I’m suggesting something like the trolley problem except you’re the person that has to die for a larger number to live. — Captain Homicide

I covered that one.

(No throwing the fat guy under the trolley, unless he's controlling its downward hurtle.) — Vera Mont

Nobody, except the high priests of ancient religions and military commanders, has the right to decide who is to be sacrificed for whom, how many deaths are worth how many lives and which ones. Except in ancient religions and warfare, self-sacrifice is voluntary, not morally required.

A breach of moral standards is wrong, no matter what the practical or emotional justification.

TB, leprosy, polio - whatever. The moral issue is not personal hygiene but public safety. Getting drunk is not immoral; driving while drunk is. Having unprotected sex with a consenting adult is not immoral; having unprotected sex when you have a STD is.

Maybe ask yourself the question of whether handwashing rose to the level of a "moral act" during COVID-19. — Leontiskos

I doubt it. Hands are not a major vector in the transmission of Covid; airborne particles are. (Don't assume it's over!) The refusal to wear a mask in public when one did not know whether one was a carrier would certainly count as immoral. This is not a question of personal hygiene; this is a question of following or refusing to follow medically advised guidelines in an epidemic. It's situational and specific. As a general rule, hand-washing doesn't figure in moral codes.

Nobody is expected to argue about anything, but everyone is expected to provide arguments for their points of view, beliefs and the statements they make. — Sir2u

Every statement? Every POV? Every belief?
Conversations could get really, really cumbersome. How be, we just provide links to authoritative sources for statements of fact, acknowledge our personal opinion, belief or perspective, and provide arguments only for philosophical positions?

The people in this situation aren’t attacking you but you are still forced to choose between killing them or sacrificing yourself. — Captain Homicide

Nobody knows what they would do in that situation. If it happens, you do what your instinct dictates, which you either do not survive or regret for the rest of your life. Unless you're a psychopath.

Thanks. She didn't get to do it very long, did she? I've been at this a little while longer, and the fear of losing our minds or each other is very much a looming disaster in old age.

Would it be moral to kill two or more people to save yourself even though their lives outnumber yours? — Captain Homicide

If two or more people were threatening me and my loved ones, certainly. That's what the self-defence defence is. The killing of innocent bystanders in order to save yourself is never accepted as justification.
The number you sacrifice or the number you save thereby are not at issue. (Except in religion, of course.) The moral justification only works if you kill someone in order to prevent them killing you or some innocent victim(s).
(No throwing the fat guy under the trolley, unless he's controlling its downward hurtle.)

My question is how does one know when that is the case - ie they're chatting sh*t. And to the contrary, when they really do know what they're talking about. — Benj96

I have a pretty firm grasp on some subjects, it's insecure on others and there are some that I have not been able to grasp at all (and some in which I have no interest). I have collected reliable information on some subjects, sketchy on others and and there are some subjects on which my information is fragmentary at best. I know which is which, so I'm confident discussing the ones I'm sure of; the ones I'm not sure of, I check sources before making a statement; the ones in which I'm completely at sea, I steer clear of.

In the past year or two, I've had to resort to memory aids even in areas where I used to be articulate: I forget names, the correct terminology and quantities. (I also forget peas cooking on the stove and have destroyed several pots, but that's another matter.)

In idle chat, it matters much less whether one's information is strictly accurate, as long as it's plausible and inoffensive. I do make a reasonable effort to avoid calling other people morons, even if I know their opinion is ill-informed.

As for delusions, I've been fortunate enough not to be subjected to intensive indoctrination and it's some help to be an immigrant, so that one can compare very different points of view without necessarily embracing either. If I still have illusions about things like the perfectibility of systems, institutions or humankind, they're fading fast.

Yet if bad personal hygiene surpassed a certain threshold, such as when it would cause others to become physically sick, it would then be deemed "immoral." — Leontiskos

Would it? I've not seen it mentioned in any code. How do we determine whether others are becoming sick as a direct consequence of one person's state of cleanliness? Is he making then sick deliberately, or is it simply that he lacks access to hygiene facilities? What if his mental condition is unequal to the required judgment?

No sound moral philosophy makes arbitrary distinctions. — Leontiskos

And this is an arbitrary distinction, which is why cleanliness may be next to godliness, but filthiness is not next to satanism.

How many people who use “begging the question” actually know what it means? — Mikie

They usually mean something like : "That gives rise to another question"
I let it slide, even from people who quote irrelevant swathes of Wittgenstein at me, because the original meaning is poorly named. Probably clumsy translation from ancient Greek or summut. I would very much prefer they accused me of circular reasoning, because I can at least refute that.

In fact, " raise a question or point that has not been dealt with; invite an obvious question." is listed by online Oxford as the #1 definition now,
while the fallacy "assume the truth of an argument or proposition to be proved, without arguing it" has slipped to #2.

Yes it is !!! — Agree-to-Disagree

Very well reasoned, too; compelling.

That really isn't an argument.

Why is everybody expected to argue about everything all the time anyway?
Oh yes, I remember: "This is a philosophy forum." and "That's begging the question."

If you don't want to be the kind of person that does X, then by definition you deem X immoral. — Leontiskos

Not everything in human physiology or psychology is divided on strictly moral grounds. Some things are just embarrassing, or show weakness, or present one in an unfavourable light. Overeating is not immoral and we who indulge in too much good food don't regard ourselves as sinners, but still don't like to be regarded as fat. Concern for one's health is not immoral, but people don't like to identify as hypochondriacs. There is nothing immoral about lax personal hygiene, but nobody likes to be called Pigpen.

What about vines that choke the life out of trees in order to blossom and spread - is there an ethics we should look for there? — Fire Ologist

I'm pretty sure vines aren't smart enough to conceive of an ethical framework for their action. Or have a choice of actions, for that matter.

We are animals too. — Fire Ologist

Yes. So we can use that as an excuse for acting like other animals. And when we choose to act as if we owned all the other animals, we claim superiority.

People create ethics and can apply it to everything they do, such as how they kill animals to eat. — Fire Ologist

Yes. They can. Lions can't. People can also determine to what degree their ethical judgment affects their actions, each according to their inclination.

The point though, is that another visionary just takes up the idea, and actually takes charge of enacting policy. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that is a point, howbeit unrelated to the comment I made. Another visionary takes an idea, or part of an idea, and incorporates it into his own agenda to enact a policy that bears little or no resemblance to the one the big-picture guy had in mind. That doesn't ever put the originator of a big picture vision into a position of directing his society, which is pretty much all I said.

You make the blanket generalization of assuming that those who have visions, but do not move toward bringing their visions to policy — Metaphysician Undercover

I didn't say 'do not move toward; I said they lacked the power.

are "good",

Nope, didn't say that, either. I didn't say all visionaries are good, only that the good ones are not in charge.

and those visionaries who move toward enacting the policies are evil.

Not 'move toward'; seize the power to do so, and yes, many of those are bad.
That's not what I wrote, but it often is the case in real life.

But I think people's inclinations can be affected by arguments if they are a reasonable person, which I think most people are (or believe themselves to be). — xorn

There is a world of difference between active reasoning and wishing to consider oneself reasonable. That difference manifests most obviously in their choice of information sources. If their inclination is to make reasoned decisions, they pay attention to all available evidence without prejudice, weigh the options and yes, their opinion and habits may change. In fact, many have https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/11/vegetarianism-rise-fall-world-chart/

If they're looking for a reason to keep doing what they're used to, or follow their cravings, they can find authoritative sources to reinforce their own vested belief. Where the diet was plant-based due to religion, tradition or economics, many people are tending toward what they consider a more western, upwardly-mobile consumption. Their reason tells them: the old ways made us backward and weak; the imperialist's ways will make us successful and powerful.

But on average, more truthful arguments receive some advantage from their truthfulness. — xorn

This, I have yet to see in the public arena.
There is always a bullhorn. One of the biggest and loudest is money: a huge amount of capital is tied up in and an obscene amount of profit is made from the processing and distribution of meat products. That industry has a formidable presence in the media. And it already has an enormous constituency - red-blooded red-meat eaters, eager to be convinced that their diet is the only healthy, wholesome, natural one.
Add to this the secondary economic reality: switching to a healthy vegetarian diet requires a great deal of thought and calculation to work into an average family food budget. The processed plant-based meat substitutes are very expensive and getting inflated faster than other foodstuffs (perhaps because they are regarded as luxury items). To prepare vegetarian fare - even the compromised ovo-lacto versions - you have to learn new recipes, appropriate combinations, and some way to make it palatable to family members who don't like giving up what they're used to.

Not many food-providers (most commonly women) have the time and emotional resources to invest. Mothers who do make all that effort may be rewarded with children who don't grow up obese or develop Type 2 diabetes.

I don't see how this significantly differs from when the person is alive. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only in that the visionary was not in charge of making policy during his lifetime and is not in charge of making policy after he's dead. I.e. never.

All those mentioned, Paul, Lenin, and Robespierre, are visionaries in their own right. — Metaphysician Undercover

Certainly, but I cannot call them benevolent.

That reality is, the truth of the matter which you refuse to respect, and that is that visionaries really do enact policies, and where they derive their ideas from is not relevant to this truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Mussolini qualifies on one count, anyway. So that's all right, just so somebody has a vision of some kind and the power to impose it on others. Sorry I can't respect them all equally.

Even if you have different values, it's hard to value human well-being and draw the line at animals. You certainly can draw that line, but it seems arbitrary. — xorn

It is arbitrary. Even when we encode it in law, it's still arbitrary: the line keeps moving in response to public sentiment.

Some people are devoid of empathy; others assert that all farm animals are raised for that purpose, so it's all right, while a few still maintain that without meat, we would suffer malnutrition and die.
Some claim an ancestral right to whatever they want; some put themselves in a 'higher' value category in one kind of situation and on par with other species in another; some refuse to consider the issue at all; some rationalize their preference on religious or cultural grounds. The committed carnivores are not swayed by ecological, economic or any other proof that industrial food-animal farming is bad for the world and bad for the people who engage in it. A common counter-argument is modern farming and slaughtering methods are 'humane', while denying that modern technology can yield a healthier product without the mess and suffering.

There is no point in debating this: people decide according to their own inclination and every decision is defensible in some manner.

With this in mind do you think there things that aren’t immoral but you still shouldn’t want to be the kind of person that does them even if you’re the only person affected? — Captain Homicide

my italics
I took this to mean, acts that do not come under a moral code, but are nevertheless considered shameful; things that, if they are witnessed by other people, would diminish our social standing and/or self-esteem. Like throwing a tantrum in a public place or throwing food at the television screen.

it is not me making a judgment about people; I am just describing how disclaiming belief works in the world. — Antony Nickles

... the world of believers. That is not how it works in the world of atheists. We don't think of our ourselves or one another as

lost to the particular cause, or hopeless, maybe for anything going the way they hoped someone they trusted would do, but also by those that feel they know everything and have complete control over the world. — Antony Nickles

The way words work in the world is pretty much any way people choose to use them. Words are helpless in the hands and mouths and minds of manipulators.

I wonder what modern televangelists would do with Jesus.

Do they make social policy, determine legal, ethical and moral codes?
No, never."
Clearly, whether the social policy is enacted before or after the person is dead, is irrelevant to the question of whether these people are the ones who "make" the policies. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, it is absolutely relevant. Once dead, the visionary has no control or ownership of his idea. Anybody can 'interpret' it, subsection it, misapply it, misdirect it any way they want. Paul ran with an idea Jesus had and made a complete hash of it. Lenin did similarly with Marx. And poor old Rousseau did not fare any better at the hands of Robespierre. The ones who enact are not the visionaries and not usually benevolent and the 'influence' is not reflected very well in the actuality that ensues.

Nature isn't "the peaceable kingdom", but it isn't entirely "red in tooth and claw" either. — BC

Why are you telling me this? I'm the one who has been attempting to explain that human ethical values evolved along with us, from the social systems of our ancestors, all the way back to insects; that they originate from the need to keep an orderly state of affairs going.

Please don't leap to any semblance you may see in human male behavior. — BC

Too late! About 70 years too late.

But for the fifth time, survival is question begging. To survive as such has no ethical meaning. — Astrophel

Fine.

But....THIS is incidental to the issue. I mean, seriously? — Astrophel

The "issue" is tucked up safe in bed. Good night.

Dogs and cats don't "talk" in this.....or do they? — Astrophel

They communicate, and there is a structure to their language, just as there is to ours. The language of dogs consists of sounds, body stance, gestures of head, paws and tail, facial expressions, ear and hair erection. They are quite capable of reprimanding one another for rule breaking, status offenses and breaches of etiquette - and of responding appropriately to such a reprimand.

Yes, but you see, this begs the question: what is this social cohesion all about, essentially? — Astrophel

For the - what? Fifth? - time: it's about SURVIVAL. I'm reasonably sure you'll let your bottle of wine and deck furniture be taken rather than your life.

So, philosophy wants to inquire as to the nature of value. — Astrophel

So, let Philosophy inquire to its tiny heart's content, it won't find anything deeper than survival as a basis of basic values. Once you're dead, you stop asking questions.

for one cannot even conceive of a moral prohibition without conceiving value. — Astrophel

By the 'one' who can't conceive, I have to assume you mean yourself. The value of things is tertiary. The value of civic responsibility is secondary; the value of social cohesion is primary. The value of keeping peace in the community - whether through the protection of property or of institutions or of traffic laws or of civil deneanour - is far more important than how anybody feels about their stuff.

All you say is not wrong at all. It is simply not philosophy. — Astrophel

That's as may be. I'm not the one who ate all those textbooks. But it's enough for a derail that's nowhere close to answering the OP.

what is the underlying basis that makes this discussion even possible? — Astrophel

The internet.
But I think it's had more than a fair run.

Those are simply examples, the wine and the chairs. This was clear, I thought. — Astrophel

They were two irrelevancies among many. Ethics isn't about your preference or what you happen to value at any given moment. It's about interpersonal transactions conducted in such manner as to promote the cohesion of a social unit.

It [survival] is a term with no ethical dimension to it. — Astrophel

It doesn't need an 'ethical dimension' - whatever an ethical dimension is - because the will to survive is the root cause of the need for social systems, moral codes, ethical and legal frameworks.
All other desires, lusts, adorations etc. can only follow if the basic requirements of survival have been met. And they can not be met by solitary humans; therefore humans need a family and community in order to thrive and they can't thrive unless their survival is assured.

Whether you value something or not is irrelevant to the prohibition against stealing. It's just as unethical to steal a cow from a rancher who's lost count of his stock as from a farmer with only one cow. (It's less immoral, but equally illegal; the ethical issue is the theft, not the cow or whether anyone loves her.) The point of the prohibition is that if people take stuff without the owner's permission, it causes strife within the community.
Even so with every other breach of ethics. If a supplier of meat uses a dishonest scale, that impoverishes members of the community. If a soldier skives off for an assignation while on guard duty, he puts his comerades in danger. If a carrier of disease breaks quarantine, he endangers everyone he meets. If a man seduces his colleague's daughter, that causes conflict in the workplace.
It's not about how you feel about your things - it's about the welfare of the polity.

No valuing, no ethics. — Astrophel

Possibly. But the basic valuing is not of the material possession, but of the survival of individuals, which are dependent on the survival of the social unit. The secondary value is adding to the welfare of the community, and thus promoting the welfare of each member. Under secondary-value ethics, we could include assisting the elderly, protecting the very young, cutting down noxious weeds, setting a good example for children, and ordinary everyday courtesy.

This is why a certain level of corruption - which is simply, an abandonment of ethical behaviours and standards by a large enough percent of a population - can lead to the utter collapse of the nation. Abandonment of common courtesy, respect and regard for one's fellow citizens is a less notable component of corruption. Primary and secondary values.
The emotional ones come far down the priority scale, and fall entirely outside the purview of ethics.

This makes it sound like it depends on me how language works; as if it depends on you how what you said, says what it does. — Antony Nickles

What I say depends on me; what you hear depends on you. If I say 'slippery' and you hear 'irrational' that's only because language can be used in various ways; it's up to people who use it to decide whether they do so co-operatively, so that language conveys the intended messages, or antagonistically, so that a message is diverted. I might have intended to imply something I did not say, or I may not have. You can't know my intention; you can only guess, that is, infer. If you do that with good will, the inadvertent miscommunication can readily be corrected; if you do it with ill will, it can as readily lead to an argument.

So to suggest that the implications of what you say are just my opinion, is to overlook the rationality of language, again. — Antony Nickles

I don't see where the rationality of language requires you to read an entirely different word from the one that was written. When I write 'your interpretation' and you read 'just your opinion', that is not forced upon you by the structure or function of language; that is a choice.

Thus why “I do not believe in God” is said by those lost to the particular cause, or hopeless, maybe for anything going the way they hoped someone they trusted would do, but also by those that feel they know everything and have complete control over the world. — Antony Nickles

That's one hell of a big inference about a whole hell of a lot people you know nothing about.

I think you are wrong, and these people did effect changes within their lifetimes. However that little disagreement is irrelevant because the condition of "in their lifetime" has been arbitrarily added by you anyway — Metaphysician Undercover

Not arbitrarily, but to fill in an oversight. I had neglected to point out earlier that people make national policy and religious doctrine while they are alive.
You eventually returned with a list of men who wrote books, that may later have influenced the thinking of men who made policy and revolution. None of the resulting policies and actions, AFAIK, yielded the outcome envisioned by the writers.

Could you give some examples of benevolent visionaries who made national policy or church doctrine? — Vera Mont

In ancient times we could begin with Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. And since these three were greatly influenced by Plato, we could designate him as having a secondary role. In more modern times we might consider philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and even Marx. — Metaphysician Undercover

In ancient times we could begin with Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. And since these three were greatly influenced by Plato, we could designate him as having a secondary role. In more modern times we might consider philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and even Marx. — Metaphysician Undercover

They all may well have influenced people, even long after they were dead, but in their lifetime, they changed not one dot or iota of public policy or prevailing morality or general standards of behaviour.

But you are not arguing the case put before you. — Astrophel

Sorry; I see no case to answer.
If you have made a case for something or against something, I can't follow what it is. I sincerely do not believe that your taste in wine, or concern for your lawn-chair is the basis of an ethical system.

But the term as "the rock bottom foundation of awareness" has no value in a discussion about ethics if there is nothing IN the term that is inherently ethical. — Astrophel

That's because it's been around a whole helluva lot longer than ethics; the concept of ethics comes long after animals with brains big enough to think of it. They couldn't have got there without surviving the evolutionary steps that precede it. Nor will you have children, wine and Brussels sprouts without having survived to get them. (Also, I fail to see the ethical component of Brussels sprouts, but that's just me. )

But then, what good is survival? — Astrophel

For some people, it's no use at all. But for the majority of living things, it's the primal drive. It doesn't need a specific utility: it is the rock-bottom foundation of awareness and effort; the first cause by which all things needful, useful and beneficial are measured.

Survival as such applies to anything, as in, I hope the lawn chair survives the storm — Astrophel

Pink herring, conflating a careless figure of speech with the primal instinct. The lawn chair was never alive. You might go out into the storm to save your neighbour or your dog, because life matters - fence-posts don't.

The ideas expressed above try to show what it is that makes our survival (and those of animals) ethical at all. — Astrophel

That's backward. What makes anything ethical is its contribution to survival.

For that the essence of ethics has to be exposed. — Astrophel

I don't think it needs to be exposed any more times than I've already done.
If you have a more convincing source for the concept, by all means, expose away!

Therefore, an inquiry into the nature of ethics must look here, in the concreteness of our existence for the essence of ethics. — Astrophel

The concreteness of our existence is that we have physical and mental requirements and an innate will to survive. In isolation, very few humans can survive on their own in adulthood; none at all from infancy. So ethics and morality are constructed on the requirements for survival in groups.

Never say "never". — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay: I should have said: Never in the modern world, or never in the written, civilized history of mankind. Certainly in the early millennia, when people lived in nature and had direct contact with the non-human world, they were more aware of other creatures, of water and trees and landscape. Some, like the Australian natives, set up a system of stewardship over the resources they needed to survive, while other hunted entire species to extinction.

You appear to be not well educated in the history of humanity. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's true; I have not made an exhaustive study of it. Could you give some examples of benevolent visionaries who made national policy or church doctrine?

"Good" is clearly defined by a larger context than the social context. — Metaphysician Undercover

By whom? Defined where? What larger context?
If you mean that some humans are able to see a larger picture than is depicted in our social codes, yes, I agree that has always been so. Do these big-picture individuals attempt to communicate their vision? Of course they do. Do they make social policy, determine legal, ethical and moral codes?
No, never.

You have completely lost me.

You seem to be saying that the world of animals and their lack of ethical principles provides the substratum for the analysis of our world's ethics. — Astrophel

Not their lack of ethical principles; their social mores, which are not articulated as an abstract concept. Everything grows out of all that went before.

This has to be shown, not assumed. — Astrophel

I can't possibly show you the entire spectrum of social behaviours in other species. Here is a starting point.

And "every legal code ever devised" really says nothing about the generational ground of ethics. — Astrophel

That was in answer to :

take the moral obligation not to bludgeon, burn, rip and tear, or otherwise offend and afflict another's living body,....etc. Is this morally exhaustively conceived in the social institutions that would express the prohibition? — Astrophel

Not to:
"What is the generational ground of ethics?"
The answer to that one is my comment about social animals and normative standards of behaviour.

A supreme being would be question begging, for one has to first show what it is about ethical matters that would even warrant such a thing. — Astrophel

It's the only way you're going to get an ethical standard beyond that set by human societies.

Is this morally exhaustively conceived in the social institutions that would express the prohibition? — Astrophel

Yes, in every legal code ever devised. Also every unwritten social convention among wolves, elephants, dolphins and apes. Limited to one's own tribe, that is: the enemy or prey is available

to bludgeon, burn, rip and tear, or otherwise offend and afflict another's living body, — Astrophel

without moral sanction or legal repercussion. In most human cultures, no such prohibition applies to other species, which are considered legitimate prey. Many cultures have permitted or do still permit some unfavoured members of their own society to be treated that way.

Or is there more to it than this set of rules, laws, sentiments toward, and so forth, that the put forward this prohibition? — Astrophel

If you profess faith in a supreme being, you are required to believe there is.