How to Justify Self-Defense?
Given the following stipulations, I am wondering if there is a way to salvage the principle of self-defense; and would like to here all of your responses.
The moral principles and facts being stipulated are that:
1. It is morally impermissible to perform an action that is in-itself bad;
2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something badeven for the sake of something good;
3. Harming someone is, in-itself, bad.
It seems to me, under these stipulations, that one could never justify self-defensee.g., harming someone that is about to kill youbecause it will always be the case in such examples that one directly intends to harm that person for the sake of saving themselves.
I am leaving out a lot of the schema which I imported into this conversation (e.g., direct vs. indirect intentionality, the moral evaluation of actions per se, etc.) for the sake of brevity; but I am more than happy to discuss that with anyone as well.
Let me briefly address two common responses.
The first is an attempted deployment of a version of the principle of double effect, such that one is directly intending to save themselves, utilizing a means which is not the harming of the other person itself (e.g., a gun), and the harming (or even killing) of the perpetrator is a bad side effect which is outweighed by the good effect (of saving themselves) which is the end the victim has in store. By my lights, this fails because the harming of the person is, in practicality, a means of saving oneself because it is a part of the directional flow towards that end which facilitates it. If we compare this kind of argumentation to abortion, e.g., then it would also be the case that aborting the child is not a means towards avoiding pregnancy but, rather, the tool used to abort the child is; and somehow this is morally permissible under the above stipulations. The abortion of the child is a part of the directional flow of the end that is aimed at and is required to facilitate that end, and so it is a means (or a part the overall means) towards the end. On the contrary, in the 1v5 trolley case we dont have an analogous situation when a person pulls the lever as the means to saving the five: unlike shooting someone in self-defense, the bad effect is not a part of the directional flow of the end being aimed at. In the case of self-defense, a part of the directional flow, almost by definition, is using the harming of the perpetrator as a means to facilitating ones safety.
The second is an attempted deployment of a principle of forfeiture, which essentially advocates that a person can act proportionally to bad acts which are being committed upon themselves or anotherviz., the perpetrator forfeits, proportionately, the rights which they are violating in another. However, this violates the stipulations above, for this sort of principle fundamentally takes into consideration the circumstances around an act that is bad in-itself and states that it is permissible in some circumstanceswhich is inherently consequentialist.
It seems to me that the only way to justify self-defense is to either (1) abandon stipulation #1 or (2) reject #3.
What are your guys thoughts?
UPDATE:
The answer that I would give to this dilemma is to note that the 'act of harm' is not a proper act: it is a description of a possible object of acts, and not an act itself. Producing harm leaves no mention of the end behind such harm and thusly pertains solely to the physical causality involved (which was triggered by a volition of will): there are many acts which incorporate this object (viz., producing harm), and so this object denotes a species of acts. The object, in this case, is itself neutral, because, as an aristotelian, producing harm isn't necessarily disrespect towards the recipient: there are many acts which produce harm which actually give proper respect to the nature of the being in question (e.g., disciplining a child, giving someone a vaccine, performing surgery, etc.).
The whole dilemma arose out of #3 implying that harm is an act and it is bad.
The moral principles and facts being stipulated are that:
1. It is morally impermissible to perform an action that is in-itself bad;
2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something badeven for the sake of something good;
3. Harming someone is, in-itself, bad.
It seems to me, under these stipulations, that one could never justify self-defensee.g., harming someone that is about to kill youbecause it will always be the case in such examples that one directly intends to harm that person for the sake of saving themselves.
I am leaving out a lot of the schema which I imported into this conversation (e.g., direct vs. indirect intentionality, the moral evaluation of actions per se, etc.) for the sake of brevity; but I am more than happy to discuss that with anyone as well.
Let me briefly address two common responses.
The first is an attempted deployment of a version of the principle of double effect, such that one is directly intending to save themselves, utilizing a means which is not the harming of the other person itself (e.g., a gun), and the harming (or even killing) of the perpetrator is a bad side effect which is outweighed by the good effect (of saving themselves) which is the end the victim has in store. By my lights, this fails because the harming of the person is, in practicality, a means of saving oneself because it is a part of the directional flow towards that end which facilitates it. If we compare this kind of argumentation to abortion, e.g., then it would also be the case that aborting the child is not a means towards avoiding pregnancy but, rather, the tool used to abort the child is; and somehow this is morally permissible under the above stipulations. The abortion of the child is a part of the directional flow of the end that is aimed at and is required to facilitate that end, and so it is a means (or a part the overall means) towards the end. On the contrary, in the 1v5 trolley case we dont have an analogous situation when a person pulls the lever as the means to saving the five: unlike shooting someone in self-defense, the bad effect is not a part of the directional flow of the end being aimed at. In the case of self-defense, a part of the directional flow, almost by definition, is using the harming of the perpetrator as a means to facilitating ones safety.
The second is an attempted deployment of a principle of forfeiture, which essentially advocates that a person can act proportionally to bad acts which are being committed upon themselves or anotherviz., the perpetrator forfeits, proportionately, the rights which they are violating in another. However, this violates the stipulations above, for this sort of principle fundamentally takes into consideration the circumstances around an act that is bad in-itself and states that it is permissible in some circumstanceswhich is inherently consequentialist.
It seems to me that the only way to justify self-defense is to either (1) abandon stipulation #1 or (2) reject #3.
What are your guys thoughts?
UPDATE:
The answer that I would give to this dilemma is to note that the 'act of harm' is not a proper act: it is a description of a possible object of acts, and not an act itself. Producing harm leaves no mention of the end behind such harm and thusly pertains solely to the physical causality involved (which was triggered by a volition of will): there are many acts which incorporate this object (viz., producing harm), and so this object denotes a species of acts. The object, in this case, is itself neutral, because, as an aristotelian, producing harm isn't necessarily disrespect towards the recipient: there are many acts which produce harm which actually give proper respect to the nature of the being in question (e.g., disciplining a child, giving someone a vaccine, performing surgery, etc.).
The whole dilemma arose out of #3 implying that harm is an act and it is bad.
Comments (136)
Hey Bob! Its been a while, glad to see you again. There are a few clarifications I feel you need to give to address this.
1. What is bad? What is bad 'in-itself? Can you give an example of something that is is bad in itself, and why it is bad?
2. This is going to be important, because a person who doesn't have your set definitions can set up this scenario.
a. It is good to not starve.
b. It is bad to starve.
c. It is bad to steal.
d. It is good to not steal.
e. If you do not steal, you are going to starve.
Therefore if you do not steal and starve, you are doing both a bad and a good thing. But if you steal and don't starve, then you are doing both a good and a bad thing. If things are good or bad 'in themselves' then we reach a situation in which either choice is equally as good and bad as the other. But our intuitions, (and I'm sure deeper argumentation) justify stealing to not starve. So we have a situation by which things in themselves result in a coin flip outcome that I think many of us would not call a coin flip.
I don't see stipulations1, 2, or 3 as cohering with my thinking very well. In any case, I would say there are times, when going with your fast thinking is crucial to the outcome of things, and a self defense situation is likely to be such a time. I'm inclined to think it is moral to be human, and act as one, without going around with one's head in the philosophical clouds at all times.
My man Le Rochefoucauld has that one covered:
Quoting Le Rochefoucauld, maxim 22
Nice! :up:
I suppose there is the author of Ecclesiastes and The Byrds as well.
Hello Philosophim! I am glad to hear from you again.
I purposely left out the analysis of the entire ethical framework which I implicitly imported in for the sake of the question (in the OP), because it would require a lot of writing (:
Irregardless, this is a fair and fine question to ask. The question in the OP is operating under the assumption that one accepts that a thing can be bad or good in-itself and simply that the action of harming someone is in-itself bad. There are many ethical theories that are compatible with these two claims, and I think the common man would agree with them (although that isnt saying much).
In its most generic sense, I mean bad and good in the common mans usage of the terms as it relates to morality. In a more technical sense, I would say badness is negative intrinsic valuableness and goodness is positive intrinsic valuableness; however, these technical definitions are not required to understand, more generally, what is meant by bad and good in the OP.
By something being bad or good in-itself, I mean that that something is bad or good all else being equali.e., taken by itself in isolation from all other circumstances and factors. An example of this commonly would be rape: rape is bad in-itself, because, when evaluated in isolation from any accidental factors, it is, per se, bad; and it is bad because it violates the autonomy of an individual and inhibits or decreases their well-being. We could say, equally, that it might be good per accidens to rape someone if they have to choose between raping them for 10 seconds or torturing them in a basement for 10 years (and assuming those are the only two options); but this would have no effect on the fact that rape itself is bad, when taken in isolation.
I dont think they really have to: you understand fine, I would imagine, what the commoner means by bad and good in a morally relevant senseeven if they do not have a robust concept of it.
For me, what is good is what is (positively) intrinsically valuable; and what is most (positively) intrinsically valuable is well-being; because that is what we are physiologically determined to value for itself the most, being simply the result of ones biological functions working in unison and harmony with one another to fulfill what they are designed to do (in a weak teleological sense). Again, one need not accept my ethical theory to participate in the OP. They just have to understand what is commonly notated as bad in a morally relevant sense, what it means for something to be bad in-itself, and to understand the stipulations.
Stealing is bad in-itself and starving is bad in-itself; but it does not follow that one ends up in a coin toss when having to decide whether to continue to starve and not steal or steal and stop starving.
One is not permitted to do something bad in order to achieve something good; and this is the scenario you have setup. E.g., one is actively starving and this is bad; they could perform the act of stealing to remove that bad situation; but they cannot do so because their action would be bad and one cannot do something bad to achieve something good. Moreover, if they starve to death because their only option to avoid it was steal, then they did not do anything badjust because it is bad to starve it does not follow that one is acting by allowing something to happen. Allowing something to happen is inaction; and not doing anything is preferable to doing something wrong.
Irregardless, I am not entirely following your critique here; because even if I grant your point (that it is a coin toss), then it still would follow that both are bad in-themselves.
Bob
Quoting Bob Ross
These two together seem to be question begging as well as a sort of separation fallacy.
That 2. is against self-defence seems to be based on the fact that self-defence involves harm ("something bad") towards the attacker. But it is not the case that everything that involves harm is bad:
Tetanus vaccination harms a child by cutting through a child's skin, to which they will have to put on a band-aid, and inflicting significant pain due to the liquid setting into the muscle. But vaccination is not bad, it is a necessary harm that leads to a greater good than otherwise, a otherwise which might imply death. Likewise, self-defence cannot be separated from the harm towards the attacker.
Of course, 2. says that we ought not to intend something bad even if for the sake of something good. But the vaccination example is clear counter-evidence of that: we must intend to vaccinate against tetanus.
If one could separate the immunisation against tetanus from the injection (like those droplets that are available for some diseases), injections against tetanus would be "something bad", especially for kids. But they are not separable yet, therefore they are not bad. Likewise, by definition of self-defence, harm towards the attacker is not avoidable; otherwise, in the case of no harm towards the attacker, we just escaped the attacker and the legal definition of self-defence doesn't even apply anymore to the situation, there is not need for it.
So, either self-defence involving harm is not bad, thus falls out of 2., or 2. ought to be rejected. Likewise, either vaccination involving harm is not something bad, or 2. is a plainly wrong normative principle.
Quoting Bob Ross
I see. Isn't refusing to make an action that would prevent starvation a choice however? If I was starving and a pie was in front of me, the act of not eating the pie does seem to be choosing starvation. People go on hunger strikes all the time because they believe its essential to draw attention to the prisoner's inhumane treatment. Choosing not to eat, is a choice when you have the means in front of you to eat. So if this is the case, we still have the 50/50 scenario. The person can choose to steal the food in front of them the avoid starvation, or choose not to steal the food, and thus also choose to starve.
Quoting Bob Ross
That is fine by me. For now we can assume that there is no reason behind what is good or bad intrinsically, only that they are. I am also assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, that inherent goodness and badness don't have a 'rating'. For example, stealing isn't 2 badness, while murdering isn't 4 badness, they're just both intrinsically bad. Same for goodness. Helping a little old lady across the street is just as good as saving 1 million lives. While I see problems with this, I can accept this for now and discuss what it would be like to have such a system.
This also leads to the point that the 50/50 scenario doesn't need to be explicit. Maybe you don't like the steal/starve scenario, but that doesn't mean that there won't be a good/bad conflict of some kind. We can assume through the varieties of life experience, its going to happen. You can use a starve/steal example to make it less abstract, but any scenario will do. How does your moral framework handle such a scenario? A 60/40? Does a scenario have to be 100% good for a person to act, that even a 99% good choice should not be done if there is 1% evil involved?
Quoting Bob Ross
There seems to be a bit of an answer to my above question in here. Again though, what about degrees of badness? If its rape, but the rape is your husband. Lets not make torture 10 years, but ten seconds to be more comparative. What if that torture is water boarding vs toe nail removal? The problem I'm getting at is that intrinsically good or bad without degrees of value overly simplifies morality. Morality is complex and can lead to some controversial and odd situations. A framework that cannot handle that is not strong.
And to not stray too far from your topic, this leads us back to:
Quoting Bob Ross
Which if a moral framework claims you can never defend yourself, this seems like the moral framework is unable to handle a fairly common moral scenario that is generally agreed upon by people across the world. Most of the world has determined that defending yourself is a moral right. Not that this means they're correct, but there's a high burden of reason for any framework to state that it is immoral to do so.
So in sum:
1. Does this framework have degrees of moral good and evil? If not, you run into a problem of oversimplicity, and an inability to handle moral complexities.
2. I don't think one can easily discount that 'not doing something' is 'not a choice', and a 50/50 scenario of some kind is unavoidable. How does this framework handle these scenarios?
As always, feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood anything. :)
Very well said. :up:
So we should stand by and watch someone brutally murder several innocent people because it is 'bad' to harm the murderer. :D
Having, once upon a time, taken a piece of brass rod (well suited to wrapping my fist around) to what I was afraid might become a gun fight, the OP does suggest a tendency towards scrupulosity to me.
The vaccination example is disanalogous to the self-defense example: the principle of double effect can easily resolve the dilemma in the case of the former. One vaccinates a child with the good effect of protecting them from harm in mind, and the means is to vaccinate them. The means has a side effect, a bad effect, of causing some immediate harmthis is indirectly intended. The allowance of the bad side effect is permitted because:
1. The action is in-itself neutral or good (viz., injecting someone with something to boost their immune system is good);
2. There is a directly intended good effect (viz., protecting a person from harm from a disease);
3. The good effect cannot be achieved without the bad effect (viz., injecting them with something to boost their immune system simultaneously produces the bad effect of pain);
4. The good effect cannot be achieved with a lesser bad effect (viz., the way they are injecting it is the least painful way); and
5. The good effect significantly outweighs the bad effect (viz., protecting them from a life-threatening disease outweighs avoiding the bad effect of the minor pain they will have from being injected).
One need not reject any of the OPs stipulations to accept the permissibility of vaccination (of some circumstances).
The reason I dont make an analogous argument for self-defense, is that it seems like harming the person, unlike in the vaccination example, is a part of the means of achieving the good end; as opposed to being a bad side effect.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/926405
It is a choice, but not an action. Theres no 50/50 decision being made, because it is morally impermissible to do something bad for the sake of something good; and so it is better to choose to not do anything than do something bad.
In the example you gave, it is 100% the case that one should allow themselves to starve; because you have setup the situation where they cannot avoid it without doing something wrong.
I was assuming, for the OP, that they do have degrees. Rape is worse than saying something insulting because rape is more negatively intrinsically valuable than saying something insulting (in terms of the effects they have on the well-being of the victim).
I agree. Thats why I am trying to see if anyone knows of a good justification, under the OPs stipulations, of self-defense. I am not suggesting that self-defense is impermissible; on the contrary, I find it obviously permissible but have found the peculiarity of seeing no real justification for it under my theorywhich indicates I messed up somewhere.
You are confusing choosing with acting: one can choose to not act.
I guess you could also argue that #1 is impossible and therefore irrelevant. Meaning there is no instance that is in-itself bad. The 'badness' is only existent within specific contexts.
If you stipulated different moral principles then you might come to the opposite conclusion. This demonstrates the futility and impotence of moral deliberation based on stipulated conditions.
No worries :smile:
That solution has been grave consequences, though--e.g., rape is no longer bad in-itself, which seems absurd. It seems like we can evaluate the ethicality of an action, independently of any accidental circumstances, and note that some of them are bad; and if some of them are bad, then it shouldn't matter what accidental circumstances arise.
Not at all. Everyone who adheres to an ethical theory imports principles into any moral conversation.
This is a hard sell. In logic, to choose A, is to choose not B. If I were to grab A, it means I'm grabbing not B. To say that choice isn't an action seems odd to me. If you choose something but don't act on it, did you really choose? So if I choose not to steal, but then take the action of stealing, what does that mean? If I choose not to starve, but don't take an action to prevent starvation when that option is presented, didn't I act by not stealing, thus actionably starving?
The times that I see where we have no choice or ability to act, is when there is no agency. Agency can be defined as knowledge plus the ability to act. So if I have knowledge of a way to avoid starving, and the choice to act on it, then I have agency. If you choose not to steal to prevent starvation, you are actionably starving by agency. Just as if you chose to steal to avoid starving, you would act by agency.
If of course you were simply starving, and there was no way to stop it, you had no choice, and did not actionably starve. But if a person has knowledge, and the ability to act, acting on A means not acting on B, your other choice.
If you disagree that this specific scenario does not seem to fit the 50/50 scenario, its fine, but a 50/50 is going to happen. By choosing one, you will commit an evil act. By choosing the other, you will also commit an evil act. However, you do have relative evil, which I think resolves this major problem. In the face of a 50/50, you would choose the less evil act, and I think that's a good enough solution for the framework. Still, this does lead into two other considerations.
1. If there is relative evil, how do we determine the level of evil.
2. Logically, if there is relative evil, there is relative good.
In the second case, you may have your solution to the OP. Lets say intrinsically it is good to not be harmed. Then in the case of self-defence, it is less good to hurt another person, but not if they are being even less good by trying to harm you. The question of how you evaluate the relative good is the next question you have to tackle, but if there is relative evil, then logically there must be relative good. The same language can be used if you just change everything to being relative degrees of evil. Harming others is evil, but it is less evil if you are defending yourself from them trying to hurt you.
This does not counter your idea of intrinsic good/evil. We can still say that harming a person is a rating of 6 evil, or -6 good, while defending yourself is a 3 evil, or -3 good. You can still say that rape is intrinsically evil at a level of 10, while torture is intrinsically evil at a level of 9. How you determine the intrinsic level is the next step, but I don't think you run into an contradictions in your current framework as long as you allow relative comparisons and note that intrinsic good/bad has levels to compare.
As you see, relative ratings of good and evil are necessary to tackle complex moral issues, and this does not counter intrinsic values. Whether your values or intrinsic or not, relative measurements are going to be need to accurately make the most moral decision. What really comes next is how do we determine if something is intrinsically good/evil, and to what degree? I think in general the idea of, "Do the least harm/greatest good" is uncontroversial enough. How we determine what that is, is the next challenge.
Treating questionable stipulations as if they are established moral foundations can only lead to the collapse of the edifice.
There is a difference between a principle and a moral principle. Those who begin with ethical theory based on moral principles begin, in my opinion, at the wrong end, as if where the inquiry might lead has already been determined before we begin.
Quoting Bob Ross
And harming the child's skin to immunise it is not a part of the means?
Quoting Bob Ross
Couldn't harm towards the attacker be called a bad side effect of self-defence?
It seems your phrase "directional flow" refers to causal flow? If so, I don't think that matters at all. Whether something is a direct or indirect consequence of our course of action or even part of the course of action shouldn't weigh on our duties, only whether the consequence happens or not. In other words, the distinction does not seem important to the context.
Quoting Fooloso4
In another thread:
Quoting Lionino
I don't see much difference between the person who pushes the child in the pond and the person who stands at water's edge laughing while they drawn.
This is not a logical truth whatsoever. Choosing A may entail simultaneously choosing B (e.g., if I choose to go to the grocery store in my car and I am aware that my car emits CO2, then I also choosing to emit CO2 to get to the grocery storealbeit the intention is different).
Making a decision is an act, and I may have confused you on that; but you were conflating it with the action that was ethically in question. I can choose to do nothing, and doing nothing is not an action.
The act of rational deliberation is the act of making a choice, and one can certainly rationally deliberate such that they decide not to do anything. E.g., I can choose to not get up from my chair, and not getting up from my chair is NOT an action. This is important in order to understand my theory, because omissions and commissions evaluated differently.
It would mean you are acting irrationally; and that you chose to not act, but acted anyways.
If you make the decision that you are want to change the fact that you are starving such that you arent anymore but dont actually do anything to change it, then you havent acted to change the fact that you are starving.
What I was noting is that not doing something and doing something are nor morally calculated equally; and your response here is full of equivocating the two.
If you are currently in the state of starvation, then choosing to remain in that state produces no action pertaining to itno different than me choosing to not move doesnt cause movement.
Again, you dont commit an evil act by allowing something bad to continue to happen; exactly no different than how I dont do anything to not get up from the chair that I am intheres a choice being made, but some choices require inaction.
By allowing yourself to continue to starve, you have committed an omission (an inaction); whereas if you steal you have committed a commission (an action). Your entire analysis assumes that something wrong is being done either way, when it is not.
I am not beginning with moral principles with respect to my ethical theory: I am a virtue ethicist.
All else being equal, both are being immoral; but one is an omission and the other a commission, and this can be morally relevant in some circumstances.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is a situational argument, so context is everything.
You will need to redo your steps.
Ethical egoism is a theory that argues for the person who is doing the action -- what is best for this person.
Other consequentialism argues for the common good. So, it's not just the person doing the action, but for everybody. I'm sure you are not talking about the utilitarianist point of view (common good), but for the one person who needs to use a self-defense.
I think you should re-write your argument so that it is specific to that person -- after all it is a self-defense.
Argue from ethical egoism. An argument can be made that satisfies both the individual's immediate need for protection and the common good.
I'm talking about the context of steal or starve, or mutually exclusive choices.
Quoting Bob Ross
It is though. Your action is to stay in the chair. An action is simply a decision of what to do as a living being from moment to moment. You cannot choose not to take an action as long as you live. The moment you cannot take any action, is death.
Quoting Bob Ross
Ok, I see where you're going with this then. An omission is generally understood as "Not doing the right thing". And generally, this is a descriptor of ignorance. At a very basic level, I had a choice to go right or left, I chose left on a whim, but the correct choice was to go right. Omissions generally means a choice that didn't turn out to be the right one, but the person involved didn't know that when they made the choice.
A commission on the other hand is when you know you should go right, but you go left instead. You have knowledge of the correct outcome, but do not choose it. This mirrors my explanation of agency earlier. No one is faulted for starving if there is no option that can alleviate starving. Or if someone offered you a poison apple, but you didn't know it was poison. You chose not to starve, but you didn't know the apple would kill you instead.
In the case of starve vs steal, we have full information. You can either choose to steal and not starve, or not steal and starve. The question is whether it is worse to starve or steal. And if you willingly choose the worse choice, its a commission. If you don't know what the worse choice is, and accidently choose it, its an omission. Actively deciding to starve is neither an omission or commission in this scenario as we don't know what is worse.
Quoting Bob Ross
If I didn't choose to act, how did I act? Was it unconscious or did some other force move my hand? We can have all sorts of wishes or opinions on how we act, but at the end of the day, our actions are our choices if it was in our power to have acted in a different way.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here, and I think you'll find most will as well. If I choose to go on a hunger strike, I am acting purposefully not to eat. What you seem to be implying is that if I purposefully lie on my back for three days, I took no actions for three days. An action is 'a lived choice'. This is not the same thing as the colloquial term, "I did nothing today." No, you did something today, just not anything that's worthy of sharing in a conversation with another person. The action was, "I didn't get out of bed today."
Quoting Bob Ross
Its not an equivocation. I'm not noting the morality of doing something vs not doing something. I'm just pointing out that if you make a choice, and go through with it in your lived experience, that's an action. It can be boring like sitting on the ground, but its still an action.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, your action is to not move. But not moving doesn't mean you haven't taken an action.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is again, an inaccurate use of the term for what we're discussing. If I am told to pick a card out of deck, I have 52 possibilities to pick a card. If I decided to take the action of simply leaving the table, I would be inactive in making a choice to pick a card, but I would actively be walking away from the table to do something else. Just like, "Currently I'm an inactive soldier". Its not that "I'm not taking actions", its simply a term that states, "I'm not taking any actions as a soldier anymore." In the case of steal vs starve, there are only two choices to act on. Steal or starve. Starving is not an inaction, it is a conscious choice made by not stealing.
"I would rather starve then steal".Quoting Bob Ross
Again, this is not the correct use of the term 'omission'. An omission is when an action you have taken results in something bad happening, and you didn't know that was going to be the outcome. This term is used outside of morality as well. "I omitted my signature from the form because I didn't see the line. My form was rejected". Vs "I saw the line for the signature on the form, but decided not to sign it. My form was rejected". Here I have committed an improper act vs having an improper act happen because I omitted something. You cannot avoid making an action as long as you have agency.
Or how about someone trying to commit rape then becoming the rape victim? Are these equally 'bad'?
However, I think there remains some case to be made for self-defense being a neutral act in some situations.
Perhaps the most convincing argument for this is that when one enters a real self-defense situation, one is not in a position to rationally weigh their options. A loss of control can reasonably be argued here. Panic and survival instincts take over.
Secondly, if it can reasonably be argued that the victim's intention was not to harm the assailant, but simply to protect themselves, the question arises to what degree an unintended bad side-effect can be considered fully an immoral act on the victim's part.
Obviously pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger clearly has an intent to grievously harm or even kill, but for example attempting to break free from someone's hold may not.
Self-Defense can also be classed as a form of staving off harm committed to others. If one does not defend oneself then the perpetrator of the violence will likely be more emboldened to repeat their harm on multiple others.
So #2 is a no goer.
And #3 is trying to smuggle in 'bad in-itself' as being equivalent to 'bad'.
I say the above because you seemed to frame rape as being 'bad in-itself' whereas I do not see defending one's self, or others, with a 'bad' act (eg. violence to suppress violence) to be 'bad in-itself'. This is clearly false equivalence.
I can get onboard with stating that some acts are 'morally impermissible' (barring utterly ridiculous hypothetical situations that entail one having to act in a horrendous manner in order to save others). It is certainly not morally impermissible to punch someone in the face, but it is without a damn good reason to do so. The REASON adds weigh to the permissibility of an act.
Whatever your moral principles may be, in this thread you are beginning with moral principles. In addition, virtue ethics is often cited as an alternative to principle based ethics.
I think youre right. Under those stipulations one cannot justify self-defence. But it also reveals how counterintuitive pacifism is. It is the sort of reasoning that led Gandhi to think the Jews in Nazi Germany would have been better off had they offered themselves to the murderers, or otherwise commit mass suicide.
No. A means is something that facilitates the end: causing pain to the child is not a part of what facilitates the end of giving them immunity; which is self-apparent when one considers if the end would still be facilitated properly on a child with an inability to feel pain.
No, because harming the attacker is what facilitates the end (of saving oneself).
The problem you are having is that you dont have a refined conceptual understanding of what a means is.
I mean the flow of intentione.g., an archer aiming at their target.
Whether or not one directly intends something matters, because moral agency is agent-centric. It is about what one ought to or ought not to do.
I am not making an argument from ethical egoism: if you would like to import it to explain how one can justify self-defense given the OPs stipulations, then I am more than happy to entertain it.
A non-consequentialist does not need to accept that all bad acts are equal: that simply doesn't follow from not being a consequentialist. The difference in severity of the immoral act is based off of how severe it is in-itself vs. the other is in-itself. E.g., raping someone, as per its nature, is worse than saying something insulting.
Moreover, to answer your question directly: this just goes back to my earlier statement that I am in no way endorsing the view that self-defense is morally impermissible.
I apologize Philosophim: I ran out of time to respond earlier.
The biggest problem with your analysis is that you see no difference between making a choice and acting; and if you cannot tell what or simply disagree with making such a distinction between the two, then you will fail to understand how an inaction is treated differently than an action when considering moral responsibility. The best I can do to get the ball rolling, is expound the relevant concepts as I understand them.
An action is a volition of will with an intention; a choice is the decision reached through a process of rational deliberation; an intention is an end set after as the final cause (in the sense of a why)(of what is to happen); an inaction is a lack of action; and what is voluntary is what is done in correspondence with ones will.
Couples a things worth noting:
1. Not all actions are choices: some are merely voluntary. One may very well do something that is in correspondence with their will (i.e., do something voluntarily) without rationally deliberating about it (i.e., choose it) (e.g., punching a wall in pure rage).
2. A choice is an action: one is deliberating (viz., thinking), and this is a volition of the will with the intention of contemplation (about something).
3. An inaction is not an action: this is obvious, so I will leave it there.
4. One can choose something (viz., reach a conclusion) without further acting on it. Viz., the action of thinking is separate from any action taken based off of that thinking.
EDIT: (I forgot to add)5. Not all actions are voluntary. E.g., If you hold a gun up to my head and tell me to eat a bowl of ice cream or die and I do it; then I am not doing this because it corresponds to my will in any meaningful sense (if I am doing it to avoid dying).
From your statement that your action is to stay in the chair in the case of choosing to not get up from the chair, I find if self-evident that you are lacking a robust analysis of what action is. It is manifestly incoherent to posit that not doing something is doing somethingwhich is literally what you said. If I do not get up, then I performed the act of not getting up; which is just to say that I didnt perform an act at all. In order to not get up, I dont have to do anything.
Not quite; although that is one of the common definitions, and of which is the synonym for negligence. I mean it in the more prominent sense of omitting something or someone. E.g., I consider it morally omissible to not do something and let something bad happen if the only way to prevent that bad thing from happening is to do something bad.
If I five people about to get run over by a train and the only way to save them is to push a fat person onto the tracks (knowing that fat person will get run over), then I should do nothing; because it would be immoral for me to (directly) intentionally kill that fat person in order to bring about the good effect of saving the five. I would find this morally omissible, in the sense that they are not going to be held morally responsible for not taking the measures to save the five.
Again, a choice is an act of rational deliberation. We do things all the time which are not acts of rational deliberatione.g., wanting more ice cream (without thinking about it all), punching a wall in pure rage, nervously fidgeting, etc.
Some voluntary acts which are not chosen, may be chosen indirectly by means of choosing to instill a habit which tends to produce that acte.g., one may install the habit of eating healthy by way of choice (i.e., by rationally deliberating about it), and once that habit has a strong hold one may find themselves wanting and eating a healthy meal without thinking about it all.
It is purposeful, but not an action. Again, theres nothing being actualized: on the contrary, you are purposefully not actualizing anything to achieve your goal. You are not doing anything; just like if you decide to not pull the lever and let the five get run over by the train: did you do anything by not pulling the lever? No.
Bob
Also, I think I can anticipate the response you may give and I think it may be fruitful for me to anticipate it a bit (;
I think you are going to say that sometimes not doing something requires an act of volition with an intention in mind (such as concentrating to stop one's hand from shaking); and this is the sort of not doing something which you would classify as an action. I think, and correct me if I am wrong, this is what you had in mind with the idea of concentrating on abstaining from eating food.
In some of these cases you would be partially right, insofar as preventing something can be an action (such as concentrating on stopping one's hand from shaking); but this is an action exactly because it actualizes something (such as the hand going from shaking to not shaking). Whereas, truly not doing something doesn't actualize anything; e.g., if I make the decision that my phone should continue to lie on the table exactly where it is, then me not picking it up is not an action. If I were to take measures of protecting it from getting moved (by other people or what not), then those would be actions.
There's not a volition of will (towards my intention of leaving the phone where it is) by not picking it up (all else being equal); but there is in stopping my shaking hands from continuing to shake. Likewise, there's no volition of will in not picking up a sandwich and eating it; but there is in meditating to help calm the appetites.
Given the OP's stipulations, there isn't going to be an intelligent discussion here. Just so you know. And that's because the OP's argument is laid down to fail.
I asked that it should be put in context as this is a situational argument -- we need deliberation, not a proof.
Quoting I like sushi
You use 'bad' and 'bad in-itself' in two seemingly distinct ways. Or should they both be taken as 'bad in-itself'.
This is an interesting and culturally relevant topic. It is also a well-written OP. In general I think @Lionino has the right approach.
Quoting Bob Ross
Does it then follow that it is okay to "harm" an attacker who cannot feel pain? And that because the end is still achieved in such a case, therefore the infliction of "harm" is a side effect?
See:
Quoting Leontiskos
The key here is that when it comes to self-defense harm is not a precondition for success. Because of this, incapacitation is always to be morally preferred to incapacitation via harm. It also raises the question of whether the aggressor is ever harmed by strict self-defense, even when they are physically injured. Or in other words, one must consider a distinction between moral harm and physical harm.
I admit, though, that this is only an indirect and incomplete answer to the OP. For example, one relevant difference between your case and the nurse who vaccinates or the surgeon who makes an incision, is that this is presumably done with consent or at least implied consent on the part of the patient. Classically speaking, the categorical (3) should [be] qualified by the innocence of the victim: "Do not harm the innocent." For whatever reason, in our age this qualification is seldom included. And then it becomes a question of which premise to prefer.
Not a worry! As always this is a hobby where we squeeze in time, and I know we have a habit of making longer posts to one another. :)
This is true. And if Quoting Bob Ross
Its not that I don't see a difference, its that an action of agency is a choice. You can't act, and then as a person with agency say, "I chose not to act, but acted anyway." Basically not all choices are actions, but all agency actions are choices.
Quoting Bob Ross
If we call it an action of agency, yes. An autonomous reflex for example could be called an action, but not an action of agency.
Quoting Bob Ross
It doesn't have to be through a process of rational deliberation, but could be instinctual or emotional. It is the determination of what you are going to 'do', or act.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, on a set of choices. But just because one does not act on certain choices does not mean they don't act on others. To truly be inactive is to be in a deep coma or dead. Inaction is generally meant as "That which a person does not act on." It does not mean that an awake and aware person literally makes no actions. I feel this is a language issue here, and probably our source of disagreement.
Quoting Bob Ross
Because you note that a choice is made though rational deliberation only, I understand where you're coming from. I don't believe choices need to be rational deliberations, and would simply call this an emotional choice. Again, this seems to just be a definition disagreement.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would say more that a choice is the intention to commit an action. I could choose to go out and eat, but my car won't start. However, I also understand that it could be argued that a choice is an action as well, in the fact that it is a process of a person with agency. But where I feel the words really do separate is that a choice is the intention, the action is the end result. A choice is what we are going to do, while an action is what we do. Thus I can say, "I chose to walk over there, and I acted on it."
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I don't think so. If you would, I would like you to explain why the following is wrong. An inaction is a choice to not act on one or more possible actions. And in this, I am using using the logic that if one acts on A, one is not acting on B. Total inaction, is for all possible letters, you did not act on them. That means the removal of actionable agency. This is if we are using the terms consistently and logically.
Yes, in the context of what other people might find meaningful in our lives we can say, "I didn't do anything today." But the person did not take any actions in the logical sense, they just didn't act on b-e, which are boring to talk about. What one 'does' is an action. If I 'do nothing', that is a slang term for 'not acting on anything we would consider important'. It does not mean, "I entered into a comatose state this weekend and emerged back into consciousness Monday at 7."
Quoting Bob Ross
Agreed. There can be things that get in the way of our choices, or while we may intend to act on something, the opportunity never comes around. An action is ultimately what we do though. While we may have intentions to do something different, when we act with agency, that is ultimately what we have chosen to do. So I might intend to walk over there and sit in a chair, but my ultimate choice was to not walk over there instead. I might not like my choice (what I ultimately decided to act on) but all actions of agency are choices.
Quoting Bob Ross
What you're describing is duress, or the limitation of actionable choices to those that you would normally not want to do. So lets say I would normally choose not to break my diet, but the alternative is to die. I don't want that either. But I can't choose the act of 'lying on the ground,' without getting killed. Without the duress, that I can only eat ice cream or die, I would choose the actions of "Not eating ice cream and taking a walk." And again this is equivalent to, "The inaction of A, the action of B".
Quoting Bob Ross
That was a fair point, and I hope my above points gave a better analysis of what an action is from my viewpoint.
Quoting Bob Ross
A = "Getting up"
~A is "Not getting up"
But ~A does not entail ~everything
The action that was committed was B, or what you did. Did you contemplate? Simply lie there and zone out? If one has agency from second to second, 'doing' or 'acting' is the expression of that agency. To do 'nothing' or ~anything is to have no agency at all.
Quoting Bob Ross
Wouldn't it be better to say "Morally permissible to not do something?" And remember, the something that we are not doing is, "The action that would stop X from happening." It doesn't mean that we aren't doing anything else. So I can see, "It is morally permissible not to throw a fat person on the train tracks to stop the train from running over five other people". That makes sense. Using the word omissible would imply that you made the wrong choice, but didn't realize that you made the wrong choice. Omissible just doesn't seem to work here with what I think you want.
Quoting Bob Ross
Again, I think 'morally permissible' conveys your intention clearly, whereas morally omissible implies you made a mistake though ignorance, and aren't going to be held accountable for it. Your action was ~A, which could have saved those people. You acted in another way, such as watching, leaving, or humming a tune in your head as the chaos errupted. :)
Quoting Bob Ross
Habits are ways we can act with less deliberation and effort. But one can have a habit and act with, or against that habit. Choices and actions can be influenced, pressured, or coerced, I'm not arguing against that. But ultimately what a person does, is an act of agency if it is not something like an autonomous reflex.
Quoting Bob Ross
If an action is what one does, is this not a purposeful action?
Quoting Bob Ross
Of course you did something. You chose not to pull the lever, and did something else. I think what you're trying to say is that "Its ok if I take another action besides not pulling the lever." That you made the choice not to intervene. Which that's a fine conversation to have. But what you seem to be saying is, "Because I didn't pull the lever, I am absolved of moral judgement." That doesn't work. If you're in a moral situation, understand you have actionable options, how you acted is always open open for moral judgement. "Do nothing (to stop the situation from happening) was the the choice you made by acting in some other manner than pulling the lever.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. But you acted in some other manner. And in a moral scenario, 'not acting on the choices which would stop X from happening," means you acted in some other way. One cannot escape moral judgement through such actions.
Its an interesting break down. Having gone over this again, I have a feeling the real goal here is that you want a person to have a 'get out of jail free card' on moral situations by claiming 'not acting' means they weren't involved. If someone is aware of a moral situation, and has a choice to alter that moral outcome, choosing not to alter the moral outcome is the action they take. I'm not here to judge whether that person was right in doing so or not, but that is the action they took in that moral situation. Once a person knows and understands their options in a moral situation, they cannot stop being a part of the equation by simply 'doing nothing'. In the end, their 'inaction' to alter a situation is fully within the choices that are being judged.
:up:
CC: @Leontiskos
I see why you would say this, but lets break down what is the act and what is the effect; because you are lumping them together here.
Lets take the example that you have to punch someone in the face to defend yourself from getting punched (by them). The punch is the act, and there are (at least) two effects: physical harm to the attacker and (assuming you knock them out before they land any blows) the prevention of physical harm to oneself.
The latter effect is the per se intention, because it is the end which you have in store as the final end; however, unlike a legitimate double effect situation, the former effect is what produces the latter effectthey are not simultaneously produced from the means but, rather, the means (which is your arm and fist swinging in a punch-like fashion) is producing the effect of physical harm and, thereby, producing the effect of preservation of oneself.
This seems very consequentialist. If punching someone is in-itself, qua action, bad; then it shouldnt be done for the sake of doing something goodno?
Why is it bound to fail? That is what I want you to elaborate on, and provide justification for. Are you agreeing that self-defense cannot be justified with the OP's stipulations? If so, then which stipulation would you reject and why?
They are same thing: what you are referring to is when I refer to a thing as in-itself vs. per accidens bad--e.g., an action that is in-itself bad.
No, because harm is more than just physical pain. My point with @Lionino was that the relevant difference between punching someone in self-defense and injecting someone with a needle to provide immunity is that the latter case has a means which has a double effect whereas the former has one effect that produces the other effect. Viz., me punching that perp in the face directly produces only the effect of causing harm and only indirectly (as a subsequence) the effect of preserving myselfwhich is not a double effect proper. It is the 7 diagram as opposed to the V.
Thats what makes self-defense so tricky in the OP, and I am unsure how to account for it without disbanding from stipulation 2 and replacing it with it is morally impermissible to directly intend something bad towards an innocent living beingeven for the sake of something good.
This is true and I agree: self-defense itself is merely the direct intention to defend oneself from an assault and this does not necessitate causing harm to someone; but I am thinking of cases of self-defense which would require it, as is the case for the vast majority (e.g., punching someone in the face, knocking them out, engaging in a shootout, etc.). In those cases, self-defense requires using physical harm as a means towards a good effect (of saving oneself); and so it seems as though one must either reject that (1) one should not do bad things as means towards good ends or (2) physical harm is not bad in-itself.
That is true as well; but, like I said, the needle is the means and it produces two simultaneous effects: physical harm and immunity. This is NOT the case when one punches someone legitimately in self-defense: the physical harm is effectively the means (by being the effect of the punch) which, in turn, produces the good effect: the good effect is not produces simultaneously with the bad effect. Punching someone legitimately in self-defense is analogous, to an extent, to shoving someone into the train to save the five: the good effect is an effect of the effect of the action.
Yes, this is true: I could say it is not bad in-itself to harm another but, rather, it is bad in-itself to harm an innocent person; and this is honestly probably the solution. The problem is that if we are analyzing harm in-itself, then it does seem bad irregardlesswhich comes to light when we consider using excessive force in self-defense.
It seems like the best bet is to refactor stipulation 2 and say that doing something bad a means towards a good end is not necessarily impermissible; because the bad action is permissible if it is a proportionate response towards a guilty agent.
Unfortunately, I am still not following exactly what you are arguing. I responded with an analysis of action and you responded to that response shifting the goal post towards action of agency. I dont know what action of agency is vs. action simpliciter.
I understand that you use choice in a looser sense, but what exactly is it under your view?
Again, what do you mean by action? It doesnt seem clear what you mean at all, and of which is very clear with this:
If an inaction is a lack of action, then an inaction is the negation of an action; and the negation of something cannot be identical to that something.
I dont understand what you mean by if one acts on A, then one is not acting on B. Again, A could entail B: theres nothing logically impossible about that. Likewise, do you mean to say if one performs action A, then one does not perform action B? Again, action A may be identical or imply or contain B; and nothing about that conditional statement relates to the other statement that if one does not perform action A, then they have not acted. Likewise:
That isnt a coherent sentence. What do you mean?
I think what you are trying to note is that, somehow, agents always are doing something; but the point is that not doing something is not itself an action. Not picking up a phone is not itself an action; just as much as:
With respect to the situation of the 1 vs. 5 trolley problem, you didnt do anything elsethats the point! You did something insofar as you rationally deliberated (viz., made a decision) to not pull the lever; but not pulling the lever is not itself an actionand this is what I want to see if we agree on or not.
Moral omissibility is not the same as moral permissibility; and the former is not standardly the same as doing something impermissible: it is separate moral category of thought. This is important for my analysis, because of this:
Something that is morally permissible is something which is not bad; whereas something that is morally omissible is bad but is exempt from moral responsibilitythat is an important distinction. All else being equal, one should be held responsible for failing to act in a reasonable manner to prevent something bad from happening, because failing to reasonably prevent a bad effect or act is in-itself bad, but in some cases it is exempt from moral scrutiny; and one such example is when one cannot act in any morally permissible way to prevent the bad act or effect from happening. E.g., if I could reasonably and easily grab someone who is starting to drown out of a river into my boat, then me failing to do so would constitute negligence and be punishable; whereas, if I can only reasonably grab that person and put them in my boat if I push you overboard, then that is morally omissible (exactly because I cannot save this person without doing something bad, and doing something bad is worse then letting something bad happen).
The absurdity in your view, so far, is that there is no such thing as allowing or letting something bad happen; as opposed to doing something bad; because you completely lack the vocabulary to notate a choice to not act, since you think inaction is action.
And my point is that it has not been proven that injecting someone with a neddle has a double effect while self-defence has one effect after the other. In fact, Aquinas says self-defence has a double effect, and vaccination seems instead to have only one effect, where the harming comes before the healing, instead of simultaneously.
And if it is proven, one wonders why in this case that would even be relevant on whether I shall pursue X or Y course of action. Is the principle of double effect one of your stipulations?
It seems worth adding, that in the case of a vaccination, there only some probability of the vaccinated individual receiving any benefit. After all, the vaccinated person might never encounter the pathogen. targeted by the vaccine.
Maybe you could weasel out like this: "If someone is doing something bad, and I stop them, then I'm not really harming them. It's better for someone to be killed in self-defense than to successfully become a burglar."
Some weird virtue-ethical argument like that.
But could Lionino not say the same thing, namely that the child who does not feel the needle penetrating their skin is still being harmed by the needle?
Quoting Bob Ross
Simultaneous in what sense?
Quoting Bob Ross
It's not so clear to me that self-defense involves an intent to harm. Aquinas says that one can apply lethal force in self-defense, so long as one is not intending to kill. Self-defense aims at self-preservation, and this could be done by fleeing or incapacitating the aggressor. But:
Quoting Bob Ross
So if an intruder comes into my house with a gun, and I am quietly standing behind him with a baseball bat, is it permissible for me to incapacitate him by hitting him in the head? In such a case have I used harm as a means to incapacitate him, or have I sought to incapacitate him while accepting a certain degree of harm? This is a fine-grained distinction.
When we consider self-defense in the context of double effect, and scrutinize the criterion that the bad effect may not be a means to the good effect, it becomes crucial to determine what we mean by a means. Is it a causal or temporal means? Or an intentional means? We are apparently asking about the relation of the incapacitation of the aggressor to the harming of the aggressor. Is the harming of the aggressor a means to the incapacitation of the aggressor in such a way that double effect is precluded?
When I look through Aquinas it would seem that he does not view harm as a proper act. More information is required. The act could be punishment, repelling/self-defense, maiming, torturing, etc. Each deserves its own analysis. Because Aquinas does not view harm as a proper act, it does not function for him as an intentional means. For Aquinas a means when considered in a moral sense would presumably need to be a proper act, with its own specifiable, volitional nature. I think this is right.
But perhaps the difficulty remains insofar as we are judging a relation of effects, not acts. Harm is an effect of our act whether or not it is an act in itself, and there are obviously acts which are impermissible on account of the harm they bring about.
Quoting Bob Ross
...More precisely, this comes back to our difference over natural evil vs. moral evil. We are morally prohibited from injuring others in the sense of doing injustice to them, not in the sense of causing any kind of harm whatsoever. Along these lines, I would want to say that there is no absolute prohibition on causing harm, but only a kind of relative prohibition. Put differently, harm in the sense we are considering it is a consequence, and a non-consequentialist moral approach will not be directly concerned with harm in the same way that a consequentialist approach would be. Aversion to an act on the basis of a harm consequence is, at least for the non-consequentialist, a kind of indirect aversion, which is a legitimate consideration but not a central duty.
For me the heart of this thread is the question of the moral status of harm simpliciter. Supposing we have a duty to not harm or minimize harm, in what does this precisely consist?
An action 'simpliciter' is simply what your being is at any moment in time. As I noted, you can have autonomous reactions. For example, breathing. An action of agency is when we commit an action through choice, ie, intent.
Quoting Bob Ross
A decision to make an action. Once you have made that action, you have fulfilled your choice. Assuming agency, if you choose to do A, but at the last second, pick B, you changed your choice to B.
Quoting Bob Ross
I've already pointed this out once, but I am talking about mutually exclusive scenarios. Of course you can choose A and B if they aren't mutually exclusive. You can't walk and run at the same time. If you run, you chose not to walk. If you walk, you chose not to run. And vice versa.
Quoting Bob Ross
Perhaps what you want is to argue that a person who doesn't pull the lever didn't take a moral action? Because they clearly did. In a simple scenario you can pull the lever, or not pull the lever. They chose to not pull the lever, and acted on it, because they thought it more moral to do something else. You either decide and act by pulling the lever, or by not pulling the lever in the moral situation. You don't get out of it. Of course, pulling or not pulling the lever alone does not entail moral judgement. This can only be determined after moral evaluation.
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
I see. Omissibility in itself neither necessarily exempts or makes the person responsible; that's more of a case by case basis. Omission is simply that a person did something incorrect without understanding that they shouldn't have done that. Whether this deserves judgement or not is separate. So I'm still not sure that the term fits the situation you're trying to describe. If I understand it right, what you're saying is that if a person does something wrong, but only because doing something would cause further harm, its ok. I think that's pretty uncontroversial as long as the harm was seen either equal or greater than not pulling the lever. No need to call it an omission, that's just traditional moral justification.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think its exempt from moral scrutiny, but exempt from moral judgement. As we spoke about earlier, if we had a 50/50 situation, in which you only had two choices and both were equally bad, no one could judge you for your choice. If however your choice to not pull the lever results in more wrong than if you had, and you knew that, you would be morally negligent. The way people are morally exempt traditionally is if they lack active agency, or had ignorance that wasn't do to negligence. IE, "The power plant failed because I was never told to push a certain button" vs "The power plant failed because I didn't bother to read the new manual that came out last week".
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I'm not saying that at all. My point is that "letting something happen" when you could choose to stop it, does not absolve you of moral consideration. And in the situation of moral choice, 'not acting' is the action you take. I can see in some situations, it would be better to 'do nothing' or 'do any other action' then interfere in the situation. And in some situations, its not. But no one gets a free pass from moral scrutiny if you are aware of the situation and you could have made a choice to alter its outcome.
The only exception would be in acting in self-defense in a non-violent manner. Pinning someone on the ground before running away would not be 'harmful' other than it harms their intentions.
The first rule of self-defense is certainly not to attack first, it is to run away. Self-defense can also involve disarming and incapacitating your attacker in a non-violent/non-harmful manner.
So self-defense is still possible. If you are saying self-defense requires bodily harm to the attacker then you say this is impermissible, then it is impermissible!
Quoting Leontiskos
I could, but then we are simply establishing that the word 'harm' includes 'milimetrically ripping skin with or without pain'. It is a semantic move. There is some precedent for that. We do say that someone eating junk food or drinking alcohol is harming themselves for ingesting toxins, even if they don't feel the harm at a physical level.
Not only that, that harm is more than just physical pain seems to say very little. Physical pain is surely not necessary for harm, but we could say that it is sufficient for harm, because any noticeable pain, no matter how small, could be said to inflict mental harm also a semantic move.
Semantic moves are done to establish clarity, they don't establish informative arguments. I think my communication has had clarity, so I was thinking past that.
Quoting Leontiskos
Idk, but they don't seem simultaneous at all. The vaccine's liquid setting into the muscle can cause a lot of pain, but it is the vaccine's liquid setting into the muscle that allows for immunity to be developed. They are not simultaneous: one precedes, and is necessary for, the other in the causal chain.
But then one might say "Well, the pain is a neurological effect of the muscles' reaction..." but then I go back to the question that will be stated for the third time now: why does any of this matter for whether I shall do X or Y?
Maybe there is a difference between justifying to society and justifying to oneself that is relevant here?
Possibly. But probably not, given that society just is a number of selves interacting and justifying stuff to each other. I guess I want a justification for looking for a justification of a justification. I'm not sure if that is an allowable move in the language game, but if it isn't, then maybe the opening move is illegitimate too.
But keeping it simple, supposing one has a general duty of care to one's fellow beings, one who is bent on harming his fellows thereby forfeits his own right to be cared for. Is this a justification or merely a restatement in other words? I might talk about a 'necessary mutuality' of moral behaviour, such that the thief forfeits his right to possess his own property, or the kidnapper his right to his own freedom. I'm struggling in the end to make sense of the question in terms of what sort of thing would count as an answer; if the principle of self defence cannot stand alone, how could it be defended by another principle?
It is not just pain, injections cut through the child's skin.
The reply applies all the same to self-defence: are you harming someone who feels no pain if you break their legs, stopping them from hurting you? Well, you broke their legs, but they will heal; you cut through the child's skin, but it will heal. Both cutting through the skin and breaking their legs are means to the end of immunisation and self-defence.
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
That is not really what "means" means, as the dictionary will show, but I can fly with whatever definition you prefer. The usage of "facilitate" however is definitely troublesome, I take it you mean "enables the end"; whether is made easier or harder is unimportant.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't know what the phrase "flow of intention" is supposed to mean, you will have to be more specific. Someone either intends something at a moment or not, it doesn't flow. An archer aiming at their target is an action, an action which can be intentional or not.
Quoting Bob Ross
So is the problem that we intend to harm the attacker for the sake of our self-defence, while we don't intend to cause pain for the sake of vaccination but that we intend to vaccinate and it happens to cause pain?
People who vaccinate know about the pain. In a self-defence situation we know what is going to happen if we shoot the assailant. I will say again that whether it is idiomatic in English to say we "intend" one while not intending the other seems unimportant, we know of the consequences of our actions, they happen.
Take for example if we had no clue how vaccines worked. We just knew that they did work and that they are painful. In that case, our intention would be to cause this specific kind of pain that is only caused by vaccines, because we thought that the pain is what gave immunity. So we are intending to harm for the sake of something good, it is morally fine.
I will say again that it is 2 that is problematic and ought to be rejected. 3 is not. Harming someone is, in itself, bad, but the harm might be outweighed by a good.
You could reject 3, but there are reasons against it.
l think in a very practical sense of, 'this is the way things go among humans', I would have to agree with something like that. More idealistically I'd hope for caring for everyone, even knowing it's an ideal I can't come close to living up to.
It certainly is relevant to my having taken a chunk of brass rod to what I was afraid could turn into a gun fight. The guy with the gun was a coworker at my first job out of college, and it's really a story about a fucked up year in four people's lives.
I guess I was hoping mentioning having such an experience myself might motivate someone else to give an account of a relevant experience of their own, and spare me from feeling I should go into more detail. It's a story I would have to get out between bouts of tears and I'm awfully ambivalent about trying to condense it to reasonable post length.
In that case the OP is a probing of the justification: How does the justification work? Does the justification stand? A justification needs to be more than a simple claim or assertion. In a similar way, the OP could be construed as a devil's advocate argument for pacifism.
Quoting unenlightened
What do you take the "principle of self-defense" to be? It's not so clear what such a thing is supposed to be.
Can you justify this claim? Where do justifications bottom out? I'm probing the probing here.
Edit: Also, what more can be provided?
The OP actually sets out two competing justifications for self-defense: double effect and forfeiture. In <this post> you gestured towards a forfeiture doctrine:
Quoting unenlightened
This makes it sound like we strip thieves of all property, which is not the case, and yet it seems to me that forfeiture justifications have a difficult time drawing that line. Nevertheless, this claim introduces two difficulties: punishment vs. defense and public vs. private. Classically these things are distinguished from one another. Defense is not necessarily punishment and punishment is not necessarily defense; and not everything that is available to a public authority is available to a private citizen.
Here is SEP's perspective:
Quoting Self-Defense | SEP
Good discussion!
@Lionino, I think our conversation went astray because I (or perhaps we) was (or perhaps were) focusing on the pain involved in the vaccination and not the harm. In a complete sense, the harming of the person is necessarily prior to the release of the dead cells (or what not) that will help them build immunity; and so I completely understand and agree with you (now) that this is analogous to the self-defense example I gave: part of the means is harming the person, as opposed to being a side effect of the means.
Your solution to the OP, however, is wrong; because it liberates the discussion into weighing the consequences of actions instead of their natures; and this leads (necessarily) to the bizarre permitting of immoralities for the sake of the greater good.
The solution, I think, is to reject 3: I realized that my theory is eudaimonic and not hedonic, and so I am not committed to the idea that harming someone, in-itself, is bad for them. Likewise, I find nothing wrong, now that I have liberated myself from 3, with deploying a principle of forfeiture whereby one can harm someone for the sake of preventing them from doing something wrong; and this is not a case of an action which is bad in-itself because the action of harming is not in-itself bad and the intention bound-up with the action (of harming), in this case, is good.
I mean what is intended in-itself (at least within the context) and what is intended directly for that per se intention. An archer aims to hit their target, and pulling back the string on the bow (with an arrow in place) is intended for the sake of the intention of hitting the target. The whole motion of placing the arrow in place, pulling the string back, etc. is a part of the intentional flow towards the end; but, e.g., what is not a part of that directional flow is effect of alarming a deer standing nearby.
@Leontiskos
It doesn't per se, but a lot of cases do. For example, if I am about to get shot by an aggressor and the only way to stop it is to pull out my gun and shoot them, then, in that case, I must directly intentionally harm them to save myself; for the causal means of saving myself is shooting my gun and the effect necessary to prevent my death or injury is the bullet penetrating the aggressor and harm them sufficiently to stop them from pulling their own trigger. I don't see how, in that case, you could argue that (1) there is not intent to harm nor (2) that the intent is direct.
I was meaning a causal means, like pulling a lever. Technically the gun, or my fist (in case of punching), is the means and the effect is the bullet harming the aggressor.
This is a really good point that I overlooked; and helped me realize that I am not committed in the slightest to accepting that harm in-itself is bad. An action is a volition of will; and as such cannot be analyzes independently of the per se intention behind it.
I find this inadequate, although I appreciate the elaboration. According to your definition here, a person who is brain dead in a coma is acting by not moving their arms; because it is a part of what their being is [at this moment]. Actions are tied to agency, not being.
I see the problem now: as a matter of definition, you must reject the idea of choosing to do nothing.
This is absurd to me, because, again, it is so painfully obvious that you can choose to not do something without choosing to do something else. You can decide, right now, to never respond to this message without choosing to go do something else instead: if that is true, then you made a choice to not make an actionwhich violates your definition of choice.
You know me: I hate semantics as much as the next person; but if you define choice in this way, then I would note that you must still agree that one can reach a conclusion through the process of thinking which results in that conclusion being that one should not act; and this then would not, by definition, be a choice in your schemabut thats what I am getting at.
What you are noting here, is that if one acts, then they chose those actions; and if I were to grant your point here, it would not suffice to negate the possibility of being able to choose to not act. All this notes, is that ones actions are necessarily chosen; but not that ones choices are all about actions.
Like I stated before, I do reject that all acts are chosen; because it is impossible to reach a decision other than through rational deliberation; which leads me to my next point:
Choosing is the act of deciding: you circularly defined a choice here with decision. I would submit to you that making a decision, making a choice, etc. are all the results of the process of thinking; and thinking is an act of rational deliberation (even if it is irrational in the sense that one doesnt have sound argumentation or hasnt thought it through very robustly). If this is true, then you must accept that one can act without choosing; because one can act without thinkingand surely you agree, semantics aside, with that.
Got it: that wasnt clear to me. You said it was a matter of a logical formula, which was confusing me.
How did they act on it? What you are missing, is that the choosing to not pull the lever is a choice to refrain from acting; and if that is the case then they didnt act on it.
I apologize, I used the terms wrong: moral omissibility is a category of moral thought that revolves around when someone fails to do something good. The point I was making is that an omission is sometimes permissible.
These examples we are using are not situations where all choices are equally bad. Again, allowing something bad to happen is not as bad as doing something bad. Likewise, to use your negligence example, the worker would be held morally responsible if they should have reasonably known to push that certain button; but if they couldnt have reasonably known, then they shouldnt be. The main point would be, though, that this concedes that not even all inactions are equal. E.g., it would not be right to say that the worker in both instances is doing something equally bad.
We have deeper issues now. If you define a choice as a decision to make an action, then one cannot choose to let something happenas a matter of definition.
Thats manifestly incoherent: you either have to accept that all moral choices are not instances of not acting, or you have to concede that your definition doesnt work.
Yep, this seems right to me.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, I think that's a fair point.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, but it is helpful to remember that causality does not track intention. To take a clearer example than the baseball bat, suppose someone applies a rear naked choke in self defense, and suppose that this does harm the aggressor but the defender is not aware of the harm involved. Have they used harm as a means?
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I think that's exactly right.
Quoting Bob Ross
The OP raises subtle questions that probably cannot be solved in a single day or in a single thread. For a consequentialist the topic is fairly straightforward, but for a non-consequentialist it is more complicated. This is because most non-consequentialists recognize that consequences cannot simply be ignored. Harm in itself tends to be a consequence, and it is not obvious when the level of harm becomes morally relevant and when it does not. For Thomists it is the tricky question of when and how a circumstance can enter into the object of a moral act, and corrupt it.
Quoting Bob Ross
To press the complications, this would seem to be a case of deterrence, which is not the same as self-defense. This can be approached by noting that preventing precedes a bad act, whereas forfeiture follows after a bad act. At best we would say that a right is forfeited on account of some evil and manifest intent, and that use of force prevents the carrying out of that intent. Still, this more accurately describes the police officer than the private citizen who is merely concerned with self-defense. Self-preservation and prevention of wrongdoing are not the same thing, even though in some cases they interleave. Aquinas' article on blows is somewhat on point.
Quoting Leontiskos
A preliminary takeaway is that harm does not necessarily invalidate an act, and yet it can invalidate an act. Specifically, if there is not a proper relation between the volitional act and the harm that ensues, then the harm will presumably invalidate the act. Still, to assess acts primarily in terms of harm is a preoccupation of democratic liberalism and consequentialism, and this way of assessing acts seems to be mistaken.
Autonomous breathing is an action simpliciter. An action of agency is done with conscious intent.
Quoting Bob Ross
My point is that you cannot 'not make an action'. To not act is to be dead. The whole point of this conversation is to demonstrate that you cannot avoid a moral situation by 'not acting'. You are deciding not to act on a set of moral choices, but your action is to walk away from the situation, think of sharks, or anything else. Its not that you are 'not acting' period. Your action is simply not aligned with 'pulling the lever' in this case.
Quoting Bob Ross
I can choose to not respond to the post, but I choose to make some other type of action in my life. Again, I would have to be dead. My not posting does not absolve me for choosing to do something else.
Quoting Bob Ross
A choice is simply an assertion that you are going to commit an action based on your perceived options. So if I have a mutually exclusive choice between A and B, if I choose to do A, I am also choosing to not do B. My action will include A, and exclude B. Now if I didn't know that B was an option, I would not be able to choose B, or not choose B. My action would exclude B, but I would think I could only choose A.
Quoting Bob Ross
Agreed. A realized choice is a choice that you act on. An unrealized choice is one that you are unable to. For example, if I choose to move my hand, try to, and find my hand is stuck on some glue, my choice was not fully realized.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would say agency more than thinking, as one can act emotionally, then rationally think about it later. The only way you can act without choosing is if its an autonomous action like a reflex, heart beating, etc.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not a worry, I should have been more explicit.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's a poor sentence from me. My intent was to say, "The action they took did not involve pulling the lever, because they thought it more moral to do that action then pull the lever." Choosing to 'walk away' is the same as 'choosing not to pull the lever' as it was an option they had deliberated on.
Quoting Bob Ross
Agreed 100%
Quoting Bob Ross
This sentence is circumstantially true or false. It is only true if you allowed something bad to happen because any other action or prevention would have only made it worse. For example, if I see a dog caught in a flood current in a river, I can choose not to save the dog because I'm a poor swimmer and the current would almost certainly kill me too. I wouldn't call this 'allowing' something bad to happen, just noting that there is nothing you can do to mitigate it. But that's semantics and probably not important. :)
On the other hand, lets say I'm a crane operator on a crane by the river and I realize I can easily scoop the dog out of the water without issue. If I choose to sip on some water and stare at the sky instead, I have done something bad. Staring up into the sky and sipping water are not innately bad, but they are considering everything the crane operator knows they can do given their options. By choosing to take the action of staring at the sky, I have chosen not to help the dog, and I have done wrong.
I think I understand what you are going for, which is that one must perform an action to avoid another action. (1) This isnt true; and (2) even if it was it would not negate my point.
With respect to #1, the problem is that you keep using examples where one coincidentally chooses a different act instead of doing the act in question (e.g., walking away instead of pulling the lever); but this is not always the case. For example, imagine you decide to just stand there and keep watching instead of pulling the lever: continuing to watch is not itself an actioninstead, you would be deciding to not do anything and since you are already watching you continue to watch. What you are doing is failing to analyze the inaction in-itselfe.g., choosing to not get up is itself (A) a conclusion reached through thinking and (B) not a choice to do something.
With respect to #2, even if I grant your point it does not follow that one cannot choose to do nothing: even in the case that it is true that one must perform action X to avoid action Y, it also true that the choice to not do Y precedes the choice to do Xall you are noting is that not doing Y requires a subsequent action which is not Y for Y to not be done. If this is true, then even under your view it must be conceded that choices can be about inactionswhich violates your definition of choice.
In your view, we end up with a peculiar conclusion that it is false that one can choose to not do Y; and you get this problem because you are falsely inferring that one cannot choose to do nothing because one cannot lack action. You are forgetting that deliberation is an act, but that it can be about inaction; and this means that one is technically acting when they are concluding to not do something (in virtue of performing the act of thinking), but that they are performing the act of choosing to not do anything.
That is not a part of the original choice madeor at least it isnt per se. You could choose to not respond to the post without, in that act of deliberation, choosing to not do so for the sake of some other action. Whether or not you must choose, after that, to act is a separate and irrelevant question.
You still have failed to give a coherent definition of a choice, and I think this is what is hindering you from seeing the issues I have exposed (even above).
An emotion is not a result of a choice: you dont choose what you feel. Choices are cognitive, not conative. Again, you defined choice as a making a decision to act: decisions are cognitiveit makes no sense to include emotions in that other than what emotions are filtered through reason.
This is wrong, because you have conflated a reason one may possibly have for not doing X with it being necessary that they have such a reason for not doing X: do you find it impossible for a person to choose to not pull the lever because they simply wanted to watch them die? If not, then your point cannot stand: they are not choosing to not pull the lever for the sake of another action they want to perform.
Right, continuing to watch is the action that you decide to do. Actions are from moment to moment. You pull the lever, or you continue to watch. Either way, you're taking an action.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think I'm trying to avoid what inaction is, I'm just noting that we have to be careful what we mean by inaction. If I have a group of 3 choices, A, B, and C, I can refuse to take action on A, B, and C. Colloquially we might say, "They did not take any actions.", but that' in reference to THOSE actions. Its not a statement "They chose to drop dead instead". In the logical sense, you still took an action, just not A, B, or C.
Quoting Bob Ross
I've tried to explain that a choice is what you are going to do, and by consequence, what you actively chose not to do. To have 'no choice' is to have no options. I am simply noting that choice is given its main meaning in the affirmative. What one did is the choice that lead to action, and what one did not do is by consequence. While one can say, "I chose not to go swimming yesterday," this still begs the question, "What did you choose then?" "Whereas if I say, "I chose to go walking yesterday", it would be strange if I asked, "Well what did you not choose then?" Its not that you can't ask this, its that the past tense of 'choice' entails an action. Inaction is in relation to this, and the context of the different actionable options you could have picked instead. What you cannot say is, "I chose to do literally nothing' yesterday and have that literally mean 'I made no actions of any kind'. That's just a phrase like "tow the line", not a literal meaning of the words.
If one is talking about the context of "A, B, and C" and they chose not to do any of them, they could answer "Nothing" referring to that context and we know what they mean. But because they can say "Nothing" within that context, that does not mean they didn't choose something outside of that context. They had to have. They chose whatever action they did instead. You can say I chose ~A, but its incomplete information until you give what you actually chose to do instead.
Quoting Bob Ross
One cannot choose to not do Y, then say they did not do anything 'at all' in the literal sense. One cannot stop actions unless one is dead if one is acting with agency. That is all I'm claiming.
Quoting Bob Ross
Deliberation is an act. Meaning what they chose to do is, "Deliberate some more". And in the context of other actions, A, B, and C, they chose not to do those, but "D" for deliberate instead. They are not 'doing nothing' in the logical sense. They are actively deliberating.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct, you choose how you act. And sometimes people act on their feelings and nothing more. "I feel hungry, I eat". I would call that an act of agency, and not autonomous. We may not be disagreeing here but just have a different way of looking at "emotional decision".
Quoting Bob Ross
Let me break this down.
There is a reason for not doing X.
It is necessary that they have a reason for not doing X.
I don't believe I ever implied the latter without the context of choice. I even mentioned earlier that if one had not considered B an option, its not that one 'didn't choose B', its that B wasn't even a choice. So if someone asked, "Why didn't you choose B," the reply would be, "I didn't even know B was an option."
In the case of having choices, and not picking them, yes you must have a 'reason' but it does not need to be a high bar of reason. If I have A, B, or C, and I choose D, choosing D is what the primary locus of choice is about. I could ask, "Why did you not pick A?" and the answer could be as simple as, "I forgot A was a choice", or "I liked D the most" and D is "I wanted to watch him die". If someone deliberates on an option, however briefly, then there is a reason they did not pick that option over the action they finally chose when the time came. But it doesn't have to be 'reasonable' or ethical, and it could be as simple as, "I liked D more, so by consequence, I didn't pick A".
What did you think of my example with the dog in the currents? I feel that gave the best practical example of what I've been trying to communicate. I also don't mean to go around and around on this, I feel I may have distracted from the original point of your OP.
Quoting Bob Ross
So in the case of the person in the crane, sipping water and staring at the sky is not in itself bad, but in itself normally good. You need water and moments of relaxation to be healthy. However, it is bad if that is the action they chose to do instead of easily saving the dog. The action in itself is not innately good or bad, it is good or bad based on the context of what one could choose.
The same goes for the reverse. It is innately bad according to company policy, to dip the crane in the river. In fact, the brief dip in the crane will require the crane to be inspected and re-oiled, costing the business profit that day. It would generally be considered negligence on the part of the operator. But in the instance of "A few dollars spent to save a dogs life," using the crane is the right choice. Again, it is not innately good or bad, it is good or bad based on the context of the choice.
Now back to your example. Lets work backwards. Harming someone is generally, in itself, bad. A person is going to blow themselves up, killing them and everyone around them in ten seconds. You have the skill and capability to stop them, but you'll have to harm them. There is not a soul in the world who would say it is impermissible for you to save those lives by harming that individual. Because it is not innately good or bad to harm a person, but based on the context of the choice.
Now lets twist the scenario. You have the skill and capability to stop them, but you decide instead to donate ten dollars to a charity box next to you. Donating to charity is not in itself bad, and many might say its in itself good. Yet in the context of the moment, it was very bad to donate to charity instead of stopping the suicide bomber. Once again, the context of the choice.
As we spoke earlier, bad is relative to the situation, as logically good is. If the person 'just stood there' that's not innately bad or good, but bad or good dependent to the situation on hand. Since the person had the capability to stop the suicide bomber but 'stood there' (Did something else/nothing to stop the bomber) they chose the wrong action. It is not literally 'doing nothing', it is choosing to stand there. And in the context of the moral dillema, the wrong action, "Or finalized choice by action".
Unfortunately, we arent making any progress in our discussion so far. The main issue is that your use of the concepts of to choose and to act are littered with incoherencies; and that is primarily what I would like you to see.
For example:
Quoting Philosophim
Do you see how these two statements are incoherent? If to choose is to decide to make an action (notwithstanding the circularity in the definition), then you cannot claim that one actively chose not to do something. There is not such thing as choosing not to do X in your view by definition.
EDIT:: Given your terms (and notwithstanding the circularity), when you say "I chose not to do X" that is equivalent to "I decided to perform the action of not doing X".
You need to overcome this problem before we can continue to all your examples.
I think the best way forward is to pause here, and ask you to try and define 'to choose again; because anything I point out in your response is going to hinge on your vague and incoherent use of the terms.
Again, to be clear on my side, an action is a volition of will; and to choose is to arrive at a conclusion from rational deliberation.
No worry! This has been fun to sort through and try to give exact definitions. Its made me realize we use 'choice' very loosely in common language, and the word itself needs some addendums if we wish to narrow it to specific situations.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think the problem is that 'choice' can have two meanings. "Choice" as in 'intent to act' and "choice" as in 'how I acted'. My hunch is this is where the confusion is coming from. So let me break out the difference in choice by separating the two into 'unactualized choice' and 'actualized choice'.
This also requires us to dive into the definition of 'action' a bit. An action can be measured by time. Every second of existence, you are making an action. You might be thinking, sitting, walking, laughing, etc. We can have different types of actions, such as autonomous like reflexes, and actions of agency which can be described as you noted, "a volition of will', or 'embodiment of being by intention'.
An unactualized choice is that which has not been met with an action yet. Lets say that I have five seconds to pull the lever to alter the outcome, and anytime after that pulling the lever will be too late. If I choose to pull the lever, yet I have not yet pulled it, that's an unactualized choice. Once I pull the lever, its an actualized choice. If my choice was to pull the lever in 5 seconds, but I pull it in six, my choice to pull it within 5 seconds was unactualized as well.
An actualized choice is one in which the action of the choice has been fulfilled. So if I pull the lever within five seconds, my choice was actualized. If I decide to not pull the lever in five seconds, and 6 seconds pass, my choice is also actualized.
The point is, that choices are all about intent of action, or actual action. If I chose not to pull the lever, my actual action at 6 seconds was something else. What my actualized choice is, is always in reference to my actualized action. Your actualized choice of "Choosing not to do X" in no way means, "You made no action at all". Your actionable choice was the action you took. "Not doing the action X" is only part of the story. What did you do instead?
Quoting Bob Ross
No, it is equivalent to, "I decided to perform an action that was not X". It in no way means, "I took no action at all".
I hope that clarifies it Bob. Let me know!
I appreciate the elaboration, and we are getting closer!
Ok, so heres the first problem: nowhere in your exposition of choice and to choose did you define it (in your response)! Again, what is a choice and what is the act of choosing in your view?
This is the closest you got to a definition, but instead of giving one noted two mutually exclusive definitions of the word; and I am not sure which one you mean to use for this discussion. Are you taking a pluralistic account of the concept?
This confusion is partly my fault: since we are having to get this technical about it, it is important to note that a choice and the act of choosing are separate things; and thusly deserve separate definitions. For me, a choice is the result of the act of rational deliberation [i.e., thinking] and the act of choosing is the act of rationally deliberating [i.e., thinking]. What do those mean under your view?
I am assuming you dont mean to say that the act of choosing nor a choice each have two equally cogent and incompatible definitions; so this actualized vs. unactualized distinction is just noting that when we choose to do something sometimes it doesnt actually happen. I dont have any problems with this; however, I must note that this in no way entails that all choices made are about actions.
Are you agreeing that an action is a volition of will? It seems like you are accepting my definition now, because this is the closest you got to defining an action in your response.
Why? That just begs the question. For now, I want to know how you define a choice, the act of choosing, and to act. You elaborated on them, without defining them clearly.
This is so patently false though! E.g., I can legitimately decide not to pick up my phone, and that is not itself the decision to respond to your response instead. Viz., one can decide to not perform an action, and this does not imply a decision to do something elseeven if one has to perform actions for the rest of their life continuously.
Likewise, I can act without choosing, which you seem to agree with me on that, and this implies that I can choose to not act and then proceed to act without choosingwhich refutes your position here.
There is a past, present, and future tense to choice. I'm making a choice, I've made my choice, I've completed my choice. A choice can only be made when there are options of action in a moral set of options. So when discussing choice, we have to think about whether we are using the past, present, or future tense. In all cases, a choice is only realized through action when faced with a series of actionable options, at least in the moral sense.
I have been wondering if there are choices that do not require actions. and perhaps there are in the non-moral sense. For example, "What's your favorite color?" But when discussing moral choices, we are discussing actions as a moral choice is about what you will do in a particular set of possible outcomes.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is my thinking as well. What you are describing is the present and future. "Choosing" is the present, and "choice" is either future or past. Future if you have yet to act on it, and past if you have.
Quoting Bob Ross
This last part of the sentence did get me thinking if there were choices that didn't require actions. And perhaps there are, but I did not see this in a moral sense. Trying to go along your line of thinking, there is the idea of the armchair philosopher who creates a scenario in their head and says, "This is what I would choose if the scenario presented itself." But again, this requires an action. Sometimes when the reality of the situation is present, what a person thinks they will choose is not the same as what they actually choose. And what they actually choose is how they act in the situation.
In a moral situation, it seems to always come down to actions as we talk about the results. And results are dependent on how the person acted in the situation. I can say, I chose not to pull the lever, but I did anyway," as a form of speech. But if you had free agency, you may have wanted to choose to not pull the lever, but when the time came, you did choose to pull the lever. Can you think of any moral examples of choice that don't inevitably come down to action?
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, I never rejected your definition of action, I did add a little to it though. An action of will would be an action of agency. An autonomous action would not involve one's will, like a reflex or natural breathing.
Quoting Bob Ross
Because a choice that isn't acted on in a moral sense isn't really what you chose. If I say, "I'm going to walk to the park today," then walk to the store, what did I really choose? Choosing doesn't require an action yet. A choice that has not had an action expect that choice to be actualized eventually. And a choice that has been actualized is one that has been acted on.
Quoting Bob Ross
I didn't quite get this example.
I have a choice, I can either pick up the phone, or not pick up the phone. But if I don't pick up the phone, what am I doing instead? Whatever I am doing is what I chose to do instead of pick up the phone. This is if the choice is in the past tense, or actualized by action.
Quoting Bob Ross
How? If you're not doing X, and you're doing something else instead, aren't you doing an action? And isn't a fully realized choice how you act?
Alright Bob! I hope that made things more clear. What might help me to see what your seeing as well, is if you can come up with examples of choices that don't require actions, and then see if we can apply them in moral situations. As I noted, I tried to think of something, but the most I could come up with was an opinion, or maybe a statement of intent that a person ended up not going through with at the moment of action. The problem with the latter is of course, the real choice is what a person did, despite what they thought they would do. Anyway, let me know what you think as usual.
Since you continue to fail to give an internally coherent definition of the vital concepts at play (e.g., to act, to choose, a choice, etc.), and with all due respect, I am forced to assume you dont have any; and so I am going to proceed with my definitions for my response here. Please let me know, at any time, what your definitions are if you can think of them; and if it is the case that you dont have any because, perhaps, you havent had to dive this deep into those concepts then no worries! Ive been there too!
The good news is that you now seem to recognize that not all choices are about actions; but the bad news is you think all morally relevant choices are about actions. Before we get into that, I need to point out a couple slightly irrelevant issues with your response:
You cannot accept that an action is a volition of will and then say not all actions involve willingthats patently incoherent; so, no, you technically are not accepting my definition. This is why I wanted to you to define an action, because you are importing a definition which as of now remains utterly concealed and notional. For now, I am assuming that an action is a volition of will and, thusly, that an autonomous action, by virtue of being an action, does involve willing.
If a choice is the result of the act of rational deliberation [i.e., thinking] and you agree with me (by saying this is my thinking as well), then you would have to agree that:
1. Not all actions involve choices.
2. Not all voluntary actions involve choices.
I think we can agree on this now that you agree with my definitions.
Ok, on to the substance of the conversation: why would one think that not all morally relevant choices are about actions?
First, we have to understand what a morally relevant choice is. Now, to avoid begging the question, I would like to point out that what makes the choice morally relevant is that it is about what is permissible, impermissible, omissible, or obligatory as those concepts relate to goodness and badnessirregardless if you would leave out inaction from consideration with respect to choices.
Now, if we give an example of any of those moral modes of thought, then we can evidently see that it can pertain to inaction. E.g., it is permissible, sometimes, to not do something. This entails that morally relevant choices can be about inactione.g., to say it is permissible to not do X is to the say that one can choose to not do X [if they so choose].
This immediately invalidates your position.
You are failing to analyze the given choice per se: we are currently asking if a given choice can be about, and only about, not doing something. What you are noting is, at best, after making that choice another choice may be committed to do something instead of what was chosen not to be done. E.g., if I choose to not eat ice cream and go for a walk instead, I have chosen (1) to not eat ice cream and chosen (2) to go for a walk. The reasons for each decision may be interrelated, but they are separate decisions.
This is why I think you are wanting an example of a morally relevant choice that results in inaction and are failing to find one, because in all my examples you are conflating the analysis of the given choice qua itself with qua all choices related to it.
The most obvious example I have is choosing to not get up from ones chair and continue doing whatever they were already doing. What you are going note is that whatever I am continuing to do is itself an action; and you would be right. However, (1) my choice to not get up is a choice solely about inaction, (2) my choice to keep doing what I am doing is a separate choice (albeit related), and (3) the choice to continue doing something is about continuing to act and does not introduce a new action into the mix.
If you can try to segregate the choices being made instead of evaluating them on the final, chronological action being taken; then I think you will be able to see what I am saying.
It would be helpful if you pointed out how its incoherent as I'm not seeing it. But its ok to move on.
Quoting Bob Ross
I honestly have no issue in separating the two concepts if you have a term that properly covers 'autonomous' actions. "When I entered the cave, I sneezed," describes to me what people would call an action. Its one they couldn't help, a reflex that was outside of their autonomy, or choice. What are you calling an involuntary sneeze then?
Quoting Bob Ross
If an action is a volition of will, then how can it not be a choice? What you will to happen is what you choose to happen no?
I don't see how its possible to make an action and say, "I didn't choose to do it", if you voluntarily did it. If we don't voluntarily do something we say, "We had no choice". If we voluntarily commit to something we say, "This is what I chose to do." How do you reconcile this with the way the words are most commonly used in language?
Quoting Bob Ross
Except what do the terms of permissibility mean? "They mean what you should, and should not act on". If something is obligatory, it means I should act in accordance to that obligation. If its "You are obliged to save that man," and you do nothing but say, "I choose to say the man", you did not fulfill your obligation. As the old saying goes, "Talk is cheap." :)
Quoting Bob Ross
That would literally mean its permissible to cease to exist, and nothing more. Again, you're taking a figure of speech, "I did nothing", and thinking that means you actually did nothing. No, you did something. Give me an example in which you did absolutely no actions.
Quoting Bob Ross
I feel I've analyzed it pretty in depth at this point. You say its incoherent, but you haven't really pointed out why based on what I've stated so far. It would help if you went back through and showed why its incoherent instead of just claiming it is. I feel the point is straight forward. If you choose not to do one thing, you are choosing to do something else. How is that wrong? Show me an instance in which a person chooses not to do X, and at the moment in which they don't do X, they are not doing anything else.
Quoting Bob Ross
Of course they are separate decisions. But at the end of the day the choice is only realized by action. There is always a relation between what you acted on, and what you did not. Thus your actionable choice has something that you acted on, and something that you didn't. It is impossible to have what you didn't do, without what you did instead. I can claim I'm going to go eat ice cream, but if I go for a walk, I did not commit to my former choice, but instead chose to go for a walk.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't understand what this means, can you elaborate more?
Quoting Bob Ross
That's all I'm saying. If you understand this, you understand my position.
Quoting Bob Ross
1. It is solely about inaction on that one particular option. It does not entail that you did not act on another option.
2. No argument. But my point if you say, "I did not get up", when I ask what you chose to do instead you say, "Lay in the chair".
3. Whether the action is new or not doesn't seem to have relevance. We're just taking your choices: Stand up, lay in the chair. You choose to lay in the chair. It doesn't matter what your choice was one second ago, an hour ago, or a year ago. We're just talking about you having a choice to make within a time frame, then acting on that choice. If you say you were going to do something, then act on it, that's the choice you made upon the actions completion. If you say were going to do something, then did something else at the moment of action, if voluntary, that action is what you ultimately chose to do.
And again, your reason for laying down could have been, "Because I didn't want to get up." That's fine. Your action was still to lay in the chair.
Like I said before, you havent defined them clearly; and your attempts I outlined before:
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
Under my definitions, sneezing upon entering a cave might constitute a voluntary act (although it would perhaps be a stretch); because it is a volition of will insofar as my body wills to sneeze as a reaction. In my view, the knee-jerk reaction to the doctor hitting your knee (to test its reflexes) is a voluntary act; but not an act of choice.
Remember, voluntariness is about what is in accordance with ones will; and choosing is about what is in accordance with the conclusions of rational deliberation.
Whether or not sneezing upon entering a cave is voluntary or not is going to hinge, for me, on if one can connect it to the will of the organism which sneezed. Irregardless, an involuntary act would be like sneezing because ones brain has a huge tumor in it that is causing the sneeze.
What you are calling an autonomous action is for me an action which is not a choice. Theres not second concept at play here for me: thats the issue with your concepts. You agreed with my definition and then turned around and implicitly denied it.
Willing is not always a product of thought; and thusly is not always a product of rational deliberation. So not all acts are choices, but all acts are willed. E.g., punching someone out of pure rage can happen very well without any thinking involved, and this is an action but not a choiceand likewise the action is (most likely) voluntary because it was willed in accordance with ones will. It is important to note that not everything which is willed is in correspondence with ones wille.g., eating ice cream because someone is threatening to kill you otherwise.
That is because you still havent defined the concepts! What is voluntariness under your view? What is an action?
For me, I have been very clear; and it follows from my definitions that an action can be voluntary without being a choice (since an action can be in correspondence with ones will without being a product of rational deliberation [i.e., thinking]).
Common language is full of vague, notional, incoherent, and irreconcilable uses of terms: I am not particularly interested in trying to fit my schema to match 1:1 the common usages; however, I am interested in giving a refined schema which can provide clarity with respect to their common usages. E.g., people say I think < > interchangeable with I feel < > when these are clearly different concepts, and I am not interested in reconciling them.
Permissibility is the mode of moral thought whereof one can do an act but doesnt have to. What you just described is impermissibility or obligatoriness.
Send me the links to where you defined the following clearly: an action, to act, a choice, to choose, and voluntariness. You havent.
The problem is that you are not understanding that a choice can be made about something without it also itself being made about something else. I have pointed out that one can choose to do nothing, and you keep pointing out that after making that choice they then separately choose to do something else. Plainly and simply put: one can reach a conclusion with rational thought which has absolutely no reference to performing an action and complete reference to not performing an action.
Heres exactly that issue:
If you agree that they are separate decisions, then you agree that they are separate choices being made! If you agree that they are separate choices being made, then the choice to not do it is itself a choice and solely about inaction: thats the only point I have been making. Your view only works if you deny that they are separate choices; because you have defined a decision in such a manner as to exclude the possibility of a choice being made which refers solely to an inaction.
Which doesnt demonstrate your original point, which was that choosing cannot be about inactions. If you agree with me on this now, then you can now understand why inactions can be evaluated independently of any subsequent actions one takesviz., it is possible for me to say that an inaction is evaluated differently than an action.
Remember, my original point was that, all else being equal, one should let themselves continue to starve because the only action they can take is to steal. You cannot appreciate this if you keep denying that one can let something bad happen (which implies it was a result of inaction that is to blame for the bad thing happening).
Letting yourself starve is a crime against yourself. You wouldn't let a dog starve, how could it be right to let yourself starve?
So is your heart beating an act of will then? Surely you see the clear difference that I'm noting between acts of will and autonomous acts correct? My definition of autonomous acts doesn't contrast with your idea of acts of volition, I'm just noticing that some actions can be outside of our volition through reflex or automatic responses that we don't really choose.
Quoting Bob Ross
If it was voluntary, it wouldn't be an unconscious reflex. Its very strange that you think an unconscious reflex is an action of will. Most would say will is a conscious effort. And I agree, an involuntary reflex is not a choice.
Quoting Bob Ross
Right, I don't think my definitions contradict your points. I'm only adding extra points to them to handle exceptions like involuntary reflexes. If you're saying they're an act of will...I don't know what to tell you. The medical community notes that reflex reactions are things that are unconscious actions.
https://byjus.com/biology/nervous-system-coordination/#:~:text=Reflex%20action%20or%20reflex%20is,when%20exposed%20to%20bright%20light.
"Reflex action or reflex is an involuntary action in response to a stimulus. This is a spontaneous action without thinking. For example, we adjust our eyes when exposed to bright light."
Quoting Bob Ross
Its just a nervous system response built up over centuries of evolution. No tumor. :)
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I don't think you understood my points at all if you think that. I've clearly stated a few times now I'm just adding onto what you've put forward. I agree that an autonomous action is not a choice. Its outside of one's will. A choice which is acted on is a volition of will. I've never contradicted that.
Quoting Bob Ross
An act of volition. An involuntary action like a reflex is not an act of volition.
Quoting Bob Ross
How? A reflex? Science has already noted reflexes are involuntary. Give me another example.
Quoting Bob Ross
Right, but this didn't answer my question. How does your refined schema provide clarity with respect to their common usages when what your saying contrasts common usages?
Quoting Bob Ross
If I have not been clear, I'll put them in definition format:
Action - Noun. A bodily state at any tick of time. This can be an act of volition, or an autonomous act.
Act of volition - Noun. An act based on will/consciousness/intention/agency.
Autonomous act - Noun. An unconscious act. One's will is not behind this. An autonomous reflex is an example.
To act - Verb. The act of undertaking an action at any tick of time.
A choice - Noun. A decision that when given a set of options to act on, one or more are chosen. Choices have a reason. They can be emotional, rational, but are made with agency. Reasons can be as simple as, "I didn't like the other choices", to complex as a highly refined argument. "Choice" can be defined in terms of the past, present, and future.
Past choice: A moment in time prior to now in which a decision was made to take an action at x time. X time may, or may not have passed. If X time has passed, and the action was completed at X, then the choice was fulfilled. If X time has passed, and the action was not completed at X, then that past choice was unfulfilled. A past choice is a promise of intent, but it is a promise that does not have to be kept.
Present choice: The option one has decided to act at the moment. An autonomous action is not a choice.
Future choice: A declaration of intention of how one will act at X seconds. A promise does not need to be fulfilled, and a choice can change up until the point of X seconds.
Voluntary - The choice and/or action are made with agency.
Quoting Bob Ross
By 'terms of permissibility' that was meant to include all variations such as impermissibility. What is deemed as permissible can be due to logic, limitations, or societal allowances. You are either logically, by limitation, or socially obligated to not do what is impermissible, and only do what is permissible. You should only act in ways that are permissible, you should not act in ways that are not permissible.
Quoting Bob Ross
I did say earlier that one could possibly make a choice in reference to an opinion. "I choose that my favorite color is blue." for example. But we're not talking about opinions in the case of moral decisions. Because moral decisions are about actions. You even note in your example, "Choose to do nothing". "Doing" is the an act. As I've noted many times, this is not clear language, but slang. What are you doing today. "Just hanging". You're not actually hanging from something like a tree. Slang is always an indirect implication, and the words should not be taken literally.
You cannot 'choose to do nothing' in an exact sense, as whatever action you are doing at time X, is if you did no action of any kind. You would be dead. Just like I wasn't literally hanging at time X, I'm not literally 'doing nothing' at time X. As I've noted before, the slang is shorthand for, "Out of a selection of choices, A, B, and C, I chose to an option that did not fit any of those options at X time. This can be as simple as standing there, looking to the left, or pondering what you'll have for dinner when the given options were, Did you choose to "Walk, jog, or run?" "I chose to do nothing." Does that mean you ceased to exist at time X? No, it just means you didn't act from that selection of choices, but you did act in some other way.
The full context of the above to be clear:
Quoting Philosophim
Please address the full context. As I've mentioned several times, you may logically list what you didn't act on as part of a choice at X time, but that doesn't mean you didn't act at X time.
Quoting Bob Ross
At what point in that decision was no action made? Laying down in the chair at X seconds is what you chose to do. Is lying there not an action? Is that not a choice?
Quoting Bob Ross
I have never stated that you cannot choose to let something bad happen. I have only been stating, "You always take an action, you cannot avoid it." Meaning you choose to starve or steal. What you seem to be implying is like if I said, "I'm currently stealing, but my only choice is to starve. So I don't make a choice and continue stealing." So again, as you noted there are relative evils. Which is more evil, to starve or to steal?
The circumstances can inform us of how to act, but they never dictate whether an action is right, wrong, or neutral. If stealing is wrong, then one should not steal: period.
If we want to get very technical, 'stealing' isn't a very clear act; as the government takes people's earned wealth all the time without their consent and it is not considered stealing (e.g., taxation). A worthy question to ask is: "what is stealing, exactly?". Stealing, to me, is actually, technically, a neutral act; because taking someone's private property isn't wrong in-itself--as is clear with taxation. I think a lot of laws are built around pragmatically and generally instilling justice; and so a lot of those laws are themselves circumstantial.
In the case that an act is neutral, then whether or not someone should be doing it is determined by the effect which they intend to bring about, and any side effects which will also reasonably be brought about.
It is also worth exploring whether it is permissible for a person who has the means and wealth to feed a starving person to choose not to; but this would be besides the point I made.
However, I mentioned none of this to Philosophim because I am trying to get them to analyze actions in-themselves, and assuming stealing is wrong per se is an easy example for demonstrative purposes.
I thought we made progress, but now that I have gotten you to try to define the concepts it is clear to me that you are still not agreeing on even the parts that you have agreed to before; so I am going to focus on addressing your definitions for now (so that we dont talk in circles here).
This is a circular definition: you defined an action as an act of volition.
Like I stated before, this would include what is clearly not an actione.g., lying perfectly still in a coma. As bodily states are not always volitions of will.
You are lumping a lot of distinct concepts together there: when people use the term conscious, they are usually referring to the ego or, in other words, self-consciousness. Thats why most people still associate the id with subconsciousness.
Willing is not tied to conscious acts in the sense of actions which the ego takes responsibility for. Willing is a faculty of imposition of a disposition determined by an agent; and there are degrees to willinge.g., to take your example, the heart beating is still, as far as I remember, an act willed by the brain and, so, it is voluntary but that does not mean that it was willed equivocally to when your brain decides to eat ice cream.
I see what you are going for; but, again, unconscious acts are obviously willed. E.g., sleep walking. You are going to have a hard time explaining why sleep walking isnt an action willed by the brain but yet is an unconscious act.
This is circular: to act cannot be defined in terms of the act of < >. This definition needs to be thrown out.
Why are you separating their definitions based off of time? A choice is a choice. Once you define what a choice is, then you can easily determine its past, present, and future tense. You dont start out without a definition and start defining the tenses separately.
Let me try, nevertheless, to dissect them anyways:
All of these are circular! A decision is a choice! I am throwing out these definitions: please provide a new one that isnt circular. You did not get any closer to exposing what you mean by making a choice here nor what a choice is: you just substituted the word for a synonym.
The only one that isnt circular is this one:
Ok, so a declaration of intention to act (in the future) is a future choice. So this would mean that a choice is an intention to actno? Are you defining a choice as an intention to act?
Again, we have agreed now that it would be patently false to define a choice as about actions; so this definition of future choices and the extrapolated definition of a choice are both patently false. Youve already agreed with me that choices can be about things which arent actions nor inactions (e.g., picking a favorite color).
Do you see how all over the place your definitions are? How they inchohere with all the progress weve made at getting you to see that choices arent just about actions?
Whats agency? We need to try to stick to the same terms so we can find common ground. This definition seems oddly close to mine (of an action in correspondence with ones will) but theres slight differences that I dont know how to parsee.g., splitting up a choice and an action in this definition implies that some choices are not actions (which you denied above in your definition of a choice) and that some of those can be made without agency (which makes no sense: how does one make a choice without thinking about it?--or do you just mean thinking about it but with external coercion involved?).
Likewise it is wrong to injure yourself.
Oh, I need to amend that. It would be better as "A bodily state of a living being..." I described an action as above, then defined what an act was. An act is the verbal enactment of an action. An act can be of two types, one of volition, and an involuntary act. If you intend your bodily state to be A at time X, that's an act of volition. If you don't, like an autonomous reflex, then its not an act of volition. So if I act on the lever to pull it, I'm using my hands to exert force on the lever with the intent to move it.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hopefully my adendum of "a living being' helps clarify this. Being in a coma is an autonomous action, not an act of will. You are still alive. I (don't think) I'm denying your note that we have acts of volition, I'm just noting that some of our acts are against what we will. I'm not understanding why this is controversial, as it is a common understanding in science that the body will act in ways apart from our conscious will.
What I don't understand how is how purposefully lying down is not an action of volition under both yours and my definition. If lying down is not an act of volition, then are you saying you were forced to lie down? That you had no decision or choice to lie down at X seconds? That your will was not involved?
I am trying to understand your viewpoint, so let me ask a few questions to help me. Do you believe that an action is only made if you alter the state you are in from a previous moment of time? You keep implying that lying down is not an action, because you already chose to lie down previously, but prior to the new considerations in front of you. So five seconds later, if I have a choice to get up instead of lying down, by default lying down isn't an action because I've already been doing it?
The problem is we can reverse this. So I could be pulling the lever and it isn't budging. Two seconds later I get a choice that I can release the lever. But if we are to extend logically your implications on an action, because I've been pulling the lever, continuing to pull the lever isn't an action, while releasing it would be. So in your case if I continued to pull the lever, it wouldn't be an act of volition because I had been, and when faced with the new choice I would continue to 'do nothing instead'.
The division between conscious and unconscious actions is a fairly common understanding in science, and if you are going to deny that it exists that demands high justification. So far I have not seen any justification we cannot have actions that do not involve our volition besides an insistence we cannot.
Is it because we have a different understanding of volition?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/volition
1. the power of choosing or determining : will
2 an act of making a choice or decision
also : a choice or decision made
What do you mean by volition when you use it?
Quoting Bob Ross
In the context of what I've written you would need to be conscious to have volition right? To be clear, I'm only referring to 'conscious' in reference to unconscious. We do not need to go into Freud. :) We're talking about choice as a rational process right? You need to be conscious, aware, and will to go through with them. In other words, a sleep walking person who pulled the lever would in no way be choosing to pull the lever. That action is outside of their conscious control.
Quoting Bob Ross
I have never heard the phrase, "I willed to sleepwalk". Bob, can you clarify your definition of will please? This is a contradiction to the general notion of will. Surely there is another word that captures what you want here without outright destroying the general notion of will as people understand it? I mean, there is no court of law that would say that an unconscious action was an act of will or consent. If I went up to a sleep walker and asked them, "Would you sign this form that gives all of your property and wealth away to me," and they did, this would not represent the will of the person.
Quoting Bob Ross
Ah, I should have proof read more carefully! :) Change it to "Undertaking an action at any tick of time". Its just the verb form of 'action'.
Quoting Bob Ross
Ah, I neglected to note that these are in reference to choice as a verb. We can use choice as a noun and choice as a verb. A choice, in a moral decision, is a promise of action. Undertaking a choice, or 'choosing' is the verbal description. Therefore with choice as a verb, we can consider it as prior to an action, a choice being fulfilled as an action, and a choice that was fulfilled as an action. After all, I can choose 10 seconds prior to when pulling the lever would make a difference that, I won't pull it. Then choose two seconds before that I will. Then at the moment of time to pull the lever, choose again not to.
Quoting Bob Ross
Ok, if you view a decision as synonymous with a choice, then lets use another word. First, I'm just showing I'm not crazy Choice - "an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities" Oxford Language But lets change it.
Intent - resolved or determined to do
A choice - Noun. An intent of action that when given a set of options to act on, one or more are chosen
Past choice: Verb. A moment in time prior to now in which an intent was made to take an action at x time
Present choice: Verb. The attempt to to fulfill one's intention by action.
Future choice: Verb. A declaration of intention of how one will act at X seconds. A promise does not need to be fulfilled, and a choice can change up until the point of X seconds.
Quoting Bob Ross
No we have not agreed to this at all. I have noted that there is the possibility of making a choice without regards to actions, proposing an opinion, but you have not followed up with me on that. One example I can see as a choice without an action is, "Out of the moral choices, which one do you like the most?" Again, an opinion, and not a declaration of action. But the focus of our discussion are about moral choices as actions. You are "Pulling, or not pulling the lever". Its not, "What do you think is better, "Pulling or not pulling the lever?" The prior is about the intent to act, the second is a conveyance of opinion.
So really what we're talking about are actionable choices, and unactionable choices in regards to moral decisions. You are claiming that 'Not pulling the lever' is an unactionable choice, but I have seen no good argument given for why this is. If you had said, "I think its better not to pull the lever", then yes, that's an unactionable choice. But if the moral decision is about how we will act at time X. It is an actionable choice, and we cannot 'not act' in the literal sense.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't see how they're all over the place. Amendments on some word use sure, but the intent of what I'm trying to convey I believe has been fairly consistent.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, that's fair. You can replace 'act of agency' with 'act of volition'. We just need to make sure we're on the same page of what you mean by 'volition'. Do my definitions above work, or did you have something else in mind? My intent is to hew as close to as possible to 'act of volition', but also noting that there can be acts that do not have volition, or autonomous actions.
Good discussion Bob! I look forward to your thoughts.
The main issue is that we will not be able to find common ground until we both provide clear schemas of the concepts; and, dare I say, your definitions are still patently (internally) incoherent with your view (as a whole).
For example:
Your usage of the concept of a choice and the act of choosing are incoherent with the definition you have provided; as you defined a choice as necessarily about an intent to act, while also claiming that it is not necessarily about an intent to act. Again, you must either (1) throw out your definition of a choice, or (2) deny that choices exist about non-actions (such as choices about favorite colors). You need to address this before we get into most of what you want to discuss, because the confusion lies in the fact that you arent using the concepts coherently.
Youve agreed with me that an action is a volition of will; but then incoherently claim that not all actions are volitions of will. This is why I think you need to deny my definition of an action to make your position work; otherwise, it is internally incoherent. You cant say that an autonomous action is a type of action which is not a volition of will and then say that actions are volitions of will.
It seems like, from your response, that we are not referring to the same thing by willing: for you, it seems to be linked to conscious activity (in the modern sense of that term) and this you seem to interchangeably use with intentionality. For me, willing is the exercised power of determining according to ones will; a will is the dispositions of an agent taken as a whole; an intention is an end an agent has for something; intending is acting: a volition of will [with an intentionwhich is implied given my definitions]; and by volition I mean willing (viz., a volition of will is the same as saying an instance of willing).
I completely agree that, in colloquial speech and legal speech, we would not say I willed to sleep walk; but this is because the terms are not robust, nor do they need to be, for their application. The average person has absolutely no robust account of what they mean by I nor what it means to will.
An agent is the whole of their physical constitution responsible for the processes of judging and production of dispositions which that being has; and this whole is taken to have a will, which is just the conglomerate of dispositions which that judging being has. In this sense, it is very clear that I willed to sleep walkin the event that one did sleep walkis (1) true (because the agent as a whole, comprised of the judging faculties of the brain, did will it), (2) an action (because it is an instance of willing), and (3) is not an instance of willing with the full capacities of that agent (taken as whole). #3 is what you noted and why legal speech doesnt think of willing this way: all the courts are interested in is what I call rationally deliberate action (i.e., what one chose to do).
Again, this distinction between voluntariness and choosing does not exist in colloquial speech: people say I chose to do X and I did X voluntarily interchangeably (because they have no robust analysis of these concepts).
For me, morality is concerned with right and wrong behavior that is chosen; and not merely actions which were voluntary.
The problem is that we cannot make headway on this if you cannot provide a clear and robust alternative schema to what I have put forth here; and so far I have demonstrated (above) that your definitions are still internally incoherent.
NO. Thats what I am trying to get you to see: if you are using a consciousness vs. unconsciousness schema (and omitting subconsciousness), then sleep walking is a conscious act. Normally sleep walking is a subconscious actif it were an unconscious act, then there would be no walking whatsoever (as someone would is unconscious, in the modern sense you are implying, has completely lost their ability to act whatsoever [e.g., a person knocked out cold from a punch]).
I think, at a minimum, you have to abandon your consciousness vs. unconsciousness distinction for one that includes subconsciousness. However, then you have the issue of explaining how subconscious acts arent actions...like sleep walking.
You might, then, sublate your view with something like: well, ok, I need the concept of subconsciousness to work; and sleep walking is a subconscious act; and so it is an act; but it is not an act that is willed because it wasnt done consciously. If that is so, then you are (1) denying my definition of an action (i.e., that an action is a volition of will) and (2) you need to provide a definition which coheres within your schema that enables you to make such a claim. You probably can do it, but then we will just to talking over each other: since all I need you to understand is that, given my definition of an action, subconscious activities are actionsunder your definition, they are called something else.
But, here again, you are being incoherent:
Again, you agreed with me that an action is a volition of will; said that unconscious actions exist (which are called autonomous actions); and said these sort of actions are not willed: this isnt coherent. You have to throw out one of these claims.
No. I would say that actions are about changing reality. It may be the case that I am forcing my body to stay how it is, contrary to what it would be doing otherwise, through willing. However, willing something to be the same is the act of stopping something from doing what it was going to do otherwise; and so this is a form of change insofar as it is a form of preventing change.
What I was noting with the lying down example, is that (1) lying down is an action, but (2) continuing to lie down (all else being equal) is not. It is a lack of willing that keeps me in that position on the floor. Now, you added into the mix that I have a disability where my body naturally jerks around without me choosing it, then I am acting by forcing those jerks to stop through hyper-focus. See what I mean?
Continuing to pull the lever is a part of the action which you are still performing; and one can make decisions while still acting; so, yes, me choosing to continue to perform action X does not create a new action Y.
Again, the reason you are failing to understand this is because you have no robust nor internally coherent account of what an action vs. a choice is; nor how acting simpliciter relates to acting qua choosing.
I genuinely think that once you come up with a robust schema, a lot of these issues will expose themselves to you; and you will be able to work out the crinkles without any problems.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob
Sure, I've been mentioning in the discussion that yes, choice cannot involve action in particular circumstances like an opinion. But in your case of moral discussion, we are talking about actions, not opinions. You're not saying, "I choose that its better not to pull the lever." I would have no debate over you making a choice such as that. But when you say, "I choose not to pull the lever" you are bringing this into the context of action, or what you 'do' vs 'not do'. And as I've mentioned several times, if the choice is an actionable one, some type of action happens at X time. It is unavoidable.
Basically, actionable choices vs inactionable choices. I can say, "My favorite color is blue", but in an actionable choice choose a shirt that is purple instead of blue. The action doesn't change my opinion. For my view, what you need to do is demonstrate how when faced with actionable choices, you can take no action at all.
Quoting Bob Ross
I will spell out clearly so there's no confusion. I agreed with you that one type of action is an act of volition. I already defined action, then the verb of 'to act', and noted there were two types of actions. An action of volition, and an autonomous action. I even linked a science article noting there are involuntary actions. When I say "autonomous", I mean involuntary if there was any confusion.
Surely Bob if there are voluntary actions, there are involuntary actions right? Otherwise the term 'voluntary' loses its meaning entirely.
Quoting Bob Ross
Ok, so "will" is a noun. And the noun is, the disposition of a person. By disposition do you mean:
a: prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination
b: temperamental makeup
c: the tendency of something to act in a certain manner under given circumstances
If so, you're just using the term disposition instead of will. And if that is the case, you and I agree. Both actions of agency and autonomy are part of a person's disposition. But a person's disposition is not will. They are not synonyms.
1: the desire, inclination, or choice of a person or group
2: the faculty of wishing, choosing, desiring, or intending
As you can see a will is a type of disposition. Just like being pliant, sad, unconscious, conscious, etc. I see no justification for changing the term 'will' to include all dispositions, when the term disposition will suffice.
Quoting Bob Ross
What does the "exercised power of determining" mean? Isn't that an action? Isn't the verb basically "Acting on one's will?" Considering that volition is "the faculty or power of using one's will" "Willing" would be 'an act of volition'' right?
Quoting Bob Ross
I agree with the first part, but intending can also mean something like, "I intend to mow the lawn today". Its usually a less forceful promise of future action, opposed to, "I will mow the lawn today". The former has the possibility that something might get in the way, while the second indicates that you forsee nothing getting in the way.
Quoting Bob Ross
Ok, we just need to clarify 'exercised power of determining' then. What does this mean to you?
Quoting Bob Ross
This is not an argument. We are not separate from people who do not study philosophy. Our language is not our own. Our job is to take the language that is commonly used, process it to be more accurate, clear up issues, etc. and put it back into the language of everyone else. What good are we otherwise if we construct our own language in an ivory tower? Anybody can do that and be 'right'. We have the challenge of working within a system to refine. Not that we can't create a new system or subsystem, but we need a good reason to.
Specifically, what is the problem with will as commonly defined? Is there some implicit use of will that its current definition ignores or is unaware of? You know I have no problem with amending words, but there must be a good reason to do so beyond the convenience of our own arguments. Pointing out where you feel the general use of will is lacking, and what your redefinition solves will help the discussion greatly.
Quoting Bob Ross
If the person is unconscious and sleeping, how is that at their full capacities? What example can you give of a person not at their full capacities, and why? If they aren't at their full capacities, but interacting with the world somehow, is that will or not will? Again, the word 'disposition' agrees with what you are noting, but will is a very particular type of disposition that entails awareness, consciousness, and agency.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is an excellent example of where we can come in as philosophers. Why do people use it interchangeably? In what sense is it logical to do so, and in what sense is it logically not to? Notice how I defined 'choice' in this case as "a choice of action". In which case we can see where the interchange makes sense. When people refer to choice as 'an action I took', they're referring to an actionable choice that took place in the past tense. The idea in philosophy is to define words that clarify reasons of use in a logical manner, not to outright contradict or redefine the word against the use that people use.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would like to think we're having a discussion here and trying to refine both of our terms. I agree, the point is to get to a set of terms that make sense and are logically consistent and useful. But Bob, you have to do that with your own terms as well. Your set has problems with ignoring involuntary actions, just as I was ignoring choices that do not require actions. You have a problem in using definitions that seem very at odds with common use, and have not given a good logical reason why. It doesn't mean you're wrong, but these things should be addressed better before they can be accepted as right.
Quoting Bob Ross
This seems irrelevant to the point about voluntary vs involuntary actions. I don't care what you want to label sleep walking as, except for the fact that no one would say a person sleep walking has the mental faculties to make choices of agency, rationality, or will. You need to give a good reason why we should change this outlook, and not simply because it fits your argument.
Quoting Bob Ross
If your body does something against your will then, isn't that an involuntary action? But according to your earlier definition of will as being synonymous with disposition, wouldn't this be a disposition and an act of will? What do you call your body doing an action without your will?
Quoting Bob Ross
You just noted exactly what I pointed out. "Choosing to continue to perform action x", or "Continuing to act" is a choice. Actions are performed over time. How I act at time X vs how I act at time Y. As you noted, "You can continue to make decisions while acting," Meaning as time ticks on, you can continue to do action X, or do another action. I'm not seeing in your point how I'm 'not acting' at all.
Quoting Bob Ross
Or perhaps your own set of definitions isn't internally consistent or robust? If it was Bob, why would I feel the need to introduce a counter? :) I'm not being contrary, just pointing out I see some problems and trying to point out what I see with possible fixes. That's why we chat right? Your criticisms have helped refine my words, but look to your own as well.
Finally, what is 'acting simpliciter'? Is that acting without thinking? Is that acting with will, or without will? Alright, this one has gone on far enough, let me know what you think Bob.
I am unsure how to progress the conversation: I keep trying to get you to define what a choice and an action simpliciter are; and you seemed to just accept that you dont have anyor dont need to provide them.
The difference between the problems with volunariness (which you brought up about my schema) and your definitions is that yours are internally incoherent whereas mine, even if I grant you your critiques, are. Ive cited many times how yours are incoherent, and you keep ignoring them.
To avoid repeating myself, I am only going to address the parts of your response that I think havent been touched on adequately yet.
I didnt define a will as a persons dispositionI defined it as the dispositions of an agent taken as a whole. My point is that a persons will is typically considered whatever they desire, are passionate about, believe, etc. taken as a whole. A will is not an instance of willingto will is not the same thing as a will. A will is about a persons character and personality as a whole, and to will is willing.
The reason I am avoiding saying willing is the act of volition is because that is suspiciously close to circular reasoningbut technically isnt. Acting and willing are identical to me, so saying the act of willing is like saying the willing of willing.
Willing is a power that one can exercise and it is the power of imposing ones will on reality.
Thats exactly what I have done. It is impossible to refine colloquial usages of words in such a way as to completely preserve themthat was my point.
The problem you are having is you keep using notions in your arguments and I am trying to get you to elevate them to concepts. Using colloquial understandings of terms, with no modifications, which are pluralistic most of the time, is not going to cut it in a formative analysis of a subject-matter. It never has, and it never will.
It is notional, vague, vacuous, pluralistic, need I go on? Look up the definition of any word, and you will find three or four irreconcilably different definitions for itall from reliable sources. Webster isnt about providing robust and refined definitions: they are trying to just give a super-basic exposition of the words that people use. None of the well-known dictionaries nor search engines provide good formative nor formal definitions of words.
Because their brain has shutdown most of their higher-level cognitive functionswouldnt you agree? A person who is sound asleep cannot converse with you, they cannot think, they are not aware of their surroundings, etc.
In sleep, a person only gets a phantom of these processes through dreaming.
Because they dont have a clear understanding of what they mean. People use terms to vaguely delineate meaning all the timethats basically the essence of colloquial speech.
Theres nothing illogical about it, and thats not saying much.
So you are taking a pluralist account of concepts, then? I want one definition of what you think a choice simpliciter isI dont care how other people use the term, nor if they use it in mutually exclusive and incoherent ways.
The critiques you made have nothing to do with an inconsistency nor internal incoherence with my schemayou are noting what is, for you, an external incoherence. For your schema, it is blatantly internally incoherent.
At best, if I grant your critique, my definitions allow for some actions which would intuitively be found to be involuntary as voluntary; whereas under your view, at best, a choice is and is not solely about actions.
Yes. Like I stated before, there are gray areas where I am not entirely sure how the biology underlying it works to commentbut I clearly outlined that there is such a thing as involuntary acts, and that they are actions which one commits which do not correspond with ones will. What you just asked stipulates exactly what I need in order to claim it is involuntary.
I call it an involuntary act; and it wouldnt make it to the brain to be processed through the lens of ones dispositions taken as a whole nor as a parte.g., a reflex to avoid pain. Certain aspects of the brain, in conjunction, are responsible for the fact that we are agents and subsequently have wills; and there are certainly lower-level actions which are performed which cant be meaningfully tied to those aspects [of the brain]. Where is the line drawn? I would say wherever the threshold is for the brain judging things. A reflex as primitive as removing ones hand upon touching a hot surface is probably not an act of judgment by the brain; and if it is, then it is not processed very thoroughly (such as going and eating ice cream because it taste good).
To be honest, this aspect does call for more investigation and is interesting; but it utterly irrelevant to the analysis of morality. So I see no need continue on this point.
Nope. Not at all. Ive tried explaining to you that you keep conflating choices and choosing with acts and acting; but you refuse to engage.
I mean simply actingnot acting in a morally relevant manner or what not just what it means to act in general.
Bob
I had to think for a while whether I would continue this conversation or not. I think its been clear that I've been engaging with you fairly and trying to define and redefine on every post so far. I don't mind if you don't want to use my definitions, but I think at this point if you still believe I'm not engaging with you in good faith, its best to stop. I think this has morphed from a fun conversation, and that's all this was meant to be. I have a lot of respect for you Bob, so I'll leave you to it. Good luck with the other discussions here, I'll see around in another thread.
Absolutely no worries, Philosophim! If you don't want to continue the conversation, then I respect that; and, as always, I look forward to our next one!
I don't believe that you are operating in bad faith, but you still have not defined what an action nor a choice simpliciter are; and it is impossible for us to progress the conversation if you cannot. Like I noted before, most of the issues that you want to discuss hinge on false and incoherent understandings of the concepts [of choice and action]; and this is why you are failing to understand how a choice can be about an inaction; and how that choice can be made without any action being committed because of that choice [about inaction].
At this point, without diving into your schema (which would require you to provide definitions), I cannot provide anything else useful to the conversation without it being a mere reiteration.
Another example would be if someone is holding a gun and you knock it out of their hand is this a form of 'force'? Is this not permitted in your premises?
Maybe you can think of another grey area where an unarmed person disarms someone without using 'force' on them directly. This would be 'self-defense' but just without 'force' used on the target directly.
I think the solution to this is to note that harming [something] is not a proper act, because it is an action includes the intentionality behind it; so act of self-defense is a specific action which can produce harm, but is permissible (and even sometimes obligatory) because it is good in-itself (being that the intention is to stop the attacker and NOT to kill or harm them).
To answer you question: yes, you could argue that self-defense which does not use harm is fine; but, then you have the problem that harming is being implicitly utilized as a proper action, and so you end up with the problems you noted (e.g., is hitting a gun out of their hand technically harm?).
Bob, your OP has given me an opportunity to at least somewhat process some PTSD. Thanks for that, I guess.
I spent a year protecting a new born baby and his mother from my (at least psychopath adjacent) coworker. This is a guy who thought it would be cool to be in the military and have it be legal for him to kill people. He talked at times about considering killing himself, and that if he did so he planned to take his wife and child with him. I think the guy really did consider me his best friend, while I saw myself more like ethically trapped into being his baby sitter. On that fateful day, when his wife was finally ready to take their son and go to a battered women's shelter I was prepared to punch him to a bloody pulp if need be, to protect his family from him,
As things turned out, I didn't feel the need to do what I was prepared to do, which was punch him as hard as I could, and inflict as much damage on him as I could repeatedly, for as long as I saw a need to.
Anyway, I realize that what I was in the middle of was not a purely self defense situation, but still I feel like saying, "Oh My Fucking God Bob, you have no idea what things getting real is like."
But I've got that off my chest now, so carry on. :yikes:
I completely understand wonderer1: this OP is meant to explore, intellectually, the underlying justification for self-defense. Of course, the intellectual pursuit of a coherent ethical theory is going to be much different from the reasoning one may find through experience.
I am essentially endeavoring on determining a fully coherent and plausible account of what is right and wrong; and so, although it may seem in practicality obvious that self-defense is permissible, I must be able to back that up intellectually in a way that coheres with my ethical theory.
Why? So you can feel particularly righteous?
The blinding hypocrisy in your last two posts here is a bit much.
[Edited]
Yeah, I was figuring you would be raging. I'm not really seeing much point in responding to that kind of stuff right now.
No, because Bob is constructing something important to them, an ethical theory. They are trying to get to the underlying logic of ethics, which is in my opinion, one of the last areas where true philosophy is still desperately needed. We do things all the time in our life that we cannot explain intellectually, as Bob noted. I've spoken with Bob many times, and he is not a self-righteous individual. They are passionate, curious, polite, and in my opinion, a true philosopher that is open to critique and changing their mind.
This is what philosophers endeavor to do. It is to construct a set of definitions and principles and come to a logical set of rules that help humanity understand and explain things beyond a surface level. When you encounter a person like Bob, who is a rare jewel on these forums, understand that this is their motivation. Bob can of course defend themself, but I can vouch for their reputation and intent on this forum.
I definitely do not pursue philosophy to feel righteous or a part of some sort of elite: I do it to uncover the truth, and to give myself (as well as hopefully others) a coherent and consistent account of reality.
The reason I find ethics so important, is because it is the basis of all action (and inaction)it is the crux for why we should be doing anything at all, and why we shouldnt being doing certain things. Without ethics, agency is like a boat that has set sail with no destinationwhat wind is favorable, then? None, and nihilism or radical individualism ensues.
I think it is a shame that ethics has been shoved under the rug in modern times; and I see a real threat of society (and the individual) collapsing if we do not correct this. I think the postmodern sense of ethics has the potential to do real damage to the individual; and I see it starting to happen already (e.g., active shooters, suicides, mental illness epidemics, the loss of respect for life, etc.). I, consequently, devote my free time to endeavoring to find a coherent, holistic ethical account of living; and I hope, one day, I can find the answers which will give us the key to reinstating ethics and living a actually (not hypothetically) good life as central to human culture, and I hope to (at least) give myself a full account of the living the good life.
I understand that life is a sticky place, and it can excite past emotions to try and think about topics, especially ethics, through the lens of the dull, rigid eye of reason; but it has to be done, if one is to have good reasons for what they permit themselves to do (and what not). Otherwise, we just have irrationality governing our actionsand this cannot be what ethics surmounts to.
Seems to me that 2. is a contradiction. If your act is for the sake of the good how can it be something bad?
If not, then intending something bad for the sake of the good cancels each other out and the act is neither bad nor good.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't know about that. If someone is trying to kill you, then does that not qualify as them doing something bad? In defending yourself are you not trying to prevent something bad from happening, or something worse as they may continue killing if they are not stopped?
What use is discussing what is good or bad and what is permissible if you're not willing to do something about it, ie stopping bad acts? Saying some act is bad doesn't stop people from engaging in bad acts.
:up: :kiss:
Just a reminder...
Quoting wonderer1
Quoting wonderer1
You did say that, but you obviously didn't follow through on your word. Remind yourself that not two hours later you showed yourself untrue by continuing your petty attack on philosophy:
Quoting wonderer1
I think it is an important question, but do not think it is for the purpose you suggest.
I will address this generally, whether or not it applies in this case:
I think the reason is the desire to arrive at clear answers where none are available. It is, however, in my opinion, misdirected. Ethics is not a matter of discovering or inventing equations or formulas or exceptionless rules that can be applied to whatever situation that arises. It is, as Plato and Aristotle knew, a matter of phronesis, of good judgment. It is pragmatic, involves compromises, and may not yield agreed upon or totally satisfactory results. The desire for wisdom becomes foolishness when we attempt to abstract from the confusion and messiness of life.
You leave out the other thing that Plato and Aristotle knew: thinking through ethical questions aids us in arriving at good judgment. No one has ever arrived at good judgment by avoiding all thought of ethics.
It should be obvious to anyone who understands what phronesis is that it involves thinking through ethical questions. Thinking through ethical questions, however, does not mean the attempt to find abstract, universalizable, one size fits all answers that can be appealed to in lieu of moral deliberation.
Moral principles are part of moral deliberation, and thinking to them and through them is part of ethics. Else, you fall into caricatures and strawmen if you think that inquiring into the rationale for justified self-defense is seeking "one-size-fits-all answers."
There is a difference between deliberating and rule following. There is a difference between an appeal to a moral principle and an ethics that has as its goal a system of principles. There are good reasons why many philosophers have abandoned rule based principles and returned to some form of virtue ethics.
The attempt to set up a comprehensive set of rule based principles must deal with exceptions and the need for further rules regarding exceptions. The set becomes more and more unwieldy as exceptions accrue and are compounded.
By analogy, there may be some useful principles to keep in mind when playing chess, but no set of rules that can tell you what to do in every situation. There are cases where following a genera rule will not lead to favorable results. Cases where the rule should not take precedence over other considerations, and no rule that covers when that is the case.
Quoting Leontiskos
It is not a matter of inquiring into the rationale for justified self-defense but, as the OP makes clear, of self-defense under the constriction of certain stipulated moral principles.
The one who is engaged in the attempt to formulate and justify rules is not engaged in mere rule-following. This false charge is common.
Quoting Fooloso4
No, it is an inquiry into whether a justification for self-defense is consistent with certain axioms.
Right! The attempt to formulate and justify rules is not based on rules. Or, in other words, moral deliberation must rest on something other than principles.
Quoting Leontiskos
These axioms are the moral principles stipulated in the OP. It is, then, not an inquiry into the justification of self-defense, but of self-defense under certain principles or axioms. Moral inquiry, however, is not limited by certain so called axioms. It includes the question of whether certain assumptions should be regarded as true. The three principles specified are not, as the OP calls them, "facts". They are assumptions that can and should be called into question.
When Bob Ross says:
Quoting Bob Ross
He gets it exactly backwards. The question is whether the stipulated claims can be salvaged in light of the need for self-defense. Calling "the principle of self-defense" into question too, is an indication of why moral deliberation based on principles that turn out to be questionable, as the three specified principles are, should be called into question.
And the one who actually reads the OP notices sentences like this one:
Quoting Bob Ross
The one with a predetermined interpretation has to ignore sentences like that one.
You completely miss what is at issue in my criticism. Moral deliberation is not about accepting or abandoning or rejecting stipulated principles. It not not about moral principles.
You claimed that:
Quoting Leontiskos
It any of those so called axioms is abandoned or rejected then they are not axiomatic. This supports the claim that moral deliberation is not axiomatic.
I wasn't suggesting, but I was asking Bob, because I was curious as to his purpose. Granted, it might have been better for me to stop at, "Why?"
Quoting Fooloso4
:100: :up:
In your OP, the second stipulated premise is completely dependent upon the perspective of the observer (specifically the labels of "bad" and "good"). Thus any "good" action I may choose to perform can produce a "bad" effect upon someone somewhere, perhaps in a tengential and/or marginally important or even measurable way or amount. In that case (practically all cases if one searches hard enough), then the action may be good from my perspective and perhaps to the direct recipient of my action, yet be bad to a third party, perhaps remote from the primary and secondary actors. Is the action therefore "good" if the third party suffered a "bad" outcome from it?
To my mind there are two practical options to address this situation. First, one could also stipulate that only the primary actor's perspective is used. In that case self defence would be "good" since from his perspective he is saving a life. The other option would be to acknowledge that all actions have good and bad qualities so the entire scheme needs to be adjusted to mean: "majority good" and "majority bad" (instead of good and bad). In that case self defense would be permissible because while partially "bad", it is majority "good".
The reason the latter isnt impermissible (and is allowed legally) in my mind is because of 3 reasons, most of which have to do with the likely hook of being able to actually apply these principles.
The reason the latter isnt impermissible (and is allowed legally) in my mind is because of 3 reasons, most of which have to do with the likely hook of being able to actually apply these principles.
Generally, a utilitarianism (negative or otherwise) would agree that self defense is necessary in these situations.
TL;DR: I agree with all but the second stipulation. Not that it is always good, but that if it actually has a good effect that outweighs the bad, then it is permissible. Obviously the question of weights complicates things a little, but it feels like the right way to go.
Has anyone yet mentioned that self-defense is nearly by definition a preventing of harm to ones own self?
A murderer wants to murder you. On what grounds is allowing the murderer (whose intentions are most always deemed unethical to begin with) his desire of harming your own being to be deemed anything but bad?
So, harm in some ultimate sense is a bad thing. OK. If so, then in the case of conflicts such as the one specified, harm to someone is inevitable: either to you, to your assailant, or to both. Given the murderers intention of murdering you, what then makes the harm to the murderers self of greater wrong than the harm to your own self? And, again, the murderer is unethical while you (I can only presume) are not unethical (at least no where near the same extent).
And is it not a good to choose the lesser of two wrongs whenever no other alternative is in any way available to you?
--------
The OPs question runs far deeper, though: what grants a given self more value, or worth, than some other self whenever any conflict between selves occurs?
More concretely exemplified via just a few examples: what make ones loved one more important than the stranger down the street as a self; what makes a human self more important than a dogs selfhood; what makes a virtuous persons self (say a Mother Teresa or a Gandhi) of more worth than the self of a person filled with actively occurring vice (say a Hitler or a Stalin); and so on and so forth.
This isnt an easy question to answer as far as I know, but it does determine what harm to what self is prioritized over the lack of harm to the other self - this in our judgements of right and wrong - whenever conflicts between selves occur. And I sincerely believe that only in this issues answer can be found an understanding of what justifies self-defense. Tricky issue, though.
BTW, leaning on issues of self-preservation doesn't to me seem to offer much help: the murderer is attempting to preserve their total selfhood (with mind and its desires included) in attempting to murder you on par to you attempting to preserve your own total selfhood (likewise with mind and one's own desires included) in attempting to not be murdered. To in any way prevent a self-identified murderer from being a murderer is then, technically at least, to harm the murderer's selfhood - such that it is no longer preserved via means antithetical to the self's desires. But, then, this gets into issues of what a selfhood is defined by: knowing oneself to be "the most financially wealthy person in the world", for example, requires the self-preservation of this identity/selfhood ... this in parallel to how a person who knows themselves to be domineering (with a murderer as one possible extreme example) requires the self-preservation of one's rank as a top dog that can thereby do anything they please, so to speak. All this is to say that a self is more than just a physical body, and that self-preservation thereby addresses more than a physical body's continuation of being. So the question of what a self is plays a major role in the issue of what self-defense is, of when it is virtuous, and of when it might not be (say, Hitler's actions in self-defense of his total being as a fascistic dictator.)
My OP presupposes moral realism; so whether not an action is good, bad, or neutral is stance-independently true. It does not matter semantic differences in what you or I may call 'good' or 'bad'.
The OP is not arguing that self-defense is impermissible: it is just exploring how a non-consequentalist who accepts the OP's stipulations would be able to justify it. I completely agree that self-defense is permissible; and I will update the OP with the solution.
Self-defense is usually defined in a way to include the defense of other innocents as well.
Did you read the OP? The OP is exploring what justification exists for self-defense's permissibility given certain stipulations.
I'm not familiar with such a (most especially "usual") definition. See for example self-defense as its defined by a global wiki.
What references do you have for the definition you present?
Quoting Bob Ross
(Just saw your update in the OP.)
I might have not been clear enough:
I accept all three stipulations, though their interpretations might (I dont yet know) somewhat differ between us. So I thereby endorse #3 in an ultimate sense of what is bad.
Yet my primary resolution to the issue (placing the issue of selfhood(s) and its comparative value aside) was expressed here, albeit in question form:
Quoting javra
In short, when the only available alternatives to one are all of differing degrees of wrongness, or of badness, then it is virtuous (and hence good) to choose that alternative which is the least wrong, or bad, among the available alternatives. This in contrast to choosing an alternative which is more or else most wrong, hence bad.
Choosing not to choose between the alternatives in this situation would also be, by my reckoning, a non-virtuous act - for, in so choosing not to choose, one then of one's own accord allows for the possibility of the more or else worst wrong to be actualized.
I deem this same reasoning to then likewise apply to abortions, to surgeries, etc.
Oh, I wasn't referring to the different subjective opinions on the "goodness" or "badness" of an action by various individuals, rather the reality that a single action which is (stipulated) objectively good for both the person performing the action and the person upon whom the action is performed can also be objectively bad for a third person whose bad effect may be downstream.
This is pretty stark consequentialism, is it not? Especially your final sentence?
Maybe I don't fully follow your quite terse reply - but in terms of all actions having their consequence ... sure, why not?
Is there any rational or ethical disagreement with what I've stated in the quote you provided?
For starters, I don't see how you can claim to accept all three stipulations and then argue for harm consequentialism. The stipulations logically entail the conclusion that harm cannot be done. You say you accept all three stipulations but then go on to say that harm can be done. It seems that if you want to hold to harm consequentialism then you will at least need to reject #2, no?
We then obviously hold rather different interpretations of #2:
Quoting Bob Ross
Is it a bad to choose - or else to intend the manifestation of - the lease bad from all alternatives that are available to oneself at the juncture of the given choice?
Irrespective of what your anticipated answer will be, I again deem the choosing of the least bad to be a good in an of itself, rather than a bad in and of itself. In so deeming, I then further deem the choice thus made to be the intentioning of something good - here in the sense of "best" - rather then the intentioning of something bad. The latter "intentioning of a bad" I strictly reserve for intentioning any alternative other than that which is least bad. Concrete examples are a dime a dozen. As one measly example: Ought I harm that farm animal by killing it as humanely as possible so as to eat and thereby live? Or ought I harm that farm animal by killing it in as inhumane way as possible so as to eat and thereby life? (Same could be said of plants by they way, lifeforms that they themselves are.) Or ought I harm no other living being so as to eat and thereby live and, in so not doing, basically commit suicide via starvation? These are all wrongs, but they vary in their degrees.
Feel free to comment on the last paragraph, of course, but please do provide an answer to the question I've asked.
Then you are directly denying #3.
Quoting javra
It is impermissible to choose harm on such a basis given the three stipulations. (1) and (2) form an exhaustive division: ends and means. According to (3) harm is bad, according to (1) what is bad cannot be done for its own sake, and according to (2) what is bad cannot be done for the sake of something else. The three stipulations logically entail pacifism. There is no way around this given that every act is either a means or an end. It is contradictory to accept the three stipulations without being committed to pacifism, and therefore you are contradicting yourself.
Edit: Here is a more formal version, which may help you see your contradiction:
1. It is morally impermissible to perform an action that is X.
2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something that is Xeven for the sake of something good.
3. Harming someone is X.
4. Therefore, pacifism is true.
(2 is strictly speaking superfluous, but I think Bob was going for the exhaustive division noted above.)
Nope, I uphold it. But then, once again, we're likely interpreting it in significantly different ways,
When would harm be an ultimate, absolute, pure, complete, etc. "good"? Oh, here presuming a lack of subjectivism ... wherein it can so be because some subjective being so declares it to be. I liken the likes of Hitler and Stalin to such beings.
To be more blunt about it: is it good to choose the least of all wrongs or is it bad to choose the least of all wrongs?
A simple and direct question that ought to hold a simple and direct answer.
I think what we can conclude from this is that self defense cannot be justified without accounting for intent.
This, to me, is less a problem with the principle of self defense and more another argument for why intent is crucial in any moral philosophy.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm not sure I buy this distinction. It seems to me you're trying to reintroduce intentionality through the back door here, by ascribing the intention to the "directional flow". But casual chains do not inherently have goals. The goal stems from the intention of actors. From a purely casual perspective, changing the lever in the trolley scenario causes harm to the one specific person. This harm did not previously exist as part of the causal chain.
In reply to this edit: Since you're being ultra-formal in reasoning, what pacifist (either directly or indirectly) causes no harm to other life in their persisting to live by consuming nutrients via food?* In the absence of such a pacifist, your reasoning (maybe in the interpretation of premises affirmed) can only be fallacious (... goodness intending though it might be) - for even the most stringent of pacifists will indeed by necessity engage in the harm of selfhood pertaining either to other living things or to their own life.
* This as per my previously given example:
Quoting javra
----------
I'd still appreciate answers to my two previous questions regarding your views, to be found here and here.
One one hand, for one example, here strictly addressing humans: Are those which some humans deem to be sub-human humans, such as slaves, on a par to the someones that are not slaves but slave owners? So, can a pacifist flagellate a slave and still be a genuine pacifist - this in respect to those who are someone on a par to themselves?
Else, can a pacifist engage in psychologically torturing another someone on ground that they in no way violently harm the other's physical being? Presuming not, what then about nagging (as one type of mind/brain fuc*ing) another someone; is this not a milder form of the same type of harm to the other that can be expressed via the concept of "psychological torture"? So, is a pacifist still a pacifist if they perpetually nag others about certain issues; say, maybe, such as about needing to be pacifists (which do no harm whatsoever) themselves?
This, again, to me gets into issues of what selfhood consists of. Which I find difficult. But, maybe unlike some others, I do maintain that lesser lifeforms are endowed with their own selfhood ... which they too defend as best they can and which can likewise be harmed.
This post being neither here nor there. It's been mentioned just in case the issue of harm were to be declared only pertinent to "someones" as this term is typically understood, such that harm could then only be validly claimed of persons, i.e. humans.
So then you think pacifism fails for two reasons: both because it is permissible to intentionally harm others, and because pacifism is impracticable. Either way you disagree with conclusion (4) and the stipulations that undergird it.
The question here is whether you contradict yourself in claiming to accept all three stipulations while simultaneously claiming that it is okay to intentionally harm others (or, put differently, whether the stipulations entail pacifism). As I have shown, the three stipulations do logically entail the conclusion
Now you want me to enter into a debate about whether one should choose the least of all wrongs. I am not a consequentialist, and because of this I do not think one should do what is wrong. I would counsel others to abstain from acting if the only possible actions are wrong. But I am not going to enter into this debate in full. Showing your contradiction was my aim.
As I've previously explained and illustrated via example, it is not contradictory to maintain the three stipulations of the OP - for intending the least of all wrongs when no other alternative is in any way available to you is a good, and not a bad. Maintaining the three stipulations can become contradictory when reinterpreted in the fashion you have. But, as I've previously expressed and exemplified, this is not how I myself interpret the OP's three stipulations.
Quoting Leontiskos
This, though, to me is incomprehensible, for it entails things such as the following: it is - this at the same time and in the same respect - always impermissible to both a) eat food and thereby harm other selves by requiring their death so as to sustain one's own life and b) harming one's own self via the self-murder (i.e., suicide) of starvation by not eating food. And this so far to me is a clear-cut case of contradiction irrespective of how it's interpreted.
Quoting Leontiskos
No. I was merely interested in your answer to the questions I've asked of you, and this repeatedly.
Quoting Leontiskos
Again: Is it right to choose the least of all wrongs when no other alternatives are available to you? If so, then so choosing the least of all wrongs is doing what is right - rather then doing what is wrong.
Quoting Leontiskos
I will not plead for you to give your honest answer to the simple question I've asked. And I'm interested in honest debates where both understand themselves and their views to be fallible - this rather than infallible. So, unless there will be further need to reply, I'll call it quits for my part.
At this point in the thread you have the burden of proof to show that the three stipulations are consistent with your claim that
Quoting javra
I've answered your question. Did you not see the answer?
Nope. Care to re-quote it?