Monday 24 January 2011

MORALS etc.

Have you survived Monday? Yay!
My brain, in the inexplicable way that it has, has started organising my natural ethics system into something representable by words. So I thought I'd share it with you all. Just for the "lols," as it were.

My starting point was that nothing can be unethical unless it affects someone else in a negative way. But I decided this was too vague, as "a negative way" could be considered a bit of a grey area. so I've gone with the following:
Something can only be unethical if it creates a situation another person considers undesirable.
This has the initial effect of excluding suicide, substance abuse and most sexual acts from the "unethical" category. It does NOT mean that anything that creates a situation another person finds undesirable is automatically unethical. To establish when another person's desire makes an action unethical, we introduce the "right to will" system. And that's not as terrifying as it might sound.

"Right to will" basically means "do I have the objective right to try and change this situation according to what I want?" To expand on this, we're going to introduce the "perpetrator," the person who has instigated the action whose ethics are under, and someone opposed to the action, who is inventively called the "opponent".
The right to will is essentially a utilitarian concept. If the improvement to the perpetrators life vastly (we'll come back to that quantifier) outweighs the pain caused to the opponent, the action is ethical. If the improvement to the opponents life if the action is not taken is less than the pain caused to the perpetrator by not perpetrating, the action remains ethical.
As cheekily hinted before, I do not consider pain and pleasure to be equals. That is, I do not think it is ethical to cause x amount of pain in order to create an equal amount of pleasure. The pleasure created has to be at least ten times as great, or at least ten times as widespread, to be worth the pain caused.

The third, simplest point is that all humans are morally equal, regardless of demographic group or previous things they have done.

I may come back and expand on this at a time of day that is friendlier to my brain. You're welcome to dispute the various premises of my ethics system, but please note that I am in no way insinuating that this is how everyone's morals should work. I'm just attempting to give you an insight into how I see the world, for whatever reasons we both may have.

And that, as they say, is that.

4 comments:

  1. "Handle so, daß die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten könne."

    Act in a way such that the maxim of your will could at all times apply to the principle of a universal law.

    What are your thoughts on Kant's Categorical Imperative? (With my poor translation here...)

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  2. So his point is essentially that when we act according to our will, we should ensure it complies with objective ethics? If I've got that right, then yes, I agree. :)

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  3. Is it right to torture one innocent person for all eternity if it will improve the lives of the rest of the world?

    Would you volunteer?

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  4. No, Ryan, it's not. Many of the points in this post are null, as it was written at a time I was half-asleep and struggling to say what I was actually thinking. I haven't edited it because it seems to be a rule I've subconsciously worked out for myself that I will not edits blog posts except in the event of spelling or grammar mistakes.

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