An open invitation to stop your misinformed fad and start making an actual difference in the world.

[brimstoneSalad]

I'm talking about quotes like this:

And Ill be sure to cry over you not addressing my actual points, its not like i'm expecting something fruitful to come from having a discussion with someone like you

I seriously doubt the issue here is me misinterpreting precision of intellectual conversation. Comments like these are pretty toxic and they exemplify the arrogant atheist stereotype.

Being rude to criticize somebody else for being rude is rarely productive, though. What's the use in calling people "toxic" when it just makes you "toxic" as a result? It's the root of SJW and PC movements that tear groups apart. We need to spend more time with the issues than policing each other for how we're saying things.

This is why I'm much more concerned with what people are saying regarding the content of their arguments than with how they are saying it.
How we come across is of course important, but it's so subjective and hard to qualify that there's rarely any use arguing over it beyond hard data like survey results (which have shown things like it's better to ask people to go vegetarian than vegan).

I don't see how caring about things that happen after we die, or that we don't know about, proves that suffering isn't the core of our values.

If we accept that we legitimately care about those things, then it does.

A person assuring their interests after death could still easily be motivated by the suffering it would cause him while he was alive.

You didn't answer my question about your hypothetical dog.
It's hard for me to explain this if you won't fully address the thought experiments.

But why do we have interests in experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain?

Not everybody experiences pain, but for many of us it seems to be hard wired as one of the many primitive interests we have, among things like will to live.
Behavioral response in intelligently seeking or avoiding those things are what prove they have value.

Interest is never independent of pleasure and pain(or joy\suffering).

I demonstrated how it is with the dog example you didn't respond to.

Why do you care one way or another, whether somebody tells you truthfully that he or she will take care of your dog, vs. lying to you with a convincing lie (which you believe) that he or she will do it but instead lets your dog die without you ever knowing about it?

The experience in terms of pleasure and pain is identical for you. If you still prefer one over the other in principle, then you've proven we do care about things beyond pleasure or pain -- we care about principles, and ideals.

Sure, one idea may make you happier, and yet you never know which one comes to pass. Why bother?

Saying you have an interest in achieving or avoiding X to me seems synonymous with saying X causes you joy or suffering.

So, if I told you:

"We have scanned your brain and determined using an advanced and perfectly accurate computer program exactly the amount of suffering killing your whole family in front of you before killing you would cause you, and any additional amount of suffering or pleasure you would experience by your action of pondering and choosing in this scenario. You may now choose:

A. We kill your whole family in front of you and then kill you.
or:
B. We let your family go, and torture you to cause twice the suffering you would experience in A (including the choice and the torture), then kill you. We have already taken into account and controlled for any possible positive feeling you would feel about doing the 'right' thing and saving your family, an appropriate amount of additional torture to compensate will be administered."

You would certainly choose option A.
Right?

If you would choose option B, that says something about how we value things beyond our own pleasure and pain.

The other example about having the choice to be killed instantly and painlessly (without knowing about it) vs. having your foot stomped on is also relevant.

Biology \ Natural Selection and it's reward and punishment systems seem like the more fundamental non-arbitrary basis of ethics.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-nature

Many of our interests may happen to be biological, but they also extend beyond that into concept and principle. Although, in terms of biology, clearly self preservation is a distinct interest in many cases that can overcome desire to avoid pain.

Of course he isn't consciously thinking in the same way we are talking about it now,

That's the only point. The "but" is irrelevant. He's just weighing values, he's not thinking about his future experiences.

But he obviously would still know on some level it would cause him immense suffering if it were to burn(generating the interest to save it).

How do you just come out and assert this? "On some level"? What levels?

This isn't the value in the thought experiment he is actually weighing.

It's like I said "People add 4 + 4 to get 8" and you replied "But on some level, they're adding 2 + 2 + 2 +2 to get 8". No, they aren't. Maybe they could have done if they'd bothered, but they aren't, because they already know 4 + 4 is eight. At no point did they think of or imagine "2" in that process.

They went "Four... five six seven eight -- eight!"

When we weigh two things against each other, we consider at the face how much we value each of those things in themselves. The mother example, which you also skipped, demonstrated that more clearly.

A mother does not value her child based on the notion that she may experience pain at some point if it dies. She just values her child. Her experiencing pain because of the child's death is incidental and because of that value.

Occam's razor.
The idea that a mother -- any mother, from a human to a bear -- must have to carefully reflect upon the future pain she might feel upon losing a child (which she doesn't really even understand at that moment) vs. possible current pain in order to make the decision to protect that child instead of simply valuing the child as she does herself (as a simple extension of self) is evolutionarily absurd.
You're putting far too much weight on metacognition here. We're not that complicated, and we don't think that carefully about why we value what we value in life; we just learn to value those things.

Some people do choose the pills route, and this artist might if he was had a knowledge that this would be the route with the least suffering and the most happiness. Most people don't view that as a sustainable source for happiness though.

I think I meant suicide. You don't need to feel the pain if you end it all.

But happy pills -- sure. How about we offer you an electrode implanted in your head, and you experience from that unlimited pleasure, and all pain is blocked, for the rest of your life? Do you take it?
Bear in mind, this makes you functionally a vegetable, since you have no more compulsion to move or behave in this world.

And yet, provided your body would be taken care of, why would you not choose the electrode to give you perfect pleasurable bliss?

Do you perhaps have things you value in life beyond pleasure and pain, that you want to engage with?

Maybe giving a more detailed definition of what you mean by interests and values would help?

I don't know. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the above questions though.

[inator]

You aren't making a convincing argument that having an interest in suffering\joy is actually giving that suffering\joy value, rather than having interests generated in response to potential suffering\joy. I would like what you are saying to be true, so im trying here, but unless you are just not explaining well enough, the dots don't line up as well as you think they do. I don't see how caring about things that happen after we die, or that we don't know about, proves that suffering isn't the core of our values. When we hear bad things could happen after we die, our biology causes us to suffer\not be happy about it, which compels us to takes steps to arrange assurances against it like asking a person to hang our painting on their wall. A person assuring their interests after death could still easily be motivated by the suffering it would cause him while he was alive. I know you have reiterated this isn't the case multiple times, but you need to come at it from a different angle because It's not convincing yet.

Do we value the state of an organism having an interest satisfied? Or the actual content of that interest?

It's true that most of our interests are about wanting the configuration of our neural system to be one way rather than the other, for hedonistic reasons. But there can also be a non-experiential nature to preferences - wanting the external world to be one way rather than the other.

If my friend leaves his phone on the table and exits the room for a while, is it ok for me to read his texts, given that he will never know what I did and I'll be careful not to change my behavior in any way as a result? Obviously he would prefer his texts to be in a state of 'not being read', even if he isn't aware of it.

Is there really a fundamental difference between these two kinds of preferences (experiential/non-experiential)? The difference seems to be mainly about the degree of abstraction.

Because we care about things that happen after we die, or that we don't know about, that can neither cause us suffering when they happen nor happiness.
Suffering and happiness are important because we have interest in those things. It all comes back to interests as the fundamental currency of morality.

The 'interests' framework has some implications that should be addressed.

For instance, what is the self? Do I only take into consideration my preferences expressed at the present time, or also Past and Future Me's interests? Which me-moments carry more weight than others?

If we're against killing me, or against destroying the painter's art, then we are valuing past preferences. So do we take into account the preferences across all existence? Why not also value future preferences and argue against abortion? In the hedonistic framework it's easier - no preferences have been expressed yet, so the fetus can't suffer.

If you think of a person as a collection of person-moments, then comparing utility becomes trickier. Past, present and future agents can all simultaneously have preferences. How do we deal with torture victims who temporarily wished they were dead but may not feel the same in retrospect?

If only preferences matter, and not conscious emotions attached to the experience of fulfilling those preferences, then should we also take the goals of intelligent non-conscious entities (corporations, nations etc.) into account, beyond the interests of the individuals comprising them?
If we value non-experiential preferences, then what is fundamental here is the process of having drives and exploring how to execute them (agency), not the phenomenal stance (conscious experience).

[Mr. Purple]

Being rude to criticize somebody else for being rude is rarely productive, though. What's the use in calling people "toxic" when it just makes you "toxic" as a result? It's the root of SJW and PC movements that tear groups apart. We need to spend more time with the issues than policing each other for how we're saying things.

How is telling someone they are being rude the same thing as being rude? I think its a pretty accepted distinction. If a child is teasing a classmate, the teacher or a well meaning friend would not be rude by going up to him and saying he is being a jerk when he does that. If i tell a friend he is being a dick for yelling at an old lady not crossing the street fast enough, I hope you don't think that this is just as much of a dick move as his yelling at the old lady. One is being rude for his own selfish gain(winning\looking smart\anger issues). One is looking out for others and rebuking the one causing the problem. (It could be argued i'm doing it selfishly to prevent atheists like me from looking bad by association maybe?) Do you not see this as a meaningful distinction?

Ok, it's clear you completely misunderstood most of what I was arguing which could be my fault. It may help for me to define how i'm using the word interest and the give a rundown of how i view some morality stuff for future reference. How I define interest can probably be summed up like this: Our body's reward and punishment mechanisms are what we define as joy and suffering, joy and suffering generate what we call interests, and our interests motivate our decisions\actions

To me, the best moral framework is one that recognizes the reality of human self interest and tries to leverage it in a way that benefits the most amount of people. We have a bunch of biological features like empathy and a need to belong that reward and punish us depending on how we interact with others. Our biology rewards or punishes us when we are viewed positively or negatively by others(If you aren't contributing to them\society), and rewards\punishes us when we see other beings being rewarded or punished. Most people feel these social rewards and punishments from animals as well. I want my dog to like me because that would make me happy, and I feel bad if my dog is in pain because I would feel some of that pain.

As a society, we should encourage right or wrong as being whatever maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering overall, because that is what has the greatest chance of coming back to benefit us, and generates bonus points for rewarding our empathy and other social biological reward systems. Hopefully If the implications of this are taught effectively, it would help to outweigh the specific aspects of our biology that would cause people to only help themselves at the cost of everyone else.



I'm sorry if you feel like i'm avoiding examples to try strawman your argument. I honestly thought i addressed the relevant topics that underlie those examples. I'll try to be more careful if that's what you need.

Many of our interests may happen to be biological, but they also extend beyond that into concept and principle. Although, in terms of biology, clearly self preservation is a distinct interest in many cases that can overcome desire to avoid pain.

You made an error in flagging this as an appeal to nature. I'm not saying my argument is valid BECAUSE it's natural. Things can be both valid and natural without being a fallacy. We could be talking about creatures who were unnaturally created in a test tube but have the same biology, and my argument would be the same. Our biology(and how it interacts with the physical world) is what gives rise to our interests and values directly, so it seems like a obvious choice to ground an objective basis of morality. How are concepts and principles a better basis for an objective "moral currency"?

How do you just come out and assert this? "On some level"? What levels?

I thought it would be clear that I was talking about the subconscious. People have a lot of information in their brain that they aren't currently thinking in words, or even able to express in words, but still gives them information about a given situation and informs their decision making. That's all I was talking about.

A mother does not value her child based on the notion that she may experience pain at some point if it dies. She just values her child. Her experiencing pain because of the child's death is incidental and because of that value.

The mother still knows, regardless of being able to express it in words or not, that it would create immense suffering for her if the child died. I'm having a hard time seeing how " she just values her child" is intellectually defensible. The argument that she understands her biology is making her feel happy when she is around the child, and would cause suffering if the child was to die seems like a far more objective and fundamental basis for her interest than her just having your abstract concept of interest tied to nothing else. Your example almost sounds like she has interest "just because". If you are saying they are just completely independent systems, and an interest has another sort of badness to it that isn't some form of suffering, then i don't know what you are talking about. I've never felt a bad feeling that i wouldn't describe as some form of suffering, and If it's not a bad\good feeling, I don't see it's relevance to morality. Interest without suffering\joy as a perceived outcome to me seems synonymous with a machine or a reflex. The part that makes it morally relevant is the biological reward and punishment system attached to it that other beings with the same system can relate to. If the artist is literally incapable of feeling any pain or suffering from the prospect or reality of the painting being destroyed, but just had some sort of biological imperative to save the painting anyway, i don't think there would be any moral issue in destroying the painting. He didn't get to succeed at saving the painting, but if he isn't even upset that he failed, neither am I.

It's like I said "People add 4 + 4 to get 8" and you replied "But on some level, they're adding 2 + 2 + 2 +2 to get 8". No, they aren't. Maybe they could have done if they'd bothered, but they aren't, because they already know 4 + 4 is eight. At no point did they think of or imagine "2" in that process.

since in this example 2 is suffering\joy, 4 is interest, and 8 is taking the action to save the painting, then sure, you could say he is only consciously thinking 4+4 equals eight, but its still true that 4 is made up of 2, and 2 is the more fundamental element. You are even admitting that he would recognize that the core of his interest is suffering if he'd bothered to think about it more. Meaning it is in his brain somewhere(subconscious) that his interest can be broken down into suffering. Not that he would need to be able to do this for it to be true that anticipated suffering is motivating his interest.

But happy pills -- sure. How about we offer you an electrode implanted in your head, and you experience from that unlimited pleasure, and all pain is blocked, for the rest of your life? Do you take it?

Pills or electrodes are probably not good examples because they deal with sense of self\death which to me is a pretty tricky edgecase. People may biologically feel it's a projected infinite loss of joy to die or lose their sense of self. If someone asked why dying is such a sad thought to me, I would say it's because of all the joy i'm going to miss out on(infinitely).The fact that it feels like an infinite loss of happiness to die to a lot of people makes it hard to weigh against anything else. This is why I would be able to kill other humans or animals to avoid death myself, and why eating meat to survive is morally understandable. Achieving happiness through significantly changing yourself via pills or electrodes gives the same same loss of self feeling as dying. I can't relate to the being that gets that much joy from sitting in one place and doing nothing. There is no way that could be me. The things that make me happy are sort of a core element of what makes me feel like i'm still me. If the example was instead changing the whole world around me to a place that maximized my joy, then of course i would take that offer, and since a am a being that has empathy, that world would also include maximizing joy for everyone else.

Questioner: "Hi Bob, this is a hypothetical question: Don't worry, you won't actually be killed. Would you rather be killed painlessly without knowing it's coming and have no suffering, or have your foot stomped on and suffer that pain and live?"
Bob: "I'd rather be killed, of course."
*Bob is instantly killed without fearing it or knowing it's coming.*

The other example about having the choice to be killed instantly and painlessly (without knowing about it) vs. having your foot stomped on is also relevant.

I'll answer this one if it's addressing the same idea since it's simpler and is significantly less loaded than the family one. Dying to me feels equivalent to possibly losing out on a infinite amount of joy(even if it's only a few years in reality) . So i would obviously choose to get my foot stomped on.

It may cause you suffering to think of your dog being abandoned after you die, it may cause you happiness to think of your dog being cared for. If it's all the same to you in terms of what you would actually experience, would you rather somebody lie to you (a convincing lie) and tell you that your dog will be taken care of, and then let your dog starve to death without you ever knowing about it (because you are dead), or actually take care of your dog?

I feel like I'm just saying the same stuff when answering this, but you sound like you really want me to answer it anyway. This question only has relevance when asking a living person, and the living person has a biology(empathy\attachment) that will cause him to suffer if he doesn't take steps to insure his dog will be taken care of. If someone lies to him and doesn't take care his dog after he is dead, then it wont matter to him as a dead person obviously, but to the living person being asked the question, of course it matters. This would include taking measures to make sure the person he is asking isn't lying or making sure to only ask someone he trusts. I feel like i'm being redundant, but there seems to be a miscommunication somewhere. Maybe think of a different way to frame the question because this one doesn't seem to show how we care about things independent of suffering and joy. Whoever you are asking this question to is going to be able to feel empathy for their dog that wont be taken care of and respond appropriately. It will feel the same either way when you're dead, but you aren't asking a dead person, so it doesn't feel the same.


Can someone tell me how to add the bit in the quotes that tells who said it? I feel like i can't respond to two different people without making it confusing.

[brimstoneSalad]

Is there really a fundamental difference between these two kinds of preferences (experiential/non-experiential)? The difference seems to be mainly about the degree of abstraction.

I would also argue that every sentient being is inherently capable of that kind of abstraction, to the degree it is sentient. This is the root of adaptive behavior and true learning -- it's the why behind behavior and learning.
Too much metacognition actually sabotages that abstraction by thinking too much about the state of the mind and considering that a goal in and of itself, when that has never been the purpose behind behavior (otherwise, we'd all just subsist in a persistent blissful delusion).
I think the flaws of metacognition are well demonstrated by humans in this thread, but I doubt that's anything most other animals are guilty of.

For instance, what is the self? Do I only take into consideration my preferences expressed at the present time, or also Past and Future Me's interests? Which me-moments carry more weight than others?

Good question.

Persistence of self usually means we choose to change our applied interests due to new information. That is, as we move into the future, we approach closer to our idealized self interests (or at least what we think they are).
So, usually our past interests, in conflict with present ones, are only so due to poor information.

However, sometimes people change radically, and not due to new (correct) information or more accurate thought process, and in those cases it could be perfectly legitimate to say the new self has killed the old one and stolen the body.
That's hard to substantiate, though, outside cases of multiple personalities or brain washing of some form.
It is the case for some ex-vegans, though; at least, moral vegans who have made a polar shift and no longer care about animals in earnest (most ex vegetarians are apparently open to trying again, and have just quit because of some bad information about health).
There are people who would have rather died than become what they did, on becoming jaded. I think that would apply.

The future self is unknown, so there's not much we can do about that in the present, but at least in so far as those harms are self-inflicted (given that the future self isn't radically different from the present self) they may be in themselves irrelevant. Since the present self usually creates the future self -- choosing to become it and still maintaining identity -- I think it unlikely to be a pressing concern for most.
The only exception being, of course, radical shifts in personality as mentioned.

I'm not saying that the future self even matters at all in the past (since it doesn't exist yet, and may never -- we don't know), but IF it does, there are at least some substantial limits to the concern we need to have.

Can the past self wrong the future self?
IF you value future interests, it may be possible, but only relevant morally if it's likely to be a certain way. Such as, the body is currently occupied by an unsustainable personality, and will very likely radically change in the next few years.
That context may be relevant to tattoos, since they are overwhelmingly regretted. But again, it's rare for a person to lose sight of the narrative and totally disown a past self.

It's hard for people to imagine a radical change in person without being on the cusp of it.

If we're against killing me, or against destroying the painter's art, then we are valuing past preferences. So do we take into account the preferences across all existence? Why not also value future preferences and argue against abortion?

If you abort the fetus, it never exists as a person to have preferences. There is no violating the future person's preferences by aborting the past fetus, because that future person will never be to have preferences.

IF you value future interests, you could make the argument that it is good to make people if when those people acquire interests, on average, they have positive retrospective interests in having been born that outweigh any of their desires not to have been born.
That is, some version of the "repugnant conclusion" in Utilitarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox

This could perhaps also be used as an argument against things like genital mutilation (since the person will exist and be able to reflect on what was done to him or her). Or, perhaps, as an additional argument against feeding young children animal products without their informed consent, since they will very likely (or I would hope) grow up to understand that is wrong and regret having been fed on corpses.

How do we deal with torture victims who temporarily wished they were dead but may not feel the same in retrospect?

The same would seem to apply there as with making people, I think.

If only preferences matter, and not conscious emotions attached to the experience of fulfilling those preferences, then should we also take the goals of intelligent non-conscious entities (corporations, nations etc.) into account, beyond the interests of the individuals comprising them?

Only to the extent they are sentient, and they have actual preferences rather than just evolved behavior or reflexes like plants.

Corporations tend to be headed by sentient beings, and I don't think they in themselves have real interests (due to lack of intelligence) without that executive structure. There may be something to be said for hive minds, though, if there can be shown that there is a legitimate intelligence there that exceeds the sum of its parts.

[brimstoneSalad]

How is telling someone they are being rude the same thing as being rude?

Because it's rude to tell people they're rude. It comes off as very SJW-ish.

I think its a pretty accepted distinction.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon

It's irrelevant how many people agree; it's still subjective, and culturally relative.

In some places, it's rude to slurp your food. In some places, it's rude NOT to slurp your food.
"Rudeness" unlike morality, is pretty meaningless, and the perception of it just amounts to an artifact of being offended by something -- which is probably a personal failing on the part of the person who is offended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5YDVCAEMXE

Within the culture of political correctness, everything that doesn't pander to every possible insecurity is rude, and you must dawn your armor as a good social justice warrior to battle the forces of people saying things that hurt your feelings or offend you.
I don't always like his videos, but this is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGTmwyKpz0o

Within the culture of free speech and open discourse -- which is the culture you are currently in on this forum, and on much of the internet which is not ruled by the oppression of the SJWs and their rampant censorship -- it is rude to tell somebody not to say something, or nitpick over how they're saying it, using accusations of "rudeness" or appeals to personal offense rather than just making an argument against the content of what they're saying (at least, unless you can prove it's objectively harmful and make a moral argument against it).

It could be argued i'm doing it selfishly to prevent atheists like me from looking bad by association maybe?

This is closer to an argument. If this could be formulated as a moral argument -- like that it causes others to reject atheism, and become fundamentalists and kill people (or something along those lines) -- and then you provided solid evidence to support that, it would have merit.

The issue is that there's no reason for any of us to see any value in "politeness" or "rudeness", and even less in one person's opinion of such, without evidence and a sound argument that we should, so it's a very empty claim that just sounds like complaining.

Can someone tell me how to add the bit in the quotes that tells who said it? I feel like i can't respond to two different people without making it confusing.

You add ="name" after quote.

Like this:

Code: Select all

[quote="Mr. Purple"]
Can someone tell me how to add the bit in the quotes that tells who said it? I feel like i can't respond to two different people without making it confusing.[/quote]

Just change the name in that tag to anybody's.

I'll try to respond to the rest shortly.

[Jaywalker]

I used to think suffering and happiness formed the basis of morality but after reading through this thread a second time, I'm more inclined towards this interest framework.

I wouldn't want my dog to be replaced even if I couldn't tell the difference. Even if it didn't affect my dog either, I still can't help but think there is something wrong with replacing him. Something like this doesn't seem morally neutral, but I know better than to come to conclusions based on intuition, so I have a couple questions.

What is the statue of limitation on interests? Do more recent interests carry more weight? If we take only recent and relevant interests into immediate consideration, rather than those of previous generations for instance, do we do so because it provides a world where people can expect their interests to be respected in the short term - thereby satisfying most people's interest to live in such a world?

Assuming Leonardo da Vinci did not want the Mona Lisa to be destroyed, would it be wrong if I destroyed it and replaced it with a perfect copy without anyone knowing? I realise this is the same situation as with my dog, but it doesn't seem morally equivalent to me for some reason.

Let's say we have a reliable way of measuring every interest that ever existed. Should we take all of them into equal consideration?

[brimstoneSalad]

How I define interest can probably be summed up like this: Our body's reward and punishment mechanisms are what we define as joy and suffering, joy and suffering generate what we call interests, and our interests motivate our decisions\actions

You should look into how adaptive neural networks work.

There's negative and/or positive feedback that guides the evolution of a system -- the relative sum being the guiding factor. One thing that usually produces at least some amount of negative feedback can be pain (one interest), but interests are multitude in complex organisms: generated both internally and externally from many sources.

Negative and positive feedback don't create interests, interests generate negative and positive feedback. You're looking at this backward.

We need this feedback to think and make decisions, and we need fundamental interests to provide the metrics to generate that feedback, and then -- as intelligent beings -- our thoughts and decisions that follow from the feedback can edit our interests themselves. We are self-authoring beings; any being with sentience is to some degree.

To me, the best moral framework is one that recognizes the reality of human self interest and tries to leverage it in a way that benefits the most amount of people.

Why?
That sounds pretty arbitrary. Why not just recognize the reality of the self interests of Whites, and leverage that to benefit the most Whites?

We have a bunch of biological features like empathy and a need to belong that reward and punish us depending on how we interact with others.

Some interests are a little more "hard wired" and difficult to change (and a little more consistent across individuals), while other interests are more self-defined and flexible -- there's a spectrum in between, but biological interests are not more important than those interests we decide to have for ourselves (that would be an appeal to nature fallacy), but neither are they inherently less important. We are not just genetic beings, but very largely memetic beings.

Our biology rewards or punishes us when we are viewed positively or negatively by others(If you aren't contributing to them\society), and rewards\punishes us when we see other beings being rewarded or punished.

Biology is nowhere nearly that rigid or complex in terms of cognitive function. These aspects are largely a product of nurture.

Most people feel these social rewards and punishments from animals as well. I want my dog to like me because that would make me happy, and I feel bad if my dog is in pain because I would feel some of that pain.

The "it makes me feel bad whether I want to or not so I won't do it" argument for ethics? That's not ethics, that's being a sensitive little flower of a hedonist.

Ethics is philosophical in nature. We decide to have an interest in morality, and then those interests generate pleasure or pain which guide our actions -- which are also free to edit those interests if we choose.

People can choose to rationalize, and to not care about ethics. People can choose to shut off their feelings, or may just become jaded.

As a society, we should encourage right or wrong as being whatever maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering overall, because that is what has the greatest chance of coming back to benefit us, and generates bonus points for rewarding our empathy and other social biological reward systems.

What you're arguing is utilitarianism, or something between that and egoism/Randian Objectivism.

1. Can you really prove that's the best thing to advocate for self interest?
2. How does this hold any semantic claim on ethics, being that it's just derived from selfishness?

As a man, you might as well say men should advocate right as being women giving blowjobs all the time, and wrong being women disobeying men, since that will offer the most benefit in the long run.
This whole egoist argument of "it's right because it benefits me most" mentality is philosophically bankrupt, and doesn't necessarily result in the kind of world you're after. That's not what morality is -- that's rational amorality, and it's not a very pretty picture.

We could be talking about creatures who were unnaturally created in a test tube but have the same biology, and my argument would be the same.

That would also be their "nature"; that is, how they were made, biologically, or innately. You're essentially saying what is, is good.
However, given the first quote, I think you've rather misunderstood what is.

I thought it would be clear that I was talking about the subconscious.

Might as well say they know on some level that god wants them to do it, so they do. Assertions about subconscious motivations aren't very useful.
I'll have to see how you respond to the correction on the mistaken assumption in the first quote, though.

The argument that she understands her biology is making her feel happy when she is around the child, and would cause suffering if the child was to die seems like a far more objective and fundamental basis for her interest than her just having your abstract concept of interest tied to nothing else.

No, it's an absurd argument based on assertions of subconscious metacognition. See my comment to inator above on that.

Christians do the same thing when they appeal to god as the root of all values.
I encourage you to re-read my post (this one and the prior one) in light of new information on the nature of interests.

Your example almost sounds like she has interest "just because".

The causality of that interest is irrelevant. The interest is what's driving her behavior, and what she is interested in.

She could be interested in it because she was hit in the head by a rock and it scrambled her brain. It's still valid.

If it's not a bad\good feeling, I don't see it's relevance to morality.

This is what I'm trying to explain that you're wrong on. These feelings which guide action in pursuit of interests are a consequence of interests. You are failing to see the forest through the trees here. It's not the feelings that are important, it's the interests.

Interests are like the man behind the wheel. Feelings are like the gas flowing into the engine and burning.
You're saying, "forget the driver, the only thing that matters is combustion of gasoline! This is the only purpose of cars.".

Interest without suffering\joy as a perceived outcome to me seems synonymous with a machine or a reflex.

I didn't say they don't exist, I said interests lie behind them at some more fundamental place. Feedback is essential to intelligence.

The part that makes it morally relevant is the biological reward and punishment system attached to it that other beings with the same system can relate to.

No, it doesn't matter if you can relate to it or not. Morality isn't based on your ability to empathize with something.

The part that makes it morally relevant is the interests driving that system of reward and punishment -- and the feedback system involved in self authorship that yields sentience and true learning and contextual understanding.

If the artist is literally incapable of feeling any pain or suffering from the prospect or reality of the painting being destroyed, but just had some sort of biological imperative to save the painting anyway, i don't think there would be any moral issue in destroying the painting. He didn't get to succeed at saving the painting, but if he isn't even upset that he failed, neither am I.

What you're talking about here is some kind of non-sentient reflex. This is not in any sense an interest. Rocks do not have an interest in falling -- they just do. Plants do not have an interest in growing -- they just do.
Interests are proven by true learning, like operant conditioning. There is a line between just doing and actually wanting to do.

You are even admitting that he would recognize that the core of his interest is suffering if he'd bothered to think about it more.

Here I feel like you're trying to misrepresent me. I said no such thing about it being the "core" of his interest. It is incidental to his interest. I said he could have realized it is true that it might cause him suffering later if he thought about it, not that this was the truth of what was the real interest under consideration, or that it had anything to do with them at all.
It is incidentally true that 4 is made from two 2s. It's also incidentally true that it's made from the cube root of 64. Both equally irrelevant to the fact of 4+4 being 8, both unnecessary considerations in doing that basic math.

Grief is a side effect of interests being violated -- of loss -- not the drive behind the interests. You're putting far too weight on imagined metacognition behind decisions.

Pills or electrodes are probably not good examples because they deal with sense of self\death which to me is a pretty tricky edgecase.

It shouldn't be. If all you're after is pleasure, by any means, and you have no interests beyond that, then additional pleasure is always good, up to and including euphoria.

If, instead, you have interests beyond pain and pleasure -- like having a sense of self, even if it means more pain -- then you just proved my point.

Happy pills or not?

People may biologically feel it's a projected infinite loss of joy to die or lose their sense of self.

You're not dying. Your brain is being loaded with pleasure, as is. You lose your engagement with the world, but by definition you could not have more pleasure than this.
Your rejection of the happy pills would either be irrational behavior, given your belief in pleasure as the only good, or confirmation that you have interests beyond that.

If someone asked why dying is such a sad thought to me, I would say it's because of all the joy i'm going to miss out on(infinitely).

You miss no joy. The happy pills or electrodes give you infinite joy for the extent of your natural life.

Achieving happiness through significantly changing yourself via pills or electrodes gives the same same loss of self feeling as dying.

That's absurd, and contradicts your entire argument. Now you're introducing an entirely different interest which has nothing to do with pleasure/pain as experience.

I can't relate to the being that gets that much joy from sitting in one place and doing nothing. There is no way that could be me.

Irrelevant. You were talking about the brain, and pleasure and pain. That's all this is. Now you're bringing in existential interests, and that defeats your entire argument.

I don't understand the mental gymnastics you're going through to try to justify this contradiction.

The things that make me happy are sort of a core element of what makes me feel like i'm still me. If the example was instead changing the whole world around me to a place that maximized my joy, then of course i would take that offer, and since a am a being that has empathy, that world would also include maximizing joy for everyone else.

Then how about being unknowingly plugged into a computer simulation of that world? So you don't know the difference, and your happiness is maximized now.

I'll answer this one if it's addressing the same idea since it's simpler and is significantly less loaded than the family one. Dying to me feels equivalent to possibly losing out on a infinite amount of joy(even if it's only a few years in reality) . So i would obviously choose to get my foot stomped on.

Not quite the same. You already proved my point with the happy pill argument, but I'll like to hear your response to the family one too.

How about if you're assured that the rest of your life will contain precisely equal amounts (to you) of pleasure and pain, aside from the foot stomping?
Then you must certainly choose a painless death without knowing it's coming over the foot stomping followed by a precisely neutral life or equal pleasure and pain, right?

This would include taking measures to make sure the person he is asking isn't lying or making sure to only ask someone he trusts.

Like I said, the person was completely convincing (while lying). The person earned your trust, somehow, or tricked you.

Whoever you are asking this question to is going to be able to feel empathy for their dog that wont be taken care of and respond appropriately. It will feel the same either way when you're dead, but you aren't asking a dead person, so it doesn't feel the same.

Of course, and this is because we have interests which are independent of our own personal pleasure and pain. Care for others is a good example.

You can't just try to justify a mother saving her child based on the metacognition that she will experience great suffering in the form of grief if she doesn't, then flip sides and say people aren't capable of the metacognitive realization that they will experience no suffering since they won't know their dog has been starved to death.

[brimstoneSalad]

I used to think suffering and happiness formed the basis of morality but after reading through this thread a second time, I'm more inclined towards this interest framework.

Glad to help.

What is the statue of limitation on interests?

There is none. However, we don't necessarily even know the interests of people who existed long ago, so in that sense they become less relevant.
They are also vastly outnumbered, by both current and perhaps future interests, so in terms of conflicts or interests, preserving a grave site for all of time may not be a net good (but we should if it doesn't infringe on others).

Do more recent interests carry more weight? If we take only recent and relevant interests into immediate consideration, rather than those of previous generations for instance, do we do so because it provides a world where people can expect their interests to be respected in the short term - thereby satisfying most people's interest to live in such a world?

I would say most people's interests are stronger in the short term. But see the former two points: both in terms of not knowing the interests, and other conflicts being more pressing, ancient interests tend to become less relevant.

Assuming Leonardo da Vinci did not want the Mona Lisa to be destroyed, would it be wrong if I destroyed it and replaced it with a perfect copy without anyone knowing?

If you replaced it with a perfect copy, Leo probably wouldn't mind. But that's Leo. Others might mind, though.
Also, it has already survived hundreds of years, so it's had a pretty good run.
Most artists would be happy if their art survived a hundred years after them, being hypothetically "less upset" in principle the longer it lives. Ultimately, they know art will deteriorate over the ages.

I realise this is the same situation as with my dog, but it doesn't seem morally equivalent to me for some reason.

Would you be "less upset" (given, you don't know either way) if somebody took care of your dog for 15 years, and then put your dog down when he got cancer instead of spending $10,000 on an operation that would give your dog one more year?
As in, made a reasonable effort, and gave your dog as many good years as could be reasonably expected?

Let's say we have a reliable way of measuring every interest that ever existed. Should we take all of them into equal consideration?

Sure, but let's not forget the relevance of idealized interests. Given correct information and sound reasoning (which we would all want), would they still hold these interests?

If Egyptian pharaohs knew that there wasn't an afterlife their burials needed to prepare them for, and that moving their bodies or artifacts didn't harm them in any way in the afterlife, would they still hold these interests? They might still want to be remembered and glorified, but perhaps that would be better achieved by showing their wealth in a museum for future generations to be in awe of rather than leaving it in a dusty tomb?

And, it remains absolutely true that one pharaoh's interest in keeping his gold squirreled away at no benefit to his person weighs less than the thousands it could help today, regardless of whether that interest is contemporary or not. And given that there's no law to protect him (or larger interest in social order that keeps us from stealing from the rich today), it seems on sum the right thing to do may be to take it and make use of it for the greater good.

[Jaywalker]

Would you be "less upset" (given, you don't know either way) if somebody took care of your dog for 15 years, and then put your dog down when he got cancer instead of spending $10,000 on an operation that would give your dog one more year?
As in, made a reasonable effort, and gave your dog as many good years as could be reasonably expected?

I'd prefer if he made the effort, yes. I realise why I had qualms about the comparison, it's because the underlying interests are not equally significant. My mistake in presenting them as the same. Most artists would be content with their work surviving and being appreciated for this long, as you say. The importance I place on my dog experiencing further good years is probably higher than the importance Leonardo placed on Mona Lisa's survival after this point.

This does seem to be the most consistent moral theory I've come across. I'll think on it some more before fully subscribing to it though.

[Mr. Purple]

I used to think suffering and happiness formed the basis of morality but after reading through this thread a second time, I'm more inclined towards this interest framework.

That's awesome if you were able to make sense of this abstract interest concept. Hopefully i get there. It has nicer consequences, and is simpler on its face, so it appeals to me. I just need to be convinced it matches reality.

Once again, I think it would help me a lot if you laid out a more direct definition for how you view interest and morality. (unless I missed it when you did)

Because it's rude to tell people they're rude. It comes off as very SJW-ish.

I went over how different the contexts were, and the different functions they provided socially. I think there are decent arguments to be made for casting what he said in a negative light. I respect his right to say what he said obviously, I'm not going to advocate for arresting him or banning him from the internet. But people who talk like that are going to take a hit to their credibility during serious arguments. If you are fine with this reality, and want to fight the evil SJW that badly, then have fun It's too bad i have to take that credibility hit by association

There's negative and/or positive feedback that guides the evolution of a system -- the relative sum being the guiding factor. One thing that usually produces at least some amount of negative feedback can be pain (one interest), but interests are multitude in complex organisms: generated both internally and externally from many sources.

Negative and positive feedback don't create interests, interests generate negative and positive feedback. You're looking at this backward.

Yeah, this is the core misunderstanding. I do not believe this currently. I am genuinely curious to how you think this is possible. You say you have evidence of this because of adaptive neural networks, which would be a pretty solid basis, so i would love to see what you are referring to. If you could send some stuff tying what you are saying to our neurons, it would be appreciated.

Why?
That sounds pretty arbitrary. Why not just recognize the reality of the self interests of Whites, and leverage that to benefit the most Whites?

Proposing a moral framework that subjugates people is forgoing the reward we would get from a system incorporating empathy and fairness from the start, and unless you keep yourself in total ignorance of the pain you are causing, it will have unavoidable psychological negatives from violating these foundations. I can't see why that would be a good starting point for a framework. It is also accepting a lot unnecessary risk and conflict into a system almost by definition when you are creating a subset of people people with an interest in getting rid of the system. It will probably be that much worse for you when the regime change happens as well. It's probably possible that the benefit we get from favoring whites in this scenario is so large that it actually outweighs the biological punishments we would be getting from violating our mechanisms for empathy and fairness, or the ignorance we would have to subject ourselves to, or the inherent conflict that would be mounted by those being subjected and those who aren't ignorant, but that's a big hurdle to jump from the start. luckily based on how modern civilization is developing so far, it seems like we are recognizing subjugation of people isn't the basis for a good system, but it isn't a 100% slam dunk that reality will give us the best outcome here. Animals are still having problems.

but biological interests are not more important than those interests we decide to have for ourselves

Once again you sound like you are saying your conception of interest isn't even tied to our biology. I can't fathom that you would actually argue that. Please define your concept of interest in more detail. You are making it really hard to grasp when you say things like that.

Biology is nowhere nearly that rigid or complex in terms of cognitive function. These aspects are largely a product of nurture.

Of course I am generalizing to some extent and you can find some exceptions. There are "broken" humans to don't have the same reward and punishment systems in place(sociopaths), but as a general rule, I think my statement holds true. Empathy and a need to belong are pretty fundamental. You make it sound like those things are just a cultural construction. Culture only serves in giving or withholding information to shape your behavior like teaching that animals don't feel pain or slaves aren't human, but in light of the correct information\truth those mechanisms will still motivate people. Even pretty extreme religion like jihadists that are cutting peoples heads off need to think those victims aren't innocent to actually do this. It would be extremely uncommon(maybe impossible?) to have a worldview where you want to kill people you yourself associate as innocent. I think our biological mechanisms are more rigid than you give them credit. The problem is cultural misinformation.

The "it makes me feel bad whether I want to or not so I won't do it" argument for ethics? That's not ethics, that's being a sensitive little flower of a hedonist.

What I am proposing actually fits the definition of ethics just fine. " that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions." I don't even know why you would try to argue this. Did you misspeak?

What you're arguing is utilitarianism, or something between that and egoism/Randian Objectivism.

1. Can you really prove that's the best thing to advocate for self interest?
2. How does this hold any semantic claim on ethics, being that it's just derived from selfishness?

1. No, I'm just making arguments. We don't have nearly enough information about the human brain to think we could prove something like what is definitely best.
2. What makes you thinks ethics can't involve or center around selfishness when generating a framework for calling something right or wrong in respect to dealing with others? It seems to fit plainly into the definition of ethics honestly.

As a man, you might as well say men should advocate right as being women giving blowjobs all the time, and wrong being women disobeying men, since that will offer the most benefit in the long run.

I already addressed this, i'll try again. Making women give blowjobs to men would be a terrible moral framework to propose because it would be incredibly unstable. It would be against the interests of a major chunk of the population who would be actively trying to subvert it. In addition to this, it would lead to a lot of biological punishment for the men as well unless given a substantial dose of culturally trained ignorance. Our bodies don't like it when we are unfair or when others are hurting. This is core to being a social creature. This kind of behavior probably would only last as long as ignorance of it's reality lasts.

That's not what morality is -- that's rational amorality, and it's not a very pretty picture.

There you go again making your own definitions for morality and ethics. What I am proposing fits the definition of morality perfectly fine. You must be working off an extremely narrow and specific definition. Once again, it would help if you defined the way you are using these words.

That would also be their "nature"; that is, how they were made, biologically, or innately. You're essentially saying what is, is good.

Once again you are using a very specific definition of the word nature that I can't really find. As far as i understand it, the point of the word natural is to distinguish between human(intelligently?) caused or not. Natural is a pretty vague definition anyway, so i don't know what ground you have to argue this. You may just have to chill a bit with your trigger happy fallacy policing. So far you have been wrong most of the time about it even being a fallacy, and the other times the fallacy wasn't even core to the argument.(usually the point of addressing them) I would prefer it if you would talk to me like a human without all the attempted "Gotchas".

Might as well say they know on some level that god wants them to do it, so they do.

People say they know god wants them to do things all the time, what is your point here?

Assertions about subconscious motivations aren't very useful.
I'll have to see how you respond to the correction on the mistaken assumption in the first quote, though.

I'm going to dump a bunch of questions on you here to get some clarification around this topic.
1. Do you agree that we can know things without being consciously aware we know them?
2. Do you agree that those things that we subconsciously know will inform our actions?
3. Do you agree that the mother has built in mechanisms(empathy) that make her feel bad if her child were to die?
4. What definition of interest are you using for your argument?
5. Why do we need a biological punishment and reward system if it isn't what is motivating us?
6. Do you think pain is just an unfortunate biological accident\byproduct of your concept of interest?

I'm not sure what first quote you are talking about to be honest.

It shouldn't be. If all you're after is pleasure, by any means, and you have no interests beyond that, then additional pleasure is always good, up to and including euphoria.

If, instead, you have interests beyond pain and pleasure -- like having a sense of self, even if it means more pain -- then you just proved my point.

It's like you didn't read what i said at all. I framed sense of self and death in terms of suffering and joy. That was whole point of of bringing death and sense of self up in the first place. You didn't put forward much effort in reading if you missed all of it. Go back and re-read it for clarification.

You're not dying. Your brain is being loaded with pleasure, as is. You lose your engagement with the world, but by definition you could not have more pleasure than this.
Your rejection of the happy pills would either be irrational behavior, given your belief in pleasure as the only good, or confirmation that you have interests beyond that.

That's absurd, and contradicts your entire argument. Now you're introducing an entirely different interest which has nothing to do with pleasure/pain as experience.

You asked me the question about myself, so i am giving you my answer. If my expressed interests don't line up with your theory, that doesn't make them absurd. I would not associate that being in the example as being me, and so it would have no value to me for it to feel pleasure outside of feeling empathy for it. You could offer to rearrange all my neurons to match a person who is very happy and i would view that as just changing me into someone else. If i don't exist, how am i, as the person who accepted the offer, supposed to feel that joy? As far as it being irrational, i don't see a problem with that. What prevents interests\values from being irrational? My love of music and art could be irrational, but it brings me joy and so it will motivate my actions and is fair to consider part of my interests.

I don't understand the mental gymnastics you're going through to try to justify this contradiction.

Point out the contradiction specifically please, i'm not seeing it yet.

Then how about being unknowingly plugged into a computer simulation of that world? So you don't know the difference, and your happiness is maximized now.

I don't think this is getting us anywhere to be honest, as much as I love what ifs, answering these seem to be missing the core of the disagreement. Either outcome would be consistent in my worldview. If it rubbed me the wrong way to go into the matrix for any number of irrational reasons, It would be because my biology is making me feel bad at that thought, causing me to refuse. I don't think it's objectively wrong for a being to install electrodes in its brain or go into the matrix though. all that makes sense to me, but I still don't get this neutral feeling of interest that i have no idea how to even relate to. You need to better explain how your definition of interest not tied to a negative experience can motivate anything. I honestly just can't understand or relate to that process as you have described it.

How about if you're assured that the rest of your life will contain precisely equal amounts (to you) of pleasure and pain, aside from the foot stomping?
Then you must certainly choose a painless death without knowing it's coming over the foot stomping followed by a precisely neutral life or equal pleasure and pain, right?

There isn't something inherently bad about death, the reason I would never choose the option of death is because i am a being who is biologically set up to feel extremely negative feelings when approaching death. I can imagine beings who would only feel positive feelings by sincerely trying to kill themselves. In that case, death would be in their best interest. Since for this example, you have made me a being who doesn't feel pain while approaching death, then I would assume that this version of me would happily choose the death option.

Of course, and this is because we have interests which are independent of our own personal pleasure and pain. Care for others is a good example.

You honestly don't believe humans get personal pleasure from helping others? You really need to define interest better for me if you hope to be convincing while saying things like this.

The core of our disagreement seems to be around the semantics of the word interest. It may be more than that, but we probably can't go much further until this is addressed. It would be really helpful if you spent extra effort in your definition and thoughts around the word. Maybe give me some synonyms for your use of it as well.