
Life in a World of Pervasive Immorality: The Ethics of Being Alive - blasdel
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/immoral
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tc
Aaron, I believe you're getting confused because you haven't established for
yourself a clear notion of basic morality or ethics. Many philosophers have
covered what it means to act morally -- Aristotle, Socrates, Kant, and even
Jefferson and Franklin. There's even a word for the effects-based moralizing
you went through: consequentialism, which most people associate with Mill and
Bentham. This usually leads to various forms of utilitarianism.

Being firmly in the deontological camp (rationalist ethics) myself, though, I
would recommend you check out Kant, Nagel, and the many advocates of the non-
aggression principle (pick your author). I believe our intrinsic notions of
morality are mostly deontological, which makes some sense as non-aggression
and other subforms of the school allow a person to act morally with local
information, rather than requiring global knowledge for every act, as much of
utilitarianism requires in the final analysis.

If _you_ would kill one innocent person because you thought that action might
save five innocent people, though, then you are probably (and unfortunately) a
utilitarian. Do consider both sides though.

~~~
ajb
Actually there are three main schools of thought in ethics: consequentialist,
deontolological, and virtue based. (Before someone asks me to summarise, I'll
note that I'm not expert on any of them).

One place where the distinction can become vital is in ER rooms. The following
case was described (in another, closed, forum) by the chief on an actual ER:
Suppose your ER is full, but you get a call about a patent in critical
condition who needs an ER slot, and your ER is nearest. You have one slot
occupied by a patient in a relatively stable condition, who could, with low
risk, be moved to another ER, clearing the slot for the more critical case.

The utilitarian response is to accept the new patient, as the certainty of
helping them outweighs the low risk in moving the existing one.

The deontological response is to refuse; you have accepted duty of care to the
current patient, but not yet to the new one.

I don't know what a Virtue ethicist would do.

Actual ERs in the UK have different policies, depending on whether their
ethics policy was written by a utilitarian or a deontologist. My interlocutor
said that he would usually respond by the deontological rules, but in a crisis
would (and in fact, had) act in a utilitarian way.

~~~
tc
I don't believe that is necessarily the deontological response. Remember that
morality is mostly a tool for exclusion; more than one moral choice often
remains.

A deontological person can still practice triage. Without more information
(such as published policies, prior agreements, patient consent, etc.) it is
hard to say if the question is even really a moral dilemma. If you are
standing on the street and two people get hit by a bus, deciding which one to
help is not a question of morality. By helping either, or both, you are acting
morally, and perhaps even supererogatorily. Deciding whether or not you should
go kick them while they're down, though, is a moral question. It would be
moral (though not particularly praiseworthy) to refrain from doing so, and it
would be clearly immoral to kick them.

Interestingly, Catholics actually believe in the idea of a moral safe harbor.
That is, if you've given serious and reasonable consideration to a moral
question, and act in accordance with your earnest conclusion, then you will be
held blameless regardless of the ultimate righteousness of the action.

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spyrosk
One thing that is puzzling me for some time is why vegetarians think it's more
moral/nice/whatever to eat plants and not animals. They too are living
creatures and most of the times you are killing a being in order to consume it
for your personal gain. I'll skip the analogy between fruits and their mamal
equivelant, but you get the idea..

Thing is, survival is a really competitive process and unless you want to get
off sooner, you have to take things away from other organisms, human or
otherwise. We, as a civilisation, may have raised it to a more noble,
according to our perception, level but fundamentally it's still the same.
Ethos is mostly the refined version of pack rules evolved to make sure an
individual doesn't hurt the well being of the group. It's a human fabrication.

With that said I agree with the author's view, try to do as much good as you
possibly can, while realising that just by living you are causing harm to
someone/something else.

~~~
wglb
Ah, but consider the apple. The purpose of an apple is to get eaten so that
the seeds get geographically distributed. The apple is ready to fall--else it
won't taste good--so you are not killing it. This is true for most all fruits.

~~~
nihilocrat
If it weren't for cows and pigs and chickens being so tasty, they would
probably not be so ubiquitous, because then humans would not have reasons to
breed them en masse.

By this logic, I say we start eating endangered species, creating a market
demand and thus an economic reason to breed them.

~~~
billswift
Good idea, but it's already been thought of - L Neil Smith had Eagleburgers in
one of his North American Confederacy novels - developed by a conservationist
specifically to encourage the breeding of eagles.

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michael_dorfman
The short answer to the articles final question is "Yes, many philosophers
have considered this question."

If he's really interested in philosophy, he'd have come across these already,
but the fact that he's asking the question would indicate he's not. That's ok,
of course, but the question seems a bit odd.

~~~
pj
The author is going to have to go back to the basic question of "What is
good?" before he can answer the questions he's asking in the article.

He's making assumptions on the answer to that question based on his
circumstances, which are totally different than a sweat shop worker in another
country. Sweat shop working might be "better" than the alternative for that
person.

My wife says, "You just have to do everything with love."

~~~
michael_dorfman
Your wife, it seems, is a bodhisattva. Best wishes to you both.

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DanielBMarkham
This reminds me of Martin Luther.

Luther became concerned that everything he did was sinning in one form or
another. It created quite a bit of cognitive dissonance.

For Luther, this intellectual pain led to a completely new idea of the
concepts involved. Sounds like Aaron is ready for the same kind of game-
changer.

~~~
oz
Justification by faith, not works, right?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yes.

I believe it was initially sola fide (only by faith), but he also added sola
scriptura (only by scriptures) and sola gratia (only by Grace)

Luther was increasingly upset over being able to fully reconcile with God.
Even at confession, he was concerned that in trying to do a good job
confessing he might exaggerate his sins, committing another sin. He might feel
proud that he did such a good job confessing, committing yet another sin. It
was like an endless loop for him, which sounds a lot like this article.

To top it all off, Luther saw the church selling indulgences, which basically
meant you could write a check and then do bad things and you were covered. I
think that was the straw that broke the camel's back. A similar observation,
which this article did not make, is where famous people who break these rules
are still deemed "okay" because of the monetary support they give to the
correct causes. If Aaron had made this observation it would have been almost a
perfect analogy to Luther's early concerns.

~~~
antipaganda
Giving indulgence money to rich bishops, to allow them to eat, drink, and
bugger the choirboys, is ethically different to compensating for your high-
consumption lifestyle by giving poverty-stricken subsistence farmers fresh
water and their eyesight back.

It does make a difference who you pay the money to.

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dbul
Singer warns not to consider moral positions as "rules" as stated in this
essay, but guidelines. You can't be 100% perfect at all times (as Franklin
discovered).

In addidition, moral views are mutable. My friend has been vegetarian for 10
years and on account of some book about a farm in Virginia he thinks maybe
eating meat is all right. My argument against his decision may have some
weight, but ultimately virtue and ethics are an individual's business.

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cmars232
You really can't just completely separate yourself from the "wheel of
suffering". Even if you did drop out of it completely, what scalable solution
is there for everyone else?

There's no net benefit for such drastic lifestyle changes, other than the
smugness and pride of feeling morally superior.

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jokull
Good thought practise. So much noise in this ethical discussion.

