If "God" then he wouldn't be omniscient. Is it that he's just tinkering around with toys? — TheMadFool

Can you explain the motivations of a higher being? It's like explaining how dimensions we cannot perceive looks, feels and behaves like, on a perceptive level. I'm a constant skeptic so I would never accept the idea that there is a god even outside our universe, but as we don't know anything of what's outside our universal bubble we cannot know and perhaps its irrelevant to us since everything that is us and this universe probably breaks down and "existence" as a concept might even be wildly inferior to whatever is outside of everything.

In general, logic still points to there being a physical reaction or change that made the big bang since the mathematical statistics points to dead matter being the majority of our universe and organic matter or thinking creatures/beings to be in so low quantity that it's illogical that its likely there to be an intentional creation and more of a reaction.

Even then, if we view the outside as a "lab" and "god" as a scientist who conducts an experiment, our universe might be one particle in a test tube that "blink" in and out of existence within a fraction of that god's framework of time. Our existence being of such low relevance that he doesn't even know about there being a chance of us existing at all. This concept is why I reject any notion that God has any link or guidance towards us humans because it's a self-indulgent, narcissistic delusion of grandeur about ourselves and our meaning to the universe. Any logical reasoning about our existence points to the universe being dead cold in caring for us. If the sun explodes we're gone and the universe doesn't care, just like there might have been another planet in the universe which featured life and prospering beauty (per our sense) that was swallowed up by its own sun. If we, humans, believe there to be any god who knows about us and guides us, the most logical conclusion to that, based on all that we know about the universe and also about psychology, is that we are delusional, narcissistic and self-indulgent in our sense of meaning. If there was a god, he logically and statistically wouldn't know about us, at all and he wouldn't care. We are on our own and that is the most optimistic view about the existence of a god that I can rationally give outside of the more logical conclusion of it being a physics-based event without an intentional cause.

Also, to an evolutionary paradigm, teleology is redundant isn't it? I don't know how to say this but imagine a world with certain rules and we're in it. It's to be expected that our form and function would be shaped by the rules in that world. It would ''appear" as though we were designed for that particular world. Yet, there is no purpose or teleology as such. Just an inevitable result of constraints (laws/rules) shaping matter and energy. I guess I'm saying evolution would be indistinguishable from teleology. If so, Ockham's razor would have us accept simple mechanistic evolution over teleology. — TheMadFool

What final static form does a liquid have that never becomes solid or gas?
Nothing around us, within us, outside of us have a static form, we are like liquid, always changing and with that physical change, we also have a change in function. Energy moves into new energy until depleted and therefore it has no final form but so dispersed into heat-death that time essentially stops. If that is the final form, it has no function and is nothing.

Therefore teleology essentially ends up in arguing against itself, the final form has no existential reason or function, it has lost any essential existential meaning by the time it reaches its final form. So the function, existence and meaning only exists in processes of change so there is no finality and when finality happens, there is nothing.

Imagine two worlds of fish and water, A and B. World B has a God but world A doesn't. World A corresponds to only mechanism and world B corresponds to teleology.

In world A, random mutations in genes colliding with the environment would be able to produce streamlined bodies for fish.

In world B, God would purposefully make fish bodies streamlined.

To an observer from outside the two worlds would appear indistinguishable but, in the absence of knowledge about God's existence or non existence, the observer would choose the simpler theory and say mechanism, not teleology. — TheMadFool

Except you ignore biological evidence for evolutionary changes within cells, DNA and genes. If you only look at the physical form, you would assume mechanism due to Ockham's razor, but the evidence is far deeper than just an observation of form.

I also have the argument that evolutionary changes are the optimal form to create complex perfection in my counter-argument to intelligent design. Modern engineering is moving over to iteration-based development in which we abandon trying to figure out the optimal design for something in favor of evolutionary processes.

Have you seen the design for common drones?


Its form wasn't designed by a human or by a computer, it was designed by evolutionary methods. They couldn't create the optimal form for weight balance, wind turbulence etc. so they programmed the physics of its function and let a computer test them on a form over and over, just like evolution. The end result was the above design, something no one can claim to be a designer of. Because the design was evolutionary, based on the physics of our world.

If applied to the idea that a God designed things, it actually makes no sense for something to be designed directly for its function. If a God was to design the world, it would be like ourselves trying to design something with an advanced optimal function. Specific design fails, but evolutionary design optimizes itself without a designer. If there was a God, that god would most likely just have "started the universe", the simulation argument. We haven't been specifically created, we would be the result of the evolution of the universe. In that case, our known universe, in which our laws of physics etc. exist, would be its own and the existence of a God is irrelevant to us because we are most likely irrelevant to that god. We are the unintentional bacteria that evolved on the lab sample, oblivious to our existence but also our existence invisible to the scientist.

The logic here is that the most optimal way of creating something is through the process of evolution, rather than specific design and because of this, it's illogical that a God would specifically design something over letting it evolve itself. If a god is a higher intelligence, it would then not choose the less intelligent choice of creation. If there was a god, it would exist outside of this universe and wouldn't care for the internals of this universe. Therefore the internals of our universe, everything within our realm of physics is its own thing; with its own rules, detached from any type of other realms, dimensions, and gods. We have no reason to view our existence as deliberate or in connection with anything else, we are on our own.

But science was already very sophisticated by the time of Kant, and proved to be a reliable way of obtaining useful knowledge about the world. — darthbarracuda

I'm not saying he was wrong or that the methodology wasn't advanced enough for serious science. I'm saying that science is a field which builds on top of itself in order to progress. Previous findings get adjusted or changed depending on new evidence and proven theories get mixed together with new ones into a synthesis. Hypotheses clash until they are proven into theories and strange observations lay the foundation for tomorrows struggle for evidence.

All of this leads up to the best possible answers about the world there is and that time is usually the current present time. So, my point was that in order to view his ideas with rational eyes we need to view them in the context of all the knowledge we have today.

Before our modern methods of science, before Popper and alike, science lacked in its methodology.

Although the original Kantian metaphysics does indeed suffer from certain anachronisms in light of newer developments in science and mathematics, the general idea behind Kantian philosophy remains viable to this day. — darthbarracuda

Agreed. The problem though is that many thinkers/philosophers take a lot of previous philosophy and scientific methodology as truths instead of parts of a general overview of the history of science. We use what works, but need to apply it to our modern understandings. One thing that I find lacking with the people who try to create hypotheses and arguments based on ideas before the 20th century is the lack of things like falsifiability and understanding of logical reasoning. Not saying Kant's ideas aren't working, just that the logic and falsifiability methods came long after him and could help improve upon his ideas. The solution to combine older ideas with new ones is using them through the methods of modern times.

My opinion is that desired properties of cream as presented (fixing anything that easily) would have destroyed human life long before a business cabal would've put a quash on it. That destruction might have taken the form of everyone evaporating into light (which could as well be a metaphor for death: a radical change from state A as a known state to state Z an unknown state). — Nils Loc

I think this part brings up the question of: if you had the chance to evolve beyond the existence of being human in an instant, would you do so? Some people choose to do it, but some indulge in the pleasures of being human. If you had the option between becoming evolved past humanity, or have all the pleasures of life infinitely, which path would you choose? I think the metaphor is more about infinite knowledge, the infinite perfection of yourself, in which you become so perfected in everything that there's no reason to have any values left as a human; you "leave humanity".

There is a lot in that video that is hard to parse (to go from metaphor to whatever the manifold formal arguments and well worn questions might entail). Pick an aspect, write an essay, then argue points. You have to do it in the standardized way or else no one is interested. — Nils Loc

I've rarely seen standardized arguments in first posts on this forum. In this case, however, I was more interested in a dissection of the philosophical themes presented in this piece. So it's less about an argument and more an invitation to discussion.

However, if I had to pick one thing, it's mainly the "cream" aspect of it.
If there was something that could "fix everything", what would the consequences for humanity be?

The parameters of this "cream" are:
1. It isn't anything in itself, it cannot be anything without anything else.
2. It improves everything, wherever it's applied. The improvements seem contextual to the will of the one being improved.
3. If you descent and cover yourself fully, you will improve yourself to the point where a human is evolved to its maximum form.
4. It can replicate food and resources infinitely, even itself.

Your conclusion is that it's the end of humanity because everyone would choose to evolve past humanity. I argue that there are far too many who love life as it is, who are too scared or find the pleasures you can have in this life more important.

I would say that the conclusion would be that we lose humanity, even if we are still human. If we didn't have any differences between us, if we didn't have age, ugliness etc. we would essentially lose anything that makes life worth living. We need the pain and suffering in order to be human, without it, we have no struggle, no development, no ambition and so on. We essentially just become "nothing", an existence beyond not having universal meaning, we have no meaning in our own minds, but would still value life because "cream" would make us feel it has value. But is this "cream"-induced sense of value true?

Is our sense of meaning and value in a meaningless world/universe as much of an illusion as something induced by this "cream? Like if you have a pill that would give you a sense of meaning in your life, how is that different from if you invent a meaning to your life when there isn't any external meaning at all? Where is the illusion of meaning and where is the actual meaning?

Edit: Cream could likely be a metaphor for any technological application that radically alters the total system and the necessary politics required to conserve or progress a desirable type of life (family, community, nation, world) using some kind of cost and benefit analysis. — Nils Loc

In the realm of my thoughts too. If we had the technology to almost divinely improve our lives, how would our world change?

"If you are going to allow technologies into the market place that destroy people's jobs, it is your responsibility to find a way of replacing those jobs, or compensating those people." This is a line from Brian Cox on Joe Rogan's podcast talking about the social and economic costs of replacing middle class jobs with AI technologies. Worth thinking about. — Nils Loc

This is actually one of the biggest things we are facing... which has little to no discussion within politics, unfortunately. We will have a massive unemployment-wave around the globe because of advanced automation and it could even lead to war-like scenarios. More likely than not we will see an exponential development when the cocktail-effect of many technological fields kicks in and develops tech together.

It will no longer be a question of class by the economy, but by competence and intellect. If you have a job which automation cannot easily replace you will be able to rise above others. But how would the rest of society act, the unemployed?

I'm thinking about the master/slave argument, but this time, it's the opposite. The master is the competent and the slaves are incompetent. It might create a super-class difference that would be much harder to integrate into a society for both that it may as well be what the film Elysium shows, in which the highest classes in society even leave earth entirely.

Does our relationship with science smell a lot like a religion? Yes, it certainly does. The one true way leading us to the promised land, typically believed without questioning based on reference to authority etc. — Jake

If this is how you think scientists think about science, you don't have much insight into scientific research. Do you think that scientists don't tread carefully forward? That they don't have ethics? And do you think that all scientists in the world blindly follow science in the religious way you describe? People and scientists trust science because of the facts it provides, because of the technology it develops and invents, because of the improvements for people's lives.

There's no promised land, it's the process of science that proves it's own worth. Religion does nothing, science has done everything for the quality of life that we have and the knowledge about the world and universe we now know. To put trust in science is to put trust in a method that produces facts humanity can live by, not fairy tales and delusions that corrupt mankind. To say that science "smell lot like religion" is pure nonsense in my opinion and totally ignorant of what science actually is.

There's a lot of distrust against science, scientists and the scientific community on this forum. I don't know if it's because of religious apologists who try to push their agenda or if a lot of people have a problem with scientific facts and intentionally try to discredit it in order to try and validate their own incoherent arguments, but most of the time when I read criticism of science it just comes across as heavily uninformed and misinformed.

your basis and the basis of every moral system starts with an axiom, a definition of what the purpose of morality is. — DingoJones

In this sense, absolutely, there needs to be a definition of what morality is about. But how can you even use or discuss a concept that isn't defined? I'm using the definitions of the concept "morality" to be the common definition of the word and concept. That is the baseline, textbook explanation on what morality is. Above that is how we use morality, how it is applied to humanity, to ourselves and as a concept for society as guidelines to good/bad behavior.

This is where I put all other axioms into perspective. Terrapin's point, as I understood it, is as you say, based on how you feel. But the problem I have with this is that feelings and emotions are corruptible, which means you can only create subjective morals. If morality as a concept should have any value whatsoever it has to be outside of the subjective, something applicable to everyone, without demanding corrupted ideas.

Isn't then the only way, to find the common denominators within humanity and have a concept of morality that is applicable to everyone regardless of if our society change? Earlier we had religious doctrines that set out direct moral rules to follow, but it doesn't take much time to put those strict rules into situations where they break down. So what is common between all people? Our biology, psychology and sociology predict there are common denominators between us all. Boiling these down to shorter concepts, we end up with well-being and harm as positive and negative denominators.

Therefore, I fail to see how this idea is subjective? It's a deduction of the common denominators around humans and a method to calculate good and bad choices out of the value these gives. At least I see it as the most objective method we can have, all others are corruptible or breaks down as soon as we externalize them from ourselves as subjective entities.

Strict defined moral rules, emotion-based morality, Kant's categorical imperatives, utilitarianism or even total nihilism, all have problems since they are too strict in their definitions. They are not able to fit the situations you're facing when making moral choices. In order to make room for variables, but still never turn negatives into positives (as a nihilist), we use the common denominators we have between all people and that should be the foundation for calculating a moral choice.

In essence, I can't see how emotional-based morality, that is breaking apart as soon as you have someone with corrupted emotions, is even on the same level to a rational calculation of a moral choice based on common denominators for all humans. The former is so subjective that it's irrelevant to even use it within the concept of morality, the second is applicable to all humans.

The former is like: "would you do A or B?" -"B, because I feel like it".
That's not morality, that's just behavior.

Second is like: "would you do this thing?" -"What is the end result and consequences for my choice? Will I gain a form of well-being or be harmed? Which choice between A and B create well-being for me and the ones affected by my choice? B is only my own gain, A is a small gain for me and other people. But B might give me means to help those who gain from A. Does B equal a consequence that makes them gain more well-being in the long run? Yes, my choice is B."

Of course, it requires much more thought, but it's also much more balanced, there's a rational reason that isn't based on strict rules about the choice, but about how to think about the choice. It's vastly superior since other forms focus on strict rules for the morality itself, not a method of figuring out. It's not corruptible as a system compared to the others, since there's nothing to corrupt.

I suppose it depends on what you define as emotion based, but any number of ethical systems that operate from a rational or logical basis are just as legitimate as yours is. Anything you must consistently reference in order to determine what is right and wrong. Any moral system with a system of measuement, like the 12” ruler in my analogy. — DingoJones

Emotionally based is to base your morality on "feeling something is wrong", as the title describes. It's a very corruptible morality definition.

Kant had his categorical imperatives, but they can become so strict that they aren't able to form according to each situation. I still haven't seen anyone stress test my method, so I cannot say it's more or less valid than any other rational method. The difference though, is that the moral choices can change according to the situation. Killing can be good or bad but never corrupted because the parameters of common understanding of well-being and harm steer it in the direction of the common good for both the choice-maker and others.

This is what he endeavors to do in “The Moral Landscape”. His argument is very similar, you may find it a good read. — DingoJones

I might read it then :smile:

It forms the basis of your method, if you removed them, what basis would you have left? — DingoJones

Yes, and assessing what is well-being is part of the initial "advanced" version of the calculation. But removing aspects of the method in order to invalidate it is like removing anything to define it as not what it is. Remove the trunk and the branches of a tree, what do you have left? If you remove anything at all from morality, what is then, morality? If morality is supposed to be actions of good or bad, then calculating good morals and good actions need to be connected to what we humans perceive as good or bad. Anything else would mean to ignore the very foundation of what morality is supposed to be about and in doing so, it becomes nothing. We can argue what well-being and harm really means, we could deconstruct the words and their meaning to pieces, but their definitions are pretty much straight forward in our language. If you do something to gain well-being in someone else, while you at the same time gain some well-being, that is a foundation for good moral choices. It's fundamental. If you take away the aspect of "good" from morality you don't have any morality left as a concept since there isn't anything "good" that balance against something. It just becomes nothing.

What then is morality? How do you define morality outside of these concepts?

No, rather I would argue that harm and well being are their own ends and not the basis of morality at all. — DingoJones

That isn't what I proposed though. I said they are parameters within the method that is used to define moral choices.

You’ve read Sam Harris I take it? You are trying to paint a moral landscape? — DingoJones

I know of Sam Harris and some of his thoughts, but this method is myself trying to deduce a working method out of a moral base that isn't emotional and free from religious doctrine.

There are other perfectly legit things morality can mean. — DingoJones

Such as? Outside of religious ones and emotional ones I really want to know what people define it as further. I argue that religious morality and emotional-based morality are flawed and cannot be used to define morality since they become such an undefined mess.

In what more ways do you define morality without it becoming "whatever you want it to be"?

I'm not saying all science is bad, just that people treat it more like a religion. — bogdan9310

Only those who do not know what science is or what the scientific process and its methods are would treat it like a religion. On both sides, those who criticize it and those who believe too strongly in it. It is what it is and it's the best way for us to arrive at new knowledge detached from human corruption. It's the closest we have to arrive at "truths".

Science also features discovery and exploration that can end up creating new fields. Philosophy is not the only thing that "creates" new fields, it can happen organically.

Yes, but earlier I divided the method into one which carefully defines well-being before you calculate how that well-being is being applied to the situation in order to calculate the choice.

The more simple and practical method is one which acts upon the standard definition of well-being and harm that we have. But it doesn't make the final moral choice calculated by the method, simple, it just uses these as parameters so that it's impossible to make moral choices into whatever feels right or whatever you want it to be. Assessing the well-being of someone is done through the other points in the method, by using psychology and sociology as rational and by the facts as possible or within the current knowledge at the moment. That means that the definition of well-being is being calculated by such means, not by an emotional value of what well-being is.

Would you argue that the definition of harm and well-being as they are defined as concepts in our society is wrong? In what other ways can you define these concepts? Do they ever become so differently defined that they cannot be used in my method?

Yeah, wasn't really arguing against, just wanted to try and clarify my point of view on the subject of morality. I don't say my method is tested, done and finished, but I do think there is a way to create a method to calculate good and bad morals in order to guard morality against human corruption.

I think what people are getting at is that you decide the basis for morality, for you its suffering/harm, for emotional reasons and not objective ones. — DingoJones

No, for me it's a calculated choice about others and my own well-being. I do not define it by suffering/harm without calculation about in what way it is harmful or cause suffering. It's not an emotional value choice for me. I take the common, standard definition of well-being and harm and use it for the calculation of the moral value of a choice. I don't apply my emotions to that calculation, only the common standard definitions of harm and well-being and measuring in what way harm and well-being apply to the situation. I can assess if someone is harmed without any emotional value.

I don't call my morality objective I say the method is a way to calculate objectively, outside of my emotional and subjective experience. There are no objective moral values in the method. You can argue in favor of killing someone being a good moral choice if the deduction of that choice shows it to be the best moral route. Objectiveness, in this method, is about it being detached from our subjective moral opinions and be able to apply the method for all people, even the emotionally corrupted.

Try using the method on any moral situation, can you assess good moral choices with it? If not, we need to adjust its parameters. The method itself doesn't create solid and strict moral rules, it is a calculation for what is the optimal good moral based on our understanding of harm and well-being. How to assess harm and well-being is done out of our knowledge in psychology and sociology, so it's not even about opinion in that assessment.

---

The problem with defining moral by emotion and feelings is that the rulebook goes out the window and morality, good and bad morals cease to exist since they can't be defined. If morality is whatever you feel like it to be, then there's no point in even labeling it as moral. My coffee cup is morality because I feel like my morals measure by the amount of coffee in my coffee cup, therefore my coffee cup is my morality. It's an absurd conclusion.

The second is to have strict moral doctrines, like in religion. The problem here is that the only reason to act well is that of divine reward. I'd say that humans should be capable to act well without a false authority invented for that control and it's needed when God and religion go out the window. You cannot tell an atheist to act according to religious doctrines. While some doctrines teach good morals to be killing in the name of God, stoning people and whatever. It's a corrupted way of defining morals since people in power can change the doctrines over time, it's not universal for us as humans.

So we are unable to define morals based on emotions because they are unable to apply to anything but the subjective individual and we cannot define morals based on religious doctrines since they can be corrupted. That leaves morals being undefinable. Still, we value things that act as baseline definers for morality. All people, in any society, can, for the most part, define harm and well-being. So instead of trying to define morality as something fluid and subjective maxim or some strict doctrine, let it be fluid, but based on strict parameters. This way, morality can change according to the situation, but you always calculate the level of harm and well-being, trying to maximize it to both yourself and others.

Is this method flawed? What moral choices can't be calculated with this method? Instead of people saying the method doesn't work I haven't seen any examples of testing it to conclude that it's flawed, only opinions on it being so based on personal definitions of morality.

The basics are this:
- Morality based on emotions can be corrupted and render morality undefined and without any form.
- Morality based on strict set out doctrines can be corrupted and render morality undefined and without any form while being used as a control mechanism for people in power.
- General morality can therefore not be defined by humans, as it then becomes corrupted, it needs to be defined by something else.
- Definitions on "harm" and on "well-being" are generally existing within all societies.
- Morality calculated through a solid method of defining each situations well-being and harm measurements is a way of detaching our emotions and our strict doctrines on morals from morality to assess a more general idea about good and bad morals in each situation.
- The moral choice can change, but the method's parameters cannot and that keeps the calculation from forming corrupted moral values like what happens with religious and emotional morality assessments.

Without defining good and bad morals, why even have the concept of morality? It's a concept without meaning if it isn't able to be defined outside of whatever we feel like it to be.

An option for who? Let's say for you. That depends. How do you feel about it? It would be lose-lose for you, I think. You either concede to the emotional foundation in ethical judgement, in which case yes, it's an option; or you implausibly deny any associated feelings of relevance, and at the same time tacitly admit that it is just an empty formula, which isn't what I consider to even fit the category of morality, meaning that no, it's not an option. — S

So it's not able to act as a moral guide in order for us to, as close as possible, conclude in what we generally define good morals as objectively as possible? Either we try and define a moral that works for all or we abandon morality as a concept altogether. I don't see any reason to try and define morality without any parameters. The desire to maximize well-being for the self and others combined is as close to a general good moral we can get and that method assesses that for any moral choice. You seem to miss that the assessment of well-being is for the self and others combined. That's the key because otherwise it's either giving up well-being for either yourself or others in any given choice. To maximize it for both pushes you towards a balanced moral choice. The things you bring up are already addressed in that argument. I don't see anything that really breaks the method, only your judgment of it because you are of the opinion it is impossible, but the method itself is still solid.

No, that doesn't follow. That's the same error that Andrew is making. Fallibility isn't sufficient reason for rejection. That argument is untenable. But feel free to try a different argument. — S

The point is that you cannot base morals on feelings since there are people who are so corrupted in their emotional life that what you consider good morals, they consider bad and vice versa. So you cannot measure morality based on emotional responses of events. The argument for using emotions to define morality is flawed from the beginning so that needs to be a solid argument first.

Again, the problem is twofold: 1) it's not plausible that it's disconnected from emotions, and 2) even if it is disconnected from emotions, then it doesn't come under morality in any way that makes sense — S

These points are not counter arguments since you define morality based on emotions and you assume that conclusion to be true before you present the premises above. In my argument, I argue that emotions are feedback on the choices we make, but assessing what is morally good or bad can only be assessed through a common parameter between all humans. I.e well-being. Emotions are detached from assessing what is well-being, you can deduce those things through that method, make the choice and let emotions enter after that.

Why is emotion necessary in order to make a moral choice? What happens if you have a mental health issue that means you lack empathy. How do you make good moral choices in any given situation? If you can't feel empathy or normal emotions, you can still calculate what is good for others. You could understand that a hug generates higher dopamine and because of this, heightens the feeling of well-being.

I really don't see how your argument is more valid when you assume your conclusion true before making the argument. I don't define morality to be based on emotions since the argument about corrupted emotions makes it impossible to scale morality based on it. Well-being is scalable as a measurement that you can base moral choices on, even for those who have corrupted emotions.

That only makes sense in the hidden context where they already feel that serious harm is wrong. Whatever you say, you can always go back a step until you can't go back any further, and that's where it ends in the emotional foundation. — S

It doesn't have to. You can deduce a conclusion that harm is the opposite of well-being by the very definitions of those words. If you have your own idea that the harm you do is for their well-being and test that idea against common standard definitions, you would come to the conclusion that you are wrong and that the harm you do is morally wrong. You are talking about emotional guesswork, but if you use something like the method I brought up, then you are calculating the choice outside of your emotional spectra and personal definitions. What are the common standard definitions of harm and well-being? Are you saying you are unable to calculate a choice of what is morally good or morally bad when you test the choice against harm and well-being? If you kill someone, is that morally good or bad? What maximizes well-being for both you and others combined? You can't calculate that into an answer about whether killing is good or bad? Doesn't matter what you feel, you cannot argue it isn't harmful to the one you kill, therefore it's morally bad. If you add more parameters to the situation, it gets more complex, but you can still assess where the choice end up between good or bad morality.

That is, if you agree that morality can be assessed outside of emotions, which I argue you can.

So the problem is it actually wrong to murder someone or does it just feel wrong? — Andrew4Handel

Murder for selfish pleasure or personal gain...
Does it maximize well-being for you and others combined?

By the common standard definition of well-being, no.

Therefore, murder in this situation is morally bad.

---

Murder or rather, killing someone to save others.
Does it maximize well-being for you and others combined?

By the common standard definition of well-being, yes, it maximizes the well-being. Not doing it is to let others die and fill yourself with the guilt of that consequence.

Therefore, killing someone in this situation is morally good.


Can there be dire consequences outside of this, yes, but the assessment of the situation defines the morality of you, not if you can predict the future or not.

I think you can deduce what is good for your physical body but not necessarily what is a good action or purpose. I think physical health can be fairly uncontroversial but as to what we should do with our lives I don't see answers. — Andrew4Handel

Look at the method I provided. You mean it's impossible to find out if an action is good or bad with that? Well-being is not only about physical health. If you find the method I wrote isn't working, please point out where the flaws are.

You just go with what you feel and think is right at the time. There's no other option. — S

Look at the method above, isn't that an option? Feelings can be corrupted and therefore, if you base morals on it, you essentially throw all moral values out the window. There's no point to define morals at all. The method above is my attempt to define a moral scale that isn't connected to emotions but still generate what we would consider good morals by the common definition.

People have been killed in terrible ways or died in slavery and there has been no justice. It is rather futile moralizing about an event like this when there is no hope of justice. Religious moralities have offered an afterlife justice of some sort or karma. But if you don't believe in this or objective morality then lots have people have suffered with no recompense, recognition or hope. — Andrew4Handel

Calculate the maximized well-being for yourself and everyone else. The result might not be obvious, but I consider that "good morals". Justice has nothing to do with morals since justice is an invention out of emotional responses to an immoral act, so morals comes first, justice is another question entirely, but what you choose to do with that justice is a moral choice and can be assessed.

My first post in this thread.

1. Do what is positive for the well-being of yourself and others combined.
2. Morality is an evolving process and each situation must be assessed carefully according to point 1.
3. Assessing what is morally good needs to involve current knowledge about human psychology, sociology, and knowledge about human well-being for the individual and larger groups. — Christoffer

Adjustments to that list of points:

1. Do what is positive for the assessed well-being of yourself and others combined.
2. What is well-being need to be assessed according to each situation.
3. Assessing what is morally good needs to involve current knowledge about human psychology, sociology and common/advanced definitions about human well-being for the individual and larger groups.
4. If the consequence of the choice isn't within the assessed parameters of well-being even though the choice was carefully defined to the best possible assessment of well-being, the choice is still good (the one assessing the choice cannot see the future).
5. Neither can the assessed choice be considered morally bad if unforeseen consequences occur later on. But the assessed choice need to take everything possible into consideration to the best ability of the one making the choice.
6. The choice is about maximizing the assessed well-being.

If we are to find an objective method to calculate a morally good choice, this is as close as I can get at the moment. If you take into consideration, psychology, sociology, common definitions of well-being but also advanced forms, like a relief of pain by death; take into consideration further consequences, how it affect society, larger groups and yourself at the same time. Then you can end up at a choice that tries to maximize the assessed well-being and in doing so make a morally good choice.

But at the same time, we have common definitions of well-being. We do not harm, kill or inflict pain on people and call that "well-being". So the above is the detailed argument for situations like my allegory about aliens. But we can simplify it to standard definitions of well-being, as it is defined by a dictonary: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/wellbeing
We can argue details about this definition, but in order for the method to be practical we can distill it down to:

1. Do what is positive for the well-being of yourself and the group combined.
2. Assess the well-being according to current knowledge about human psychology, sociology and standard definition of well-being.
3. If the choice is made with careful consideration of point 2 with the intention of point 1, it is considered a morally good choice at the time the choice was made to the best of your ability.

This is a practical method in our society, even if our society shifts. But this simplification is based on the standard and common definition of "well-being". What is and what is not well-being is in this regard academic, not practical. Moral choices based on emotion does not work since emotions can be corrupted. A person might feel good about killing others, but considering that "good morals" based on his emotions is flawed.

Yes, you could argue a nihilistic point of view and say that there are no moral values what so ever. But if good and bad morals should be defined, this method defines it outside of emotion and feelings, focusing on assessing well-being to the best of the choice-makers ability. If good morals are about maximizing well-being in yourself and others combined and bad morals are the opposite, this method can calculate the difference between them without feelings or emotions involved.

An objective method to assess whose "good morals"? — Terrapin Station

Presented earlier. I've explained it on earlier pages.

I'm saying that nothing, objectively is well-being. If you want to focus on the brain chemistry factors re a feeling of well-being, that's fine, but (a) that still isn't objective (because we're talking about a mental state, which makes it subjective by definition), and (b) there's no objective fact that creating the brain states in question are preferential to not creating them. — Terrapin Station

This is the reason you don't seem to understand the method in the first place. What is and what isn't well-being is what is being assessed by the method and through that assessing the moral choice. Well-being has its definition and I have not said anything about it being objective. I've said an objective method to assess good morals, not objective well-being. That's why I ask you to look at the method I presented, since your whole argument is based on a misunderstanding of the method, therefore, your argument becomes a non-argument against the method.

You're ignoring the point I'm making. — Terrapin Station

Your argument is flawed since you have written it out of the notion that well-being has objective parameters on humans when my method is about assessing the well-being. So you have initially ignored the entire method and argument I've made and so there are no points for me to care for when your argument is flawed in the first place. You are arguing about things I haven't even presented. My method is about assessing the well-being not that well-being is objective in itself.

A hypothetical person who has "zero empathy" can follow someone else's guidelines, sure. And those guidelines will count as "good morals" to people who agree with those preferences. They'll count as "bad morals" to people who disagree with those preferences. — Terrapin Station

Have you even looked at the points in the guideline? I want you to make an argument for how they are "bad morals" in any rational sense.

If they have no emotions or feelings whatsoever, the they have no reason to choose not starting a war and being killed or anything else. They have to have preferences to make those sorts of choices. — Terrapin Station

You are nitpicking the allegory again. Must I do entire worldbuilding on this in order for you to understand the actual point? I can easily say a reason, they are like plants, they have no emotions but they do choices through survival programming. War equals death to their species, hence to survive they need to adapt. They have no emotion to this, they must simply do it. So the choice is still made without emotion or feelings.

You can deduce that food is necessary to survive. You can't deduce that survival is good or better than not surviving, because that's not a fact. That's a preference that people can have. — Terrapin Station

You miss that the deduction was about well-being. Are you saying "not surviving" is well-being? Because of this you need to first explain what well-being is and define it as something other than what its actual definition is. If you don't agree with that definition, then we can just give up and just throw language out of the window and stop even having a dialectic. You are making nonsense out of the argument.

You are also making your own interpretation of my argument before counter-arguing, this is a fallacy.
The rest of your argument is out of this misinterpretation of the deduction argument I presented.

"Survival is well-being" isn't a fact. It's a preference. It's a way that people feel, where they would rather than one set of facts obtains (survival) than another set (a lack of survival). — Terrapin Station

What is your definition of well-being for a person? Please provide the definition in order to support your argument. Well-being is what it is, it's not a preference. Well-being has a clear definition and that definition is a fact of what well-being is.

The emotional value is that you prefer raising their dopamine levels to the alternative. — Terrapin Station

Why are you ignoring the point I'm making? I provided a moral method to use in order to be morally good. The method is detached from feelings and emotions. Using the method you can assess choices through the well-being of people. The choice is to follow the moral method and guideline. You are making an argument that is totally ignoring the entire purpose of ethics philosophy. So your argument becomes a non-argument. If the question is "how can we assess good morals", then your points of emotions becomes invalid. If a person that has zero empathy is told to follow this moral guideline in order to function according to good morals in society, he can do it without having empathy. Then, because of this, the choice of raising dopamine levels has nothing to do with emotions, the choice is to follow the moral guideline, that's the first choice and that choice is made out of the necessity of having good morals in our society. If there is no reason to have good morals in society, then you can throw ethics philosophy out the window since it's irrelevant to you and it's irrelevant to assess morality at all.

So what is your point? That we can't have good morals without emotions? So far I've not seen a solid argument for that. You are intentionally misunderstanding the entire method in order to make your point.

Why would they do that over the alternative(s)? — Terrapin Station

An irrelevant point to the allegory. Invent a reason, like, they need to stay on our planet but will be killed if they start a war with us. So they have to live with us and function in society like if they were people. But since they have no emotion or feelings like us, they need a method to assess good moral values.

What you are doing now is ignoring the actual argument and nitpicking irrelevant things instead of actually focusing on the argument at hand.

I asked you to look into the method and provide a counter argument for why it can't be used without emotion and feelings. So far you have not done that.

Let's say aliens came down and assessed the well-being of our species. With the method I presented, they would be able to act with good morals, even if they didn't even have any feelings whatsoever. They could use these guidelines to act like good people, even though they don't have any feelings or emotional reasons to do so.

No. What I mean is that if your ideas about morality include methods that are general to everyone, then it's not true that there are people in the world who you don't care about (in that respect). — Terrapin Station

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. It doesn't matter if I care or don't care, the moral system is still an objective assessment of what is good for people. If I lacked all empathy I could still deduce that food is good for a person in order for him to survive. Therefore, giving food to this person if he is hungry is a good moral choice, even if I don't feel anything in doing so. I follow the guideline of creating well-being without any feelings whatsoever. Therefore, this moral method is working for everyone, detached from feelings and emotions involved.

You're ignoring that "this fact rather than that is 'well-being'" IS a way that you feel. It's a preference you have. Objectively, there are no preferences for any facts (or counterfactuals) versus any other facts (or counterfactuals) — Terrapin Station

Are you saying that giving food to someone who is hungry so that he survives isn't a choice for the well-being of that person? In what way does emotion have anything to do with this? Well-being isn't emotional, it's what is good for a person, it has no emotional value.

I could boil it down even further and talk about dopamine in our brain. If dopamine makes people feel good and well-being as a concept has an essential ingredient with "feeling good". Then a hug, which has been scientifically confirmed to raise dopamine levels in the brain, is a choice I can make for increasing the well-being of that person without even have any emotional value linked to that choice. I deduced the well-being aspect of that person through their dopamine-levels without it having anything to do with my feelings of that choice.

I think you are grasping at nihilistic straws here and I don't think you are actually looking at the method I presented. Can you please do so?

Because Kant didn't write his philosophical ideas based on modern understanding of science. Therefore, I would argue that while his ideas might be interesting and thought-provoking, they are flawed because they lack all knowledge that came after him.

If there are people in the world who you don't care about, then your moral views are not going to be about them. — Terrapin Station

Do you mean that ideas about moral should not include methods that are general to everyone? Then you are essentially saying that we don't need moral guidelines, we don't need morals. I say that we can have a moral system that includes everyone, even those that lack empathy.

that would only be a credo that you feel. It's nothing like an objective fact. — Terrapin Station

You are ignoring the method I presented. The one that has nothing to do with feelings, but assessing the well-being for all, including the self. That is objective for humans. Are you saying that this method doesn't work, please make an argument against the method so that we can evolve it, otherwise you are just saying an opinion, not doing an ethics-dialectic.

You don't just have emotions/feelings about yourself. — Terrapin Station

That's not the point, the point is that there are people in the world that you might not even care about who is affected by your moral choices, therefore morality isn't about emotions and feelings. It can also be corrupted if you are a person who has mental health issues which makes you unable to feel normal emotions and empathy. Morality then, must be applicable to all people, even those with lack of empathy.

I think that most who think about this in this way don't have enough insight into how molecular science works or how cellular biology works. It's a non-argument for me.

Is it that the deeper you think the more the chances of insanity?

Is there such a thing as dangerous knowledge?

Are we better off not knowing some things? — TheMadFool

This is close to the fiction of cosmic horror, but no, I don't think so.

I think that the further away from the truth you are the more shocking the truth is for you. If someone has a mental meltdown because of knowledge, it's because they weren't even close to the knowledge in the first place and the distance between their understanding and the truth is what created the trauma.

No, there's no such thing as dangerous knowledge, there's only danger in indoctrination into the illusion that becomes the danger to the truth when revealed. The knowledge itself is not the danger, it's the human stupidity that is.

You can, but what you're explaining is about your feelings. It wouldn't make any sense to deduce what's good for you where the deduction results in something that you're indifferent towards, that makes you feel bad in the long run, etc. — Terrapin Station

Point being; can you deduce what creates the most well-being for the self and others in a situation? I argue that you can, based on my list of points. Morality has nothing to do with your emotions since morality is not about you, it's about well-being for you and within your relation to others combined.

What does it mean for a rule to be 'objective in it's intention"? — Echarmion

In that it follows something that is general for all people regardless of culture or situation. Well-being for someone else and the self, combined, does not have any change between cultures and different lives. What is good for the self and others is another assessment, but the moral intention is good if it is out of the well-being of others and the self. The other points on my list address the risks of when ideas about what is good come from a culture of, for example, "murder" being good for someone.

Making moral decisions is about using moral reasoning. Trying to find rules which can be applied consistently to all cases, like the scientific theory looks for theories that are consistent with all observations. — Echarmion

And moral reasoning is what I mean when I say moral thinking compared to acting in the context of a specific event.

And I provided such points that can act consistently in all cases. If you like, please test them out or expand, this is a theory in progress not a final solution for me.

Anyways as to the topic of "objective morality", I think it's just a misnomer. Or perhaps a case of asking the wrong question. The point of morality is, after all, not to provide information on some object. It's to provide practical rules. — Echarmion

Practical rules that are objective in their intention of the well-being of all humans (and maybe beyond).

Isn't what someone thinks is good for them based on feelings? — Andrew4Handel

No, you can deduce what is good for you. I can deduce that the death of my father put me in a terrible position mentally, but I have grown as a person to handle life more confidently and with better emotional balance because of it, therefore, it was an event that was good for me personally, even if that sounds bad. (This wasn't an example of moral, but of a deduction of what is good for me and what is attached to feelings.

The problem is that moral philosophy has failed to reach a consensus about morality or resolve moral issues. Materialism or the scientific don't appear to leave room for moral or value claims. — Andrew4Handel

This is because of two things; ethics philosophy ignoring science (psychology and sociology) and that you can't quantify specific moral events within that science. What you can do is to use science to create a foundation that can be applied to most if not all moral questions. This means you can create a foundation of morals that are based on a moral method of thinking, not specific acts to do in certain situations that are contextual. Many ethics questions in philosophy concentrate on specific events that get detached from a central moral method and focus on behavior and ideas about those single events.

Another aspect to take into consideration is that the current understanding of the human psyche within psychology and sociology is rather new, only a few decades, if at all decades. You talk about not reaching consensus about morals from philosophical dialectics and ideas from times when we didn't even know enough about how the human psyche and social interaction actually works. While we have a lot of scientific research left on the human mind, we have come a long way even measured within the last ten years. To form a moral philosophy at this time is vastly more rational than trying to pitch ideas that have been outdated for many decades and centuries.

Ideas outside of materialistic nature are unscientific and narcissistic compared to the rational notion that we are not special beings. We can define our perception through idealistic views, but we as beings aren't detached from the universe we are in and nothing points to it in any rational way. Therefore, the more we know of how things work around us, the better we can create methods that work rather than guesses and fantasies.

The result of the scientific progress in psychology and sociology can be witnessed in how we treat mental health issues, in how we can predict behavior and so on. To not be able to utilize this science to find a foundation for a more scientific and objective moral method of living is to ignore the progress we've had the last hundred years and that wasn't clear to those who've done moral philosophy through the centuries.

So now thinkers are resorting to the idea we should just go with our feelings of what is appropriate or harmful.

I think reason can be a useful tool and moralizing but it does not seem to resolve moral disputes. — Andrew4Handel

If the person who goes by their feelings are suffering from mental health problems, or if they were raised with questionable means and because of it becomes a murderer, I think that is argument enough for "feelings" not being any good measure of moral behavior whatsoever.

As I've described earlier:

1. Do what is positive for the well-being of yourself and others combined.
2. Morality is an evolving process and each situation must be assessed carefully according to point 1.
3. Assessing what is morally good needs to involve current knowledge about human psychology, sociology, and knowledge about human well-being for the individual and larger groups. — Christoffer

Is a far better baseline for assessing what is a good moral choice in a situation and if it fails it's not because of bad morality but because of a human error in assessing the situation. But the moral assessment will still be good; the intention was good. Moral behavior cannot access knowledge about the future, therefore a person cannot demand morals to be a perfect reflection of the result of behavior, only how to think within the behavior at the moment.

I'd like to hear someone expanding or trying to test my points above, I'd like a dialectic on those points because it's still a vague description, at the moment, of my moral theories in the works.

1. All memory stored information.
2. Skepticism Vol.1
3. Skepticism Vol.2
4. Skepticism Vol.3
5. Skepticism Vol.4
6. Arguments from skepticism Vol.1
7. Arguments from skepticism Vol.2
8. Arguments from skepticism Vol.3
9. Arguments from skepticism Vol.4
10. Conclusions of 8 volumes of skepticism and arguments based on all stored information.
11. Creative ideas and predictions on the universe.
12. Creative ideas and predictions on humanity.

All other experiences, emotions and the ego is irrelevant for the people who will use the knowledge in these lockers. I only leave that which I believe is of importance to others but put all mashed up memory in locker 1 to make room for further analysis of locker 2-12.

The feeling or experience of something as unpleasant but not immoral (like the taste of food you don't like). And the feeling that someone has done something wrong. — Andrew4Handel

Feelings of the one making a moral choice cannot be a foundation for morals, only the concept of what is essentially good for you and others combined can be used. Feelings distort, they're "system 1" in psychology, moral choices should be carefully assessed. If done over a long enough time frame, people can be trained so that "system 1" does these assessments as instincts, connected to our emotions. It's a fine-tuning of empathy that detaches itself from established morals by religion and political agendas into a working model for the well-being of the individual and groups/mankind.

We can feel something to be wrong, but we can train ourselves to understand and deconstruct that feeling to know if that feeling is justified or just a feeling detached from the logic of the moral choice.

Euthanasia is a good example of this. It feels awful making such a decision, but deconstructing our feelings shows us that the feeling is irrational to the logic of the choice. We suffer by the choice, they suffer from their sickness. We will suffer after the choice but we will feel good that we relieved them of their suffering. The conclusion is that you do something out of the well-being of both yourself and the one who is sick combined, even though all current emotions scream otherwise.

Morality is detached from feelings in choices but should generate positive feelings by the result of the choice.

Of course, sometimes our choices have to be made fast and we rely on "system 1", on instinct, but if we live by carefully assessing our morality based on the well-being of others and ourselves combined, we will train ourselves to have a better balance in those "system 1" instincts, just like we have trained our moral instincts to the moral values we have at the moment.

It seems that there are no moral facts or method for finding them. But a lot of people seem to think that feeling something is wrong is an adequate basis for morality. — Andrew4Handel

This is the difference between those who aren't schooled in rational dialectics and those with philosophical methods of reaching conclusions. It's like "system 1" and "system 2" in psychology. Most people live by "system 1", they rarely make time for "system 2" other than organizing their base knowledge into instinctual behavior.

This is why they cannot grasp the process of deconstructing common knowledge to find out if it's actually wrong or not.

I don't see morality to be anything we cannot find facts around or not having methods of finding them. The truth is that morality as a concept outside of religion or established institutions of power is a totally new thing historically. We've maybe been discussing this the last hundred years or so for real, with actual detachment from any former established "rules".

The problem is that people have a problem of detaching themselves from the established morals in order to find rational answers. I.e people aren't really discussing this with philosophical methods. I see it time and time again on this forum; people are not actually making rational arguments, only talking about their feelings on a subject. Many on this forum, maybe even academic philosophers it seems, abandon rational methods in favor of "system 1" irrationality and emotional outbursts.

Here's a baseline for morality.

1. Do what is positive for the well-being of yourself and others combined.
2. Morality is an evolving process and each situation must be assessed carefully according to point 1.
3. Assessing what is morally good needs to involve current knowledge about human psychology, sociology, and knowledge about human well-being for the individual and larger groups.

Points can be added, but the foundation is still well-being for the individual, the self and everyone else combined, not separated. Any other model is able to be corrupted.

This can invite utilitarianism into the picture, killing few to save more. But that is not something that I find morally good or bad, it's just assessing the moral of the situation. If you are in a situation of saving more by killing a few, there is no real good or bad choice, much like many other situations in life. You do not know if treating someone bad might be good for them down the line or not. But that cannot ever be the factor within moral choices since it's an unknown factor unable to be quantified within the calculation.

Therefore, you can only assess morality according to the things you know, i.e what is good or bad for people in the now. Morality should be about making that calculated choice and even if it turns out bad, the act of the moral choice was still done with good morals in mind. If the calculated choice was done with the points made above in mind, it's hard to make a choice on bad morals.

Now, of course, people can't walk around and always assess situations according to current scientific findings within psychology and sociology, but we can train ourselves to assess better than how we are doing it right now. Because right now, as you mention about youtube-comments, people make moral choices with "system 1" based on moral truths in "system 2" that has been corrupted by a society that is infantile in its moral system; a system past down from religion and political agendas.

People don't know how to act, because they have learned truths and ideals by other people who don't know how to act. This circle of anti-intellectualism is the established foundation when the contemporary methods of finding good morals should be a deconstruction of the morals we have established, erasing the fat and bullshit, scale it back to the basics and evolve it.

It isn't impossible, it's just that people do not do it for real. People do not think, because we act out of comfort, never out of careful thought. This can also be seen on this forum, where we demand careful thought, people write out of "system 1" not "system 2".

Deconstruct your beliefs and convictions, assume that you are wrong and falsify your opinion. If not, you aren't really making rational arguments or think in a way to evolve your ideas and theories. That is how you find answers and evolve things like morality into a more modern point of view.

That's where the difficulty lies. Morality has a rational basis on empathy but children are incapable of understanding arguments aren't they? That or their reasoning skills aren't developed enough to comprehend moral arguments. It's like trying to feed an infant with adult food. Infants simply lack the ability to digest adult food.

So, we must resort to a simpler method - reward & punishment. It's a language children understand. — TheMadFool

I'm not sure this is entirely true. It seems that abandoning reasoning with kids in favor of reward & punishment is the lazy route. It's giving up on actually preparing kids for life because parents don't have enough time to pay attention to their kids. It's one of the reasons I believe that most people in our developed society actually aren't equipped to have children because of the time constraints society have on parents.

I'm not saying abandon all, and do over. I do think there is a reasonable level of reward and punishment, but I wouldn't really call it reward and punishment. The foundation for these methods is basically teaching capitalism. It's hacking the reward center in our brain and using repetition to establish fear. I would say that a lot of the fears that parents establish in their kids could even impair their ability to think rationally later on, essentially making Orwellian thought-crimeesque pavlovian behavior in that as grown-ups they can't even, in their own private thoughts, allow themselves to think in certain perspectives on a subject. So I don't think reward and punishment is the way, the level of restriction and what's allowed by parents should be controlled with consequence and personal reward. I'm not talking about small children at the age of 3 but from 5 years of age. Children at that age start developing social skills and it's from this age parents need to pay attention to what they are doing. If the children do something bad, the consequence needs to be out of that context and not out of something else. Instead of taking away their candy when they do something bad, it should be a consequence out of the things they have done so that they start connecting the dots between cause and effect.

The biggest problem with having a punishment that isn't in context with what they've done is that they learn that if they do something, the consequences can be "whatever" other people can imagine. When choices later on in life becomes much vaguer and what is moral or not is cloaked in ambiguity, people can freak out since they've learned from an early age that punishment for doing something wrong can be something entirely different from what they actually have done. We essentially learn to distrust other people, especially in situations when we aren't sure what is entirely right or wrong. It affects relationships, business relations and so on, not just aspects of crime and punishment.

And this is why the following becomes a corrupted ideal...

As for the difficulty with adults, I think a punishment is justified as a deterrent and not as a process to exact vengeance. When people know they'll have to pay a price for breaking the law, they will think twice before doing anything illegal. If they still commit a crime then punishment is justified because they were aware of the consequences and yet committed a crime. — TheMadFool

First off, there's research that suggests that some form of crime and punishment is needed as a baseline for a working society, even though research is still ongoing on this. But the ideal you mention here is exactly how every one of us has been brought up to view morality.

Let me ask you, is it possible that you are wrong? Is it possible that the common knowledge outside of the scientific community, among the general public, is... wrong? That we have been so trained in thought about how punishment is a deterrent that most of us are unable to combine it with the actual facts on how our human psyche works?

The entire idea about it being a deterrent is not able to combine with the true nature of why people commit crimes. Those who commit crimes already know it's wrong, they do it because for most of them, they have no other choice or they have been pushed so far that reason is suppressed by strong emotions they cannot control. People aren't rational, no one is rational in their day to day life. If people were rational, commercials wouldn't work, but they do, they control people so effectively that businesses can steer people to do whatever they like. We think and act out of emotional choices, not rational ones. We are only rational when we use "system 2" of our brain, as we are doing now when discussing. We do not act out of instinct but out of slowly writing our balanced opinion on these subjects. This is one reason why I feel verbal discussions often fail since we are so focused on the social skills we need in order to maintain a conversation, while the process of writing is much more careful. Maybe that's why I write so much since I want to carefully address all aspects of the subject.

The hard truth is that punishment only works as a deterrent for those who already have no reason to commit crimes. It's the true paradox of crime and punishment. If there were no punishment or law, then people that have no reason to commit crimes could do it since there are no parameters about order in society, so a baseline is needed. But it does not have any effect on those pushed into a serious criminal life. It's an illusion that everyone who isn't a criminal has about criminals.

The best example of this is when people who aren't criminals watch a movie about a criminal. They get emotionally invested in that characters life, feel empathy, and feel that the character is treated wrong when they get caught. In any other context, in the news, people would spew hate over these people, but not when they've established an empathic connection to such a character because that is exactly the moral ambiguity that our irrational emotions have on us, have on those who commit crimes.

We cannot demand logic towards criminals out of the moral compass that we have since we are demanding them to act more rational and reasonable than even we do. We demand reason, balance, and almost inhuman rationality from them since our parameters is that of our own comfort in life. It's much harder to demand the same rationality and reason if we were in the same shoes as them.

Which leads to...

I guess it's assumed that by adulthood we're supposed to be in the know about moral rules. Is this assumption justified? — TheMadFool

No, we do not know about moral rules since our moral rules are illusions. It's either past down morality from religion or it's a twisted morality based on corrupted agendas by others. True discussion about morality need to be detached from everything we've learned about morals, it needs to be founded on scientific facts about human psychology and a baseline of the things that are objectively good for humans, which isn't as straight forward as it sounds, but it's the only true morality we can establish. Every other idea about morality is influenced by doctrines that have nothing to do with morality but by religious and political control.

Essentially, most people in the world today do not live by the knowledge we have about humanity, society, psychology, morality and so on. We live by our emotions, we live by the stupidity of comfort, by, in psychology, "System 1". We are irrational, we reject truth in favor of comfort. This is why our systems in crime and punishment, in parenting, in finding morality are so extremely flawed.

It's the reason I turn to philosophy in the first place because it has the means and methods of deconstructing our irrationality to find truths a priori.

The basic idea here, the question I ask, is what if you are wrong? What if every idea you have about the subject of crime and punishment is wrong, wouldn't you want to know that it is?
- Comfort says no, "system 2" says yes.

But philosophy doesn't allow "comfort" to be a factor in thought.

Children are morally pristine, innocent, but criminals are morally depraved and some are downright evil. — TheMadFool

This is a very simplistic summary of criminal behavior and behavior in general. There's a lot more to this than just singular labels.

The thing is that punishment is an illusion. It's a legacy from times when we didn't know anything about the human psyche and how we behave in social groups. At this time in history, we have a lot of knowledge about how we function as a species. But we still have punishment as a way of teaching and controlling morality. Without there being solid evidence at all about its effectiveness.

Children, for example, do not start acting morally because they have been punished for their behavior into good behavior. Its observed that it creates anxiety and fear of authority more than any balanced morality later in life. The more effective way is to show and really teach children why their behavior is wrong. The consequences for others, not the self. It builds up better empathy and better social skills than fear.

In crime and punishment, there's no real evidence for punishment having any effect on crime. It might be the difference between total chaos and the baseline for a functioning society, but there's nothing that proves it to actually be a factor for those that has decided on making a criminal act. It's basically a total misunderstanding of the mechanics of how why criminals do crimes. To fix problems with high criminality, you don't punish more, you fix the problems that nurture crime and criminals. You fix socioeconomic problems, segregation, inequality etc. Thos things that pitch people against each other and pressures in life that place someone on the brink of being homeless. Desperate people do not care if there's punishment or not, they do not see any other way forward but committing a crime. And if it's about violent acts that do not revolve around money, it's the desperation of the situation, the inability to see a way out, the anger of failure etc.

The psychology of criminals should not be ignored and punishment, as it exist today, is a very medieval and blunt tool for controlling crimes. The one thing that keeps it going as the method even today when we know much more about psychology and sociology is the retribution and revenge aspect.
Punishment is retribution and revenge, it is not a cure for crimes. But society has even wrapped the linguistic description of punishment in ways so that it doesn't come across like revenge. It's "the state against..." and "by the law you are punished..." etc. Never, "the victim's revenge..." "by the victims suffering you will receive their vengeance in form of...".

As soon as you really dive into the psychology, sociology and deconstruct what punishment really is, you will see that there is no paradox since punishment in itself is a paradox against what punishment is supposed to be in the first place. It doesn't reduce crimes, it doesn't teach children the right lessons, it does the opposite.

It's the message that stories like Judge Dredd tells. In that society, the police have the special force "Judges" that will punish on site, often by direct execution. It should be the perfect fear for criminals, but instead, crimes are on the rise and the criminal acts more violent. Because no one in Judge Dredd cares for the actual reasons crimes occur, they are blind to the punishment aspect of keeping control and it fails. That's the dystopia of that story. And that's the truth of punishment.

We just had a topic created about abortion, why start another one?

I'm not going to look them up but I understand your argument above. — DingoJones

From what I remember, I referenced my previous posts in this thread. If you didn't read those then I don't really know why you argue against me since my points have been argued clearly before this in this very thread. I won't repeat myself out of someone else's laziness in order to counter an argument I already countered. If that is the way you like to keep the dialectic I believe you are more interested in just pointing out your opinion rather than actually discussing the topic.

When you put in the restrictions on speech to prevent people being manipulated by hate speech, you also install the means for others to use those restrictions to suppress whatever speech they choose. — DingoJones

You haven't understood a word about the method I described earlier. What you are saying is falling in line of a false dilemma fallacy ignoring the nuances of what I've been saying.

Restricting free speech (to a certain extent, I'm not a free speech absolutist like Terrapin) is about control. — DingoJones

No, it's not. Only if your intention is control. If your intention is to promote well-being for the self and others while keeping the freedom of the individual you measure and calculate the methods according to those parameters. You straw man my argument into a binary idea of restrictions being just about control, nothing of what I said points to it being about control.

That control might be fine in the hands of someone who truly has everyone's best interest at heart (although I doubt it, as even the best intentioned person can be wrong) but the exact same logic and method can be used by bad actors with other, more nefarious interests at heart and has. — DingoJones

You misunderstand or intentionally misunderstand the method I proposed to make that argument. As I said, the method also makes it impossible for those trying to restrict free speech as a form of power, to be able to control free speech. In what way can a person use my method to do this? Give me an example and we can create a dialectic to improve the method further.