Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

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Clinton
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Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Clinton »

I'm a utilitarian. Specifically, I'm almost exclusively an act-based utilitarian...with one possible exception: certain kinds of sex crimes that won't be detected and that won't cause any form of suffering for the victim from the crime itself.

Hopefully you understand what a utilitarian is already. I'd think fewer people would understand the difference between rule and act-based utilitarians though. The source of my explanation of the difference between the two is below:

https://iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/#:~:text=A ... tealing%29.

So, for act-based utilitarians, such as myself, we believe that whenever we are making a decision, we should perform the action that results in the greatest utility...with "utility" tending to refer to a maximization of pleasure and a minimization of suffering for the group we're concerned about.

Rule-based utilitarians use a more complex system that says that an action is justified if it conforms to a good moral rule, and the moral rule is good if the rule maximizes utility (noting that again, utility for utilitarians tends to mean maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering for some group).

It's worth emphasizing that all forms of utilitarianism are consequentialist. In other words, utilitarians believe that things are only right or wrong based on the consequences of those things. This is in contrast to some other moral codes such as deontology, in which that which is right or wrong is determined not by the consequences, but by what actions you engage in - specifically, whether or not you follow rules that are the source of what is good according to a deontologist. It's also worth noting that while rule-based utilitarianism and deontology both emphasize the following of certain rules...the reason why the rule-based utilitarian follows the rules is because the rules result in ideal consequences...which are usually the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering for some group, whereas for the deontologist, the consequences, or likely consequences, aren't much of a factor. It's all about whether or not you obey the rules themselves. Obeying certain rules means you've done good, regardless of the results.

So, as a primarily act-based utilitarian...I have some of the most controversial views that can exist in a great many areas. Whether I think robbing or stealing or breaking other laws or ignoring other social norms is good or bad depends entirely upon whether or not I believe that will maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for humanity...or life in general...but I tend to focus most on humanity.

Rule-based utilitarians can often have some pretty controversial opinions too though. To illustrate how these three worldviews might view certain moral questions...let's get into the rather unpleasant topic of sex crimes...which, thought it's unpleasant, I have some ideas related to this that are the main purpose of this thread.

So, with sexual assault, a deontologist might describe the act of sexual assault itself as morally wrong. I'd definitely say that's the least likely way of viewing this issue to offend or alarm people. So, a deontologist might say: Do not commit sexual assault or you are doing something wrong. It doesn't matter what the impact is. Just don't do it...with the possible exception of if not doing it would violate some greater rule you have to follow, such as, if you did not kiss Sleeping Beauty (which I'd argue would technically be sexual assault) she's going to remain comatose forever or something like that...but that'd only be the case if you consider having Sleeping Beauty lying in a coma forever to be in violation of some rule you think is the root of goodness, that you decide is more important than the sexual assault rule. If you don't have a rule you're following about not leaving woman comatose that you believe is of higher priority than sexual assault...then Sleeping Beauty is going to remain sleeping.

Next, a rule based utilitarian might think, "Well...there are no acts that are inherently wrong...but the world would be a much better place if nobody committed sexual assault, so unless we find a species who enjoy it, we'd probably be best off if nobody committed sexual assault...so don't commit sexual assault...again with a probable exception for Sleeping Beauty, because otherwise she's going to be locked in a coma. Sexual assault causes lots of fear. It causes pleasure...but reading a good book can cause pleasure too, possibly even more pleasure than sexual assault, but without the terror and necessary jail time and sex offender registration used to discourage sexual assault that are necessary punishments to discourage more crimes that, if not discouraged via negative feedback, would have led to massive amounts more suffering.

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Next comes my usual variant of utilitarian: the act based utilitarians. I'm going to have a much more disturbing thought process than either of the above. When I think about sexual assault using my typical act-based utilitarian thought process, I think to myself, "Okay, what actions can I do that produce the most pleasure and least suffering?" Now, let's think about how that might work with certain forms of sexual assault...specifically some problems that might result in.

For example...sure, I'd agree with my above rule-based utilitarian buddy that the world would be better off without sexual assault. However, as an act-based utilitarian I know that if I sexually assault someone and won't get caught, that might provide me with lots of pleasure, and cause zero suffering for my victim...and whether I personally engage in sexual assault or not is not going to impact whether other people do it or not in any way. :shock:

So...based off my typical act-based utilitarian reasoning process...it does kind of sound like my usual moral code would actually encourage certain types of sex crimes that go un-caught and don't cause damage to my victim :cry: :shock: :| After all, engaging in such crimes would produce pleasure, no suffering, and not encourage society to behave any worse.

A problem with that is, that's essentially saying that it can be logical to commit sexual assault...and if that's the case, that's going to terrify much of society and through that terror cause much suffering, suffering that I'd argue would cause more damage than the joy of all those new sexual assaults would...so even just from my act-based utilitarian standard, my moral code is telling me that I need to find some way to CONVINCE society sexual assault is illogical.

Note that word CONVINCE by the way :shock: I did not say that I needed to conclude that sexual assault is bad. If I did find a way to conclude that sexual assault is bad, that would be one way of solving the problem. Composing a sufficiently convincing lie that sexual assault is bad that society believes, when sexual assault is actually a good thing according to my moral code, would work just as well. So, it would appear that an evil cabal of Machiavellian rapists who know the truth ruling over the ignorant and blindly trusting masses would work fine in many ways, actually, according to my traditional way of thinking :(

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So, with the above in mind you can hopefully see why I'd be very tempted to, at least in this circumstance, temporarily switch over to rule-based utilitarianism.
A problem with that is, I don't like rule-based utilitarianism. I like it better than deontology...but I typically like both much less than act-based utilitarianism.
My view is that there is a single utilitarian math formula that determines, truly, what behaviors are best to engage in. This would be a universally true math formula. It would not be something created through culture. It would be existing in the laws of nature and discovered over time, and the longer life is around and able to understand it, the more similar our behaviors should become to one another regardless of what part of the galaxy we're in, because we'd gain more and more insights into how this enormous moral formula works...so I believe there are flat out right and wrong ways to do things that are not dependent on my opinions, so accuracy is very important to me. I'm not just interested in building a moral code that generally allows people to get along. I want the moral codes I encourage to be as close to the true correct as I know how to make them.

So, the problem I see with the types of broad rules rule-based utilitarianism advocates for is that there will likely be exceptions in which acting on those broad rules does not truly maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for all feeling life (my brand of utilitarianism strives to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for all feeling life in all universes for all of time) and would therefore likely be inaccurate at times. So, again, what I don't like about rule-based utilitarianism is the broad rules that we're supposed to follow which, I'd argue, would likely not always maximize pleasure and minimize suffering to follow.

So, to maintain accuracy as I see it, I'd like to stick with act-based utilitarianism...but to do that I still think I've got to find some way to either convince society that sex crimes are bad, or more ideally think of some reason why they really are, just, bad, according to an act-based utilitarian perspective...to avoid the terror of everybody thinking certain sex crimes are at times logical to engage in, which would probably result in everybody being terrified of going to sleep/sleeping with guns beneath their pillows/etc. So now, finally, I'll go onto the meat of my post: my proposed solutions:
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Option A: convince people a watchful God exists that punishes or rewards people based on how they behave in this life, who dislikes sexual assault. If you already believe this exists, I figure you're good to go. You can be an act-based utilitarian and if you believe God will punish you for sexual assault then the pleasure of the sexual assault is countered by God's punishment and no longer becomes logical and as a result society no longer has to fear the prospect of sexual assault seeming like the logical thing to do. I don't believe in that kind of God though, so I'd perceive a society that did as being insufficiently truth-seeking, which I'd guess would result in its own problems...and people could also be lying about their belief in such a God so some people would still have reason to be afraid so I see a few flaws to that option.


Option B (this option is rather horrifying): convince society that sexual assault would ideally happen to us every time it wouldn't cause damage to us as individuals/victims and wouldn't be caught...but we're morally wrong for worrying about it because we're just harming ourselves through our worry, and ideally we'd just all be cool with the fact that we're probably going to be molested at some point :oops: :shock: :cry: I don't want to do that one because it sounds like the plot of a dystopian horror story. Also, there's something about that submissiveness that seems like it'd often be unhealthy to me. In an ideal society...we'd have some way to trust each other, just based off our word, even when there is no way to prove we're going to act on our word. If we succumb to believing, and encouraging, that kind of predatory behavior...I can imagine circumstances in which we'd see reason to automatically assume that people might engage in the most Machiavellian, dishonest strategies possible that seem to result in the most long term selfish pleasure...and I'd think that would lead to a massive breakdown in trust in general, which would seemingly have all sorts of far-reaching consequences and I'd suspect result in a lot of suffering as a result. I think we, ultimately, just need to have some reason to trust each other as a society, or much of the healthy foundation of civilization would collapse.


Option C (this option is also rather alarming): Go with the aforementioned Machiavellian cabal of rapists who view sexual assault as good in many circumstances, who rule over the ignorant masses who believe differently. So...everybody just blindly trust Dear Leader. Dear Leader knows best. Do not question Dear Leader or you'll end up going on a...we'll call it a long term vacation :wink: So, we might have a group of act-based utilitarian philosophers telling the populace that act-based utilitarianism is a ridiculous concept. I think most of us could envision how that might result in a great many problems though...quite possibly many more than it would fix.


Option D: Make punishments for sex crimes so harsh that even the tiniest risk of being caught would in no possible rational mind be worth the risk of what short term pleasure could be gained from sexual assault. and then more criminals murder more victims to avoid being caught, and fewer victims report crimes because they feel the punishments are too harsh to fit the crime. Also, again, I think we need a system of just being able to trust people, regardless of whether or not we can see them or else society is going to have all sorts of long term trust-based problems.

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Now below are what I consider the best answers:

Option E: Point out that it's impossible to know we don't live in a computer simulation and the creators could be watching us...or that it's impossible to know that you won't be caught A problem with this is that you may be pretty confident that you won't get caught.


Option F: note that if we reward ourselves with pleasure for acts that assist society, or don't risk harm to it, or that wouldn't cause fear if people knew we were doing it, we'll tend to focus on strengthening ourselves while assisting society, and often engaging in tasks that require willpower, and through limiting our rewards of pleasure to these sorts of circumstances, making it more desirable and easier for us to engage in these constructive and willpower-dependent, useful actions for society. On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to slip into tempting and likely destructive behaviors like non-consensual sexual contact, we're weakening ourselves and likely making resisting such damaging temptations more difficult in the future...perhaps even causing more suffering to ourselves than the pleasure of the sex offense would redeem...even if we lacked the pain of a guilty conscience for doing so. I think this option would work just fine...so long as you're going to be alive for a fair amount of time. One major weakness I'd say this system has is that, if you're about to die, the long term impacts this version involves won't be much of a factor, and therefore you could say that this system still leaves open an avenue for it actually being morally good for people about to die to engage in certain forms of sexual assault...so I think it does work great for most things, just very poorly in some circumstances.


Option G: I resign myself to relying on rule-based utilitarianism in this circumstance, rather than my typical, and preferred, act-based utilitarianism. Again, I don't usually like rule-based utilitarianism because when we claim it's good to follow certain rules, even if we're right most of the time, there will likely be exceptions in which following those rules will not actually maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. However, it could be that there is just no other way to convince society that sex crimes are generally bad besides using this system, or some much more destructive system...which I think most of the aforementioned options would be.


Option H: Argue that if you don't engage in sexual assault, even if you don't get caught, other people might not engage in sexual assault for the same reason...and that, for greed-bases reasons, you can use to convince yourself that you'll be living in a more secure, trusting world through not engaging in sexual assault, because if you do it, that's a sign that other people would behave similarly. Take joy in the feeling that you're part of something greater than yourself - a sheltering blanket of trust, and feel your hedonistic, greed-based reward for your behavior in the satisfaction you feel as a result. I like this one in particular, because even if that's not impressive to everyone, we could build a society and do psychological and sociological research to figure out how to max that system more impressive to society.


Option I: Just don't think about it. It's sexual assault. It's bad. This is not exactly any formal brand of moral reasoning...but oh well. It often seems to work

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My preferred explanation is a combination of all of that which I described as the "best" answers. I did not include the option that describe spreading word of a watchful God that disapproved of sexual assault...because I don't believe that exists, but if I did, I'd probably include that in the list too.
Leontiskos
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Leontiskos »

In all seriousness: Is it worth considering the possibility that the necessity of such immense mental gymnastics itself invalidates act utilitarianism? Your post seems to indicate that the problem of sex crimes cannot be sufficiently addressed by act utilitarianism. If one expends a great deal of time and energy trying to find a solution, and fails, it may be because their presuppositions preclude a solution.
Clinton
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Clinton »

Leontiskos wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 4:16 am In all seriousness: Is it worth considering the possibility that the necessity of such immense mental gymnastics itself invalidates act utilitarianism? Your post seems to indicate that the problem of sex crimes cannot be sufficiently addressed by act utilitarianism. If one expends a great deal of time and energy trying to find a solution, and fails, it may be because their presuppositions preclude a solution.
I would not say that act-based utilitarianism is invalid...just that it might have to work alongside rule-based utilitarianism in some circumstances in which solutions act-based utilitarianism seems to point to would cause massive amounts of suffering, that would not occur without those "solutions."

I don't believe that would need to be the case in all circumstances. With nearly every other moral conundrum I've thought of, I think I've found very strong act-based utilitarian arguments that typically lead to moral conclusions most of us would consider very reasonable, or at least that I think are quite reasonable, even if much of society wouldn't. This is pretty much the only big exception.

Even without rule-based utilitarianism...I do think my proposed "best" solutions do combine to work fairly well, probably the majority of the time. It's just that I could envision some weird circumstances in which things slip through the cracks. I'm also wondering if there are just better solutions I haven't thought of yet.

Thanks for the response.
Leontiskos
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Leontiskos »

Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:43 pm
Leontiskos wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 4:16 am In all seriousness: Is it worth considering the possibility that the necessity of such immense mental gymnastics itself invalidates act utilitarianism? Your post seems to indicate that the problem of sex crimes cannot be sufficiently addressed by act utilitarianism. If one expends a great deal of time and energy trying to find a solution, and fails, it may be because their presuppositions preclude a solution.
I would not say that act-based utilitarianism is invalid...just that it might have to work alongside rule-based utilitarianism in some circumstances in which solutions act-based utilitarianism seems to point to would cause massive amounts of suffering, that would not occur without those "solutions."
Isn't this just to say that act utilitarianism is an insufficient moral theory? If it can't do what it is supposed to do without the help of another theory, then it is insufficient, no?
Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:43 pmI don't believe that would need to be the case in all circumstances. With nearly every other moral conundrum I've thought of, I think I've found very strong act-based utilitarian arguments that typically lead to moral conclusions most of us would consider very reasonable, or at least that I think are quite reasonable, even if much of society wouldn't. This is pretty much the only big exception.
So perhaps it is the only exception? Perhaps, but I would keep an eye out for other exceptions.

The thing is, when I read your post it was fairly clear to me that you are not an act utilitarian. If you think that there are evils which exist that cannot be accounted for by act utilitarianism, then in my book you are not an act utilitarian. In other words, your personal understanding of morality is not fully captured by act utilitarianism. This is a good thing in my opinion.
Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:43 pmEven without rule-based utilitarianism...I do think my proposed "best" solutions do combine to work fairly well, probably the majority of the time. It's just that I could envision some weird circumstances in which things slip through the cracks. I'm also wondering if there are just better solutions I haven't thought of yet.
Well, haphazardly throwing a bunch of insufficient accounts together isn't really a theory, in the same way that haphazardly throwing a bunch of ingredients together isn't a recipe. What would be required is a clear and orderly way of combining them to achieve a specific result.
Clinton
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Clinton »

Leontiskos wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:54 pm
Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:43 pm
Leontiskos wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 4:16 am In all seriousness: Is it worth considering the possibility that the necessity of such immense mental gymnastics itself invalidates act utilitarianism? Your post seems to indicate that the problem of sex crimes cannot be sufficiently addressed by act utilitarianism. If one expends a great deal of time and energy trying to find a solution, and fails, it may be because their presuppositions preclude a solution.
I would not say that act-based utilitarianism is invalid...just that it might have to work alongside rule-based utilitarianism in some circumstances in which solutions act-based utilitarianism seems to point to would cause massive amounts of suffering, that would not occur without those "solutions."
Isn't this just to say that act utilitarianism is an insufficient moral theory? If it can't do what it is supposed to do without the help of another theory, then it is insufficient, no?
Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:43 pmI don't believe that would need to be the case in all circumstances. With nearly every other moral conundrum I've thought of, I think I've found very strong act-based utilitarian arguments that typically lead to moral conclusions most of us would consider very reasonable, or at least that I think are quite reasonable, even if much of society wouldn't. This is pretty much the only big exception.
So perhaps it is the only exception? Perhaps, but I would keep an eye out for other exceptions.

The thing is, when I read your post it was fairly clear to me that you are not an act utilitarian. If you think that there are evils which exist that cannot be accounted for by act utilitarianism, then in my book you are not an act utilitarian. In other words, your personal understanding of morality is not fully captured by act utilitarianism. This is a good thing in my opinion.
Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:43 pmEven without rule-based utilitarianism...I do think my proposed "best" solutions do combine to work fairly well, probably the majority of the time. It's just that I could envision some weird circumstances in which things slip through the cracks. I'm also wondering if there are just better solutions I haven't thought of yet.
Well, haphazardly throwing a bunch of insufficient accounts together isn't really a theory, in the same way that haphazardly throwing a bunch of ingredients together isn't a recipe. What would be required is a clear and orderly way of combining them to achieve a specific result.

I think it might be correct to call act-based utilitarianism insufficient...but I'm not sure that's the case yet. I see "insufficient" as different from "invalid" though. I'd say, they just might turn out to be two parts of the whole. Were act-based utilitarianism invalid, that would imply to me that it should scrapped entirely and replaced with some other system.

I'm not entirely sure that act-based utilitarianism can't have a fitting solution to this issue. I did describe myself this way:
I'm a utilitarian. Specifically, I'm almost exclusively an act-based utilitarian...with one possible exception: certain kinds of sex crimes that won't be detected and that won't cause any form of suffering for the victim from the crime itself.

I think that about covers it for now, until I think of other exceptions. It's worth noting that in that statement I did not describe myself as a purely act-based utilitarian, so much as an almost exclusively act-based utilitarian.

I do think I'm using a clear and orderly way of combining the ingredients to achieve a specific result. I think I'm engaging in utilitarian calculus...the specifics of which are nearly always going to be too long to describe in detail. I have to do a lot of estimating. Thinking about exactly why I think certain behaviors would result in certain amounts of suffering and pleasure is a vital part of this...but describing that process would involve lengthy enough of arguments that they would be impossible to type out here, and pointlessly distracting...so I could understand how you might perceive my reasoning process as haphazardly throwing together a bunch of ingredients. I would not describe it that way though.
Leontiskos
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Leontiskos »

Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:12 pmI do think I'm using a clear and orderly way of combining the ingredients to achieve a specific result. I think I'm engaging in utilitarian calculus...the specifics of which are nearly always going to be too long to describe in detail. I have to do a lot of estimating. Thinking about exactly why I think certain behaviors would result in certain amounts of suffering and pleasure is a vital part of this...but describing that process would involve lengthy enough of arguments that they would be impossible to type out here, and pointlessly distracting...so I could understand how you might perceive my reasoning process as haphazardly throwing together a bunch of ingredients. I would not describe it that way though.
That's fair. I think what I meant is that instead of trying to explain what the combination would look like or how it would be assessed, you only said, "My preferred explanation is a combination of all of that which I described as the 'best' answers." Ideally you want criteria that render your thesis falsifiable, and in order for this to happen the thesis itself must be visible and well-defined, even if estimation is also involved.
Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:12 pmI think it might be correct to call act-based utilitarianism insufficient...but I'm not sure that's the case yet. I see "insufficient" as different from "invalid" though. I'd say, they just might turn out to be two parts of the whole. Were act-based utilitarianism invalid, that would imply to me that it should scrapped entirely and replaced with some other system.
Mmm... Once we step outside the consequentialism-deontology rivalry there really is no such thing as "scrapping and replacing entirely." Most historical moral 'systems' involve consequentialist and deontic elements, along with other elements as well. So I think invalidation occurs with respect to the internal goals of the system. If the moral system of act utilitarianism is meant to be a partial solution which should be overridden by other theories in certain cases, then the abandonment of the act utilitarian approach in those cases would not invalidate the system. But I don't think that's what act utilitarianism means to do, and if it did we would not tend to call it a 'system' or 'theory'.
Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:12 pmI think that about covers it for now, until I think of other exceptions. It's worth noting that in that statement I did not describe myself as a purely act-based utilitarian, so much as an almost exclusively act-based utilitarian.
Fair enough. Good luck with your theory.
Clinton
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Clinton »

Thanks Leontiskos.

I have very little formal education in philosophy. It's almost exclusively consisted of several new vocabulary terms I've learned from a philosophy teacher in a club I'm in, and the ensuing reading I've done after that...so there's a lot I don't know.

Aside from that, I've done a pretty hearty amount of thinking about my personal moral code though, which is definitely a brand of utilitarianism. I probably spent about a decade thinking up the concept of utilitarianism and hedons and hedonism myself and only figured out that those were existing terms after the philosophy professor I know told me the formal names of those concepts...so I'm still kind of focused on my views, moreso than the specifics of how other people's pre-existing ideas work.

I'm thinking how this is probably going to work out is that...I periodically think up mini formulas that tell the specifics of how certain forms of utilitarian calculus will work. I'm thinking act-based utilitarianism will remain the default system, because I see it as a much more specific and nuanced way of determining things than rule-based utilitarianism, unless the circumstances it would lead to would result in the kinds of fear-based reactions and distrust and chaos that would defeat the primary goal of the system...which is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. Under these circumstances, and these circumstances alone, we'd accept that there is no way for the path to be ideally nuanced, and we'd adopt rule-based utilitarianism temporarily just to deal with these circumstances...and I don't think it would be enough to lie about doing so. We'll have to truly adopt the rules of rule-based utilitarianism to be "good" people, according to the system of morality. Otherwise, we'd end up having strong reasons to distrust each other, which could lead to the breakdown of society, and to more of the types of suffering we're trying to avoid. Reasoning like those "best" arguments I listed would still be important to take into consideration though, because they, I'd say, can provide more convincing arguments to individuals who just don't agree with following the rules of rule-based utilitarianism.
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 12:52 am A problem with that is, that's essentially saying that it can be logical to commit sexual assault...and if that's the case, that's going to terrify much of society and through that terror cause much suffering, suffering that I'd argue would cause more damage than the joy of all those new sexual assaults would...so even just from my act-based utilitarian standard, my moral code is telling me that I need to find some way to CONVINCE society sexual assault is illogical.
I do admire a bit of edgelord hyperbole with my philosophy, really I do, but I fear you have the cart forward of the horse on this one. If a moral theory has an absurd outcome, people aren't alarmed, terrified, nor in need of persuasion that bad things are still bad. They reject the theory as inadequate and absurd.

This is a key factor that makes moral theories different from scientific ones (see the rest of this God awful moral philosophy sub). An outlandish scientific theory can be laughed at for a decade or two and then suddenly become accepted fact on the basis of evidence, moral understanding moves not by evidence but persuasion.

All the different brands of grand philosophical moral reasoning work up to a point and then they have their moment of invalidating absurdity because they all express something that we all believe (know) is an important factor. Thus..
  • We have 12 types of consequentialism because consequences are obviously important whether deontologists know it or not.
  • We have 9 types of rules or command based theory because following correct imperatives is a good thing and if those are universifiable then so much the better because we all know for sure that hypocrisy is bad, especially when other peope do it.
  • And we have virtue ethics because it is obvious that at all times you should do whatever a good kind wise and virtuous sort of dude would do.
  • What we don't have is anything other than our moral sense to tell us which is the appropriate form to apply at any given time.
Our quotidien practises of moral reasoning that we all do every day relies upon an innate ability to switch between moral judgment contexts seemlessly depending on who we are talking to and who we are talking about. Depending on where you live there may be a preference to start negotiations with a principle of moderation (the notion that the mid way point between two arbitrary extremes is probabvly a good thing on some fraudulent heuristic basis).... when that fails perhaps apply a freedom to do X without interference rule, and if there is still controvery we may wrap it up with the question "but what must his mother think, that poor woman?" The process ends when all participants have agreed, or else somebody has left the room in a huff.

To put it another way, in our daily moral practices we informally formalise a bunch of contradictory assumptions that we swap in and out of action until we are not collectively offended by an outcome. Moral philosophy fails by attempting to render that process faithfully without the contradictions. The absurd conclusions that each school of moral philosophy arrives at demonstrate why we remain stuck with the inconsistent reasoning of our ancestors in this field. In our urge to tidy up this branch of reason, all we can do is break something that was in fact held together by the dirt.
Clinton
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Clinton »

FlashDangerpants wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 8:24 am
Clinton wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 12:52 am A problem with that is, that's essentially saying that it can be logical to commit sexual assault...and if that's the case, that's going to terrify much of society and through that terror cause much suffering, suffering that I'd argue would cause more damage than the joy of all those new sexual assaults would...so even just from my act-based utilitarian standard, my moral code is telling me that I need to find some way to CONVINCE society sexual assault is illogical.
I do admire a bit of edgelord hyperbole with my philosophy, really I do, but I fear you have the cart forward of the horse on this one. If a moral theory has an absurd outcome, people aren't alarmed, terrified, nor in need of persuasion that bad things are still bad. They reject the theory as inadequate and absurd.

This is a key factor that makes moral theories different from scientific ones (see the rest of this God awful moral philosophy sub). An outlandish scientific theory can be laughed at for a decade or two and then suddenly become accepted fact on the basis of evidence, moral understanding moves not by evidence but persuasion.

All the different brands of grand philosophical moral reasoning work up to a point and then they have their moment of invalidating absurdity because they all express something that we all believe (know) is an important factor. Thus..
  • We have 12 types of consequentialism because consequences are obviously important whether deontologists know it or not.
  • We have 9 types of rules or command based theory because following correct imperatives is a good thing and if those are universifiable then so much the better because we all know for sure that hypocrisy is bad, especially when other peope do it.
  • And we have virtue ethics because it is obvious that at all times you should do whatever a good kind wise and virtuous sort of dude would do.
  • What we don't have is anything other than our moral sense to tell us which is the appropriate form to apply at any given time.
Our quotidien practises of moral reasoning that we all do every day relies upon an innate ability to switch between moral judgment contexts seemlessly depending on who we are talking to and who we are talking about. Depending on where you live there may be a preference to start negotiations with a principle of moderation (the notion that the mid way point between two arbitrary extremes is probabvly a good thing on some fraudulent heuristic basis).... when that fails perhaps apply a freedom to do X without interference rule, and if there is still controvery we may wrap it up with the question "but what must his mother think, that poor woman?" The process ends when all participants have agreed, or else somebody has left the room in a huff.

To put it another way, in our daily moral practices we informally formalise a bunch of contradictory assumptions that we swap in and out of action until we are not collectively offended by an outcome. Moral philosophy fails by attempting to render that process faithfully without the contradictions. The absurd conclusions that each school of moral philosophy arrives at demonstrate why we remain stuck with the inconsistent reasoning of our ancestors in this field. In our urge to tidy up this branch of reason, all we can do is break something that was in fact held together by the dirt.
It seems that you and I have a disagreement on the source of morality.
The way I see it (and I'm in the process of writing a possibly lengthy book on this, so there's no way for me to fully encompass my worldview here) is that the source of what would be best described as true morality is that pleasure is good and suffering is bad. I don't see how we can possibly have any other goals besides maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering. That is to say, I would not describe anything that is not an attempt to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering as an actual goal of ours...so much as us being tricked somehow into believing that behavior is our goal.

I don't see how we could possibly care about anything except for the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering. Also, I can think of no conclusion besides our feelings producing quantities of pleasure and suffering that are just as real as concrete and my shoes...because we can feel that certain feelings are more or less pleasant or unpleasant than other feelings, which implies there being specific quantities of hedons (units of pleasure) produced, because I don't know how there could be more or less of something than something else if there is not some specific quantity of the thing.

Now, we can't be entirely sure what the quantity of hedons is that are produced by any given feeling...but we don't need to know the specifics, we can estimate that, and we have to, if we're to behave rationally, because we have no other sensible goals in life besides the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering...so far as I can tell.

Now...regarding the difference between science and moral philosophy you mentioned...is science really less subjective than moral philosophy? I'm not sure it is. For example, if we live in a computer simulation everything we think we know about the laws of physics could be wrong, and I'd definitely say that we have no way to prove that we don't live in a computer simulation. Let's compare that to simple type of utilitarian calculus I can do. That thought process will consist of: When only considering my feelings over the course of the next thirty seconds...would it be better for me to have my arm torn off by a gorilla (assuming I have traditional pain receptors), or to get a small, average, paper cut?

Well, I'd argue that if getting my arm torn off by a gorilla in this instance can possibly be described as less painful than the paper cut, the meaning of pain in no way resembles its traditional meaning, so we have to say that the paper cut would be less painful. Going back to what I claimed our goal to be...the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering, I think I'd have to say it would be just flat out better to get the paper cut than have my arm torn off by a gorilla...and what's more, that pain would exist whether or not we live in a computer simulation. We could feel that pain, and therefore be far more certain of its realism than any law of physics.

In that sort of way, I'd actually argue that moral philosophy can often be a much more precise means of determining truth than the physical sciences.

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Now, to expand upon my previous ideas, if our goal is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering, by default I'd say that should be to maximize all pleasure and minimize all suffering, because we didn't specify otherwise...which means the default system would be to strive to think up some way to maximize the pleasure and minimize the suffering of all life in all universes for all of time. So, the next step would be to think up some formula to do this.

I don't know how any system except for utilitarianism could compose such a math formula that focuses on maximizing quantities of pleasure and minimizing quantities of suffering.

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So, I'd say that's how we should look at the truest form of morality, and while doing so it's vital to keep in mind that the goal is not to seek consensus, but to come as close to that true form of morality that really does maximize pleasure and minimize suffering as possible.

So, in many ways I think this process would ideally be treated as any problem in physical science...such as how to go to the moon most efficiently. I'd say if we limit ourselves to persuasion, we're ignoring the goal.

There are of course purely descriptive types of morality achieved through nothing but consensus. I feel like a good description of them is "false morality" though, although that's not an official title that has been popularized. Those forms of morality don't necessarily strive to achieve the only goal I think we actually have...so I wouldn't describe them as true morality.

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I'd argue the types of moral codes I'm trying to develop may be flawed...but the important thing is that I'm trying to get as close to truth as possible. The physical sciences have similar goals. You can't know the laws of physics are true, but so far they seem to be, so they're as close as we can get to truth, and we build our assumptions off that because we have to...because it's the goal of science to close in on truth, and we have no better path to do so than working from these assumptions about reality and building atop them.
Peter Holmes
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Peter Holmes »

Thanks for an interesting discussion.

In my opinion, consequentialism just kicks the deontological can down the road. In other words, whether X is the act or its consequences, judgement as to X's moral rightness or wrongness - and as to the moral rightness of a goal, such as maximising pleasure and minimising pain for a group - is ineluctably subjective. There are no moral facts.
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Clinton »

Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:47 am Thanks for an interesting discussion.

In my opinion, consequentialism just kicks the deontological can down the road. In other words, whether X is the act or its consequences, judgement as to X's moral rightness or wrongness - and as to the moral rightness of a goal, such as maximising pleasure and minimising pain for a group - is ineluctably subjective. There are no moral facts.
I would argue that my above example involving the question of whether it's better to have my arm torn off by a gorilla, or get a typical paper cut, refutes that statement. I think there are moral facts...and if there can be simple moral facts like it's better to get the paper cut than have my arm torn off by a gorilla, we should be able to extend those simple concepts outward to form more complex moral facts...which is the foundation of my view of the truest form of morality existing as a giant utilitarian math formula.

So...in other words, I think you could say there are no moral facts. I also, however, think it if I make that claim, that would be comparable to saying that it is not a fact that 1+1=2. I'd argue that, there is no inherent reason why 1+1=2, but based off the rules we use to determine math equations, it does. In that same way, I'd argue it's basically a moral fact that getting my arm torn off by a gorilla is worse than getting a paper cut. If that's not true...we're living in a world with a different system of rules than I'm familiar with, I'd say.

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I'm not especially knowledgeable about deontology, and Kant wrote a lot of confusing stuff about it. So far as I can tell it seems to focus on achieving consistency...so it doesn't advocate moral rules that you would just use in one situation. You have to apply them universally, as I understand it...and that seems like a good goal if we're to avoid hypocrisy.

However, here's my criticism of non-consequentialist moral codes like deontology: How do I know that the moral codes are good without contemplating the consequences of those moral codes? Normally, I'd argue we adopt moral codes due to the impacts of those moral codes on the world around us. We adopt them to help us achieve consequences we've cared about before adopting the moral code.

Even if a moral code focuses on consistency...I'm not sure what that necessarily has to do with what I'd describe as the real goals of humanity. I don't know why consistency is necessarily a good thing. I do know why pleasure is a good thing, and suffering is a bad thing...at least to me...but I don't know why I'd care about any opinions that claim pleasure is not a good thing, because of how important it is to me.

So, I'd say any moral code that matches up much with what humanity really cares about most is going to be consequentialist, and focus on maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering at bare minimum for someone or something...and utilitarianism and hedonism do that and deontology does neither.
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Peter Holmes »

Clinton wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 10:37 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:47 am Thanks for an interesting discussion.

In my opinion, consequentialism just kicks the deontological can down the road. In other words, whether X is the act or its consequences, judgement as to X's moral rightness or wrongness - and as to the moral rightness of a goal, such as maximising pleasure and minimising pain for a group - is ineluctably subjective. There are no moral facts.
I would argue that my above example involving the question of whether it's better to have my arm torn off by a gorilla, or get a typical paper cut, refutes that statement. I think there are moral facts...and if there can be simple moral facts like it's better to get the paper cut than have my arm torn off by a gorilla, we should be able to extend those simple concepts outward to form more complex moral facts...which is the foundation of my view of the truest form of morality existing as a giant utilitarian math formula.

So...in other words, I think you could say there are no moral facts. I also, however, think it if I make that claim, that would be comparable to saying that it is not a fact that 1+1=2. I'd argue that, there is no inherent reason why 1+1=2, but based off the rules we use to determine math equations, it does. In that same way, I'd argue it's basically a moral fact that getting my arm torn off by a gorilla is worse than getting a paper cut. If that's not true...we're living in a world with a different system of rules than I'm familiar with, I'd say.

-------------------------------------------------------

I'm not especially knowledgeable about deontology, and Kant wrote a lot of confusing stuff about it. So far as I can tell it seems to focus on achieving consistency...so it doesn't advocate moral rules that you would just use in one situation. You have to apply them universally, as I understand it...and that seems like a good goal if we're to avoid hypocrisy.

However, here's my criticism of non-consequentialist moral codes like deontology: How do I know that the moral codes are good without contemplating the consequences of those moral codes? Normally, I'd argue we adopt moral codes due to the impacts of those moral codes on the world around us. We adopt them to help us achieve consequences we've cared about before adopting the moral code.

Even if a moral code focuses on consistency...I'm not sure what that necessarily has to do with what I'd describe as the real goals of humanity. I don't know why consistency is necessarily a good thing. I do know why pleasure is a good thing, and suffering is a bad thing...at least to me...but I don't know why I'd care about any opinions that claim pleasure is not a good thing, because of how important it is to me.

So, I'd say any moral code that matches up much with what humanity really cares about most is going to be consequentialist, and focus on maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering at bare minimum for someone or something...and utilitarianism and hedonism do that and deontology does neither.
Okay, and thanks. I think that morality is about the moral rightness or wrongness of behaviour. So a moral assertion is one that says something is morally right or wrong, or that we should do something because it's morally right, or not do it because it's morally wrong.

It follows that the assertion 'it's better to have a paper cut than to have your arm torn off by a gorilla' is not a moral assertion, because it says nothing about moral rightness or wrongness. And a non-moral assertion can't assert a moral fact. In other words, 'better' in that assertion is not 'morally better'. It just means less painful and consequential.

Non-moral premises can't entail moral conclusions, because a deductive conclusion can't contain information not present in the premise or premises of an argument.
Last edited by Peter Holmes on Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Clinton wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:24 am It seems that you and I have a disagreement on the source of morality.
The way I see it (and I'm in the process of writing a possibly lengthy book on this, so there's no way for me to fully encompass my worldview here) is that the source of what would be best described as true morality is that pleasure is good and suffering is bad. I don't see how we can possibly have any other goals besides maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering. That is to say, I would not describe anything that is not an attempt to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering as an actual goal of ours...so much as us being tricked somehow into believing that behavior is our goal.
We certainly do have highly divergent views. But at least this thread is a discussion of moral philosophy and those that surround it in the moral philosophy sub do not, so that's something in your favour. The sub has been taken over by an autistic guy who is currently obsessed with discussing generalised ant-realism and the apparent divide between noumena and phenomena - but not the synthetic/analyutic one for some reason.

Why introduce that odd little segue? Because the journey that ended up with him ploughing that deceased furrow began with his attempts to do very much the same stuff that you are doing (although I can predict with certainty that you would complete that book of years much sooner than he will complete the one he's spent about a decade on thus far). That is the background info that will help you make sense of some instances where I suddenly just replace your terminology with his, where the sentiment appears to match. Also he is the only living person apart from yourself that I have ever known to take the concept of hedonoic calculus literally, and one of exceptionally few to suppose that there might be an actual quanatitive measure for such things, but I'll address that point shortly.

The first of thise is your phrase "true morality", which henceforth shall be morality-proper. It accompanies something that will crop up later where your term is "false morality", his I think might be "naive or vulgar morality" and a term that philosophers might use for the same thing would likely be "folk morality".

In your search for morality-proper, you are focussing to begin with on that which you can conceive of as possible. Phrases such as "I don't see how..." leave one open to accusations of argument from incredulity, or in other words, substituting the limits of your imagination for the output of reasoned investigation. Where possible, it makes life easier if you fcan point to a solid reason why something is inconceivable such as a contradiction with the meaning of the very term needed to describe it or something.

In this para, you appear to be referencing the a goal derived ought, aka a hypothetical imperative (neither term coes from VA this time, one is modern philosophy wording, the other is Kant). So the thing you cannot conceive of is that the goal we want to acheive via our choices is feeling good in some way, and therefore the thing we ought to do is to secure that objective.

It is not common to argue that hypothetical imperatives are the true object of moral regard. If you want to, you can deal with the objection by arguing that a single non hypothecated imperative (categorical imperative) justifies the pursuit of some specific hypothecated objective by making it universally proper at all times and in all possible worlds to pursue.... but you won't get there by just noticing that there is thing we call nice and the nicest thing is to feel all nice all the time.
Clinton wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:24 am I don't see how we could possibly care about anything except for the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering. Also, I can think of no conclusion besides our feelings producing quantities of pleasure and suffering that are just as real as concrete and my shoes...because we can feel that certain feelings are more or less pleasant or unpleasant than other feelings, which implies there being specific quantities of hedons (units of pleasure) produced, because I don't know how there could be more or less of something than something else if there is not some specific quantity of the thing.
What is the basis for asserting that pleasure exists in the same way that a pair of shoes does? I would genuinely say that of course it doesn't because mental objects are not worldy objects that occupy spaces and weigh either more or less than the real world objects that they are "about" and quite how a real world object would be semantically about another.

When we say that the Mona Lisa is more <insert any art term you want here> than this picture of epic comics badass The Goon... what exactly did we measure?
Image

It seems to me that there is nothin automatically problematic in the suggestion that we speak only metaphorically in spacial terms when we say a computer has disk space, and only metaphorically in physical terms when we say that a certain book is weighty - even if we say one is weightier than another, that was still purely metaphorical. And thus if we say that eating delicious cake is nicer than eating diet diet sadness cake we could only possibly be speaking metaphorically if we argue about whether it is 50% nicer or 67%.
Clinton wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:24 am Now, we can't be entirely sure what the quantity of hedons is that are produced by any given feeling...but we don't need to know the specifics, we can estimate that, and we have to, if we're to behave rationally, because we have no other sensible goals in life besides the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering...so far as I can tell.
We would definitely be needing those specifics, or at least some viable roadmap to get us there. Given the scope for doubt that this talk of existence for joy and despair and art and goodness amounts to anything more than the reification of metaphors, this guestimation talk is not viable at all.

Your counterpart likes to suppose he can assemble a measurement by projection. He believes he can assign a group of experts who can collectively estimate quantities for these things and then if he gifts himself a 5% margin of error then that's all sorted out. His method is not good, but yours is to trust to a leap of faith perhaps accompanied by some sort of gentlemen's agreement.
Clinton wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:24 am Now...regarding the difference between science and moral philosophy you mentioned...is science really less subjective than moral philosophy? I'm not sure it is. For example, if we live in a computer simulation everything we think we know about the laws of physics could be wrong, and I'd definitely say that we have no way to prove that we don't live in a computer simulation. Let's compare that to simple type of utilitarian calculus I can do. That thought process will consist of: When only considering my feelings over the course of the next thirty seconds...would it be better for me to have my arm torn off by a gorilla (assuming I have traditional pain receptors), or to get a small, average, paper cut?

Well, I'd argue that if getting my arm torn off by a gorilla in this instance can possibly be described as less painful than the paper cut, the meaning of pain in no way resembles its traditional meaning, so we have to say that the paper cut would be less painful. Going back to what I claimed our goal to be...the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering, I think I'd have to say it would be just flat out better to get the paper cut than have my arm torn off by a gorilla...and what's more, that pain would exist whether or not we live in a computer simulation. We could feel that pain, and therefore be far more certain of its realism than any law of physics.

In that sort of way, I'd actually argue that moral philosophy can often be a much more precise means of determining truth than the physical sciences.
We got a few things going on there. In this little section though, you have moved in seemingly ordinary way of reasoning from a discussion of what is and is not to one of that which ought and ought not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xEcdJHNdZE.

Aside from the is-ought thing going on there, the measurability of the pain is a real problem for your example. Suppose that a gorilla's brain is natually more attuned to the feeling of pain and elation than is the human organ, let us assume for the sake of arg that it is so by two orders of magnitude. Where your positive and negative joys are measured merely in hedons and nega-hedons, his are megahedons, and meganega-headons, that's how much more the gorilla feels than you do because he just has bigger feelings than a human has. If this gorilla has a lifelong ambition to rip off a human arm (cause: mistreatment at a zoo that was nothing to do with you) and wipe his own arse with it, his need is greater than yours, you greedy 2 armed bastard. You won't even feel most of the pain, you're a weak human and will pass out.

But a more important side note than either of those is the general direction of the argument you are presenting. It's a mistake, consider it the opening move in a chess game where you are sacrificing your bishop to take a pawn. Downgrading science such that it resembles the thing you want to elevate to a peer of the same sciences is a bad sacrifice, VA made that move years ago, some utter fucknut who calls himself Prof did the same, those guys are shit, don't follow their lead.
Clinton wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:24 am ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, to expand upon my previous ideas, if our goal is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering, by default I'd say that should be to maximize all pleasure and minimize all suffering, because we didn't specify otherwise...which means the default system would be to strive to think up some way to maximize the pleasure and minimize the suffering of all life in all universes for all of time. So, the next step would be to think up some formula to do this.

I don't know how any system except for utilitarianism could compose such a math formula that focuses on maximizing quantities of pleasure and minimizing quantities of suffering.

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So wrapping up the previous stuff I wrote into a more compact and helpful unit: Any moral requirement to maximise pleasure on such a universifiable basis would be a requirement only if it were an imperative of the categorical sort, which isn't compatible with consequentialism and thus not something that you are presently able to argue in support of. The goal to do so just because it seems consistent is a mirage. Once you find yourself even desiring to ahve a mathematical formula for moral rightness you are liekly to be in some trouble, but to need it is to be hopelessly adrift.
Clinton wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:24 am So, I'd say that's how we should look at the truest form of morality, and while doing so it's vital to keep in mind that the goal is not to seek consensus, but to come as close to that true form of morality that really does maximize pleasure and minimize suffering as possible.

So, in many ways I think this process would ideally be treated as any problem in physical science...such as how to go to the moon most efficiently. I'd say if we limit ourselves to persuasion, we're ignoring the goal.

There are of course purely descriptive types of morality achieved through nothing but consensus. I feel like a good description of them is "false morality" though, although that's not an official title that has been popularized. Those forms of morality don't necessarily strive to achieve the only goal I think we actually have...so I wouldn't describe them as true morality.
The problem with making a division between folk morality and morality-proper is that-morality proper is an ersatz substitute. I liken it to Genuine American Cheese, the food adjacent substance that needs the word cheese in its name because otherwsise there would be no reason to suppose that word applied at all.

Folk morality is about right and wrong, good and bad, that which is honourable versus that which is despicable, fairness, justice, sportsmanship and all that shit. All the "improvements" we keep getting offered have proven lacking, they are eliminatively reductive because there is no natural reduction from fairness to pleasure and pain unless you try to sneak fair pleasure and unfair pain into a previously quanititative analysis and I've just cut that line of arguement off here.
Clinton wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:24 am --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd argue the types of moral codes I'm trying to develop may be flawed...but the important thing is that I'm trying to get as close to truth as possible. The physical sciences have similar goals. You can't know the laws of physics are true, but so far they seem to be, so they're as close as we can get to truth, and we build our assumptions off that because we have to...because it's the goal of science to close in on truth, and we have no better path to do so than working from these assumptions about reality and building atop them.
It's somewhat presumptuous to assume there is a moral truth to which your investigation can aproximate.

The reason why this whole sub barely discusses morality these days is because VA triend the downgrade of science move in order to upgrade his morality-proper to scientific status and then needed to descide whether his analogous connection between morality and science would be based on there being a similar pattern of approximation to truth within science and and morality. If you are going to go down that road, I would at least suggest taking the sane option and being a scientific realist beasue that other guy is doing my brain in. If you wanna go that way, and you want to save some time, you could try reading this guy he hasd some moves that might help you out.
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Peter Holmes »

What Flash just said. And I'd add the following.

1 That pleasure is 'better than' or 'preferable to' pain is a matter of opinion. An opinion held by everyone is still an opinion. And it's possible to hold the opposite opinion, and some people (such as ascetics) do - sometimes for moral reasons: 'it's morally right to endure pain and eschew pleasure'.

2 The choice of a goal - such as maximising pleasure and minimising pain - is always subjective, And the consistency of an action with a goal, even if it's objectively demonstrable, doesn't confer objectivity on the moral rightness of the action or goal - which is always a matter of opinion.

3 But 'pleasure is better than/preferable to pain is not a moral assertion anyway, unless 'better than/preferable to' means 'morally better than/preferable to' - which begs the question. An is can't entail an ought.
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Re: Act based Utilitarianism and sex crimes and moral solutions

Post by Clinton »

Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:36 pm What Flash just said. And I'd add the following.

1 That pleasure is 'better than' or 'preferable to' pain is a matter of opinion. An opinion held by everyone is still an opinion. And it's possible to hold the opposite opinion, and some people (such as ascetics) do - sometimes for moral reasons: 'it's morally right to endure pain and eschew pleasure'.

2 The choice of a goal - such as maximising pleasure and minimising pain - is always subjective, And the consistency of an action with a goal, even if it's objectively demonstrable, doesn't confer objectivity on the moral rightness of the action or goal - which is always a matter of opinion.

3 But 'pleasure is better than/preferable to pain is not a moral assertion anyway, unless 'better than/preferable to' means 'morally better than/preferable to' - which begs the question. An is can't entail an ought.
I'm going to comment on this before getting into the other comments, because is rather concise and It hones in a major issue of importance regarding an inevitable source of disagreement me and many responders to this thread will have.

I don't believe it's possible to truly enjoy pain. If we enjoy it, I'd say, by definition, that can't be pain. What I'd say we enjoy when we say we enjoy pain is either hearing about other people's pain we can't feel, or enjoying the pleasure that results from certain types of pain...such as what masochists experiences, or what people like myself enjoy from eating spicy food. So, if a masochist claims to enjoy pain...they dislike the pain. It's just that the pleasure they experience from the pain is greater than the unpleasantness from the pain.

So far as I can tell pain was evolved purely as negative feedback. We don't want it by default. So, yeah, you could look at it like that's just an opinion...but I'd say it would be a universally agreed upon opinion of everyone who experiences pain, whether they know it or not.

If someone claims to believe that it's morally right to endure pain and eschew pleasure, I'm going to ask them why. I figure there are a limited number of explanations they can have to that that I can think of. One plausible explanation could be a belief in some kind of divine command theory advocating their belief. If that's the case, I have no idea why that belief would make sense unless it pleases God for humanity to endure pain and eschew pleasure...in which case the goal is still increasing pleasure...they've just attached a higher value to God's pleasure, for some reason. The other options I can think of is that the person believes that we should avoid extremes (like in Buddhism) or sacrifice to assist others...both of which really also are going to have long term goals of maximizing pleasure. So, for example, I might want to avoid experiencing massive amounts of joy so as to avoid future suffering feeling worse in comparison...or I might want to go jogging in order to live longer to complete more goals that would please me or benefit society.

Now, regarding people believing it's good for other people to experience pain...I'd say that's hypocritical. We're all born based off the clockwork of the universe, and our fates are sealed without our consent, so far as I can tell, so vengeance makes no sense except as negative feedback to prevent some future harmful action from occurring again...so it's a form of suffering used to avoid more suffering. I don't think we really want others to suffer either...it's just that we get confused a lot because of our aggressive instincts. If we thought about it more, we'd realize we could have been born into Hitler's body, and due to our environment and genetics we'd have made the exact same decisions, and then we'd feel miserable regarding any suffering someone dealt is as punishment. So...should we have tried to kill Hitler? Sure...because the alternative in which he lived was likely worse...but even Hitler's suffering was still a bad thing.

So, I don't think we have a choice regarding what we really want. We inevitably want to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering, and I'd say, because of the above kind of reasoning involving Hitler, if we don't think we want to develop a utilitarian math formula that strives to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for all feeling life for all of time in all universes...it's because we're confused about how reality works and we don't really know what we want.

So yeah, you could say morality is subjective and it's all just people's opinions...and I would say, I don't think that matters much because I think I know what everyone reading this really wants, whether they know it or not, and I think it's inevitable that you all want that, and if you think you don't...I'd say that's because you don't understand reality well enough to really know what you do want. I would say what everyone reading this really wants is to maximize pleasure and minimizing suffering through behaving in a way a utilitarian math formula that works to achieve that for all feeling life says to achieve.
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