There is no correspondence between the original transgression and the presumed reimbursement.
— Congau
Yes there is, it corresponds to whatever satisfies as reimbursement. This would be true even if I was talking about the individual, which Im not. — DingoJones

How can you know what satisfies if you are not talking about an individual? Compensations that are actually unconvertible seem to work because the individual is content. The damage can’t be undone, but a million dollars sort of makes him happy, so he accepts. Another person would demand more a third person less.
What would satisfy the abstract mankind?

people reach satisfaction over moral transgressions all the time. — DingoJones

Yes, people reach agreements, individuals, that is.

We dont judge someones moral worth on whether they’ve did 1 good thing or 1 bad thing, we take account of both and weigh them against one another. I dont think thats controversial. — DingoJones

If you are only talking about how we morally judge people, it’s a rather trivial point. Sure, I could say, this guy has done a lot of bad things but also a lot of good, so he’s moral worth is about medium.
But you are clearly talking about something more than that when you use a concept of moral debt. Who’s to say that a person should have a medium moral worth or the worth of an average human being? If you are above that level, it’s great, below is bad and balancing is just ok?
Why? Let’s say all actions, good or bad, were assigned a moral value unknown to us, but maybe existing in the mind of God or the universe. Then we could assume that each of us had a real moral value, a number that we wouldn’t know but was still existing. If good acts had a positive value and bad acts negative, why would it necessarily be ok to have the value zero? Maybe objective morality would demand a positive value for an acceptably moral person. (Btw, total inactivity would produce a zero.)

What would satisfy the abstract mankind? — Congau

It would function the same way anything else is decided/judged by a collective. With morality the varied judgements within the group may differ on various points, but there will be collective agreement on certain clear acts of morality/immorality. That is why Ive used easily contrasted acts, such as mass murder and working at a soup kitchen once or twice. It should be easy to see the imbalance there. Do you think that the balance is unclear in that example?
Before you mention individual dissent again, remember im talking about a collective, society in general. The small portion of whacky dissenters do not represent the larger body of moral judgement.

Yes, people reach agreements, individuals, that is. — Congau

Groups of people (individuals) reach agreements too. They even do that if not every individual within the group agrees to it or about it.

If you are only talking about how we morally judge people, it’s a rather trivial point. Sure, I could say, this guy has done a lot of bad things but also a lot of good, so he’s moral worth is about medium. — Congau

Yes, exactly. Its much more difficult to determine all the different, exact points on the moral spectrum as you are pointing out, but for the purposes of the OP we do not need to. We just need to operate from the premiss that there IS a spectrum. Again, this is why I used such easily contrasted examples, to show that there is a spectrum. Thats all my question requires.

Your original question was: “Can we pay off moral debt?” and I realize that the question is one of principle and not concerned with the exact measurement of each act of charity or transgression. The problem is not about subjective/objective, but that a debt to an unspecified collective doesn’t make sense. How could there be a debt to mankind? The idea of repayment necessitates some unity of feeling on the part of the creditor. Someone feels a loss and a repayment somehow relieves the pain. That unity of feeling obviously doesn’t exist in mankind.

If we still judge the moral value of a person according to how we think his good and bad deeds add up, that doesn’t include any notion of debt since we only assess the achievements and shortcoming of the moral agent. If a student gets some excellent grades and some lousy ones, we call him a medium level student, but there is no preconceived assumption that overall grades are always ok if they balance in the middle. Grades should be as good as possible and so should a person’s moral standing. There’s nothing inherently ok about being average. It’s just that we don’t find it fair to judge a person too hard if he’s no worse than most people.

Your original question was: “Can we pay off moral debt?” and I realize that the question is one of principle and not concerned with the exact measurement of each act of charity or transgression. The problem is not about subjective/objective, but that a debt to an unspecified collective doesn’t make sense. How could there be a debt to mankind? The idea of repayment necessitates some unity of feeling on the part of the creditor. Someone feels a loss and a repayment somehow relieves the pain. That unity of feeling obviously doesn’t exist in mankind. — Congau

Well now you’ve gone the complete opposite of the individual, all of mankind.
Two things. Its not an unspecified collective. It can be a specific one. A city, a town, a community within a city or town and whatever standards that group agrees on...and also its not about paying off the debt or accruing it to a specific person, Thats a separate judgement I would say. Its about the moral debt to the community. Stealing from that community and balancing it out with service to that community.

If we still judge the moral value of a person according to how we think his good and bad deeds add up, that doesn’t include any notion of debt since we only assess the achievements and shortcoming of the moral agent. If a student gets some excellent grades and some lousy ones, we call him a medium level student, but there is no preconceived assumption that overall grades are always ok if they balance in the middle. Grades should be as good as possible and so should a person’s moral standing. There’s nothing inherently ok about being average. It’s just that we don’t find it fair to judge a person too hard if he’s no worse than most people. — Congau

Is there something inherently not ok about being average? (Just curious)
Anyway,
We judge the student on the balance of his good and bad grades. That may come out medium, low or still excellent. Thats exactly what Im suggesting about taking someones moral measure.
So its not about aiming for average, but surpassing a minimum standard to qualify as a good person. This standard can actually be very high or very low, whatever the group or community has accepted/adopted.

So now you are moving from a universal standard for ethics (at least that’s where I thought you were in your OP) to a community based practical agreement. Sure, that could work, but then you’re not really talking about morality anymore but about political and legal theory (related but still different). It could be a good principle for organizing a society, but whether it is ethical or not would depend on the actual content of the agreement. Imagined a horrendously skewed law for acceptable repayment, e.g. giving a chewing gum to pay for murder. People’s sense of justice is surely more advanced than that, you could argue, but you have no guarantee that the community would not pass a law that in your opinion would be very unjust. What makes you think that a community of people necessarily would come up with fair principles? They have been inventing customs throughout history, but all customs are not just. (Communities have practiced human sacrifice etc.)

Is there something inherently not ok about being average? — DingoJones

No. No level is inherently ok or not ok. From a universal/moral perspective there is no such thing. People decide what they find acceptable for whatever reason. They make laws about what is acceptable behavior, but that’s only aimed at what would make the community work. Excellence would be too high a standard because it would make most people criminals and too much lenience would make society fall apart. Whatever the community decides, it is not to be confused with actual ethics (although by chance it may coincide with your ethical standards).

Ya, I wasnt intending to operate from a universal standard for ethics. Ive meant it to be about any given societies standard. All thats required is a standard by which people are morally judged, or their moral measure taken.
So to your point about it not being about ethics anymore but law/politics. I think we both recognise that distinction, however Im not referencing laws here. Im still referencing the ethics of the group/community, whatever they may be. Law is about whats best for society, and morality is about whats best according to a moral standard.
I agree that you could have unjust laws and imperfect ethics in a group, but thats not what Im asking about. Im asking about how the balance of moral/immoral works, regardless of what the individual standards that are in place may be. Its about how people are judged morally according to any given moral standard, not whether or not the standard is just or not. Thats a separate topic.
I understand its not always clear where the overlap between law and ethics is, so examples Ive used might have been confusing, for that I apologise.

Im asking about how the balance of moral/immoral works, regardless of what the individual standards that are in place may be. Its about how people are judged morally according to any given moral standard, not whether or not the standard is just or not. — DingoJones

So people are judged morally in any given society by adding and subtracting good and bad actions according to the standards of their society. So what?

Regardless of what those standards are, whether they are very strict or very lenient from our perspective, one would assume that the average member would have an average score, that is a balance between good and bad. It is pretty much a tautology: The standard of any society is determined by how the members generally behave, and how the members generally behave will be identical to the standard. Those who subscribe to the standard, the members in general and the average member, will naturally accept those who are like themselves, those who hit the balance. (They will condemn those below and praise those above.)

This is how we assess everyone in our society concerning everything, not only concerning moral issues (although we tend to confuse them). Someone who dresses in average clothes will get an average acceptance by average members. It’s just how it works, but is it how it ought to work? Should the average expectation be of any real concern to you at all? If you are not an average representative of your society, you will disagree with its verdict, so why bother?

So people are judged morally in any given society by adding and subtracting good and bad actions according to the standards of their society. So what? — Congau

So now we’re clear about how I framed this in the OP? This was all about clarifying on what basis I made my questions about moral debt.
Now that you’ve agreed there is moral measuring going on, Im interested in your thoughts about how they balance out so id refer you the OP.

Regardless of what those standards are, whether they are very strict or very lenient from our perspective, one would assume that the average member would have an average score, that is a balance between good and bad. It is pretty much a tautology: The standard of any society is determined by how the members generally behave, and how the members generally behave will be identical to the standard. Those who subscribe to the standard, the members in general and the average member, will naturally accept those who are like themselves, those who hit the balance. (They will condemn those below and praise those above.) — Congau

This is a tangent, and I fail to see the relevance. We may have gone into the weeds a bit, we’ve spent a lot of time sorting out the context of my question and not the question.

If we can measure the moral balance in this way, I dont see any reason why even heinous acts of immorality couldnt be balanced out in the same way as my stick of gum example above. This is where Id like to be challenged, as Im not very comfortable with that conclusion. — DingoJones

So people may tend to think that way and I conceded that I may instinctively do so myself. (“He has done some bad things and some good things, so I guess overall he’s an ok guy.”) but that doesn’t mean there’s any deeper truth to it. There is no logical reason why good and bad acts may cancel each other out. But you were not looking for a logical reason, were you, so why expect anything from the conclusion about the “heinous act”?

The reason you are not comfortable with the conclusion is that the original premise was only true in a very inaccurate sense. The premise says: this is how we generally and unreflectingly judge a person’s moral standing. The conclusion: therefore, we must also do it like that in this extreme case. The conclusion doesn’t seem true, so there must be something wrong with the premise.
This is exactly how we detect that our general assumptions are logical fallacies: It seems right from the start because we haven’t considered all implications.
But you didn’t exactly say that the premise was true, did you? You only said that this is what people (including yourself) generally do when considering someone’s approximate moral merits. It’s like explaining why you want something for dinner- it’s generally right but can’t be put through a logical test.

Well I disagree with pretty much all of that. I think its precisely logical, and do not think its correct to call it inaccurate. I think you can take moral measure on more than an instinctive level. I think you are mistaking discomfort for illogical.
Ok, so if a guy steals 20$, then feels bad so builds a few houses for homeless people, cures cancer and creates peace in the middle east to make up for it, you would say its illogical to A) forgive him and/or B) consider him a good person? And you think there is something inaccurate about saying his good deeds outweighs his bad deeds?

So, we are back where we started then. It’s not just that people tend to feel that way, and it’s not about how people in a given collective would give weight to different kinds of action.
Your claim is that this way of thinking has an absolute truth value (which makes it an ethical theory). Very good. Let’s test that.

Whatever is ethically good or bad is either an action or a person. We here assume we know what a good/bad action is and also the degree of good/bad action. This is about testing the ethical value of a person.

I would say that a good person is one who is inclined to do good actions. He has a mental disposition that makes him do what is good when it’s time to act. This is what is called virtue. A person possesses a degree of virtue now at this moment - he is now a good or bad person.
People can change. He may have been a terrible person in his youth, a murderer even, but now he has grown virtuous and that depends on the mental disposition and habits that he has now acquired. It doesn’t depend on what he has actually done, he may not have had the chance, or the change may have come over him relatively recently, but if something came up now, he would do the right thing.

So, how can we tell that he is now a good person? We can’t. We don’t know what is going on inside him. We can only judge from what we see from outside. We acknowledge his good acts, subtract his bad ones and guess his inner state based on that, but we may be wrong. An extremely good deed, curing cancer or creating peace in the middle east, doesn’t make him a good person unless he did it for the right reason, that is a desire to do good. (Maybe he did it to make money)

ay of thinking has an absolute truth value (which makes it an ethical theory). Very good. Let’s test that. — Congau

No im not claiming absolute truth. Its relative to whatever standard of the society/group.

I would say that a good person is one who is inclined to do good actions. He has a mental disposition that makes him do what is good when it’s time to act. This is what is called virtue. A person possesses a degree of virtue now at this moment - he is now a good or bad person.
People can change. He may have been a terrible person in his youth, a murderer even, but now he has grown virtuous and that depends on the mental disposition and habits that he has now acquired. It doesn’t depend on what he has actually done, he may not have had the chance, or the change may have come over him relatively recently, but if something came up now, he would do the right thing. — Congau

So your objection is essentially that morality isnt about taking moral measure of the past but only as the persons Moral disposition is currently? Is that right?

So, how can we tell that he is now a good person? We can’t. We don’t know what is going on inside him. We can only judge from what we see from outside. We acknowledge his good acts, subtract his bad ones and guess his inner state based on that, but we may be wrong. An extremely good deed, curing cancer or creating peace in the middle east, doesn’t make him a good person unless he did it for the right reason, that is a desire to do good. (Maybe he did it to make money) — Congau

How do you separate the act from the intention? If a guy saves babies and cures cancer so he can pick up chicks easier, the act is clearly morally good and the intention not so much, but since the act is an act of good Im not sure it makes sense to say the actor is bad (or not good).


.

im not claiming absolute truth. Its relative to whatever standard of the society/group. — DingoJones

I don’t quite believe you think it’s that relative. If a society/group considers that donating a chewing gum makes up for murder, they would be plain wrong, wouldn’t they?

So your objection is essentially that morality isnt about taking moral measure of the past but only as the persons Moral disposition is currently? Is that right? — DingoJones

If by morality you mean moral character, that’s right. And I think that’s what you are trying to measure with your scheme. Isn’t it? The issue is the moral worth of the person and I don’t know what that would mean other than character.

How do you separate the act from the intention? If a guy saves babies and cures cancer so he can pick up chicks easier, the act is clearly morally good and the intention not so much, but since the act is an act of good Im not sure it makes sense to say the actor is bad (or not good). — DingoJones

Right. The action is still good, and the actor is neither good nor bad based on this action.
Of course it’s difficult or impossible for us, the observers, to know his intention. That’s why we make shortcut judgments based on his actions, and that’s why your scheme might seem to work on the surface. We can’t look inside a person’s head, so we assess him based on the circumstantial evidence we have.
That would be the way we actually judge character, but it’s highly inaccurate and often unjust. We look at the drunkard who neglects wife and kids for his booze, which of course is bad, but we don’t know what brought him there, what tragedies he may be fighting against. Therefore, we shouldn’t judge anyone, if we can refrain from it, and a system like yours is an invitation to superficial judgment.

I don’t quite believe you think it’s that relative. If a society/group considers that donating a chewing gum makes up for murder, they would be plain wrong, wouldn’t they? — Congau

Different discussion. Im not asking about your own “objective” morality and how the societies morality is measured against it, im just referencing the societies standards. (Specifically so we dont have to dick around with an entirely different discussion about whats right and wrong). Im asking about how the measurement is done, not what its being measured against.

If by morality you mean moral character, that’s right. And I think that’s what you are trying to measure with your scheme. Isn’t it? The issue is the moral worth of the person and I don’t know what that would mean other than character. — Congau

No, by morality I mean morality. Not a scheme, a simple moral question about how we settle on moral questions. Not moral worth, moral balance. This is entirely a straw-man...straw-men. I chose the framing for a reason, if you think im not using the best words for my meaning you’ll have to show me why first.

Right. The action is still good, and the actor is neither good nor bad based on this action.
Of course it’s difficult or impossible for us, the observers, to know his intention. That’s why we make shortcut judgments based on his actions, and that’s why your scheme might seem to work on the surface. We can’t look inside a person’s head, so we assess him based on the circumstantial evidence we have.
That would be the way we actually judge character, but it’s highly inaccurate and often unjust. We look at the drunkard who neglects wife and kids for his booze, which of course is bad, but we don’t know what brought him there, what tragedies he may be fighting against. Therefore, we shouldn’t judge anyone, if we can refrain from it, and a system like yours is an invitation to superficial judgment. — Congau

None of that answers the question.

Im interested in some thoughts concerning how moral/immoral actions balance out.
When we judge a person as moral or immoral, it seems to me that we are measuring his moral actions against his immoral ones. We consider the act, its consequences, collateral benefit or damage and how it all fits morally speaking. An ethical cost/benefit analysis if you will.
If a person commits theft but regrets in it for some reason and spends the rest of their life giving most of what they have to charity (not necessarily a formal one, could just be to people he meets who are in need or whatever) then he has worked off some kind of moral debt. We might even say the person has paid their moral debt and has a surplus, moral credit, if they ended up with a huge imbalance of moral acts over immoral ones. (For example, stole a pack of gum but saved millions of lives and donated billions of dollars to charity)
If we can measure the moral balance in this way, I dont see any reason why even heinous acts of immorality couldnt be balanced out in the same way as my stick of gum example above. This is where Id like to be challenged, as Im not very comfortable with that conclusion.

The most obvious objection to that line of reasoning is principal based, that breaking the rules is breaking the rules and no action can justifiably balance another. Thats a more fundamental issue, I dont really buy into principle based ethics. For every principal, its trivially easy to show an instance where adhering to that principal is the act of a moral monster. For example, its wrong to lie. Well, what if the lie saves a billion people? The person who refuses to lie in that instance, is a moral monster. The only way to get around that contradiction is to make yet another appeal to principal, or commit semantic fallacy where the acts are considered separately (the lie was still wrong, the saving was right).

Id most like to discuss the first bit, but I recognise that it relies on a non-principal based approach to ethics. Perhaps someone would be sporting enough to consider this thread in the context of a non-principal based approach, even if they do not normally do so.

Anyway, what Im not interested in discussing is the objectivity/subjectivity of morality. This discussion doesnt require it and if you think it does then Im sorry to say Im not talking to you. (By which I mean, ignore this thread as its not addressed to you.)

So, can we pay off moral debt? Are we moral simply by having our moral acts (and all the good they do) outweigh the immoral acts (and all the bad they do)?
(Also, I realise good acts can have bad results and vice versa, I think we can cross that bridge when we come to it, which we very well may not have to) — DingoJones

Hello DingoJones,

I'll start with breaking down what you want into claims, to simplify it for myself. Below that I propose my idea of a solution, before continuing by elaboration upon it.

Claim 1: We judge people as Moral/immoral. Claim 2: We do this by measuring their immoral acts up against their moral. Claim 3: We use an ethical cost/benefit analysis, where we consider the act, its consequences, collateral benefit or damage and how it all fits morally speaking.
Hypothetical example of how this should/could work. "Commits theft (Moral debt), spends life giving to charity and people they meet. (Pays debt) At one point achieves Moral Surplus, goes from Moral Debt to Moral Credit."

Claim 4: Refusing to lie to save billions of people makes you a moral monster.

Conclusion: Given the above claims, further elaborated upon by the hypothetical example, any act should be repayable. I'm not very comfortable with that conclusion.

- Do not use a principle based approach and do not refer to Objectivity of morality or subjectivity of morality. -

How I view this.
You say you are not very comfortable with the fact that your conclusion shows that any act is repayable, and you wish to disprove the conclusion to resolve the feeling. I propose a different solution, namely to fill in the gaps by adding claims, so that your conclusion is more fleshed out. The reason for this is that your conclusion makes sense given the premises, so it makes sense to look at it as it is. Another solution to resolve the issue would of course be to change the premises, but that is not a solution in the context of you having written this OP.

Here are some claims that might fill some gaps. There are still things missing though, and I haven't continued that far as I want to know if this fulfills your criteria.

Claim 5:
Every community is collectively responsible for the immoral acts of every member.

Claim 6:
It is a collective immoral act not to stop immoral acts.

Claim 7:
A community, that collectively has moral debt, becomes morally bankrupt.

With these claims in mind, let's look at the conclusion again.
Any act is repayable, yes, but not unconditionally. If an individual racks up debt, and is not stopped, the community might turn bankrupt. A morally bankrupt community loses it ability to discern whether individuals have moral debt, to measure moral against immoral acts, and also to analyze their moral economy.

I'll stop there, and ask what you think about this line of thinking?

Kindly,
Caerulea-Lawrence

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I think the claims 1-3 are a fair assessment of what Ive offered in the OP.
Claim 4 was actually an example for some of the claims 1-3 and shouldn't be taken as a claim unto itself. Im not sure it adds anything claims 1-3 do not cover.

Im not sure what context claims 5-7 are for. What are the gaps you mention? If I understand those then perhaps claims 5-7 will make more sense to me.
Also, I take it you disagree with one or more of my premisses?

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I think the claims 1-3 are a fair assessment of what Ive offered in the OP.
Claim 4 was actually an example for some of the claims 1-3 and shouldn't be taken as a claim unto itself. Im not sure it adds anything claims 1-3 do not cover.

Im not sure what context claims 5-7 are for. What are the gaps you mention? If I understand those then perhaps claims 5-7 will make more sense to me.
Also, I take it you disagree with one or more of my premisses? — DingoJones

Hi again DingoJones,

You are welcome. Then let us ignore claim 4 as a claim.

And to answer that first, for the sake of the argument, I was not trying to disagree with your premises or your conclusion. But for your interest I added that below my answers to your questions; see The disagree option

I see that using the word claims might seem like I disagree, or want to add additional premises. That was not my intention. My intention was to try to answer questions that I found reasonable to ask given your premises. Here is the reasoning behind the "claims/answers" I made. Hope that clears it up for you.

First, I assume claim 1-3 are true. "We can judge Moral/immoral, by balancing moral against immoral, and furthermore are able to do an ethical cost/benefit analysis of every situation."

The gaps I mentioned are the parameters you haven't specified. So I started by looking at one of these. The parameter differentiation of, how many does it take to pass moral judgment? You mentioned we specifically, and not I, meaning it could be between 1 and everyone, and I chose to interpret the we as a community.
Did you have another specification in mind? If so, which?

Another parameter, a follow-up to the first, is how skewed the ability to make accurate cost/benefit analyses are between the individual and the community.
I chose to make the community collectively responsible, meaning that if an individual does a "10" immoral act, it affects the total score of the community by -10.

Which is answer/claim 5:
"Every community is collectively responsible for the immoral acts of every member."

The next answer/claim, claim 6, is an answer to the following parameters: Is the ability to make an analysis absolute? You haven't mentioned any limitations to your claim 1-3, so I assumed yes. We can make judgment of each and every action, and our cost/benefit analysis are always accurate.
Which opens up the following parameter: If we, the community, know the consequence of every action and its moral cost, are we in not acting upon this knowledge ourselves committing immoral acts? To which I arbitrarily chose the answer yes.

Which is where claim/answer 6 comes in:
"It is a collective immoral act not to stop immoral acts."

My answer/claim 7 is a response to this situation: If the community, being fully aware of the consequences of moral/immoral actions and with more power than the individual as well, is unable to have a moral surplus, are they immoral or morally incompetent? I'm not assuming the community is perfect, but if they know the consequences of every situation, and they end up immoral aka morally bankrupt, shouldn't that have much bigger implications than the half blind individual not seeing the full extent of his/her immorality?

And to that I answered:
A community, that collectively has moral debt, becomes morally bankrupt.

And when a community becomes morally bankrupt, I just assumed it lost every power and privilege it had with regard to claim 1 through 3. The reason for this being the simple idea that with great power comes great responsibility. So, if you can do claim 1-3, but you fail, the consequences should be big as well. In this case, I chose that they turn morally blind. I stopped there, as I wanted to hear your thoughts.

The disagree option:
If you want to argue that your premises are fundamental or indispensable in some way, I would love to see that. But you haven't argued much for your claims, and there are numerous ways the claims conflict as well. Since your claims and their connection is not well-proven in my opinion, and therefore the conclusion is not solid. I said you could just change the premises. If you find the premises compelling, then for someone to disprove it, shouldn't it first be proven?

One thing I would like proof of, is why Claim 1, 2 and 3 are connected? I would also like proof of the individual claims, and proof of them being better than the alternatives - or at least why you chose these over other options.

Here is one example of different options to your initial claims:
Another option to claim 1, is that we judge people just because we want to. Moreover, we can also judge people without adhering to claim 2. We can also judge people as immoral/moral without using an ethical cost/benefit analyses.

If we add in the parameters, there are a lot of questions too, even without undoing your premises. In each of the questions, I make a choice regarding a parameter. What is your choice of parameters, and why. What is your proof, or ideas, around why this is the right choice?

What if claim 1-3 is true, but we forget the score after a month?
What if claim 1-3 is true, but only groups of 10 can make accurate judgments?
What if claim 1-3 is true, but we can only judge actions that happened in the past week?
What if claim 1-3 is true, but different groups use a different basis for their ethical analysis?
What if claim 1-3 is true, but we choose to pass the debt on?

Kindly but in debate-mode,
Caerulea-Lawrence