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[Serious] Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
#61
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
Hard, hard no. I don't see it that way - in my own experience of doing necessary and unnecessary harm - both are equivalent in my own repugnance. One may be necessary, the other not, but a necessary evil is still evil - I feel pretty much the same in either case.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#62
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
(May 8, 2021 at 2:13 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Hard, hard no.  I don't see it that way - in my own experience of doing necessary and unnecessary harm - both are equivalent in my own repugnance.  One may be necessary, the other not, but a necessary evil is still evil - I feel pretty much the same in either case.

So let me see if I understand you correctly. Are you saying that harm which is necessary is equally immoral to harm that is unnecessary, that if I give my daughter a vaccine to save her from getting cancer, what I'm doing is just as immoral as if I subjected my daughter to that pain for no reason at all?
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#63
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
That would seem to be the thing that's different between a necessary and unnecessary evil as I conceive of them, yes. Necessity - both are evil.

I think I dropped a line about this one a few responses back - so long as we have to stick a kid with a needle to vaccinate them - that's what we're going to do. In either case, the killing of a person or the vaccinating of a child - if we constrain the field to nothing but bad things - it may be the case that some of those bad things leads to better outcomes than others but that doesn't suggest that we don't recognize or work to eliminate the bad in that thing as we see it.

Vaccinating kids is immensely instructive in this regard. Sure, we see the necessity or the practicality - and we want that enough to allay our concerns about whatever pain or fear it causes beyond some point. We tell our kids "hey, it's just one little prick". We expect the provider to be skilled and careful. If we could deliver the medication another way - we would. Yes, pricking kids with needles is pricking kids with needles in any situation. There can be all kinds of diffeences between the two situations, but the similarity there is the pricking of the kid with the needle - which is something that concerns us, which we take steps to address.

(my kids are giant assholes about this, btw, they're all afraid of needles but they just love sticking each other with pushpins - wtf is that?)
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#64
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
(May 7, 2021 at 7:08 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: What if I told you that Neo doesn't have a commitment to forced birth? What if I told you that Neo has a commitment to the welfare an unborn child?

While I work on more detailed responses, I thought I should address this, since it is of a personal nature. I believe the welfare the unborn child must be balanced with the welfare of the mother carrying that child. I find it callous and irrational to consider the unborn without rights.

And I object to the turn forced birth since a healthy birth happens naturally without any outside force.
<insert profound quote here>
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#65
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
(May 5, 2021 at 2:44 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: This is philosophical question about if one can be morally obligated to a possible world. One potential solution, would be to treat potential as a kind of existence.

Possibility by it's very nature exists as a plurality. In other words, for one world to be possible so must another. So my question would be, to which of all the possible worlds are we morally obligated to?

ps. As for abortion, my two cents are a amplification of a Thomas Nagel argument: That death is evil insofar as it deprives us of life. Abortion, it follows, deprives a person of the most life possible.
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#66
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
(May 8, 2021 at 2:46 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: That would seem to be the thing that's different between a necessary and unnecessary evil as I conceive of them, yes.  Necessity - both are evil.

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

(May 8, 2021 at 2:46 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I think I dropped a line about this one a few responses back - so long as we have to stick a kid with a needle to vaccinate them - that's what we're going to do.  In either case, the killing of a person or the vaccinating of a child - if we constrain the field to nothing but bad things - it may be the case that some of those bad things leads to better outcomes than others  but that doesn't suggest that we don't recognize or work to eliminate the bad in that thing as we see it.

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?
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#67
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
(May 8, 2021 at 9:56 pm)Angrboda Wrote: 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.  

Quote: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?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#68
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
(May 9, 2021 at 8:36 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:
(May 8, 2021 at 9:56 pm)Angrboda Wrote: 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. 

(May 9, 2021 at 8:36 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: 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).

I'm beginning to believe that you don't understand the concept of necessary harm. If something is necessary that means that it could not have been avoided, that no choice that I could have made would have prevented it. Most systems, moral realism or whatever, consider only acts for which we are responsible to have moral import, that one has to have control of or care for the events or things to be morally responsible. But if harm is necessary, I couldn't have caused any less harm, so why are you/they holding me morally accountable for them? It's like if I was driving my car and the brakes fail, causing me to hit and kill someone. In this 'system' of yours I would be guilty of murder, or manslaughter at least, yet my acts don't fit the definition. I said earlier that when you do specify the system you had in mind it would be unusual. Any system that holds people responsible for things they aren't responsible for is definitely unusual, and it's hard to reconcile it with reason. The reason the person who gave the shot for no reason is considered more immoral in most systems is that he could have avoided causing the harm. In this system of yours, both someone who could have avoided an event and a person who had no control over the event and could not have avoided it are both responsible for, or said to have control over the event. The only way to make that rational is to make us responsible for all bad events that happen, whether we could control them happening or not. But that would also make us responsible for the good events as well. So in your 'system' I saved 46 people from dying today. I didn't do anything to prevent them dying but something happened which did. Since I'm responsible for both the things I have control over as well as the things I don't have control over, I get the credit for saving those lives. Does that sound as stupid to you as it does to me?


(May 9, 2021 at 8:36 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: 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?

The meaning of rational is also something that I'm beginning to think you don't understand. Something isn't rational simply because reason was involved somewhere along the way -- it must be rational top, bottom, and middle. Partially rational isn't rational. So the foundations of abortion reasoning have to be as rational as anything that comes after it. The unborn are like the born in some ways but unlike them in others, so it's a matter of judgement what rights carry over from the similarity and what rights do not carry over due to the dissimilarity. Pro-lifers want to suggest that all the rights of the born should carry over, that the differences aren't relevant. Are they right? They could be. Are they wrong? They could be. Is there an objective, rational answer to these questions? You say yes. So tell us, objectively and rationally what the answers to these questions are.
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#69
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
You're concerned that my moral system will hold you accountable for something - but, perhaps it won't..and so what if it did?  I'm only giving you a different take on morality than the one you hold because you asked.  We may have a disagreement - but if there are no facts to be had in this disagreement, there's no reason to argue facts..either.  You could be charged as a murderer in 40 states - I don't think that's a good outcome for the people seeking to or willing to help people end their lives any more than I think being charged with a crime for having an abortion is a good outcome, as I just explained.

- but I do understand that it's a rational system.....and as I keep mentioning, the setup pretty much excludes any good outcomes ....... doesn't it?    

In that rational system up above, a system which we both probably have at least a few disagreements with together, a person could also be charged as a murderer for shooting a pregnant women in the stomach.  We do assert that the unborn are like us in a relevant enough way to justify such a thing.  It's not actually on account of believing that they aren't that we decriminalized abortion either - it was an issue of a competing and compelling interest.

The things that compel and motivate us aren't always moral things.  Our rights are not limited to the good alone - as if I could only say nice things with my freedom of speech. The things that our moral systems might imply aren't always comfortable or comforting.  There may be things which we don't see as wrong, which are.  Probably won't make you feel any differently about them, not in a flash if ever - at least, that's never been my experience - as I mentioned. I think that we have responsibilities to children, even ones that haven't been born yet. In many cases, I see a limited range of options before us for even attempting to satisfy that obligation -and- some of the time, all of the options are bad (our environmental issue at present is full of this kind of thing, too). Picking a bad option, or falling into the neccessarry harm, is still bad, still harm - that's a consequence of a natural realist system. It's the thing itself that's bad, literally. I may find it compelling. Still bad. I may not be able to avoid it. Still bad. I may think it's good. Still bad. I may be personally offended by the notion that in some rational and objective moral system a thing I think is something other than bad, is bad.

Two people who pull a trigger are at least equally responsible for the things that they have equally done - which is pull a trigger. That doesn't necessitate that we deal with both of them in the same way. We understand that there are ways a person can end up doing bad things which aren't as much of a concern to us as others. I haven't seen the stats on it, but I don't think that people who help loved ones shuffle off the mortal coil end up being repeat offenders very much. Same probably isn;t true of straight up dyed in the wool murderers. I'm similarly unworried that a woman who seeks and gets an abortion will wake up and snatch a kid to kill the next day.

I'll point out, again, that fishing for personal incongruencies in my apprehension or takes that you imagine might shame some another person... is pointless. When you find one - and it's dead certain that you will if you keep the line in the water long enough-..... I'll just go "neat, so that's me failing again at what I'm trying, just like I already told you happens all the time".

Moral realism is not the belief that I'm in possession of the right answers, Angr - let's make that perfectly clear shall we...? You're asking the wrong guy for something like that. It's a belief about how we could get them. A productive way to make the attempt. The application of some rigor and factual analysis. Using tools that have worked before in places where they could work gain, and..perhaps, in places were we haven't applied them quite as well. There's never a point in realism where there's no room for disagreement or the introduction of any fact deemed relevant that may have never been considered before. Moral realism, like the sciences and as opposed to moral absolutism or fatalism - offers provisional certitude, at best. I've repeatedly stated that I think that we have moral responsibilities to children, that I think this claim is true. In this post and in others. There's something that I think is true - the right answer - but I'm still here discussing it as a thing that I could have very well gotten wrong.

Do you believe that there is a right or a wrong answer to a math question you can't personally solve? If you wanted to attempt to solve it, how would you approach it? I see the question of our moral responsibilities and - what we've been discussing for the past few posts, moral desert, a bit like that.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#70
RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
Before responding to specific replies, I would like to position my comments by noting that almost all moral decision-making in some way seems to involve using foresight.

(May 5, 2021 at 3:01 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: If responsibility to a hypothetical future generation, not yet conceived, seems too intangible to understand  - consider debt and reciprocity.  The current actual generation has already benefitted from exactly this sort of responsibility…Or, perhaps, consider our own actions purely in the present.  Would it be better to lead a life which respects future life, or one which doesn't?  What do the two types of lives look like?  

That is a perfect example. It does seem unfair for people alive today to squander resources and burden future generations with debt.

(May 5, 2021 at 11:46 pm)Belacqua Wrote: The Scholastic argument against … makes sense to say that the only ontological change occurs at conception, and from there it is a question of potential coming to actuality, through one continuous process of gestation, birth, life, and death…
working against the actualization and flourishing of an extant thing (the already-made fetus) is bad. However, neglecting to actualize the potential of a baby I might potentially have conceived but didn't isn't bad. I don't feel that I have harmed the flourishing of a being who never began to exist in the first place…So then we have to think about which category to put future people into. Those who exist and have potential, or those who are purely imaginary.

When we think of people who will exist in the future, after I'm gone, I think we should have the same responsibility toward them that we feel to already-made things. That is, we don't treat them as the imaginary babies I might have made, but who never got conceived. This is because we know that they will exist -- we know that there will be somebody there existing and therefore having the right to flourish. All of those people who really will exist, but whom I will never meet because I happen to drop dead, are not just imaginary -- or will not stay just imaginary. So we have a responsibility to them.

Your first paragraph makes sense to me. A fetus warrants our consideration by virtue of its ontological status as an actual being with potential, human potential. I guess you could say that even if we had no moral obligations to people not actualized, we would still want to consider how our choices effect the lives of unknown strangers who will live on after we are gone. In other words, I need not concern myself with people who may or may not exist in future, since it is more than enough to worry about contemporaries who will outlive me.

However, your last paragraph reminds me of the notion of knowing that something exists without knowing what that something is. We can know that it is likely someone will exist even if we don't know who will exist.


(May 6, 2021 at 7:51 pm)Angrboda Wrote: I don't know whether moral truths themselves are dependent upon intuition, but determining whether something is morally true or not seems to rest only on intuitions… Our morals appear to inescapably rest upon intuition, and intuition is a guide of questionable value… consider Munchausen's Trilemma…The third leg of the trilemma is that definitions, concepts or whatever terminate in an indisputably basic fact.  Basic facts are known through apprehension, or intuitively.  You can't define what would constitute a basic fact, as that would lead to another iteration of the trilemma.  So the challenge for those who would argue that morals have an objective foundation is to confront an equivalent trilemma for morals and show either that there is a fourth option that hasn't been acknowledged, or that  there are basic, indisputable beliefs about morals that are objectively true.  Failing to do either is just wasting my time….All reasoning starts from things which are assumed to be true.  Thus all reasoning is without an ultimate rational foundation.  This is no less true of arguments about color than it is about morals…I pointed to moral disagreements on slavery, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, and masturbation as questions as to whether a consensus of intuitions among the majority of thinkers was sufficient to determine whether something is likely to be true.  And until someone shows some other basis for morals than intuition then skepticism that such exists is warranted.  Reason and rational chains of thought have one thing uniting them that intuitions do not: they are transparent and accessible to inspection.  If nobody has presented something possessing those qualities with respect to morals, skepticism is most certainly justified.

The fatal flaw of philosophical skepticism is its obsession with certainty. While there is a place for examining unchallenged assumptions, at some point people need to make their best guesses.  Pyrrhonic skepticism has some value. It reminds us that the human condition includes a limited range of sense data, fallible perception, and a vulnerability to skewed reasoning. Skepticism seems better at promoting epistemic humility when it isn’t used as a cudgel to undermine productive attempts to gain understanding of the world.

IMHO, skepticism is a negative kind of mysticism. Not only does it posit an unseen and unknowable reality underlying the world as we apprehend it, it asserts that knowledge of the unseen realities are inaccessible. It does this by simultaneously exaggerating human limitations (both cognitive and perceptual) and demanding absolute certainty, which of course is unobtainable. The right and proper response to someone doggedly presenting skeptical arguments, like Agrippa’s trilemma, is “whatever.” Doubt is not an automatic defeater. If the human condition is to navigate through a life without uncertainty, then it seems wise to leave aside debilitating forms of skepticism and embrace the fact that what we consider knowledge is not “justified true belief”; but rather, earnest conjecture. In other words, if the best we can do is guess, how can we assure that we are making the best guess?

I would not discount value of intuition in attaining philosophical insight any more than I would discount the role of beauty in mathematics. Any moral philosophy, including nihilism, which fails to condemn the slaughter of innocents, be they children on the cusp of birth or Amalekites, deserves extra scrutiny, does it not?

I think as it relates to the OP, the intuition that moral obligations are real can be taken as a given, as vulcanlogic does below.


(May 7, 2021 at 2:58 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: …Assuming moral realism, I think we can say something about a moral commitment to future generations.

Our actions affect future generations whether we want them to or not. The fact that they don't exist yet doesn't change the fact that our actions will affect people in the future. We ought to feel the same obligation to them as we do with people in the here and now.

Far too much moral reasoning is based on speculations about the future. The trolley car problem, for example, relies on comparing two possible futures and the dilemma of having to choose one over the other. Rather than judging the choice on either utilitarian or deontological grounds, I want know how the moral agent at the crux of the dilemma made his or her decision. Maybe the rightness or wrongness of the moral agent’s action isn’t in the action itself or its outcome; but rather embedded in the nature of the moral agent. Did he or she act in his or her fullest capacity as a human being attempting to exercise sound judgement?

With respect to future generations, I would like to see a moral justification based on the notion that the people alive today are not necessarily obligated to speculate about possible events in the far future but can be obligated to live virtuous lives with the incidentally effect of benefiting future generations. For example, the moral dilemma of the ancient world was not about whether to abolish slavery, which was inconceivable; but rather how to best accommodate an apparent necessary evil. IMHO, we cannot fault the ancients for failing to imagine a world in which industrial-technology replaced forced-labor, whether it be chattel slaves, serfs, or in-debted servants. But we can reflect on whether they did the best they could overall, which I think is all anyone can ask.
<insert profound quote here>
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