Does the end justify the means?

First, axioms are generally not “tautological”. A tautology is a statement that is true by virtue of its own structure (i.e. “either it is raining or it is not raining”). An axiom is a statement that one accepts as true in order to derive further truths, but that doesn’t make it “tautological”.

Second, perhaps we should conflate this discussion with the one on post modernism. Dodo is making the classical “modernist” argument. She says:

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Why can't there be ethical experts? Ethical geniuses? Once the basic axioms are defined (and as I said most reasonable people actually do agree on them), everything else is just a matter of finding the conclusions. And some people happen to be better at this than others for various reasons including intelligence, education and the capacity to empathize with others. If I make that statement about math, biology or physics, people would agree, so why does it suddenly differ because the issue is morality?

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The modernist thinks we can reason our way to a better world. But on what basis does she think so? Have the “ethical geniuses” who have arisen in the past used this method? Jesus? Mohammed? Francis of Assissi? Some have, but most haven’t. That’s because the hidden assumption here is that reason and rationality are the ideal driving forces behind ethical improvements. But that’s certainly questionable.

First, Dodo says that reasonable people agree on the outcomes for which we should strive. Balderdash! Religious people, for example, disagree with atheists. Most Christians think that we should try to emulate Christ, and act in accordance to God’s will. Does Dodo think the Pope is one of the “ethical experts” who should “peer review” ethical arguments before passing them along to the hoi polloi? If she does, at least she’s in agreement with the Catholic Church on the issue.

Second, why is finding conclusions based on logical derivation from axioms the only way to approach ethics? Surely many people (for example) use analogical reasoning to define their ethical code (for Christians, “What would Jesus do?”). Modernist approaches have certainly worked to further math, biology and physics. But it doesn’t follow that they are the best way to develop ethical systems. That’s one prejudice that the post modernists have largely debunked. And the Transhumanism projects that Dodo supports are specifically based on the notion that rational, purposeful human design will always move us toward a better world – a notion questioned by global warming, nuclear war, and other byproducts of scientific modernism.

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

First, axioms are generally not “tautological”. A tautology is a statement that is true by virtue of its own structure (i.e. “either it is raining or it is not raining”). An axiom is a statement that one accepts as true in order to derive further truths, but that doesn’t make it “tautological”.

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I know, that's why I said 'nearly'. Look at the axioms in math, they do make intuitive sense, don't they? Look at 'suffering is bad and should be avoided', makes intuitive sense too, right?

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

Second, perhaps we should conflate this discussion with the one on post modernism. Dodo is making the classical “modernist” argument. She says:

The modernist thinks we can reason our way to a better world. But on what basis does she think so? Have the “ethical geniuses” who have arisen in the past used this method? Jesus? Mohammed? Francis of Assissi? Some have, but most haven’t. That’s because the hidden assumption here is that reason and rationality are the ideal driving forces behind ethical improvements. But that’s certainly questionable.

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Yes, i'm indeed making the 'modernist' argument. That's because I think postmodernism is nonsense. Don't accept all that relativity talk as given. There are objective facts about human nature. And as a side note, isn't postmodernism self-contradicting? After all, it's only a 'theory', right, so why should it be any more true than modernism? Hahaha

Muhammad an ethical genius? Are you kidding me? Read the Qu'ran..

(I'm a guy actually.)

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

First, Dodo says that reasonable people agree on the outcomes for which we should strive. Balderdash! Religious people, for example, disagree with atheists. Most Christians think that we should try to emulate Christ, and act in accordance to God’s will. Does Dodo think the Pope is one of the “ethical experts” who should “peer review” ethical arguments before passing them along to the hoi polloi? If she does, at least she’s in agreement with the Catholic Church on the issue.

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Who says religious people are reasonable? If they have 'faith', defined as 'belief without evidence', then they're by definition unreasonable. If they think they have evidence for God, then let's assess that evidence and if they're right then eventually the open-minded atheists will come to the same conclusions. I've had my fair share of discussions with religious people, and I and many others have come to the conclusion that so far the religious DON'T have evidence for their religion being true.

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

Modernist approaches have certainly worked to further math, biology and physics. But it doesn’t follow that they are the best way to develop ethical systems. That’s one prejudice that the post modernists have largely debunked. And the Transhumanism projects that Dodo supports are specifically based on the notion that rational, purposeful human design will always move us toward a better world – a notion questioned by global warming, nuclear war, and other byproducts of scientific modernism.

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Postmodernism itself is debunked. I recommend the following three books on 'modernism':

Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Not a technical book on philosophy but actually a memoir. Sometimes real life stories are best to get a point across. 'Infidel' is an eye opener for everyone who thinks morality is relative. Ayaan grew up as a Muslim in Somalia, was oppressed, circumsized and forced into a marriage. She managed to flee to the Netherlands, where she came into contact with 'Western ideals'. The passages of her arrival and acculturation in the Netherlands are the most moving passages I've ever read in a book.

Practical Ethics - Peter Singer
The classic book on utilitarian ethics that actually deals with real-life problems instead of trolley problems. It deals with poverty, euthanasia, abortion (and infanticide), meat eating, immigration and civil (dis)obedience. It also makes quite a convincing case for an 'objective' (or 'collectively subjective' if we want to play semantics) justification of ethics.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values - Sam Harris
After the other books, this one is a bit less important but still pretty powerful and well argued. The title says it all.

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Originally Posted by billl

[...] Saying that people would all want to promote well-being can buttress your position only if we would all ever agree on what it would be in regards to behavior modification on a very large scale. There's a personality test thread that's been popping up on LitNet recently, and it might be useful to take a look at when considering this issue. At the risk of being glib (but to still, maybe, get across the basic gist) the only way to get real agreement on this behavior modification thing seems to be the artificial consolidation of all of us into one category (perhaps the one Ray Kurzweil fits in?) or to leave us as we are (some outgoing, some sensitive to assertive types, some intuitive, some introspective, some very sociable, etc.) and just *maybe* use the new genetics-based techniques to take care of some small number that we've traditionally regarded as severely mentally ill. I really can't see a move to genetically modify behavior in large numbers of us--even (especially!?!) gestating infants--catching on at all.

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I'm not sure there exists an empirical correlation between personality types and overal happiness. If we find out that for instance INTJ people (what I got) are ON AVERAGE less happy than others, why not try to make people less INTJ? I really doubt such a correlation exists by the way, but if it does, why 'keep' the bad ones?

I concede that I used misleading attributes with 'unbalanced' and 'aggressive'. These attributes can be positive in certain circumstances. I thought about it again, and came up with some basic changes that are of great ethical importance:

1) Health. Whatever makes people healthier is good, and no one should object to changing genes. This includes wiping out genes that increase the risk of getting obese.

2) Longevity. If people don't want to die, they shouldn't have to.

3) Happiness. There are brain chemicals that make people prone to depressions. Many forms of depressions, even mild ones, have genetic factors that increase their likelihood. Away with all of that.

Those three are obvious. There are more attributes that are less obvious but definitely are worth researching.

4) Xenophobia. Evolution has equipped us with an in-group / out-group distinction. That's good for certain purposes, but the exagerated hostility towards the 'out-group' only creates conflict and violence (and racism in general). We can do just fine without it. Doesn't mean we'll have to love everyone..

5) Intelligence

6) Communication skills

7) Beauty (not towards everyone looking the same, haven't you noticed how very different looking people qualify as 'beautiful'?)

8) ...

Well, a billion or so people consider Muhammed an ethical genius (or at least a prophet expressing the genius of God), so, benighted as they might be by your modernist standards, they would not agree with you about the basic axioms.

Post modernism, by the way, is not a philosopy. It is a diverse and varied critique of modernism. In those terms, it has been very successful. I'll grant that it has been less successful (and perhaps cannot by its nature be successful) at replacing modernism with some other coherent philosophical approach.

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I've had my fair share of discussions with religious people, and I and many others have come to the conclusion that so far the religious DON'T have evidence for their religion being true.

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Obviously, religious people have plenty of evidence for their religion, including, but not limited to, personal testimonies, historical written accounts, their own experiences, etc., etc., etc. The evidence may not be persuasive to you (or to me, for that matter), but to say it is not evidence is simply to betray you modernist, scientific prejudices. How are written, eye witness accounts not "evidence"? We may not believe them, but we can hardly throw them out of court for failing to be "evidentiary".

One more general point about planned genetic modification. As with other scientific advances, there will doubtless be unintended consequences. In general, genetic DIVERSITY has adpative value -- genetic HOMOGENEITY does not. A genetically diverse poplulation is more likely to survive plagues, climate shifts, and other dangers than a genetically homogenius one. Indeed, many biologists posit that the major Darwinian advantage of sexual reproduction is that it dramatically diversified the genetic makeup of the population, because genetic diversity was a result even without any mutations.

(Sorry for thinking you were a woman, which I only did because Dodo is a common nickname for Dorothy.)

Besides, things aren't as simple as "wiping out" an obesity gene.

A gene that makes eyes blue, for example, could be the obesity gene. It regularly makes eyes blue but in people who live in a certain environment will likely become obese.

That's obviously not true but the reality could be similar. WE call it an obesity gene because that's what we're concentrating on. A biochemist might call the same gene an enzyme producing gene because it's that effect of that gene that's relevant to him.

There is no 1 obesity gene that turns anyone who has it obese. Even if we do find one there is no guarantee that wiping it out will be good for us.

Here's a thought I just had on moral relativism: if you are really going to be a consistent moral relativist, then you are under no obligation to respect the moral codes in your or others' cultures. If I had the power to do so, it would be OK for me to forcibly abolish slavery, female genital mutilation/assorted sundry oppression in the Muslim world, etc., and if anyone questioned me I could say: Look, my personal moral code says that this is what I should do, and your belief that I should respect the traditions of others is no superior--it's all relative, right?

It seems to me that moral relativism is a form of "might makes right." We don't have to feel guilty for imposing our way (if we can), but we also don't get to feel wronged or indignant if others are stronger and impose their way on us. I'm not a moral relativist, but I just wanted to point out that if you are consistent about it, it certainly does not mean "We should respect the traditions and moral codes of other cultures." There is no place for "should" in this worldview.

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

Well, a billion or so people consider Muhammed an ethical genius (or at least a prophet expressing the genius of God), so, benighted as they might be by your modernist standards, they would not agree with you about the basic axioms.

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If millions of people believe having sex with children is okay that doesn't make it right!

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

Obviously, religious people have plenty of evidence for their religion, including, but not limited to, personal testimonies, historical written accounts, their own experiences, etc., etc., etc. The evidence may not be persuasive to you (or to me, for that matter), but to say it is not evidence is simply to betray you modernist, scientific prejudices. How are written, eye witness accounts not "evidence"? We may not believe them, but we can hardly throw them out of court for failing to be "evidentiary".

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'Modernist, scientific prejudices' -- LOL. Those aren't prejudices. It's the scientific method, the most successful achievement of the human species. It brought us the computer you write on, it brought us to the moon (and to Tschernobyl and Hiroshima). We now understand the interferences of freaking sub-atomic particles! When did religion ever do such a thing? Or any other kind of 'worldview' that supposedly is equally valid than science? There are good reasons for why we shouldn't accept the evidence of religious people, one is for instance that their 'piecies of pseudo-evidence' are often mutually contradicting!

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

One more general point about planned genetic modification. As with other scientific advances, there will doubtless be unintended consequences. In general, genetic DIVERSITY has adpative value -- genetic HOMOGENEITY does not. A genetically diverse poplulation is more likely to survive plagues, climate shifts, and other dangers than a genetically homogenius one. Indeed, many biologists posit that the major Darwinian advantage of sexual reproduction is that it dramatically diversified the genetic makeup of the population, because genetic diversity was a result even without any mutations.

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True but it wouldn't matter anymore. If we know what every gene is for, and if we can modify them as we want, we will overcome plagues and viruses easily. I'm surprised by the way that you seem to have a basic understanding of science (biology), makes me wonder where the 'scientific prejudices' attitude originated..

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

(Sorry for thinking you were a woman, which I only did because Dodo is a common nickname for Dorothy.)

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No problem. I didn't even think of that... I meant the bird though haha.

Yes, I don't understand what people mean when they talk about science as if it were some kind of worldview or attitude. The scientific method is simply the application of common sense to the natural world. The only thing separating it from everyday applications of reason, such as determining what kind of animal is getting into the garbage bin at night by examining footprints, is that we are more careful and rigorous in going about it.

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

'Modernist, scientific prejudices' -- LOL. Those aren't prejudices. It's the scientific method, the most successful achievement of the human species. It brought us the computer you write on, it brought us to the moon (and to Tschernobyl and Hiroshima). We now understand the interferences of freaking sub-atomic particles! When did religion ever do such a thing? Or any other kind of 'worldview' that supposedly is equally valid than science? There are good reasons for why we shouldn't accept the evidence of religious people, one is for instance that their 'piecies of pseudo-evidence' are often mutually contradicting!.

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Well... nobody can possibly deny that computers are at least comparable to, if not superior to, God......

I'm not an expert on post modernism -- but from a philosophical point of view it has questioned the epistomology of science. Karl Popper (the great modernist philosopher of science) developed the notion that science moves forward through "falsification". That's how he tries to deal with the "problem of induction" -- an epistemological problem science has never fully dealt with. In other words, because we have never seen a pig fly, can we say that pigs don't fly? There is, of course, no logical way to come to that conclusion. However, Popper thought that by repeatedly experimenting and investigating to try to falsify the theory that pigs cannot fly, the theory gains credibility.

Post modern philosophers of science (Kuhn being the earliest, and the only one I know much about) think that science is affected not only by a methodological search for some kind of truth, but by politics, intellectual investments, and any number of other social and cultural factors (and he's obviously right). That's why I don't understand why so many people despise post modernism -- I think what they either find it threatening because it criticizes modernism, or because they don't understand it. Of course I don't understand most of it either -- but I like that. If I can't understand something, I always think it must be complicated enought to possibly be correct.

One more thing: I'll grant that science has been instrumental in creating massive technological advances. It's very good at that. It's practical (if epistemologically flawed). But the notion that because certain methods are good at developing technology those same methods would be good at developing ethics is a leap of faith. You can't chop down a tree with a steak knife, and I wouldn't want to cut my steak with a chainsaw, either.

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

Post modern philosophers of science (Kuhn being the earliest, and the only one I know much about) think that science is affected not only by a methodological search for some kind of truth, but by politics, intellectual investments, and any number of other social and cultural factors (and he's obviously right). That's why I don't understand why so many people despise post modernism -- I think what they either find it threatening because it criticizes modernism, or because they don't understand it. Of course I don't understand most of it either -- but I like that. If I can't understand something, I always think it must be complicated enought to possibly be correct.

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I'm quite familiar with postmodernism, I just think it's nonsense. Postmodernist reasoning goes something like this:

"SOMETIMES, the ideology of a scientist or a culture MIGHT affect the findings TO A SMALL EXTENT, therefore all truth is relative and we can't ever know anything!! So let's be agnostic about everything there is, except agnosticism itself which we dogmatically accept. Gödel is our god for he showed that nothing can ever be proven for sure. Kuhn is a hero because he showed that Newton was just as right as Einstein!"

And so forth, and then these postmodernists hypocritically turn on a TV without having the faintest idea of the science and 'theories' behind it.

I'm caricaturing, yeah, but the sad thing is only a little actually..

What if all truth IS relative and we can't ever really know anything? Do you still object?

Just because you can't know anything doesn't mean that you can't have a good reason for believing the way you do. I don't know the sun's going to rise in the east tomorrow 100%, but I have a pretty firm belief that it will, and for a good reason.

But lets just go back to the original question for a second and think about this in terms of the ends justifying the means. We currently do not understand everything about the human genome, not even close. So we are not yet able to engineer ourselves in terms of happiness, intelligence, beauty, etc. We may have that capability in the future, but that is not certain. Even if it were, tampering with evolution would be extremely risky, for obvious reasons. Right now, what we are able to do, is eliminate some of the actual CAUSES of suffering. MOST of the suffering in the world today is caused by environmental and cultural factors such as poverty and war, rather than genetically low levels of serotonin in the brain. Lets take obesity for example. America has a problem with obesity, in large (no pun intended), because capitalism and our culture tells people they need foods which are not healthy for them. So right now, we can try to change that perception and educate people about making healthy food choices. It would be a mistake to assume that one day we will be able to just wave a wand, and 'poof,' problems like obesity are gone. Nothing is that simple. All actions have repercussions, and engineering the human genome will as well. Plus, people having an obesity gene would be less succeptible to starvation, which is still a problem, even in first world nations. So we need to deal with that first, then worry about eliminating the gene for obesity.
So my point is, it is okay to talk about ethical repercussions of changing the genome, for when that time comes. However, we are still expending energy in investigating how to do that. And we must consider that tampering with life on such a basic level is extremely risky, simply in that it has never been done before. I just think that we could focus more on changing socioeconomic factors that impact quality of life, rather than one day creating human beings without flaws. We may be able to eliminate some of these problems through other means, and not have to remove a gene from the species which could be advantageous in some situations.

Hm. So we ask the question: do the ends justify the means? What about the antithetical question: do the means justify the ends?

The problem with these kinds of thought experiments is that they polarize people and place them into either consequentialist and deontological camps. Both have their criticisms that seem incorrigible, and in many instances both are morally counter-intuitive (my favorite example is Phillipa Foot's trolley-problem and variations thereof). I beg to ask, if a moral theory tells you to do what seems obviously wrong, what is that theory really worth, should it not be rectified? In the end, our moral theories are based on our intuitions and will end with our intuitions.

Consequentialism and deontology are in limbo between being theories of practical ethics and metaethics. Not only do they fail to guide us through every situation, relatively few people actually apply them in daily life.

In the end, these kinds of thought experiments are quite unanswerable because they do not grant any kind of situational appreciation. They do not let the agent practice any kind of "wisdom" she has.

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Originally Posted by Baudolina

Do the ends justify the means? It depends on how the moral calculus comes out at the end of the day. If the good ends are worth, say, 100 "virtue" points, and all the bad things you did during the "means" phase was worth -200 virtue points, then at the end of the day you are 100 points in the hole, so in this case, no. So the answer to this question is, Not always. The proper question to ask when confronted with one of these situations is: Do the ends outweigh the means? If yes then do it, if not then don't. But it is a mistake to give special weight to the ends just because they come later in time.

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So who decides how many virtue points are assigned to the ends and to the means? It's still measured by intuitions, which vary from person to person. Seems like you're just trying to use numbers as "virtue points" to give your "virtue" facile or ostensible objectivity, which you have not established. Of course you can assert that there is objective goodness, but without adequately defining it and giving a sufficient proof for it, what you've said is meaningless.

I think this debate about postmodernism can be remedied with a healthy dose of Kant.

We cannot have a universal test of truth, because then we would have to test it against itself, which would be circular and thus an inconsistent argument.

Logic is the negative form of the truth. What is illogical cannot be true. What is logical might be true. But since we can never know objects in themselves (following transcendental idealism) we can never be certain of our premises, that is, we can never have well grounded facts about things, unless these things are revealed to us a priori (that is, necessarily true). To function sensibly, we must assume or imagine (through induction) that our sense impressions and the conceptions that we surmise from them correspond to real things, notwithstanding the (a priori) fact that we cannot prove their existence.

As for the defense of the existence of a priori knowledge, we may be brains in a vat, yet the laws that govern mathematics would be the same unconditionally. That is, math would be the same if we were or if we were not. Same goes for the laws of logic. The reason for this, according to Kant, is because they are presented to us in space and time, without which experience is impossible.

Unfortunately one would be hard pressed to reject Kant on this. Those who feel the need to give reasons to denounce logic fall into a patent hypocrisy.