Meaning of Right and Wrong... Finally Answered!

[Cerrone]

Of course it relies on what you define morality to be, though most commonly it is used to mean "a standard by which we judge action" or phrased in another way "conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct."(Dictionary.com)

I am arguing for an objective moral theory, until recently i was a moral subjectivist, but I think Desirism is a better framework that best represents our moral intuitions about right and wrong with only the use of empirically testable phenomenon and objective measurements of relationships between desires and a state of affairs. It can achieve moral facts, such as making the statement "rape is wrong" factually true instead of subjectively unpleasant.

Ok, I can generally agree that true moral conduct stems from virtue in a way and even if I think that morality in the common use of the word is non-existant it still takes some virtue for an individual to attempt to obey the rules of morality in their "desire" to "do the right thing".

However where I think you're going wrong with applying desirism here is that often "the right thing to do" isn't always pleasant, hence why it's easier to just give up or not make the effort rather than trying to be virtuous because you're unconciously or conciously using your own desire for happiness as the driving force behind your actions. I'm not trying to say that this behaviour doesn't exist, of course it does, but it's more accurately described as a completely selfish state of mind, rather than an ideological philosophy with any merit.

Granted if you applied long term consequentialism into desirism and if peoples desires were not entirely selfish, then it turns into something much better, more productive, but desirism alone is like a car engine without a car; it's just a rampant uncontrolled force which only provides any use when put to work inside the context of another philosophy- consequentialism.

So how do we get to moral facts? In Utilitarianism we are trying to achieve a better state of affairs, and a better state of affairs is one where more and stronger desires are promoted than thwarted compared to the present moment, a good action is one that leads to a better state of affairs.

Explain to me how a better state of affairs is one that produces more desires? You could use that logic to validate consumerism, individualism... it doesn't give either one any more merit and it doesn't fix their destructive impacts. If any desire needs to be thwarted it'd have to be selfishness.

Of course the latter, the ongoing suffering of many thwarts more and stronger desires than the death of the bad man. Nobody desires to suffer, the desire not to suffer is stronger and more prevalent than the desire to make someone suffer, thus actions that lead to the suffering was morally wrong and any action that prevents the suffering from continuing, such as the killing of the person who is enforcing the suffering, is morally good.

I can see how your thought process is working on this one, i'm glad we agree.

Oh, so donating to starving children makes them worse off? That's bullshit mate, having food, clean water, medicine, education, shelter etc DOES NOT make their life worse. You're argument is totally unsubstantiated and has absolutely no resemblance to the actual data, world disease and suffering is down in impoverished nations, especially in children, disease rates are down too, education is up and life prospects are improving.

Well keep telling yourself that. Everytime you give charity to anybody it makes them less concerned about providing for themselves because they can always go back to you for handouts. People generally don't do anything for themselves until they've realised that the only people who'll improve their lives is them themselves. This is really a case where the taking action in agreement with the best long term consequences aren't in fact the most pleasent thing to do, but it is nevertheless, the right thing to do..

So fuck charity, they need a revolution. But thats a subject for another conversation...

Besides have you studied macro economics? The first world desperately needs the third world to exist in poverty in order to get cheap goods and resources, if the third world was as wealthy as the first they wouldn't be making our sneakers for us, so nobody would be! Do you think the world leaders would take a course of action that is so obviously detrimental to the continuation of their powerbase and even the economc system itself? This is one of the big reasons why the US is so fond of controlling the third by installing vassal dictators to keep them in line.

Bizarre example, you may want to phrase it a little more clearly next time, i've had to read between the lines to make any real sense of it.
If cattle prodding them into raping each other would be an action that thwarts less desires (the desires of the bad people not to be raped) than the desires of the people that they would otherwise rape, the cattle prodding the bad people is more moral.

My point was that to disinterest people who're intent on doing harm, you shouldn't wait for them to do harm and hope they will realise by themselves that their actions are counter productive to their own desires, you should force them into realisation as soon as possible. If you fail to completely make them realise this then there's no guarantee they aren't just biding their time waiting until an eaiser oppourtunity comes along where they can fulfill their destructive desires.

Desirism is not a deference of moral responsibility it is a method of determining the truth of moral propositions, and it as for making choices go, the choices you make are more likely to be morally good because you have a method for working out which actions help fulfil the most and strongest desires and thus bring about a better state of affairs, rather than intuiting it, and intuition is far more prone to error than relational measurements.

Where the hell did you get that from? Do you want to show the part of my argument that you used to make this conclusion, because i'm pretty sure you have it completely backwards. The length of consequences, short term or long term, makes no difference, what matters is what desires are ones that tend to promote more and stronger desires than they thwart, a moral person is one who's desires tend to promote more and stronger desires than they thwart, it tells you want actions are morally good and bad based on this relationship between desires and the state of affairs.

We need to apply consequences to desires before we can resolve this arguement properly.

You're basing that desirism will make peoples choices more "morally good" on the aspect that those people aren't falling prey to false-fulfillment, they may believe they're happy and moral, but they're just deluded because of their short term vision and lack of perspective, and that's proved when any action they take leaves them walking in a circle without any change or notable achievement.

And until that's resolved, my conclusion still stands.

So all desirism achieves universally then, is putting off the inevitable harder choices for short term gains (and we'll assume that inaction and remaining neutral is considered a short term gain as well) and forgetting to take account for the long term consequences of the act, which you didnt even consider then when creating the example... or willfully ignored.