The Purpose of Ethics

[TimeTraveler]

Three questions:


The only basis that I can think of for morality would be nature.


We should base ethics on what's best for the survival and evolution of the species.


It depends, if pain and suffering are better for the survivalof the species, then yes. There are many instances when increasing pleasure is not moral. When it becomes selfish or materialistic, in my opinion, it is not moral. Unless of course it has to do with food.

If the survival of the species is the goal, I think I answered it in my post. An ethical person is responsible. An ethical person is a person who does the least amount of harm to others and the least amount of harm to their environment. The harm principle, or the do no harm oath, and things such as this can help you decide on how ethical a person is. The survival of the species depends on ethics, and this is why I predict the species will not survive. We arent breeding ethical people, we are breeding warriors and business people. Ethical people can be warriors and business people too, but unethical people are just naturally better at killing massive amounts of people, and being greedy as hell. If a person is unethical they might actually have a talent for this. If a person does not feel guilt, remorse, or love, they'd be the ultimate business man who everyone fears as boss, and they'd be the unstopable general or soldier that will obey any order.

Ethics matter because ethics are the heart of our species, and if we lose the ethical core, we will simply destroy ourselves, and we already are destroying ourselves so there already is an ethical poverty.

 

[S.A.M.]

Life is a manifestation of a universal instability.
Things happen because there is a lack. Universal flux is this lack manifest.
We can refer to it using multiple human words such as: instability, imperfection, imbalance, evil, chaos, entropy, chance, change etc. etc.

And you prefer sameness, stagnation, death?

As a product of universal flux (lack), life is also characterized by lack.
It needs constantly.
Life is a self-contained unity of animated matter in constant Need (active).
It comes to be as a more sophisticated and efficient method of seeking stability, rather than blind matter relying on chance.

What chance? Haven't you heard of natural laws? Everything follows an organisational plan, evolution selects for characteristics that ensure survival while random mutations prepare the way for future changes. In fact, with the amount of changes we are subjected to (did you know that DNA damage due to environmental factors and normal metabolic processes inside the cell, occurs at a rate of 1,000 to 1,000,000 molecular lesions per cell per day?) it is nothing short of a wonder that we do survive, flourish and are able to reproduce with such evidently obvious ease.

Knowledge is such an attempt by the conscious mind to minimize chance and become more efficient in the expenditure of energies towards self-fulfillment.

Self-fulfillment? What would you define as self-fulfillment?

This need is interpreted by the conscious mind, if and when it becomes present in a living organism, as suffering.
Suffering is consciousness interpreting, sensing, feeling, universal flux.
In a sense it is the sensation of an absence of self, as it mirrors the environment that produced it.

So a desire for self-fulfilment causes suffering?
Even though knowledge moves us closer to it each day? (based on the premise that we are acquiring knowledge)

So maybe our knowledge is misdirected? Or incomplete?
Are we so enchanted by the pleasure of creating and consuming that we have mistaken it for fulfillment?

Suffering is constant and unceasing, as the flux is or change is or time is or space is.
An organism is never without need. It is Need manifest.
It breathes constantly, it absorbs nutrients stored in its digestive system constantly, it maintains and heals and defends itself constantly.
It is in perpetual action (need).

I should hope so. Absence of need after all, is death.
I'd rather be needy than dead, wouldn't you?

Pleasure, therefore, is a double negative concept.
It is the momentary distraction from need or the momentary alleviation of one need before a new one absorbs the mind’s attentions.
It is the negation of a negative. This is felt, by the mind, as pleasure or a release from Need (life) - ecstasy.

How mundane your pleasures must be!
Pleasure is momentary true, but isn't all pleasure a product of the fulfillment of a need? The pleasure from a perfectly formed flower, a melodious tune, a fragrant breeze; the pleasure from a silk shirt, a soft caress, a moment of revelation. Are they irrelevant simply because they are momentary?

Is not the whole more than the sum of it's parts?

The need placated never goes away it simply diminishes in intensity and slips under consciousness’ awareness.

False. One may never feel a need for what one never experiences.
But once experienced (and enjoyed), the need is established.
Every recurrence of that experience makes that need more firmly established; sometimes beyond the point where we stop caring and yet cannot let go.

So, pleasure is the momentary distraction away from living (suffering), in essence or it is a temporary respite from one need before the mind become preoccupied with another.

Nonsense; all action is in anticipation of pleasure. It's not a by-product, it's the goal.

No man is ever fulfilled completely.
He only momentarily fills himself partially or distracts himself, inebriates himself, away from his emptiness.

Of course he is not. Every need fulfilled feeds it, makes him need more, so he reaches out further and further, in an attempt to reach the stars.

Ethics, therefore, are the set of rules which force a present suffering or effort so as to ensure a long-term or longer lasting return of respite from suffering.
It is an individual investment in the community, if you will.

No. Ethics is when a man stops thinking about his own needs, gets out of his own pleasures and suffering, and rises above his self-involvement to realise that there are other people in this world who have needs that he may be able to help fulfill and suffering that he may prevent or alleviate.


That's it for now; I'll look at the remainder of your post later.

 

[(Q)]

You have to thank (Q) for that, I'm afraid.

He brings out my caring compassionate side.

And he's done it so often, it's become second nature now.

Come now, haven't I turned that gerbil wheel in your head once or twice? Haven't you on many occassions engaged me when I'm responding to someone else?

It takes two to tango, sweet cheeks.

PS Thank you for the sweet words. They warm the cockles of my heart.

He's just trying to get laid.

 

[S.A.M.]

Come now, haven't I turned that gerbil wheel in your head once or twice? Haven't you on many occassions engaged me when I'm responding to someone else?

It was a compliment, (Q).
No one tests my compassion as much as you do, conversely, I try harder when I am challenged.

It takes two to tango, sweet cheeks.

I don't single you out (Q); ay, there's the rub.

He's just trying to get laid.

Is that the only reason you would compliment someone?

 

[(Q)]

It was a compliment, (Q).
No one tests my compassion as much as you do, conversely, I try harder when I am challenged.

Reality challenged?

Is that the only reason you would compliment someone?

Well, I've never seen him compliment a male, so your guess is as good as mine.

 

[S.A.M.]

Reality challenged?

Whose reality? You presume your assumptions define reality, I do the same.

Well, I've never seen him compliment a male, so your guess is as good as mine.

Glass houses.

 

[(Q)]

Whose reality? You presume your assumptions define reality, I do the same.

My reality is defined by observations and testing, yours is defined by religious scriptures written by men who knew nothing of the world around them, who thrived on myth and superstition and imagined gods ruled their world.

Glass houses.

 

[S.A.M.]

My reality is defined by observations and testing, yours is defined by religious scriptures written by men who knew nothing of the world around them, who thrived on myth and superstition and imagined gods ruled their world.

Whatever.

 

[Satyr]

samcdkey

And you prefer sameness, stagnation, death?

And that’s the irony of it all.
By wanting to be fulfilled, find Eden, we are expressing a secret desire to cease becoming and Be.
We desire an end to life.
If life and suffering are tautologies then to seek a minimization or an end to suffering or need or pain is to seek an end to living.

Life-affirming means accepting suffering as an unavoidable part of life – as life itself manifest.

What chance? Haven't you heard of natural laws? Everything follows an organisational plan, evolution selects for characteristics that ensure survival while random mutations prepare the way for future changes. In fact, with the amount of changes we are subjected to ( did you know that DNA damage due to environmental factors and normal metabolic processes inside the cell, occurs at a rate of 1,000 to 1,000,000 molecular lesions per cell per day?) it is nothing short of a wonder that we do survive, flourish and are able to reproduce with such evidently obvious ease.

Yes, but the unions caused by these natural laws are chance unions seeking a final stability but never completely achieving it.

Consciousness directs energies into a more efficient usage it. It seeks stability through discrimination, by eliminating the unwanted or undesirable – as that which is worthless or doesn’t work – and tries to find ways to stabilize the unity o self and lead it to its final conclusion with analysis and logic.

Matter simply combines and recombines and deteriorates and absorbs and is absorbed with no guidance or Will. It seeks stability, we could say, through chance.

Self-fulfillment? What would you define as self-fulfillment?

The absolute.
Call it perfection, stability, harmony, omnipotence, omniscience, singularity, Being, timeless, spaceless.

So a desire for self-fulfilment causes suffering?
Even though knowledge moves us closer to it each day? (based on the premise that we are acquiring knowledge)

Am I not explaining my positions well or are you failing to comprehend them?

I said: consciousness is the awareness of universal flux. Suffering is how it experiences this awareness.
The mind experiences temporality and change and flux as suffering.

So maybe knowledge is not the answer?
Are we so enchanted by the pleasure of knowledge that we have mistaken it for fulfillment?

Knowledge is another form of appropriation.
We feed, we learn….same thing.

But the antipathy towards understanding and knowledge is something your gender is well-known for.
Women prefer to feel things and not know them. They cannot stand deconstruction because it uncovers their nature from behind romanticism and idealism.

How mundane your pleasures must be!

The common perception concerning understanding is that it takes away the magic from life.
Things are diminished and made mundane when understood.
An air of mystery is required, by most, to keep them enthralled.

They then suppose that the other must not experience their ecstatic relationships to the unknown.
This is how stupidity is raised to the level of a mystery necessary for living.

My pleasures are not the topic, firstly, and secondly my pleasures are found in the simple and experienced with no less pleasure.
I just know what it is and I guess what is causing it.
If knowing how the movie maker created his illusions causes you distress or makes you unable to enjoy the movie, then please turn away.
For some of us knowing how special-effects are created or understanding the craft of movie-making only enhances the movie experience. It makes us appreciate it all the more.

Are they irrelevant simply because they are momentary?

Where did I say “irrelevant”?

Is not the whole more than the sum of it's parts?

Ah yes, the magical, God, hiding in the shadows. The mind urging itself to feel more than what it perceives that it is.
“I cannot be just this.” it tells itself “I must be more. I must be special.”

False. One may never feel a need for what one never experiences.
But once experienced (and enjoyed), the need is established.

You are confusing Wants for Needs.
I need not experience breathing to need air.

Needs are fundamental.
Wants can be Needs refocused and redirected through cultural and memetic lenses.

Nonsense; all action is in anticipation of pleasure. It's not a by-product, it's the goal.

The expectation of pleasure is pleasing because it is an imagined and expected future cessation of suffering.

Pleasure itself is merely the absence of Need/Suffering.

No. Ethics is when a man stops thinking about his own needs, gets out of his own pleasures and suffering, and rises above his self-involvement to realise that there are other people in this world who have needs that he may be able to help fulfill.

That is so touching.

This ideal itself offers pleasure to the mind believing it.
It is in accordance to memetic established ideal which preach communal sacrificing as a method of ensuring discipline to the whole.

One enjoys feeling selfless when this is impossible as a contradiction of existence – I am means I am in the process of self-fulfillment of establishing self and therefore interested and focused with self even when seeking it through others.
The enjoyment of this ideal is derived for these reasons:

1- The mind feels that it lives up to its social contract and to its obligations to the whole, ensuring its acceptance within the whole and its future safety and well-being. It proclaims its small sacrifice of self, to the others so as to make them see that it is committed to them, even if for selfish reasons.

2- The mind likes to believe it is being selfless so as to escape the reality of the others selfishness in acting and behaving towards it. It therefore avoids the reality of existence, which is solitude. It feels welcomed and belonging and together in community. It escapes the reality of self, as Heidegger would say, through the theyness.

3- The mind wants to avoid the cold reality of its behaving with ulterior motives. Its investment must be protected; it has sacrificed too much to simply risk it all by admitting that all its acts and beliefs and opinions were selfish and that when it gave or helped it was investing in receiving and being helped.
Females, having the most at stake due to their procreative strategies, are the most fervent defenders of idealized selflessness.
They proclaim that motherhood is the ultimate display of selfless love when it is no such thing. The self, even in motherly affections, is directly involved and receives immediate or hopes for future rewards for its sacrifice.

Emotions, in general, are ways of inebriating reason away from immediate concerns.

(Q)

He's just trying to get laid.

And it is so hard do to so, these days. Especially for someone like me.

Well, I've never seen him compliment a male, so your guess is as good as mine.

Q…you are magnificent.

Glass houses.

The idea behind ‘glass houses’ is that nobody should say or think things that harm itself.

Isn’t this prejudiced thinking making truth a subjective interpretation of what the mind thinks is in its self-interests?

If a mind isn’t willing to speak its mind and to see and to experience, even though what it sees and experiences might not be good for it, then in what way can it pretend to be a lover of wisdom or trying to be objective?

If you only throw rocks, dear boy, when you are sure your own glass will not break then it is this fact that makes you unable to throw rocks very far.
Thinking is risky business, peering into the void can make you go mad, uncovering reality doesn’t guarantee that reality will be flattering or rewarding or positive towards your own self-interests and desires.

The universe doesn’t give a shit about you or me and our little hopes and expectations and pleasures.
It is what it is.
Describing it using rosy-colored glasses is a sure way to remain a victim to it and forever blind.
Seeing it for what it is, in all its cruelty and coldness and indifference, is the only way to find ways to overcome it.

I’m walking through the forest. I come across a bear.
I don’t know what bears are or what they eat or their nature.
My mind immediately ants to believe the bear is friendly and will hug me and kiss me and call me George.
I refuse to believe the bear is capable of harming me because that would go against my immediate self-interests and throwing rocks in glass houses might harm my own glass house.
The bear doesn’t give a shit what I think of it or about my rosy outlook or about what I hope it is.
It is what it is.
If I fail to analyze it precisely, I will become a victim of it or I can hope for a bear hug and pray to the unknown God for His intervention on my behalf.

In closing I urge you to never throw rocks which risk your own glass structures. Why that would force you to rebuild and to grow and to think.
Just tiptoe carefully around the glassware, hoping you do not knock anything over accidentally and face the repercussions of your actions.
Remain average.
And when you throw things, throw pebbles so none of your stuff gets damaged.

*ploink*

 

[S.A.M.]

But the antipathy towards understanding and knowledge is something your gender is well-known for.
Women prefer to feel things and not know them. They cannot stand deconstruction because it uncovers their nature from behind romanticism and idealism.

So why is it difficult for a man without a home to find a woman?
Surely not because they are practical above all things?

The common perception concerning understanding is that it takes away the magic from life.
Things are diminished and made mundane when understood.
An air of mystery is required, by most, to keep them enthralled.

Boys and their toys.

They then suppose that the other must not experience their ecstatic relationships to the unknown.
This is how stupidity is raised to the level of a mystery necessary for living.

Yes, and amazing how many idiots will chase these stupid women.

If knowing how the movie maker created his illusions causes you distress or makes you unable to enjoy the movie, then please turn away.
For some of us knowing how special-effects are created or understanding the craft of movie-making only enhances the movie experience. It makes us appreciate it all the more.

Me too. I always find the greatest pleasure in taking things apart to see how they work.

Ah yes, the magical, God, hiding in the shadows. The mind urging itself to feel more than what it perceives that it is.
“I cannot be just this.” it tells itself “I must be more. I must be special.”

Interesting how it is the atheists/agnostics who see God in everything a theist says.

You are confusing Wants for Needs.
I need not experience breathing to need air.

Would be pretty hard to get it without breathing, some would say.
I'd say it would take less than ten minutes without air to realise how much you need to experience breathing.

Needs are fundamental.
Wants can be Needs refocused and redirected through cultural and memetic lenses.

Wants can be meaningless and evil, too, but only to the other person, not to the one who wants.

This ideal itself offers pleasure to the mind believing it.
It is in accordance to memetic established ideal which preach communal sacrificing as a method of ensuring discipline to the whole.

One enjoys feeling selfless when this is impossible as a contradiction of existence – I am means I am in the process of self-fulfillment of establishing self and therefore interested and focused with self even when seeking it through others.

Strange how you profess to separate reason from mystery; and yet cannot separate a concept from it's derived benefits.

 

[(Q)]

And it is so hard do to so, these days. Especially for someone like me.

Are you invert nexus? Why the two userids?

Q…you are magnificent.

Thanks.

The idea behind ‘glass houses’ is that nobody should say or think things that harm itself.

Really? I thought it meant something completely different, is that your definition?

I refuse to believe the bear is capable of harming me because that would go against my immediate self-interests and throwing rocks in glass houses might harm my own glass house.
The bear doesn’t give a shit what I think of it or about my rosy outlook or about what I hope it is.
It is what it is.
If I fail to analyze it precisely, I will become a victim of it or I can hope for a bear hug and pray to the unknown God for His intervention on my behalf.

What do bears have to do with anything?

In closing I urge you to never throw rocks which risk your own glass structures. Why that would force you to rebuild and to grow and to think.
Just tiptoe carefully around the glassware, hoping you do not knock anything over accidentally and face the repercussions of your actions.
Remain average.
And when you throw things, throw pebbles so none of your stuff gets damaged.

*ploink*

I really don't know wtf you're on about, a lot of drivel, suspectedly.

 

[Rosnet]

Three questions:
1. Ought a system of ethic's primary objective be the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of displeasure, or ought other ends be admitted and allowed to perhaps even supercede pleasure/pain?

Yes that's true. If you don't belive in a God who decides what is right or wrong, then this is actually what is left (even when you believe in God, it's because you dno't want to suffre punishment, or in hope of eternal paradise or similar reasons that you choose to be ethical). Nothing can supercede this principle. I don't say "pleasure" exactly, as in momentary pleasure. I think "happiness" is more appropriate. I'll say more shortly. And yes, I'm talking about your own happiness, not the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

3. Are all instances of increasing pleasure moral? All instances of decreasing suffering good? Or are their times when decreasing pleasure is moral and increasing suffering is good?

Again, if you're talking about pleasure, and not happiness, then of course there are instances of what you say, as when you diet, or undergo surgery, or even try out some painful experiment on yourself.

 

[Rosnet]

I wouldn't think...
I think morals and ethics stop our pleasure seeking ways getting out of control and being harmful to others and society rather than supporting them.

Why?

 

[Rosnet]

Why would one use pleasure as a yardstick for ethical decisions?

Why not?

 

[Rosnet]

The only basis that I can think of for morality would be nature.

Why is that?

We should base ethics on what's best for the survival and evolution of the species.

Again, why? There is no point in living for the survival of your (or any other) species. Altough this, I admit is how ethics came to be... But that's for later.