What I’ve said so far suggests a question to me: can something a person does with no ethical intentions be ethotactical? For instance, say I am with a friend I know to be much more poor than I and we come upon an apple tree in a public forest with one apple on it, and I pick it and eat it, not thinking of my friend. Or, for a more colorful example, say I have been taught that Irishmen are subhuman creatures without the ability to feel pain, and that hunting them will be good practice in the use of firearms that one may one day need to fight off aliens from outer space. So I shoot a few Irishmen between the eyes, inflicting pain on them without realizing it, and even perhaps killing one or two of them. Have I behaved immorally?
According to my theory of knowlecular psychology, no. That’s because an ethotactic, or the choice of a moral or immoral action, can only be the result of some anthroceptual decision based on living in harmony with a known social code.
I think I would go so far as to say that my killing an Irishmen or two in such a case is not immoral even according to most people’s standards. Many would protest, but because it would seem that I would be excusing a Nazi taught to consider Jews sub-human for gassing them. I would excuse the Nazi, but only morally. For me, he would be not immoral, but homicidally stupid—and therefore deserving to be reprimanded! Sorry. I have a weakness for black humor. What I believe is that such a person should be prevented from continuing to gas Jews by being executed—unless one truly believes some kind of re-education can make him accept Jews as human, and he is compelled to repay society for his social stupidity by spending the rest of his life shining the shoes of Jews for free or something.
Ultimately, I believe all reprehensible acts are acts of stupidity, and that what kind of stupidity is involved—moral stupidity or some other kind of stupidity—is irrelevant. Society should be maximally protected from the person acting reprehensibly (and protected from his genes, for I believe criminals [real criminals], and that’s who I’m talking about, should not be allowed to breed). Of course, I realize I’m making a complex subject seem much more cut&dry than it is. Just ideas to counteract simple-minded bad/good anti-continuumism and the insensitivity of certain sentimentalists to Evil.
About evil I will say that all definitions of it are necessarily subjective, but that it does exist, and can be defined sociobjectively. Sociobjectivity is a view of an idea that is held by such a large majority of the members of a society and which has an objective neurophysiological basis as to be close enough to true objectivity as to be taken as such. Take the evil of killing an innocent child. Almost everyone would disapprove of that, and (I believe) almost all of us are instinctively repelled by the deed, and—in fact—would instinctively try to prevent a child, innocent or not, from being killed.
Not that our instinct to use reason would necessarily not be involved. If effective, it might tell us that our standing in society will go up if we stop someone from murdering a child. Although our instinct to advance statoosnikally would be part of that. Actually, I think in most cases, protecting the child would be reflexive whereas our explanation would be taken care of mostly by our reasoning.
To be honest, if I were dominated by reason, I would never risk my life, even as the old man I now am, for some child, because what I believe I may contribute to World Culture is almost sure to be more than what the child will, however long he lives. The problem with that, of course, is that my ability to reason may be defective, in which case, my not saving a child at the risk of losing my own life would be stupid integrity–that is, acting according to my code that I should protect my own life at all costs because of its great value to the world. I claim that following that code would be absolutely valid if I were another . . . Nietzsche, without his breakdown.
Needless to say, the idea that Evil is what some deity has said it to be is absurd; various deities have universally defined certain acts as evil because the men who invented them were instinctively against those acts. Other non-universal acts, like saying something contemptuous about some deity, have also been said to have been ordained Evil by a deity invented by men not because their inventors were instinctively against such acts but because the definition of Evil helped them gain power or destroy other tribes, or simply because of some personal dislike—of a priest once clawed by a cat that made him claim his main god had defined cats as evil, for example.
I do think that reasoning should dominate every moral choice one makes, but it can’t overcome one’s instincts, all of which are ultimately moral, for a given person. We can only argue about whose individual morals would work best for the society we want to live in, and perhaps use reason to show that giving in to a society’s chosen code will be better for each individual in the long run, the long run excluding some never-seen Heaven or anything like it.
Which brings to mind the question of whether or not it is moral to lie to the masses and tell them some God will do horrible things to them if they don’t accept a society’s code. I realize that there are those who don’t believe that our species naturally, due to our genes, divides into different social classes–three of them, roughly speaking: masters, slaves, and . . . cerebreans. They’re nuts.
I divide ethics into the study of socioethotactics and the study of egoethotactics . . . I think. There are two major problems: formulation of a maximally fair and biologically advantageous set of socioethotactics by a society, and an individuals’ reconciling his inevitably conflicting set of egoethotactics with his society’s socioethotactics.
More on this eventually, if I think I can say anything at all interesting about it.
* * *
Note: on the day I made my first entry here about ethotactics, 36 people checked up on me at my Wikipedia entry; rarely do more than 4 people visit it on a day, and none since the first month it was up have anywhere near that many done so. Were they fans of Jonah Goldberg, whose article I was commenting on? The visits after that have been few, for or five in a day at most.
Last, and definitely least, here’s this SURVEY again:
Please, Dear Reader, I implore thee: when you have read as much of this entry as you feel like reading, let me know whether you have found it worth reading in full or not by clicking “YES” or “NO” below. You would help me a great deal, and might even get me to make my entries more reader-friendly. (And for the love of Jayzuz, please don’t try to spare my feelings by politely declining to click the NO although you think the entry Vile Beyond Imagination. Oh, some of you may need to know that I am not asking you whether you agree with me or not!)
YES
NO
Note: I will be repeating this request in some of my entries to come. Feel free to click one of my buttons each time I do, but please don’t click either more than once a day.
.
Entry 1639 — Choice of Ethotactic, Part 4
Saturday, November 22nd, 2014
What I’ve said so far suggests a question to me: can something a person does with no ethical intentions be ethotactical? For instance, say I am with a friend I know to be much more poor than I and we come upon an apple tree in a public forest with one apple on it, and I pick it and eat it, not thinking of my friend. Or, for a more colorful example, say I have been taught that Irishmen are subhuman creatures without the ability to feel pain, and that hunting them will be good practice in the use of firearms that one may one day need to fight off aliens from outer space. So I shoot a few Irishmen between the eyes, inflicting pain on them without realizing it, and even perhaps killing one or two of them. Have I behaved immorally?
According to my theory of knowlecular psychology, no. That’s because an ethotactic, or the choice of a moral or immoral action, can only be the result of some anthroceptual decision based on living in harmony with a known social code.
I think I would go so far as to say that my killing an Irishmen or two in such a case is not immoral even according to most people’s standards. Many would protest, but because it would seem that I would be excusing a Nazi taught to consider Jews sub-human for gassing them. I would excuse the Nazi, but only morally. For me, he would be not immoral, but homicidally stupid—and therefore deserving to be reprimanded! Sorry. I have a weakness for black humor. What I believe is that such a person should be prevented from continuing to gas Jews by being executed—unless one truly believes some kind of re-education can make him accept Jews as human, and he is compelled to repay society for his social stupidity by spending the rest of his life shining the shoes of Jews for free or something.
Ultimately, I believe all reprehensible acts are acts of stupidity, and that what kind of stupidity is involved—moral stupidity or some other kind of stupidity—is irrelevant. Society should be maximally protected from the person acting reprehensibly (and protected from his genes, for I believe criminals [real criminals], and that’s who I’m talking about, should not be allowed to breed). Of course, I realize I’m making a complex subject seem much more cut&dry than it is. Just ideas to counteract simple-minded bad/good anti-continuumism and the insensitivity of certain sentimentalists to Evil.
About evil I will say that all definitions of it are necessarily subjective, but that it does exist, and can be defined sociobjectively. Sociobjectivity is a view of an idea that is held by such a large majority of the members of a society and which has an objective neurophysiological basis as to be close enough to true objectivity as to be taken as such. Take the evil of killing an innocent child. Almost everyone would disapprove of that, and (I believe) almost all of us are instinctively repelled by the deed, and—in fact—would instinctively try to prevent a child, innocent or not, from being killed.
Not that our instinct to use reason would necessarily not be involved. If effective, it might tell us that our standing in society will go up if we stop someone from murdering a child. Although our instinct to advance statoosnikally would be part of that. Actually, I think in most cases, protecting the child would be reflexive whereas our explanation would be taken care of mostly by our reasoning.
To be honest, if I were dominated by reason, I would never risk my life, even as the old man I now am, for some child, because what I believe I may contribute to World Culture is almost sure to be more than what the child will, however long he lives. The problem with that, of course, is that my ability to reason may be defective, in which case, my not saving a child at the risk of losing my own life would be stupid integrity–that is, acting according to my code that I should protect my own life at all costs because of its great value to the world. I claim that following that code would be absolutely valid if I were another . . . Nietzsche, without his breakdown.
Needless to say, the idea that Evil is what some deity has said it to be is absurd; various deities have universally defined certain acts as evil because the men who invented them were instinctively against those acts. Other non-universal acts, like saying something contemptuous about some deity, have also been said to have been ordained Evil by a deity invented by men not because their inventors were instinctively against such acts but because the definition of Evil helped them gain power or destroy other tribes, or simply because of some personal dislike—of a priest once clawed by a cat that made him claim his main god had defined cats as evil, for example.
I do think that reasoning should dominate every moral choice one makes, but it can’t overcome one’s instincts, all of which are ultimately moral, for a given person. We can only argue about whose individual morals would work best for the society we want to live in, and perhaps use reason to show that giving in to a society’s chosen code will be better for each individual in the long run, the long run excluding some never-seen Heaven or anything like it.
Which brings to mind the question of whether or not it is moral to lie to the masses and tell them some God will do horrible things to them if they don’t accept a society’s code. I realize that there are those who don’t believe that our species naturally, due to our genes, divides into different social classes–three of them, roughly speaking: masters, slaves, and . . . cerebreans. They’re nuts.
I divide ethics into the study of socioethotactics and the study of egoethotactics . . . I think. There are two major problems: formulation of a maximally fair and biologically advantageous set of socioethotactics by a society, and an individuals’ reconciling his inevitably conflicting set of egoethotactics with his society’s socioethotactics.
More on this eventually, if I think I can say anything at all interesting about it.
* * *
Note: on the day I made my first entry here about ethotactics, 36 people checked up on me at my Wikipedia entry; rarely do more than 4 people visit it on a day, and none since the first month it was up have anywhere near that many done so. Were they fans of Jonah Goldberg, whose article I was commenting on? The visits after that have been few, for or five in a day at most.
Last, and definitely least, here’s this SURVEY again:
Please, Dear Reader, I implore thee: when you have read as much of this entry as you feel like reading, let me know whether you have found it worth reading in full or not by clicking “YES” or “NO” below. You would help me a great deal, and might even get me to make my entries more reader-friendly. (And for the love of Jayzuz, please don’t try to spare my feelings by politely declining to click the NO although you think the entry Vile Beyond Imagination. Oh, some of you may need to know that I am not asking you whether you agree with me or not!)
YES
NO
Note: I will be repeating this request in some of my entries to come. Feel free to click one of my buttons each time I do, but please don’t click either more than once a day.
.
Posted in Ethics, Grumman coinage, Jonah Goldberg, Political Commentators | No Comments »