(no subject)

[johnpalmer]

So, I think I have my brilliant philosophical contribution taking shape.

It comes down to drunk driving and peanut butter sandwiches.

Drunk driving is evil, even if no one gets hurt. The risk of causing harm is too great, even if no harm is actually done.

And, at some point in time, a person who keeps giving random hungry children peanut butter sandwiches is obligated to ask "Can you eat peanut butter?" after a few children go into anaphylaxis.

There's still a little bit more to be written filling in the gaps and tying it all together... but really, that's the essence.

You're responsible for what might happen as a result of your actions, and you're responsible for noticing what happens when you perform an action, and change your behavior accordingly.

Past that, it comes down to my fundamental theorem, you have to make the best moral decision you can (which might include listening to the advice of another, following a set of guidelines, etc.), since it'd be silly to make a decision other than the one that's the best you can make.

Oh, yeah, and it's good to make things better for people, and not good to make things worse for people. What's better and worse? Well, some of those are obvious; the rest comes down to noticing what happens, and doing your best to figure out what that means.

Comments

Sooo

[razordemon.livejournal.com]

You're saying that essentially that your responsibility actually is tied to what level of "notice" you take to the harm you cause? For the harm you inflict is actually just a matter of your degree of consciousness to that harm?

That's a slippery slope. (Maybe an incline slope coated with peanut butter.) hehe.

Re: Sooo

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's pretty close to correct, but remember, you're supposed to be doing your best to make the right decision, in addition, and watching what effects your actions have. So, you can't just refuse to look at the results of your actions.

This is not an externally applicable system. You can't look at someone and say that person is, or isn't behaving morally. You can look and be pretty damn sure they are, or aren't, but you'll never know, because you can't see inside that person's head.

If you're doing something, and can't see any way you could be causing harm, why *should* you stop? If someone tells you that you are, you have to evaluate what they say, and remember that even a good enough possibility of harm is enough to make an action evil (drunk driving).

And, a final note: other people have to act in the best manner they can, as well. That PersonX might be acting morally (as best as PersonX can tell) doesn't mean other people shouldn't decide that PersonX is a dangerous criminal (or that PersonX is dangerously insane).

Re: Sooo

[kightp.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you're talking about what the Buddhists call "mindfulness" - the responsibility to pay attention to the consequences of one's actions.

That doesn't always mean you don't act if the consequences are "bad," but you try to make the decision and take the action mindfully, with full recognition of those consequences.

Or maybe I've been reading too much Dalai Lama again. (-:

Re: Sooo

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

No, that sounds right. Mindfulness is a good way to put it, in fact. And, yes, the best decision might involve bad consequences, which you shouldn't ignore, but you can't just decide to keep doing the same stupid thing, over and over, because you claim that it's "a hard thing", like some Presidents... oh, wait, am I getting partisan? Really, this book I'm working on *is* going to be non-partisan... mostly.

(Re: how many of my ideas seem to sync up with Daili Lama's, I'm going to be pissed off if people say that I'm just cribbing from Buddhism and re-writing it in modern English. I really *am* thinking this stuff through! That I'm coming up with this stuff independently just shows that it's pretty good stuff.)

(Hey, I think I just found that streak of arrogance I said I'd need to write this properly. :-) )

Re: Sooo

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Sigh. I hate it when I mis-spell something with an example *RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME*! Dalai Lama. Sigh-sub-2.

Re: Sooo

[kightp.livejournal.com]

how many of my ideas seem to sync up with Daili Lama's

It's not that the ideas synch up in a re-inventing the wheel sort of way, it's more that the viewpoints are compatible, and there are places where specific ideas and concepts intersect.

This is mostly just me synthesizing ideas from separate sources, though. That's how my brain works, by drawing associations and metaphors from here and there and mooshing them into a sort of grand unified theory of What Pat Believes. When I was reading a lot of Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth) for instance, everything else I read reminded me of something he said ... but considering that he was writing about mythology - well, duh!

[cerval.livejournal.com]

I am way, way, way to out-of-it to respond in a meaningful way here. But I think I get where this is going, and I like it.

Re: Sooo

[razordemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you see, it's always an external system. Any system that defines harm in terms of effect on another person is laying down a moral code of some sort. You can decide what degree of "mindfulness" rates judgement, but essentially that's all morality is -- is deciding where that line is drawn.

It's all just moral relativism. When you call drunk driving "evil", you're drawing a line and defining one action as being over that line (and we codify it even further by explicityly definine drunk as 0.08%). But that's just what we've decided to define as an unlawful act. Call it evil if you want, but I think that's more societal influence than morality.

Re: Sooo

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you see, it's always an external system. Any system that defines harm in terms of effect on another person is laying down a moral code of some sort. You can decide what degree of "mindfulness" rates judgement, but essentially that's all morality is -- is deciding where that line is drawn.

Yes, but that's the point. You can't ever judge another person's morality, simply because you don't know. You can only judge your own. Only you know if you see what you're doing as the best thing to do. While we can be pretty sure about another person, we must always admit (if we're honest and intellectually rigorous) that the person could be, for reasons of their own, making up a huge parcel of lies that tell us believable things, or suffering from incredibly internally consistent delusions.

The only thing you can do, when it comes to morality, is decide how *you* will respond to another person's actions. You don't need to know if the other person is acting in accordance with his or her personal moral code, and making the best decision or not... you just need to know that "Someone is being attacked; I'll try to help."

Understanding another person's morality can help you decide how to interact with that person, whether you can change the person's mind or not, but it isn't necessary for you to decide what to do in response.

And, yes, this *is* an acceptance of moral relativism; the good of a person is influenced by that person's surroundings and beliefs. The good of the person's *actions* aren't.

A muslim might believe that sharia (I hope that's the right spelling: secular application of the Quran's moral code) is correct; that doesn't mean it's *good* to cut off a thief's hand or kill an adulterer. It simply means that the person is living up to the best moral code s/he knows.

I don't have to condemn such a person as "irredeemably evil" or even "redeemably evil". I do have to oppose the cutting off of hands and killing of adulterers.

Good people can do bad things with the best of intentions, and bad people can do good things with the worst of intentions, and you can twist and mangle all you want. In the end, though, you only have real control over a single person... you. That's where all moral reasoning has to begin and end.

Re: Sooo

[razordemon.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm getting confused now.

Why would anyone but "God" (if that exists) be interested in what other people's own internal moral code is? The only way to judge someone is their actions in the physical world. Trying to seperate thought from action seems like an exercise in sophistry. Granted, we all have our moral codes, what we decide is right or wrong. And we can choose to say we have our own relatavistic codes. But what matters is what society has decided.

I personally don't think that ANY action is inherently good or evil.

I do believe that we as social creatures have decided that certain activities are over the line. Our different tribes have chosen to draw that line in different places.

Absolute moral relativism is too much -- down that way anarchy lies.
Absolute moralism (good/evil) only exists if God exists, in which case philosophy is mute. S/He gets to decide.

The rest is how we choose to organize ourselves.