On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 16:15:10 -0700, "Immortalist"
<Reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote:

"Liberator Veritatis" <LiberatorVeritatis@houston.rr.com> wrote in message
news:s9h3f0dkqi1esn9urjljjvsecv969qp56t@4ax.com...

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 08:35:57 -0700, "Immortalist"
<Reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote:

-snip-

most people Do not want to be Killed
most people Do not want others to Cause them Pain
most people Do not want others to Disable them
most people Do not want other to Deprive them of Freedom
most people Do not want others to Deprive them of of Pleasure.

therefore

Do not Kill
Do not Cause Pain
Do not Disable
Do not Deprive of Freedom
Do not Deprive of Pleasure.

or

THE MORAL RULES

What are the rules of morality, i.e., the public system that apply to all
rational persons? What rules would a rational person who wants to avoid the
evils want as part of a public system that applies to everyone? I claim

people would agree on the rules they would want to be part of a public
system that applies to everyone. A list of these rules contains the
following five rules:

Do not Kill
Do not Cause Pain
Do not Disable
Do not Deprive of Freedom
Do not Deprive of Pleasure.

One point here is that morality need not be characterized as
consisting of imperatives. Indeed, it normally shouldn't be (even
though it seems like it normally is) since a moral statement is
actually something like "Killing is immoral," as opposed to "Do not
kill." The former is actually taking the form of a proposition while
the latter is not. The latter is certainly in some way loosely
understood by someone being presented with the former, but the former
is not at all contained by the latter. For instance, I can certainly
order you to not kill without it being construed as a statement about
whether it is right or wrong to kill.

Any time someone characterizes a statement that looks like a
proposition as a command, I think they are taking on a heavy burden of
proof. You haven't spent a lot of time here (and hereafter)
discussing why morality is *limited* to what some particular type of
person would choose (e.g. a "rational" person or a person in a "state
of nature" or ...). Yet, by characterizing it this way, you are
implicitly asserting that moral statements are nothing more than
imperative statements a person under certain circumstances would apply
to everyone.

The ones who stay alive get to make up the philosophy because if you kill us

will kill you and ask questions later. Its not really a choice but a

if you ***** with us we kill or imprison you.

If I kill you, then all you do is die. And whether you die or not,
the truth does not die with you nor does it change to agree with the
survivors' beliefs. It merely remains imprisoned in obscurity.

Be sure to notice the close connection between these rules and the items on
the list of evils. These first five rules just tell you "Don't cause anyone
to suffer an evil." Since you don't want to suffer an evil, and you know
that no other rational person does either, if you are putting forward a
public system that applies to all rational persons, you obviously want

rules to be included in that system.

These five rules are not the only moral rules. There are, as luck and

would have it, five more rules. These second five rules are also related to
the evils, but less directly. I do not have the space here to provide the
arguments showing how obedience to these rules is required for avoiding
causing the suffering of evils, but I can recommend a book that has all
these arguments in it. Even without consulting this book, I do not think
anyone will be surprised by any of the second five rules. This is the list
of the next five rules:

Don't Deceive
Keep Your Promise
Don't Cheat
Obey the Law
Do Your Duty--where Duty includes those actions you are required to do by
your job, your position, your family, your circumstances, etc., e.g., a
teacher has a duty to show up for class.

These are the ten moral rules that all rational persons would want to be
part of the public system that applies to all rational persons. No one
should be surprised by these ten rules. These are all obvious, simple rules
that everyone is supposed to follow regardless of what their personal goal
in life is. Careful attention to these rules shows that they primarily set
limits on what one is morally allowed to do. They do not provide a positive
goal for life. This is done by another part of the moral system, what I

the moral ideals. But before I say anything about moral ideals, I want to
point out a few interesting features of the moral rules.

I have a few more problems with this development of morality

1) Why not a slightly different set of rules?

These rules are all very explicit. Are you sure this is what a
rational person under the general circumstances you are generally
talking about would agree to or would want everyone to be bound by?

Once they see the penalties, they are usually all for our little social rules.

It seems like there would have to be a whole lot of examination of
just under which circumstances someone would agree to rules like these
and if that is really the sort of ideal judge that we must all be
implicitly referring to when we talk about morality. Also,
manipulation of these rules is possible. Do you really need "Do not
deprive of pleasure," or is the other one "Do not cause pain," enough?
If so, then the outcome might be quite a bit different down the road
in some particular moral dilemma

2) Why not a different anthropological basis?

It may well be that a certain kind of person under the right
circumstances would want everyone to be bound to these rules. But,
that is just one way to broach the subject of morality. It could be
equally asserted that the notion of morality originally starts with
something like what you are calling moral ideals and works its way
down into a more specific notion of justice and/or political
philosophy that more directly addresses the general ideas your ten
commandments address. In other words, the method is to take an
idealization or generalization of a particular way in which moral
dilemmas arise and use that to derive morality (to settle all dilemmas
regardless of how they arose). It would seem that the choice of which
particular moral dilemma to generalize would have a profound impact on
the final outcome. What's to stop someone from using some other
starting point?

You are free to try alot of things and free to suffer our consequences.

You seem to be suggesting that your set of rules are the most
evolutionarily robust and that, therefore, this must be what morality
is all about. The veracity of both claims is doubtful. How can such
an explicit and yet open ended set of rules be known to be the most
evolutionarily robust? I just cannot believe you would know with very
much certainty something like this about such a set of rules.

Even so, why do we think that this is what morality is all about? I
see no reason to think that the concept of morality is at all
connected to evolutionary fitness.

3)

Notice that they are simple and general. They can be understood by

They are all prohibitions, or can be stated as prohibitions, "Keep Your
Promise" is exactly equivalent to "Don't Break Your Promise."

Well this second group of rules have different criteria of justification and I
don't yet know if I support them. But Gert and his book about these moral

is a contraversial ethicist.

http://aristotle.tamu.edu/~rasmith/Courses/251/gert-paper.html

I have the updated version of the moral rules and it is really a good summary

ethics generally but his thesis leads to these rules after hundreds of pages.

do not know what to think about his ideas yet becaus he is a lone wolf and

is dangerous.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~phil/faculty/gert.html

Oh boy! Thomas Hobbes and Ludwig Wittgenstein...fabulous...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195060768/qid=1089673644/

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195122569/ref=ase_wordtradecom/102-69990

Morality: A New Justification of the Moral Rules
by Bernard Gert

For a strong defense of the "rationality of the moral life," see Bernard Gert,
Morality: A New Justification of Moral Rules (New York: Oxford, 1988).
http://ethics.sandiego.edu/theories/Intro/

Everyone of

those rules can be stated as a prohibition and with no change in meaning at
all. What is not obvious from just looking at them is that they all have
exceptions. The moral rules are not absolute, they have exceptions. They
are, however, universal--they apply to everyone. Many people confuse
universal and absolute. The moral rules are universal, they apply to
everyone, but they are not absolute. They have exceptions, but these
exceptions are also universal.

Yes, I think if I remember right Gert goes into the "Reasons" for the

argument.

Well, he certainly isn't the first to come up with a list of morals
and to deal with the idea that they might conflict and/or what
exceptions there might be to the rules. I think I can conceive on my
own that they all must each have at least enough exceptions to deal
with their mutual incompatibility. And, that such technical
contradictions do not diminish the moral philosophy.

Exceptions to the entire set of rules are more problematic, but
perhaps taken individually just lead to a few more morals. The real
issue in my mind is less about how to go about interpreting such a
system, in general, but more with things like the epistemological
issue of knowing that it is the right one, for instance. How can you
ever know (indeed what does it mean to know) this when you are dealing
with such necessarily general rules?

I mean, he just pops them out like Moses or something. Here they are!
I doubt something like that just resolves thousands of years of
philosophy. But you never know, I suppose...

Well, they are just open as you have presented them. Presumably under
some particular circumstances, the implication of all of this would be
both universal and absolute. That is "What you did was wrong," as a
statement someone might make about some particular action someone else
committed would be absolutely true or false and without any exceptions
(since it is necessarily about a particular arrangement of facts and
circumstances). And, it would also be absolutely true in a variety of
counterfactual scenarios where someone else did more or less the same
thing.

What are the justified exceptions? Here, not
surprisingly, people may disagree somewhat, just as they disagree on the
ranking of the evils. In fact, it is this difference in the ranking of the
evils that accounts for most moral disagreement when there is agreement on
the facts. But almost all moral disagreements are in fact disagreements on
the facts. Very seldom is there disagreement on the facts, including
estimates on the probability of consequences, and disagreement on what
morally ought to be done. In my seven years as a member of the Ethics
Committee in a hospital, and as a consultant on ethical problems, I have

run across a single case, not one, where there was moral disagreement which
was not based upon disagreement in the facts.

I am certain I disagree with this. I would think the mere existence
of moral philosophy would be enough to refute the idea that most moral
disputes just boil down to disputes over the relevant facts or the
ranking of evils that can be done to a person. In fact, it might even
be argued that philosophy got its start with moral philosophy and
perhaps will always have moral philosophy as its core.

I do think that there is a lot less disagreement on what is or isn't
moral than there is often claimed to be. But, I do think that
questions like "Oh yeah, then give me a right that we all
unequivocally have," or "Oh yeah, name one moral that is
indisputable," are very nearly impossible to answer. While it is true
that we all tend to agree on the morality of a great deal of
particular outcomes and that this agreement implies a more general set
of rules, it is all so philosophically vague that it is impossible to
come up with answers to such questions. In fact, that is the whole
point -- to come up with the one irrefutable moral imperative. Doing
so could very well determine the rest.

http://aristotle.tamu.edu/~rasmith/Courses/251/gert-paper.html

I don't like the characterization of the Categorical Imperative in
this article. My general reaction is that it is based largely on the
Groundwork to the Metaphysic of Morals in which no distinction, for
instance, between the Doctrine of Right and the Doctrine of Virtue is
made. You, yourself, make a similar distinction between these ten
rules you present and what you call Moral Ideals. To make a striking
example out of the failure to distinguish between these two in Kant's
moral philosophy, consider lying. "Everyone knows" about how
according to Kant, it is wrong to lie even to save an innocent person.
And yet, consider this quote from the Doctrine of Right:

"This principle of innate freedom already involves the following
authorizations... his being authorized to do to others anything
that does not in itself diminish what is theirs... such things as
merely communicating his thoughts to them, telling or promising
them something, whether what he says is true and sincere or
untrue and insincere..."

Then, an even clearer discussion of this in the Doctrine of Virtue:

"The greatest violation of a human being's duty to himself
regarded merely as a moral being... is the contrary of
truthfulness, lying.... In the doctrine of right an intentional
untruth is called a lie only if it violates another's right, but
in ethics, where no authorization is derived from harmlessness,
it is clear of itself that no intentional untruth in the
expression of one's thoughts can refuse this harsh name."

So, this is quite a different take on lying for Kant than is often
presented. He judges it lacking in virtue. Certainly lying to save
an innocent person is no violation of the doctrine of right (It isn't
wrong) according to Kant, although he does take a slightly less
controversial though counterintuitive stance that it is still lacking
in virtue.

More generally, how you apply the categorical imperative to arrive at
virtues and how you do it to arrive at rights are quite different in
Kantian moral philosophy. The fact that it supposedly does both
requires this. And in any case, the approach of "if everyone did
this, then...," is not really going to accomplish either task. This
is more like what the Categorical Imperative is "kind of like" to
someone that has never heard of it before. This is hardly a fair, let
alone charitable, presentation of it.

For instance, I'll come out and say that being the last to leave a
party doesn't *necessarily* violate the Categorical Imperative. Of
course, it could do so if that was the only aspect of your actions.
If the entire basis for doing so is that you like to party and only
when you are absolutely forced out by the host will you leave, then
most of us would recognized this as being sorely lacking in virtue.
(And, the application of the Categorical Imperative in the article
would be a more or less accurate description of why -- not everyone
can do this and so doing so would constitute your treating yourself
preferentially to everyone else.) But, if you just happened to be the
last to leave a party or if it is you best friend and you both are
always the last to leave each other's parties. Then, the maxim of
action that resulted in the eh outcome of leaving the party last is
quite different than "I will always be the last to leave a party."

This underscores the subtlety of the Categorical Imperative. The best
you will do is discredit Kant's Doctrine of Virtue this way by
applying it so generally to achieve a positive goal for one's life.
But even then, one must contend with the fact that all sorts of
different maxims can result in the same action while there is always
only one maxim (rule that someone makes their principle of action on
subjective grounds) under which one is acting at any given point in
time. It is indeed lacking in virtue if you leave the party last
because that is what you always do. It is not (necessarily), if you
had some other maxim and perhaps another action even whose indirect
consequences where that you left some particular party last.

In short, the Categorical Imperative doesn't (and cannot) really speak
to when to leave a party.

Very good critical look at the information provided about Gert's viewpoint. I
have to look closer in order to respond and do Gert justice.

Well, then, we'll just stick to evolution and morality in the
meantime...

-snip-

--

Liberator Veritatis

--

Liberator Veritatis