Comments on: Anatomy of a Moral Disagreement

By: michael

michael — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:24:19 +0000

Just saw an interesting response to Harris that echoes some of what I was saying: http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/03/moral-by-definition-some-slightly.html

By: michael

michael — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:40:33 +0000

Yep, I saw the Harris talk in my feed reader a few days before your comment but have been putting it off because it was 25 mins. I’ve watched it and it is very interesting — I’ll probably just write a separate post on it within a week or 2. If you write out the reformulation of your argument to exclude empathy (which as you guessed I’m interested in) before I’ll try incorporate that too.

By: keddaw

keddaw — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:19:27 +0000

It would be fair to ask me to explain that reasoning in terms not involving empathy, which I intend to do later…

By: keddaw

keddaw — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:18:25 +0000

Quick one:

http://www.samharris.org/page/ted_talk/

VERY much worth a listen if you haven’t already heard/seen it.

There are principles that I hold higher than any empathy and are often in direct contradiction to my empathetic reaction. These principles, or values, can be nothing more than moral statements that are based on anything but empathy…

For example I believe that the right of an individual to refuse to help another, even at no cost to themselves, is more important than helping the other person. This is far from empathy as I would want the person to be helped when placing myself in both situations. What I would not want is to be forced to help, even though I would help, and that is a moral based on reason not on empathy.

By: michael

michael — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:39:52 +0000

I don’t think it’s irrelevant if we agree on all dilemmas since we’d then be using equivalent decision algorithms (even though at the lower level they might be arranged differently on a superficial level).

I do believe on minimising harm — but this comes from the fact that I have empathy with someone who is harmed. It can’t be substituting empathy reason because there is no purely-reason-driven argument about why it’s wrong to harm others (I still don’t think I’ve encountered a successful version of the argument in this thread).

On cutting someone open for medical purposes there is obviously the conflict between immediate harm and long-term good but I see that as the concept between a smaller case of empathy with a larger case of empathy. For the same case, if it’s empathy that makes us reluctant to cut someone open, why should it be anything other than empathy that drives us to perform the actual operation?

By: keddaw

keddaw — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:09:44 +0000

Whether we agree or disagree on a specific ethical dilemma is somewhat irrelevant. How we get there determines how we will react to different situations and how we would rank various outcomes. It is highly unlikely that someone trying to view a situation without empathy as a guiding light would come repeatedly to the same conclusions as someone using empathy.

You, if memory serves, believe in minimising harm which would suggest dropping empathy for reason. this appears at odds with what you are saying in these posts unless you have changed your mind.

I have posited that the principle is higher than the outcome so while in many/most situations we would agree there are some we would not, e.g. enforcing the wearing of seatbelts in cars by adults might be one.

To cover the baby killing, I would say that if it was a real choice between me torturing and killing a baby or me dying then I’m afraid the baby is not going to have a long or pleasant life.

However, I think the medicine example is much better. We do not like the idea of cutting someone open (empathy) but we know it is in their long term interests so we do it (rational). Or chemotherapy, or radiation treatments, etc. etc.

By: michael

michael — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:31:58 +0000

But say for obeying orders in Nazi Germany, are you saying that empathy says not to kill the baby whilst reason says kill the baby? I’m not sure how say for that one I can parse it as a conflict between reason and empathy.

My specific views don’t necessarily differ from yours in what I think is ethical in different situations (although they probably do) — it’s probably a course of practical education. Since I still see empathy as being the core, I would like to see that emphasised in education and moral discourse, whilst you might disagree. But it’s still possible that for each moral question we come to the same conclusion of what is to be done.

By: keddaw

keddaw — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:36:33 +0000

In reverse order:
Empathy and reason being in conflict – well that’s all surgery and quite a lot of other medicine. It’s allowing the sick to take their own life, or put them out of their misery. It’s shooting one hostage to save the many. It’s shoving the fat man in front of the trolley, or allowing the five to die (depending on your take on that issue). It’s allowing fifty guilty people to go free rather than lock up one innocent person. It’s [not] torturing a suspect to gain vital information. etc. etc. As humans we are awful at the big picture stuff and make stupid, small minded, parochial decisions as a matter of course. There can be nothing more emblematic of an empathy vs. reason issue than Kamikaze pilots or Saving Private Ryan; obeying orders in Nazi Germany or torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib?

Empathy is not required for equality (it does help though!). We simply need fear. The fear that what we want, or what we have, will be removed by others unless we also grant what we have to everyone else, thus we all stand together. Naive, perhaps, but we’re dumb mammals.

Fear is actually the basis of most of my morality and politics, leading to a very free ideal with a much greater chance of being harmed by individuals, but less so by the state. C’est la vie.

If you can give me a more specific example of where my views are self contradictory or diverge from yours and you think I am in error (as opposed to a simple difference of opinion based on alternate reasoning or different starting axioms) then I’d be glad to take them point by point.

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:07:32 +0000

Michael:
You’re right, he doesn’t agree. I would like to know where you think his theory is wrong or where he is mistaken about going from non-moral to moral statements.

You say
it will still be broken down into concepts that are core values that won’t decompose into further logic

I think that meshes nicely with DU. The core entities are desires. Or more specifically malleable desires. As far as the theory is concerned they don’t decompose into further concepts. That doesn’t make (malleable) desires some written-in-stone, never-changing objects. They evolve over time and are different throughout different cultures.

By: michael

michael — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:10:01 +0000

Keddaw: I agree with most, however my counterexample was only meant to show that yours does not do as much work as you claimed it does. The form of argument in both is the same so to stop from saying John ought to rape and kill the child we are forced to introduce extraneous things like the child’s rights or “everyone should be treated equally” without proving it — and yet this is exactly what a sociopath with perfect logic can question and that we can’t prove to him/her!

To have a stable society (for everyone and not just me) as a goal, or to believe in rights (of everyone and not just me) I believe I need empathy at least for that core, and I think this discussion has only highlighted this.

As for empathy and reason conflicting can you give an example of what you mean? I’m sure it happens but you could be referring to one of a few cases each of which might be explained differently.