X-Message-Number: 28439 Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 11:49:22 -0600 From: "Anthony ." <> Subject: Re: morality References: <> > From: > Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:19:23 EDT > Subject: feel-good & morality > This is not really off topic, because these issues crucially impact all of > life and death and potential recruitment as well as post-recruitment > activities. I'm glad "morality" is not off-topic ;) > By "moral" is generally meant inter-personal or societal ethics. Most philosophers distinguish between ethics as the study of good and bad, but also right and wrong, efficient and wasteful... and other concepts of behaviour which do not necessarily entail morality. Ethics is *partly* the study of morality, whereas morality is the unreflective practice of cultural/personal ideas about good and bad. However, the words "ethics" and "morality" are often used interchangably in popular usage - which is why my clarification seems to be mere hair-splitting. > Nothing has direct importance to the individual > except his own welfare, which boils down to feel-good. This implies a certain "atomisation" of society which is incorrect - an individual's welfare is intimately tied up with the quality and kind of: the environment (is it polluted? stressful?), the human community (is it violent? poor?), loved-ones (are the relationships good?), and various organisations like government and corporation (do they work in your favour, or not?) Whether a person feels good will depend on the influence of these factors and so many more. It is hard to "boil-down" this feeling or disconnect individual welfare from the wider world. > figure out what you ought to want, to maximize feel-good over > future > time, and if necessary (as it always is) to modify your own personality. This "ought" is good advise, and the real problem. For example, I think we ought to take-care of the most vulnerable people in society by providing minimum housing, welfare, and universal health-care. The idea makes me feel good, the reality would make me feel better. I feel good because I think almost everyone would benefit from the reduction of poverty and the various privations, limitations, and violence that arise from that state. Other people think that we have no moral imperative to help the vulnerable and dispossesed, and this makes them feel good. How then, do we understand and cope with the seemingly incommensurable conflicts of good-feelings arising from incompatible "oughts"? Why is it that the idea of cryonics does not make people feel-good in the way it does for many of us? Anthony Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28439