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[WealthyRadish]

Religious systems tend to provide a basis on which to make such evaluations. Physics, not so much.  Philosophy - well especially post-modern thought has a significant relativism about it which makes it difficult to use as a basis for merit ranking.  It seems to pick as its general assumption that "self actualization" or something similar is the property to maximize, but it has no unbiased rationale for choosing that as the best property to maximize.

Without wanting to sound combative, what in your mind makes the christian religion an "unbiased rationale" by comparison?

[McTraveller]

Oh I didn't mean to suggest Christianity is unbiased - it has a source for its bias and it lets you know it.  I was perhaps suggesting that other philosophies are biased but claim they aren't.

As for consequences - the question is in "judging" the consequences.  So I can at least respect nihilism, because that flat out says nothing matters, so it's all arbitrary.  Nihilism feels honest to me, even though I don't agree with it.

I can sort of understand codes of ethics from a pragmatic standpoint, but not a moral one.  That is - maybe I don't care about that field. I don't care about water erosion, or even if the planet exists in an hour.  The universe sure doesn't - a gamma ray burst could toast the planet any time.  Why should I base ethics around if I speed up climate change or not? I mean, aren't I supposed to do whatever makes me happy? Why should I deny myself (see what I did there)?

Nihilism says no. Most theistic religions say yes.  Atheism says yes, but I don't know much beyond pragmatism and self-preservation, but that sounds circular.  Theistic religions may be argued as cop-outs because while they are not circular, they have the stigma of being "because that's what God says".

[wierd]

Even with a very truncated ethos of "I do what brings me most pleasure", there is basis for ethical behavior toward others, if for no other reason than the avoidance of unwanted negative consequences to actions.

EG-- Sure, I dont really give an actual damn about the neighbor, his house, or his livestock. I only care about myself.  BUT, ever since I enabled that landslide that destroyed his house and killed his wife, he has been a super big dick to me, and has been causing me all kinds of trouble.

I am gonna move, so I can get away from this problem I caused, and then I won't do that kind of thing again.

[McTraveller]

I guess that's what I call "pragmatism", not "ethics".  That is - doing something just to avoid what you consider to be negative consequences for yourself (now or at a future time) is just pragmatism.

[Il Palazzo]

Give us some examples of non-pragmatic ethics.

[Baffler]

Give us some examples of non-pragmatic ethics.

From the standpoint of the individual facing certain death for the benefit of others is extremely non-pragmatic. You gain nothing, and pay the highest possible price for it. People only do that sort of thing when they care about something other than their own self-interest.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Pragmatism isn't necessarily self-interested. I'd probably be willing to face certain death if I was convinced it would have the consequence of entrenching my views in humanity's future and would save many lives, and I think most people with established beliefs feel the same even if they'll never encounter such a scenario.

[Baffler]

Pragmatism isn't necessarily self-interested. I'd probably be willing to face certain death if I was convinced it would have the consequence of entrenching my views in humanity's future and would save many lives, and I think most people with established beliefs feel the same even if they'll never encounter such a scenario.

What you're talking about isn't the kind of pure pragmatism that I'm talking about, but pragmatic principles applied to idealistic goals. It isn't necessary to have any kind of long-term objective to be pragmatic. Although pragmatic is an annoying word in general. People sometimes use it to mean "judging methods and ideas by their immediate material viability" and at other times as "making the right decision" or even "having good decision-making skills." The second meaning is ipso facto desirable but the first (and arguably more proper) is not. Sometimes it's even a bad thing, but some of the good vibes rub off on it anyway.

Edit: And I just realized that I made the exact same mistake I was pointing out, in the very post I pointed it out in. Semantics are hard.

[Cthulhu]

Ethics is just how you launder your basal, mostly illegible sensibilities into high level preferences that you can articulate. 

[wierd]

In my opinion (which isn't worth a lot, I know) ethics and ethical behaviors, are the result of how well developed your theory of mind for other people/lifeforms is.

Hence why some people have ethical issues eating beef and others do not; some consider the cow to have complex feelings, emotions, wants, and needs-- and that raising the creatures exclusively to neuter them early in life, then butcher them at about 1 year of age to make beef out of is unconscionable.

Others view cows as unquestionably dull to the point of banality, and that current cattle are so far removed from their more intelligent wild ancestors that they cannot survive without human intervention, and exist only to be eaten.

[Cthulhu]

I'm maybe halfway there.  Cows are cute and pretty smart, but they are basically adapted for being eaten.  They're very successful in that niche too.  Really if you think about it, the most adaptive trait any animal can have is being useful to humans.  We're eradicating wild species at an insane rate, but something like a dog or a cat or a cow will basically never go extinct as long as humans exist.

[Tingle]

It's this simple. Everyone in my town mows the lawns, the council mows the burms. A low to ground prickle flourishs and flowers are decapitated.
I stopped mowing my lawn, flowers encourage the bees and the long grass shades out the prickle weed thus killing it, the insects love the wild lawn and with the straw I can grow mushrooms, with the insects the birds come and they eat the white butterfly thus my crop is rarely decimated. My soil is incredibly myceliated and retains water. My garden is happy. I can feel it.

Humans do things that make no sense to the betterment of themselves because of our continually adopted culture.
Cows are not smart. Go back 500k years and meet the aurochs of then. We bredd them to be stupid too.
Dogs kill beyond their means unlike the wolf.
Sure we are smart but we don't often look beyond our short life spans and our eternal cultures we cling to.

[wierd]

The whole "Its so.. UGLY!" and "WAAAAAh! My property value!" duo are responsible for so many ecological crimes, yes.

I agree.

[Eschar]

There are real consequences to actions that can be verified very rigidly. Even if you are a psychopathic self-fullfillment seeker, there are reasons to engage ethically, because failure to do so has negative consequences for you eventually.

There's an excellent book, Non-Zero: the Logic of Human Destiny, about how this web of interconnected benefit shows up and influenced the formation of government, morality, etc.

Of course, it still doesn't answer McTraveller's question. It provides no moral rationale for valuing one's existence, nor for valuing others' comfort for their own sake. But it gives a reason for why we usually feel uncomfortable harming others: societies, and any genetic influences on the brain, that didn't value/produce nonharm died out. Empathy is a conserved trait. We like "shoulds" because organisms with "should" feelings survived, and survive, better than those without.

I think one can fashion a pretty effective moral system based simply on empathy and observation, but like MT, I have no transcendent justification for following it. I don't see any transcendent reason to follow this moral system, other than conscience (which I don't consider transcendent, but it is involuntary, hard to control and has many similarities from person to person: so it can reasonably be used as an objective quantity even if I still have no justification for believing that what it says is a valid source of "shoulds.")

[Il Palazzo]

I mean, it's a truism that if one doesn't believe in the supernatural they don't have transcendent reasons to prop up their ethics. But MT's  argument looked more like: one can't have ethics without a belief in the supernatural, because ethics have to be transcendent.