I never said that you did.
Unsubstantiated assertion.
Not at all. But on a very basic level, they cannot contradict the physical laws of reality and their nature as a human being. You can tell yourself that you don’t want food, but your body will very quickly prove you wrong.
My example was of a guy trying to starve himself. If he dies, he succeeds. Of course, you might say that people like that are not relevant. But that would not alter the epistemology or whatever of it.
If his end is to die, then yes, he succeeds. If he claims to not have the end of “food,” he is wrong. No amount of self-convincing or desire to die can alter the sensations of one’s body. In this case, pain is the indicator that he very much does want food at a very basic level.
I know, but (from my understanding) Mises conclusion is the opposite, and Mises has been a big influence on many subjective ethicists here.
No way. He was just often ambiguous about whether he was talking about ends or ultimate ends.
But I am talking about ultimate ends. I thought he explicitly said that ultimate ends are always subjective and must just be taken as givens.
Agreed. I didn’t mean for it to be read as a shared end. But if we can say, for instance, that every individual person has the objective end of “not going hungry,” and capitalism is objectively more effective at preventing hunger for each individual (which is a simplification, of course), then I assert that capitalism can be objectively good.
You may conclude that it is good from the perspective of all of the people, sure.
It is good from the nature of ourselves as human beings. It can never be evil for anyone unless their premises are inconsistent. By way of comparison, the physical laws of our universe are objective, yet our interpretation of them can still be subjective. If I say that gravity doesn’t exist, this doesn’t alter the fact that it very much does.
Even if each person in the world did have the end of himself not going hungry (which is not actually true, given hunger strikes), that would not qualify the end as objective.
See my response to I. Ryan above. One can try to deny the fact that one’s body (and, by extension, oneself as a being) wants food, but pain is the indicator that one is wrong - in other words, that one does want food, no matter one’s protestations otherwise.
Yes, but his desire to be martyred may outweigh his desire for food. Many people have died on hunger strikes.
Die by starvation, sure.
No, those are just advisements from his subconsciousness. His ends are an outcome of the combination of both his thoughts and his feelings.
He did. I do, too.
Again, not if the guy wants to die by starvation. Feeding him would be, to him, a bad thing.
The parenthetical was an aside. This is my main point:
Even if each person in the world did have the end of himself not going hungry, that would not qualify the end as objective. What if, during a nuclear winter, only a handful of people were left on earth, and they all happened to prefer Coke to Pepsi. Would that make Coke’s superiority to Pepsi an objective fact? No.
See my response to I. Ryan above. One can try to deny the fact that one’s body (and, by extension, oneself as a being) wants food, but pain is the indicator that one is wrong - in other words, that one does want food, no matter one’s protestations otherwise.
Yes, but his desire to be martyred may outweigh his desire for food. Many people have died on hunger strikes.
While true, I’m attempting to point out that food is an objective end that all individuals have. Trying to deny one’s nature as a human being is like trying to deny gravity. Sure, you can convince yourself in your own head, but reality is the ultimate arbiter. I haven’t yet figured out a good answer to the question of death (it might be that it’s simply amoral, I really don’t know), but the physical sensation of pain is proof that there are some objective ends held by all humans.
If he claims to not have the end of “food,” he is wrong. No amount of self-convincing or desire to die can alter the sensations of one’s body. In this case, pain is the indicator that he very much does want food at a very basic level.
No, those are just advisements from his subconsciousness. His ends are an outcome of the combination of both his thoughts and his feelings.
This seems more like a semantic issue than anything. “Wants”, “ends,” and “advisements from [one’s subconscious]” aren’t immediately apparent to me as distinct categories.
See my response to I. Ryan above. One can try to deny the fact that one’s body (and, by extension, oneself as a being) wants food, but pain is the indicator that one is wrong - in other words, that one does want food, no matter one’s protestations otherwise.
The parenthetical was an aside. This is my main point:
Even if each person in the world did have the end of himself not going hungry, that would not qualify the end as objective. What if, during a nuclear winter, only a handful of people were left on earth, and they all happened to prefer Coke to Pepsi. Would that make Coke’s superiority to Pepsi an objective fact? No.
I addressed the parenthetical because I felt like it formed the basis for the rest of your post too. “Food” as an end is an objective fact of human nature, and is always and forever true for so long as we are to be classified as human beings. Food is not a preference, in other words. Coke vs. Pepsi is very much an issue of preference.
I’m not attempting to employ the whole Randian system of valuation because I agree that there are certain ends which we cannot analyze (Coke vs. Pepsi), but I disagree that we cannot analyze any ends.
Men nearly universally prefer food to the lack of food. There is an aspect of virtual universality to this matter of preference, but it is a matter of preference nonetheless. The definition of “preference” is “a greater liking for one alternative over another or others”; it doesn’t include “except for when it’s universal” as an addendum.
Is absence of choice moral?
Are the actions of plants subject to a characterization of morality?
If morality only can only apply to a species that can make choices in nature then all human beings who can choose are moral.
Food is not a preference, in other words.
Men nearly universally prefer food to the lack of food. There is an aspect of virtual universality to this matter of preference, but it is a matter of preference nonetheless. The definition of “preference” is “a greater liking for one alternative over another or others”; it doesn’t include “except for when it’s universal” as an addendum.
My argument is that men always “prefer” food to the lack of food, but I don’t think it’s accurate to refer to it as strictly a preference because it is part of our basic being that we need food and instinctually crave food. It’s very similar to Mises’ discussion of logic: yes, we could possibly conceive a being - perhaps descendant from us - that does not need food, but if we are to deal with what is and not with what hypothetically could be, food is an ultimate end held by all human beings.
If morality only can only apply to a species that can make choices in nature then all human beings who can choose are moral.
I would agree with this statement in that choice makes man a moral being, but it doesn’t implicitly make him morally good. Is that what you meant?
How is this relevant to natural law?
No, it would not be. The act of giving is only possible when the other party accepts the gift. What you are describing is littering.
Justin,
Another issue is the notion of establishing objective ethics on allegedly objective ends. To establish that capitalism is objectively best, it would not be enough to establish objective ends, even if that could be done. You would need to establish an objective ranking of ends: objective valuation. Even if it made sense to say that food is an objective end, that in and of itself would not preclude the possibility of a person having that end, yet also having the abolition of private property as a higher ranked end.
When a being is unable to choose does the being cease to be a moral being?
It is a preference virtually held universally because of facts about our biological nature, but its root cause does not make it any less a preference.
Moral can have many different meanings. What do you mean in this case?
Well put.
I was using verbaige posted in the reply above but I did not have anything specific in mind other than my own personal understand of the term to mean the distinction between right and wrong. However I am an intelligent independent thinker and if you would be willing to provide a definition of moral that is satisfactory to you I am happy to use that definition and repose my question(s) if you are willing to respond to them.
Thanks, Marko.
Another issue is the notion of establishing objective ethics on allegedly objective ends. To establish that capitalism is objectively best, it would not be enough to establish objective ends, even if that could be done. You would need to establish an objective ranking of ends: objective valuation. Even if it made sense to say that food is an objective end, that in and of itself would not preclude the possibility of a person having that end, yet also having the abolition of private property as a higher ranked end.
I would argue that there are certain ends that always imply subjective preference (is Bach better than Mozart?) but then there are others that must always be grounded in concrete reality. Private property is not merely a value involving subjective preference, because, at some very basic level along the way, it involves an objective ultimate end.
Put another way, I believe it possible to logically deduce a larger category of ends from a very restricted set of objective ultimate ends such as food, water, a livable temperature, etc., in much the same way that Austrian economics deduces an entire corpus of economic thought from a few axioms that are true a priori. I don’t mean to bring values into Austrian economics, because I believe that the utilitarian analysis is a beneficial one as well - economics is properly a value free science. I am, however, trying to show that values are not necessarily outside the realm of objectivity and logical deduction.
I’m not trying to say that I have all the answers - I don’t. But I fundamentally believe that an objectively ascertainable code of ethics exists, and I think that its existence can at least be proven, even if we will not agree on what the code itself is.
My argument is that men always “prefer” food to the lack of food, but I don’t think it’s accurate to refer to it as strictly a preference because it is part of our basic being that we need food and instinctually crave food. It’s very similar to Mises’ discussion of logic: yes, we could possibly conceive a being - perhaps descendant from us - that does not need food, but if we are to deal with what is and not with what hypothetically could be, food is an ultimate end held by all human beings.
It is a preference virtually held universally because of facts about our biological nature, but its root cause does not make it any less a preference.
This strikes me as analogous to saying that reality itself is subjective because everyone perceives it subjectively, but the latter doesn’t imply the former. Similarly, everyone has the “subjective” need for food - in that it is personalized and within their own person - but the need itself is very much objective.