What is your moral philosophy? | Page 7 | INFJ Forum

What is your moral philosophy?

Definitely. My wife is always having a laugh at me because I try and catch wasps in the house and send them on their way rather than killing them. I haven't been stung yet, but it's only a matter of time. I draw the line if we get a nest in the loft though. You can't live with it safely and you can't remove it to a safe place - but I always feel really bad if we have to get the pest people in.

I always have wasps in my shed and they never make a move against me even when I'm right next to them. I've only been stung three times in my life, two of those were my fault and one was because it got stuck in my hair and I didn't know it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ren and Skarekrow
I always have wasps in my shed and they never make a move against me even when I'm right next to them. I've only been stung three times in my life, two of those were my fault and one was because it got stuck in my hair and I didn't know it.

It's the age old story - the sadly movable moral fibre disintegrates under the irresistible wife force :sorrowful:. Actually, they don't bother us till the end of season, but then if we don't do anything they come downstairs scrounging all over the house. When it gets colder, we find them half comatose on the floor and you can't always see them on the carpet. I like wasps - they are like rodents, very successful and full of attitude, so I'm pleased we haven't had an invasion in a long time now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Skarekrow
It's the age old story - the sadly movable moral fibre disintegrates under the irresistible wife force :sorrowful:. Actually, they don't bother us till the end of season, but then if we don't do anything they come downstairs scrounging all over the house. When it gets colder, we find them half comatose on the floor and you can't always see them on the carpet. I like wasps - they are like rodents, very successful and full of attitude, so I'm pleased we haven't had an invasion in a long time now.
It's hard to get people to understand that I don't kill anything unless I'm going to eat it. My sister is terrified of every bug and no amount of explaining will help it. Her first instinct is to kill everything before she even knows what it is.
 
John K said:
Charlatan, I'm coming back to the thread after a couple of days, so apologies if my thoughts rewind your discussions a bit. Your focus on suffering as being at the substratum of moral philosophy is very interesting. I've found that these thread comments can sound a bit dogmatic - I'm just throwing out thoughts and questions here rather than taking a position.

Ah, well dogmatism is what bothers me most! I prefer lengthy discussion of alternate possibilities to dogmatism.

Buddhism is related to but pretty different from my philosophy, in that Buddhism/similar theories tend to opt for a sort of self-less state. I don't see any problem with attachment or any such thing -- the idea that they INHERENTLY lead to suffering doesn't make sense to me/sounds too much like "because caring about things leads to the potential for hurt, it must lead to hurt" -- not necessarily, that's something to be corrected about the world if it does lead to harm.

As to the thing about natural suffering vs human-imposed suffering, that doesn't play much of a role in my philosophy. The point for me is to discover whether there are things we objectively can say ought to be avoided -- uncontroversial agony, like when one is being tortured, seems to me to be inherently negative, if anything. The point of this isn't about human relations but about asking are there objective statements about how the world ought and ought not to be.

The way I was thinking of the moral problem, it's really finding if there are any 'oughts' in the universe, not just 'is'

Empirically it seems to me that not all suffering is necessarily a bad thing, at least at first base. Some examples: I resented school a lot of the time, the way it made me do things I didn't want to and I was unpopular with the people

As with this and with the fire burning your hand, I'd say the suffering itself is bad by definition, but the capacity to know suffering can serve useful purposes and arguably it is more rational to be able to know it than not, simply because the capacity for knowledge is a precursor to rational choices. That is, it would be better if you didn't burn your hand, period, but that differs from saying you shouldn't be able to experience suffering if your hand is burned.

All this says is that it's inconsistent with your goals to burn your hand. That's a coherent position to take. This still means suffering ought not to happen, it just means that in order for it not to happen, you ought to act consistent with your goals of not getting you hand burned.
It's fine for it to be inconsistent with your goals to burn your hand, but it does NOT seem to me to make sense to say the suffering is fine itself.

With respect to the unpopularity -- there you're saying in our imperfect world, sometimes to get to the good, you need to endure the bad. Heck, it might be that in an imperfect world, you might decide to endure unspeakable torture for a greater good. but it's safe to say the torture was itself evil, and the fact you needed to endure it was negative -- you couldn't self-consistently say I WANT that type of circumstance to exist. That is, it would be a better world if the good could've been achieved without your torture.

After all, the greater good one might be enduring torture for might itself be so that others don't get tortured. The point is suffering, agony, etc seems to be nonsensical to not call negative -- otherwise it ain't suffering, agony, etc.


The real point is suffering gives us a grounding for saying there is objectively negative stuff in the world.
 
Last edited:
Ah, well dogmatism is what bothers me most! I prefer lengthy discussion of alternate possibilities to dogmatism.

Buddhism is related to but pretty different from my philosophy, in that Buddhism/similar theories tend to opt for a sort of self-less state. I don't see any problem with attachment or any such thing -- the idea that they INHERENTLY lead to suffering doesn't make sense to me/sounds too much like "because caring about things leads to the potential for hurt, it must lead to hurt" -- not necessarily, that's something to be corrected about the world if it does lead to harm.

As to the thing about natural suffering vs human-imposed suffering, that doesn't play much of a role in my philosophy. The point for me is to discover whether there are things we objectively can say ought to be avoided -- uncontroversial agony, like when one is being tortured, seems to me to be inherently negative, if anything. The point of this isn't about human relations but about asking are there objective statements about how the world ought and ought not to be.

The way I was thinking of the moral problem, it's really finding if there are any 'oughts' in the universe, not just 'is'



As with this and with the fire burning your hand, I'd say the suffering itself is bad by definition, but the capacity to know suffering can serve useful purposes and arguably it is more rational to be able to know it than not, simply because the capacity for knowledge is a precursor to rational choices. That is, it would be better if you didn't burn your hand, period, but that differs from saying you shouldn't be able to experience suffering if your hand is burned.

All this says is that it's inconsistent with your goals to burn your hand. That's a coherent position to take. This still means suffering ought not to happen, it just means that in order for it not to happen, you ought to act consistent with your goals of not getting you hand burned.
It's fine for it to be inconsistent with your goals to burn your hand, but it does NOT seem to me to make sense to say the suffering is fine itself.

With respect to the unpopularity -- there you're saying in our imperfect world, sometimes to get to the good, you need to endure the bad. Heck, it might be that in an imperfect world, you might decide to endure unspeakable torture for a greater good. but it's safe to say the torture was itself evil, and the fact you needed to endure it was negative -- you couldn't self-consistently say I WANT that type of circumstance to exist. That is, it would be a better world if the good could've been achieved without your torture.

After all, the greater good one might be enduring torture for might itself be so that others don't get tortured. The point is suffering, agony, etc seems to be nonsensical to not call negative -- otherwise it ain't suffering, agony, etc.


The real point is suffering gives us a grounding for saying there is objectively negative stuff in the world.
Thanks for such a detailed reply Charlatan - that does help clarify for me. Thinking again about the example I gave of the burnt hand, if the brief pain I experience by touching something hot accidentally means I pull my hand away quickly then that is the lesser of two evils because it has prevented a far greater damage to my hand if I had felt no pain and my hand was maimed as a result. The discomfort I then experience from a slight burn is much less of a problem than that of losing the use of my hand. It would be better if it had not happened at all though.

I think you make a powerful point about objectively negative stuff in the world in your comments. As a Christian, I am in full agreement even if the basis of how I get there may at first sight look different to yours. But actually I don’t like unnecessary god of the gaps approaches, and the sort of rational / natural approach you take is appealing to me as an illustration of how this might be considered without reference to an external divine authority.
 
John K said:
The discomfort I then experience from a slight burn is much less of a problem than that of losing the use of my hand. It would be better if it had not happened at all though.

It's certainly possible to have it be the case that an event is negative (the suffering one has upon burning hand slightly), but another is more negative (the greater and/or longer term suffering one has upon realizing one's life sucks without a hand). This enables one to get the interpretation you want -- that is, that it's probably going to be more suffering in the long run if one loses the hand than if one experiences lesser discomfort right now for the short term.

Basically, this preserves my idea that suffering itself marks the negative, which doesn't mean one has to say burning one's hand shouldn't cause suffering so much as one is obligiated to try to avoid burning one's hand because it hurts -- barring some other greater good or greater evil.

And, as always, there existing a greater good doesn't take away the negativity of the lesser suffering -- it would still have been better for the world to have been such that the lesser negative could've been avoided.



Perhaps some would wonder what about death -- should one not want to die? Well, I suspect the answer to that is there can be reward, not just suffering, and even if death means the absence of either, the absence of positive is rightly seen as < the positive.


Basically, the entire point of all this exercise is to say there's a rational basis for morality -- that there's actual knowledge one is unaware of if one does not recognize certain ought-nots.
 
Last edited:
Moral statements are primarily statements of the speaker's desire/emotion/opinion (e.g. "Murder is wrong" means "I hate murder").

Each person has a moral purpose that exists outside of one's preferences and is the same for all people.

People will be good only when ruling forces of society use the power of force to make them be as such.

Morality originates from human intellect, with the natural capabilities of human thought.

To be virtuous/live morally, we should primarily make moral distinctions according to our empirical knowledge (what we know with experimentation).

Morally, the intent (the choice to do something or the will) is most important.

Our legal system be based upon achieving the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

There is no free will. Our fate is already determined. God(s) or circumstances already decreed the future.
 
Last edited:
There is no free will. Our fate is already determined. God(s) or circumstances already decreed the future.

@Pin Do you think it is possible to take a moral position in the absence of free will? It's always seemed to me that if my behaviour contains no element of choice, then I cannot be held accountable for my actions and there is no right and wrong.

My personal subjective experience is that I do have freedom of choice - but this could itself be a deterministically generated illusion. The current foundations of science lead to the conclusion that the world is deterministic - even quantum mechanics seems to be that way orientated at close examination, with the universe as we know it being fully in existence as an eternal completed 4 dimensional object in space time. My instinct is that current scientific thinking gives an incomplete picture and that there is freedom of will which will emerge from yet more advanced scientific thinking - but perhaps I'm just programmed to think like that forever in my own eternal space time timeline. All good stuff to dwell on over plenty of alcohol ?? :wink:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Skarekrow and Ren
The current foundations of science lead to the conclusion that the world is deterministic - even quantum mechanics seems to be that way orientated at close examination, with the universe as we know it being fully in existence as an eternal completed 4 dimensional object in space time. My instinct is that current scientific thinking gives an incomplete picture and that there is freedom of will which will emerge from yet more advanced scientific thinking - but perhaps I'm just programmed to think like that forever in my own eternal space time timeline.

What about open monism - do you think it offers a glimmer of hope? :wink:
 
John K said:
that if my behaviour contains no element of choice, then I cannot be held accountable for my actions and there is no right and wrong.

I think there's still a meaning to morality here, in the sense that one's reasons and actions can still be immoral by the suffering/rationality stuff i explained earlier....however, it does take the punch away for actually blaming you for your immoral deeds.

here, the 'you ought to have done otherwise' means your reasoning was poor, your actions were wrong, and so on, as opposed to 'you chose the wrong option freely and could have chosen differently'

I have no idea how quantum mechanics will turn out/seems a crapshoot right now, but if it does go in the direction of genuine choice, it still doesn't mean WE have free will -- if our brains work deterministically (particularly given the cells of the brain seem to be larger than the scope for genuinely non-classical quantum mechanics to work fruitfully in the information processing of decision-making).
However, perhaps with future enhancements to our brains, we'll GET free will.

I'm not sure that eliminating physical determinism is sufficient, of course. There would need to be something like physical indeterminism + mental determination of outcomes to get genuine free will.
 
Last edited:
@Pin Do you think it is possible to take a moral position in the absence of free will? It's always seemed to me that if my behaviour contains no element of choice, then I cannot be held accountable for my actions and there is no right and wrong.

My personal subjective experience is that I do have freedom of choice - but this could itself be a deterministically generated illusion. The current foundations of science lead to the conclusion that the world is deterministic - even quantum mechanics seems to be that way orientated at close examination, with the universe as we know it being fully in existence as an eternal completed 4 dimensional object in space time. My instinct is that current scientific thinking gives an incomplete picture and that there is freedom of will which will emerge from yet more advanced scientific thinking - but perhaps I'm just programmed to think like that forever in my own eternal space time timeline. All good stuff to dwell on over plenty of alcohol ?? :wink:

Well here's another perspective. Just as computer programs instruct computers what to do, minds instruct brains what to do. I realise it's controversial to say, but consider the following.

Suppose that minds are nothing but collections of memes that instruct your physical brain what to do. How do we know that memes "exist" objectively? Well, they are substrate independent. It's possible to transfer them from one brain to another through communication. We can instantiate them on a piece of paper, in a computer and even into the eachings of a mechanical mind. In each medium, the meme retains its meaning; even though each of them is physically different! Hell, even a meme instantiated into me and my exact replica are still in two separate mediums. So how is this possible? One explanation is that memes are substrate independant! Which means they exist objectively. Which means that minds really do exist independently from the brain. Which further means that minds really CAN tell physical matter how to behave. Therefore freewill exists

One barrier to understanding this is to assume that only physical objects exist. But why should we believe that? Light isn't physical, neither is SpaceTime. Further, isn't "physical" just a property of things that exist in reality. A property like "wet", or "gasious", or "high energy". And don't our best explanations in biology require that biological "systems" exist. To say that biological systems dont exist because they can be reduced to atoms amounts to saying that those theories are wrong! The truth of biological theories rely on fact that "systems" exist independantly of the atoms they are instantiated in. "Systems" are described as existing in their own right. I think you get my point.
 
Last edited:
I think there's still a meaning to morality here, in the sense that one's reasons and actions can still be immoral by the suffering/rationality stuff i explained earlier....however, it does take the punch away for actually blaming you for your immoral deeds.

here, the 'you ought to have done otherwise' means your reasoning was poor, your actions were wrong, and so on, as opposed to 'you chose the wrong option freely and could have chosen differently'

Agreed (I think :smile:) ..... we might have to explore free will concepts a bit more though. I'm assuming that if things are determined then my poor reasoning and the value judgement that it was poor are themselves determined and are as inevitable as the next sunrise. That means that all suffering that actually happens is unavoidable and there is no personal accountability. The logic of reality as the choices are made by nature in such a world would be decided in part by the suffering-related "oughts" in the same way as any other force of nature acts deterministically. Does that make sense?

My subjective feeling ..... by sitting outside such a world in a thought experiment it seems to me that, using your criteria from this viewpoint, I would be looking at a world that was intrinsically evil because individually experienced suffering is then predetermined and totally unavoidable. The "ought" that occurs to me is that such a world should not exist - but that would be an F judgement (and hope), not a T one!
 
What about open monism - do you think it offers a glimmer of hope? :wink:

Very much so Ren :thumbsup:. More than that, it offers a possible way out of a solipsistic trap that comes from a primarily materialistic philosophy of the world. I'll not mess up the thread by going too deeply into it, but in outline: if I follow blindly a very physically orientated scientific world view, it follows logically that the world I subjectively experience is a virtual reality inside my head that I can never get out of. I don't believe this is so, but that's faith rather than knowledge, and is why I think that while our scientific theories give good descriptions of the world as far as they go, there is a hell of a lot more to discover yet. Your monism ideas may well provide a conceptual framework for how we as individuals can actually really engage directly with the external world, rather than just our own self-contained model of it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Skarekrow and Ren
Very much so Ren :thumbsup:. More than that, it offers a possible way out of a solipsistic trap that comes from a primarily materialistic philosophy of the world. I'll not mess up the thread by going too deeply into it, but in outline: if I follow blindly a very physically orientated scientific world view, it follows logically that the world I subjectively experience is a virtual reality inside my head that I can never get out of. I don't believe this is so, but that's faith rather than knowledge, and is why I think that while our scientific theories give good descriptions of the world as far as they go, there is a hell of a lot more to discover yet. Your monism ideas may well provide a conceptual framework for how we as individuals can actually really engage directly with the external world, rather than just our own self-contained model of it.

Actually, you can refute solipsism because it is just Realism with an added step! Solipsism is realism, but with the added assumption that only YOU exist. Since this added assumption remains unexplained, solipsism can be summarily rejected. You could also use Occam's Razor, but that's kinda pointless.

Here's a rule of thumb I usually follow: if a philosophical idea is too abstract or esoteric, avoid it. Wait until the philosopher responsible can tether his idea to the facts of reality.
 
Actually, you can refute solipsism because it is just Realism with an added step! Solipsism is realism, but with the added assumption that only YOU exist. Since this added assumption remains unexplained, solipsism can be summarily rejected. You could also use Occam's Razor, but that's kinda pointless.

Here's a rule of thumb I usually follow: if a philosophical idea is too abstract or esoteric, avoid it. Wait until the philosopher responsible can tether his idea to the facts of reality.

You just don't wanna admit that open monism is amazing. :p

Kidding. I agree with your rule of thumb, except that I would replace "abstract" and "esoteric" with simply: "impossible to criticize".
 
Very much so Ren :thumbsup:. More than that, it offers a possible way out of a solipsistic trap that comes from a primarily materialistic philosophy of the world. I'll not mess up the thread by going too deeply into it, but in outline: if I follow blindly a very physically orientated scientific world view, it follows logically that the world I subjectively experience is a virtual reality inside my head that I can never get out of. I don't believe this is so, but that's faith rather than knowledge, and is why I think that while our scientific theories give good descriptions of the world as far as they go, there is a hell of a lot more to discover yet. Your monism ideas may well provide a conceptual framework for how we as individuals can actually really engage directly with the external world, rather than just our own self-contained model of it.

Thanks a lot for your kind words John. I promise you I wasn't fishing for them ( :eek:mnomnom: :foxylove: )

Your monism ideas may well provide a conceptual framework for how we as individuals can actually really engage directly with the external world, rather than just our own self-contained model of it.

That's definitely one of its goals! I think the ultimate ambition is really to rethink our traditional concepts. It's even hard to enter into some of the discussions here because I feel like I'm using some of the concepts in a different way at this point. But I look forward to catching up with the (moral) conversation.
 
You just don't wanna admit that open monism is amazing. :p

Kidding. I agree with your rule of thumb, except that I would replace "abstract" and "esoteric" with simply: "impossible to criticize".

Yeah that's another one. What is open monism though?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ren and Skarekrow
Thanks a lot for your kind words John. I promise you I wasn't fishing for them ( :eek:mnomnom: :foxylove: )

Not taken that way either:tiphat: I'm convinced that philosophical ideas (or scientific ones for that matter) take on a life of their own when you are emotionally and subjectively invested in them as well as rationally. It generates the energy and the vitality of interest. Don't get me wrong - everything needs to be processed through sound perception, rational analysis and sound judgement primarily. An analogy - I've spent a lot of time over the last few years researching my family history. It turns out one of my likely ancestors was an Anglican rector who was appointed to his parish shortly after the restoration of the monarchy in England in the early 1660s. I found myself avidly reading all about the way that clergymen were selected and appointed at that time, which is otherwise a very specialised and not intrinsically compulsive academic subject, but was spot-lit with all the colours of the rainbow for me because of my family association.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ren and Skarekrow
Actually, you can refute solipsism because it is just Realism with an added step! Solipsism is realism, but with the added assumption that only YOU exist. Since this added assumption remains unexplained, solipsism can be summarily rejected. You could also use Occam's Razor, but that's kinda pointless.

Here's a rule of thumb I usually follow: if a philosophical idea is too abstract or esoteric, avoid it. Wait until the philosopher responsible can tether his idea to the facts of reality.

I really appreciate your concern Wolly :thumbsup:. The trouble is my involvement with solipsism is not an unhealthy interest in an academic backwater (if only!), it's something I've unfortunately actually experienced subjectively starting when I was about 8 years old and developing in my teens, long before I ever heard the term - and I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. I found a way out in my early 20s but I'd like to back that up with a convincing rational analysis as well. It can't come from present-day science which just reinforces the possibility that it's correct - which is one of the major reasons why I think science has a long way to go yet.
 
  • Like
Reactions: wolly.green and Ren