I think there are some general basic principles that can be derived from how the universe works, though.
Most notably, that every living organism avoids pain and hurt unless strictly necessary for survival. Therefore, we can IMHO conclude that inflicting pain on other living things is a negative/bad/evil act. It is one that is necessary for us to do in order to survive, but should be minimized.
(Edit: just reread this and realized this first sentence comes off much harsher than I intended it, sorry. I legitimately meant it’s a fun fact you might not be aware of and I just thought “fun fact, you’re wrong” was a humorous way to start an explanation.)
Fun fact, you’re wrong. Many living things don’t experience pain and act entirely like robots responding to their environment reflexively whether by their chemical or even neurological structure.
While microbes are the common example, Jellyfish are a better one since they are complex organisms. They respond to their environment because changes in their environment directly cause reflexive actions. There’s no thought or awareness of pain, just chemical switches going off when the right inputs occur.
They’re just machines that avoid destruction because the ones that didn’t got destroyed. If responding to one’s environment is all that matters, then computers are just as “living” as jellyfish but don’t inherently act towards self preservation or feel pain, so you’re wrong, plenty of things that can respond to their environment don’t give a shit about it or act towards self preservation.
If you try to qualify “only reproducing things count” or “organic life” you’re the one drawing those arbitrary boundaries so this isn’t an objective basis for morality.
And, even if pain were a solid basis, we run into problems with which pain matters more? Would you walk away from Omelas? Would you kill an innocent man yourself to save five others?
And what about cancer or viruses? Something tells me you think a person who feels pain is more important than the millions of viruses or bacteria giving them an infection/disease, but that’s not objective. Why does the life of one outweigh the life of many in this circumstance?
And if you really don’t want anything to feel pain, the guaranteed solution to this problem is to kill every living thing. No more living things will feel pain ever again. Something tells me you wouldn’t think that good though…
Morality (and any justification for it) is always subjective
Fun fact, you’re wrong. Many living things don’t experience pain and act entirely like robots responding to their environment reflexively whether by their chemical or even neurological structure.
That’s the same way we experience pain (or our environment in general). There is a stimulus, such as you cutting yourself, which triggers nerves that transmit an electric signal to your brain, which then interprets this input. Cells of the immune system respond via chemical signaling, etc. etc. Just because our reaction is more complex doesn’t take away from the fact that other organisms respond in a similar basic way. Whether I cut you, a tree or a microorganism, there are reactions averse to the stimulus. Our complex response “pain” is only possible through those basic ones, unless you assume some ethereal concept of the soul or such to be true.
I’ll borrow your theme of computers: Running a modern OS is only possible on top of more basic software and in the end the hardware. A GUI displaying an error is just a complex representation of the fact that the underlying system has entered a state in which it can no longer function.
If responding to one’s environment is all that matters, then computers are just as “living” as jellyfish but don’t inherently act towards self preservation or feel pain, so you’re wrong, plenty of things that can respond to their environment don’t give a shit about it or act towards self preservation.
If you try to qualify “only reproducing things count” or “organic life” you’re the one drawing those arbitrary boundaries so this isn’t an objective basis for morality.
I am not sure why you think I’d count a computer as a living thing by default, given my reply and the fact a computer or machine is whatever we give it the capability to. I’ll entertain the thought, though: We can further break down the premise to “Acting destructive is a bad thing”. Coming to think of it, that is even closer to what I’m trying to convey than “Hurting is bad”.
Everything that has the ability to do so strives towards procreating one way or the other. Simply destroying something without furthering this goal can be seen as a negative action. And this premise can be expanded to include all things. So yes, destroying a computer for no good reason can therefore be considered bad.
And, even if pain were a solid basis, we run into problems with which pain matters more? Would you walk away from Omelas? Would you kill an innocent man yourself to save five others?
I had to look up what “Omelas” is. I recently finished The Dispossessed and Always coming home by Le Guin, and I guess I have my next book cut out for me.
And as for the trolley problem: That is the point where IMO we actually enter subjective territory. How much evil is tolerable in the name of survival. It’s a fact that in order to survive, we have to destroy.
And what about cancer or viruses? Something tells me you think a person who feels pain is more important than the millions of viruses or bacteria giving them an infection/disease, but that’s not objective. Why does the life of one outweigh the life of many in this circumstance?
You and I are more than one singular entity, and that’s before we start to consider weird phenomena such as split brains. We consist of an unimaginable amount of cells and symbiotic organisms. So the question is not “one vs millions” but “millions vs billions”. And therefore destroying millions of viruses/bacteria to keep an organism of billions of cells alive is the lesser evil.
Can this be extended to mean that it is ethical to kill 8 billion humans in order to save the ecosphere from being destroyed by our actions? Hell yes, it can. Is this an inherently bad thing? I don’t think so. Would I do it? Hell no, because I believe that humanity can better itself, therefore this magnitude of destruction is not necessary for survival.
And if you really don’t want anything to feel pain, the guaranteed solution to this problem is to kill every living thing. No more living things will feel pain ever again. Something tells me you wouldn’t think that good though…
That is, if you believe that avoidance of pain is the end goal of all existence. That’s subjective.
(Edit: just reread this and realized this first sentence comes off much harsher than I intended it, sorry. I legitimately meant it’s a fun fact you might not be aware of and I just thought “fun fact, you’re wrong” was a humorous way to start an explanation.)
Yeah, that definitely didn’t come across, and with some more expletives in your reply gave not a good expression. I reversed my downvote.
I am not sure why you think I’d count a computer as a living thing by default, given my reply and the fact a computer or machine is whatever we give it the capability to.
Why does it matter that we “give” them their capabilities and functions? Living things act the way they do because the universe shaped them that way, and since humans are part of the universe, the same is true of computers. To give life priority because it wasn’t “made” is an arbitrary subjective choice.
As for the reason they are comparable to living things, they can respond to stimuli, which is the main necessity of your definition of pain. If you try to define life in another way, you’ll be biasing data by only including things which fit the pattern you’re describing.
The scientific definitions of “living” usually require growth, reproduction, and the ability to sustain itself, which means your statement that all living things seek to sustain themselves is vacuously true.
By saying all living things seek to avoid pain and hurt, you’re saying all things that seek to sustain themselves seek to sustain themselves. You drew a line around things that had a quality and then said that because all these which have this quality have this quality, somehow it means that quality is objectively important.
That’s the point I was trying to make.
Using universal patterns as a basis for morality is also problematic because entropy is far more common and far more universal than living/self-preservation. All things decay. Everything “wants” to be in the lowest energy state. Order always tends to disorder.
So if prevalence of a thing/pattern is basis for morality, accelerating entropy (destruction, disorder, chaos, etc.) is the most moral action.
You might actually have a better chance at justifying that the preservation of life is important by using scarcity since, as far as we currently know, we’re the only planet with life in the entire universe.
So the question is not “one vs millions” but “millions vs billions”. And therefore destroying millions of viruses/bacteria to keep an organism of billions of cells alive is the lesser evil.
Fair point.
Do you know the game Stellaris?
I’ve heard of it but haven’t played, but that does sound interesting, so maybe I will.
Anyway, I would like to note that for what it’s worth I do agree with you on the idea that pain is probably a good basis for ethics. I just don’t think one can claim that it is objectively/universally right.
Neither.
The universe itself is neutral as fuck.
Good and evil are man-made distinctions that constantly change depending on who happens to define them.
“Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human constructs.” –Frank Herbert
Just because they’re man-made distinctions doesn’t mean that they cannot be discussed or don’t have beginnings.
Sure.
But the beginning is a hen/egg discussion per definition.
And for the distinctions… There are currently about 8 billion different ones.
Discussing those as if there was an absolute answer doesn’t make sense.
I think there are some general basic principles that can be derived from how the universe works, though.
Most notably, that every living organism avoids pain and hurt unless strictly necessary for survival. Therefore, we can IMHO conclude that inflicting pain on other living things is a negative/bad/evil act. It is one that is necessary for us to do in order to survive, but should be minimized.
(Edit: just reread this and realized this first sentence comes off much harsher than I intended it, sorry. I legitimately meant it’s a fun fact you might not be aware of and I just thought “fun fact, you’re wrong” was a humorous way to start an explanation.)
Fun fact, you’re wrong. Many living things don’t experience pain and act entirely like robots responding to their environment reflexively whether by their chemical or even neurological structure.
While microbes are the common example, Jellyfish are a better one since they are complex organisms. They respond to their environment because changes in their environment directly cause reflexive actions. There’s no thought or awareness of pain, just chemical switches going off when the right inputs occur.
They’re just machines that avoid destruction because the ones that didn’t got destroyed. If responding to one’s environment is all that matters, then computers are just as “living” as jellyfish but don’t inherently act towards self preservation or feel pain, so you’re wrong, plenty of things that can respond to their environment don’t give a shit about it or act towards self preservation.
If you try to qualify “only reproducing things count” or “organic life” you’re the one drawing those arbitrary boundaries so this isn’t an objective basis for morality.
And, even if pain were a solid basis, we run into problems with which pain matters more? Would you walk away from Omelas? Would you kill an innocent man yourself to save five others?
And what about cancer or viruses? Something tells me you think a person who feels pain is more important than the millions of viruses or bacteria giving them an infection/disease, but that’s not objective. Why does the life of one outweigh the life of many in this circumstance?
And if you really don’t want anything to feel pain, the guaranteed solution to this problem is to kill every living thing. No more living things will feel pain ever again. Something tells me you wouldn’t think that good though…
Morality (and any justification for it) is always subjective
That’s the same way we experience pain (or our environment in general). There is a stimulus, such as you cutting yourself, which triggers nerves that transmit an electric signal to your brain, which then interprets this input. Cells of the immune system respond via chemical signaling, etc. etc. Just because our reaction is more complex doesn’t take away from the fact that other organisms respond in a similar basic way. Whether I cut you, a tree or a microorganism, there are reactions averse to the stimulus. Our complex response “pain” is only possible through those basic ones, unless you assume some ethereal concept of the soul or such to be true.
I’ll borrow your theme of computers: Running a modern OS is only possible on top of more basic software and in the end the hardware. A GUI displaying an error is just a complex representation of the fact that the underlying system has entered a state in which it can no longer function.
I am not sure why you think I’d count a computer as a living thing by default, given my reply and the fact a computer or machine is whatever we give it the capability to. I’ll entertain the thought, though: We can further break down the premise to “Acting destructive is a bad thing”. Coming to think of it, that is even closer to what I’m trying to convey than “Hurting is bad”.
Everything that has the ability to do so strives towards procreating one way or the other. Simply destroying something without furthering this goal can be seen as a negative action. And this premise can be expanded to include all things. So yes, destroying a computer for no good reason can therefore be considered bad.
I had to look up what “Omelas” is. I recently finished The Dispossessed and Always coming home by Le Guin, and I guess I have my next book cut out for me.
And as for the trolley problem: That is the point where IMO we actually enter subjective territory. How much evil is tolerable in the name of survival. It’s a fact that in order to survive, we have to destroy.
You and I are more than one singular entity, and that’s before we start to consider weird phenomena such as split brains. We consist of an unimaginable amount of cells and symbiotic organisms. So the question is not “one vs millions” but “millions vs billions”. And therefore destroying millions of viruses/bacteria to keep an organism of billions of cells alive is the lesser evil.
Can this be extended to mean that it is ethical to kill 8 billion humans in order to save the ecosphere from being destroyed by our actions? Hell yes, it can. Is this an inherently bad thing? I don’t think so. Would I do it? Hell no, because I believe that humanity can better itself, therefore this magnitude of destruction is not necessary for survival.
That is, if you believe that avoidance of pain is the end goal of all existence. That’s subjective.
Fun fact: Do you know the game Stellaris? One of the endgame crisis the player can encounter is a megalomaniacal synthetic being that wants to end all pain by removing all higher brain functions
Yeah, that definitely didn’t come across, and with some more expletives in your reply gave not a good expression. I reversed my downvote.
Why does it matter that we “give” them their capabilities and functions? Living things act the way they do because the universe shaped them that way, and since humans are part of the universe, the same is true of computers. To give life priority because it wasn’t “made” is an arbitrary subjective choice.
As for the reason they are comparable to living things, they can respond to stimuli, which is the main necessity of your definition of pain. If you try to define life in another way, you’ll be biasing data by only including things which fit the pattern you’re describing.
The scientific definitions of “living” usually require growth, reproduction, and the ability to sustain itself, which means your statement that all living things seek to sustain themselves is vacuously true.
By saying all living things seek to avoid pain and hurt, you’re saying all things that seek to sustain themselves seek to sustain themselves. You drew a line around things that had a quality and then said that because all these which have this quality have this quality, somehow it means that quality is objectively important.
That’s the point I was trying to make.
Using universal patterns as a basis for morality is also problematic because entropy is far more common and far more universal than living/self-preservation. All things decay. Everything “wants” to be in the lowest energy state. Order always tends to disorder.
So if prevalence of a thing/pattern is basis for morality, accelerating entropy (destruction, disorder, chaos, etc.) is the most moral action.
You might actually have a better chance at justifying that the preservation of life is important by using scarcity since, as far as we currently know, we’re the only planet with life in the entire universe.
Fair point.
I’ve heard of it but haven’t played, but that does sound interesting, so maybe I will.
Anyway, I would like to note that for what it’s worth I do agree with you on the idea that pain is probably a good basis for ethics. I just don’t think one can claim that it is objectively/universally right.