Random Musings - Part 2 What is good

Stunned by the awesome response to random musings post 1 -

There seems to be several views on what makes something good that presumably colors our judgment on everything:

1/ Benthamism - Utility theory - the greatest good for the greatest number.

Using only this it is perfectly acceptable to kill 1 to save 2.

2/ Equality and rights - everyone is equal and has as much right as the next person to 'anything' - this leads to the debate over law and rules - if I decide to shoot people then I deprive them of the right to life or at the very least an unholy body:) If I break the rules I destroy the construct that gives me a measure of freedom so I lose a right by breaking a rule which already curtails a right...e.g. if I drive at any speed I like on the road and on any side then I exercise a right but destroy others rights. As a society we agree that its better to sacrifice perceived full freedom on the road for partial freedom. The twist of course is that you'd never be totally free on the road anyway as you'd hit somebody pretty quick. Rights are a moral minefield - should we pay toilet cleaners as much as computer hotshots, should women be paid the same as men, should old be paid same as young, should disabled be paid the same as able bodied and so on.. The difficulty with rights is to whom do the rights apply and when (abortion for example - the mother, the father , the state or the unborn child.)

Under rights and equality it would not be acceptable to kill 1 to save 2.

3/ Justice - a deeper version of rights - everyone has the same 'right' to the consequences of their actions. Nature is totally and utterly just. Evolutionary theory is totally just. Quantum theory is not yet proven to be just. The issue then is that justice has a human dimension - in the wild there is no moral concept of rape, murder or theft - we however have constructed 'rights' around these and apportioned a 'false' consequence (ie there is no actual cause-effect - there is cause followed by a seperate cause and finally a hopeful effect - criminals get away despite commiting a crime and police searching for them.) This is a more difficult concept than rights simply because human justice is an artificial construct and reflects the society that made it rather than anything real.

Using Justice it would only be right to kill 1 to save 2 if 1 was guilty of the future deaths of the 2.

4/ Love / mercy / compassion / altruism / sacrifice / duty / honour - I'll lump these together since these are the furthest concepts from black and white definitions of 'good'. I argued (unsuccessfully) with my degree colleague that there is such a thing as altruism - the doing of something for no personal benefit. He pointed out that you must be motivated by something to be altruistic (see list above) which derives you benefit. Doing 'good' for any of the above reasons is normally accepted by people very easily even if the 'good' is bad by other definitions:

Crimes of passion, Helen of Troy, Charge of the Light Brigade, letting the burglar off with community service rather than jail to rehabilitate them, giving your hard earned cash to help hurricane victims, not reporting your violent spouse becasue you love them etc..

Under these rules it would be right to kill 1 to save 2 if the 1 chose that action themselves.

5/ Pragmatism - despite all the above we almost all to a man and women override the philosophy of above from time to time and go for the immediate selfish, benefit approach, we criticise politicians but when we get a little bit of authority we often turn into them and make the same sort of decisions, we take the moral highground on fidelity and then sleep with our neighbour, we tut tut over world poverty and then spend our money on sweat shop produced items, we hate waste and fill our trash cans with mountains of the stuff, we talk about compassion but would walk away from the mugged person in case we 'get involved' and we get hurt and so on.

Under these rules we would kill the 1 to save the 2 if we were one of the two and we'd fight like billy'o to kill the two if we were the 1.

Plenty of logical mistakes in my premises to pick over:)

In my view, the only possible logical and consistant view of rights is that of natural rights (number 2 on your list). As human beings, we have inherent rights - the right to our lives, our liberty, and our property. Each compliments the other. These rights exists a priori, or prior to government. We have no right to invade on the rights of others. Any inititation of force to deprive someone else of those rights is immoral. It is acceptable to defend one's own life, liberty, and property against someone else's aggression. This includes living with the consequences of your actions, since you have no right to anyone else's life, liberty, or property (as you mistakingly include in your definition of equal rights).

It is not acceptable to kill 1 to save 2, unless 1 has a gun to 2's head and is threatening to kill or severly main 2. Similarly, it is not moral to take money from 1 to help 2 under the threat of jail or death (as government does day in and day out). This does not rule out 1 giving money to 2 to help him or her, as long as it is voluntary, which is by far the more virtuous form of help (remember Jesus and the old lady putting money in the tithe?).

The other views of rights and society break down because they ignore the individual's rights, depending on the situtaion. It is thinking such as Bentham's utilitarian theory that allow Marxists to starve 40 million people to death "for the greater good." Same goes for Hitler's view that Jews are not humans and that it is OK to exterminate them, "for the greater good."

The same willingness to engage in moral relativism allowed the US supreme court to say that it is OK for government to steal one person's land to give it to a private developer. Without a foundation of rights, government (and thus people) can do whatever they please to each other under the color of "for the greater good."

I believe that Kant's categorical imperative is a fantastic summary of human rights. I'll paraphrase: No person is a means to an end, but an end in and of himself.

Random Musings - Part 2 What is good

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