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| Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' (1444780) | |||
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Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' |
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Posted by Nilet on Thu Jul 27 09:53:42 2017, in response to Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'', posted by New Flyer #857 on Thu Jul 27 08:00:35 2017. What is the right thing to do: the right thing, independent of popular opinion, animalistic desire, selfish wish. . .that there is a right thing to do and it should be done. For example, you seem to be of the opinion that it is the right thing to set up your traffic system if it can be ascertained as the optimal one for minimizing not getting people what they want. That seems to be what you think is objectively right. I do not necessarily agree.Well, in the simple "world" of the traffic system, what greater good could anyone aspire to? Remember, the "world" consists of nothing but a group of cars with conflicting routes and destinations who would rather go than yield and rather yield than crash. Then the metaphor fails. I do not think of the world merely as a bunch of random people trying to get their way. There are people. Each has desires. Each wants to see their desires fulfilled. The desires conflict, so it's impossible for everyone to see their desires fulfilled. Fulfillment is not all-or-nothing; any degree of fulfillment is more desired than any smaller degree. There may be more to the world than that, but that's the part of the world morality is concerned with. And even if that's all the world was, there is no baseless transcendental reason why anyone should be trying to help these people get their way (keeping order and helping me try to get my own way being ultimately meaningless affairs). We are these people. You have desires you want to see fulfilled. I have desires I want to see fulfilled. Morality can help us do that by creating a system in which rules exist to optimise the extent to which the desires of people (and thus, by extension, you and me) are fulfilled. Again here you are talking about practicality for governments. People change opinions and so the government follows suit. But what if people's opinions are wrong (bad) and the government knows it? What do you mean by "if people's opinions are wrong/bad?" Your desires are your own, and are fundamentally subjective; your wanting something is neither good nor bad. That desire is one of many considered by a moral system which can declare an action you take to fulfill that desire to be good or bad, but the desire itself is neither. By "transcendental" do you just mean "what people want?" Because that would be another source of difficulty in our mutual comprehension. There exists a perfect ruleset that maximises the extent to which our desires are fulfilled. If this ruleset were known, all rational people would agree to it. If a rule change were proposed that would get our existing ruleset closer to the perfect one, all rational people would agree to it. These rules, which all rational people would agree to, exist independently of governments. Governments can comply with those rules or violate them, but they can't declare them void or nonexistent or lacking the properties they plainly have. That's what I mean by the rules transcending governments— because if the rules say killing is wrong and a government says killing is right, then the government is wrong because it did a thing the rules say are wrong. So? Does this have anything to do with rights being transcendental? I'm not sure what you mean by "transcendental." I said that rights transcend governments— that is, rights are a product of morality, which governments are subject to and have no ability to change. However, you seem to be using "transcendental" is a vaguely religious sense. The point I made about a rational person yielding some desires to uphold the system that fulfills their desires more than the alternative is that a rational person would tear down an immoral government, which means a government can be immoral, which means a government is judged by morality and subject to its rules, not in a position to decree them. Are you saying that people in aggregate getting what they want equals those transcendental rights? Not quite; rights are an expression of shared interest. I have a right to X because everyone universally wants X, and thus any rational person would agree to a rule guaranteeing X for everyone as the most reliable way of securing X for themselves. That would basically be your opinion, that the transcendental rights are strictly meant to get people what they want, even if what people want in aggregate is bad for them? "What people want in the aggregate" doesn't refer to a single collective desire; if I want the room to be either pink or blue and hate green, you want the room to be either blue or yellow and hate pink, Alice wants the room to be either blue or green and hates yellow, Bob wants the room to be either pink or yellow and hates green, and Carol wants the room to be either blue or white and hates red, then painting the room blue means that in aggregate, the maximum number of people get what they want. Bob's not happy, but in aggregate we've got the best possible outcome. Since there's no single collective desire, it's impossible for such a thing to be bad for anyone. Individual desires can be bad for the individual, but only the individual can make that call— who but me can tell me that getting my desire to make the room blue is bad for me? Yes. Morality transcends governments. Morality transcends me too. This is our breakdown point in conversation. On the contrary. Morality transcends all of us. I think the breakdown point is that you're appealing to some objective good that's entirely independent of humanity, but failing to define what that may be. All you are worried about is people getting what they want. Everyone wants what they want by definition. Everyone will pursue what they want by human nature. Morality must accommodate because neither of those things is going to change. I concern myself with much more than that because I know that people can very well land in better places (and I'm not even talking about afterlife) by not getting what they want. It's true that getting your desires fulfilled might make things worse for you and you'd be better off if they weren't. The trouble is that nobody on the planet can tell you that your desires should be unfulfilled for your own good. Autonomy is paramount; anyone who can act on their own behalf wants to, and there are basically no circumstances where denial of autonomy can be desirable. Or in other words, getting what you want might not make you happy, but it will make you happier than any meaningful alternative. Someone all by himself in the world can look back a few hours and say "I should have done x while I was at y because x would have been the right thing to do back there. . ." that would be a moral statement, even though nobody else was involved. I don't agree that's a moral statement. If you take east path and walk for several hours before realising you're going the wrong way, you can regret your decision and lament that you should have taken the west path because it would have been the right thing to do, but you're not talking about morality; you're just talking about your own desires and what would have fulfilled them. An act counterproductive to getting what you want, taken in error, might make you unhappy, but it's not immoral. Morality by its nature is about interpersonal relations. You need at least two people involved before a decision can be moral or immoral. I argue that the vast majority of actions done in the world affect other people, even if nobody witnesses to them. That may be true, but I'm trying to get a sense of your underlying beliefs about what morality is. If you think an action that cannot possibly affect other people can still be immoral, then you're working off a very different definition of the term. And still, yes, I could be making life as a whole (even if I'm the only one around) better, objectively, or worse, objectively, through each of my actions. My actions have objective "rightness" and "wrongness" even then - it's just that I'm the only one who stands to benefit / suffer from the world's movement toward or away from objective goodness. Well, that's the thing. In that example, where you are the only inhabitant of a private planet and your actions can never possibly affect any other person, what does it mean to make your life "objectively better" or "objectively worse?" How is it measured? If an "objectively better" life is one that you, personally, find happier or more fulfilling, then it's true that your actions can make your life better or worse, but I wouldn't say that's an issue of morality. If an "objectively better" life is one that conforms to some external standard, then where does that standard come from? Who is expecting you to conform to it? Why are you expected to conform to it? |
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