What is your moral philosophy? | INFJ Forum

What is your moral philosophy?

Ren

Seeker at heart
Oct 10, 2017
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If you had to give an outline of your moral philosophy, what would it be?

And do you think you manage (more or less) to apply it in real life?

Looking forward to your answers.
 
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If you have to give an outline of your moral philosophy, what would it be?

And do you think you manage (more or less) to apply it in real life?

Looking forward to your answers.
Maintaining intergrity with an open mind to the experiences of others.

We all assume and define our sense of right/wrong - good/bad based on an internal buffet of sorted belief. As we mature, (or not;-)), we fine tune what these beliefs are. We take in information from society, our early-years of conditioning from our care givers, teachers and peers, and our ideas of our own and create an edified-soup. With wisdom comes the ability to create a culinary delite, or pig slop, the choices to do so are inevitably unique to each individual. In my own regard it is a pallitable broth based in clairty--a clear soup, with mind wide open, taking into consideration the occassional potato that passes through, often this starchiness only thickens the soup as a result.

:D without all the flavorful words, I am continually re-evaluating my morality while maintaining an open mind to others', or lack of it. However, when others get too close and put my morality to question, meaning I have to chose mine or theirs to continue in the social interaction, my personal beliefs and values remain and I enforce them...often this has caused a view of my having a double standard, not true to a keen observer, morality had been there all along. ;)
 
I don't have an internally consistent, universally applicable moral framework yet.

I know that's kind of a non-answer, but it's the truth.
 
If you had to give an outline of your moral philosophy, what would it be?
Ayn Rand-Atlas Shrugged.jpg


And do you think you manage (more or less) to apply it in real life?
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If you had to give an outline of your moral philosophy, what would it be?

Our destination is same so it's not worth to make others loss instead make them gain because their gain is your gain also their loss is your loss although it may not be the same and/or equal but it doesn't matter.

And do you think you manage (more or less) to apply it in real life?

Yes.
 
I don't have an internally consistent, universally applicable moral framework yet.

I know that's kind of a non-answer, but it's the truth.

Do you think you don't have an internally consistent moral framework yet, or rather that you have one but you haven't rationalized it in words yet?


What does 'good' mean to you? Does it mostly just make intuitive sense what it is?

Our destination is same so it's not worth to make others loss instead make them gain because their gain is your gain also their loss is your loss although it may not be the same and/or equal but it doesn't matter.

I think your answer is a beautiful example of how metaphysical convictions usually underlie ethical ones.
 
I'm consider myself a moral relativist. That no act is inherently good or evil. It's all about perspective.

That said, I'm too much of a softy to apply it to real life.
 
Take Jesus. Strip away all of the Sunday clothes showing the congregation them sweet goody two shoes BULLSHIT. Remember that Jesus stood against two major powers of the time. He used their own words against them. He wiped their faces in their own corruption. He gave the people they oppressed hope. He talked to god in nature, not a tabernacle. He cared about people who had the least and met them on their level. He replaced fear with love.

In general I see him as a hard ass dude layin the smack down on punk suckas, but all the while making sure his homies knew he had their back.
He let everybody know what was real. Corruption of the heart was his enemy and he din't take no shit.

So yeah, gansta Jesus
 
Honestly, it's just try to be rational and try to avoid creating suffering... never found much more to it than that

Any desire that is not intrinsically about creating suffering is reasonable by this philosophy...
 
I'm consider myself a moral relativist. That no act is inherently good or evil. It's all about perspective.

That said, I'm too much of a softy to apply it to real life.

Interesting. Would you apply your relativism to all acts without distinction or exclude certain acts from it? I'm thinking in particular of acts that perhaps most people (which doesn't mean they are right) would consider inherently evil, like genocide, slavery, etc.

I've a feeling that your stance doesn't say these are not evil acts but rather that it's impossible to have a law that stipulates what they are "by essence".

Honestly, it's just try to be rational and try to avoid creating suffering... never found much more to it than that

Any desire that is not intrinsically about creating suffering is reasonable by this philosophy...

Would you then say that a Truman Show-like world in which certain people are living a lie, but are not suffering and may in fact be happy, is not immoral from your standpoint? Or would you argue that therein lies the possibility of future suffering (as we see in the case of Truman eventually)?
 
Ren said:
Would you then say that a Truman Show-like world in which certain people are living a lie, but are not suffering and may in fact be happy, is not immoral from your standpoint? Or would you argue that therein lies the possibility of future suffering (as we see in the case of Truman eventually)?

Good question -- here are the dimensions I see to this:

- If something will create future suffering, that is certainly ruled out -- I see no reason to oppose present suffering but not oppose future suffering

- In my answer, I included try to be rational, which rules out the whole living a lie thing -- in practice, it is implausible that we can ensure things go as they ought to be without knowing how things are

- As to whether even in principle, one ought to be rational, well, I'd say if one ought to do anything it's to attempt to be rational, because the willingness to accept contradictions basically leads to being willing to accept/reject anything, so you can't really have any other oughts before accepting the most basic ought-obligation

- However, there's a subtle question: assuming *I* am being rational, ought I to ensure other people are? That is, suppose people are living a fairytale, and they're happy. Is there anything wrong with leaving that state of affairs be, assuming it couldn't possibly lead to suffering and/or the failure to prevent it (e.g. if I told someone that people are suffering and they could do something about it, then obviously I tell them)?
It isn't obvious to me that there's anything wrong with this.....

Still, it makes me uncomfortable because I do think I am obligated to be rational, so is it really clear I'm not obligated to make others aware, so as to promote their rationality (again, in principle -- in practice I do this already)

Another similar thing is suppose people are living like a brain-in-vat/Matrix type scenario and aren't aware of it, where their brains are being stimulated to create the experience. If the experience isn't causing suffering, is there something wrong with the fact that really, they're not making decisions 'freely', their decisions are being 'made' by the program hooked up into the brain?

Again, not obviously bad to me but makes me nervous, because being able to make decisions yourself is a precondition of being rational. It seems like this type of scenario being 'forced' on someone without knowledge would be something the someone is obligated to reject. Plausibly this would lead to suffering were the person to find out some day.

I think things that would lead to suffering in someone were they to find out may be things I can't call immoral on the basic level, but unloving. That is, if I value them, I am forced to incorporate their 'oughts' into my 'oughts' too somehow.
Another way to think of this is you can end suffering by just getting rid of everyone painlessly. Is this intrinsically bad -- that is, nonexistence? Harder to say for me than inflicting suffering.



This last bullet point is where a lot of my thoughts are still going/am not quite sure. I might decide some of these things ain't OK even in principle in the future, but I'd have to see some reasons that convince me it's not just my subjective discomfort.

Generally the 'objectivity' of morality to me is as real as the objectivity of suffering. We can have different likes, dislikes, strategies, philosophies, but the one thing that leads to some objectivity seems to be the suffering itself.
 
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Maintaining integrity with an open mind to the experiences of others.

(...) often this has caused a view of my having a double standard, not true to a keen observer, morality had been there all along. ;)

This sounds like a very sensible moral path, Sandie. :) I can totally see what you mean by the "double standard" thing. Especially as openness to the experiences of others can sometimes be confused with objective embrace of the principles of those others, which isn't always the case.

On a somewhat tangential note, I think this is more likely to happen to Fe users than Fi users.
 
Another similar thing is suppose people are living like a brain-in-vat/Matrix type scenario and aren't aware of it, where their brains are being stimulated to create the experience. If the experience isn't causing suffering, is there something wrong with the fact that really, they're not making decisions 'freely', their decisions are being 'made' by the program hooked up into the brain?

Oh, it's bad. Not because they are being fed artificial stimulus, but because it is being used to plant sets of ideas that they identify as being personal long held beliefs. Even when you show them the laundry list of personal long held beliefs that's everyone else has the exact same beliefs and rationale.

I like how they call it a feed. It's not even trying to disguise what it does.