If I recall my philosophy lessons correctly, ethics are the code and morals are the applications of that code.
Now, I am of the opinion that Ethics are, indeed, objective and if I'm allowed to not only build on this:
[QUOTE]My stance in this is that there isn't free will.
First, this implies that the mind is something outside of the world, which I would call the soul.
The soul brings a lot of questions such as how can it exist without something governing its actions (if it's itself, it must act to let itself act, which means it would be impossible for it to act; if there is something over it, either it isn't free or we have a second-soul, creating the same situation as before.
Or how can it act on something if it's ruled by a different set of physical laws? For it to act it must exist in this plane of existence, but how can it exist here if it's being governed by a second set? And how would the boundary zone behave?
Secondly, there is vast documentation that physical things can influence the behavior of the mind. We have anti-depressants and other such chemicals.
Thirdly, I'm pretty sure genetics has an influence in one's values via one's intelligence or directly on the value system, and genetics are purely physical. There is a whole branch of psychology, called evolutionary psychology, based on this premise.[/quote]
but as well as copy pasta some of my thoughts in response to someone who claimed the same as I did upstairs, I'll leave here my ideas regarding an objective morality.
First of all, people aren't moral or immoral, because, as you said, there is no free will, which morality depends on.
Your actions then are decided on some kind of programming.
Now, what the body does is what the body wants, no matter what influences it. The body can experience 3 things: feelings, perceptions and thoughts, perceptions and thoughts are two faces of knowledge, so you have knowledge (data from the senses and from the mind) and emotions (the trademark of the consciousness, what defines consciousness, it is impossible to know without feeling (even if that feeling is indifference, which is different from not being able to feel about it) but not the other way around). Knowledge is nothing but replication of the world on your mind; therefore it can’t possibly propel you, just like the real world doesn’t, which leaves feelings. Now every feeling can be split into combination of happiness and unhappiness (each referring to different things), and happiness is good, while unhappiness is bad. Therefore, every single last thing we do is propelled by happiness.
Happiness is this programming. You do whatever you think will make you happier, you and you alone, because you are incapable of feeling other people's emotions, and you evaluate situations and their level of happiness using ideals, or tastes.
These ideals are the ones that can be judged, and all you need to do to do it objectively is assume that happiness is objectively good, which it is, because worth (what makes something good) comes from consciousnesses only, and if happiness that propels us, then it is the only thing considered worthy of having, good, possessing worth.
And if your happiness is objectively good, then it is a characteristic of the universe and applies to everyone, same for all other consciousnesses.
With this follows (if you assume that happiness is the ONLY thing that is good, which it is, all human experiences eventually come down to a balance between happiness and unhappiness) that the sole rule for human conduct is maximization of happiness.
This is all premise. Now, tastes are divided into two mechanisms. The happiness, which comes from the realization of a taste, which is entirely subject and molded, and the consequences which are the natural consequences of the action, which depend on the nature of the action and are strictly objective, as they depend on the laws of physics and logic.
This is where the grading starts. The better ideals, the more efficient ones, are the ones whose consequences allow for you to perform more actions from which you will receive happiness, the happiness you get from the realization of the ideal does not come into the equation because you can mold to have any ideal whatsoever, you can't mold the laws of physics.
Medicine allows for one to live longer and better, sadism and violence do the opposite.
I mentioned how the one rule is to maximize happiness, but how should we?
There are rules, laws to the mechanics of happiness.
Firstly, we'll assume that happiness, as something that can rise and decrease can be measured in a numerical fashion. What is very hard is to find a scale, but that is not needed for the argument.
The first rule, which I already mentioned, is:
Every unit of happiness felt by any consciousness, in itself, is of the same value
The second one is in regards to happiness distribution.
Assuming person 1 has X U.H (units of happiness) and the other one also X/2 U.H., and we have an object which will, on a determined standard person, produce 50 U.H. and assuming that no other difference between them exists other than level of happiness (and that the object will produce happiness and not unhappiness on the people), who should we give the object to?
The sad person, merely because the less you have, the more of a happiness boost you will receive. Inversely for unhappiness, the unhappier you are, less importance you will give to bad things.
The second rule then is:
The same stimulus will not provoke the same variation in happiness of two equal people, disregarding their happiness levels.
Now, we know what is “moral” (i.e. efficient), and we (sort of) know how to figure out which situation is better when presented to us, now we need to see how we can predict situations.
Let’s imagine we have this situation.
A man must choose between taking or not taking a 5 dollar bill from someone, all other effects are neglectable.
First, we need to find all possible consequences for each outcome and attribute them a happiness value. For the sake of argument, let’s assume money’s happiness value is equal to its monetary worth.
You get Situation A (he does) where we have Hpv = 5-5 (+5 for the man and -5 for the man he took the bill from) while situation B has an Hpv = 0+0 (nothing changed)
So both situations are equally valid, but what if we can’t (and we can’t, thanks quantum physics!) predict the future with a 100% rate of success, then we need to factor in probabilities.
Let’s think of a bet, would you bet your entire money for a chance at getting 5 dollars? It’s not ver y wise, but how do we calculate that one. Easy:
Situation A(he does) you get an Hpv= 5(dollars) x 0.5 (chance of winning) – 10000(his money) x 0.5 (chance of losing) while you invert the happiness values of each stimulus for situation B. Situation A is then the preferable choice.
BUT there’s a possibility the man running the wager shoots you if you win, you must also factor that, there’s a chance he’ll shoot and miss and the man ends up killing him because of it. There is a chance the man who just died were a future Hitler, or maybe that he would be future Hitler’s murderer.
A nigh infinite amount of probabilities that must be factored in, but ones we can ignore since the probabilities of the guy being/killing the future Hitler are near identical in both situation so, when putting one against the other, we can ignore them.
And it's not that it can't be measured. It can, we have been doing so ever since we were born. If happiness levels fluctuate and we know something makes us happier than something else, then we've been using numbers (estimations) all the time. What's VERY hard is using a standard unit. That depends on the brain; I'm thinking maybe concentration of happiness hormones or number of neurons fired. I don't know enough about the brain to talk about this.
Unfortunately a lot of people think free will exists. Determinism is something I hold as fact, not philosophy.
I'm also on the edge about happiness being objective. I understand happiness isn't the same as pleasure, the later being bodily and the former being mental. Take a case where someone believes that they should suffer their entire lives for a god and if they didn't, they would feel very guilty. They may still be "happy", but would always have a belief that what they're doing is wrong. I think a term like "fulfillment" would be better, just because happiness isn't broad enough.
[quote]You get Situation A (he does) where we have Hpv = 5-5 (+5 for the man and -5 for the man he took the bill from) while situation B has an Hpv = 0+0 (nothing changed)
So both situations are equally valid, but what if we can’t (and we can’t, thanks quantum physics!) predict the future with a 100% rate of success, then we need to factor in probabilities.
[/quote]
Keep in mind that here you're veering somewhat outside of the realm of ethics and moving into more personality philosphy - self supremacy and others.
While the net gain of happiness | unhappiness does remain the same the overall allocation changes. As a society we attempt to reduce these allocation changes as much as possible to the level that for all happiness you expend you should get a seeming equal value back.
Usually if someone ends up getting far more value back then what was invested for his actions, and shortens someone's gain via that they tend to end up in a territory where they have to commit this gain either by immoral, unethical or illegal means.
And very often society then attempts to restore the situation and fix it.
This obviously is speaking in very general and deterministic terms but it does point at a long term existance of moral and ethics in human society as well as pointing at certain minimal truths.
Usually this overall idea remains the same across societies the main difference being if there exists broader social strata inside of the society which can expect different approaches from said society. The overall long term trend though is for morality and ethics to be universal across all strata.
The important thing is, that morality and ethics are not about efficiency, they are about long term societal controls which stem from societal development.
a) What is more efficient
Having a slave to fullfill your work|sexual needs or giving them the correct return?
From a mere personal supremacy standpoint the slave is far more efficient as you don't essentially have to invest anything yourself in order to get return. But from a societal standpoint this is strongly immoral and unethical ( as an evolution of this has also become illegal). And the fear of society condoning this behaviour leads to most people suppressing their personal superiority motives and instead stay societaly true. And when people do this behavior they attempt to keep it secret.
There's a number of further important aspects where people commit similar moral behaviour even when it is not expected of them but it also somewhat stems from our biology.
No such as morals, ethics, right or wrong, this universe is subjective.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;32392550]Keep in mind that here you're veering somewhat outside of the realm of ethics and moving into more personality philosphy - self supremacy and others.
While the net gain of happiness | unhappiness does remain the same the overall allocation changes. As a society we attempt to reduce these allocation changes as much as possible to the level that for all happiness you expend you should get a seeming equal value back.
Usually if someone ends up getting far more value back then what was invested for his actions, and shortens someone's gain via that they tend to end up in a territory where they have to commit this gain either by immoral, unethical or illegal means.
And very often society then attempts to restore the situation and fix it.
This obviously is speaking in very general and deterministic terms but it does point at a long term existance of moral and ethics in human society as well as pointing at certain minimal truths.
Usually this overall idea remains the same across societies the main difference being if there exists broader social strata inside of the society which can expect different approaches from said society. The overall long term trend though is for morality and ethics to be universal across all strata.
The important thing is, that morality and ethics are not about efficiency, they are about long term societal controls which stem from societal development.
a) What is more efficient
Having a slave to fullfill your work|sexual needs or giving them the correct return?
From a mere personal supremacy standpoint the slave is far more efficient as you don't essentially have to invest anything yourself in order to get return. But from a societal standpoint this is strongly immoral and unethical ( as an evolution of this has also become illegal). And the fear of society condoning this behaviour leads to most people suppressing their personal superiority motives and instead stay societaly true. And when people do this behavior they attempt to keep it secret.
There's a number of further important aspects where people commit similar moral behaviour even when it is not expected of them but it also somewhat stems from our biology.[/QUOTE]
I argue that the personal standpoint isn't valid and as such, is pointless to think of it. I argue that, since out happiness is objectively and intrinsically good for us (and that, therefore, it's impossible to dissociate our personal happiness from our perception of it being good) and that, because of it, it must be a property of the universe that one's happiness has worth and if it's a property of the universe, it must extend to everybody. Which leads us to the standpoint of the set of all consciousnesses being the only valid standpoint.
Regardless of how it appeared in society or how it is enforced.
Against that I would argue that humans are intrinsically social beings and our existance in groups, communes and cliques tend to affect us very strongly. As a result of this it is far easier to find a person that willingly and functionally exists inside of such a commune with none or little objections and rarer to find individuals that do not.
And even these individuals tend to have a set of ethics and morality which tends to permeate their own social groups. Though admittedly a lot of these tend to protect them from the majority group enforcing their own morality and ethics.
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