Doing the right thing takes willpower because the right thing is often painful in the short term. Exercise, eating healthy, helping others are examples. Contrast with eating sweets - the wrong thing to - is attractive to people of low willpower - because it is short term pleasure in exchange for long term pain. — Devans99
I think perfecting your morals includes adopting a definition of group as 'all sentient life' - leading to respect for all sentient life. — Devans99
Agreed, but within this group, how do you solve the trolley problem? As an example? Moral dilemmas need a method that includes the complexity of many different situations. — Christoffer
I think its based on pain and pleasure:
- Completely right is maximum pleasure and minimum pain for the individual and group.
- Completely wrong is minimum pleasure and maximum pain for the individual and group. — Devans99
So in the trolley problem, we kill 1 person rather than 5. — Devans99
First I'm not asking for what is right or wrong, rather were do our sense of right and wrong come from
— hachit
Long term > Short term
So Right is what is optimal for the long term (exercise, healthy diet, helping others)
Wrong is what is optimal for the short term (sweets, laziness, harming others) — Devans99
Have you read the moral theories I posted before? It's basically based on this value calculus :wink: — Christoffer
But if we think long term, how do we know that the one person killed isn't the causal start of something that leads to a cure for cancer? That person's child or they themselves might solve such a cure in the future, meaning that if you kill 5 to save 1, you save more in the long term. This is why the trolley problem becomes problematic. — Christoffer
First I'm not asking for what is right or wrong, rather were do our sense of right and wrong come from
— hachit
Long term > Short term
So Right is what is optimal for the long term (exercise, healthy diet, helping others)
Wrong is what is optimal for the short term (sweets, laziness, harming others)
— Devans99
Is this a joke? Did you not read what he just said? — S
Essentially the same physiology yet two very different moral frameworks. Clearly, it is inadequate to say that the mind or limbic system is the source of morals because it cannot account for vast differences in moral frameworks.
— praxis
Great point. — Merkwurdichliebe
It seems as if you're unaware that people in the same family, including twins, even, can and often do have completely different moral views. — Terrapin Station
Well it doesn't. The pleasure machine thought experiment refutes that. — S
I run into the problem were the first learn it from, after all life seems pointless in the light of reason alone. Sure people my say we learn it from a deity but some of them (if they were really) don't seem to care about human life. — hachit
But the pleasure machine cannot maximise pleasure because it cannot give me a role in society which I value above all.
So the thought experiment is contradictory. — Devans99
Ok, then, I'll give you a chance to convince me. Tell me, how does the limbic system directly and immediately cause the emotional experience of love.
My prediction, you will completely dodge the question like you do every time. — Merkwurdichliebe
Ok, then, I'll give you a chance to convince me. Tell me, how does the limbic system directly and immediately cause the emotional experience of love. — Merkwurdichliebe
No, the pleasure machine isn't contradictory. Once again, the pleasure machine is machine which gives maximum pleasure. If you're talking about a machine which doesn't do this, then you're talking about something else. — S
It is inadequate to say that the mind or limbic system is the source of morals because it cannot account for vast differences in moral frameworks. Saying "we often feel differently and judge moral matters differently" isn't explaining or accounting for the differences. — praxis
If anyone refuses to get it, then it cannot be maximising their pleasure. For example, the machine would have to give the occupant the illusion that they are a successful member of society, rather than strapped into a pleasure machine. — Devans99
Then everyone would get in — Devans99
I missed where you property [sic] responded to the following, btw.
It is inadequate to say that the mind or limbic system is the source of morals because it cannot account for vast differences in moral frameworks. Saying "we often feel differently and judge moral matters differently" isn't explaining or accounting for the differences.
— praxis — praxis
That's astoundingly ignorant. You've asked everyone in the world about this, and they all answered in the affirmative? — S
The source of morals is both nature and nurture. — praxis
If it was going to give someone everything you could possibly want then we can say only stupid people making the wrong decision would get not get in.
So pleasure/pain (in all its emotional/physical guises) really is all there is to happiness for right thinking people. — Devans99
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