DxLaughRiot t1_ja9ar9s wrote on February 27, 2023 at 8:07 PM

Reply to comment by gobbo in Universal ethics/basic law for all people & global moral education: A new way to sustainability and peace? by fortin1984

I use trolly problems as an example because it’s un-nuanced, straightforward, and still yields huge differences in supposedly objective systems of ethics. If objective systems can’t agree on something as basic as that - whether the scenario is common in real life or not - how are we supposed to find objectively ethical solutions for even the most slightly nuanced questions in the world?

Even your “we should all agree sexually abusing children is bad” has issues with it. On the surface, yeah no duh people shouldn’t sexually abuse children, but start digging even a little bit and you start to see cracks in the statement. What constitutes a “child”? What constitutes “abuse”? Ancient Greek philosophers had sex with young boys as young as 13 on the regular and thought it was ethical as long as both consented. Was that child abuse? Age of consent in Germany is 14 - in parts of Japan it’s 20. Whose legal framework is correct and why?

If the basis of your ethics is “legal consensus” you’re going to have a hell of a time trying to consolidate a global ethical framework.

gobbo t1_ja9c5mh wrote on February 27, 2023 at 8:16 PM

I am pretty sure this is an excellent example of "perfect is the enemy of good".

Sometimes you just have to get shit done and compromises are necessary. Again, alignment is not necessarily about lining things up perfectly.

DxLaughRiot t1_ja9dh5c wrote on February 27, 2023 at 8:24 PM

I’m trying to say we can’t even figure out perfect something as simple as “don’t sexually abuse children”. That was supposed to be easy!

More what I’m trying to say is it’s naive to think that with as messy and complicated life is that anyone will ever agree on a universal moral framework. Humanity has tried to for millennia, and typically what happens when people try to trot out their new super awesome objective morality is that people go to war over whether it’s right or not.

gobbo t1_ja9rky6 wrote on February 27, 2023 at 9:53 PM

I'm saying

"Pay attention to trends. What you state as impossible is happening incrementally despite the protests of theory."

cf. xeno's paradox; theories limited by excessive parameters will fail.

Also: maybe the universality doesn't need to be as totalizing as you assume for a global ethics platform to succeed. We aren't talking about total consensus; as hominids we are wired to have some kind of minority opposition to keep evolving. In practical terms a consensus can be 'good enough'--how you decide where to draw the lines is an interesting but necessarily drawn out discussion.