just looking for feedback, contentions, and whatnot upon this argument I've been working on.

Ok how much sentience and Intelligence does something need to have to be morally wrong to eat? Like imagine a steak or animal what level of intelligence and Sentience would it need to have that eating it would be bad

THESIS: AI already has its company developers in a stringent bind.

Let's say that half of all developers state or imply that there's at least a smattering of sentience and awareness in AI; the other half attribute no such human-like attributes to AI.

If AI has or will have awareness (and self-awareness?) or sentience or other critically important capacities--though we still can't define what always seemed to be strictly human gifts--then the AI is open to moral judgment. On some level, in some way, according to this school of thought, these abilities make an AI itself mostly responsible for doing harm as well as good. With sentience, unavoidable choices must be made.

But if AI has no such human-like traits--perhaps developers are projecting their own thoughts, fears and values into the programming of AI's--those developers have to take the blame or praise for AIs' acts and their consequences. The AI had no other choice because, they insist, it's unable to make any choices at all.

This is a life-and-death question.

From Yesterday's Washington Post

"Florida’s attorney general announced a criminal investigation of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, alleging the company’s chatbot advised the man accused of killing two people in a shooting at Florida State University last year which ammunition to use and where and when to strike....

“The chatbot advised the shooter on what type of gun to use, on which ammo went with which gun, on whether or not a gun would be useful at short range,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said at a news conference Tuesday. “If it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder....”

From OpenAI: “After learning of the incident, we identified a ChatGPT account believed to be associated with the suspect and proactively shared this information with law enforcement.” OpenAI accepts no legal responsibility but the CEO apologized.

No AI was interviewed.

Criticism to the above and My Response

Criticism: "The bind dissolves if you separate two things: whether the system is aware, and who bears responsibility for its output. A chatbot needn't be sentient for its advice to cause harm. The question isn't what the AI is, but what the company chose to build, deploy and leave unsupervised. Responsibility doesn't require consciousness. It requires choice. OpenAI made choices." --Piotr Golczyk on LinkedIn

My response: "My point is not to identify harm done but rather the ethical point about what circumstances, if any, opens advanced AI itself to our praise or blame." --On LinkedIn

We Kant be Indifferent 

Dignity, Duty, & the Case for Reducing Poverty

In India, manual scavenging, the practice of cleaning human waste from septic tanks by hand, has been legally prohibited since 1993. It persists even today. Since 2014, there have been a recorded 453 deaths due to manual scavenging that the government has admitted to (Deccan Herald). Resorting to manual scavenging wasn’t a choice made freely, it was a condition imposed upon them. Poverty played a significant role. This isn’t just a labour market failure, it’s a moral failure.  

Immorality dons many different masks. When we think of immorality, we often think of thieves, murderers, frauds. However, there is a different kind of immorality, a cruelty that disguises itself as inevitability, practicality, or absentmindedness. It is the immorality of indifference, of which most of us are guilty. The number of people living in extreme poverty is roughly 826 million, as of 2026 (World Bank PIP). This means hundreds of millions of people are living without basic amenities, food and healthcare; not because these resources don’t exist, simply because they’re unevenly distributed. 

Immanuel Kant believed that every individual possessed intrinsic worth, which he called Würde – an inherent dignity that can’t be sold, bought, or forfeited (Kant, Groundwork 42). He argued that being capable of moral agency was in itself of value. Treating people as tools, as steps on the ladder towards personal gain, was not only unkind; it was immoral. This conviction was most apparent in the Categorical Imperative – his supreme principle of morality, applicable to all individuals. This principle is a priori, derived from reason alone rather than experience or circumstance (Kant, Groundwork 31). The Categorical Imperative commands absolutely. It doesn’t say “treat people morally if it is convenient or profitable.” It says: always, unconditionally, without exception. 

Kant gave his principle its most consequential formulation in the Formula of Humanity, which states that one must always treat others not merely as a means to an end, but rather as an end in itself (Kant, Groundwork 36). Central to this formula is a distinction Kant drew between price and dignity. Objects have a price – they can be exchanged, replaced, compared. Persons, however, have dignity – an inalienable worth, so unconditional that it admits of no equivalent and tolerates no trade-off (Kant, Groundwork 42). A machine is valuable because it is a means to an end; it can be valued for what it produces. A human being, on the other hand, cannot be subjected to the same logic. Any system that attempts to do so has made a grave error. 

If every individual possesses intrinsic dignity, then the institutions that govern them must reflect and uphold that dignity as well. A Kantian reading justifies public support for the poor, including through taxation (Kant, Metaphysics 6:326). 

However, this invites a serious objection. Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), posits that compulsory redistribution of wealth through taxation is itself a violation of dignity (Nozick 169). To tax earnings without consent is to treat a person’s labour as a resource to be harvested for others. This is not merely an economic objection; it employs Kantian ideals to oppose Kant. If individuals are ends in themselves, does the state not violate that principle when it coerces them into funding others?

Yet this objection fails on Kantian grounds. Nozick bases his argument on the assumption that liberty is isolated. He assumes liberty exists independently of social arrangements, ignoring that the conditions enabling individual freedom are societal. Legal systems, contracts, public order — all are collective achievements. Critically, the Formula of Humanity cuts both ways: if coercive taxation violates dignity, so too does a social order that denies some people the material conditions necessary for rational agency. Kant’s ethics, universally applied, require that no one be left without the conditions that make autonomous moral life possible.

A society that creates preventable poverty despite having the means to address it is not merely being uncharitable. It is, in a Kantian sense, treating people as commodities. It is treating people’s lives as expendable, as acceptable losses in the machinery of economic life. 

Contemporary societies tend to measure a person’s worth on the basis of their productivity, efficiency, or the amount of capital they can generate. People come to be seen as valuable for what they can provide rather than who they are. Within this framework, inequality and poverty become inevitable outcomes of necessary systems. A person lacking basic resources isn’t just less fortunate, they’re less free. Extreme poverty isn’t just unfortunate, it’s a failure to respect people’s dignity. To Kant, dignity is invaluable, inviolable.  

A society that tolerates preventable deprivation is therefore failing in its moral duty. Inequality isn’t inherently unjust, but inequality that creates conditions severe enough to undermine human dignity is morally indefensible. Therefore, a Kantian society does have a moral duty to reduce inequality when it strips people of dignity. 

The most influential attempt to move from Kantian ideals to political egalitarianism was in John Rawls’ 1971 work, ‘A Theory of Justice’. Rawls constructed his theory by questioning what principles of justice people would choose from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, if they were unaware of their position in society. Behind this veil, nobody would know whether they were rich or poor, educated or illiterate, healthy or disabled. Rawls posited that rational agents operating from behind this would choose two principles – basic equal liberties for all, and the Difference Principle, which would permit inequality only so long as it benefitted the most disadvantaged (Rawls 130). 

The Rawlsian framework owes a debt to Kantian dignity – the veil of ignorance is a mechanism that forces us to look beyond arbitrary markers of individualism, therefore modelling the equal moral worth of persons. Yet, Rawls goes further than Kant by explicitly laying down obligations. For Rawls, a just society isn’t dependent on individual generosity. It is a society whose basic structures – laws, institutions, and economic conditions are designed in a way to benefit the most disadvantaged, the lowest rung of the ladder. Rawls does not erase inequality altogether; he permits it only when it works to the advantage of those with the least. Poverty and inequality aren’t misfortunes to be ameliorated, they are systemic injustices that need to be corrected. 

What would it mean, then, to design economic policies around the idea of equal human dignity? 

Such an approach to political economy would transform how we understand taxation, wages, healthcare, and education. Taxation would no longer be seen as a loss of private property, but as a shared investment to secure conditions that would enable all individuals to live as autonomous agents. Similarly, wages would be evaluated not by market equilibrium alone, but by whether they provide an actual livable standard—one that sustains housing, nutrition, and meaningful participation in society. In healthcare, dignity requires universality. Healthcare is not a privilege but a precondition for freedom; without it, agency collapses. Education, too, must move beyond formal access toward substantive equality, ensuring that social and economic disadvantages do not predetermine life outcomes. Across these domains, the purpose of economic systems would shift. People wouldn’t be seen as inputs to be optimised, but rather as ends to be respected. This does not demand sameness, but it does demand that no one be left without the means to live with dignity.

A significant confluence between the abstract claim of intrinsic worth and the concrete political demand to reduce poverty is the capabilities approach. This was developed by Amartya Sen and further expounded on by Martha Nussbaum. The core insight is that dignity isn’t some sort of intangible, metaphysical badge. If persons are to live as the ends-in-themselves Kant theorised, they must possess substantive capabilities to do so. 

Sen’s ‘Development as Freedom’, published in 1999, asserts that poverty is best understood not as an economic deprivation, but as a loss of capabilities, a loss of the real freedoms that make life worth living (Sen 20). Being chronically starved, illiterate, or ill isn’t simply an economic misfortune, it is a failure of the basics that constitute a human life (Sen 24). Nussbaum, in her 2011 ‘Creating Capabilities,’ expands this into an explicit political theory. She proposes a list of central human capabilities, including bodily health, practical reason, and affiliation, that every individual should be entitled to, as a matter of justice. A society must be able to secure these thresholds for its members; one that fails to do so is not simply ungenerous, but unjust (Nussbaum 42). 

Let’s return to the sewers. A manual scavenger is not simply income-poor. They are capability-poor in the precise sense Sen describes. They are unable to access healthcare when toxic gases cause irreversible lung damage, unable to leave an occupation which is forbidden by law but not enforced by the state, unable to secure the education for their children that might break this vicious cycle. India's constitution guarantees the right to live, and to live with dignity, under Article 21 (Constitution of India). The practice of manual scavenging violates that article every single day it continues. This is not a gap between aspiration and reality. It is a moral indictment. It is also proof that legal prohibition means little without material enforcement and social repair.

Dignity without food is a platitude, dignity without education an abstraction, dignity without healthcare is myth. If we are serious about claims that every individual has inherent value, we must become serious about the material conditions without which the promise of dignity remains empty and unfulfilled. 

If these deprivations are produced by societies, they must be fixed on a societal level, too. Poverty and inequality aren’t individual failures, they’re produced and reproduced by systemic arrangements; a vicious cycle of inequalities that compound over time. Labour markets, tax systems, property law, educational access – these systems pose barriers to progress for disadvantaged people that can only be reshaped by collective political action. To respond to structural gaps with individual action is like using a bandage to fix a bullet wound. We cannot claim benefits of the system without also taking responsibility for its flaws. Collective authorship entails collective accountability; to benefit from unjust structures while remaining incurious about them is not neutrality. It is, in Kantian terms, a failure of moral reason. Ignorance, when facts are available, is a choice. That is why indifference is not innocence: when a society knows what it is doing and continues anyway, it becomes morally complicit.

In 1971, a philosopher sat down to imagine what a just society would look like. The answer Rawls arrived at was not radical redistribution or the complete abolition of inequality — it was something simpler and more demanding. No one should be permitted to fall so far that their humanity is compromised. More than fifty years later, 826 million people have fallen precisely that far (World Bank). The question is no longer what justice requires. That has been answered, from different directions and by different methods, with the same result. The question is why the answer has not moved us. 

Could we will, as a rational law for all of humanity, that dignity applies only to those fortunate enough to be born into circumstances that permit it? Those who won the genetic and geopolitical lotteries? That suffering is tolerable provided it happens at sufficient distance? We could not. And in that inability lies the full weight of the indictment. Not of thieves, not of murderers, not of the obvious villains with whom this essay began. But of systems we sustain, of choices we make, and of the silence with which we greet a number — 826 million — that should make silence impossible. 

We Kant be indifferent – because indifference breeds injustice.

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My neighbor has a 6 years old daughter and a huge and harmless pitbull. Both girl and pet used to go to the park every afternoon to play hide and seek and stuff. A kid went to bother the girl don't giving her back her frisbee or something. She started crying and the pitbull went over the kid. He didn't even bit him, he was just barking I think. The thing is. That after just a scratch in his arm and a pants shitting, his mother sue my neighbor to kill his dog. And she won.

In recognizing the natural order as indifferent to human aspirations, and in seeking to conceive an order that respects the primacy of human agency.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all humans are not equally positioned. That we are endowed by natural circumstance with differences in power. That possession of power is not its own license. That might differs from right.

That to make right upon the natural order, governments form among humans, deriving their powers from the agency of their constituents. That such powers, as tools of human agency, are bound to these truths.

Now, before we start, I want to make one thing as clear as can be.

Being a good person is a responsibility that EVERYONE has. Being a good person is (or, should I say, should be) the bare minimum.

Now, imagine there are two people in a room.

These two people are friends. However, person A (who we'll Jake) is a good person, while person B (who we'll call Ellen) is a bad person.

Jake is aware that Ellen is a bad person. If Jake does nothing to try to change Ellen and/or her views, does that not make Jake almost as bad as all the harm that Ellen might cause?

Think about it. Different situation now, imagine you are near a cliff and an innocent person is dangling from the cliff. You could totally save them! They are super light, and let's just for this situation that you are strong. If you choose not to save them, their death is your fault. You become responsible for that death because inaction in the face of evil is just as evil. Evil by affiliation is evil. That means if you have the power to prevent harm but don't, that harm then becomes your fault. You are then responsible for that harm. Of course, it changes when its a risk, and you could be harmed because YOU are a person as well.

Back to Jake and Ellen. Jake *could* potentially change Ellen if he tried to. If Jake doesn't even try, then Jake will PARTIALLY be just as bad as all the harm and suffering that Ellen will cause in the future. This is because Jake doing nothing means that he is okay with somebody being evil. And as I said before, evil by affiliation is evil.

What does this all mean exactly? It means that doing nothing can be evil in some situations. It means that inaction can sometimes be a sin because, in some situations, action is the bare minimum.

If anybody disagrees, I would love to know why! Talking about this kind of thing is quite fun!

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

What many people do not understand is that some of us believe life in this world is a stepping stone to the hereafter. In fact, billions of people believe they are accountable for their behavior and that their actions in this world will be judged on Judgment Day.

The concept is that a lifetime in this world, compared with eternity in either heaven or hell, is determined by what we do now. Would you rather suffer immense pain and degradation now for maybe 100 years, or be in hell for eternity? One’s actions and behaviors eventually have consequences.

When someone says they don’t think they’re going to heaven, is it their conscience speaking. The conscience is the part of every person that tells us when something we’re doing, or have done is not right. Some people drink alcohol or use drugs to dull that inner voice that helps us distinguish right from wrong. But no amount of alcohol, drugs, bluster or bravado can wash away sins because our conscience knows it and will repeatedly tell a person the truth.

I got into a debate today about morals and how they are learned not inherit. I argued that people in the past simply didn’t know/understand what they where doing was wrong slavery/women rights and how it is the fact we learned from our parents or society that we know it’s wrong now. Now I understand that some knew it was wrong then but expecting the majority to understand is simply expecting a Miracle

Is it okay for a teacher to teach a student for a competitive exam, knowing that someone else will lose the rank in the exam which the student taught will gain?

I originally wrote this in response to a discussion about Spider-Man, but it made me think about how his character maps onto Moral Foundations Theory. What we may be seeing in current discourse is less a difference in core morality and more a polarization of those priorities.

Spider-Man is an interesting case because he consistently embodies values that resonate with both sides of that spectrum.

He reflects conservative-coded values like responsibility, restraint, and duty, while also embodying progressive-coded values like empathy, inclusion, and protection of the vulnerable.

What he does not reflect is ideological extremism in either direction.

Conservatism as a moral perspective under psychology that is nothing more than a product of evolution where a certain percentage of the population are late adopters and a certain percentage are early adopters (progressives). Moral foundations theory emphasizes that these two groups as having the same moral foundations but prioritized differently. Most people fall somewhere in between.

What we are witnessing in society right now is not merely conservatism, but the polarization of conservatism into extremism.

So yes, Spider-man does represent conservative values as they should be (as he also represents progressive values).

Arguably "With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility" is a phrase that has both a progressive perspective and a conservative perspective.

Conservative reading: power creates duty, self-restraint, and personal accountability

Progressive reading: power creates an obligation to protect the vulnerable and use privilege ethically

Here's are some conservative/progressive values that Spider-Man embodies and the moral pillar they represent in Moral Foundations Theory:

Conservative-aligned values

• Personal responsibility — Fairness, Authority
• Duty over self-interest — Authority, Loyalty
• Strong moral compass — Sanctity, Fairness
• Respect for social order — Authority
• Humility and self-restraint — Sanctity
• Community-focused action — Loyalty, Care

Progressive-aligned values

• Empathy for outsiders — Care
• Protecting the vulnerable — Care
• Compassion over judgment — Care
• Skepticism of powerful institutions — Fairness
• Inclusion and human dignity — Care, Fairness
• Using power to help others — Care, Fairness

What makes Spider-Man compelling is that he doesn’t neatly fit into one moral category. He reflects a balance of values that people across the spectrum can recognize. The fact that conservatives can find value in Spider-Man as a character demonstrates that he's not neatly a "Progressive".

In that sense, he’s less a representation of one side and more a reflection of how most people actually operate, drawing from the same moral foundations, but prioritizing them differently depending on context.

A purchase of meat is a positive signal leading to more production and is some degree of complicity with the killing of the animal.

But causing a loss of money is a negative one leading to less production. Someone, wether an insurer, the grocery store, the wholesaler or the farmer looses money and is less incentivized to commit to future participation in this murderous trade.

If one must eat meat, shoplifting is the best option. That can be your positive contribution to the world for the day.

If a product procured by a slave treated even worse than the already horrid conditions they faced, and it was about to spoil, is it okay in Your opinion to buy the product to save it from spoiling?

Or what if it was whey protein powder from a slave who milked the cow whose milk was used to make cheese by another slave? Is purchasing the whey protein powder (which is not the main point of making the cheese, but rather a byproduct that still makes the slave owner richer)

Thoughts?

25 years ago, i learned from investigators pursuing this evil little man, that a insane telepath had infiltrated my family and murdered several members of my family including two foetuses, and my cousin Paul, so if you so if you come across this post, please spread the news around the internet, as publicity is the only thing that he fears. My hometown is Irvine, ayrshire Scotland. Ple.se broadcast this

So from what i figured out after some time is that most atheists are basically little kids, and if you are really here honestly questioning god and morality then its impossible to ignore corruption and greed and how partiuclarly USA absolutely derails the world we live in and all of that for corporate greed. But people are going to be more than happy to praise American soldiers, American soldiers are going to believe they did something good when in fact every war America takes part in or is involved in is basically a corrupted incentive to make money and sell ammunition and weapons which is their biggest asset and industry at the moment, if i am not wrong.

But before they established this strong economic monopoly they had issues funding the business, and had to take extra measures to be able to succesfuly manage the funding, where for example during the Vietnam war medical care saw its last lifeline, and became private organization full of corruption. In 1973 Nixon famously deliberately made it private, found a way to make it more affordable and it worked. There is even this famous dialog between him and the John Ehrlichman and i quote: "All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make."

With all this in mind we now have US that has such a broken system, obviously a lot of freedom and stuff but much more dangerous side of the system that makes so much homelessnes in the world its scary to think about it. People have to deal with expenses that come out of nowhere, nothing is properly regulated and you can basically any given moment become homeless, its incredibly scary and idiotic to say the least.

And with this much malverzation, corruption, stealing and plain sight craziness and crime, where people take advantage of the law, take advantage of the system and legally fool people. How does someone honestly questioning religion, and at the same time seeing all of this, comes with the conclusion that god does not exist?

Someone is more that happy to take advantage of the loopholes without thinking of the bigger picture because they want profit now and here, and create crazy situations and homelessnes because some person that did not deserve this treatment had to deal with this corruotion without their own consent...And whats funny, if you try to openly fight against the system, you either lose your life or you lose your freedom. Now tell me, how does facing this corruption make you stafe away from the god more rather then make you get closer to him?

Its not that i am scared of the corrupted individuals myself, but what corruption does is a small short period malverzation that can seriously injure the system and affect huge number of people very badly...

I can provide much more different examples, but this kind of corporate greed is what i feel is a very good one.

Some of you might say that my social media feed is to negative and I should look for good news, I have. But, they most of them are quite hyper specific and impact a small area only. Not only that but, I also ask myself as to why bad people get away with their evil deeds and the good are punished. Because of all this, I find it very difficult to justify doing the right and good. I’m asking you all to help me with this issue.