White sight

Hm.. So upon request. Here’s an update.

School started, I’m mostly doing ok. Pretty interesting classes:-

Psych: Bio, Abnormal, Health, Developmental
Philo: Normative Ethical Theory, Major Moral Philosophers

The reason why I don’t go on msn nor update as much is because of the usual mood swings. You know the ones.

So there.

On Morality

Let’s see… I kinda have some thoughts about what constitutes as Viv’s moral theory and wanted to pen some thoughts down.

For starters (easy stuff), I’m quite sure I am a consequentialist, who believes in agent-relativity. Ok.. So this means I think the morality of an action depends on its circumstances, and that there is no ideal neutral observer so feel free to put your family above strangers first.

I think Classical Utilitarianism is a pretty cousin of Consequentialism who means well but is kinda impossibly inapt without John Rawls’ ideas on Justice.

We’re doing Aristotle’s virtue ethics stuff in class these days and yes, I happen to think that he got some stuff that seems right, but loads of others that sound wrong. (i suspect one of the few reasons i still tolerate him is because it just takes too damn much effort to go through the translations and by the time i’m done, i can’t be bothered to critique everything under the sun)

Aris-MCP seems to think much about honor and eudaemonia -happiness+flourishing+living well. He introduced the idea of means for virtues (quite a wonky move there), but otherwise.. I like how he introduces ‘happiness’ as related to the ULTIMATE GOOD.

Now. Moral Philo’s prof is a Kantian, and norm eth theory prof is a Consequentialist (Hedonist, Total Utilitarian). It’s great because I get to hear both sides of what they’re saying and that helps give perspective on what I really want.

Like was pointed to me earlier, I feel the problem is the formation of moral beliefs. Once I thought about that, the muck in my head got a lil clearer and I know what I’m looking for moral reasoning.

Well firstly, I think Consequentialists got it right. Kantian reason and all that jazz about virtues being good in themselves without much qualification which isn’t foundational seems wrong to me. Consequentialism captures for me common moral intuitions and normal decision making processes in humans. (and you know how I love trying to connect psychology to philosophy).

My original premise is along the lines of… “People just make decisions based on what benefits them most anyway. Morality doesn’t even matter.”

Well, this is a pretty bad way of going along with things since it sounds like I was too lazy to explore all those different scenarios.

By now, I understand ‘Morality’ to be a label/family resemblance term that people register as a set of ethical rules to follow. Why then, would they follow these rules?.. I gathered it is because of the need to survive well in human society, seeing as humans are social creatures and operate in certain ways which are codependent… Ethics would certainly make life easier for them in some way. But more importantly, we want to ‘survive’ because it’s our desire to do so.. and it makes us ‘happy’. Is ‘happiness’ an intrinsic good pursued for its own sake?? Aristotle seems to think so. Hedonists go along the lines of ‘pleasure’. The important thing to note is that I do think people operate in alignment to what ‘they think’ is moral, because of a whole lot of reasons like upholding justice/honor/dignity, but whatever it is, things do register to the brain as electrical signals. Since there is evidence that certain parts of the brain becomes more active when ethical judgments are in play, I can only assume that there is a certain sensation of pleasure that comes from knowing that one has done the right thing according to his code of ethics.

This is also why I was quite hesitant to position myself as a supporter of hedonism, or perhaps of eudaemonia or desire-satisfaction. It’s all lovely to say that everything can be reducible to electrical signals that register ‘pleasure’ aka hedonists-score. But the problem is that with regard to intention and choice, it’s not like everytime i want to do the right thing, i actively pursue that ‘feeling/pleasure’ and recognise everything that I do for the sake of pleasure in itself. Of course, it can be argued that subconsciously, I really do want pleasure (from being ethically moral in my view) but my conscious mind may truly, rationally, want to uphold justice in of itself as a virtuous end.

.. Long story short (haha like it is), thinking of these three was hard (particularly the difference between desire-satisfaction and hedonism cus if they can both be reconciled, i’d like that)…. Ok. But then it occured to me that I really don’t think there is such thing as Morality with a capital ‘M’. That’s the meta-ethical-relative theorist in me talking… And that to me, there is no good reason to believe there should be an ULTIMATE GOOD in the first place.

Simple no? -scraps morality-

Further thoughts include how.. just because normal human behaviour operates in a certain decision making process.. does not necessarily make it the ‘RIGHT’ way of doing it. So I shouldn’t advocate people following their intuitions, cus those might not be MORAL. But if I’d thrown out morality, (and the baby with the bath water), .. well..that’s the end of the discussion on what makes something ‘RIGHT’ doesn’t it? All that is left (it seems to me), is some moral-neutral description on how human society operates for its ‘progress’, and how the different branches of ethical theories are all just.. dressed up accounts of what might help people classify certain actions/thought processes that would lead them to do what they and society thinks is right.

All that is being said is that… because theories of justification are wonky, and because the rationalism route doesn’t seem as convincing to me as the observable consequentialist path, it seems like a pretty good idea to care about maximising my happiness (because desire-satisfaction really is.. the intrinsic desire, although not necessarily moral). Ah.. So there we go.

No intrinsic good.

Just to push myself a little, I was thinking about what exactly I would say if I really do have to make a decision to dive back down into the world (after viewing things on meta) and make moral decisions. It is not enough to be told of what actually happens, but people are more keen on knowing what exactly is the right thing they should do. (cus people like following instructions, seems to be innate)… Well.. My answer to that is with a question: Is it still meaningful to ask what the most important virtue/good is, if I honestly believe there is no such virtue/good other than what people label as? Would I not, instead, be making assumptions, taking votes and then passing off some unjustified claim that ‘something’ is/are the best out of em all? Something doesn’t seem right about that and as lazy as it sounds, I think moral speculation would end around there for me.

Everything’s an observation, a discussion on what good is (or what people say/call it is)… And it’s just.. hard to leave that alone and go back in.

And because all good moral theories are self-effacing, clearly my justifications for all these are out of whack… But because they’re just like so many other theories out there, I’ll just have to like and accept mine by virtue of the fact that it is my choice and I feel somewhat good about it.

And even if that isn’t the ULTIMATE GOOD, ‘Happiness’ is surely, the ultimate desire.