Ethics

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I read history and the newspapers. If Might doesn't make Right, it sure produces Results. Historically, goodness and justice rarely triumph. Even when they do triumph it is all over for goodness and justice two generations down the line. That is why the struggle goes on without end.

ruveyn

I see. The holocaust was merely the first phase. The second comes when all those Arab nations get the atomic bomb. Since Israel s so small i won't take many.

Poly-ethics topic

I do not have a system such as Mjght-Right or reciprocal behaviour conseqences so I approach doing the best thing from an experiential viewpoint. It is an eclectic, cautious approach and highly individualized, so that what might work for me would not work for others.

In any given situation, I'll tend to adopt whatever utilitarian perspective seems nice to me at the time. So in general, I can't claim to be taking the view of any specific type - and you're right, this probably will prevent me from coming up with a fully consistent system. That's not going to stop me trying, though. Ethics is something I engage with because I enjoy it as I enjoy a piece of music. There are some things I find genuinely disgusting, and some things I find very good, and I like trying to fit those 'emotional responses' into an ethical system.

Animals certainly matter to me. Yes, some beings matter more than others. I think that an average fully grown human is more morally relevant than an infant, for example.

I don't believe there is such a thing as justice, and I consider that to be a damn good thing. Oftentimes when people talk about criminals, they might mention how the current system doesn't deliver what they consider to be the right amount of justice to an offender - it doesn't give offenders what they deserve. The idea of inflicting suffering on somebody simply on the basis that they have inflicted suffering on somebody else previously is one of those things that I have an emotional response of disgust to. And I mean that unrestrictedly. If you told me that this serial child rapist deserves to be thrown behind bars for 10 years (a fairly tame punishment compared to what most people would want), then I would consider that disgusting (I'd consider his crime disgusting, too).

I do have intuitive emotional objections - as you can see from what I said above - but I don't object to the same kind of things most people do. That's probably why utilitarianism works well for me: it tends to fit my immediate emotional responses.

About as accurate as i could put it (moreso, really), if in fact the universe is only deterministic and/or probabilistic

If free will exists, then ethics is no longer moot. The most realistic method from changing social equilibrium from A to D, would be essentially the wican rede. Though the word "harm" is rather ambiguous.

"An(If) it harm no one, do as thou please"

define Harm: effectively limit the freedoms of another person/entity (or conduit of free will)
(yes, "effectively" remains subjective, but it's the best i've been able to make the statement as objective as possible while discounting silly banalities)

of course you'd have to put a caveat in there permitting the "harming" of someone who is trying to "harm" another.

Enforcement of ethics is the problem, there are two agents for doing so, a) Law; b) indoctrination.
If law enforcement is feasible and effective, and can be carried out in a reasonably objective manner, then there is no issue. Lacking sufficient enforcement of law, ethics would require b) which has to be a violation of any realistic ethical system -- or at least, i would reject any ethical system that would permit b)

I don't fully understand your position, and on some level it does not make sense to me. I mean, I can understand that sometimes punishment is silly, but I don't understand the position "all punishment is silly", nor would I think it reasonable to never address the wrongs a person has done, even if the method isn't strictly punitive. I dunno, that just seems like a person saying that they like listening to loud TV static.

Punishment may be useful for other purposes. I would never advocate completely abandoning all punishment. I just don't like punishment for its own sake: the fact that a person has inflicted suffering on somebody, no matter severe that suffering may be, simply isn't a reason to inflict suffering on them. If that is justice, then I would like to see justice abolished. Some forms of punishment, however, may have value as deterrents or as forms of rehabilitation - though I think there would have to be significant changes in the current system to make that worthwhile. I don't consider my view on punishment to be particularly radical, and I don't see why it wouldn't make sense to somebody. It seems fairly simple to me.


I certainly like that, and I know a few other people who do, too.