(January 5, 2015 at 10:48 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Put simply, ethics are not about you, they are about us. All of us. When you say that killing redheads is pleasurable to you, first of all I have to say I find that unlikely, as a normally functioning human brain has empathy that would prevent that; statistically few people think like that. But more importantly, since ethics does not concern itself solely with you and what you want, if your idea of maximized pleasure subtracts pleasure from someone else, then it is rationally untenable as a position. You might still hold it, and nobody can force you to change your mind on that, but you cannot make it jive with the way ethics works without adding in a whole lot of special pleading, making exemptions for yourself that do not appear in a normal execution of ethical considerations.
So the short answer is, yes, that goes against ethics.
I wouldn't approach this using the term "ethics" (Forsakens term) because it is such a complicated topic. I'd use terms like "right" and "wrong" instead because they are more intuitive. However, so if I get this right, you are saying that killing redheads "goes against ethics" because it is against normative ethical considerations ("normal execution of ethical considerations"). So does that mean the defense against killing redheads is just an appeal to what is normative? Why use what is normative as a defense? Why not just what I want?
