Thread: The Art of Ethics *highbrow alert*

Interesting, that must be a relatively new developement. I hadn't heard that they made anti matter. How long does the stuff exist for?

Nevermind, I'll look it up.

First of all this is a great thread!!!

I trained as a geneticist but became interested in bioethics. Now I my interest of the human condition is explored by myself through art.

About 10 years ago I read a book by Derek Parfit, "Reasons and Persons." (I was 22 at the time and it blew me away!!) I would state the case that he is the greatest living philosopher and is in the same echelons as Kant, etc. He was a Professor at Oxford and he just sat in his office all the time until his peers urged him to actually do something and he authored his book.

He questions deep set beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. It is rational but illogical to act against our best interests. He argues that that our moral beliefs are self defeating; logically we would make every decision to make our lives run as smoothly as possible. He also dicusses, ethics, personal identity and our moral obligations to potential future generations.

If any of you gentlemen have not read this book I STRONGLY urge you do so.... I am off to dust off my copy right now!

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

Interesting, that must be a relatively new developement. I hadn't heard that they made anti matter. How long does the stuff exist for?

Nevermind, I'll look it up.

it's not new, Fermilab has been doing it since the late 80's, iirc. it exists for a very short timeframe, on the order of picoseconds sometimes. but just as a windsock reveals the effects of "invisible" wind, so can the anihilation of a particle and anti-particle reveal that the anti-particle, was in fact there, however briefly.


also, to back up what bruno is saying, he is very correct that saying each of the two groups of apples has a quantity called "5" is making a lot of assumptions. it is in the fundamental nature of two groups of apples to combine in a meaningful way that is easily expressed as a sum. not all things behave this way (again, as bruno pointed out) but we label the way they behave with terms that are convenient to us. if I see ten apples, I call it "10" because that is a term familiar and convenient to me. cultures with different counting systems and different concepts of quantity might think otherwise.

in the end, the mathematics are irrelevant (hard for me to admit, having earned my degree in theoretical mathematics) and it is more a question of semantics. semantics, necessarily, are relative to the person using them, as their perspective is unique. to some extent, societies will form a group-connotation of certain terms to facilitate communication, but that is not absolute.

ethics/morality is even more relative, as it is a far more complex and amorphous concept than counting fruit. to that end, I will suggest the following axiom:

"What I like is Good, what I dislike is Evil."

while this may, on the surface, appear to be a gross oversimplification of a very non-simple topic, I submit that it is at the root of ALL value judgements, and as a mathematician, I strive to reduce things to their simplest meaningful form.

Originally Posted by jockeys

ethics/morality is even more relative, as it is a far more complex and amorphous concept than counting fruit. to that end, I will suggest the following axiom:

"What I like is Good, what I dislike is Evil."

while this may, on the surface, appear to be a gross oversimplification of a very non-simple topic, I submit that it is at the root of ALL value judgements, and as a mathematician, I strive to reduce things to their simplest meaningful form.

You're getting circular again, friend! People prefer to think that they choose what they like because it is good, and what they don't like because it is evil. From there they feel they (I love using "they" - it means I'm not necessarily included. I like that. It is good.) can extrapolate and decide what is good and evil based on what they like and dislike. I don't think one always precipitates the other

My mother taught me when I was very young that I can choose to like something that I previously disliked. She never told me whether or not it works the other way around, but I have a feeling it does. That was her basis for discipline too - funny coincidence

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

From there they feel they (I love using "they" - it means I'm not necessarily included. I like that. It is good.) can extrapolate and decide what is good and evil based on what they like and dislike.

"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."

Terry Pratchett - Jingo

Originally Posted by Bruno

"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."

Terry Pratchett - Jingo

VERY good book, very appropriate as well

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

You're getting circular again, friend! People prefer to think that they choose what they like because it is good, and what they don't like because it is evil.

you're implying causality that is the inverse of what I intended. I don't think I like something because it is Good. it is Good because I like it, and I like it because I like it. it's unidirectional and linear, not circular.

as to why people like certain things, there's no explaining that; it's just human nature. everyone likes something different. everyone has their own slightly different versions of Good and Evil, if they are honest, and bases it on what is appealing to them.

if it wasn't for the protective enclosure of the Monkeysphere, this would all seem quite overwhelming, no doubt.

If I'm reading your take on Kant correctly This is not a system of determining morality but of rationalizing action.

In other words if I want to kill someone, I come up with a plan of action, (step 1) make it possible for anyone to follow my plan and kill said person should the choose to do so (universality) then it would be moral to commit this murder. I know this isn't what you mean but it seems I'm missing something here.

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

While this may all be true.....in Maths....

In the real world, if you have 5 apples....and you add 5 apples....you get ten apples. (assuming the apples are whole apples and no-one eats any during the adding process.

There's no way around this.

I think that's more the direction KP is thinking in.

What if you have 5 apples and add 5 oranges?

Everyone knows you can't compare apples and oranges.

And for that matter, how can you compare math and ethics?

I agree with one of the above posters who, I believe, said that there is alot of dancing around with semantics going on that is being used to construct an argument that may not actually be there.

If you view ethics from a human only based viewpoint, there is no "hard object in the dark" that you will stub your toe on, ethically speaking--you are free to construct any type of morality you wish to.

Many ethically questionable issues of today do apparently apply Kant's three step process of determining "morality".

1) By stating the case (perhaps: "unwanted babies are problematic")
Make it desirable to people (we can give you the option of keeping a baby or not, and in related issues: unwanted embryos can be used to come up with wonder medicines to help YOU live longer...)

2) Make it universal- We should all have "the right to choose", We should all have access to stem cell replacement parts for ourselves.

3) Will that your maxim become the universal law-- Cue up the propaganda machines, euphamisms, and political action commitees


In the end the practice in question may come to be socially accepted, but will that make it any more morally right, in the true sense of the word?


EDIT: Just read WildTim's post above:

If I'm reading your take on Kant correctly This is not a system of determining morality but of rationalizing action.

That is what I got out of Kant's three point plan as well.

Another Kantian distinction that might be useful in these discussions is between logical and real possibility. I notice that others have brought up that in certain context, the addition of numbers is not as simple as I have put it. Some bring up the notion of using bases other than 10, and others mention the use of negative, imaginary and irrational numbers, as well as some effects in the quantum realm. Much of this argument does not really apply to the general case I was making. What is possible, both logically and really possible, entirely depends on the circumstances in which you find yourself and the outcome you are trying to achieve, indeed, the nature of the circumstances themselves depend on your goals. Laying out the structure of the world in terms of what exists and what is possible can only be done with reference to those two things.

I think part of the obstacle here is the notion that we are entirely in control of our own goals. Being organisms of a certain sort, we must eat, we have natural impulses to reproduce ourselves, and many other impulses that involve our socialization with others. These impulses, which imply inborn goals we cannot help but have, provide the specific direction all our acts must take. Our ability to reason brings with it it's own goal, the maximization of its power and effectiveness. What we do have control over is the means we take to achieve our goals, and in doing so, we necessarily put those things in a certain sort of priority. When we're hungry, we put getting food above being well clothed, and so forth. Acting morally involves ordering these goals so that the goal of reason always has the highest priority. The universalization test of one's maxim is a test of whether your act can be fully understood. If what you propose to do and why cannot be done by everybody else in your same situation, then what you propose to do is fundamentally incoherent. Similar to what happens in science, you have proposed a method that is not fully repeatable. The test of willing your maxim to be a universal law maximizes the future power and scope of reason, by allowing more ends to be really possible and extending that power to all others with the ability to reason.

To put this in more common parlance, isn't the first thing you say to defend yourself when someone asks you, "Was that really what you should have done there?" "But, anybody else would have done the same thing in my place!"