The Monolaw Challenge
Monolaw Challenge
Mor'al\, a. [F., fr. It. moralis, fr. mos, moris, manner, custom, habit, way of life, conduct.] 1. Relating to duty or obligation; pertaining to those intentions and actions of which right and wrong, virtue and vice, are predicated, or to the rules by which such intentions and actions ought to be directed; relating to the practice, manners, or conduct of men AS SOCIAL BEINGS IN RELATION TO EACH OTHER, as respects right and wrong, so far as they are properly subject to rules.
Most here know that I have asserted my conclusion that the Monolaw is all that is sufficient to define/delineate what is morality. Behavior by an entity that violates the Monolaw can be regarded as immoral (not moral), and conversely behavior that complies with the Monolaw can be regarded as moral (not immoral).
Here are a few historic pronouncements of the Monolaw.
Deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt by. Do nothing to thy neighbor which thou wouldst not have him to thee hereafter.
Mahabharata (c. 800 BC)
That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self.
Dadistan-I dinik, Zend-Avesta (c. 700 BC)
Whatsoever thou wouldst that men should not do to thee, do not that to them. This is the whole law. The rest is only explanation.
Hillel Ha-Babli (c. 200 BC
This is my take on morality. When I am faced with a question that requires being tested for morality, I apply the Monolaw.
I am not satisfied to merely depend on my own evaluation as to the validity of this position based on my reflections to date. I believe that true wisdom is reflected in the continue examination of one's philosophies. Towards this end, I issue an outstanding challenge to the Monolaw.
The challenge is to suggest the real world scenario in which the Monolaw fails to adequately serve as the definition of morality. This means come up with a case, in which it would be commonly accepted that something is either not immoral and the Monolaw identifies it as immoral, or something is immoral and the Monolaw identifies it as not immoral. In all fairness to the Monolaw, the challenge must supply a replacement rule that succeeds where the Monolaw fails, without failing where the Monolaw is sound.
The objective of the case presented is to assist me in my efforts to properly understand morality, so to the extent that the case does or does not advance this goal, so shall the challenge ultimately be judged.
CAVEATS
The person in question, i.e., the one who's behavior is under consideration, must not be what would widely be regarded as a psychological aberrant. Obviously a deranged maniac, who thinks everyone he comes upon is a demon, is not going to apply The Monolaw successfully. What should be equally obvious, but maybe overlooked, is the fact that such a person is not going to apply any moral rule successfully. This goes for sadist, masochists, psychotics, and psychopaths. To best help me judge The Monolaw lets keep our case subjects to the 95 percentile of the human populous.
Mor'al\, a. [F., fr. It. moralis, fr. mos, moris, manner, custom, habit, way of life, conduct.] 1. Relating to duty or obligation; pertaining to those intentions and actions of which right and wrong, virtue and vice, are predicated, or to the rules by which such intentions and actions ought to be directed; relating to the practice, manners, or conduct of men AS SOCIAL BEINGS IN RELATION TO EACH OTHER, as respects right and wrong, so far as they are properly subject to rules.
Most here know that I have asserted my conclusion that the Monolaw is all that is sufficient to define/delineate what is morality. Behavior by an entity that violates the Monolaw can be regarded as immoral (not moral), and conversely behavior that complies with the Monolaw can be regarded as moral (not immoral).
Here are a few historic pronouncements of the Monolaw.
Deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt by. Do nothing to thy neighbor which thou wouldst not have him to thee hereafter.
Mahabharata (c. 800 BC)
That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self.
Dadistan-I dinik, Zend-Avesta (c. 700 BC)
Whatsoever thou wouldst that men should not do to thee, do not that to them. This is the whole law. The rest is only explanation.
Hillel Ha-Babli (c. 200 BC
This is my take on morality. When I am faced with a question that requires being tested for morality, I apply the Monolaw.
I am not satisfied to merely depend on my own evaluation as to the validity of this position based on my reflections to date. I believe that true wisdom is reflected in the continue examination of one's philosophies. Towards this end, I issue an outstanding challenge to the Monolaw.
The challenge is to suggest the real world scenario in which the Monolaw fails to adequately serve as the definition of morality. This means come up with a case, in which it would be commonly accepted that something is either not immoral and the Monolaw identifies it as immoral, or something is immoral and the Monolaw identifies it as not immoral. In all fairness to the Monolaw, the challenge must supply a replacement rule that succeeds where the Monolaw fails, without failing where the Monolaw is sound.
The objective of the case presented is to assist me in my efforts to properly understand morality, so to the extent that the case does or does not advance this goal, so shall the challenge ultimately be judged.
CAVEATS
The person in question, i.e., the one who's behavior is under consideration, must not be what would widely be regarded as a psychological aberrant. Obviously a deranged maniac, who thinks everyone he comes upon is a demon, is not going to apply The Monolaw successfully. What should be equally obvious, but maybe overlooked, is the fact that such a person is not going to apply any moral rule successfully. This goes for sadist, masochists, psychotics, and psychopaths. To best help me judge The Monolaw lets keep our case subjects to the 95 percentile of the human populous.
posted by Steve at 2:41 PM
44 Comments:
stephen,
I'd love to, but I don't have a way to contact you.
Steve
If everyone had the same understanding of morality then I guess there’d be one less thing of interest to talk about. (Speaking of talking, know that it’s my personal belief that internet exchanges are an abysmal means of communication. But I shall try to overcome the short comings of this mode of communication so that we might avail each other to our thoughts on this matter.)
I believe the idea of morality appeals to something supernatural because it says something is inherently right or wrong. That something is right or wrong independent of any purpose or intent.
"I'm going to say something straight out and try to then explain myself.
I do not believe in morality instead I believe in a principle of social co-operation originating from self interest.
The Monolaw does not preclude or impinge upon any principle of social co-operation. Believing in a principle of social co-operations originating from self interest does not keep one from believing in morality as defined by the Monolaw. I don’t see a conflict yet.
I believe the idea of morality appeals to something supernatural because it says something is inherently right or wrong. That something is right or wrong independent of any purpose or intent.
Granted, the Monolaw does say that doing something to another that you wouldn’t have done to yourself is inherently immoral, but this does not appeal to anything supernatural in doing this. The Monolaw does say that doing to another that which you wouldn’t have done to yourself is immoral independent of purpose or motive, but again, there is nothing supernatural in this statement.
This does not seem to make any sense to me. I can say that i don't want to be murdered so i will support systems that prevent murder but i cannot say murder is inherently wrong. There is no greater source that i can appeal to than my own desire not to be murdered to say murder is wrong.
O.K.. the term “inherently wrong” is your nomenclature, I am not using the term inherently wrong. As a rule I don’t employ the terms good and bad, nor right and wrong inherent or otherwise. What the Monolaw does say is that it would be immoral for you to be opposed to yourself being killed while reserving for yourself the right to kill.
If someone wished to be murdered there is no way that i can prevent them from murdering people other than to hold something they value more than being murdered to ransom.
Two things. First, such a hypothetical person is so aberrant as to be impervious to any definition of morality. Secondly, there is another way you could prevent them from murdering people other than your proposed ransom, you could incarcerate such a person isolating them from any potential victims.
There is nothing irrational about such a person. If they are clear in there mind and fully understand the consequences of being murdered then they are rational. We do not like to accept this person as rational for the very reason that they damage our comforting supernatural belief in morality.
Again, your hypothetical involving someone who wishes their own murder deals with an aberrant outlier that would defy most any rule of morality, but I shall comment nonetheless. If you truly believe that there is nothing irrational about a person who wishes to be murdered, then we probably lack the necessary commonality required to understand each other. I have no “comforting supernatural belief” in morality, so I reject your conjecture about why I reject anyone that desires murder to be rational. It has nothing to do with supernaturalism.
I put this challenge forward, use the same reasoning to both justify homosexuality as not being a mental illness and yet a desire to be murdered as being a mental illness. Are both these things not just preferences? It is not enough to say that well they shouldn't want to be murdered. We could use the same reasoning to say well people should just not want to be homosexuals.
Are you suggesting that the occurrence of homosexuality in humanity is about the same as the occurrence of people not opposed to murder or loss through murder? Come on, James, do you know the percentage of homosexuality in the general population, do you know how universal the undesirability of murder is? These two things are not even close. I see where you were trying to go with this, put its hardly a reasonable comparison.
And besides, homosexuality is more of a orientation than a preference. And if certainly nobody believes that not wanting to be killed is a mere preference.
Here is what i propose in the place of morality. The currency of honor. This is actually what morality is so we are not really replacing it. Honor is the commodity with which we trade or rather gamble in society. Honor is the measure of how much any individual can be trusted. Trust gains us the cooperation of others and makes us more able to get what we want. The more people trust us the more effort they will put into keeping us around. Trust buys us more than all the money in the world. Our honor buys us freedom where money and power makes us a slave. Freedom is the ability to be whoever we desire. Someone who trades their honor for power is stuck as someone who must always keep others afraid for fear is the only thing that keeps their enemies from falling upon them.
I’m confused. You say that you don’t believe in morality, O.K., but how can you not believe in morality and then in the same breath try to tell us what morality really is? A lot of what you say here about honor, I agree with, but I would suggest that it is in acting morally that we gain honor in others. So there is a connection between morality and honor, but I think you have the relationship reversed.
Often though we are forced to betray one persons trust to maintain the trust of another. This is where honor is traded. If i have Jews in my basement and Nazi's come to the door i may trade my honor to the Nazi's in return for buying the honor of the Jews because i believe the honor of the Jews to be more valuable.
Why is this so? What leads you to hold that Jew honor is more valuable than Nazi honor. And are you asserting that if Nazi honor happened to be of higher value then you would be moral in turning the Jews over to the Nazis?
I'll just finish with this. Ethics is the science of getting large groups of sentient entities to co-operate. It is not something that is good in and of itself. Ethics is the compromise that we come to when trying to balance a world full of conflicting desires into some kind of stability."
Ethics might be necessary to achieve co-operation, but ethics is not the science of co-operation. A system build upon fear of death might get people to co-operate completely devoid of any ethics. Really ethics is pretty much a synonym for morality.
Here is something else that i will add. I believe people have a desperate need for morality because they want to be able to garrantee peoples co-operation. This is an impossible goal as we can never be aware of all the factors that are effecting a person. The best we can do is show and explain to people that whatever the factors acting upon them they ultimately gain more from co-opertion than they don from acting against us. We must make people feel they can trust us with anything and that we will not judge them because of their preferences whatever they are. We must try to do whatever we can to help people reaslise their desires whatever they are in such a way as they do not interefer with the desires of others. With the advent of video games and virtual reality even the person who wants to be murdered may be able to fit into our sociaty wihtout being judged. The virtual world my be the key to removing ethical paradoxes all together but I still have to think more about that.
Now you’re talking about appeals to morality as a tool to achieve compliance. As in declaring the eating of pork immoral as a way to prevent people from getting sick from pork. Clearly this has nothing to do with the Monolaw’s position on morality.
I might start work on a document that will better explain my views on ethics and morality that may make them more understandable and perhaps more palatable.
I hope these responses/comments will help in that effort.
I believe trust, tolerance and compassion should be the bedrock of a sociaty of which we we all benifit.
No argument from me on this.
Also, I believe self interest is king and i can not begrudge annyone who does what they think is best for themselves it's just my job to convince them that what is best for themselves is also what is best for the people i care about and myself. If i can not do this then i really have no grounds to think their decision wrong if they act against the people i care about. I just don't want them to do it and will do everything in my power to stop them.
I am unclear how this conflicts with the Monolaw.
Hopefully what i have said won't cause a bad reaction but at this point this is the only thing that makes sence to me.
I'm interested in your responses
I hope they have been stated clearly.
James
Writing what I had to write,
Steve
I think your caveats pretty much destroy your whole challenge. Something that may be considered "psychologically aberrant" in one culture may be considered fairly normal in another. You would need to define "sane" first (and I doubt that 95% would qualify - if you define sane as "thought patterns that are rational, internally consistent and non-delusional" then I doubt 5% of the human population would qualify).
Personally, I agree with jrs - there is no such thing as morality, just ways of organizing society. Having "rules" is one tool used to organize a society. While "Do unto others..." is a fairly basic one, I think it's not the be all and end all. For example, imagine it's long ago and in a time of famine - should I let my children starve, or should I invade the neighboring village and take their food? I certainly do not want the neighboring village to attack me, nor would I expect them to help me (as then their children would starve). What would the Monolaw answer be to this dilemma?
Morality is a social construct; it was created by man because societies that act morally succeed and do better than those filled with people who act immorally.
Morality has no inherent value; it is subjective and self defined. There is no true reason to behave morally, except where doing so prevents negative consequences (pragmatism).
Blinding yourself to the "virtue" of morality is being a slave to social conditioning and the freeing one's mind from the shackles of morality is an important first step in becoming a 'free' thinker.
I suggest that the Monolaw is actually a rather selfish and narrow way to judge correct behaviour. If I treat you as I would want to be treated, I am in fact saying that your needs, preferences, desires, norms and prohibitions do not matter. Only what I like or dislike matters.
For instance, I am a vegetarian who also belongs to a faith that eschews pork. If I have a neighbor who feasts daily on pork ribs but hates vegetables, and she invites me to dinner, according to your law, she would be correct to serve me only pork. She is in fact treating me as she would like to be treated (giving me her favourite food), and not treating me as she would not like to be treated (since having vegetables would be distasteful to her.)
The same can be said for ways of communicating (people who prefer detailed explanations with examples versus those who prefer quick, to-the-point statements), living arrangements, workplace settings, learning methods...the list is endless.
Clearly, Monolaw fails miserably to address the reality that what I like and dislike may be far from what you like and dislike. Thus, as a law, it does NOT address 90% of human interactions successfully -- rather it fails on almost every front!
I think that the monolaw concept is a good starting place, but it wouldn't work to guide me in day to day living.
Instead I have found that I need to look at another person and treat them as they wish to be treated.
There are things that I may enjoy, that someone else would not. Or things that someone else might not like, that I would.
If I merrily went along just treating everyone as clones of myself, I would create a lot of unhappiness.
After all, not everyone likes dark chocolate, Star Trek and rampant silliness!
Dear YourChessCoach...
There are people who do not like dark chocolate, Star Trek and rampant silliness? WHY????????
(Curling up into a ball at the very thought!)
Seeker, it is hard to believe that people like that exist in this world. :-)
Good luck with your upcoming nuptials!
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