constraint to act as evolution would have us act. In fact, there is no reason to respect the blind and random process known as natural selection at all.
- celibacy (monks, etc)
- suicide
- mastubation
- many other examples
- Logic is based on a set of axioms - axioms which are necessarily arbitrary in some sense. But these axioms are things such as the principle of non-contradiction ( ~(A ^ ~A) ) that are self-evident. In so far as logic is an internally consistent system derived from axioms, it is not merely an artifact of the human thought process. If you want to claim that this makes it useless, you are free to.
- Finally, 'better and worse' implies 'best and worst' for non-infinite sets (and the set of all possible decisons at a particular moment is non-infinte). Since I have defined correct == best, our views are not in conflict. Therefore, in order to avoid accepting my conclusions (some of which you state in you paper) you need to attack either the premises or the derivation, but not the concept of correctness.
Since you have requested my input, I'm more than happy to give it. As for the posts since my last, I think that samth's last post was excellent. Now I will spend a little time on samth's previous post that I didn't get to before.
First off, I should say that if I believed that good should be defined before right, I would agree with everything in samth's post. However, I don't. I also fundamentally disagree with the idea that happiness should be the good. Good should be defined as that which improves character (in Aristotle's terms). I have an easier time believing Mill than I do with Bentham. Arguing that we are essentially sponges for pleasure is no better than claiming that we are seeking to perpetuate evolution, as you claimed we are now above. I think that there is a differentiation in pleasure. The entire concept of utiles assumes that all pleasures are the same. I have a hard time accepting that someone can actually claim that the only variance between what one experiences when they are eating ice cream and finishing a novel is intensity and duration of pleasure. There is a different sensation with each. Bentham has no concept of that.
As for your different types of tests that one can experience, I disagree with your evaluation of the last option. I will agree that there are some utterly useless tests. However, what about those tests (or even classes, books, conversations, etc) that you may not enjoy, may be hard, and may never have any direct usefulness in your life, but you learned something from it. For example, I took a Russian Literature class last year. Did I need it for anything? No. Does it help me in any way? No. Did I lose opportunities to have fun with my friends because I had to read extremely long books? Yes. However, I gained something from the books that I read. I don't think that it makes me any happier. At best, it might depress me - they were rather sad books, on the whole. But, I have a bit more understanding. I may never need it, but it doesn't matter. I have improved as a person for having done it. I think that this point is where we ultimately differ. My problem with utility is that it has a poor concept of Good. And since the concept or Right is based on what is Good, that is flawed as well.
I absolutely agree with your terms of praiseworthy, blameworthy, rational, and irrational. This is not exactly an attack on utilitarianism, but kind of an interesting quirk I came upon when studying it. The following example is from Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons: Imagine that you have a great deal of wealth in a safe in your house. An armed robber knows this, and comes to your house to steal it. He declares that he will kill your children if you do not give him the combination to the safe. You have called the police, and the robber knows this. He has ten minutes before they get there and arrest him. You realize that even if you open the safe for him, he is going to kill you and your children, because you will be able to identify him and his car, and the direction that he went in when he left. So, what do you do? You take a short-term drug, making you lose all logic. You therefore beg the person to torture you and your kids, and are unable to give him access to your safe. He can do nothing, and leaves. There is no point in killing anyone, since you won't be able to help the police when they arrive. So utilitarianism claims that occasionally you have to lose logic to be moral. An interesting idea, to say the least.
Since we have essentially reached an unarguable point, I suspect the discussion won't go anywhere from here. But I just have a few last things to say.
- I think the root of our disagreement is that I think the set of intrinsic goods has only one member, happiness. You believe that it contains at least one other member, character development, and probably others. For better or worse, this is a point that is hard to logically argue. In fact, Mill doesn't even try, he just makes an appeal to common sense. The usual utilitarian response is to ask why other supposedly intrinsic goods are valuable, but that doesn't work in this situation. So we have to agree to disagree.
- As to your Russian Lit example, I think that at a minimum, you are made happier by thinking that you are a better person, however much like cheating that sounds. I also suspect you also feel that your life would be poorer had you not taken the class, which I feel implies something about happiness.
- As to your robbery example, that's really fascinating. Even more humorous is to realize that the rational choice in this situation is to act irrationally. :-)
This has certainly been an entertaining discussion.
I wasn't arguing that evolution is the only thing of value, I was trying to make a point about my meta-philosophical views. In my view everything we perceive is distorted by our brain, an already accepted point, but I also beleive that the ways that we think about these perceptions is also an artefact of our brain and its evolution.Science has suggested that our abilities to think, categorise etc have not evolved under pressure to find the truth but under pressure to reproduce. These are two entirely different things so I don't see how one can claim to know that the latter pressure has led to an ability to perceive reality. I also don't see how one can claim to know that our reasoning systems are valid anywhere other than in our brain and therefore how one can seriously contemplate such concepts as `correct/incorrect' questions. Such questions imply a validity beyond our minds whereas `better/worse' questions do not.
I've thought some more about your comparison of my theories to sociology and have started to add some new chapters based on it - although I haven't put them on the web yet. Here is what I think the differences are:Sociology is primarilly a study of how things are, whereas I want to create a study of how thing should be - exactly what you aim for with ethics. There is one fundamentally important difference between us though. In my theory morality is not a binary concept, but is rather a continuum. On my scale the current system is at the zero point and everything that would move us into the negative is immoral and that which would move us into the positive is moral. So my theory is not about finding an absolute but is a process for moving us in a particular direction - the moral positive.
This really all comes back to my ideas about knowledge because I just can't beleive that we can define a final universe set. We may be able to create a universe set of everything that we currently know but that does not prove that there is nothing outside the universe set. So we can create a psudo-final universe set but that does not mean that we know that it is the final universe set.
To take physics as an example, in the late nineteenth century physicists thought that their science was comming to an end (falsely), and nowadays many phsyicists have the same feelings again. From the nineteenth century error it should be acutely clear to modern physicists that they are not really reaching the end, they are just reaching a point of stagnation with good reason.
Likewise, ethics may progress in some fields and in others it may stagnate. The only case in which stagnation is justifiable is when