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So then, when you're in an evolutionarily unfamiliar situation where these instincts of yours don't work, does anything go? If you're a drone operator shooting

So then, when you're in an evolutionarily unfamiliar situation where these instincts of yours don't work, does anything go? If you're a drone operator shooting missiles at people through a video game, and it's too abstracted for you to feel bad, is that perfectly hunky dory? Or, I dunno, maybe you might want to work on figuring out a way to think about that kind of decision?

crimsonalucard 8y ago
Read what I wrote carefully. I'm saying there is no way of figuring out a RIGHT way of making the decision because there is no real concept of RIGHT. If I push an innocent fat man in front of freight train (the man is fat so he's heavy enough to stop the train dead, but he dies as a result) to stop the train from running over 20 people tied the tracks am I a murderer or a savior? Am I moral or am I immoral? I'm saying the answer to the question is irrelevant because there is no RIGHT answer. Any answer a regular person or an ethicist comes up with is ultimately as made up and as arbitrary as the moral instincts that drive our behavior. The hard questions have no right answer because the question is loaded to begin with. We never evolved a moral instinct on whether I should push the fat man or leave him be. This isn't physical law or logic. Morality is an arbitrary biological phenomena. If the ethicist tells you, you should push the person to save 20 people, and another layman says you shouldn't murder an innocent, fat bystander, neither answer is more wrong or correct than the other. The difference here is that the ethicist spent years studying something that ultimately has no answer or meaning. Thus the ultimate argument is, there is no need for a company to hire an ethicist for hard moral problems. Your layman judgment is as good as the ethicists because it's all made up anyway. The only probable benefit an ethicist can possibly provide is logical consistency. Making sure your current decisions are inline with your past decisions. But is that really a benefit when each decision doesn't have an exact moral answer to begin with? It's not. If I encounter the train problem 50 times at different stages of my life, and I choose to push the fat man 25 times and ignore him another 25 times the question is still loaded and both decisions are still arbitrary and it's still unclear what decision was right or wrong. Moral instincts were never meant to be consistent, the codification of morality into law was something we made up in attempt to make sense of our moral emotions but is ultimately irrelevant. Keep in mind I'm not saying that we should get rid of all our morals because it's all pointless. We're human and ultimately humans are moral and we should act human when the moral questions are straightforward and easy. I'm just saying that when the questions become complex you don't need to create an entire field called "ethics" around it because it's all ultimately made up and meaningful study on a made up phenomena is fruitless.
- paultopia 8y ago
  I read what you wrote perfectly carefully. I was merely suggesting, with a small question or two; that: 1. Those of us who take a position like yours nonetheless manage to find themselves experiencing the answers to moral questions as right or wrong on a daily basis, notwithstanding all efforts to deny that they can be true or false, and 2. That in a complex world we often experience ourselves as called upon to make judgments about situations that our instincts don't track. And we don't tend to think that flipping a coin is an adequate way of doing so. Ultimately, even if you believe that propositions of right and wrong have no truth value---even if you believe "X is the right thing to do" just amounts to "yay X," thinking carefully about right and wrong is a felt human need, deeply embedded into our psychology as a species. And it's embedded in our social relations too, as we make claims of right and wrong, just and unjust, fair and unfair against one another every day and have done so since forever. And, sure, the root instincts for this are shared by all. But is it so absurd to think that maybe the same economic division of labor principles that generate gains from specialization in every other form of human activity, even those that might not have some foundational truth value, might also apply to ethics? Even if you really think that ethics are a form of art, only with aesthetic value (a view I don't endorse, just to be clear, but I'm taking an extreme view for sake of argument---I actually think moral claims do have truth value, but that's a whole other conversation)---while it's true that any of us can slap paint on a page, and any of us can recognize beauty, I am sure glad that the world contains people who specialize in painting.
  - crimsonalucard 8y ago
    1. So? I make decision regardless I don't spend time developing a career around it to claim my answer is better because it isn't. 2. You don't think flipping a coin is adequate and I agree it's not adequate. The problem is, no one has the adequate way of solving the problem. It doesn't exist... the best we can do is as good as flipping a coin. To claim that god exists when we don't know whether he exists is the same instinctual human drive that lays the foundation for the need of an ethicist to come in and answer questions no human knows the answer to. I don't equate it to painting art. I equate it to fraud or delusion. The artist makes no claim that his creation is real, he exists for entertainment. The incredulous attempt to claim that an ethicists answer is better than a layman is fraudulent. You truly think an ethicist can tell me the right answer to whether you want to murder the fat man to save 20 people? To make a judgment on murder and killing and claim that his answer is better than my answer when no answer exists is not only arrogant but flat out wrong. Nobody wants to flip a coin on moral decisions such as murder and life. But sometimes for hard ethical questions that's the best outcome. And for someone to claim that they can do better than a coin flip. Well... that's fraud or delusion. The need for answers causes humanity to make up answers. It's the basis of religion, and only in recent times does the discovery of science, logic and the scientific method are we able to break from this mold and realize our self delusion. Yet this knowledge is hard to obtain and self delusion still permeates our behavior. You're right in the sense that there will probably always be people who think they "need" ethicists just like there will always be people who "need" religion. It's just another lie we tell ourselves to get us through the day.

crimsonalucard 8y ago

Read what I wrote carefully. I'm saying there is no way of figuring out a RIGHT way of making the decision because there is no real concept of RIGHT. If I push an innocent fat man in front of freight train (the man is fat so he's heavy enough to stop the train dead, but he dies as a result) to stop the train from running over 20 people tied the tracks am I a murderer or a savior? Am I moral or am I immoral? I'm saying the answer to the question is irrelevant because there is no RIGHT answer. Any answer a regular person or an ethicist comes up with is ultimately as made up and as arbitrary as the moral instincts that drive our behavior. The hard questions have no right answer because the question is loaded to begin with. We never evolved a moral instinct on whether I should push the fat man or leave him be. This isn't physical law or logic. Morality is an arbitrary biological phenomena. If the ethicist tells you, you should push the person to save 20 people, and another layman says you shouldn't murder an innocent, fat bystander, neither answer is more wrong or correct than the other. The difference here is that the ethicist spent years studying something that ultimately has no answer or meaning. Thus the ultimate argument is, there is no need for a company to hire an ethicist for hard moral problems. Your layman judgment is as good as the ethicists because it's all made up anyway. The only probable benefit an ethicist can possibly provide is logical consistency. Making sure your current decisions are inline with your past decisions. But is that really a benefit when each decision doesn't have an exact moral answer to begin with? It's not. If I encounter the train problem 50 times at different stages of my life, and I choose to push the fat man 25 times and ignore him another 25 times the question is still loaded and both decisions are still arbitrary and it's still unclear what decision was right or wrong. Moral instincts were never meant to be consistent, the codification of morality into law was something we made up in attempt to make sense of our moral emotions but is ultimately irrelevant. Keep in mind I'm not saying that we should get rid of all our morals because it's all pointless. We're human and ultimately humans are moral and we should act human when the moral questions are straightforward and easy. I'm just saying that when the questions become complex you don't need to create an entire field called "ethics" around it because it's all ultimately made up and meaningful study on a made up phenomena is fruitless.

paultopia 8y ago
I read what you wrote perfectly carefully. I was merely suggesting, with a small question or two; that: 1. Those of us who take a position like yours nonetheless manage to find themselves experiencing the answers to moral questions as right or wrong on a daily basis, notwithstanding all efforts to deny that they can be true or false, and 2. That in a complex world we often experience ourselves as called upon to make judgments about situations that our instincts don't track. And we don't tend to think that flipping a coin is an adequate way of doing so. Ultimately, even if you believe that propositions of right and wrong have no truth value---even if you believe "X is the right thing to do" just amounts to "yay X," thinking carefully about right and wrong is a felt human need, deeply embedded into our psychology as a species. And it's embedded in our social relations too, as we make claims of right and wrong, just and unjust, fair and unfair against one another every day and have done so since forever. And, sure, the root instincts for this are shared by all. But is it so absurd to think that maybe the same economic division of labor principles that generate gains from specialization in every other form of human activity, even those that might not have some foundational truth value, might also apply to ethics? Even if you really think that ethics are a form of art, only with aesthetic value (a view I don't endorse, just to be clear, but I'm taking an extreme view for sake of argument---I actually think moral claims do have truth value, but that's a whole other conversation)---while it's true that any of us can slap paint on a page, and any of us can recognize beauty, I am sure glad that the world contains people who specialize in painting.
- crimsonalucard 8y ago
  1. So? I make decision regardless I don't spend time developing a career around it to claim my answer is better because it isn't. 2. You don't think flipping a coin is adequate and I agree it's not adequate. The problem is, no one has the adequate way of solving the problem. It doesn't exist... the best we can do is as good as flipping a coin. To claim that god exists when we don't know whether he exists is the same instinctual human drive that lays the foundation for the need of an ethicist to come in and answer questions no human knows the answer to. I don't equate it to painting art. I equate it to fraud or delusion. The artist makes no claim that his creation is real, he exists for entertainment. The incredulous attempt to claim that an ethicists answer is better than a layman is fraudulent. You truly think an ethicist can tell me the right answer to whether you want to murder the fat man to save 20 people? To make a judgment on murder and killing and claim that his answer is better than my answer when no answer exists is not only arrogant but flat out wrong. Nobody wants to flip a coin on moral decisions such as murder and life. But sometimes for hard ethical questions that's the best outcome. And for someone to claim that they can do better than a coin flip. Well... that's fraud or delusion. The need for answers causes humanity to make up answers. It's the basis of religion, and only in recent times does the discovery of science, logic and the scientific method are we able to break from this mold and realize our self delusion. Yet this knowledge is hard to obtain and self delusion still permeates our behavior. You're right in the sense that there will probably always be people who think they "need" ethicists just like there will always be people who "need" religion. It's just another lie we tell ourselves to get us through the day.