[Serious] Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds

[The Grand Nudger]

Are they the same amount of evil or not?  You seem to be saying both yes and no.

Same act of moral import, which is evil - same evil.  The difference between necessary and uneccessary evil is that one is necessary and the other is not.  Just like it says on the tin.  I'm sure that we could find necessary evils which contain bigger bads than unneccessary ones and vv - but if we're comparing two apples, even for size, I'll call both apples.  

I think you're equivocating upon different senses of bad.   Let me ask you this, should we punish people proportionate to the severity of their crime?

There's a line of objection in which all of natural realism is contended to be an equivocation, so it's not surprising to find - at any point, that a person might get that impression.  

As for the q - Robin Hood is a thief and a hero, in the story (and a murderer, too).  Strict adherence to law and notions of some specific set of criminal punishments would suggest that he be thrown in the dungeon at least but more likely executed.  Whatever we did to some other guy who committed the same crimes.  Assisted suicide is a similar case.  You could be prosecuted for murder in 40 states, murderer and hero.  

I think there's a better way than punishment based on severity of crime - but sure.  If we're slapping hands, taking a lollipop and taking a life probably end up being worth different amounts of slaps.  That's the whole more/less/equal divide in desert, and agency based modifications.  We tend to think, for example, that there are some people who cannot be held fully accountable for their actions for any number of reasons.  Other times we think that a person shouldn't be punished at all for a crime.  Some of us, myself excluded, think that the ideal difference between what we get and what we deserve is zero. I tend to think that we should get less punishment, and more reward, than we we might deserve.  Don't harm do help doesn't just apply to the criminal, but also to their potential executioner. Whatever they've done is on them - what we do in response will be on us. The moral clock doesn't stop and get stamped when they do whatever they did - it's still going.

Now, this is just a tick of the current state of law in the us - but there are piles and piles of crimes which I don't feel that people should be punished for at all, regardless of their severity - and we're currently looking to add more to that pile. Abortion, for example, is being criminalized all over the country as we speak. I can agree with the notion that abortion is a bad thing and we shouldn't be doing it - and also think that punishing people for having them is a bad thing and we shouldn't be doing it. The anti-abortion crusader is asking me to select a thing contended to be a necessary evil in order to stop some other evil from an exclusively suboptimal list.

This is where I invoke that famous right to fail. As a matter of motivation - I sometimes find necessary evils compelling - but not always. In the latter case, and assuming that my revulsion towards some thing x really is an anomaly and even in my own moral system I should be doing it - I still won't....or assuming that I can;t muster up the courage to refuse (which has happened many times in the past)...it won't be surprising to find that I say okay and then never get around to completing the task.

The same could be true of the person seeking the procedure. They may think it's wrong, they may have severe misgivings about it - and even so, they may still have one. Or maybe they can't bring themselves to go to the clinic..., and they count on some absurd set of behaviors dangerous to mother and child alike to do the deed. I think that the number of people who jump out of bed whistling a jig and exclaiming to the world that they're going to have an abortion today - or snuff their dad out with a pillow- is low. A person who kills their dad probably should spend some time in facility - as a practical matter..we know that they're a killer in a palpable sense, at that point, and we might want to keep an eye on them. Not just because they did it - but because killing people tends to have an effect on people too. Killing the wrong guy.....probably going to be worse for you. Might want to make sure that the man who can reach the decision to kill a loved one isn't broken in some way that might cause them to consider that act again and in other circumstances. Maybe another suffering person, maybe themselves.

Pricking people with needles is pretty low priority, low evil, for any reason. It's unclear why pricking a person with a needle for no reason would be wrong if pricking a person with a needle were not wrong. If there was nothing wrong with it than pricking a person for any or no reason wouldn't be wrong in any case. A few slaps on the wrist, maybe...and the same would be true for someone who's routinely shitty at vaccinating kids - but, as before..I'm a leniency over severity guy, myself. I'd prefer to avoid compounding evil with further evil. My kids prick each other with pins, and I think that's asshole behavior - but I'm not throwing them in the obliette for it, and I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that to a stranger either as a matter of moral principle (though, hey, I may fail, and shoot them dead in the moment - that sounds like something I might do).

-it may be useful to keep in mind that I'm only elaborating on how the kinds of moral systems you were asking for can and do work - and all of the ways in which they're at least as rational as any other rational thing. None of the above is an argument for you assuming the same sorts of propositions - which could all..ofc, be inaccurate. The ability to be right or wrong (in the non moral sense) is a requirement of realism - any realist conjecture must by default possess that attribute, and any argument that they -are- wrong is..itself..a realist assertion.

Trying to tie it all in succinctly, with our possible worlds and responsibilities to children in them - I tend to see at least some of those statements as true. I have a moral opinion on that matter informed by things I consider to be facts which I do expect to be able to show to any other person and which I would expect those other people to be able to see. That moral opinion alone won't provide me (or anyone else wondering about my opinion) with the full explication of my thoughts on the subject - and even though I try to practice a realist morality..human beings are meaningfully subjective agents. I can launch an argument...but...at the end of the day, I can alo accept that the terms of my argument might be wrong and that, in that event, I'm unlikely to flip like a switch to the new right (and..this time, in the moral sense). I'll get it, I'll rationally understand how I got it wrong in what you would call the non moral sense and how that lead to me getting it wrong in what you would call the moral sense - but I'll still feel the way I do - still have the same kneejerk reactions still have a temper - still be a spotty agent. I'm a spotty rationalizer too. All of these things are true. However - looking for incongruencies in a persons moral life in a realist system, and finding them, probably shouldn't be taken to mean that the system has failed - so much as that people routinely fail by any measure, including their own.

If objective morality were easy or natural to a subjective agent, we probably wouldn't have to call it practicing at all. I think that it's something that we can do, that can be done, that would take a rigorous application, and that would almost certainly dissatisfy or frustrate us - particularly with respect to any moral disagreement it may offer with things we currently assert to be true and valuable. Our concern for the welfare of the unborn is many things, imo- among them, rational. True. Not everything we believe about that, however, is or even could be true. What do you think?