Concerning the Correspondence of an Ethical System to the Definition of Morality

[brimstoneSalad]

Would you consider judging people 's interests by tossing a coin as a non-arbitrary, consistent system?

The only sensible way to determine what another's interests are is through observation and scientific methodology.

You mean deciding whether to help or hinder, once we determine somebody's interests? Like "Two Face" or discordianism?

[DarlBundren]

Yes, once we have already determined somebody's interests. 'Consider' as in 'consider to help or not'. I guess you would call it a consistent system, but not a moral one.

[brimstoneSalad]

I guess you would call it a consistent system, but not a moral one.

Not sure what you mean.
If you mean discordianism, I guess it's consistent with randomness; consistent in its inconsistency. That's probably not what most people think of when they're asking for consistency.
Of course, even if so, it wouldn't reasonably fit the definition of the word "morality".

I usually leave it out of discussion on morality because it would be confusing.

[Mr. Purple]

Randian-style egoists believe in only being considerate of others who are "rational agents" and can mutually benefit you. This isn't morality, though, that's just self interest.

Isn't a system where you help for self interested reasons consistant and non-arbitrary though? If you aren't talking about the system itself being arbitrary, and instead are talking about the choice of adopting that particular system, then how is the choice of adopting a more altruistic system any less arbitrary? Are you just deciding this based on what the you think the current most popular definition of the word morality is?

It sounds like you are saying a system needs to be consistent, non-arbitrary, and fit with your conception of the word morality.

[brimstoneSalad]

Isn't a system where you help for self interested reasons consistant and non-arbitrary though?

That's not a moral system, it's doing whatever you want without influence from ideological compunction. You can also just not do it if you don't want to and you're still obeying the rule of "do whatever you want". It's the default position of the amoral. Of anything with agency and will without need for any moral system.

Randians/most egoists in general also make the mistake of assuming what a person's self interests are (an arbitrary assumption). They attempt to describe something universal and objective (hence the name "objectivist") but completely fail at doing so (so it's not objective either).
Some people WANT to fight, and enjoy "the game" of survival of the strongest; there are people who LIKE and prefer zero sum games and mutual physical/financial destruction.

As such, the notion that you should even "help" others at all is subjective and assumes metrics of a game that are not actually objectively established.
Non-zero-sum games only make sense as objectively correct if you objectively define the goal of the game -- like maximizing monetary profit in economics. No such singular external material goal is universal among human beings, so even if we were all perfect rational agents, that doesn't mean we could come to terms in cooperation. Some people even want to die, and want to be killed and go out with a bang -- realizing those goals means tearing down existing support systems for others, and that's the rational thing for them to do based on those goals.
In terms of self destruction, Randians would protest that this is not "rational", but they're wrong to compare it to any profit motive as rational; any functional desire (one we can define in specific external real-world terms) is non-rational, based on programmed instincts, childhood, emotions, or any number of influences.
There's nothing that more appropriately links eating chocolate and having sex to an egoists' purpose than starting fires and killing people; to attempt to do so would be to make an appeal to nature fallacy. If the latter yields more hedonic pleasure in the person doing it than the former, then an egoist would have to admit that the person should rationally pursue the latter under the only premise the Randians can claim (maximization of pleasure). No system universally supports conflicting destructive interests like these.

In the same way, Kant made these mistakes with his categorical imperative. Many assumptions, contradictions, and circular ontological bullshit.
I talked about it a bit here: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2689&start=10#p27331
Please read that post if you haven't. We can go into more detail on why these attempts at establishing objective rules like this break down if you want.

IF you want to try to fix that, and say that some sets of interests (eating chocolate and having sex) are better than others (starting fires and killing people), then you have violated the fundamental rule of Egoism (at least Randian egoism) and told people what they SHOULD want to do.
You're no longer an egoist once you start prescribing better personal interest for others that are more beneficial to peers; if you're remotely consistent then you're an altruist or at least some kind of utilitarian by that point.

See how that works? Any time you try to fix these broken systems by changing a rule to fix a contradiction, they fall from an unstable state back to consequentialism, and back to something like altruism or utilitarianism. This happens with Egoism, it happens with Deontology, this even happens with Virtue ethics (which is poorly defined, not always so much contradictory).
It's not difficult to show by process of elimination (and how fixing the problems in other systems regresses them back to that mean) that there is only one general region and set of qualities that make moral systems objective, consistent, and non-arbitrary.

If you aren't talking about the system itself being arbitrary, and instead are talking about the choice of adopting that particular system, then how is the choice of adopting a more altruistic system any less arbitrary?

I'm talking about the system. Your choice to adopt morality instead of immorality/anti-morality, or to stay with the hedonic default (of some kind of nihilistic/egoist existence where decisions are based on arbitrary personal whim alone without consideration of ideology) is yours.

Are you just deciding this based on what the you think the current most popular definition of the word morality is?

We could call it Gluberflobble instead of Morality. I use certain words because of common usage and the fact that they would be recognizable and convey the meaning most clearly. That's just language. Yes, words mean what their popular definitions say they do, within the limits of logic (some words are broken or useless due to problematic common usage).

It sounds like you are saying a system needs to be consistent, non-arbitrary, and fit with your conception of the word morality.

Consistent, non-arbitrary, objective/absolute (in a sense), universifiable. There are a number of tests we can do, and discuss the meaning and significance of those tests (some of them mean the same thing).

As to the word:
It's not my conception. If you're applying a word to a thing, you use the word that is the best fit.
If I hand you something I call a banana, and it's something you would call a live hand grenade with the pin pulled, we have a lapse in communication.

There is one other system which is consistent and arguably non-arbitrary (if we ignore the negative part), which is immorality/anti-morality/malevolence. Using "morality" to describe this system would be inappropriate. No usage panel would agree that's the right word, and it would result in very troubled communication.
There is some leeway in what we call things and how we describe them, but not so much as to break language and render discussion incoherent.

[Mr. Purple]

I'm not specifically trying to defend objectivism. l just feel like your reason for dictating what counts as a moral system isn't justified.
Under definitions like this: " concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character." It seems to me that a system could have killing for it's own sake as a prescription and it could be considered "moral" in that system. The fact most people wouldn't agree that this is actually moral just tells us what moral system those people adopted, not that a legitimate moral system can't have this as a prescription. Basing what counts as a moral system on what most people already have as their moral system seems useless.

That's not a moral system, it's doing whatever you want without influence from ideological compunction. You can also just not do it if you don't want to and you're still obeying the rule of "do whatever you want". It's the default position of the amoral. Of anything with agency and will without need for any moral system.

I don't see why a person doing whatever they want is necessarily what an egoist would call good. You still will want to listen to the moral wisdom that it's better to work together, and collaborate with others instead of kill them, because you will have more happiness in the long run this way. A person who failed at maximizing his own pleasure by giving into short term urges being considered objectively wrong makes sense to me. But this is slightly beside the point. Even if it didn't make sense to me, It clearly seems able to fit into the definition of a moral system.

Randians/most egoists in general also make the mistake of assuming what a person's self interests are (an arbitrary assumption).

IF you want to try to fix that, and say that some sets of interests (eating chocolate and having sex) are better than others (starting fires and killing people), then you have violated the fundamental rule of Egoism (at least Randian egoism) and told people what they SHOULD want to do.

I don't see how telling people what they should want to do violates egoism. If as a general rule we find that people are happiest when they structure their life around collaboration, emotional bonds of love and friendship, having intellectual stimulation and creative outlets, and all that other stuff we consider important to happiness, how does it violate egoism to say that's what a person should do? Yes, you would have to make the assumption that this person is somewhat biologically similar to the rest of his species, but that seems the same for altruism and egoism. A friend may be correct when telling me the only way he will be happy is if i let him drink himself to death, but I wouldn't just believe him. Based on what I know about humans and happiness, I would have to make the justified assumption that an intervention would be more in his interest.

[brimstoneSalad]

Under definitions like this: " concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character." It seems to me that a system could have killing for it's own sake as a prescription and it could be considered "moral" in that system.

That deals with culturally relative descriptivism, not prescriptive morality. That's a definition anthropologists would use, it's useless in philosophical discourse. We're talking about philosophical truths of objective morality as a principle.

If you assert such a definition in a philosophical context, you're asserting relativism and nihilism; you're denying that such objective systems can exist or that they hold meaning or quantify value. It's a non-definition, it does not define a system, it just precludes consideration of objective systems.

Anthropologists can make the worst philosophers, particularly in ethics, because to even begin to engage in the dialogue they have to unlearn all of the relativistic terminology they've been indoctrinated with. Not that this can't be done, but when they're so sure of cultural relativism it's nearly impossible.

If some other culture or obscure tribe has a system which doesn't resemble morality, then the word they use for that system is NOT a translation for morality in English.

Kind of like 龍 is not really a dragon, it's a distinct supernatural being with a different history and different characteristics.
We're talking about English semantics, not intercultural exchange and crude/poor translations here.

Basing what counts as a moral system on what most people already have as their moral system seems useless.

That's not what I'm doing. Given the above, you should re-read my last couple posts.
Understand that we're not discussing cultural anthropology, this is not an anthropology forum, and that the word is used completely differently in moral philosophy and the same way [as in philosophy] in common usage; it's how I'm using it here. That is, referring to absolutes of value independent of culture or personal opinion/whim, as we would talk about a quality of mass or energy in physics. You're thinking in terms of weight or gravity, which is relative to the planet you happen to be on -- we're talking about mass, which is independent of that. The two do not translate.

I don't see why a person doing whatever they want is necessarily what an egoist would call good.

I don't think you understand egoism.
I explained this in detail in the last post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_egoism

Ethical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds that it is rational to act in one's self-interest.[1] Ethical egoism holds that actions whose consequences will benefit the doer can be considered ethical.

An egoist only wants to maximize/fulfill his or her own self-interest. This requires answering two questions: What is the self? And what are the interests of that self?

So far you've only been capable of answering those questions one way:
The brain. Stimulating maximum lifetime hedonic pleasure.

We've discussed this at length elsewhere and failed repeatedly (several people have tried), and until you can understand non-hedonistic interest frameworks, you can't understand or engage with this topic properly. Hedonic values are not in line with reality or how the mind works.

You still will want to listen to the moral wisdom that it's better to work together, and love others instead of killing them, because you will have more pleasure in the long run.

Not if you don't like other people, and you enjoy killing them, and particularly if you're good at it and can do it secretly and get away with it.
Serial killers can operate for years, or a lifetime, without ever getting caught at no detriment to themselves. For an egoist, if you enjoy torturing and killing people, you should do that and it is moral to do so; only under some formulations you should avoid getting caught because that would interfere with your interests in killing, but the risk of getting caught is often part of the fun, so even this is not necessarily true.

If you changed from being a sadist to being a loving person who wanted to help others, you'd be a different person -- a different SELF.
Egoism doesn't prescribe changing who you are.
If you start talking about a system that prescribes changing your interests and values, you are no longer talking about egoism. You're probably talking about Virtue Ethics of some kind.

Indeed, the way to change your values and preferences to maximize pleasure stimulation is to prefer sticking an electrode in your brain's pleasure centers and living out the rest of your life in a mindless euphoria, probably arranging to have your body dropped off at an institution somewhere in a pro-life state so you get a feeding tube and a bed so it lasts longer (with a strict will that denies permission to remove the electrode).

A person who failed at maximizing his own pleasure by giving into short term urges being considered objectively wrong makes sense to me.

Because you only understand hedonistic values. That doesn't resemble reality. Your whole premise is wrong.

And because you don't understand non-hedonistic values, you probably won't understand this (but other readers might so I'll say it anyway):

If somebody fails to realize self-interest, that is objectively sub-optimal to realization of those interests. That doesn't make it "wrong", though. A failure is not always a moral failure. It can be a failure of ability or knowledge or circumstance. The root of moral failure is existential -- it stems in wrong interests. Interests that conflict or interfere with each other, for instance. You can't understand such a notion without realizing that human interests are complex though.

We can easily judge one person's interests and see how they harm another's in practice and call that wrong. You can't judge something relative to itself and find it lacking. And judging those things that amount to our non-existential physical and psychological limitations as morally wrong just makes any moral judgement categorically meaningless (you're immoral for not immediately teleporting to heaven to experience perpetual euphoria -- that doing so is impossible is irrelevant if you fail to excuse impossibilities from your judgement).

Our actions are derived from our interests, and our ability, knowledge, and the circumstances we're presented with. The only way to inject moral agency back into that once you've excluded the rest would be to throw out how the brain functions and postulate some supernatural "free will" we can blame all of this on instead.

Any attempt by you or any egoist to judge somebody as having a moral failing is doomed unless you assert an ideal, but any such attempt is arbitrary. Perhaps even worse, if you're asserting a hedonistic ideal and if you believe in psychological egoism (debunked though it is), it's a foregone conclusion that everybody's interests MUST already be ideal, because people could have nothing other than hedonic self interest, then all you're really measuring is intelligence or knowledge, "rationality" (highly debatable), and impulse control (we already have words for these things, and changing the definitions in attempt to conflate them with morality is extremely deceptive).

But this is slightly beside the point. Even if it didn't make sense to me, It clearly seems able to fit into the definition of a moral system.

Only by ignorance of the implications. Most theists would claim that God (the god of logical extremes and which demonstrates contradiction upon more careful examination) is clearly possible. They're just incorrect.

You could propose a system of hedonistic maximization which demanded people (in order to be considered moral) maximize the stimulation of the pleasure centers of their brains with drugs and/or electrodes. Anybody not pursuing this goal would be considered immoral.

It's an arbitrary goal, though, which has no connection to values. It's just as reasonable to tell people they need to maximize stimulation of the pain centers, or of the region of the brain that deals with perception of the color blue, or sticking electrodes in an orange to maximize stimulation of citrus, or running a program in computers that maximized production of binary 1s, or any other arbitrary goal like maximizing the number of pickles in the universe.

The problem is, for you, because you can't understand why hedonistic experience as a value system is both flawed and empirically false, none of that will make sense to you. Here one error on your part in thought is just compounding itself. You can't see it as the arbitrary goal it is because you falsely equate pleasure and value and can't conceive of non-hedonistic value.

I don't see how telling people what they should want to do violates egoism.

Because it's their SELVES, and it's their INTERESTS. Not yours, and it's not for YOU to decide what they should want.

You'll find quotes like these throughout Randian/Egoist/Libertarian communities and advocates:

"Each of us is intimately familiar with our own individual wants and needs. Moreover, each of us is uniquely placed to pursue those wants and needs effectively. At the same time, we know the desires and needs of others only imperfectly, and we are not well situated to pursue them. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that if we set out to be 'our brother's keeper,' we would often bungle the job and end up doing more mischief than good."

- James Rachels

I don't have time to find more, but you may want to actually talk to some of these people to learn what they believe.

Egoism is realization of self interests, not telling other people what their self interests should be. Again, you can't understand this because you can't see beyond hedonism. You think everybody's true self interest is a pursuit of mindless pleasure stimulation. This conversation is pointless if you can't come to terms with the necessary premises.

Based on what I know about humans and happiness, I would have to make the justified assumption that an intervention would be more in his interest.

That's you imposing your hedonistic value upon others. Some people legitimately want to die, or even to sacrifice themselves for something they hold to have greater value; you intervening in other's pursuits of their interests in order to strap them down to a hospital bed and insert electrodes into their brains to stimulate maximal pleasure would be evil.

Altruists care about idealized and informed interests, they are not mindless hedonists and they don't force mindless hedonism upon others. Interests by their nature are deeply personal, non-rational and there's nothing indicating that they're inherently hedonistic in nature.

[Mr. Purple]

If you assert such a definition in a philosophical context, you're asserting relativism and nihilism

How is allowing for descriptive definitions in the conversation asserting anything? it’s impossible to talk about non universal morality without making a positive claim about relativism and nihilism?

Understand that we're not discussing cultural anthropology, this is not an anthropology forum, and that the word is used completely differently in moral philosophy and the same way [as in philosophy] in common usage; it's how I'm using it here. That is, referring to absolutes of value independent of culture or personal opinion/whim, as we would talk about a quality of mass or energy in physics.

As far as I can tell, philosophical conversation includes the descriptive sense of morality all the time. I think you’re wrong in assuming the context of philosophical conversation automatically makes the definition you are using clear. It’s not that hard to write a single sentence defining your use of the word for this conversation. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when people ask the questions they have been asking. The definition you gave above still seems to allow coin flipping and egoism though. I’m just going to assume you are using something like “Rules of conduct most\all rational people would agree to”, and you are excluding something like “Rules of conduct seen in different societies” or “Rational rules of conduct”. Is that accurate?

I don't think you understand egoism.
I explained this in detail in the last post.

You layed out what sounded like a horrible straw man of what egoism is(“Do whatever you want”). You can’t expect people to take you seriously when you do that.

Not if you don't like other people, and you enjoy killing them, and particularly if you're good at it and can do it secretly and get away with it.

Is it reasonable to assume that there is some possible change of environment(including drugs) and behaviors that once prescribed to a destructive person would lead him to a different mental state where he could start liking and relating to other people? And that this would be a more positive mental state overall than perpetual Isolation and hatred? I think most people would say yes, and most people themselves have probably gone through some smaller version of that transformation. Saying that under egoism it would best for him to keep killing because that's what he wants in that moment seems like a straw man to me.

There is a point where egoism gets less palatable when you change the person's biology drastically enough to make his only option for happiness require antisocial behavior, but every system has something that feels wrong if you stretch it far enough. Under Utilitarianism, If a serial killer gets more pleasure from killing than the pain it causes the victim\everyone else, it’s moral right? Does that put Utilitarianism on the same footing as Egoism? The Interest framework you mentioned before seems to have the previous problem but also requires you to care about the interests of beings that no longer exist.

It's an arbitrary goal, though, which has no connection to values. It's just as reasonable to tell people they need to maximize stimulation of the pain centers

I imagine science will eventually tell us what we actually intrinsically value, in the mean time, pleasure\suffering seems like a reasonably convincing approximation. As far as i can tell, the reason for deciding the definition of interest is going to be "Reason for action" as you have stated before, is at least as arbitrary as the reason for deciding the definition of interest is pleasure and suffering optimization.

If somebody fails to realize self-interest, that is objectively sub-optimal to realization of those interests. That doesn't make it "wrong", though.

It's not wrong assuming your set of definitions and moral system, correct.

until you can understand non-hedonistic interest frameworks, you can't understand or engage with this topic properly.

I think I do understand non hedonistic frameworks well enough(of course you disagree), I just don’t relate to them, and it’s not clear they are the best framework to use.

Altruists care about idealized and informed interests, they are not mindless hedonists and they don't force mindless hedonism upon others.

I imagine both egoists and hedonists would care about idealized and informed interests. You are the only one here using the mindless hedonist caricature.


I fear we have dug up that poor horse and have resumed beating him.

[brimstoneSalad]

it’s impossible to talk about non universal morality without making a positive claim about relativism and nihilism?

You can talk about it negatively, by way of debunking it.
But asserting such a definition (implicitly as useful in the discussion) is an assertion of relativism and nihilism (from an objective standpoint).

Yes, it is impossible to talk about it in the way you did without making such positive claims for relativism etc.
Just like it's impossible to talk seriously about dialetheism and present it as a useful system (or even suggest it might be) without making claims against logic and the foundation of reason.

There are certain concepts that, by bringing them up and implying their usefulness or legitimacy, undermine the basis of the entire conversation.

As far as I can tell, philosophical conversation includes the descriptive sense of morality all the time.

No, moral systems are frequently compared to a more intuitive or common views, not as authority, but as a sort of yard stick or depth marker/compass to see where we are. If something seems wrong, it bears more examination.

If something is very wrong, we might find that we're talking about something else that can't be properly described as morality. That's a semantic issue, though.

A fish only gets to spend so much time on land, and adapt its fins into legs so much, before we call it an amphibian or something other than a fish. That's a question of labels more than an undermining of the reality of what is being discussed.

If you have a system in mind which could not be described as morality proper, it may still be a value system or consistent framework/code. The issue with these systems tends to be two fold: they are arbitrary, and calling them morality is confusing to people (semantically).
They are competing value systems, but they're not competing for the space of the objective/non-arbitrary value system people look for when they discuss Morality/good and evil. If you are not interested in which system or systems rightly contend for that spot on rational grounds and just want to give them all equal consideration like a journalist who is over correcting to avoid perception of bias, then you're dealing in anthropology and not philosophy.

I think you’re wrong in assuming the context of philosophical conversation automatically makes the definition you are using clear. It’s not that hard to write a single sentence defining your use of the word for this conversation.

This is a topic that has already been addressed many times. Cirion, the original poster, is already familiar with why relativism makes the discussion on morality philosophically meaningless. His question seemed pretty specific to me, and it really should have been obvious that the conversation was prefaced on questions of objective morality, he even said this in his first post:

1 Note: definition of morality is being used to refer to the definitions of good and evil in morality

The question relates to the actual conceptual qualities of good and evil, not to people's opinions of them.
Actual objective universal notions, no less substantial than mathematical concepts like pi, i, e etc. Things an advanced alien species would be able to connect with, primitive cultural differences aside.

Answering the question of what good and evil are with, essentially, "whatever your culture says they are" is not useful. It's like answering "does god exist?" With "What does your faith tell you?", or, "He does if you believe he does."
These are serious questions of existential substance, and answer like that undermine the whole conversation and pursuit of real knowledge.

As to your contention that I should have defined morality in one sentence: that's what the whole thread is about.

The definition you gave above still seems to allow coin flipping and egoism though.

Coin flipping is a very interesting question.
I've already outlined the logical issues with egoism.

Do I need to make a flow chart?

[I'll may do that and add it in another post later]

I’m just going to assume you are using something like “Rules of conduct most\all rational people would agree to”, and you are excluding something like “Rules of conduct seen in different societies” or “Rational rules of conduct”. Is that accurate?

No, it's not remotely accurate.

When we're talking about Morality in a philosophical context, and asking what it is, that presupposes that it has an answer -- we're talking about what it can be as an objective concept. Therein where're looking for certain qualities that give a particular system a leg up over others, and claim to that throne.

We're looking for something logically consistent.
That's not hard, but amazingly most "systems" fail at this. Deontology fails pretty hard, as well as Randian Objectivism. Virtue ethics is found to be without foundation on its own.
This narrows the systems down to those which amount to some form of consequentialism, typically.
We're looking for something consistent with reality too.
Divine command tends to fail these, as do those dealing with physical substance of sin etc. as well as hedonistic Egoism.
We're looking for something objective.
We're looking for something non-arbitrary.
This is one of the more difficult to define.

There may be a few others I'm missing at the moment (I won't claim that's complete).
Once we determine these things, we could have two or three possible contenders.

Like, as I mentioned, positive and negative consideration for the interests of others. Which one gets to be called morality?
Assuming we don't rule out reversing the polarity of consideration as an arbitrary move, the accepted usage of the word itself gives us a good sense of which should be preferred, as a tie breaker.

It makes sense to call positive consideration morality, and to call negative consideration its opposite -- immorality, evil, etc. Doing otherwise would just be confusing, like calling up down and down up.

In no way are we starting from what we think the definition should be, or what we feel the word means. Although it would seem that we could, because once you do all of the leg work you essentially boil it down to what looks like the golden rule. It would seem to save a lot of work just to assert that morality is the golden rule, but that would just be an assertion, and showing our work by demonstrating why other contenders fail and arriving at it by the process of elimination is much more compelling (AND an actual legitimate argument).

I don't think you understand egoism.
I explained this in detail in the last post.

You layed out what sounded like a horrible straw man of what egoism is(“Do whatever you want”). You can’t expect people to take you seriously when you do that.

Maybe you should not make assumptions that it's a straw man, but consider that it may be a carefully considered conclusion backed up by reasoning and extensive knowledge of the systems that have been proposed under that umbrella (as varied and inconsistent as they may be).

Is it reasonable to assume that there is some possible change of environment(including drugs) and behaviors that once prescribed to a destructive person would lead him to a different mental state where he could start liking other people again and enjoy the benefits of relating to other people properly?

If he said he Wanted to change, then that would be fine. Otherwise, you're imposing that against his will.
Have you never talked to a Randian/Ideological Libertarian/etc.?

EGO. Self. We're talking about HIS interests being right for HIM to pursue, not your interests or anybody else's, not chemically altering him to the point you suppose he has better interests, or that you imagine will be more in his interests once he's altered.
In order to make arguments like these, you start going through people's psychology with a fine toothed comb and cherry picking which things you think are legitimate and which are "irrational" and saying those don't count.
You might as well pick up a bible, become born again, and go through the old testament with the same philosophy: you'd fit right in with the mindset of ad hoc rationalizations and cherry picking. This is not a moral theory, it's an unfalsifiable faith based belief on your part. You're doing the same thing as you did before arguing hedonic motivations.

Saying that under egoism it would best for him to keep killing because that's what he wants in that moment seems like a straw man to me.

Which is how I know you don't understand egoism.
A true egoist (or even just somebody who understands egoism, assuming the framework for the sake of argument) would agree that this is the right thing for him to do, but it's also the right thing for the rest of society at large to protect their own interests by killing this psycho. He didn't do anything morally wrong, but he was a problem and it was right to eliminate him.

Objectivists are a similar beast and focus more on the social contract as ethical while appealing to egoism for the authority to do so. There's not really any consistency to it, but you're far off base as least in terms of how people who believe it practice it and what they believe.

There is a point where egoism gets less palatable when you change the biology drastically enough from what is typically considered human, but every system has something that feels wrong if you stretch it far enough.

Are you saying it only feels wrong, but you think it's right?

Under Utilitarianism, If a serial killer gets more pleasure from killing than the pain it causes the victim\everyone else, it’s moral right?

Correct, and a hard core Utilitarian will defend this with consistency. It's called the utility monster, and it's often argued to be a legitimate conclusion which is right despite it being counter-intuitive. I'm not a utilitarian, though.

Luckily for utilitarianism, there's no evidence of any such thing existing now. Unlucky for the weird hedonistic pleasure fixated version of egoism you're advancing (which is not what most egoists believe, who favor interests over mindless pleasure), it's entirely possible to plug somebody in to mindless pleasure stimulation.

Why doesn't that put Utilitarianism on the same footing as egoism?

As actual Egoism as most people practice it where they respect autonomy and self interests (even "self destructive" ones), or your pure hedonistic version of it?

Utilitarianism has its own problems, but if we're going to quantify wrongness, what you have suggested fails on multiple levels, from being logically inconsistent, to inconsistent with empirical reality, to being arbitrary, and probably more.

I imagine science will eventually tell us what we actually intrinsically value,

And a Christian could say "I imagine science will eventually tell us how god created man."
The very premises you're basing this claim on are bogus.

Value is emergent. It's a part of a whole system. Your monomaniacal focus on some intrinsic value to be found in biology is blinding you. It's as if you looked at a clock and decided the purpose was to spin gears, rather than understanding the thing is meant to keep time.

"Science" already tells us what people value; it's roughly what they say they value (minus some error), and it's different for different people.
You're looking for substantiation of psychological egoism, and you won't find it in human behavior.

in the mean time, pleasure\suffering seems like a reasonably convincing approximation.

"In the mean time the Bible says HE created man from dirt on the last day of creation, and that seems like a reasonably convincing approximation"

Sure it does, if you know nothing of science. You're assertions that it's convincing to you is not a valid argument, it's an argument from ignorance (a fallacy).
You need to study psychology and neuroscience. Understand how intelligence functions. I tried at length to explain it to you and failed. Take a university level class in some of these subjects.

As far as i can tell, the reason for deciding the definition of interest is going to be "Reason for action" as you have stated before, is at least as arbitrary as the reason for deciding the definition of interest is pleasure and suffering optimization.

A Christian once told me that scientists saying evolution took millions of years seemed like just as much hand waving as the Bible being true.
Your ignorance is not an argument, you just really can't tell very far and you need to acknowledge that and work harder at understanding.
If you'd go back and read my actual explanation, you're butchering it. I explained how the mind worked, and WHY we know optimizing stimulation of pleasure isn't at the root of all human interest.

I even drew a diagram (which may not be there anymore).

I think I do understand non hedonistic frameworks well enough,

The young Earth creationist who thinks "If man came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" is a compelling argument against evolution thinks he understands evolution well enough.
How do you convince him that he does not?

You clearly do not understand any of this. Everything you've said is evidence of that.

I imagine both egoists and hedonists would care about idealized and informed interests. You are the only one here using the mindless hedonist caricature.

You're the one who's fixated on hedonic pleasure as purpose; your vision of "idealized" interest has no other logical conclusion than to want nothing but mindless euphoric pleasure; that is the END and the ROOT of value in hedonism. I was showing why it does not fit the criterion and how it is arbitrary.

Egoists don't necessarily believe in hedonism, as I touched on, and explained why when you relate it to INTERESTS rather than pure pleasure, it's meaningless as a moral system due to inability to establish culpability for failure. You can't compare interests to themselves and find them wanting. And as I said multiple times now, you can't prescribe what interests a person should have, since that's not egoism. That's some kind of arbitrary virtue ethics position.

[Mr. Purple]

“I’m just going to assume you are using something like “Rules of conduct most\all rational people would agree to”,”

No, it's not remotely accurate.

The reason I chose that definition is that something like it was specified as the definition of morality in the normative section of the stanford philosophy encyclopedia: “ Those who use “morality” normatively hold that morality is (or would be) the code that meets the following condition: all rational persons, under certain specified conditions, would endorse it. “
Is this incorrect to you?

It would help a lot if you specified the actual definition you are using, and why this seemingly accepted one should be ignored.

“We're looking for something logically consistent.
That's not hard, but amazingly most "systems" fail at this. Deontology fails pretty hard. Virtue ethics is found to be without foundation.
This narrows the systems down to those which amount to some form of consequentialism, typically.
We're looking for something consistent with reality too.
Divine command tends to fail these, as do those dealing with physical substance of sin etc.
We're looking for something objective.
We're looking for something non-arbitrary.
This is one of the more difficult to define.”

What is the justification for applying all these criteria to filter moral systems? Are they all actually necessary to call something moral?

Elaboration on how each of these fit in respect to your conception of morality would be useful. In what way are you needing objectivity to play a role for example? By objective do you just mean the normative version of morality(http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Objective_morality)? Or does this list need to apply to things like interests\reasons as well?

Maybe you should not make assumptions that it's a straw man, but consider that it may be a carefully considered conclusion backed up by reasoning and extensive knowledge of the systems that have been proposed under than umbrella.

I always consider this of course. As far as I can tell though, you were attacking an argument I never put forward.
If you aren't making any fallacies, then maybe show me why it's not as it appears.

If he said he Wanted to change, then that would be fine. Otherwise, you're imposing that against his will.
Have you never talked to a Randian/Ideological Libertarian/etc.

He and others that have it as their best interest would be responsible for changing him.

“Saying that under egoism it would best for him to keep killing because that's what he wants in that moment seems like a straw man to me.”

A true egoist (or even just somebody who understands egoism, assuming the framework for the sake of argument) would agree that this is the right thing for him to do

I don’t see a justification for this. Feel free to explain.

There is a point where egoism gets less palatable when you change the biology drastically enough from what is typically considered human, but every system has something that feels wrong if you stretch it far enough.

Are you saying it only feels wrong, but you think it's right?

I’m not saying I personally think it’s right, i’m saying I don’t see how people that frame the world in a more egoistic way would be on any worse footing than most other moral systems as far as hypothetically possible consequences go.

I don't think consequences are the determining factor of what is definitionally moral though. Egoism, Altruism, and Utilitarianism aren't doing anything fundamentally different from what the normative definition of morality permits. If the definition I gave above is too simplistic, and you think it should be changed, then maybe some moral theories wouldn't technically counted as moral anymore, but the definition I posted seems better in describing the way people use morality than your method of listing a bunch of rational principles.

From what I can tell, in order for something to follow the main definition of morality, the person putting it forward just has to believe all rational people would agree to it, Not that everyone actually would.

As actual Egoism as most people practice it where they respect autonomy and self interests (even "self destructive" ones), or your pure hedonistic version of it?

I thought it would be clear i'm referring to the hedonistic version.

what you have suggested fails on multiple levels, from being logically inconsistent, to inconsistent with empirical reality, to being arbitrary, and probably more.

And…?
Just saying that doesn’t help anyone. It would actually be quite informative for you to walk me through the logic of why all of those issues apply to hedonistic egoism. You don’t need to tell me i’m wrong. The fact you would be giving an explanation clearly implies this.

Have you been assuming some sort of preference egoism this whole time? Your arguments will be perceived as a straw man if you do that.

Value is emergent. It's a part of a whole system. Your monomaniacal focus on some intrinsic value to be found in biology is blinding you.

I never said it wasn't part of the whole system. I would still want science to answer which brain states constitute this emergent property of positive\negative experience.

I'm not sure the target chosen as the intrinsic value has relevance to the definition of morality though. You could have a moral system that has maximizing the amount of things in free fall as it's value. "Free Fall Utilitarianism". As long as the person advocating it believes that falling truly is what carries intrinsic value, and that given the requisite knowledge of the facts all rational people would agree, that would also be a legitimate moral system as far as I can tell. Just one that almost nobody else would recognize as true.

Luckily for utilitarianism, there's no evidence of any such thing existing now.(Utility monster)

A group of psychopaths getting more pleasure than the pain caused to the kidnapped victim they did terrible things to has almost certainly occurred and may be occurring frequently. That's great news under utilitarianism. I don't see how the consequences of Egoism are any worse than that.

The young Earth creationist who thinks "If man came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" is a compelling argument against evolution thinks he understands evolution well enough.
How do you convince him that he does not?

You just have to work on making your arguments more convincing. For you specifically, I would say work harder to represent the other side’s arguments as they would themselves before knocking it down. A good majority of the time you go on long tangents disproving concepts that I would never say I agree with in the first place. Another significant part of the time you simply assert I would agree if i knew more. Both are very unconvincing approaches.