brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 4:39 am
Stijn wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 3:48 am
1) If we are not allowed to procreate, a lot of people will complain and their total complaint can trump the complaints of those few one in a billion potentiel future people.
I wasn't talking about force.
I'm talking about choice and ethics.
Is it morally a wrong act to choose to procreate?
Or are you saying a personal complaint against morality is enough to nullify it as a decision making factor?
I'm saying that we have to take all complaints into account, including the complaints when one is not allowed to procreate. If you procreate, you have to be able to give a moral rule that justifies procreation, of which you can want that everyone follows that rule. The rule can be for example: procreation is allowed if the probability of an offspring complaining against it is sufficienty low. If you can consistently want that everyone follows that rule (i.e. if you agree with the condition "sufficiently low"), then you are allowed to procreate, and if you were forbidden to do so, your complaint against procreation prohibition is valid.
Stijn wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 3:48 am
2) It is not clear whether those few potential people have complaints against our decision to procreate. Perhaps a third situation is possible where those people would not complain. Then we should procreate and choose that third situation.
The point was the
inevitability of some complaints. You are ignoring practical reality here; you can not absolutely control the future.
suppose you procreate and you have two children. One of them, the big brother, steals everything from the other, making his live not worth living. The other child complains, but the complaint is not necessarily directed at you, it can be directed at the brother. Your choice to procreate is a choice for two situations, one with both children that are happy (no stealing), and one with both children of which one is unhappy. The unhappy child cannot complain to you. However, if you procreate and know that there will be only one situation, for example a happy child and an unhappy, disabled child, then I tend to be against procreation, unless your complaint when you can't procreate is bigger than the complaint of the unhappy child.
Besides, if it's neutral, why should we choose it?
because you might have a strong preference to do so.
Stijn wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 3:48 am
3) I'm studying a variation of my theory, where people can decide for themselves whether they prefer complaints or gratitude (anticomplaints) in the calculation of the best situation.
Do you only let them choose once, or on a case by case basis?
they can only choose once, because there is only one choice. A person P at a time T in situation S can only make one choice about how his or her complaint or gratitude is calculated.
This is all so arbitrary.
for the people involved it can seem arbitrary, because they have to make the choices. But the theory itself is far from arbitrary, because it maximizes autonomy. The rule "let the people decide" is not arbitrary, but the choices of the people can be arbitrary in the sense that perhaps they cannot generate a rule that explains their choices. Perhaps they simply pich a choice arbitrarily.
Anyway, you do understand that this results in the exact same issues that utilitarianism had that you criticized, right?
yes, but this time I leave it up to the people to decide. If they all prefer a total utilitarian view and they all accept the repugnant sadistic conclusions in population ethics, then so be it.
You're basically adding corrections to your system until it is just Utilitarianism by another name.
it is utilitarianism with a few extra degrees of freedom. Total utilitarianism means we have to maximize the total of utilities U(P,Si,Si), summed over all persons P, where U(P,Si,Si) is the utility or preference of person P in situation Si for situation Si. Critical level utilitarianism maximizes the sum of U(P,Si,Si)-C. My theory maximizes the sum of U(P,Si,Si)-U(P,Si,Sr), where U(P,Si,Sr) is the preference of person P in situation Si for a reference situation Sr. That reference situation can be the most prefered situation, which results in the minimum complaint theory. It can be the least prefered situation, which results in the maximum gratitude theory. It can be the situation for which person P in situation Si has a preference 0 or C. If all persons in all situations choose as a reference situation a situation for which they had preference 0, then we have total utilitarianism. But in my theory nothing prevents them from choosing other reference situations, and those reference situations can be different for different persons and different situations Si.
Basically that means: if everyone is a total utilitarian, then we should maximize total utility.
Stijn wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 3:48 amThe complaint of those white people is only valid if they are able to formulate a moral rule that justifies the genocice and they must be able to consistently want that everyone follows that rule.
Now you seem to be coming up with another arbitrary constraint on validity.
It has to follow Kant's categorical imperative (logically broken, by the way) or perhaps the golden rule (which is not broken).
this constraint can be arbitrary, in the sense that other constraints are possible. But it is not an unwanted arbitrariness; everyone can consistently want to add this constraint. It is an improvement of Kant's categorical imperative and the golden rule.
Why, then, not just throw the whole thing out and base your morality on the golden rule (Simple consideration for the interests of others)? Or if you think Kan't reasoning is sound, then the categorical imperative.
In a sense that's what I'm doing. But Kants imperative is too vague; it is not always clear what it implies. Also "consideration for the interests of others" is too vague.
That's fine on its own (well, your reasoning has issues --it's the same mistake "ask yourself" makes -- but we can discuss those later). No need for this other stuff about complaints and validity and gratitude. You're just going to confuse others and yourself with all of this unnecessary complexity to preserve in name the idea that this is a unique theory. You may have a lot invested in this, but it's time to let go and apply a bit of Occam's razor.
I consider it a s ahierarchy; on top we have the most fundamental ethical principle, the principle that we have to avoid all kinds of unwanted arbitrariness. Next, as a special example of this principle, we have a nice rule of thumb: if you do something, you should be able to formulate a moral rule that justifies your act, of which you can consistently want that everyone follows that rule. Next, a level lower, we are faced with a choice for a moral theory such as utilitarianism. If I may formulate such a theory, then so are you, following the same rules that I follow in formulating my theory. I follow the rules of coherence (completeness, accurateness, simplicity, no contradictions,...), That means we have to choose coherent moral theories. Then I look for a coherent theory that has the least complaints against it, one that maximizes respect for autonomy and still looks at people's preferences. So I end up with this kind of minimum complaint theory.
Compare it with physics. At the most fundamental level, we have the basic principle that a physical theory should be written in the language of mathematics, i.e. no avoidable arbitrariness. So the fundamental claim is that mathematics is the basis. At a lower level, we have to condition that the physical theory of our universe should correspond with the data, contain no contradictions, etc...
...And then you twisted yourself up in a knot.
Moral systems have the power to compel action through justification and dissonance. Don't imagine that we're dealing with descriptivism here. You just convinced yourself happy slaves are OK after rejecting it a day before.
that's right. With new data, new thought experiments, I can change my mind, my moral theory. The god thought experiment was pretty convincing to me. So what do you think about it?