escarpment

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Can you elaborate, perhaps with an example?

I think I agree that radical subjectivity is the state of reality.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Hm maybe I see what you're saying. You're saying, even if you're a hypocritical selective ethicist who kills Wilbur and snuggles Fido, you can still be "right" about certain issues.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Answer: it depends.

To a deontological ethicist: yes, it does matter (and deontology is a major field of ethics). Intent is ethically salient. Attempted murder is unethical, even if it fails.

To a consequentialist (e.g. utilitarian): no, the reason or intent does not matter at all.

To a moral skeptic / moral anti-realist: the intent is irrelevant and the outcome is also objectively neutral. Both inputs and outputs are morally neutral.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook I think I'd have to give you the same rundown.

To a consequentialist, if your murder attempt failed, you're ethically fine (which is why many think consequentialism defies intuition and can't possibly be right).

To a deontologist, attempted murder is always bad (which is why deontology seems vague and misaligned with reality to some).

To a moral skeptic: see? The fact that we're going in circles means we're barking up the wrong tree with this whole ethics thing.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Yes, exactly. It is impossible to convince people to share your ethical judgments. Even if we were all philosophers with extremely open minds, we would still view the same facts with different judgments.

I'm not sure we rely on consensus though. Whoever's judgments have the most "power" win. "Power" is the ability to mold the world to one's subjective preferences and appraisal.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Power is a combination of population (how many people share the judgment- how many kids the people with that judgment were able to have), information (what technological advantages a smaller number of people were able to use to assert their judgments; what wiles they were able to use to enact their judgments); and material (what resources people were able to martial in support of their views).

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook My definition is, take the picture in the people's mind. Now take a picture of the world. Compare.

Whoever's mind is closer to the world win.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Yes, exactly. Different cultures have different ethics. China has different ethics than the US. China has been modeled to match the minds of whoever was best able to consolidate power in China. The US has been modeled to match the minds of whoever was best able to consolidate power in the US. Taiwan exists in a fragile equilibrium because the power of the people on that island is approximately equal to the power on the mainland.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Can you elaborate?

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook I guess I view ethics more like weather or physical systems. "This hurricane formed because this water was hotter than this other water and this air was higher pressure than this other air."

Similarly, "this group of people has this cultural moral because sufficient power was behind it."

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook I'd take a few steps back.

1. I think this discussion is partly to point out that we all fail a purity test.
2. I'm not necessarily advocating for veganism. I'm saying if you claim that ethics exist and you are ethical and have a sound ethical theory, then it might be hypocritical to not be vegan and possibly, per your ethical framework, you belong in jail for not being vegan.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Hmm I think you might have it backwards. Of course it's artificial and doesn't reflect reality. Whatever artificial and subjective opinions that are the current laws and systems have won. That seems indisputable to me, but maybe I'm not articulating it properly.

In the US, the people who thought free speech is very important "won" by getting it onto the bill of rights.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Sure, that's another way of looking at it. But in a new set of circumstances, only a response with sufficient power will win. Power still reigns. In the US, states with abortion rights have sufficient power to continue protecting those rights and states without abortion rights have sufficient power to restrict those rights. And the two regimes coexist because their powers are at equilibrium.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook I don't think you're giving the goat enough respect. Under certain ethical systems, it's no excuse that you need B12 or you can't survive without eating the goat. Per some ethical systems (I.e., answers to the trolley problem) you should take your own life rather than kill someone else. What gives you the right to kill a goat to survive?

I'm not saying this is my ethical system, just a plausible one.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook What doesn't reflect reality? This is a very real system under which people are living. Gerrymandering is part of that reality. The existence of gerrymandering is a result of the people whose minds conceptualized the technique of gerrymandering "winning" and imposing that idea on the world.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Under that ethical system, yes. Or goats deserve to live just as much as the humans born there.

Or you can reject ethics and say, look, if goats were smarter, they'd exert more power and prevent me from slaughtering them to eat them. But they failed. They don't have the power to stop me, so I am going to slaughter them for my own survival. That's tough for goats.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Well, the majority in some of those states has failed (did not have sufficient power, did not win). Every woman denied access to abortion in those states, despite the apparent majority, is an example of that majority failing to exert their power, and the minority cult succeeding in exerting their power.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook The reality is the outcome. Did the woman have access to an abortion or not? If not, the people whose mind picture was a world without abortion won. They successfully molded the world to the picture in their minds.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Sure, if everything is subjective though, how do you ever know which side is "right." What if instead of consensus on some issue you have a 50-50 split, or a 55-45 split.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook But they made it illegal. That was the molding of the world in their mind's eye's image. The laws as written match the anti-abortion people's preference, not the pro-choice people. The anti-abortion people won (for now).

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook That is the stance of moral relativism, one branch of moral skepticism. The belief that ethics exist but are culturally dependent. So it is right to sacrifice children to the gods if you live in early mesoamerica but wrong to do so in the modern US.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook The laws are part of reality. The bytes on the webpage of the laws of Texas are really arranged that way. The ink molecules are really there on the printed out copies of the laws.

I am pro choice I just feel like you are really missing my point here.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook Not in the slightest. I am not claiming an objective ethical truth. I have a moral anti-realist streak. I think things are morally neutral.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@shekinahcancook I think you misunderstand that I say power makes things ethical. Not at all. I think power is what causes things to be the way they are. Why are the laws written that way in Texas? Because whoever wanted them written that way was powerful enough to get them written that way. That just seems indisputable to me.

escarpment, 25 days ago

@tristansnell Why do "we" care about the abuse of dogs but not the systemic slaughter of millions of cows, pigs, chickens, and fish every day? Why does no one go to prison for that?