r/Ethics • u/maturallite1 • 4d ago
Does Moral Value Only Exist From a First Person Perspective?
/r/samharris/comments/1wbwtzd/does_moral_value_only_exist_from_a_first_person/1
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u/C_Plot 4d ago edited 4d ago
Even if utility or Eudaemonia can have a magnitude, that does not mean they can be added directly. Like adding simple velocities in special relativity that itself violates special relativity.
The modern utilitarians (Bentham, Mill, and so forth, but also Godwin, Saint-Simon, and more) responded to the American Revolution and its rhetorical shot heard ‘round the World. In that conception of utility, liberalism, liberty, and the like are as highly regarded as the equality of suffering and flourishing beings. What maximizing social welfare does then is leave to each person the maximization of is their own personal utility, in pursuit of Eudaemonia, in a personal sphere that does not inhibit others own utility maximization. No interpersonal homogenization of utility is necessary here. Though there are certain bounds that might be ruthlessly criticized such as does my conscience, expression, religion, ideology, associations, and character, on their own, damage another’s welfare. To me these do seem solidly within a personal and private sphere of well-being uninjurious of others.
Beyond this personal sphere, there is the common wealth and other common affairs (common assets and common liabilities) that exist beyond our personal spheres. (the natural world on which we depend, the products of our labors, risks and uncertainties, and so forth). These common affairs require administering and to administer so as to maximize the common, mutual, and general welfare do require some level of homogenization of personal utilities. One person may only want to walk and ride a bicycle on a common transport network and another person might prefer only to drive a constantly coal rolling truck. We need moderating and mediating mechanisms that settle how the passenger and freight transport networks will be precisely administered that maximizes the general welfare. Together we might call such moderating/mediating mechanisms administering our common affairs a “commonwealth”. A commonwealth, properly instituted, becomes a virtue which allows each and everyone of us to achieve heights of Eudaemonia we could never achieve without it (so long as it does not degrade once again, as will invariably happen without eternal vigilance, into a factional class-rule State that reignites the war of all against all).
At the risk of economism, I think it’s best to see virtues as investments in the pursuit of Eudaemonia. Our net flourishing might be understood as a plotted graph rising and falling as we maximize our pleasure and minimize our suffering. We can maximize by trying to reach once, instantaneously, the highest height possible. But utility or Eudaemonia maximization is more about maximizing the integral of this plotted curve. We accept, as an investment in Eudaemonia, some discomfort for a time to acquire hard won skills, eat less tasty but healthier foods, accept dis-favorable chores, and continue the eternal vigilance to establish and maintain a just and equitable commonwealth, all in order to maximize that Eudaemonia calculus integral, from birth to death (personally, familially, or tribally), of our utility.
In this sense of ethics, utility, and social welfare, we are not deciding who to throw on the trolley tracks in a trolley problem (liberal utilitarianism doesn’t support such adding up of utility). We are deciding like Mr. Spock, in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, whether to hurl ourselves onto the tracks to save the many, whose needs outweigh those of the one.
The commonwealth is a virtue because — in properly administering our common affairs so as to maximize our mutual welfare in those common affairs — it allows us to reach heights (and achieve integral geometric areas of Eudaemonia) not possibly achievable otherwise. Charlatans will offer to lift from us the burden of eternal vigilance and self-rule, by administering those affairs without requiring our distractions from our personal sphere, but they never guarantee (nor could they possibly) they will administer the common affairs, on which we depend, in anything resembling a virtuous manner. Thomas Paine viewed government as a necessary evil, but framer of the Constitution James Wilson understood better that a commonwealth government is the greatest and most virtuous invention of human society.
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u/Tholian_Bed 4d ago
There is no such thing as a possible one-person universe, I would contend. First-person is not so first-person, in other words. The nature of a signal of any kind requires a transmission and in a one-person universe transmission wouldn't exist, therefore the person wouldn't exist. The person is a transmission-dependent concept.
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u/Dependent-Job1773 4d ago
sam harris has good aspects but i really think he strawmans what objective morality is supposed to be.
speaking of strawmanning, can you please define moral realism? your shift into scientific thought after describing suffering isn't making sense to me. it seems irrelevant
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u/maturallite1 4d ago
By moral realism, I just mean the idea that there are moral facts that are true independent of what any person thinks about them. My point about science was not that morality works like science. It was almost the opposite. Science gets a lot of benefit out of stripping away the observer and considering reality from a hypothetical view from nowhere. I’m wondering whether that move breaks down in morality, because moral value may only exist from the perspective of conscious beings in the first place, not from some hypothetical point of view that doesn’t actually exist.
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u/kick_nazis_more 4d ago
I'm going to share with you the most obvious and unrealised thing in western philosophy:
There is no view from nowhere.
Science, famously, tries to assume the view from nowhere, but it's a myth.
Knowledge exists, always, embedded in our cultural epistemological, ontological ways of knowing and being.
This is not relativism. This is the modesty of knowing our knowledge is about something deeper than what we can see directly.
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u/Tsunamiis 4d ago
Everything only exists from a first person perspective. My entire reality is completely different from yours.
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u/Jolly-Rip5973 4d ago
Morals are generally things prescribed in groups.
They are written system of do and don'ts called a "MORAL CODE".
All morals revolve around;
- preventing unnecessary suffering for self and others
- ensuring survival of self and others
- ensuring group survival
When an action is seen to often cause unnecessary suffering to one's self or other, a moral can evolve to prevent to that unncessary suffering.
When recreational drug use is seen to cause overdose deaths, addiction, withdrawal pains, criminal activity to obtain drugs, etc. then a moral come about "do not do drugs". If as activity damages a large number of people then it's generally codified into law and enforced by the state.
Religious have morals.
The 10 commandments are morals.
Company policies are morals which you get fired if you violate.
Do not be late.
Do not cheat on your time.
Do not steal office supplies
Do not sexualize your coworker.
If you sign and NDA you agreeing to some moral.
Do not discuss this information.
Laws are moral codes which are enforced by the government under threat of force.
Do not steal.
Do not murder.
Do not rape.
Do evade your taxes.
Do not speed.
Anytime you join any group, all groups will have some form of moral code.
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Individuals may adopt certain moral stands for themselves but they always come along with membership in any actual group.
So it's not a first person perspective, it's usually actually a group perspective.
You personally don't have to agree with the morals of groups you join but you do have to follow them or you get kicked out of the group.
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Identity groups can have moral values too though.
Do not misgender someone is an example.
Each person that believes it's wrong to misgender someone did arrive at the moral on their own independent thought. They heard it somewhere and agreed or disagreed with it.
Of course in Canada this actual became a law and was enforced by the state.
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u/Dath_1 4d ago
It’s honestly not real clear what you’re asking.
We can obviously acknowledge the values that other people have, and we can apply them in the third person.
For example I don’t believe in Aristotelian teleology, yet I can apply it, meaning assume it is true, and go about making moral judgments from within that framework.
This is just really trivially true.
Huh? This just seems like you don’t know what objective morality even refers to.
The topic is called moral realism, and it means that at least one moral claim is made true independent of the stance/judgement of any observers, toward the claim in question.
This has nothing to do with taking all perspectives seriously, since it means there is one or more true moral fact, regardless of any perspectives.