Philosophical Vegan Forum

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:I think I understand better now. It makes sense that the foundations of an ethical system should be non-arbitrary and that if multiple iterations of said foundations exist, have an iteration selected based on how well it fits the popular definition.

Let's say it came down to two basic consistent and non-arbitrary options:

1. Positively value the interests of others.
2. Negatively value the interests of others.

In this case (a case I don't necessarily agree with) both would be equal contenders based on requiring an objective and non-arbitrary system.
You could call the choice between those two arbitrary, or you could call it guessing; but it's much less arbitrary, or much less of a guess than a choice between thousands (one in two chance is pretty good odds).

Anyway, assume you have no other means of narrowing things down.
If you described #1 as evil and #2 as good, it would be confusing to most people.
There, of course, is nothing in the word or definition that should suggest that we choose 1 over 2 or 2 over 1, but if asked what is good, I think the answer is fairly clear.

Assuming you have already decided that you want to do or be good, #1 is your only real option there, which is as consistent and non-arbitrary as you can get.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:What is the definition of value in this context?

It's an aspect of will/desire/preferences of a sentient being; that which guides action.
Moral value goes beyond whatever a person was already inclined to value personally and tells him or her what he or she should value.
Immoral values probably do about the same thing, but from an evil perspective.

The question of how symmetry is broken between good and evil in terms of preferential prescription is a good one, and one the definition itself doesn't answer. The definition doesn't really tell us anything other than what words to put to what concepts.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:I understand that implication of my question is absurd, but I don't understand why its less arbitrary to pick a group (interests / mathematics) over one of its components (happiness / prime numbers).

You can form a mathematics from all consistent numbers, or you can try to form one from only primes, only even, only Fibonacci sequence, etc.
The choice to limit the scope is an arbitrary one. It's an additional parameter you add on for no reason; think Occam's razor.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:Why is this less arbitrary?

Fewer additional acts of discrimination of personal choice or preference were made.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:Side Question: Does it even make sense for arbitrariness to be described as a spectrum of values?

Not sure what you mean.

I'll get back to you when I get home brimstone, I'm currently on vacation and don't want to deal with the terror of quoting on mobile

I don't think I really have any response. All your answer are satisfactory. Thanks brimstone.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:I don't think I really have any response. All your answer are satisfactory. Thanks brimstone.

I'm not trying to come across as an asshole or anything, but can you elaborate on the last point you made so brimstone knows what you are talking about? I don't understand what you mean, but if I am guessing correctly, you're asking if arbitrariness can be classified as it's own sector of morality? That's probably not what you meant.

RedAppleGP wrote:I'm not trying to come across as an asshole or anything, but can you elaborate on the last point you made so brimstone knows what you are talking about?

Oh fuck, you're right, I didn't see that when I was reading over brimstone's response again.

RedAppleGP wrote: I don't understand what you mean, but if I am guessing correctly, you're asking if arbitrariness can be classified as it's own sector of morality? That's probably not what you meant.

You're right, that isn't what I meant. What I'm asking is whether it makes sense to compare two or more things as more or less arbitrary than another, therefore suggesting a spectrum of arbitrariness values, or if arbitrariness is just a binary dilemma, where it either is isn't. And I'm looking for a justification for either case.

Good question, I'm glad you asked it.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:What I'm asking is whether it makes sense to compare two or more things as more or less arbitrary than another, therefore suggesting a spectrum of arbitrariness values, or if arbitrariness is just a binary dilemma, where it either is isn't. And I'm looking for a justification for either case.

Look into the concept of precision (e.g. as opposed to accuracy).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision
The concept is somewhat related to those distinctions (which are all spectrums).

The tighter the error bars are -- restricted with good reason -- the less arbitrary that range of options are.

For example, you go to the cake store to select a cake for your sister's birthday. If you choose one entirely at random (or based on your uninformed whim), that was 100% arbitrary based on the overall selection. In no way were the parameters of your selection based on relevant data.
But if you know that your sister likes chocolate cake, the selection is narrowed, and while your selection of a particular chocolate cake is arbitrary within the limits of chocolate cakes, your selection of a chocolate cake is less arbitrary within the entire selection of available cakes.

Perfect. Thanks!

BrimstoneSalad wrote:Even if they narrow down to a range of two or three qualities, we can at least look at what they all have in common. In the overlap of the venn diagram of all of them, we can find unambiguous good

The remaining ideas(maybe hundreds) that are logically coherent may have nothing to do with each other. It seems like most likely there wouldn't be any overlap between all possible moral ideas.

In the case of the two you presented, they are direct negations of each other, so it already seems like the overlap idea would fail without even needing to find all the other coherent moral ideas.

BrimstoneSalad wrote:With "Preference egoism" at least you'll admit to that being a decent summary. Will you admit that this makes up the majority of egoists in practice?

How is this relevant to questions of what is really good or bad? I don’t know what the ratio of different types of egoists are. The fact this is something you would need me to admit confuses me.

BrimstoneSalad wrote:Real egoists reject any imposition of you telling them what interests they should have like that.

I don’t see how what these supposed “ Real egoists” think matters for this discussion

BrimstoneSalad wrote:If it's not something you're convinced of by now, you may just have to tentatively accept it as one of the rules of discussion on this forum.

I specifically told you I was convinced of the value of logic in my last post. I see the logical absolutes as having uniquely solid justification due to the fact we are forced to use them to argue anything(or communicate at all?), but many bedrock philosophical ideas(like mathematics, induction, occam's razor) are still justified with intuition at their root, so i’m not sure why you are setting up logic and intuition as if they were a dichotomy. In the same way that intuition is used for these while still being considered logical and rational, it doesn’t seem irrational that morality could require an intuitive foundation as well ( except for those you actually do manage to prove contradictions in).

I see the issue where this makes it easier for religious people to set their foundational justifications as god or whatever else they want, but then you need to point out the way to differentiate between the two. You have to show what is fundamentally different about the intuition used to justify the truth of math, induction, or occam's razor that doesn't apply to the silly foundations of god or magic. I'm sure there is a better answer to this than just telling me to step in line or you will ban me. If this is figured out, then it seems like most questions about how to proceed with morality will be figured out as well.

Do you see no problem with answering the question "what should we do to be good" with "whatever you want to do

I see a problem with that intuitively of course, but you are the one advocating that intuition shouldn’t be given any weight. Logically, it seems consistent. It still specifies what is to be considered good and bad without being gibberish or contradicting itself.

It's not consistent, it's meaningless.
It's like defining god as "god is god".

Meaningful to you and logically consistent are two different things. You can’t just say it’s inconsistent, you have to show where the logical inconsistency is. The bit about God being defined as “god is god” made no sense to me. Please elaborate.

BrimstoneSalad wrote: The premise of the question "what should we do to be moral?" suggests that there must be things that are moral and things that are not moral (or that are immoral) within our control

You can't attempt to do what you don't want (in sum) to do in a given situation; you can only see an outcome which didn't occur as you wanted by accident.

Does functional meaning refer to morality that is “Within our control”? Even if the only metric being measured is a being's propensity towards accidents being considered wrong, that doesn’t mean the moral system is logically inconsistent, it just might make it seem silly to us personally.

Why did you add “Within our control” as a necessary component to morality? When asking “ What is a good or bad action?” It doesn’t seem necessary to include this. Morality could be independent of whether any humans ever do the right thing or if every human must do the right thing and still could be logically consistent.

Hedonistic egoism, which is the only form of egoism I have voluntarily brought up, seems to even fit your extra criteria of “within our control” though, so i’m not seeing where hedonistic egoism is inconsistent even by your standards.

BrimstoneSalad wrote:Let's say it came down to two basic consistent and non-arbitrary options:

1. Positively value the interests of others.
2. Negatively value the interests of others.

In this case (a case I don't necessarily agree with) both would be equal contenders based on requiring an objective and non-arbitrary system.
...You could call the choice between those two arbitrary, or you could call it guessing;

You seem to be making it clear here that the final popular opinion choice between the many remaining systems has nothing to do with one being any more true than the other. It’s just practical advice for not confusing people, but It seems like if it was true that #2 was the correct set of actions, then we should advocate for it regardless of how much it confuses people. If finding truth between the remaining options would actually be equivalent to guessing, At that point it seems like the intellectually honest answer would be to reserve judgement about morality.

^^

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:Perfect. Thanks!

Cirion, can you please take over here and try to explain it in another way?

brimstoneSalad wrote:Cirion, can you please take over here and try to explain it in another way?

I'll give it a go this weekend, I'm pretty busy as of now.

@Mr. Purple, could you sum up your argument for me? I know you've been having a long talk with brimstone, but I don't think I can seamlessly continue your discussion