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[Drunken]

As for quantifying benefit, you can absolutely do it in situations where...

Only in relation to certain goals or values which are taken as axioms. In your example a human dying is taken as a cost, or as a bad thing, and productivity is taken as a good thing. These are both axiomatic value judgements, and dependent on a specific subjective system of value that is not necessarily universal. I don't even agree that productivity in and of itself is a good thing. How do you deal with someone who builds weapons for example, if I build 50 million worth of weapons which are subsequently used  to kill 20 families, is my net contribution 0? Productivity being a good thing is dependent on society at large having a goal that all people are contributing towards. There is no such goal.

[kaijyuu]

Intent doesn't really make sense as a basis for ethics. If I do something that will result in someone's death, and I am aware of that, but I do it because I want some material gain, is that wrong, even though my intent is not for the person to die? Morality should be based on what you expect will happen, as opposed to your reasons for doing something.

A virtue ethics supporter would look at all their thought process, not just their desired end goal, to judge them. So they'd say that was immoral due to them not valuing a person's life over material gain. Finding a person's life an acceptable cost is part of their intent, and thus can be ethically judged.

EDIT: I'll rant about it since it's my view:
Virtue ethics takes all morality out of actions themselves, and instead places moral responsibility entire on a person's character (or their "virtues"). A person's actions are not inherently good or bad, but by observing their actions, you can see evidence of their inner character, and thus judge their morality.

So, a virtue ethics supporter would not see a difference between attempted murder and murder. The inner character of the person who attempted it is the same, but in one situation, something got in their way and prevented their goal. That outside influence should not have an effect on how they are judged.

The problem with this moral theory is defining the virtues that should be espoused. What is considered a "good" inner character to one person could be a "bad" inner character to another. As I'm a supporter of subjective morality, this isn't a problem to me, since we can then all decide what virtues are good for us (as that's what we do anyway).

As for quantifying benefit, you can absolutely do it in situations where it's lives being compared to one another, with more sentients being more valuable. Since in our society, money can unfortunately be equated into saved lives, wouldn't the value of a human's life simply be the monetary value of the items necessary to keep them alive and productive their entire remaining life(or expected life), plus the amount they will produce over their lifespan? If fifty million dollars will sustain 20 families for their entire lives, then it should be right to kill someone who doesn't produce anything for society for that amount of money.(Assuming that the murderer donates all the money to those families) Ultimately, more productive lives with a decent standard of living is better.

Thing is, you'll never find a set scale that everyone agrees on. You'll come up with wacky stuff like this. Utilitarians don't really have a problem with that, but supporters of other ethical theories will scoff.


I mentioned deontology before, so I'll expound on what they think too: Morality is entirely action based and objective. Stealing is stealing, essentially. So taking a loaf of bread to feed one's starving family would not justify the theft; they're still guilty of it no matter their intent, no matter the consequence.

[Eagle_eye]

I'm counting productivity as a good thing when it provides good things to people, as is the case in most industries. Productivity normally has a positive connotation, so if it wasn't clear that I was counting only productivity that is not harmful to human beings I apologize. As for human death being a bad thing, I would expect that virtually every person on the planet would prefer not dying and being able to live out their life at a standard level of wealth. There may be a few people who suffer knowing that others are happy, but their suffering is monumentally less, because the dead person is missing out on an entire lifetime of experiences. Combine that with the fact that there are so few people like that and it's obvious that on the whole, people enjoying a decent standard of living makes them happier.

And kaijyuu, I'm not saying you can compare any action to any other action. I'm just saying that most of what we value in society can be equated to human lives, and any two random people, if you don't have any opportunity to learn anything about them, are equal in value.

[kaijyuu]

Sorry I don't have a better source for this, but... What costs are acceptable for a net boost in happiness? Is there a point where the end does not justify the means, regardless of any increased "net happiness"?

This is perhaps the most common criticism of utilitarianism. Suppose there was a situation where you could make 1 (or a small number) of people miserable, but by doing so you make an extremely large number of people very happy. Is that better than having everyone just content?

Historical example: Eugenics. There are quite a few disabilities passed on by genetics. Eugenics supporters wanted to sterilize these people so future generations would no longer have these diseases. They were not killed (well except for the extremist eugenics supporters that went with criteria such as race, but let's ignore those for now), just prevented from having children. We as a society deemed this unacceptable, despite it meaning there will continue to be incurable genetic diseases, and despite the cost being (relatively) small.



I get where you're coming from, and yeah I agree that you can "weigh" consideration for people. I'd rather 1 person die than 5. But I don't think it's the only thing to consider.

[Leafsnail]

This is all very well but pretty irrelevant to atheism or theology.

[kaijyuu]

Morality is irrelevant to atheism or theology? 


Alright let's throw some into the mix: Objective morality. Whatever theory you espouse, you can decide of morality can be objectively determined, or if it's just stuff we arbitrarily define.

Theists are often supporters of objective morality because they then have an authority on the subject. X is bad because God says so. Combined with all the other random things we've discussed in this thread, there are some obvious problems here: As religions are unfalsifiable (or at least the reasonable ones are), appealing to the authority of God doesn't hold weight to people who do not share the same belief in God. Yet people still try to shove it down other's throats (see: homosexuality).


I dunno if I'm actually attacking the opinion of anyone here, though. Any theists who claim God is an authority of morality want to speak up, and why (or why not) a follower has the right to claim that view on morality is the Right Choice for everyone?

[alway]

They know The Truth^TM and so it is their duty to push it on you for your own good.

[Mrhappyface]

I support crop eugenics.

[Siquo]

I dunno if I'm actually attacking the opinion of anyone here, though. Any theists who claim God is an authority of morality want to speak up, and why (or why not) a follower has the right to claim that view on morality is the Right Choice for everyone?

Nope, sorry. Just brought it up to show that morality is not evidence-based and it's therefore impossible to have worldview ("belief") entirely based on evidence, and still have morals. This doesn't mean a "god" or supernatural thing needs to exist in order for morals to exist, but a belief in something without basis does.

For instance, I believe (amongst other things) that the human race's purpose is to continue existing (creating an AI counts), and try to base my actions and morals on long-term human survival. I changed my actions a lot but the base is not (for instance, communism/cooperation is more effective, but capitalism/competition is more resilient, so I changed my views on that, without changing my belief). This is a baseless belief, as the importance I give to the inferred survival-traits of our genome is completely made-up.

They know The Truth^TM and so it is their duty to push it on you for your own good.

Ah, but don't we all? Murder and rape is bad, generosity and kindness are good? And if you don't think so (and act upon it), we'll throw you in jail. Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, and not notice the beam which is in your own eye? (aka it's easy to judge others but make sure you're not guilty of the same)
As I'm now comparing judging a murderer to prison sentence with the stoning of a homosexual, let me elaborate: They are both judgments against a crime, where the crime is committed against the morals of that group.

In other words, you can't really blame other people for zealously trying to push their version of The Truth^TM on you, if you support doing the same thing but just with your own version of The Truth^TM. What you can do is attack that "Truth", and please do. And then there's a lot of The Truth's out there that reward you for trying to push the The Truth on other people, thereby becoming self-replicating memes. You can't really blame people for the beliefs they have, but you can blame the beliefs. Compare: "You're stupid for believing in X" vs "X does not exist".

[Grek]

Actually, it is perfectly possible to have a set of morals entirely off of evidence. It's called preference utilitarianism, specifically with a selfish preference utility. You get evidence about your own preferences via introspection in an attempt to formalize your own desires into what's called a 'utility fuction' a mathmatical statement that encapsulates all of your preferences. Then you get evidence about the world around you and try to maximize (or minimize, if your personal preferences are based around minimizing your suffering rather than maximizing your happiness) your utility function.

Morals arise out of applying game theory (the CogSci discipline of trying to model other people and figure out what they'll do so you can decide what is best for you to do based on their expected future actions) and coming to a cooperative or altruistic strategy, where you do things to make other people happy on the expectation that they'll reciprocate in order to get you to continue doing that. It also leads to ideas like a Hobbesian mandate for justice, where you punish criminals and evil-doers in order to discourage them from hurting people in general and thus from hurting you in particular.

Preference utilitarianism makes no attempt to justify your preferences, or to modify them. It simply attempts to discover them, based on evidence, and goes from there. There's no moral judgement about your preferences, only about specific actions given your preferences. There's no belief involved about why you "should" have a preference for one thing or another or whether or not a preference is "justified", only about whether or not you happen to have a given preference and, if you get into evolutionary psychology, why you evolved to have that preference.

Admittedly, this is all alot more work than just declaring, "I believe moral commandment X because I want to.", but I think that ethics is worth the extra effort.

[Eagle_eye]

The problem with that is there are some people who are incapable of empathy or predicting others' wants.

[kaijyuu]

I've never been a fan of "karmic balance" moral systems. If you only do stuff in the hopes of getting things in return, I really don't find that at all worthy of respect. There are plenty of situations too where you have the opportunity to extend an altruistic hand, but know for certain you'll get absolutely squat in return. Any karmic justification falls flat in encouraging performing the act of altruism.

[Cthulhu]

Morality is irrelevant to atheism or theology? 


Alright let's throw some into the mix: Objective morality. Whatever theory you espouse, you can decide of morality can be objectively determined, or if it's just stuff we arbitrarily define.

Theists are often supporters of objective morality because they then have an authority on the subject. X is bad because God says so. Combined with all the other random things we've discussed in this thread, there are some obvious problems here: As religions are unfalsifiable (or at least the reasonable ones are), appealing to the authority of God doesn't hold weight to people who do not share the same belief in God. Yet people still try to shove it down other's throats (see: homosexuality).


I dunno if I'm actually attacking the opinion of anyone here, though. Any theists who claim God is an authority of morality want to speak up, and why (or why not) a follower has the right to claim that view on morality is the Right Choice for everyone?

Morality is subjective.  I have a feeling everyone knows that deep down, but some people just haven't done the mental aerobics to make it clear.  Most Christians I've seen believe sometimes killing people is justified.

This is what I use to demonstrate to people who claim morality is objective:

Killing lesser animals for food is NOT immoral.
Killing humans for food IS immoral, no matter how hungry you are.
<Most objective moralists will agree with these two assumptions.  If you got the one vegan/cannibal objective moralist, tough luck son>

What happens if an alien, so advanced it can't meaningfully communicate with us, and sees us as lesser animals, comes down to Earth.  It's starving, so it starts killing and eating humans.

If its actions are moral, then morality is subjective.  What's immoral to us is moral to others.
If its actions are immoral, then either morality is subjective or you  need to stop killing and eating lesser animals for food.

[SealyStar]

I'd probably be classified as an agnostic, maybe an ignostic. I'm going to avoid posting on this thread a lot, mainly because it would be hypocritical. I've fallen into the middle path, so to speak, because I'm fucking tired of both atheists and religious people shoving their beliefs down their throat, then claiming either "science" or "faith" proves that only their viewpoint, and no other, can possibly be true. There is no way to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of a god or similar figure, despite the shit I hear on both sides, so why the fuck should I care?

[Siquo]

I'd probably be classified as an agnostic, maybe an ignostic. I'm going to avoid posting on this thread a lot, mainly because it would be hypocritical. I've fallen into the middle path, so to speak, because I'm fucking tired of both atheists and religious people shoving their beliefs down their throat, then claiming either "science" or "faith" proves that only their viewpoint, and no other, can possibly be true. There is no way to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of a god or similar figure, despite the shit I hear on both sides, so why the fuck should I care?

Hide! It's a fundi agnostic! He may or may not have a bomb-belt!