moral blind spots

[Joshua Jones]

What is the value in judging someone's moral character? Either the members of a society have morals that produce good outcomes, or they don't. Only St. Peter needs to evaluate moral character separate from actions.

The largest problem I see is that the worst excesses in history have come from the idea of good applied through the lens of a some sort faith, idea or political philosophy.

I don't think there is much value in assessing anyone else's moral character. However, there is considerable value in assessing our own, and seeking to do so apart from our own opinions. Should we be judged by a jury of ourselves, we will always be innocent, be we Ghandi or Hitler. Yet, I am certain we would all agree there is a fundamental moral difference between the two. The question is what is the basis of this distinction, and more importantly, by what measure do we determine which one we are more like.

When you speak of moral codes not being flexible, though, you must be differentiating them from ethical theories. Both of the examples I gave above are ethical theories which seek to be nuanced and flexible, so you must be meaning a set of "do's" and "don'ts". And, yes, if by moral code you mean a set of actions, nuance is nearly impossible. The point I am trying to make is that only one popular ethical theory, Deontology, and its cousin Natural Law, are concerned primarily with actions. There are two major theories where actions are less fundamental than something else; more specifically, consequence in Utilitarian Ethics and intention in Virtue Ethics. Personally, I think the latter is more persuasive. No one acts in a vacuum; our actions are based on various reasons, rationalizations, and motivations. If these things are causal to moral or immoral action, then should they not be thought of as the starting place of morality?

And, I would change your last statement to say that the worst excesses in history come from differing definitions of how society ought to be ordered and the grasping of political power. Stalin, Mao, and the Crusades represent the latter, while Hitler and global terrorism are more the former. Though religion is frequently the excuse given to the masses (I include Social Darwinism and Humanism in the religious category for the sake of this discussion, although metanarrative is the more appropriate term for the set), the actual motivator of the antagonists is nearly always der wille zur macht.

And, again, we believe the throwing away of lives to achieve a political figure's fantasies of power is morally wrong. Why? That is the central question I am probing at. What makes that wrong? Is it simply a brute fact that it is wrong, or are the consequences what make it wrong, or is it that it begins with the assumption that der wille zur mucht is more valuable than the lives of others? How one answers that question is based on the ethical theory they either knowingly or unknowingly hold to. The bigger question is which is the right answer, and that has to be tested through logic, rather than opinion.

 

[awesomesauce]

It seems like there's not a clear, shared understanding of what people mean when they say ethics or morals in this conversation. I get the impression from some comments that some people see morality as a religious thing, where ethics are based in logic and reason. I don't really see any difference between ethics and morals in the way that the original post is using the term.

I looked this up, and it was helpful.
ethics | Origins, History, Theories, & Applications

I do enjoy moral philosophy.

Going back to the OP (sorry to change the subject) I've been reading this book, The Intellectual History of Cannibalism. (It's really good, if dense in places.) And I was thinking about how the ability to culture animal tissue for food might change our mores about human flesh as food in the future.

On the back of the news about cultured meat, a friend asked me if I would eat meat that hadn't come from an animal (I'm a vegetarian), and I was like "Sure." (Caveat being that the process for culturing it isn't really toxic or environmentally destructive or harmful in some way.) To me, in the here and now, it seems less gross to eat cultured human tissue grown in a lab than flesh from an actual animal, and I wonder if the ability to produce "animal" foods this way will change how more of us feel about them in the future.

 

[Montero]

"Moral" is a word that can be used to mean a number of different things. One is adherence to a code of behavior - and the rigidity of that adherence could be called "moral character". Another is whether someone is "good" or not - which might also be called their "moral character".

I'm not sure what exactly you're asking since you quoted two very different ideas. Moral codes aren't bad - they give people without broad judgement a tool that will often allow them to be good. But moral codes suffer because of their lack of flexibility and ability to be subverted by a larger ethos.

If you're asking about the first part, what "matters" depends on what you're interested in. If you're interested in how people treat the world, then the morals matter. If you're interested in who qualifies for salvation or a Rotary Club award, then you'd want to look into the heart of the individuals to see why they acted.

.

I was trying to understand what you were saying and am still a bit baffled. You appeared to be saying that how well a person behaves is irrelevant, it is just the moral code that is important.
We may be using the term moral character in different ways.

Approaching this from the personal end - so, people have a range of people they interact with, whether it is a neighbour, a shopkeeper, a friend, a total stranger. With people you interact with repeatedly, you build up a picture (accurate or not) of what to expect from the other person. Going with the shopkeeper - are their goods what they say on the tin? Or when you open the tin is it not what you expected? Is the change they give you accurate?
So is the shopkeeper someone who provides an honest service or not?
The moral codes I've encountered say be honest in your dealings with other people. So if they do provide an honest service I would say they were adhering to at least that part of the moral code, and to the extent of my experience of them they are a moral person.
It of course does not guarantee that in other ways they may behave in ways I wouldn't like.
I don't tend to think of "good" people - very wary of "good".
My other scales of judgement of people would tend to rest on competence, kindness, fun, reliability and consideration.
I've certainly socialised with people who'd I'd label "good value at a party" - witty, amusing, well informed - but not necessarily reliable and they might have inconsiderately double parked and blocked in someone else's car on the way into the party.
This could feed back into a discussion on morality, if you said a moral person caused, or strived to cause, no hurt to another person. Not actually saying that, but just floating it for discussion. (And yes, you would then have to define hurt..... )
In fact, extending from that, how much of a moral code is about physical or financial harm and how much is about feelings?
Feelings certainly extend into the legal system - been watching The Force Manchester - and the police taking witness statements were asking an old lady about how upset she'd been by a thief, as that will input into sentencing.

 

[Montero]

I don't think there is much value in assessing anyone else's moral character..

Which seems to me at first sight to be the opposite of what I am saying - in that I am assessing a person for a pattern of how they behave so that I know what to expect from them. I'm probably missing a point.

Incidentally, I am finding your definitions and explanations very interesting - and it is a lot of information new to me. May I ask what your background is - as in have you studied philosophy? Or psychology? (Or summat...)

 

[awesomesauce]

I don't think there is much value in assessing anyone else's moral character.

Which seems to me at first sight to be the opposite of what I am saying - in that I am assessing a person for a pattern of how they behave so that I know what to expect from them. I'm probably missing a point.

I understood Joshua Jones' statement to be more about passing moral judgment on others according to your own measure, where your statement seems to be about having a practical understanding of someone's personality, how they're likely to behave, and what it's safe to expect from them. I think you can do the second without the first.

Example: My mom is always late for everything. I can know this about her and adjust my expectations for her behavior and plan how I'll handle her lateness in a given situation without judging it as a failing in her moral character when she's late.

 

[Montero]

OK thanks @awesomesauce - yes, what you are saying makes sense in the way you are saying it, but I am not entirely convinced by the separation you are making between personality/character and moral character. To me the phrase "moral character" refers to a subset of the character - it is the part of a person's character that deals with the moral stuff like honesty. The rest of the character could include likes Mozart, the colour blue, prefers cats to dogs.....

A few further thoughts on morality

The basis of a lot of legal and moral code, seems to me to be ways of ensuring a co-operative society works when it is so big that the direct consequences of dumping/cheating/doing down a person will not necessarily land on the dumper. By that I am thinking of the kind of small society, where reputation is important and if someone is known as not giving a fair deal, or breaking their promises, they quickly become isolated as people will not want to engage in any kind of deal with them, whether it is a big "deal" or just a "hey if you'll take this to the post for me I'll do the same for you next week" kind of deal.

Not exactly morality but moral judgments. It fascinates me how some people associate types of behaviour together. So if say someone is dressed scruffily, has tattoos and piercings some people would assume the person more likely to be violent than a person in the suit. I think I would include "likely to be violent" inside the moral code as part of morality is dealing with mitigating threats (stealing, killing). However, in my experience in living in a big city, I've found that the person in the suit is more likely to be the one in a tearing hurry who might bump into you or not help you.

So I am theorising that an important part of a moral code is supporting a co-operative society (as in human society - teamwork) - so how immoral is not helping someone?

 

[Joshua Jones]

I understood Joshua Jones' statement to be more about passing moral judgment on others according to your own measure, where your statement seems to be about having a practical understanding of someone's personality, how they're likely to behave, and what it's safe to expect from them. I think you can do the second without the first.

Example: My mom is always late for everything. I can know this about her and adjust my expectations for her behavior and plan how I'll handle her lateness in a given situation without judging it as a failing in her moral character when she's late.

You are exactly right. @Onyx seemed to be concerned about those who use ethics as a way of looking down upon or otherwise othering people, and I was seeking to respond to that concern.

It seems like there's not a clear, shared understanding of what people mean when they say ethics or morals in this conversation. I get the impression from some comments that some people see morality as a religious thing, where ethics are based in logic and reason. I don't really see any difference between ethics and morals in the way that the original post is using the term.

I looked this up, and it was helpful.
ethics | Origins, History, Theories, & Applications

I do enjoy moral philosophy.

I agree that we do not seem to have an established definition here. The classical definitions are that ethics is the study of the principles which answer what a moral thing is and why it is thus. Morals, or more precisely, moral duties, refers to ethics as applied in a given situation. For the sake of the OP, this distinction is pretty much irrelevant. For the sake of the conversation with @Onyx, however, there is some relevance, because only one major and one minor ethical theory produces moral duties (a collection of which are used to create moral codes as we have used the term above) which are focused on action, and there are two whole branches of ethical theory which don't. Hence why I am seeking to establish the distinction between morals (though, again, moral duties is the more accurate term here) and ethics.

Which seems to me at first sight to be the opposite of what I am saying - in that I am assessing a person for a pattern of how they behave so that I know what to expect from them. I'm probably missing a point.

Incidentally, I am finding your definitions and explanations very interesting - and it is a lot of information new to me. May I ask what your background is - as in have you studied philosophy? Or psychology? (Or summat...)

Yeah, I didn't do a particularly good job of hiding that, did I? I studied ethics, philosophy of God, and theology pretty extensively in university, and I intend, one day, to obtain a doctorate in Philosophical Theology with an emphasis on Ethics. Much to the frustration of my wife, I tend to bring back issues of The Philosophical Quarterly as reading materials to doctor's appointments and the like. So, yeah... I have studied it a bit. I also find psychology fascinating, though I have only researched that in the context of a handful of classes, my work, and for characters in my works. Then again, I am also interested in history, physics, genetics, biology... And I roll it all into my SF writing!

 

[Joshua Jones]

OK thanks @awesomesauce - yes, what you are saying makes sense in the way you are saying it, but I am not entirely convinced by the separation you are making between personality/character and moral character. To me the phrase "moral character" refers to a subset of the character - it is the part of a person's character that deals with the moral stuff like honesty. The rest of the character could include likes Mozart, the colour blue, prefers cats to dogs.....

Ah, and here we have another example of separation by a common language. I can't speak for anyone else, but in my own usage, I don't mean "character" in the sense of personality traits or, if we were fictionalized, what our characterization would be. When I speak of character in this context, I am referring more to one's moral patterns and nature rather than their personality. Sorry for the confusion there.

A few further thoughts on morality

The basis of a lot of legal and moral code, seems to me to be ways of ensuring a co-operative society works when it is so big that the direct consequences of dumping/cheating/doing down a person will not necessarily land on the dumper. By that I am thinking of the kind of small society, where reputation is important and if someone is known as not giving a fair deal, or breaking their promises, they quickly become isolated as people will not want to engage in any kind of deal with them, whether it is a big "deal" or just a "hey if you'll take this to the post for me I'll do the same for you next week" kind of deal.

Not exactly morality but moral judgments. It fascinates me how some people associate types of behaviour together. So if say someone is dressed scruffily, has tattoos and piercings some people would assume the person more likely to be violent than a person in the suit. I think I would include "likely to be violent" inside the moral code as part of morality is dealing with mitigating threats (stealing, killing). However, in my experience in living in a big city, I've found that the person in the suit is more likely to be the one in a tearing hurry who might bump into you or not help you.

So I am theorising that an important part of a moral code is supporting a co-operative society (as in human society - teamwork) - so how immoral is not helping someone?

How very Utilitarian of you to think that way! Ribbing aside, I am sure you are right that a co-operation is surely a moral duty in any system except perhaps some forms of ethical Darwinism. But, it is for completely different reasons in different systems, and which system is being used will inform how significant not helping someone will be.

 

[Onyx]

Should we be judged by a jury of ourselves, we will always be innocent, be we Ghandi or Hitler. Yet, I am certain we would all agree there is a fundamental moral difference between the two.

If you put 100 equally "powerful" people in a sealed community together, they will arrive at the Golden Rule automatically. From a universal perspective, Ghandi hoves to that rule more universally than Hitler. But you also have to understand that Hitler was "doing right" by the German people in a very similar way to what Ghandi did for India - up to a certain point. Which is why both came to and maintained power.

The point I am trying to make is that only one popular ethical theory, Deontology, and its cousin Natural Law, are concerned primarily with actions. There are two major theories where actions are less fundamental than something else; more specifically, consequence in Utilitarian Ethics and intention in Virtue Ethics.

These are theories that explain - after the fact - why people may have behaved as they did. They aren't explanations of how a group would arrive at a particular set of values, just what they look like in a philosophical way. Like an economic theory, it doesn't actually describe why individual people do things. No one carries Virtue Ethics around in their head to decide if they should help a stray puppy or not.

And, I would change your last statement to say that the worst excesses in history come from differing definitions of how society ought to be ordered and the grasping of political power. Stalin, Mao, and the Crusades represent the latter, while Hitler and global terrorism are more the former. Though religion is frequently the excuse given to the masses (I include Social Darwinism and Humanism in the religious category for the sake of this discussion, although metanarrative is the more appropriate term for the set), the actual motivator of the antagonists is nearly always der wille zur macht.

I don't understand the line you're drawing between the Crusades and Hitler. In all cases a huge number of people made what they believed to be decisions for a "greater good" based on an ethos promulgated and interpreted by their leaders. They did that because they believed that ethos (Mao's Red Book, recovery of the Holy Land, the restoration of the German people to prominence) were overriding responsibilities that made smaller "wrongs" acceptable (or actually "right") for a "greater good". Just as the US has the death penalty - where we judge murder to be acceptable if it is in the service of an artificial ethos we'll call "justice". Every time a felon is executed, the people that say "I'm glad!" have abandoned the basic Golden Rule in favor of a more abstract idea of good that includes violating individuals for a supposed pro-societal concept. But from a universal vantage, they (we) are doing wrong.

I was trying to understand what you were saying and am still a bit baffled. You appeared to be saying that how well a person behaves is irrelevant, it is just the moral code that is important.

No, I'm saying that why a person behaves in a "good" way is irrelevant to the fact that they are behaving in a good way. You can have a black soul, but if an imposed moral code causes you to function pretty much like a naturally benevolent person, there is little functional difference between the two.

The flip side to that is that there is little difference between a murderer that enjoys the act and a Christian that murders gays because he feels an obligation to his faith to do so. Their victims can't measure that difference.

You are exactly right. @Onyx seemed to be concerned about those who use ethics as a way of looking down upon or otherwise othering people, and I was seeking to respond to that concern.

I'm more saying that human beings are able to subvert their natural community level ethics (the Golden Rule) by inserting an overriding value system that warps how their morals are applied. At no point in Nazi Germany was an ordinary murder not considered a heinous crime, even while the citizens as a whole were engaged in murdering millions. The ethics of murder didn't change - the definition of murder changed to suit the ethos. It is the worst problem human beings face - that subscription to a belief system (political, economic, genealogical or religious) can warp good moral action into acceptance of evil.

It is like the futility of being a mathematician who decides one day that the number 3 is anathema, but must still make calculations. The result is inevitably irrational.

However, that doesn't mean that all ethos that downgrade individual lives are bankrupt - the Golden Rule can't be a suicide pact.

 

[RJM Corbet]

The Little Red Book was imposed upon the Chinese population by force. They were obliged to carry it at all times, on pain of torture, imprisonment and death.

@Onyx
"... there is little difference between a murderer that enjoys the act and a Christian that murders gays because he feels an obligation to his faith to do so. Their victims can't measure that difference ..."

Provide a single instance? Or are you getting confused with ISIS, or whatever?

 

[Onyx]

The Little Red Book was imposed upon the Chinese population by force. They were obliged to carry it at all times, on pain of torture, imprisonment and death.

By the force of the rest of the Chinese population that had subscribed to it. Mao had no more power than anyone else - he was a wealthy farmer's son that became the leader of a grass roots political movement. The way you talk about things it sounds like aliens showed up and imposed order on everyone. The reality is that Hitler and Mao came to power as the result of somewhat democratic processes.

 

[RJM Corbet]

By the force of the rest of the Chinese population that had subscribed to it. Mao had no more power than anyone else - he was a wealthy farmer's son that became the leader of a grass roots political movement. The way you talk about things it sounds like aliens showed up and imposed order on everyone. The reality is that Hitler and Mao came to power as the result of somewhat democratic processes.

Dream on. Mau was carried on a litter for the duration of the great march. Their feet and knees were torn and bloody as they carried him up and down mountains. He didn't walk a single step. They HATED the Little Red Book. He was killing them in millions. They didn't love him.

 

[RJM Corbet]

They both used democratic process to get to the top and rule by fear and murder millions

 

[Onyx]

Dream on. Mau was carried on a litter for the duration of the great march. Their feet and knees were torn and bloody as they carried him up and down mountains. He didn't walk a single step. They HATED the Little Red Book. He was killing them in millions. They didn't love him.

I don't think this conversation is working, as you often seem to ignore cause and effect. Mao became the leader of a movement because a large number of people decided to make him one. Those people could have changed their minds, but did not.

So you'll pardon me for not replying to you any more. I don't see how anyone benefits from this level of discourse, and the "Dream on" stuff is childish and rude.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Anyway... much as though I do find history interesting, I think the opening of this thread had a more interesting premise - that of considering what future generations might consider the moral blind spots of our generations.

It's already been mentioned that the following may become stronger movements in future:

1. Environmentalism
2. Keeping of pets
3. Veganism (or a movement toward that)

I'd like to get this thread back on topic to that, and see if anyone can think of any curve balls we can imagine - maybe not probable, but at least a tiny bit probable.

 

[Montero]

@Onyx - thank you for the explanation on the results vs the motivation. I understand the point your are making and mostly agree with it.
@Joshua Jones and @Onyx - well that is a whole raft of new to me words and concepts that floated past. I'm going to have to google what JJ thinks I am......

@Brian G Turner - hear you boss

I've maybe got one (possibly a variation on what I said earlier) - it does arise in part from the discussion further up this page, hope it doesn't take us back into more contentious discussion. Here we go:

There is a lot of theory, and political and philosophical theory that has roots in science at some point. For example, survival of the fittest was grabbed in the 1980s and used as the excuse for a lot of very greedy and back-stabbing behaviour by some people. However as far as I can see (and I am not expert on this), some of this was based on a misunderstanding of what is meant by fittest. (In simplistic terms a co-operative society, being very co-operative would surely make you the fittest.) Animal behaviour is an ongoing field of study, and as I mentioned earlier in the thread newer experiments and in the wild observations have shown animals exhibiting an understanding of fairness in terms of fair pay (the monkeys) and sharing (the cougars that share their food, and are more likely to do so with a cougar that previously shared with them). So theories/philosophy such as survival of the fittest, take on a life of their own, separate from the fields of evolution and animal behaviour where they started, and are not updated by new data from animal behaviour studies. There is an interesting book by Richard Conniff called The Ape in the Corner Office, which is looking at how many human behaviours have clear parallels in animal species and are in no way exclusive to humans.

So I would hope that one day, it will be immoral to think there is a clear "them and us" between humans and other species on earth. With books like The Ape in the Corner Office, I am seeing a start that makes this a possibility.

 

[RJM Corbet]

That's fine: perhaps in the far future if will be incomprehensible how past generations like our own made so many decisions from insufficient/faulty input data?

Perhaps one may visualise a future where, to those who have mastered the mental ability, all events will be available to view on 'akash tapes' (astral) that record everything and that can be accessed by higher knowledge, observed directly through the eyes/minds/emotions of the actual witnesses of those past events.

Of course much of this reality will be extremely traumatic to the 'viewer' and without the necessary training and control, may cause serious mental and emotional damage ...

The 'rulers' will necessarily be those who have achieved a greater or lesser degree of mental and emotional mastery required?

 

[Joshua Jones]

Anyway... much as though I do find history interesting, I think the opening of this thread had a more interesting premise - that of considering what future generations might consider the moral blind spots of our generations.

It's already been mentioned that the following may become stronger movements in future:

1. Environmentalism
2. Keeping of pets
3. Veganism (or a movement toward that)

I'd like to get this thread back on topic to that, and see if anyone can think of any curve balls we can imagine - maybe not probable, but at least a tiny bit probable.

You know, we could wind up going the other way as well. If we become a spacefaring, FTL race, we may not see much need to preserve a particular environment. I could see this happen for a couple plausible reasons.

1. If we rapidly expand, the human population may simply have vastly more space available than population to fill it. Mars, for example, has roughly the same dry surface area as Earth, so the dry surface, if made habitable, could support a population roughly equal to Earth. Find 8 more Mars type planets, and if the population is evenly distributed, we move each planet's population back centuries. Imagine if we found hundreds... We could realistically have planets with populations in the tens of thousands.

2. We may come to believe that a planet is expendable, or may stop living on planets altogether. If the latter, I could see us dumping trash into the grav-well, where there is clearly plenty of space and it is no longer of concern to us.

 

[Onyx]

Imagine a future time where contraception is absolute and there are no longer diseases of any type, including STDs.

In such a world, denying sexual contact between friends and peers could be a violation of basic human needs and hospitality. When there are no longer medical reasons to avoid sexual contact, will people still see it as something any more sacred than shaking hands or lending a jacket?



Along similar lines, what do we do with the with the pedophiles? My wife and I were talking about this last night: At some point it is going to understood that, like hetero or homosexuality, what people desire is often beyond their control. A society that completely denies pedophiles every outlet increases the likelihood of children being abducted, raped and murdered to cover the crime. Society may decide to offer technological alternatives to actual child pornography or contact so pedophiles have an acceptable outlet. At least one SF author discussed adults who reverse their apparent age to act as legal prostitutes for such people.


Both of those ideas are essentially so far outside what is currently considered reasonable that it is like discussing cannibalism. But both reflect alternative ways of dealing with real problems and a change in the way we evaluate good behavior based on our current technological level.

 

[Graymalkin]

Private transport. Our minds are too fragile and easily distr ...