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| Re: Orange Is the New Black actress vs. Homophobic moron preacher on uptown (M) train (1325427) | |||
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Re: Orange Is the New Black actress vs. Homophobic moron preacher on uptown (M) train |
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Posted by Nilet on Wed Nov 26 00:59:33 2014, in response to Re: Orange Is the New Black actress vs. Homophobic moron preacher on uptown (M) train, posted by New Flyer #857 on Fri Nov 7 10:49:05 2014. Yes, it's a different system that happens to lead to the same stance on the given issue (the death penalty). I hold that it is necessary to uphold the dignity of the human person over and above "the pursuit of happiness." And therefore, we would not start with happiness and then impose restrictions (represented by clauses) because we "noticed" that human beings have dignity, which is your method. Rather, we would start with human dignity and then explore what options such dignified human beings may have in order to live their lives well and as happily as possible. There is indeed a difference, just not one that affects the death penalty stance.How big is the difference in practice? Are there any issues where it will be important? Seems like it at first, but not necessarily. It is not intrinsically necessary that whatever is wanted is exactly what should be pursued. Very often something (such as happiness) simply occurs because something else was pursued. In fact, it is ironically very possible that happiness is best "obtained" by avoiding pursuit of it! However, so long as you and I both realize that happiness is an extremely ambiguous term, I'm willing to accept it and move on. Pursuit of happiness is a very generic term that basically just means doing what you like. If we lived in separate universes where our paths would never cross, anybody would be able to do what they liked all the time. Since our paths do cross and people have different and conflicting interests, we need a moral system to resolve the conflicts. Using overall pursuit of happiness as the fundamental goal basically just means that the moral system should work such that people with conflicting goals should take the compromise that gives the most people the most of what they want overall— simplified slightly to make it workable as a social policy. I must disagree. What difference does it make (looking in from the outside) if some people are extremely happy while others are entirely unhappy if you have still increased overall happiness? Why does overall happiness depend on an even spread of it? Why is an even spread required? That's the "science" part of morality. There is essentially a finite limit on how happy one can be. Or rather, if you view morality as conflict-resolution, then no one can face less restrictions on their activities than none at all. In practice, this means the only way to increase happiness overall is to give more people the means to pursue it— you can't bring up the average by making a few people substantially happier. There is no inherent reason for equality without it coming "from above." Nature in general follows the rule of "survival of the fittest." Why should we be any different as human beings? You absolutely must start with dignity (over and above happiness) in order to reconcile this. I don't see what you mean by "above." The idea of human dignity is an emergent property of my moral system and a definitional aspect of yours, but it's hardly a physical thing that can be measured— it's a function of our relationship with other humans. As for "survival of the fittest," that's really just a misinterpretation of evolution. Evolution favours genes that are good at replicating themselves. A gene that makes the organism who carries it form societies and work for the mutual benefit of other carriers of that gene will be "fit" from an evolutionary perspective— altruism is a positive-sum game where the recipient receives a benefit greater than the cost to the giver. In fact, a gene that makes me willing to die in order to save the lives of two other people with that gene would have a strong selective advantage— although I, personally, end up dead, the gene pool ends up with two copies of the gene in the people I saved rather than the one I was carrying. Of course, looking at nature to determine how we should behave isn't a good idea. Just because something is universally true doesn't mean we have to like it and it doesn't mean we shouldn't work to change it. Our history has left indelible marks on our psyche— we instinctively treat the people we know and the people similar to us as special and everyone else as a massive "them" to be - at best - treated as less important. Yet slowly over time we've been fighting against that instinct, accepting larger groups as "us" and warming our opinion of "them." But then the question arises. . .why have a moral system at all? Is it necessary that we come up with one to begin with? How about just "everybody for themselves?" The very idea of a moral system assumes first and foremost a recognition of a certain dignity that is already there before the moral system is born. There's no need to assume innate dignity as the basis of a moral system— just rational self-interest. If we went with "everyone for themselves," then I, personally, would be worse off— and everyone else would be saying the same thing. If every single one of us would prefer not to have that system, why should we use it? That's the absurdity of it, and the reason we have a society in which this can be discussed in the first place— altruism evolved because it is selfish from a genetic perspective, and morality was developed because it is selfish from an individual perspective. A moral system needs to account for practicality— that is, can everybody be convinced that it's a good idea to follow the system or at least generally accept its validity. No one will accept the validity of a system that hurts them, so a moral system needs to be all-inclusive and fair— essentially, to assume human dignity. I have basic agreement with your treatment of an understanding of science. I do not agree, however, that happiness should be x, for reasons I partially give above. The dignity should be x, and happiness will come along. Honestly, it seems like overall happiness and human dignity are a pair of linked traits— each one necessarily follows from the other, so having one requires having both. In that case, it's not really meaningful to talk about which one comes "first." If you light a piece of wood on fire, this results in chemical changes to the wood and the release of energy. It's not really meaningful to say which one comes "first" since they're both linked products of the same reaction. Releasing energy requires the chemical changes to the wood, and applying those changes inevitably releases energy. Similarly, if you declare human dignity of paramount importance, you'll end up with maximal happiness as an inevitable result, while if you declare maximal happiness of paramount importance, you must assume human dignity to allow it. In either case, the distinction between the trait you declare of paramount importance and the trait that is absolutely required to achieve it is pretty much moot. Human dignity either exists or it doesn't. If it doesn't exist, then why not just go to "survival of the fittest?" The happiness of those who survive will cover for those who don't. If it does exist, then it exists whether we remember to throw it into our moral system or not. In that case, it had to come from without. We need that dignity to tell us why our happiness indeed should be "pursued." That it exists doesn't make it a physical object. It's an abstract concept— an idea we all agree to accept because it's in our self-interest to do so. Imagine a twelve-dimensional green sculpture made out of foam. This sculpture doesn't exist, of course, but the idea of it does because I thought of it. However, this idea would not exist if I hadn't thought of it, and it wasn't handed to me by some external entity. We certainly don't need human dignity to tell us why we, personally, should pursue happiness— that's the one thing we want entirely for its own sake. Since I want happiness as its own end rather than the means to another, I attempt to pursue it. My ability to pursue it is easier if I do not face malicious action from other people. In fact, when it comes to my personal ability to pursue happiness, the harm I face from malicious action is substantially greater than the benefit I might receive from committing malicious actions myself. As such, a blanket ban on malicious action would benefit me. Because everyone else on the planet is following the same reasoning, we all agree to a blanket ban on malicious action because we all personally benefit from it. We then invent the term "human dignity" as a shorthand to describe the idea that every one of us has a right to be free from malicious action because we've all agreed to that system because it benefits all of us. Basically, we have dignity, we want happiness. Instead of starting with what we want, which is extremely ambiguous, we should start with what we believe we have, and see if that tells us how to proceed. We must believe in our dignity in order to have this moral system; it is not necessary to believe that happiness exists to be pursued though, in order to follow this system. (Not that we wouldn't be happy in the end). Except to some extent, it's the other way around— we have a desire for happiness first and foremost because "happiness" is what we want by definition. Given that desire, we start thinking (individually, without regard for others) about what how we might achieve this goal and each of us independently arrives at the same conclusion, that postulating a concept of "human dignity" and agreeing that it should be universally respected is absolutely vital to our ability to successfully pursue happiness. Since everybody arrives at that conclusion, it becomes universally accepted— human dignity is an idea which arises organically out of rational pursuit of individual happiness, and is universally accepted by any and all rational people because for anybody to disagree with the idea is contrary to basic self-interest. Human dignity is certainly not a physical trait that exists independently of our belief systems. Of course, do keep in mind that my explanation above relies on the fiddly and miserable statement: "Assume all people are rational." In actuality, rational people are few and far between; truly 100% rational people will probably never exist. Many people don't believe in the notion of human dignity because they rationally considered how best to pursue their desires and reached the inexorable conclusion that postulating human dignity and seeing the idea universally accepted was necessary; rather, they pursue their desires according to heuristic mechanisms refined by evolution to be just effective enough to allow survival and reproduction over multiple generations, and believe in a very limited concept of human dignity that applies primarily to people who look and act like they do because that inclination was instinctively programmed— ie, since universal acceptance of human dignity is in our own self-interest, evolution has programmed the notion into our instincts in the sloppy and flawed way evolution does everything. Of course, having that notion programmed into our instincts does make better moral systems possible— if we instinctively understand the idea: "It's just wrong to kill my friend," it doesn't take an impossible effort to convince people "...and also, it's wrong to kill other people's friends. Even if you don't like them." The last hundred thousand years have been a haltingly gradual process of slowly but surely increasing the number of people that it's just wrong to kill. The key lesson, though, is that a moral system that no one will agree to follow is worthless. People will try to pursue happiness no matter what. Using pursuit of happiness as the basis of a moral system doesn't just hold it up as a core value— it essentially says: "Here's a better way of doing something that you were inevitably going to do anyway." Or to put it another way— if you use human dignity as the core principle of a moral system, where does the human dignity come from? If a rational and risk-averse but selfish and childlike person asked why he should believe in the idea of human dignity, what would you tell him? If you use the intrinsic value of happiness as the core principle of a moral system, the rational risk-averse selfish childlike person wouldn't even need to ask the question— he already knows that he wants happiness for himself because he just does, so it's merely a question of explaining to him that if he agrees to respect other people's efforts to pursue happiness, then they'll agree to respect his, yielding a net gain for his own efforts. By the way, my apologies for the delay in responding to you. I actually wrote the bulk of this post over a week ago but I never got the chance to finish until now. I do appreciate your willingness to have this discussion, though. |
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