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| Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' (1444724) | |||
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Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' |
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Posted by Nilet on Wed Jul 26 21:51:28 2017, in response to Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'', posted by New Flyer #857 on Wed Jul 26 21:08:52 2017. So we have completely different goals.Luckily, morality can accommodate that! :D But when you label that morality, I could not help but be unsatisfied since the dictionary definitions of morality that I have been looking through don't mention anything about "getting most people what they want" or anything even close to that. From my dictionary, it just says morality is about the distinction between right and wrong behaviour; the dictionary hardly comments on why a particular behaviour is right or wrong. When I hear "morality," I think more of what is objectively right. What do you mean by "objectively right?" For you, all that seems objectively right is for governments to locate the perfect "ruleset" for the traffic circle, not to actually make sure that the entire operation of the traffic circle to begin with is actually good for the world. In the traffic control metaphor, the traffic circle is "the world." The whole point of the metaphor is that it contrives a simple "world" to explain principles that can be universally applied. Mind you, it's not governments that are searching for the perfect ruleset; people are. An update to make the ruleset more perfect requires at least supermajority assent, and when it occurs, governments adopt it for the simple reason that any democratic government will pass a law with near-unanimous support. "Helping people get what they want" without reflection on whether or not that's any good for them is exactly what leads to government corruption (the government official carries his/her inherited selfism into office) and even the great tragedies of history (those who helped Hitler were helping themselves by keeping him happy). You misunderstand. It's about helping people in aggregate get what they want, not each individual person pursuing their own desires. In fact, the whole point is that a rational person would willingly yield their desires to maintain a system that grants their desires more than the alternative and eagerly tear down a corrupt system that privileges certain individuals (eg, those in government). Each person submits their desires for consideration by a system which tries to ensure that as many desires as possible are granted. Which desires you submit for consideration are up to you; if they don't make you happy, that's your problem. Similarly, in the traffic circle, each car submits its destination for consideration by the control system which aims to get it there as quickly as possible and without regard for whether it's happy to be going there. It is not necessarily good for the world for people to get what they want. What does that mean? If you found yourself alone in a world with no other people, where your actions could never affect anyone but yourself, would anything you do be considered morally good or bad? And since I identify morals with conduct that is objectively good for the world, I hold that any transcendental list of such conduct requires a definition, or at least elaboration, of ultimate, objective goodness. What does "objective goodness" even mean? Under your view of "objective goodness," is it possible for an action that doesn't affect any other people to be good or bad? Take quickly your murder case. Yes, between the two parties it's an overall loss since one lost his/her entire life. But there are more than those two people in the world. Was the murder good, overall, for the world? Unanswerable without further info. Once again, I do not condone murder, but my opposition of murder is not philosophically sustainable based only on your systems. If by murder, you mean killing, then yes there are a tiny handful of rare circumstances under which it would be tolerable. However, opposing murder is still sustainable under this system— if murder is allowed, then you might be murdered, so you have an incentive to keep it banned. Everyone else shares that incentive, so all rational people will agree to ban it. Except, of course, under the incredibly rare circumstances where the alternative is worse. |
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