X-Message-Number: 16928
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:06:18 -0500
From: david pizer <>
Subject: objective way to pick a moral system

Trying to find out how to be objective.

It may not be possible for a subject to define an objective moral system,
but we may be able to recognize one.  Here is a little thought experiment
for an example that might help or it might need a lot of work?

Suppose our universe were about to vaporize tomorrow and you had one chance
to go to another universe - a one-way trip.  There are two available.  In
both of them you will be an animal that obeys the following rules, but you
don't know which animal in the whole selection of animals that live in
these universes you will be:

In universe A, same as universe B, except animals eat plants only.

In universe B, animals eat plants and the other animals.  Some animals are
stronger than others but you don't know what type of animal you will be -
at the end of the transporter trip you might be assembled as a weaker one
or a stronger one, it will all be a random decision.  All the animals that
you might randomly become have at least as much intelligence as you do now.

In both universes, there is biological immortality and no disease (sort of
how things might be here in a hundred years, or so).  

Which universe would you want to be sent to.

It should be obvious that you will be safer in Universe A, since in B there
is a chance you may get eaten.  It is making a thought-choice like this
that gives a subject a tiny sense of what objective morality should be
like.  Where you imagine what sort of morality you would like to apply to
all beings involved *before* you know what sort of the possible beings you
will have to be in that moral system.

Dave Pizer

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