Just when it seemed like we were actually having an actual polite conversation and coming to at least a productive sharing of thoughts on a topic... — Pfhorrest

No, we were nowhere near there... same old, same old...

This kind of thing really gives an air of you just looking to shoot down anyone who is insufficiently meek in your eyes — Pfhorrest

Yes, pretence pisses me off far more than perhaps it has any right to - one of my many flaws.

If I was arrogant I would be trying to get real philosophy journals to publish my thoughts. — Pfhorrest

You're confusing arrogance with blind denial. Abandoning one's chances of being lionised by one group isn't an indicator of humility in one's attempts with another.

because philosophy is supposed to be logically prior to empirical data. — Pfhorrest

Logical priority is irrelevant. As is whether you choose to call what you're doing 'philosophy' or not. You are making prescriptions for human beings, who are cold hard biological entities. 'Good' is a thought in a brain, as is 'pleasure', 'pain' and any other metric you seek to use. Are you suggesting that a doctor is dealing with a different subject when he prescribes pain medicine than you are when you say that 'suffering' is bad and should be avoided? Like it or not, you're dealing with states of a human being, and that means biology, neuroscience, psychology...

But then you know that really; you're not slow to correct dodgy physics when it's part of playing a role in some philosophical enquiry.

There's simply no way you can claim that one could construct an entire approach to morality based on hedonic values like affect without actually knowing how affect works in the brain. It's like writing a treatise of foxes without knowing what a fox is.

Changing the target valences to match the external events is a perfectly fine way of achieving that match, on my account. And if one were to take a change-the-external-events approach anyway, and the target valences were unpredictable in advance, one obvious strategy would be to enable the subject to better adjust their environment in real time as their target valences change — Pfhorrest

No. What you're missing is that we are part of that environment, including your philosophy, Mill's philosophy, this internet forum... you can't have a philosophy that stands apart from the environmental variables that effect our target valences such that it can be merely 'about them'. The very act of having philosophy will affect your target valences.

But not only that, the very affects you're modelling are themselves models of physiological states which, prior to that modelling, stand uninterpreted. One's philosophical view will be a significant part of what forms that interpretation.

Your system relies on static data points of hedonic value (in context) such that a world maximising those values (or minimising negative ones) can be imagined such as to act as an answer to moral dilemmas. I'm telling you that those data points are not static, they change over time (and, most importantly with the culture - including the moral philosophy - one is brought up with). As such the 'right' world to aim for (which satisfies them) will change over time too. All of which means that there is no answer to the moral dilemma. You can say what the answer was yesterday, but by the time you've worked out what the answer is today it's already not the answer any more.

Sure. If we commit ourselves to some extremely high moral standard, we are likely to fall short of it. This issue of looking to "moral leaders" and the like, is a big mistake. — Manuel

Not at all. I might very successfully travel to London by following the instructions "Head North". It's not necessary for me to be able to actually get to the North Pole for the instruction to have utility.

If we try to act like 'moral leaders', then, in doing so, we will become more moral ourselves. It's not necessary that we are actually able to achieve their standards.

I said most contemporary metaethicists are stupid — Bartricks

Metaethicists are philosophers, right? Or are you trying to claim that philosophy departments don't have metaethicists?

So when you say

The theory you're asserting (not defending) is the metaethical theory known as 'individual subjectivism'. It's a theory no professional philosopher defends — Bartricks

Experts don't defend it. — Bartricks

Moral norms and values appear external: there is no serious dispute about this, at least not among moral philosophers. — Bartricks

The 'experts' whose authority you're using to justify your claims that the premises you use are 'self-evident to reason' are expert by virtue of exactly the same training and testing regime you've just proven must be inadequate to ensure their analysis is even above the level of idiocy.

So by what justification should we accept their conclusions about other aspects of morality to be indicative of that which is self-evident to reason?

It's not that I can't imagine why you would possibly think the things that you think. — Pfhorrest

it's not that I can't comprehend why they would think that, because I used to think something much like that myself. — Pfhorrest

I don't see anything new, and I see the faults with it that I already found back when that was my own position — Pfhorrest

when they keep insisting that I come look at this view that I'm already quite familiar with as though it's something new and persuasive — Pfhorrest

And here I though we might be dealing with something more interesting than the boring old internet messiah.

My primary objection to your hedonism-as-emprical-data-points approach comes from Bayesian modelling approaches to neuroscience applied to affect states. It was only published a few years ago, and then only in the cognitive science papers. I'm truly impressed that you've read it, understood it, and already rejected it years before it was even published despite having no qualifications in the field at all and there being very few objections to it even now... Truly the work of genius, I'm obviously out of my league even talking to you.

I think most contemporary metaethicists are very stupid — Bartricks

Then how do you justify your previous measure of self-evident premises as being those which professional philosophers deem self-evident after receiving their professional consideration? Here you're saying that nothing about the status of professional philosopher protects against idiocy, insanity or sophistry. So perhaps you could explain why their conclusions about what is and is not self-evident to reason rise above average if their conclusions are so decidedly below par here.

I love a quote from Dogen, the founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism: "Before one studies, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters." — Pfhorrest

Funnily enough, I often repeat the same aphorism. I have no problem at all with the sentiment, only the enaction.

It sounds like you read only the first half of the first sentence of the bit you quoted, and overlooked the second half: "...and to find out if there are any related things that are new and interesting to me that I can mull over and evolve my own thoughts with." — Pfhorrest

No, I included that. Reading other thoughts to 'mull over' is what we do with books (and the blogs of other people), it's not a forum (again, not to me anyway). What exactly do you see different about this place to a series of personal blogs? You write what you want, others write what they want, you each read and say "oh, that's interesting...". That's not a forum, that's Wordpress.

My point is only that I'm not here for competitive discussions, where we're fighting to convince each other that "I'm right and you're wrong", but rather cooperative ones, where we're sharing our views and reasons for holding them, but not caring whether or not anyone in particular is persuaded to change their mind because of that, only caring whether anyone in the discourse got any new ideas to chew on. — Pfhorrest

Again, that's not co-operative, you're mixing your narratives. You've drawn 'co-operative' from the Coeusian search for truth storyline, but the laissez-faire scattergun of ideas from the Cassandrian one. Standing on a soapbox preaching is not co-operative, even if you give everyone a fair go on the box. Co-operation is about a shared part in a shared objective, it's not just a synonym for 'lots of people involved'.

If your 'quest for truth' is already filtered and screened by your own proclivities (what seems right to you), then it can't be a shared, co-operative quest, can it? We can't share in a process that results from your personal filters, that's your quest. You say "A follows from B" and your interlocutor says "No A does not follow from B". You can see if that seems right to you, but unless your claim 'A follows from B' is something you pulled out of your arse (as I believe you Americans put it), then it's opposite is obviously not going to be something that seems right to you, we have to presume you've at least given it that much thought. So anything which calls into question whether A does in fact follow from B is going to be either part of a Web of Beliefs that's radically different to yours, that's going to take some serious work to understand, or it's going to be based off some empirical data you're not aware of and so seems wrong on the face of it. A rare third way might be that someone shares your general Web of Beliefs, and your empirical knowledge, but is wise enough (or you daft enough) for them to spot a fatal error in the logic by which you've connected those beliefs. Holding out for that (and only that) on a public forum like this is vagary.

That's my issue with the way you engage. It feels like I'm being pelted with the same familiar contrary points of view over and over again, never something new. And I'm not interested in pelting you with my point of view over and over again in retaliation. That's intellectually boring and emotionally tiresome. — Pfhorrest

It seems odd that you would follow this with...

What I loved about formally studying philosophy at university, and what I hoped to replicate some semblance of here, was how I was getting exposed to interesting new ideas and the arguments both for and against them — Pfhorrest

I'm broadly an indirect realist, my morality is part ethical naturalism, part semantic, I take a broadly Wittegnsteinean view of most philosophical issues, I'm mostly deflationist about truths, have a Ramseyan approach to both belief and knowledge... plus whatever I've missed. There's not a thousand different aproaches out there. You post something about morality, I'm going to give a semantic/naturalist response. You post something about epistemology, I'll give a Quinean underdertimism response. Others' will give virtue-based, deontological, egoist, or possibly religious responses... and then that's it. Because that's all there is. You either engage with that to see where it's coming from on that particular issue, or you don't engage at all. We're not going to invent a completely new philosophy every time you post something.

What you seem to be looking for is this goldilocks perfection of an approach that's not so different from yours that it's hard work to understand, but not so similar that it's somehting you've already encountered. All of this in a field that's been around for over 2000 years! Is it any wonder you're disappointed? Back at university it would have all been new, but there's less and less new stuff to choose from as you get older, all that's left, if you want to expand your horizons further, is the hard slog of trying to understand those positions which seemed opaque at first glance.

But plenty of people see retribution as an end in itself. — Pfhorrest

Again, It's these 'plenty of people' who I've never heard of. Retributions as an end in itself - really? I find that very hard to believe, that no amount of probing would get these people to admit that a society with retributive justice is one in which people are overall better off than one in which there's none. I think this goes to what I said about underestimating the intelligence off your interlocutors. Someone extolling the virtue of retributive justice for it's own sake, isn't literally saying that there's no element of being 'better off' as a whole resulting from it, they take that for granted so it drops out of the conversation. The matter at had is always how to get universal 'goods' like prosperity, liberty etc. What's odd about your contributions is that you assume people have missed this important foundation because they don't explicitly refer to it. In reality people don't explicitly refer to it because it's too trivially obvious, we've moved on to the more contentious stuff and our mode of negotiating has moved on too to accommodate that. I'm not even suggesting that everyone is aware of this, we often just engage using whatever mode we've picked up from our social environment, but it's implicit in most of those modes.

Then the argument would be that they have an incoherent conception of liberty — Pfhorrest

Yes, absolutely - which would be the interesting argument to have. That 'liberty' is a good thing is just common ground so trivial that it doesn't even need mentioning. The important argument is about what we can and cannot coherently say about it.

Because I’m here for casual philosophical discourse, to share my thoughts with anyone to whom they are new and interesting, and to find out if there are any related things that are new and interesting to me that I can mull over and evolve my own thoughts with. I don’t care to fight interminable fights with people who are saying nothing new to me and who find nothing I’m saying new to them, when there’s nothing on the line that we must reach agreement on soon. — Pfhorrest

That all sounds very charming (although utterly pointless) but not at all the purpose of a forum. As I said, it think you've mistaken it for you personal blog - where we can read your thoughts if we're interested in them, or some kind of compendium of random opinion. What makes a forum different from either of these is that once a topic is created it is created to be the mutually available topic a community can use to debate the merits of or issues with. You seem to see this space rather as a supply of free web space anyone can dip into if they want a soapbox. Maybe that's what the creators and maintainers intended, I don't know, but it's not what a public forum means to me. Once you open a thread it's not 'your' thread, you haven't rented the space as a publishing platform, it's public space into which you put an idea.

We circle back (thankfully) to the start of this whole sub-thread. The deep suspicion people naturally have of these 'grand systems'. And here we find that suspicion well-grounded. what you describe sounds more like a recruitment drive, not a community venture - put your theory out there, see if anyone bites, if there's any trouble just ignore it, move on and try again later. It's a good scheme. If someone complains about a lack of engagement with the issues you can play the casual, carefree Cassandra of ideas "oh well, if they don't believe me, no bother, move on", but if someone disrupts your sermon with their own ideas you can play the Coeus on your passionate quest for truth so that the dissenter's 'bad faith' in repeatedly disrupting 'your' quest can be held against them.

if you want to prevent any condition where suffering will occur for another person, ..., then yes antinatalism would be the best claim. — schopenhauer1

No. Antinatalism would be the most effective means (in that case). Even if we ignore the patent absurdity of someone wanting to prevent any condition where suffering will occur for another person and had no other objective, for some odd reason, just being the most effective means to an end does not make it the 'best' morally.

The most effective means of preventing rape might be to castrate all men, doesn't make it the 'best'.

Take a look at the wide range of moral intuitions in the 'fat man' dilemma (on the main page at the moment). Even when killing the fat man is deliberately set as the only means to prevent mass suffering, people's intuitions are still mixed as to whether it is therefore the best course of action morally.

We're just back to square one. You have this odd objective - remove all suffering, no matter how minor at all costs. You've found a method by which it can be done (one which most people are at least a little repulsed by), and you sneer at any other moral imperative (such as the greater good, or community values). All of which is fine, but then acting like you're the injured party when people don't agree is just wierd. You've got a bizarre premise which hardly anyone shares, a favoured method which even many psychopaths would still baulk at, and a lack of any of the other usual moral sentiments that humans seem to have... it really shouldn't come as a surprise that you get this amount of push back.

Kant denies the accusation — Pfhorrest

What Kant does and does not deny is not the same category as we were discussing. The point is that when you rebut arguments against hedonism's ignoring values and virtues (such as reason) you do so by appealing to what those values and virtues 'really' mean (long term hedonistic value. So one might argue against hedonism by saying that suffering can actually be character forming and so focussing on virtues would better capture that. You'd respond (actually have responded, in fact If I recall) that 'character building' just ensures a greater lack of suffering in the future, and so virtue ethicists are not capturing anything here hedonism cannot account for. the virtue ethicists themselves would obviously deny that, but you don't take their denial as as indicator that their position is not actually hedonic. that is the sense in which I claimed it was trivially true that positions could be framed that way. what Kant 'says' is irrelevant, his position can be framed as hedonic (Mill, did exactly that). My claim is that all such positions can be likewise framed and so hedonism (in the sense you use it) doesn't resolve and moral dilemmas, merely renames the terms in them.

In this case, it's liberalism vs authoritarianism — Pfhorrest

No. Same would be true there too. I bet both would be able to frame their approach as libertarian, allowing people to be as free as possible - just their definition of 'as possible' would contain restriction they think necessary but we don't. You just don't seem to respect the basic level of intelligence most humans have - we've already thought of all this, we already know 'libertarianism' sounds better than 'authoritarianism', no-one's going to turn down 'liberty'. People's arguments are framed such as to make them sound like they're on whatever axis appeals most to their audience, and mostly that things like freedom, prosperity, etc.

we should be here because we're interested in figuring out what it is — Pfhorrest

contradicts

nobody is obliged to prove themselves right — Pfhorrest

If we have an obligation of sorts to be pursuant of truth, then that obligation can only be met by ensuring that one attempt to prove themselves right (or rather not-wrong, since neither of us are verificationists). If someone is potentially wrong, but avoids dealing with that by assuming it's their interlocutor who is mistaken, then they are demonstrably not as interested in 'figuring out what it [truth] is' as they are in avoiding stumbling block to the progress of their presentation.

The only way round this that I can see is to make the argument that the pursuit of 'truth' is an internal quest, one in which the opinions of others don't figure. But then you'd undermine your narrative where the forum acts as a joint quest.

Basically, you're saying you get to ignore fundamental issues with your theory, on the grounds that you think they're irrelevant/misinterpreting, but still don't thus fall foul of your own requirement that we collectively pursue truth. Yet you want also to say that if I don't present my theories for analysis I do fall foul of such a requirement. I can't see the difference.

You seem to be here just to throw a supposed burden of proof at anyone who dares to have any opinion and shut them down — Pfhorrest

Where have I even suggested anything of the sort. It's the exact opposite of what I'm talking about. I have never, nor would ever, suggest that anyone should be 'shut down'. I want people to address the issues. It's intriguing that you should accuse me of wanting to 'shut' people down when we're talking here about engaging further (not less), and you yourself are one of the handful of people here who've expressly said that my contributions are not welcome on their threads. Who exactly is try to shut whom down?

you don't seem like you just want to know what people think and why they think that, you seem like you want them to 'know' (to accept your judgement) that they have no good reason to think it and should therefore shut up. — Pfhorrest

Again, in our exchanges you are the only one who has told me to 'shut up', never vice versa. I've only ever wanted to discuss the issues further, so how you're developing this displacement fantasy that I want to shut people down is truly intriguing.

we're only exchanging thoughts about things, not verifying actual empirical experiences. — Pfhorrest

But my main contention with your model is based on the entirely empirical observations of how affect is generated in the brain, so we are talking about observations. I've looked at fMRI scans, lesion studies, experimental results... and I've seen evidence which contradicts your model.

in practice, it's not worth the effort of trying to figure out how I might just not be "replicating your observation" properly; you claimed to see something, I looked, I didn't see it — Pfhorrest

I think that sums it up perfectly. We've worked out the simple stuff already. If the only effort you're willing to put in is to see that which was obvious at first glance then you'll only ever confirm your own theories. None of them are going to be so wrong that the issues aren't apparent at first glance.

Say I'm doing something that effects only me — Pfhorrest

...contradicts

encouraging others to share it — Pfhorrest

you can prevent b by not causing a. — schopenhauer1

@Benkei's argument is not about what it is possible to do, but about what one is morally obliged to do. It is not a sufficient argument to merely show one can bring x about by doing/abstaining from y, you must also show that it is the node at which one ought to intervene.

That's why proximity matters. All things being equal, the most proximate cause carries the burden of responsibility in order to preserve as much freedom and autonomy as possible. If we start accruing responsibility for any node at which we could intervene our burden becomes rapidly unbearable.

If computers became self-programming, why would they have any reason to write programs that benefitted humans? — Wayfarer

Why wouldn't they?

I can think of several reasons why they would...

They might like the company - unpredictable, quirky, and irrational as we are - or find us useful in some way and so benefit from our thriving.
They might develop random codes which get re-enforced in subsequent codes.
They might see not helping as simply entailing more uncertainty in complex environment than a more conservative approach.

It's like you're suggesting there aren't any good reasons for us to benefit other humans (if it weren't for strong moral codes prescribing that we should). If benefitting those who share our world is a good thing for all, then there's no reason at all why a computer wouldn't work that out.

I don't believe this. Humans write software. Computers execute it. — Wayfarer

Nope.

https://www.wired.com/story/googles-learning-software-learns-to-write-learning-software/

It is a common assumption that as an institution, criminal punishment serves to deter crime, but that is actually a questionable thesis. It is far from clear whether, how much and in what circumstances punishment has that effect. And what about private, non-institutional retribution? — SophistiCat

Yeah. I agree that deterring crime doesn't at all capture the objectives of criminal law. My concern (clearly very badly expressed) was with a style of argument which seems to get all of that to fit simply by widening the terms. It's a technique I've seen used elsewhere perhaps more than in this thread, but relevant here, I think.

What I see happening is... one proposes a moral theory based on hedonism... the obvious counters are given -

Virtues and values other than pain/pleasure. "Ah, but those are all about deferred pain/pleasure - they value stuff that's best for everyone in the long run".

Authority of external judgements. "Ah, but those are separate questions, not directly to do with the definition of moral good".

The role of reason and reasonableness. "But that's about how we find out what's in those categories, not what their definitions are"

...and so on.


What we end up with is a re-framing of ethics, presented as if it were an answer. No actual work's being done to resolve any of the issues the previous ethicists have raised, only to re-frame them to fit the language of the new model.

The reason I brought up schadenfreude as an example was to show how pointless the approach is. If we want to defend the retributive justice system within a hedonistic ethic we can do so using schadenfreude (and other wider 'pleasures/sufferings'). If we wanted to attack the retributive justice system within a hedonistic ethical system we could do so too by invoking the suffering of criminals (as you mentioned). Nothing has actually been resolved about the rightness or wrongness of retributive justice. We've just changed the names.

Well, one could say that doing what one believes is right satisfies an "appetite" and thus falls under the hedonism, but I wouldn't want to interpret Pfhorrest so uncharitabl — SophistiCat

As above. I don't think it's uncharitable. I think it's what's happening.

The reality is that we interpret affects within a model which itself is informed by our past experience, culture, language etc. What one believes is right not only satisfies an appetite, it directly plays a role in determining what those appetites are.

Two common critiques of Kantian ethics are, on the one hand, that it does actually appeal to hedonistic criteria even while it claims it doesn't (Mill himself argued that), — Pfhorrest

Then why on earth did you bring it up as a counter-example to the claim/query...

You've not quoted a single philosopher who doesn't agree with the basic points you take as premises here. That suffering (when assessed hedonically at the affect level, and in the long term, recognising that it might change over time, and including future generations, plus an afterlife if there is one, including any 'higher' senses like art and music and love...) that long and complicated definition of 'suffering' is a bad thing and we shouldn't impose it on others. Find me a philosopher, scientists, any public academic who disagrees with that. — Isaac

I've still yet to pin down who you're arguing against here. Now you're saying...

My total ethical view is the intersection all of my four core principles as applied to ethics. Phenomenalism is one of those principles, and applied to ethics that's hedonism. Universalism is another one of those principles, which narrows in to only a specific subset of hedonism. Criticism and liberalism are two more principles, which narrow in on an ever more specific subset of hedonism. — Pfhorrest

...which seems to bring even more ethical positions into the fold. I'm struggling to see who you're arguing against here with the specific point you raise.

Where there are massive differences is not in the existence of any of these four 'core principles' of yours, it's in their interpretation - the nitty gritty of it that you don't want to get your hands dirty with. Even something as divisive like apartheid was not couched in terms of non-universalism, it was presented as treating everyone equally but that because of their various 'natures', the best way to do that was to keep then separate. As FW DeClerk said "What I haven't apologised for is the original concept of seeking to bring justice to all South Africans through the concept of nation states.". If you've ever read the Area Handbook for South Africa in which Apartheid was outlined to world, the whole thing is justified in terms of peace, prosperity, justice etc - a lot of it based on racial pseudo-science, but also on principles of justified colonial expansion and seeing resistance to that as criminal activity. The point is the likes of Botha and DeClerk do not claim to disagree with universalism, they claim multiple contextual details which support their policies. You can't argue against them simply by appeal to these trivially obvious broad brush approaches - everyone will just agree and fit their own agendas to it.

What makes your argument style bad faith is that you don't seem to be engaging in a cooperative pursuit of the truth with anyone, since you never even state what your own stance is, much less look into whether or not it might be right. — Pfhorrest

Looking for ways that a position might be wrong is not in itself bad faith, but if you're just here to tear other people's views down no matter what they are, and (act as though) you don't actually have any views of your own and aren't engaging in the same figuring-out-what-might-be-right mission as others — Pfhorrest

You seem to have two contradictory narratives going on with regards to the process of discussion in this context.

First you have this 'quest for truth' approach which (if it's anything like your epistemology with morality and empirical matters) I take to be a kind of fitting of lines to data points - seeking that theory which fits all observations.

Then you have this 'political project' narrative where it's all about your ability to persuade me and mine you. Here, lines of fit and data points go out of the window and it's some kind of race to gain as many supporters as you can in the most efficient way - "don't waste precious time on the difficult ones when you could be gathering up support from less recalcitrant quarters".

These two narratives a diametrically opposed. If you want to search for 'truth' and consider it to be that theory which best fits all observations, then the main area of focus should be those observations which do not fit. Those which fit quite closely already are the least of your concerns. If there's an observation which doesn't fit right at the heart of your theory, resolving that should be priority number one. And, most importantly, you thinking you've resolved it is completely irrelevant because that's just more of your observations. We already know they fit your theory. It's the observations of others not fitting it that's a problem for it's 'truthiness'.

What I find to be 'bad faith' (not that I'm a fan of that expression) is the pretence that you're on a quest for 'truth' when you're actually on a quest to drum up support for your pet theory, hence the profusion of polls asking for agreement and the skipping over of dissent the moment it can't easily be accommodated into your existing framework. Is it really any wonder that people are concerned about an authoritarian overtone to this 'find a objective which matches everyone's hedonic feelings' when we can see exactly what happens to the observations of those that don't match your pet theories - they're 'misunderstandings', 'bad faith', 'uncharitable', 'questionable motives' and so on... The fear with these systematising of morality approaches is exactly what we see here. You claim a system which attempts to just unbiasedly universally fit all experiences, but what we'll end up with is the preferred morality of whoever proposes the model and anything that doesn't fit is 'misguided', 'dishonest', 'mentally disturbed'...or whatever else you can come up with to explain why the data point isn't matching the line you prefer.

Yes, analogous to convergent evolution in biology. — James Riley

That's what I had in mind, yes. Like if one person wanted two antagonists to stop fighting so they don't wake their sleeping baby and another just 'can't stand to see people upset', they'd both stage an intervention to mediate or prevent the fight in some way.

In law the legal drinking age might be a good example. Morally we might encourage teenagers to reign in their drinking a bit out of a moral concern that one should not deliberately put oneself in a position of limited self-control. The law might also restrict their drinking but in their case to limit public disturbance and property damage.

Since a peaceful co-existence is most of the time the best overall strategy to meet both moral and political objectives, there's going to be a lot of overlaps like these.

For one who believed the law were a matter of convention irrelevant of morality, it seems they would have a challenge to explain (or argue against) the general concordance of, say, the "Thou shalt nots" with laws over legal systems. — fdrake

Say, for example, that laws were largely devices for those in power to manage their estates (I'm not saying that's all they are, just using it as an example), then many of them would be about maintaining peace. If morality were about how we can live most effectively together then many morals would also be about maintaining peace.

What I'm getting at is if the two systems have some crossover in their strategies then we'd not be surprised to see some crossover in methods, even if they remain two separate systems.

Is a coincidence of methods the same thing as a coincidence of objective?

By which I mean that if law is the reinforcement of morality, what is the mechanism by which that connection is made? — Isaac

When people believe that might makes right. — baker

Wouldn't that just be self-fulfilling anyway. If some group were not able to enforce some proscription on behaviour then by definition they wouldn't be the 'mighty' in that case. This is true regardless of what the current law happens to say, so can't itself be a mechanism whereby law is tied to morality.

we need to put necessarily moralism inner laws to reinforce the development of ethical/moral issues — javi2541997

Maybe. But if we also need to put paint in tins so as to stop it spilling all over the floor, paint does not thereby become tins, nor synonymous with tins, reliant on tins, made of tins nor any other necessary connection with tins. Plus once it's on your wall you can throw the tin away.

Tins likewise, are unaffected by their sometime use carrying paint. they are not no longer tins when the paint is used up, nor are they no longer tins if used for something else.

the purpose of searching with jurisprudence the most morality solution to the law dilemmas. — javi2541997

But that's not how laws are made. Laws are drawn up by civil servants to the specification of politicians who've (usually) been mandated to do so by an electorate. My question was only where in that process does morality necessarily get infused into the law? Are you suggesting politicians are incapable of acting immorally (I'd have more sympathy with the opposite argument).

If you want, rather, to say that the law should be the reinforcement of morality, then one would have to wonder why. What an odd instrument to think to use, the same thing we use to set import duty...

There are cultural systems where "sense indulgence" can mean a great variety of things, from overeating, getting drunk, to never sitting down or holding up one's arms for years. — baker

Yes, indeed. @Pfhorrest's system is like fitting a line to series of data points (the hedonic affects of each person in each circumstance). It relies on there being such a line. But as I've pointed out several times, the empirical evidence is against him on this. All that we know about affect (which is a cold hard biological feature) is that it is a dynamically modelled state, where things like cultural mores can affect the output of that model. As such the 'data points' are not only not fixed (and so can't have any line of fit put to them), but they are actually moved by the very act of trying to fit a line to them.

Your ascetics there would actually feel differently about their experiences in a culture which viewed them differently.

No. It is not. I guess law is literally the reinforcement of morality... — javi2541997

How then? By which I mean that if law is the reinforcement of morality, what is the mechanism by which that connection is made?

Kant's ethics make no appeal to divine commands, nor to any experience, but to some kind of abstract reasoning. — Pfhorrest

What I'm struggling to understand here is how you're forming an argument that hedonism is the only alternative to "...because X said so", yet also arguing that alternative philosophies exist which do not amount to "...because X said so". If Kant's framework relies on reason - ie, only act according to that which you could at the same time wish were a universal law (or something like that), then it seems that the only two conclusions you could draw from that are either a) there exists a non-hedonistic means of judging that which is moral that does not amount to "...because X said so", or b) morality captures more than hedonism and no matter how accurate your measurement of it you'd be missing something if you didn't also measure 'reasonableness' (or somesuch). If you agree that Kant's moral philosophy is based on something no-hedonic, yet also non-authoritarian, then your argument about hedonism being required in order to avoid having to resort to "...because X said so" falls apart.

Just agreeing that people feeling good rather than bad is all that matters doesn't tell you anything about, for example, whether or not it's okay to cause a little suffering now to spare a lot of suffering later — Pfhorrest

If that were an issue then temporal nearness or hyperbolic discounting would also 'matter'. Something else other than feeling good or bad would matter - how far removed the feeling is in time.

whether or not it's okay to cause a lot of suffering for a few people so as to spare the suffering of a disproportionately huge number of people. — Pfhorrest

Again, that just means that something else matters. Here it's the number of people who share in the pleasure/displeasure. That's unarguably something else mattering other than just whether people feel good or bad.

do you get to take that responsibility into your own hands? Do they? — Pfhorrest

Once more, now something else matters - justness of personal responsibility. Just good/bad are no longer all that matter, but additionally the rightfulness of the authority of the judge.

How it's permissible to actually get to that state, and who's responsible for ensuring that that happens, are additional questions on top of that. — Pfhorrest

Questions which cannot be judged on the basis of reducing suffering. Yet they're still moral questions. One of them even contains the term 'permissible' as you've phrased it. The other implies permissible behaviour (who ought to judge and who ought not). If you're denying that these are moral questions, then on what grounds? If not then there are clearly moral questions which cannot be resolved by reference to hedonic values.

We can imagine where that might lead — Pfhorrest

Maybe, but your argument relies on us being right about that. We'd 'imagine' it, but replete with all the hard-wired beliefs which we just can't shift still as firmly in place as they ever were. For citation see... every psychological experiment ever. 'Imagining' that you're building your beliefs up from some blank slate is no different to 'imagining' you're an alien from Mars and using it to claim you now have some insight into what Martians think.

I already foresee that you'll reply "What if all moral sentences are categorically like that?" — Pfhorrest

I was more thinking of "what if some moral sentences are like that?".

that's why I have an account of moral semantics that defends a kind of cognitivism and explains what moral sentences categorically mean — Pfhorrest

Which I've no doubt already disagreed with, you've already claimed I'm merely misunderstanding you on, and thus you use, as if flawless, as a prop... I'm only trying to see if the argument has more to offer than "these are the things I think". One of the reasons your posts bug me - and you're not the only one - is that this a public forum. Forum being the key word. It's not your personal blog, you can publish that yourself anytime you like, curate responses if you want to, edit, or not, as you see fit. But here is not the place to do that. Here is a forum for public debate, we're here to discuss, not accumulate a database of "stuff people on the internet reckon".

That you think your account of moral semantics "defends a kind of cognitivism and explains what moral sentences categorically mean" is utterly irrelevant here. Great material for your personal website. Publish it, stick it on YouTube, shout about it on your street corner... whatever. But here what matters is what other posters think it defends or explains. It taken as given that you think it does, that's presumably why you posted it. If you publish it here then it becomes the topic for debate, we're not your editors, nor your peer review board. We're not to be dismissed with "thanks for the input but I don't agree so your services are no longer required"

I wouldn't think you would. I would think you would drop out as soon as it became clear that we're not going to reach a resolution on something that will be foundational to everything else to come. — Pfhorrest

As above, why on earth would I do that? The aim is not to reach a resolution on something such that if that's not possible the project might as well be abandoned. What you're doing is the conversational equivalent of ignoring your interlocutors with "yes, that's all very interesting, but stop interrupting...now, as I was saying..."

I don't think it's worth the time trying to convince you about them — Pfhorrest

It's really not about convincing me of anything. Again, we're a discussion forum, we're not a policy think tank either, we don't have to come up with the answer any time. It's about having a decent amount of respect for weight of human thought that's previously gone into these issues.

I still don't think you're arguing in good faith. (You only ever adopt a position so as to argue against someone else's and never positively endorse any position yourself, making you always playing offense and everyone else always play defense, which is a classic type of bad-faith argument style). — Pfhorrest

Is it? what would be the 'bad' in that approach - It seems again to confuse a discussion forum with your personal blog. The entire point of posting something on a discussion forum is as a topic for discussion (critical, if need be). To say that people who then discuss such an offering are doing so in bad faith is really weird.

Yeah. I know. Move on. — Pfhorrest

Move on to what? You seem to be confusing the forum with a Gallup poll now. "here's my idea", "I agree", "I disagree", "great discussion guys...next". The argument about moral realism probably extends to several hundred thousand pages in philosophical literature...and it's still not resolved. Do you expect Rosalind Hurthouse to object to Robert Louden’s 'application problem' criticism with a paper just entitled "Yes, I get it, you don't agree, move on!" in which she just complains about his constant interjections that non-virtuous agents cannot learn virtue without rules? Of course not. and the debate already spans several thousand words. We've barely exchanged more than couple of hundred on this, yet a handful of posts in you're already wanting to shut down the discussion and move on as if it never happened. You put the ideas out there ostensibly for debate, but you don't seem at all interested in getting into the debate, you just want a quick round of applause so you can move on to post the next in your grand edifice for the same purpose.

We're here to discuss. The issues with your theory (as yet unresolved) are as good a topic as any, there's no good reason at all to 'move on'. Hell, we still haven't 'moved on' from debating Platonic realism and that debate started 2000 years ago. You've fundamentally misunderstood how philosophical discussion works if you think a couple of exchanges is a good reason to ignore the issues and carry on regardless.

I said that one could try to argue that retributive punishment is conducive to the reduction of suffering, but it wouldn't be a perfect fit, even extensionally (it doesn't always reduce net suffering), not to mention intensionally (it isn't aimed at reducing suffering). — SophistiCat

Now that's an interesting difference. I was speculating that one could capture the extensional features of retributive justice in a sufficiently wide definition of 'suffering-reduction', only that to do so would be trivial as the definition thereby allowed would be so wide as to just be synonymous with 'morally bad' anyway. Am I right to think you're suggesting here that no such definition could be made of even the extensional features alone?

If so, what features of retributive justice do you think fall into that category? I tried thinking along lines of your example of ensuring the perpetrators suffer, but even then could frame that as easing the suffering of the victim by schadenfreude. I thought of 'justice served' as a virtue, but any 'virtue' is subject to the argument that it's absence causes psychological 'suffering' - being in an ignoble state. I basically drew a blank, anything 'Good' by definition seems to be open to having its absence framed as a kind of suffering.

Being a naturalist about morality, i.e. believing that moral intuitions and norms are the outcome of biological and cultural evolution, social dynamics, and other such natural factors, it seems reasonable to expect that common moral principles would be at least somewhat aligned with the imperative to reduce suffering. But by the same token, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect the alignment to be perfect. — SophistiCat

Yes. This chimes very nicely with my favoured semantic approach. Regardless of my previous niggle about what 'could' be done with ambiguous definitions and re-framings, I'm in broad agreement with you here. What we actually count as 'morally good' is too dynamic, too socially-mediated, too prone to feedback to be aligned with anything permanent and external to that system.

This is my main gripe with any kind of hedonism. It ignores the basic psychological fact that our affects are fabricated, in part, from social cues. Part of why we feel good about some things and bad about others is because we interpret physiological states that way as a result of the models we've learnt from our culture.

If a culture's morality helps define what we feel good and bad about (and it unequivocally does), then it's pointless trying to define a culture's morality on the basis of what we feel good and bad about.

But anyway, I'm re-covering what you've already said really.

It wasn't, by the way. I actually googled "trail data". lol

There was a website about national parks. — frank

Oops! My apologies for my sloppy spell-checking in that case.

If we plant the trees and get out of the way (i.e. don't cut the down again because our numbers demand the resource) then yes. No doubt. — James Riley

How would that repair the damage? Large canopy trees take hundreds of years to grow so the ecosystem would certainly not be 'repaired' within one generation, just no longer being destroyed.

You were thinking of trees metaphorically, as a representation of all our damage/repair. I was talking about trees. — James Riley

No, I was talking about trees too. Literally. They plant themselves, have done for millennia. It's those other issues which are the problem.

if we bring our population back to a sustainable level (I suggested, above, 35 people per 10k square miles) then the repair would take care of itself. — James Riley

Maybe, if we did so instantaneously, but since that's impossible without genocide, doing nothing (no inter-generational projects) in the meantime would lead to a massively impoverished environment for those 35/10k^2, which would take many hundreds more years to recover than it would if, rather than ignore it, we protect what we have whilst such a reduction in population density was slowly enacted. Walking away is not the best way to do that.

I'd say the burden is upon you and your next generation to show the continuation of the current spree is not inevitable. — James Riley

Indeed.

There isn't a good reason, at least as far as nature is concerned. — James Riley

Reasons are not the sorts of things which concern nature in any case.

The only reason is our own subjective reason, and that has yet to be proven as an objectively good reason. — James Riley

What would an "objectively good reason" be? What would the truthmaker of 'Good' be objectively?

the risk of these events is very low and not more than one would expect by being a member of the general population and certainly lower than one would expect if actually infected with the virus. Since the frequency of occurrence is known and so low — aporiap

... confusing prevalence with risk.

It will definitely take more than one generation. — Isaac


No, it will not, not for trees. — James Riley

Really? You think we could repair the damage we've done to an ecosystem like the rainforest in less than one generation?

If we'd simply do nothing except get out of the way, nature will both resew and tend itself. But if we want to do a favor for succeeding generations of people, then, rather than sewing the succeeding generations of people we could sew succeeding generations of trees in the areas that we've destroyed and then get out of the way. — James Riley

I don't think you've quite grasped the nature of habitat restoration. Sowing (or planting) is really very low down on the list of jobs that would help. Land needs to be legally protected, markets for unsustainable resource extraction overturned, illegal activity prevented, pollution reduced, climate change reversed...

extinction of homo sapiens might be an attractive option for nature, — James Riley

I can't think why, homo sapiens has managed to have minimal impact for the first few hundred thousand years of our existence. I don't see anything inevitable about our current destructive spree.

That population will be way more than enough to tend, and even more effective in doing so, if it isn't saddled with the teaming hoards. — James Riley

Agreed. But the OP isn't suggesting we should have fewer children, it's suggesting there's no good reason to have them at all.

Actually, it is trivially false that all commonly held moral beliefs can be construed as being aimed at minimizing suffering. (I am including the "commonly held" qualification in deference to your social/semantic take on ethics.) Take, for example, the imperative to punish offenders. While it can be argued that just punishment, on the whole, tends to reduce suffering (by way of deterrence, for example), this is not so in every particular case. And in any event, minimizing suffering is not what motivates the imperative in the first place, even if it happens to have that side effect - on the contrary, what matters to those who adhere to it is that the offender does suffer. — SophistiCat

I understand what you're saying, but the manner in which I meant it is the manner in which your first proposition is undermined by your second. You say it is false that all commonly held moral beliefs can be construed as being aimed at minimising suffering and then give an example of exactly that. "it can be argued that just punishment, on the whole, tends to reduce suffering (by way of deterrence, for example)". Whilst I completely agree that to do so would be to miss entirely the motivation and social purpose of punishment, I merely wanted to point out to pfhorrest the triviality in attempting to give such a wide definition of 'suffering' that every position could be viewed through that frame. I shouldn't want to be seen as suggesting that do to so would capture all, or any, of the nuances that other frameworks have to their credit (or demerit), only that such a thing could be done.

Essentially I was trying to say what you've said here with your example of punishment. We could frame it as a long-term suffering reduction method but to do so doesn't get us anywhere because the issues that retributive justice deals with are not captured by such a framing.

What I'd be looking for, if you still think I've missed the mark, is an example of a moral position which cannot be (not just is not) construed in some super-widened sense of reducing suffering. If that makes sense? It's the banality of widening 'suffering' to the point that it just means the same as 'bad' (in a secular sense) and then arguing that this proves suffering is bad.

Because there are supposedly rational people (thousands of years of professional philosophers) who give arguments for why that's supposedly the right way to do things — Pfhorrest

I think you might be getting the wrong impression of what I meant here. I don't mean the likes of Lane-Craig or some such arguing the rationality of god's existence. I mean having accepted that, they don't then question god's instructions on the basis of whether they think he's doing a good job or not. If you want to argue God doesn't exist then fine, but when arguing that ethics should be based on X, you're never talking to the religious who do not question the ethical proscriptions of their chosen divinity.

Lots of supposedly smart, reasonable people believe some really wacky shit.

SEP also has a list of arguments against hedonism with names if you like. — Pfhorrest

I wasn't after opposition to Hedonism, that's not quite as general as your claim, you include suffering of all sorts over all timeframes, to all people and without even taking their own word for it. that's a much wider definition of 'suffering' than most hedonism and thus would simply be encompassed in those arguments.

The non-necessity arguments would all just be subsumed under more long-term or esoteric versions of 'pleasure' rather than the short-term, visceral type more commonly associated with traditional hedonism. Most insufficiency arguments are simply voicing the same long-term approaches, or taking a wider societal view of non-suffering. I'm not here saying that these are frames that the proponents of these positions would use, only that it's a trivial matter to re-frame them in terms of hedonism if you widen the definition of 'pleasure' and 'suffering' sufficiently. But in doing so you've simply re-defined the same dilemma, not solved it.

someone who was philosophically unsure could agree in general that people feeling good rather than bad is probably the only thing that really matters, as an end in itself, but be undecided about whether the ends justify the means, or whether we should trust authority, etc. — Pfhorrest

That's self-contradictory. If they were concerned about justifying means and libertarian concerns about authority, then they would be performatively contradicting a belief that people feeling good rather than bad is probably the only thing that really matters.

I think my novel contribution to the problem is mostly in taking parts from those different well-known views and connecting them together into a form that escapes their common arguments against each other — Pfhorrest

You do realise that the humble use of the word "mostly" there does nothing to cover the fact that what you're claiming is to have resolved the common arguments against all philosophical positions.

suppose a starting point of absolute radical doubt where you don't even know what there is to know, or how to know it, or if we can know it at all, or if there is even anything at all to be known — Pfhorrest

Impossible right off the bat, so anything done from here is going to be a pretence

there is some such answer or other to whatever question is at hand (because if you assumed instead to the contrary, you'd have no reason to try out any potential answers) — Pfhorrest

The question could be ill-formed, meaningless or nonsensical. assuming there's an answer ignores those possibilities.

Elaborating the chain from those core pragmatic assumptions to every other specific position is what all the text I've already written in all those other threads is for, so I'm not going to repeat it all here. — Pfhorrest

Which exemplifies the point I made earlier. there were massive issues with that exposition. virtually everyone taking part in that particular thread raised an issue with your approach. Citing it now as a premise without acknowledging those issues is what comes across as oddly 'authoritarian'. We're the same people who read that previous thread you know. why would you think we'd follow on through the project as if it hadn't happened?

It may be true that capitalism doesn’t have the best way of responding to this crisis, but what alternatives are there. — Wayfarer

Well, there's socialism...

Seriously. There are, unarguably, a number of factors which help prevent the impact and spread of this, and future, pandemics...

1. The general health of the population - yet no additional action at all is being taken on junk food, excessive sugar and salt, sugary drink advertising, sedentary working conditions, community health and fitness facilities, atmospheric pollutants, overcrowding, poor housing conditions... I could go on.

2. Surveillance programs for emerging diseases - yet funding has been and still is actually cut from these programs.

3. Frontline healthcare - proper ICU care cut deaths from Covid by over 60% in one study, yet we've seen no investment in better ICU care, no promises of such, no talk of more access to care for poorer groups. Nothing.

4. Community healthcare - better geriatric care, more access to hospitals and doctors, better delivery systems. All have been shown to minimise damage from pandemics, yet none have received any further investment at all resulting from this one.

5. Community action (handwasting, social distancing, lockdown measures) - action on these has been better but decidedly half-hearted and too late.

6. Tracing contacts - virtually no efforts at all toward this in either England or America.

7. Mass vaccination - the only option on the list that will make billions for the most powerful industry in the world. Also the only option on the list being pursued with any fervour at all.

In (accidentally, I hope) lumping all anti-vaccine sentiment with the nutjob redneck conspiricist, one would be implying that option 7 just coincidentally happens to be the best approach and the fact that the major beneficiaries of it just happen to be the most powerful lobbying industry in the world is entirely irrelevant to the favouring of such an option.

Obviously that's ridiculous. Which leaves us with the only sensible default being that if an industry spends more than four times as much as it's nearest other industry on lobbying (both governments and institutions), that expenditure is going to result in those governments and institutions favouring options which benefit said industry over those which don't.

I'm afraid I'm quite baffled as to why the pronouncements of the medical industry are taken as such gospel truths. We wouldn't treat the oil industry, or arms manufacturers the same way. If any policy favours either of those we're (quite rightly) immediately deeply suspicious. We suspect lobbying pressure, we suspect insider dealing, we suspect backhanders, share deals etc. The pharmaceutical industry spends four, five times more than either of those on lobbying and yet those same suspicions when levied against them are treated as mad conspiracies.

Edit - "baffled" is rhetorical. I'm not baffled at all. We fear death, the medical industry offers us a way to postpone it, we fear rejecting them.

They will if we get the F out of their way. But since we've trashed X% of the worlds lungs, we could replant with the 7 billion parasites currently killing the host. Then, when we've scaled back to a sustainable level, like 35 people per 10k square miles of temperate zone, they'll have some descent shade and air. — James Riley

The point is that if, for whatever reason, we're needed to do the replanting, we'll also be needed to do the tending. You can't invoke a self-sustaining nature to do the tending, but assume it incapable of doing the seed sowing. Both are natural processes, no categorical difference. I get your point about that fact that ecological systems have been damaged to extent that they might not perform normal functions, but it seems contrived to say that seed sowing is such a function but seed aftercare is not, without any evidential basis.

Repairing the damage we've done to the environment is exactly the sort of project I was referring to. It will definately take more than one generation.

This doesn't make the COVID-19 vaccine 'a tool for extracting money from the population' — Wayfarer

It literally makes it a tool for extracting money from the population. That may or may not be a bad thing depending on whether that tool happens to be useful. Sometimes its utility is the best way of making money out of a product, other times not. The point is that the company considered the development and sale of it to be profitable. The point of the economic analysis in the paper I cited is that lobbying for a product (regardless of efficacy) is a better return on investment than research to ensure an effective one.

And yes, it's a criticism of capitalism as a whole. Anyone who thinks that private corporations through the mechanisms of a capitalist economy are the go-to method of dealing with a global health crisis have a seriously blinkered view of the role such corporations and economic systems have had in society.

Excluding the religious (and similar) views on morality is the point of this facet of my ethics. The people who object to this ethical view pretty much just are religious people. They’re the ones I’m arguing against. — Pfhorrest

Well, since religious people accept their ethics on faith, not rational argument, I can't understand why you would put such effort into it. Your argument seems to hinge on "...because X said so" being a conclusion we would want to avoid, yet for the religious, that's exactly the conclusion they have faith in.

If you trivially agree with my points, great! Others don’t. — Pfhorrest

You've not quoted a single philosopher who doesn't agree with the basic points you take as premises here. That suffering (when assessed hedonically at the affect level, and in the long term, recognising that it might change over time, and including future generations, plus an afterlife if there is one, including any 'higher' senses like art and music and love...) that long and complicated definition of 'suffering' is a bad thing and we shouldn't impose it on others. Find me a philosopher, scientists, any public academic who disagrees with that. It's just the definition of the 'suffering'. If anything within 'suffering' wasn't bad it wouldn't be called 'suffering'. Anyone who can speak English agrees that 'suffering' (in that long sense) is a bad thing, it's part of knowing what the word means.

Endorsing hedonistic altruism doesn’t have to mean endorsing consequentialism or authoritarianism or anything like that. It’s just an answer to one little question: what criteria to use when assessing what is moral. The methods by which to apply that are another topic (and on that topic I’m anti-consequentialist), who is responsible for applying such methods is yet another (and on that topic I’m an anarchist), etc. And those are topics I’m getting to. — Pfhorrest

It means having an answer to those questions (otherwise you wouldn't even be starting the process).

I'll keep this short because I know how much you dislike my involvement. Humans have been dealing with the question of how we should act toward one another for upwards of 200,000 years, since before complex language even. It's deeply ingrained in our language, culture and possibly even genetics. It's woven so tightly into everything we do that you can't even discuss it without using words, the meaning of which, involves an already present ethical framework.

Thousands of pages have been written about it, with probably in excess of 10 billion people involved in greater or lesser ways. The idea that you out of all of them, have come up with a system finally, after 200,000 years of trying which is not just a re-framing, or restatement of the issues already known, is ludicrous to the point of being messianic. Maybe you have, maybe you are, indeed, the smartest person ever to have lived (in regards to this topic), but for that to be the case you'd surely be unsurprised by the amount of 'pushback' you get from people struggling to believe this fact, yet it seems to constantly alarm you.

It seems like you want me to start with the big picture conclusion (“hey everyone lets be less authoritarian and hierarchical and work together independently but cooperatively to realize all of our dreams”) and then go into the reasons for that conclusion and the reasons for those reasons etc, going backward through the argument until we get to the deepest premises. I get it, you’re used to psychologically analyzing like that. And that could be a way to do it, sure.

Except then anyone who doesn’t like that conclusion on the face of it is going to dig in their heels and reject any premise that might lead to it no matter how trivially true those premises.

...The point is to first get agreement with those no-duh obvious things, and then build up to things nobody wants to believe (like the rejection of all religions and states), on the grounds of those very same trivial obvious things.
— Pfhorrest

You're working with people's intuitions only here. No actual physiological facts. So how are you distinguishing a 'conclusion' from a 'premise'? Our intuitions don't go around with little labels on them. If I have a feeling that everyone should "be less authoritarian and hierarchical and work together independently but cooperatively to realize all of our dreams" and I also have a feeling that "imposing suffering on others is bad", and maybe also a feeling that "some divine being must have made this universe and so whatever He says is right must be right"... What properties of each of those feelings are you using to judge that one is a 'premise' and the others 'conclusions'. Why should one not take one's feeling about God as a premise and one's feeling about suffering as a conclusion - realising that they must be wrong about the whole suffering thing because God can be a bastard sometimes in that respect?

As we've been over already in your thread about epistemology, all you have if some beliefs which seem inconsistent. You can change any one of them to match, or re-frame them so that they're consistent, or postpone doing so (assuming they're all right but you haven't worked out how yet), or treat the whole thing as confusion of language...

...all of which is essentially what ethical philosophers have been doing all these years.

You've chosen one of those feeling to be your starting point and worked logically to support others from there (and thereby argue against those other feelings in other people). But all this does not carry any normative weight. All it does is reflect which of your beliefs you're going to label 'premises' (spoiler alert - it's the ones which make all your other beliefs right and your opponents wrong).

False equivalence. — tim wood

I don't know what you might mean by 'false equivalence'.

This the best I can do here. — tim wood

Really? This is a highly technical subject and the best you can do is a Penn and Teller YouTube clip? Whatever point you're trying to get across it should not be too hard to lay your hands on the source for it. I can't think what's given you the impression that I need my information dumbed down by TV celebrities, and if that's the actual source of your information...

What's trail data? — frank

I meant trial data. As if that wasn't obvious...

They tested it the same way the always test vaccines. You said it was lacking normal safety precautions. — frank

Right. I've given the data I have in previous threads from reputable journals like the BMJ and STAT. I'm asking you for the data you're basing your view on. What trial data are you using and what 'normal statistical methods' are you comparing them too. I've read, in several places, that special measures have been put in place, specifically, as I've cited twice now, that trials were smaller and more homogeneous than usual and that peer statistical review was shorter and less well staffed than usual. If I'm wrong about that it would be good to know so that I don't keep repeating the same error (errors criticising health narratives are basically conversational suicide), but I'm obviously not just going to take the word of some random internet poster, so I'm asking for your sources.

It's a damning sign of the state of debate about this that I just had to explain that. "What are your sources?" really should not be a confusing request on a topic as technical as this.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines didn't take any short cuts in testing. Three phases, same statistical approach they always use. — frank

What statistical approach would that be, and what trail data are you comparing it to?

Seems that on a philosophy site at least folks would make explicit their understanding of the difference between not getting/being vaccinated and being anti-vaccination. Explicit because there seems to be both confusion and conflation on this. — tim wood

Absolutely. Being anti-vax is a position that vaccination is never the solution in any circumstances . That's not the same as saying that vaccination is not the best solution is some specific given circumstance.

I find, however, that there are no fewer blind pro-vaxers (vaccination is always the solution in all circumstances), as there are blind anti-vaxers (vaccination is never the solution in any circumstances). Reality is, as usual, more complicated than can be captured in polemics.

Do you decide therefore to go unvaccinated? — frank

As yet, yes, but I live deep in a rural backwater, the decision is a different one for me than for others. I'm not particularly concerned about short-term side effects though, I'm fairly healthy with no allergies, I think the chances of me sustaining an adverse reaction are very small indeed. Most vaccines have side-effects so this one is not exceptional in that respect. I should like to have had more information about the effects on vulnerable groups ,but now it would be considered unethical to have large control groups so that's not going to happen.

For me it's more a political position. There are many ways to tackle this crisis. Each with their risks and benefits. For example, whilst I'm not concerned about side-effects myself, I'm not sure that now (with our hospitals at breaking point) is such a good time to give a new medicine to billions of people. Even with normal safety precautions that would likely lead to thousands of adverse reactions, all of which will need hospital treatment, and this particular treatment has not had normal safety precautions.

Regardless of the repective cons, only one of the possible solutions makes a small amount of people an enormous amount of money, I'm not going to stand in line to cheer that fact that our collective governments chose that one above all others.

Are we likely to see investment in ICU capacity after the enormous expense of vaccination? I don't think so. Community healthcare, emerging threat surveillance programs, nursing home staffing, critical care... are any likely to now see the investment they need to protect us against the next covid? Again, I don't think so. But no doubt after only a few million unnecessary deaths the great pharmaceutical companies will come to our rescue again with another short-term get rich quick scheme solution.

The trees will tend themselves. — James Riley

Well then why do we need to plant them? They do that themselves too you know.

Better to plant trees than to add more people. “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit." — James Riley

Who, then, will tend the trees?

So for you there are impositions that are simply “too much” and having children is one of them.

You could’ve just said that. — khaled

Yeah. All that @schopenhauer1's argument ever seems to boil down to is that being born is a terribly bad thing for one to have happen to them - whether that's framed in terms of 'harms', 'suffering', or 'dignity', it's always in a league of it's own, and as such it cannot (unlike the impositions we normally make on others) be considered acceptable for any reason at all, no gain is sufficient to justify it.

If one has, as a premise, that birth is an imposition greater than any other, then one is going to be antinatalist. It's not a conclusion, as it's presented here (and in every other such thread), it's just a restatement of the premise. We can simply assume that, having decided something is more bad than any consequent gain could justify, one would be unconditionally anti-it. So that leaves nothing of substance here beyond the premise itself.