Morality? What morality?

[Betterave]

I thought about that possibility, but discounted it based on what Spock said. Remember when Spock asked us to admit that morality was a meaningless filler word? I took that to indicate that he concluded there was not morality in fact.

Further thoughts?

Interesting thread.

Sure, but I think that just means that ‘apple tree’ and ‘no apple tree’ would likewise be “meaningless fillers” - still the logical structure of all these “meaningless fillers” remains the same, it seems, and Spock’s logic seems to dictate a “meaningless filler” of the kind I indicated.

 

[inocente]

It is never the case that 1 moral action + 1 immoral action = moral action

Subjective. The opposition can say:

1 immoral action + 1,000,000 moral actions (saving the other million kids) = 999,999 moral actions

Remember, to the opposition your inaction is deliberately killing one million kids. For what, the sake of your soul compared to one million others? It’s not so cut-and-dried when you walk in their shoes

 

[Betterave]

I’m not arguing there’s no morality (see my post #14) but am questioning how objectivity might apply.

What you have done is what InSpiration pointed out:
“You have inexcusably breached the English language’s grammatically institutionalized laws for its man-made semantics of moral pronouncements.”

Answer this dilemma:

A small girl is about to throw a switch that unknown to her will kill both herself and one million other children. We ourselves are safe, thousands of miles away watching her on video, but by pushing a button we can save the million by killing the girl, shortening her life a little. We only have five seconds to decide - is our most moral action to push the button or not?

If we push the button some will say we are morally evil, we deliberately murdered the girl, the ends never justify the means, evil can’t stop evil. If instead we don’t push the button some will say we are morally evil, our inaction makes us mass-murderers.

Either way I’d suggest the moral action can’t be arrived at objectively.

Why not? And so what? If we don’t know what to do with certain ‘hard cases’ (which happen to be contrived counter-factuals…), so what? What do you think that implies??

 

[You]

All of those examples attempt to combine the two moral and immoral actions and come to an overall moral assessment for the total scenario.
Perhaps its like one of those logic circuits;
1 + 1 = 1
1 + 0 = 0
0 + 1 = 0
0 + 0 = 0

 

[Betterave]

Well, wonder no more. I will don my Catholic thinking cap, and use some Catholic logic to answer.

1. God only premits evil, if he can “twist” it so that something good will come out of it. (Catholic doctrine)
2. God permitted both bombs to detonate. (Fact)
3. If God wanted to, he could have made either one of the bombs or both of them to become a “dud”. (Catholic doctrine pertaining to God’s omnipotence)
4. Therefore the bombing was morally good, since God permitted them. (Logical corollary)

Life is so easy when one becomes a Catholic for a minute. By the same token, the whole “problem of evil” becomes nonexistent. Everything we do is permitted by God. Moreover, God actively participates in all of our actions!

Dogmas jloughnan.tripod.com/dogma.htm:

69: God keeps all created things in existence. (De fide.)
70: God co-operates immediately in every act of His creatures. (Sent. communis.)

So God was an active participant in releasing the bombs. Surely you don’t want to accuse God to do something immoral, do you?

That logic is so bad it’s not even funny. Are you serious, Spock?

(b.t.w., there’s no such thing as “Catholic logic.”)

 

[You]

Subjective. The opposition can say:

1 immoral action + 1,000,000 moral actions (saving the other million kids) = 999,999 moral actions

Remember, to the opposition your inaction is deliberately killing one million kids. For what, the sake of your soul compared to one million others? It’s not so cut-and-dried when you walk in their shoes

All of those examples attempt to combine the two moral and immoral actions and come to an overall moral assessment for the total scenario.
Perhaps its like one of those logic circuits;
1 + 1 = 1
1 + 0 = 0
0 + 1 = 0
0 + 0 = 0

But these are never real-life examples. They have nothing to do with reality. So I would not confuse them with reality by appealing to emotion.

 

[Spock]

That logic is so bad it’s not even funny. Are you serious, Spock?

The logic itself is impeccable, but the syllogism is still unsound - because the premises are nonsensical. Yet, this is the kind what many (not all) aplogists use. I am glad you spotted the nonsensical nature of the premises. That was the point. By the way, would you point out for the edification of those incompetent apologists, which ones of the premises are incorrect. I already know the answer, of course.

(b.t.w., there’s no such thing as “Catholic logic.”)

Why not? If there is “military logic”?

 

[4Horsemen]

I’m not arguing there’s no morality (see my post #14) but am questioning how objectivity might apply.

Answer this dilemma:

A small girl is about to throw a switch that unknown to her will kill both herself and one million other children. We ourselves are safe, thousands of miles away watching her on video, but by pushing a button we can save the million by killing the girl, shortening her life a little. We only have five seconds to decide - is our most moral action to push the button or not?

If we push the button some will say we are morally evil, we deliberately murdered the girl, the ends never justify the means, evil can’t stop evil. If instead we don’t push the button some will say we are morally evil, our inaction makes us mass-murderers.

Either way I’d suggest the moral action can’t be arrived at objectively.

Since we cannot reduce moral issues to mathematical presumptions (as some posts suggest), we have to look at the greater good of an action or an inaction. I would argue that in the example the greater good is saving as many souls (children in this case) as possible – the million. The decidedly moral choice here would be to save the greater number because the action of pushing the button is for the greater good. Also, it satisfies our own destiny to choose the greatest good, an inclination which precedes our actions.
According to Prof. Donald DeMarco, “our constitution inclines us thoward our end. Our destiny, like targets, precedes our actions.”

Interestingly, though, G.K. Chesterton once remarked, “Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide.”

 

[You]

One shouldn’t conclude that it is moral to kill the girl because of whatever reason. If pushing the button only killed one person and not pushing the button only saved one person one would find that pushing the button would be the immoral choice.
As I say these are logic games but ‘an enemy has come along at night’ and sown huge amounts of emotion to try to throw the match. But the emotion is not part of the logic game. It is part of a different game.
In real life these things do not happen, there are always third ways and fourth opportunities, and trap-doors etc. The point of the game is to attempt to force one to call an immoral action a moral action which is, of course, logically impossible.

 

[CTuck]

1. God only premits evil, if he can “twist” it so that something good will come out of it. (Catholic doctrine)
2. Therefore the bombing was morally good, since God permitted them. (Logical corollary)

Seems like you messed up somewhere. Moreover, you misunderstand the dogmas you stated, as well as missed a few. I don’t think that was a Catholic thinking cap you put on. Anyways, way to evade answering a question.

 

[Betterave]

The logic itself is impeccable, but the syllogism is still unsound - because the premises are nonsensical. Yet, this is the kind what many (not all) aplogists use. I am glad you spotted the nonsensical nature of the premises. That was the point. By the way, would you point out for the edification of those incompetent apologists, which ones of the premises are incorrect. I already know the answer, of course.

Wrong. Regardless of the truth of the premises, the conclusion is a non sequitur. The logic itself is awful.

Why not? If there is “military logic”?

There just isn’t!

 

[4Horsemen]

One shouldn’t conclude that it is moral to kill the girl because of whatever reason. If pushing the button only killed one person and not pushing the button only saved one person one would find that pushing the button would be the immoral choice.
As I say these are logic games but ‘an enemy has come along at night’ and sown huge amounts of emotion to try to throw the match. But the emotion is not part of the logic game. It is part of a different game.
In real life these things do not happen, there are always third ways and fourth opportunities, and trap-doors etc. The point of the game is to attempt to force one to call an immoral action a moral action which is, of course, logically impossible.

These so-called games can be translated into reality. For example, is it moral to choose to save 98% of unborn babies who would be aborted instead of 100% by making it a law to undo abortion except for the cases of rape, incest and life of the mother, which account for about 2% of abortions? Some pro-life groups are purist and refuse to accept a law unless it guarantees that all unborn babies would be saved. Other more pragmatic groups insist on a law, even if imperfect, if it would save 98% of the unborn. Which is the moral response? The issue is not really the same as pushing a button to save one or kill one, but it’s based on a similar ethical dilemma.

Besides not pushing the button could be a sin of omission, which is also immoral. Is is better to be there helpless not doing anything to help 1 million people for the greater good of society? Of course the problem is that one must die. But we can hope for third and fourth opportunities as you have said.

 

[Spock]

Wrong. Regardless of the truth of the premises, the conclusion is a non sequitur. The logic itself is awful.

Just because you don’t see it, it does not mean that it is not there.

 

[inocente]

Why not? And so what? If we don’t know what to do with certain ‘hard cases’ (which happen to be contrived counter-factuals…), so what? What do you think that implies??

But these are never real-life examples. They have nothing to do with reality. So I would not confuse them with reality by appealing to emotion.

Dilemmas are often used to tease out how people deal with morality.

Even after people are given all the time they want, they will disagree on the answer. In this case some, like 4Horsemen, may use a “do least harm” logic and push the button. Others, like You, may use a “do no evil” logic and not push the button. Both answers are completely reasoned through, only the axioms differ.

(You – if you like to think of it as arithmetic, one group uses normal arithmetic, the other Boolean arithmetic as in your case).

Even though we may scream at the others that they are wrong, they will scream back that we are wrong. But neither side’s logic is faulty, we all just choose one kind of reasoning. A conclusion is that we give differing answers not because our reasoning in poor but because we all subjectively prefer one form of reasoning over another.

If we then go back to simple moral questions where everyone gives the same answer, it may be that we all subjectively happen to prefer the same reasoning as everyone else, and only imagine we’re being objective.

 

[You]

Dilemmas are often used to tease out how people deal with morality.

Even after people are given all the time they want, they will disagree on the answer. In this case some, like 4Horsemen, may use a “do least harm” logic and push the button. Others, like You, may use a “do no evil” logic and not push the button. Both answers are completely reasoned through, only the axioms differ.

(You – if you like to think of it as arithmetic, one group uses normal arithmetic, the other Boolean arithmetic as in your case).

Even though we may scream at the others that they are wrong, they will scream back that we are wrong. But neither side’s logic is faulty, we all just choose one kind of reasoning. A conclusion is that we give differing answers not because our reasoning in poor but because we all subjectively prefer one form of reasoning over another.

If we then go back to simple moral questions where everyone gives the same answer, it may be that we all subjectively happen to prefer the same reasoning as everyone else, and only imagine we’re being objective.

I’ll try and say it just one last time. You have the last word then if you wish.
These games are not about reality, sin, emotion, ‘what I would do’, crime, subjectivity nor anything else other than logic of objective morality.
I decide for this example that the capital letter A is immoral, objectively.
I don’t decide on its morality; I decide on its place in the set called immorality.
Now somebody pulls my hair, pulls my nose, stands on my foot; and like magic I decide that A actually belongs in the set called morality.
Now my problem is that capital A, which I already know to be objectively immoral, is now trying to be objectively moral at the same time. This is a logic impossibility. It cannot be both. And it can only be immoral because it is objectively immoral.

Now you can if you wish try to force these games into reality but you cannot change the rules of reality. Because you are outside the game and in the big bad world now, and you are a human with free will you can push the button or not as you wish; but if you push the button you will still be doing an immoral action, the girl will die.
But now, because you are attempting to transfer the game into the real world you can ramp up the stakes and say that to save the universe you must kill the girl. These circumstances still do not change the fact that pressing the button to kill the girl is an immoral action; however some may try to argue, in the real world, that you do not intend to kill the girl when you press the button you intend to save the universe. Of course people have freewill, we are not machines and are as such not precluded from acting just because some thing is immoral or moral. But what you cannot do is say that you have changed objective immorality into objective morality. Whichever way you decide to act in the end, in the real world is beside the point; Doing the logically impossible and making objective immorality objective morality I feel is always the cynical point of these types of scenarios.
Yes you can still push the button in the real world because you are a free willed creature and yes it will still be an immoral action.

 

[tonyrey]

Even though we may scream at the others that they are wrong, they will scream back that we are wrong. But neither side’s logic is faulty, we all just choose one kind of reasoning. A conclusion is that we give differing answers not because our reasoning in poor but because we all subjectively prefer one form of reasoning over another.

If we then go back to simple moral questions where everyone gives the same answer, it may be that we all subjectively happen to prefer the same reasoning as everyone else, and only imagine we’re being objective.

You are assuming morality is divorced from reality! Have you ever considered the possibility that moral principles and laws are not subjective but based on truths about personal development and fulfilment? If you are a Baptist that should come into the picture…

 

[inocente]

Yes you can still push the button in the real world because you are a free willed creature and yes it will still be an immoral action.

You are assuming morality is divorced from reality! Have you ever considered the possibility that moral principles and laws are not subjective but based on truths about personal development and fulfilment? If you are a Baptist that should come into the picture…

Using moral dilemmas is standard practice amongst philosophers in ethics.

You can ask this particular question, or another such as the Trolley Problem to university or high school students, or any mixed group you like, and they will give differing answers and then scream at each other. They will argue about it for days and get really upset with each other because neither side has a killer argument – both sides are being entirely sincere and rational but starting from different points.

Note I never gave my own answer because it’s irrelevant. You can call the other side immoral as much as you want and they will say exactly the same about you. You can tell them your objective morality and they will tell you theirs, you can appeal to God and the Heavens to make them see sense and they will do just the same. The fact remains that people reach completely different conclusions.

Even groups of Christians reach different conclusions. You can go to war on this or you can allow freedom of conscience. No point debating it with me though, find a group and try it for yourselves, this is the reality.

 

[Betterave]

Using moral dilemmas is standard practice amongst philosophers in ethics.

You can ask this particular question, or another such as the Trolley Problem to university or high school students, or any mixed group you like, and they will give differing answers and then scream at each other. They will argue about it for days and get really upset with each other because neither side has a killer argument – both sides are being entirely sincere and rational but starting from different points.

Note I never gave my own answer because it’s irrelevant…

Or could it be that you never gave your own answer because having trouble doing so is actually very typical and your characterization of the situation is nonsense? ("…they will give differing answers and then scream at each other. They will argue about it for days and get really upset with each other because neither side has a killer argument – both sides are being entirely sincere and rational but starting from different points." - Will they? Highly unlikely.) A dilemma, by definition, is something that people do not have strong intuitive inclinations about, they recognize that the two options are both attractive, and their recognition of the dilemma as such - as a dilemma - shows that their basic principles are in fact in agreement, that their starting points are in fact NOT different.

 

[Betterave]

Even though we may scream at the others that they are wrong, they will scream back that we are wrong. But neither side’s logic is faulty, we all just choose one kind of reasoning. A conclusion is that we give differing answers not because our reasoning in poor but because we all subjectively prefer one form of reasoning over another.

First, you mischaracterize real deliberations about moral dilemmas - these don’t typically involve screaming; to the contrary, they involve agonizing. Second, your mischaracterization of the situation would appear in any case to be irrelevant to the truth of the matter: if people scream at each other and use different rationalizations for their view points, that does not imply that the difference between them is *fundamentally *grounded in a difference in “subjective preferences”. You would have to examine their actual claims and their actual reasoning in order to even consider such an assessment.

If we then go back to simple moral questions where everyone gives the same answer, it may be that we all subjectively happen to prefer the same reasoning as everyone else, and only imagine we’re being objective.

That’s nice speculation. Now maybe you could tell us a reason for actually believing it?

 

[tonyrey]

Using moral dilemmas is standard practice amongst philosophers in ethics.

You can ask this particular question, or another such as the Trolley Problem to university or high school students, or any mixed group you like, and they will give differing answers and then scream at each other. They will argue about it for days and get really upset with each other because neither side has a killer argument – both sides are being entirely sincere and rational but starting from different points.

Note I never gave my own answer because it’s irrelevant. You can call the other side immoral as much as you want and they will say exactly the same about you. You can tell them your objective morality and they will tell you theirs, you can appeal to God and the Heavens to make them see sense and they will do just the same. The fact remains that people reach completely different conclusions.

Even groups of Christians reach different conclusions. You can go to war on this or you can allow freedom of conscience. No point debating it with me though, find a group and try it for yourselves, this is the reality.

You have failed to answer my question. Let me pose it differently:
How do you reconcile your Baptist beliefs with the view that morality is divorced from reality! Surely moral principles and laws are not subjective but based on truths about personal development and fulfilment.