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Your statement sounds quite philosophical. Is it open for discussion, or do you consider it a dogmatic truth? I'd recommend to check out John Rawls and Amartya

by wsy 8y ago

Your statement sounds quite philosophical. Is it open for discussion, or do you consider it a dogmatic truth? I'd recommend to check out John Rawls and Amartya Sen on how you can reason about a fair society without assuming universal concepts of happiness, and with taking into account everyone's selfishness.

Koshkin 8y ago
Problem is, “fair”, “good”, and “right” are three different things, and what adds to the confusion is that each has a different meaning depending on a context (the size of the social group - down to the individual; relation to other social groups; the point on the timeline - i.e. whether we are speaking about now or the future, etc.) Statistical mechanics avoids complexity of taking into account properties of the individual constituents by shifting attention to the averages, and so, in a sense, must ethics, if it is to be rational. But, again, the properties in question are not well-defined, unfortunately, and so no amount of effort to rationalize them could yield a positive result. Otherwise we’d have moral codes in place of arbitrary laws long ago.
- wsy 8y ago
  I agree that these are different things. I also agree that they are hard to define. I fail to see why that should be a reason not to attempt it. I strongly disagree that our laws are arbitrary. They are very much inspired by, sometimes even directly derived from what philosophers thought about fairness and freedom. I also want to point out that what both of us do here is having a philosophical argument about moral code. It's not a new one, you can find related stances to your own one with respect to morality in Nietzsche, and with respect to meaning of terms and futility of discussion in Wittgenstein. But this is not the whole picture, other philosophers have already reacted to them and advanced the discussion. Like in other areas of knowledge, you better do thorough research first, otherwise you just reinvent the wheel.

by wsy 8y ago

Koshkin 8y ago

Problem is, “fair”, “good”, and “right” are three different things, and what adds to the confusion is that each has a different meaning depending on a context (the size of the social group - down to the individual; relation to other social groups; the point on the timeline - i.e. whether we are speaking about now or the future, etc.) Statistical mechanics avoids complexity of taking into account properties of the individual constituents by shifting attention to the averages, and so, in a sense, must ethics, if it is to be rational. But, again, the properties in question are not well-defined, unfortunately, and so no amount of effort to rationalize them could yield a positive result. Otherwise we’d have moral codes in place of arbitrary laws long ago.

wsy 8y ago
I agree that these are different things. I also agree that they are hard to define. I fail to see why that should be a reason not to attempt it. I strongly disagree that our laws are arbitrary. They are very much inspired by, sometimes even directly derived from what philosophers thought about fairness and freedom. I also want to point out that what both of us do here is having a philosophical argument about moral code. It's not a new one, you can find related stances to your own one with respect to morality in Nietzsche, and with respect to meaning of terms and futility of discussion in Wittgenstein. But this is not the whole picture, other philosophers have already reacted to them and advanced the discussion. Like in other areas of knowledge, you better do thorough research first, otherwise you just reinvent the wheel.