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When I lived in China, drinking as a group over dinner was a common social interaction. The one acceptable excuse, on which no one would press you, was to claim that your doctor has forbid it, which is another form of "health reasons". If people do press you on it, give them a quick cold glance that says "you are being rude" and then get back to the conversation.
I do not mean this to be flippant, but Richard Feynman's -- who quit drinking when he thought he might be showing early signs of alcoholism and did not want to risk damaging his brain -- wife would ask you this:
What do you care what other people think?
If you are at a bar or a party and you determine that other people are looking down on you for not drinking, why should you care about such silliness? It's your body and your health and damn people who cannot respect that.
Good on you for not drinking.
Should we not have at least some good evidence that the world has been measurably changed by charitable actions before positing this? Can we also establish that the making of as much money as possible does not itself have costs and do damage?
It can be easily, even sleepily argued that many of the popular vehicles for becoming wealthy are quite destructive. We can happily found charities to ameliorate this damage, but what of it?
You may have excellent arguments to support this charity statement, but these are not at all apparent to me. Please do enumerate them if you have a moment.
To give my own answer, I think the single best contribution that a person can make to society is to raise a child (genetically related or adopted) educated in the sciences and in reason, and with mind strong and nimble and ready to apply this knowledge in any field she finds to be interesting.
If you think that people working in synthetic biology and bioengineering are doing worthwhile work (and I entirely agree that they are), then go help them. Why the ennui? Set yourself to spend a month investigating these fields and find if you are able to suss out interesting ideas that might (how can you know?) be of use. If your imagination is sparked, then you should find a job in a lab on a trial basis and take your investigations further. I would encourage anyone with a good mind to go into this area of research, as it will doubtless benefit me (I cannot speak to society).
I think your arguments against the utility of mathematics can be applied generally to any science, which is why I reject them. However, the weakness of my objection (it relies on unstable induction) is also the weakness of your argument. Look, sure, you cannot KNOW that what you are doing is going to result in something useful. But I see no evidence at all that anyone who has made worthwhile discoveries knew otherwise. It just is not true, we have no evidence for it, that Newton set out to lay down the mathematical foundations of physics for the benefit of anyone. He seems to have done it for reasons of curiosity and perhaps ambition. I imagine he had a bit of fun with it. Like it or not, this is why people do things, especially when said things require years of work.
I would posit (but do not know), that if you do want to make a useful contribution, the state of ignorance is exactly the right position to be. The x-ray, the laser, the computer, antibiotics, physics, Greek geometry, etc. etc. down the line are the result of accident, aimless research motivated only by curiosity, or people having fun with ideas. Some of these might even have been the result of chaps trying to get the girl. That is how it goes. I see almost no evidence at all (with exceptions of specific technologies, the airplane, for example) that the best way to go about making discoveries is to trying to make specific discoveries. You get interested in something and, if you find something useful, good for you, but most people do not. Given this, that we would find that the most successful scientists are motivated by curiosity, playfulness, and perhaps a little ambition. A survey of the history of science reveals, I think unquestionably, that yes, this is exactly the case!
It is certainly possible, even likely, that if you do spend your time doing theoretical math, that you will do nothing of importance or use to society. The chances, I think, are, at best, only very slightly better if you switch fields to do something else. You should do what gets you excited and interested, because only then, no matter what your pursuit, can you really increase your chances of doing something useful for yourself and society. At the very least, you will be happy, and that is not nothing.
I think this objection, though I empathize with your bringing it up, is not really worth our time in considering.
Look, we all know, if we are honest, that there is a kind of skepticism (the result of realizing the problem of solipsism and following through on its logical consequences) that cannot be eliminated from the system. It is universal and infects everything.
For this reason, we really need to know more about why these folks have objections to these conclusions. Why we should give particular credence to the opinions of members of the philosophical professions is not obvious, as certainly this site testifies to the fact that you need not be a professor of philosophy to investigate philosophical questions. I suspect, but let us test, that in a fair number of cases the kind of doubts that are raised can be raised in any and every case of a claim of truth. If this is the case, then what matters it? I do not think our interests, practical as they seem largely to be, require that we be constantly limited by such doubts.
I am sure this reveals me as a scientist, but cannot we agree that in the cases of such doubt we should just move on and get on? We should, I think, care about doubts specific to the problems we are considering rather than doubts general to all problems, or we can be pretty sure that we are not going to get anywhere on any topic ever.
You might read Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan for more ideas on this topic, as he agrees with you on your main point. He argues, I think strongly, that the best way to go about discovering new ideas and methods is to obsessively tinker with things, and thus to expose oneself to the lucky accident, which is generally the real reason for insight or original invention.
Very well put.
I think an important part of our disagreement, at least for me, is that you are interested in people generally and morality as it is now --- at least your examples come from this set --- while I am trying to restrict my inquiry to the most rational type of person, so that I can discover a morality that all rational people can be brought to through reason alone without need for error or chance. If such a morality does not exist among people generally, then I have no interest for the morality of people generally. To bring it up is a non sequitur in such a case.
I do not see that people coming to agree on things that are demonstrably false is a point against me. This fact is precisely why I am turned-off by the current state of ethical thought, as it seems infested with examples of this circumstance. I am not impressed by people who will agree to an intellectual point because it is convenient. I take truth first, at least that is the point of this inquiry.
I am asking a single question: Is there (or can we build) a morality that can be derived with logic from first principles that are obvious to everyone and require no Faith?
I think we might still be talking past each other, but here goes:
The reason I posit and emphasize a distinction between subjective judgments and those that are otherwise -- I have a weak reason for not using the term "objective" here -- is to highlight a particular feature of moral claims that is lacking, and in thus being lacked, weakens them. That is, I take a claim to be subjective if to hold it myself I must come upon it by chance. I cannot be brought to it through reason alone. It is an opinion or intuition that I cannot trace logically in my own thought, so I cannot communicate it to you by guiding you down the same line. The reason I think that this distinction matters, is that without this logical structure, it not possible for someone to bring me to experience the same intuition through reasoned argument or demonstration. Without this feature, morality must be an island state. This is ruinous, because morality inevitably and necessarily touches upon interactions between people. If it cannot do this, it cannot do much.
Perhaps we should come to common agreement, are at least agreed-upon disagreement on this point before we try other things.
Other Things:
I suspect -- this is an idea I have only recently invented have not entirely examined -- that any idea that is irrational needs must be essentially incommunicable. How could it be otherwise? If you can lay out the logic behind a thought and give support to its predicates carefully and patiently, and of course your logic is valid and your predicates sound, how can I not, if I am open to reason, not accept what you say as true? That is, if you can demonstrate your ideas as the logical consequences of some set of known truths, I must, because that is what logical consequence is, accept your ideas as true.
I have not witnessed with done with moral notions. Hence my doubt about there existence as rational ideas. I do not doubt that people have moral ideas, but I doubt that they can be communicated to people who have not already come upon them by chance, and who then can only be partially sure that you are of common mind.
Perhaps I can draw a parallel with the distinction between Greek and Babylonian mathematics. The difference between demonstration by proof and attempted demonstration by repeated example. The first (except to mathematicians of the subtle variety), if done properly, seems to be able, in its nature, to be powered to accomplish the goal of communication in every case. Can this be said of the latter type? I think only in the case when the examples given are logically structured so as to be a form of the first type.
"I agree with your basic point that moral intuitions reflect psychological realities, and that attempts to derive moral truths without explicitly referring to those realities will inevitably turn out to implicitly embed them."
I have not wanted to make this claim. What I am claiming is that this claim does appear, thus far, to hold water. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, etc. etc. I am asking for someone to show me the light, as it were.
"First, I can have moral intuitions about non-humans... for example, I can believe that it's wrong to club cute widdle baby seals. Second, it's not obvious that non-humans can't have moral intuitions."
As for your first objection, have not you given precisely the sort of case I was talking about? The moral judgment stated is not about bears clubbing baby seals, it is about humans doing it! Clearly that does involve humans. Come up with a moral judgment about trees overusing carbon dioxide and you'll have me pinned.
"If that is in fact your desire, then you haven't a care for it. Or, indeed, for much of anything else."
That is just silly, is it not? I must at least care for reason itself. The desire to be rational is a passion indeed. If I must be paradoxical at least that far, I will take it and move on. As for your love of pie, if it is really a consequence of your biology and history, then you CANNOT give it up. You cannot will yourself to unlove it, or it must thus not be the product of the aforesaid forces alone.
Perhaps this is just silliness, but I am curious how you would feel if the question were:
"You have a choice: Either one person gets to experience pure, absolute joy for 50 years, or 3^^^3 people get to experience a moment of pleasure on the level experienced when eating a popsicle."
Do you choose popsicle?
Forgive me for being sloppy with my language. Given what I wrote, your objection is entirely reasonable.
The idea that I meant to express is that, while it seems safe to assume that virtually everyone who has ever lived long enough to become a thinking person has encountered some kind of moral question in his life, we cannot say that an appreciable percentage of these people has sat and carefully analyzed these questions.
Even if we restrict ourselves only to people alive today and living in the United States -- an enormous restriction considering the perhaps 100 billion people who have lived ever -- the population of thousands you point to is pathetically small. Certainly I agree that Socrates, Mill, Kant, & their Merry Band have approached the subject seriously, but beyond these we've but a paucity, which I think is truly surprising given the apparent universality of moral experience.
The comparison to studying thermodynamics or logic (perhaps not quite so with logic), is that while we can say that everyone is of course affected by thermodynamics, almost no one attempts to think about it. The effect of thermodynamics on a person's life is not impacted by that person's ignorance of thermodynamic laws. However, a huge number of people do attempt to think and talk about morality, and I am not convinced that this latter group does so rigorously or well, which does have a real and critical effect on what morality is in actual practice.
However, I hope you will notice that this is a minor point, and was not a premise to the larger objection I was putting forward.
If I take you correctly, you are pointing out that thought experiments, now abstract, can become actual through progress and chance of time, circumstance, technology, etc., and thus are useful in understanding morality.
If this is an unfair assessment, correct me!
I agree with you, but I also hold to my original claim, as I do not think that they contradict. I agree that the thought experiment can be a useful tool for talking about morality as a set of ideas and reactions out-of-time. However, I do not agree that the thought experiments I have read have convinced me of anything about morality in actual practice. This is for one reason alone: I am not convinced that the operation of human reason is the same in all cases, and in this particular, in the two cases of the theoretical and the physical/actual.
I am not convinced that if a fat man were actually standing there waiting to be shoved piteously onto the tracks that the human mind would necessarily function in the same way it does when sitting in a cafe and discussing the fate of said to-be switch-pusher.
If I were to stake the distinction between the actual and the theoretical on anything, it would be on the above point. What data have we on the reliability of these -- I think you must agree that, regardless of the hypothetical opinions of medieval scholar types, the Torture vs. Dust Specks scenario abstract for us now and here -- thought experiments to predict human behavior when, to retreat to the cliche, one is actually in the trenches?
This may have some connection to the often-experienced phenomenon when in conversation of casual nonchalance and liberalism about issues that do not affect the speaker and a sudden and contradictory conservatism about issues that do affect the speaker. This is a phenomenon I encounter very often as a college student. It is gratis to be easy-going about topics that never impact oneself, but when circumstances change and a price is paid, reason does not reliably produce similar conclusions. Perhaps this is not a fair objection however, as we could claim that such a person is being More Wrong.
If you can convince me of a reliable connection, you'll have convinced me of the larger point.
I think we may indeed be talking past each other, so I will try to state my case more cogently.
I am not denying that people do possess ideas about something named "morality". It would be absurd to claim otherwise, as we are here discussing such ideas.
I am denying that, even if I accept all of their assumptions, individuals who claim these ideas as more-than-subjective --- by that I think I mean that they claim their ideas able to be applied to a group rather than only to one man, the holder of the ideas --- can convince me that these ideas are not wholly subjective and individual-dependent.
If it is the case that morality is individual only, then that is an interesting conclusion and something to talk about, but it does seem, at least to a first approximation, that for a judgment to be considered moral, it must have some broader applicability among individuals, rather than concerning but one person. What can Justice be if it is among one man only? This seems a critical part of what is meant by "morality". It is in this latter, broad case, that moral philosophy appears null.
If you possess an idea of morality desire that I consider it to have some connection with the world and with all persons --- and surely I must require that it have such a connection, as moral claims attempt to dictate the interaction between people, and thus cannot be content to be contained in one mind alone --- at least enough of a connection that you can, through reasoned argument, convince me that your claims are both valid and sound, then surely your ideas must make reference to principles that I can discover individually to both exist and serve as predicates to your ideas. If you cannot elucidate these foundations, then how can I be brought to your view through reason? This was the intent of my original criticism, to ask why these foundations are so lousy and to beg that someone make them otherwise if moral claims are to be made.
I think that this is the crux of my objection. I cannot find moral claims that I can be brought to accept through reason alone, as even in the most impressive cases such claims are deeply infected by subjective assumptions that are incommunicable and --- dare I write it? --- irrational.
(This is to change the subject somewhat, but I find that the quality of an idea that allows it to be communicated is necessary to its being considered the result of reason and objective. I use that last word with 10,000 pounds of hesitation.)
However, and now I think that we are talking to each other directly, if, when you write of moral ideas, you refer only to those ideas that currently do exist, whether logically well-constructed or not, and you say that you are interested in studying these for their effects, then I am agreed.
I certainly agree that, whether I am convinced of its validity or use, morality does exist as a thing in the minds of men and thus as an influence on human life. But, I think that restricting ourselves to this case has gargantuan ramifications for the definition of "moral" and drastically cuts the domain of objects on which moral ideas can act. It seems this domain can include only those which involve human beings in some fashion. If morality is exclusively a consequence of the history of human evolution and particular to our biology -- and I do agree that it is -- then I feel that I am bound by it only as far as my own biology has imprinted this moral sense upon me. If it is just biological and not possible to derive through application of reason, then, if I desire to make of myself a creature of reason alone, what care have I for it, but as a curiosity of anthropology?
I suspect that we agree, but that I took a bottom-up approach to get there and left the conclusion implicit, if present at all. All apologies.
Avoided in this post has been struggle with the word "morality" itself. I suspect we could write reams on that. If you think it worthwhile, we should, as the debate may be swung on the ability or inability to pin-down this notion.
(Note: As for SIAI, I think imprinting upon an AI human notions of moral judgments would be hideously dangerous for two reasons: 1) Human beings seem capable in almost every situation of overthrowing such judgments. If said AI is bound in similar manner, then what matters it for controlling or predicting its behavior? 2) If said AI is to possess a notion of justice and of a being who has abdicated certain rights due to immoral conduct, what will its judgment be of the humanity that has taught it morals? Can it not glance, not at history, but simply at the current state of the world and find immediately and with disgust ample grounds for the conclusion that very many humans have surrendered any claim to the moral life? It would be a strange moral algorithm if an AI did not come to this conclusion. Perhaps that is rather the point, as morality even among humans is a strange and often-blind algorithm.)
I find it impossible to engage thoughtfully with philosophical questions about morality because I remain unconvinced of the soundness of the first principles that are applied in moral judgments. I am not interested in a moral claim that does not have a basis in some fundamental idea with demonstrable validity. I will try to contain my critique to those claims that do attempt at least what I think to be this basic level of intellectual rigor.
Note 1: I recognize that I introduced many terms in the above statement that are open to challenge as loaded and biased. I hope this will not distract from my real concern, as stated below.
Note 2: I recognize that I am likely ignorant of the thought of philosophers who have dug into this question. If you can present to me any of these ideas, if they respond clearly and directly to my objections, please do.
I find moral problems intractable and even ridiculous because I have not managed to find foundations for moral judgment through my own inquiry and those foundations proposed by others have all proven specious, at least in my judgment. Examples of the latter include religious ethical systems that claim basis in the mind of a deity, ethical systems based on an individual's emotional response to X scenario, and pragmatic claims, such as X is moral because it is useful. I admit that the latter is the argument that comes nearest to intriguing me.
Overall, I am frustrated with the a priori assumption that morality must exist (an assumption seemingly based on the fact that the word exists), so let us set out to FIND it. Perhaps it should be found first, and assumptions can come later. Until it is, I have to be neutral and frustrated.
I have not yet had a conversation in which my interlocutor, while making moral claims, could provide convincing definitions of fundamental principies, including justice, duty, the good, vice, etc., though the speaker will have readily made use of these terms. It is not helpful that the population of individuals in society who have attempted to understand and establish such principles on their own, and done so carefully and analytically, is near zero.
As for scenarios resembling the Torture vs. Dust Specks problem: My response is to reject the premise. No, I do not need to make that choice! Morality, at least as that word seems to be applied in non-academic fashion (meaning in daily use), has nothing to do with such abstraction. Moral choices involve actual theft, actual death, actual starvation, actual inequality, etc. etc. The Torture vs. Dust Specks choice is one that no one will ever need to make, so while it might be an intriguing question, I think it avoids the actual subject of morality, or what you might want to call "applied morality". I feel the same about psychological studies that ask questions about pushing people in front of trains. This is a field built only of theory with no area that actually touches human experience.
Speaking as an undergraduate student in a computer science department, I can confirm your observation. I have also observed that while coding, the philosophical pumps start working and good -- or at least interesting -- ideas about other subjects are often produced. The most interesting off-topic conversations I have had with other students in any class have been had in computer science classes.
I have also noticed that my ability to deal with mathematical problems that are generally algorithmic mentally has been improving rapidly. I suspect the regular practice of holding a process in one's mind while encoding it is related to this.