Subjective Morality?

[bennyboy]

What represents self-interest?  It is the sense of agency.  It think, therefore I am, isn't just a general sense of qualia, IMO, it's also a mythological archetype-- that of the individual agency of self.  Benjamin isn't so much a thing, as a complex of ideas and feelings attached to a name.

Actions which lead to the dissolution of the agent cannot be in the self interest of the agent because you have to have an agent to be a self.  Thus those acts which encourage the dissolution of the agent, rather than discourage it, are against that agent's self interest.  The rest can be derived from that.  It's a lot like asking the question of what is health.  The answer may be subjectively based, but the difference between health and it's lack is based upon objective considerations based upon the undesirability of pathology and dysfunction.  Likewise, the interest of the agent may be subjectively defined, but it is based on objective facts.

Well wait a minute, there.  Why is existence itself in the best interest of the agency of self?  Why should we favor existence over non-existence?

My position is still the same: that we have an instinct to survive, and that this instinct expresses it through the agency of self as a feeling.  Or to put it more precisely, that instinct to survive, along with other core elements of agency, ARE the self.

What if you found out we were living in a simulation, for sure, scientifically proven?  What if we were in the Matrix or in the mind of God?  Do you feel this would fundamentally change human morality?  I believe it would not.  Some people might start worshiping the Great Programmer in the Sky, but in essence, it would still be about our feelings about things.

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What represents self-interest?  It is the sense of agency.  It think, therefore I am, isn't just a general sense of qualia, IMO, it's also a mythological archetype-- that of the individual agency of self.  Benjamin isn't so much a thing, as a complex of ideas and feelings attached to a name.

Careful there, bennyboy. By criticizing the logic or coherence of an ethical theory, and asking the question "What represents self-interest?" you'd be doing moral philosophy... the kind that assumes the existence of moral facts...

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Oh great then. The matter is settled. Morality is just as real as my friend Ben. I do have a friend named Ben, and he is very real to me. So when you say moral facts aren't real, you mean it in the sense that my friend Ben isn't real. What did you call him? A complex of ideas and feelings? Okay. I'll be sure to tell him you said that. 

When you first said that you doubted the existence of moral facts, I thought you were saying that they were less real than my friend Ben. Now I understand your position: they are only as real as my friend Ben. I agree with you there. And I'm glad we're on the same page now.

Nom nom.  Words. . . in mouth. . . mffffff.  Can't breathe. 

Let's be clear hear.  I'm not saying there are no facts which are considered in the process of moral consideration.  I'm saying there are no facts which are categorically moral in nature-- especially, which are objectively right/wrong valued.  There's no particular fact about a murder, for example, which may be objectively observed, and known by anyone who observes them to represent a moral wrong.

This view, that rightness exists out there independent of subjective agency, and that some people correctly perceive it, and some do not, is quite dangerous, actually.  It's easy when you're in a culture with certain views to say, "Oh. . . well everyone KNOWS that's morally acceptable.  Everyone KNOWS that's objectively wrong."  But what if everyone KNOWS that women are morally inferior to men, and that this is considered an objective truth?  What if almost every white person considers the savagery of black people an objective moral truth?  What if everyone in a subculture KNOWS that human beings are a scourge to the world, and that the complete elimination of the species represents a tremendous good?