The idea that goodness produces happiness, and badness produces misery.

Only mosquitoes and idiots don't go away when you ignore them. When any bible puncher is ignored they eventually figure out that they are wasting their time and go away. If you get upset by them I think it says more about you and your agenda than theirs. — Sir2u

Here, here!

Anger attempts to hide vulnerability. Whenever one gets angry at the words of another, one should ask themselves why those words are making them feel vulnerable.

When approached as such, emotion can lead to great personal insights, so I don't see why it cannot have a place on this forum.

Sounds more like a way to bully people with unpopular opinions into leaving the forum.

Nope. I don't see how this could positively effect a forum like this. Shouldn't those with intellectual pursuits be interested in viewpoints that contrast theirs? (And hopefully be mature enough to deal with the fact that such viewpoints exist)

I recommend you read some of my conversation with .

Okay then. Show me this person that routinely makes people miserable on purpose and is happy at the same time.

The answer to a moral question in your theory cannot be equivalent to 'he must be unhappy deep down because otherwise the answer comes out wrong'. — Kenosha Kid

It is true though. People that want others to be miserable are miserable themselves. If that has to be the basic assumption on which my theory is built, then so be it. It seems like a reasonable assumption to me, which I have seen confirmed plenty of times through experience.

Hold up. Both my replies to you have been about the nature of true happiness and not yet about morality.

The assertion that my theory amounts to "it causes harm to others, thus it is immoral" is way too hasty.

So what is inner peace or true happiness? Sorry if you already defined these terms, but I can't continue this discussion without knowing. — Aleph Numbers

Understandable.

I think the concept is too intricate to describe in a forum post. I'll give you a few terms that I relate to inner peace and I hope you can fill in some of the blanks yourself: Inner deconfliction, freedom of fear, openness to love and compassion, guided by reason.

Perhaps true happiness is achieving a happiness that is free of the constraints of one's maladaptive tendencies, experiences, and base desires? But what makes tendencies and experiences maladaptive? — Aleph Numbers

When properly examined, much problematic behavior stems from fear.

What are base desires? — Aleph Numbers

When fears are properly examined, much of them are related to our desire to continue our physical existence. Fear of soical isolation, fear of poverty, fear of not procreating, etc. Perhaps that is a good definition of base desires.

Deriving pleasure from something is not necessarily related to true happiness or inner peace.

So one can derive pleasure from something whilst at the same time not moving any closer to becoming truly happy. In fact, it may even move them away from such happiness.

For sure, but in a moral theory that depends entirely on personal happiness, if you assume everyone to be lying about their happiness if the wrong moral fact is derived, you don't have a workable theory: it is circular. It is not a question of completeness: you have precisely demonstrated that you have not answered anything, merely deferred the question. — Kenosha Kid

I disagree. I think there's a workable theory, however there is no simple 1+1=2 type of proof. But I've no desire to impose this system upon others. I use it to make sense of my own experiences and what I see in others.

Human beings have both selfish and social drives, and satisfying either can be a source of happiness. A less extreme example might be a guy running off with a woman he's infatuated with, leaving his wife and five young children unsupported and none the wiser. This is unconstrained hedonism: the man is doing exactly what he wants undeterred by considerations of responsibility and consequences for others. The harm he causes far outstrips the benefit he enjoys; nonetheless I'm sure he's having a wonderful time. — Kenosha Kid

In this situation there are a few options:

1. The man carries out this act without regret, thus must be ignorant of matters such as love, compassion and the harm he inflicts upon others. One so ignorant, cannot be truly happy.

2. The man caries out this act and regrets it in the end, meaning the act did not contribute to his happiness.

This actually seems like the no true Scotsman fallacy: If one acts in a way that is sadistic in order to achieve happiness, you say they never were actually pursuing true happiness. — Aleph Numbers

More accurately, they would be pursuing true happiness (as do we all), but not achieving it.

We seem to be working with a hypothetical person who is both extremely malicious and truly happy. I don't necessarily believe such a person exists, but if you know any I'd love to hear about them.

But how is it known if doing sadistic things works against one's true happiness? Couldn't it be behavior unrelated to their happiness and thus not be immoral according to your third claim? — Aleph Numbers

Ok, if I'm correct your question here, "Can one be sadistic without it affecting their efforts of achieving true happiness?", and I would answer no.

To carry out sadistic acts one either has to act in complete disregard of well-being, or be completely ignorant of well-being. If one, at some later point in life, gains insight into well-being, then they must see the pain they inflicted upon others and they will atone through guilt. This is karmic, in a way.

Then you don't have a moral theory. You're merely deferring a moral judgement to one about happiness, while insisting that a person is not the judge of their happiness but rather you are. You can bypass the middle man of happiness entirely and just insist on what is moral and what is not on a case-by-case basis, which is what you're doing with happiness. — Kenosha Kid

Maybe.

Like I said, I haven't really gotten the chance to get into details yet.

Ultimately it is only the person themselves that can judge whether they are truly happy, and only they themselves that can validate the trueness of such a statement. I, on my part, can choose to believe them or not. If I see a truly miserable person state they are happy, I am going to doubt that statement, obviously.

What is central to my theory is that while every person desires to be happy, very few people actually know what it is that will make them truly happy. They may spend their lives chasing dreams of wealth and success (or have darker pursuits, as mentions) and end up unfulfilled and miserable. In fact, they may live their entire lives staying completely ignorant of what true happiness means for them!

What then becomes a central question is, why do people have such a hard time recognizing what it is that truly makes them happy?

And the answer seems to lie in the many layers of mud that are cast upon the individual's psyche from birth. Opinions of others (parents, society, school system, politicians, etc.) that have become internalized, and have formed the bedrock of our worldview, even though they may directly counteract our attempts at finding happiness.

What if someone derives inner peace from torturing small children? From causing immense amounts of suffering? I've known sadistic people, and they genuinely revel in others' suffering and misfortune. — Aleph Numbers

Then they are not truly happy, no matter what they may tell themselves. Or maybe they are mentally defect, in which case there's an argument to be made for them not being moral agents.

You're obviously playing the devil's advocate for the sake of doing so. It's not going to lead to anything productive. As I said, is a blind person truly blind, or is it all some elaborate ruse to fool people? Maybe they are seeing, we cannot look into their minds after all. It's very easy to play this game, but also pointless. Let's have a serious discussion.

So being immoral prevents one from achieving true happiness because you say that if one doesn't achieve true happiness one is acting immorally. — Aleph Numbers

We haven't delved far enough into the idea to really start explaining how it works in detail, but this isn't what I've said. Let me state it clearly:

Acting in a way that works against one's true happiness is immoral.
Acting in a way that works towards one's true happiness is moral.
Acting in a way that works neither towards nor against one's true happiness is not a matter of morality.

If one does not achieve true happiness, one isn't necessarily immoral.

That might be true of some people who murder, rape and torture but not all of them. Some people might do it just because they enjoy it, and those are the people im talking about. How would you exclude these people from being moral? — DingoJones

Enjoying something and true happiness are not the same. True happiness is a prolonged state of being, and not some short-term gratification of base desires. Perhaps inner peace would be another term to describe it.

The Nazi’s thought they were creating a better world, they were in the pursuit of true happiness, they thought they were doing good. — DingoJones

And they were wrong. Simply pursuing true happiness is not enough to be moral. One must achieve it for oneself. And if one actively works against it, then one can be said to be immoral. Thus, immoral actions lead to destruction of oneself, either physically or psychologically.

Some people are born or conditioned by experience to derive true pleasure and happiness from inflicting pain or rape or whatever. — DingoJones

A blind person cannot see, no matter how much they believe it so. Similarly, a malicious person cannot find love or true happiness.

One may play the devil's advocate and ask how do we know that a blind person is truly blind and not simply acting to be, but I fail to see the point of that.

Exactly!

Quite simply by pointing out those things in fact do not contribute to a person's happiness. Isn't it so that people who commit such acts are deeply troubled or even mentally ill individuals?

They are driven by a need to resolve childhood trauma, slavish obedience to their basic impulses, or mental defects. All sorts of things that need to be resolved before an individual can understand what true happiness means for them.

Without pretending to have any definitive answers to these questions, I wouldn't mind making an attempt to spark some discussion:

what do [you think] constitutes an act which is moral? — god must be atheist

An act which leads towards the true happiness of the individual that commits it.

The core here is the first Socratic paradox "All men desire the Good"; in other words, everyone does those things that they think will make them happy. The sad part is, what we think makes us happy is more often than not based on fears, ignorances, delusions, etc., many of which are deeply engrained since childhood.

The more one exposes these matters which cloud our judgement, the closer one will be able to see what it is that will make them truly happy, and thus learn to act morally.

It totally is the opinion of the majority of people, yes — Aleph Numbers

Then how does this view produce anything objective? I'm asking, since that is the goal you seemed to have set out at the start of this thread. This seems about as subjective as it comes.

Doesn't that make circumstances and motivations irrelevant? It seems to me that under that definition the sole determinant is the opinion of other people!

You make a good if obvious point: circumstances and motivations are important. — Aleph Numbers

But how does this all relate to making the determinant of a moral action being a ratio of people who approve versus disapprove?

Alright, then what about the second part?

Motivations and circumstance, rather than the action itself, are, in my eyes, way more important in judging the morality of a certain action. In what way can it ever be said that the motivations and circumstances of all a groups' members are exactly the same? — Tzeentch

I don't see how one could seperate the two. If we were to agree that groups are not moral agents, it would follow that calling groups (rather than the individuals they are comprised of) immoral is meaningless.

I don't think groups of people can be moral agents. Groups are after all comprised of individuals, the actions of which, taken together, may be (strictly speaking, incorrectly) generalized as actions of the group.

Motivations and circumstance, rather than the action itself, are, in my eyes, way more important in judging the morality of a certain action. In what way can it ever be said that the motivations and circumstances of all a groups' members are exactly the same?

In the context of this topic, it is perhaps worth asking the question whether a conglomerate of individuals can be a moral agent, or whether only individuals can be moral agents.

Wouldn't this imply no selfless and caring person has ever had a hard life? And that no selfish and toxic person ever had a good one? — Outlander

True happiness is completely seperate from those things.

Let me guess. You're fortunate enough at present to call yourself happy? — Outlander

Happy? Yes.

Achieved true happiness? No.

True happiness is the great equalizer, because it comes only to those who truly deserve it.

If a God exists, presumably an afterlife exists. If an afterlife exists, death and pain as negative experiences are meaningless.

I think the more one analyzes what it means for them to be truly happy, the more one will realize that what is truly good for oneself is also good for another.

I've always found the phrase "necessary evil" a little puzzling. Evil is really a religious word, and if you examine it religiously it really can never be necessary. Like if a doctor needs to cut off a man's arm because otherwise he'd die due to frostbite we might reflexively call this a "necessary evil" but there's really nothing evil about it - it's entirely necessary. If on the other hand the doctor just randomly cut off the man's arm for no apparent reason, yes, we'd call that evil. The evil lies in the complete lack of sense or necessity. Just something to think about. — BitconnectCarlos

I used the term rather liberally here to describe something which is undesirable but necessary to prevent a worse situation from occuring.

Sticking with your analogy though, it is worth considering whether the doctor's actions can be considered evil when made without the consent (or perhaps with express objection) of the man. The doctor may think he knows what is best for the man, but if the man disagrees then on what basis should his arm be cut off anyway?

The true voluntariety of these agreements is something that socialists generally dispute, as there generally is not a reasonable alternative for many people besides to accept one of several largely indistinguishable bad deals. I don't want to rent from anybody, for instance, but my only practical options are to rent a house from somebody, or rent money from the bank with which to mortgage a house from somebody. I don't want to do any of those things, but I don't have enough money to do none of them, so I pick the one that sucks the least. "Your money or your life" is still a choice, but "your life" is not a reasonable choice, which is what makes that "choice" actually coercion. — Pfhorrest

I am mostly on board with this, however I think there's a large grey area between what is unreasonable and what people find personally undesirable. Furthermore, we can have a discussion about what the remedy should be.

There's also a question of what kind of agreements (contracts) should be valid to begin with. — Pfhorrest

I struggle to understand why a contract that is voluntarily agreed upon by two mentally capable individuals would be deemed invalid, except for perhaps contracts that result in direct physical harm (or are made under threat thereof). Is this to protect individuals from their own bad decisions?

Such pre-emptive actions are a slippery slope for me.

And what of my involuntary contract with my government? This type of stance must have some implications for that too.

That does mean I can kick you out of the house I was letting you live in... but it also means I have no use for that house that I'm not living in, since I can't contractually obligate anyone to pay me to live there, since I can't legally owe them the right to live there... without just making it their property, that is. So in lieu of being able to rent it out, I would have no better choice but to sell it... and nobody else will be buying it for a rental property, since they can't rent it out either... so I can only manage to sell it on terms that people who would otherwise be renters could afford.

I think that that revision to which contracts are valid would have far-reaching effects that basically incentivize people not to own things besides for their own use, and so achieve socialist ends -- the owners of things are the users of things -- without actually having to directly reassign ownership. — Pfhorrest

Maybe you could elaborate a bit further on this, because I don't think I fully understand what you mean. Should everything I have no use for then belong to someone who does have a use for it?

This is interesting but unclear what exactly what you mean. Could you elaborate? — praxis

I'm talking about wars, atrocities, that sort of thing.

Do you agree that evicting someone from their home for failure to pay someone else is likewise coercive: "Give me money, or get out, or else"? Or someone "evicting" someone from their workplace for similar reasons: if workers in a business decide not to hand the money that customers paid them over to the owner, so that the owner can give them a small fraction of it back, but instead keep it all for themselves, and the owner says "then get out, or else", is that not coercive? — Pfhorrest

An important element that I think needs to be considered here is whether the supposed coercion is not the result of a voluntary agreement that has taken place in the past.

When someone pays a landlord so they can live on their property, it is implied in the agreement that whenever they can no longer pay the landlord, they can no longer live on their property. Presumably, they know the terms of the agreement beforehand, and voluntarily choose to go ahead with it.

The same seems to be true for the workplace example. One makes a voluntary agreement with the workplace owner to do labour in exchange for wages.

In these cases, it seems both sides should be able to end the agreement, should either side fail to meet their end of the deal. After all, it also seems normal that a worker should not have to work if their boss does not pay them.

So I don't think these examples are strictly coercive, even though I could think of many ways such situations can become coercive or immoral. For example, if a side alters the terms of the agreement knowing the other side is in no position to object. Or if one side acts with the foreknowledge that the other side will not be able to fulfill their end of the deal.

Note that in the case of government, there never was any such agreement. One is born involuntarily and made part of a state without one's consent.

Usually, it's a government enforcing the "or else" there in those situations, but even if there nominally is no government, if the owners themselves can get away with enforcing that "or else" themselves, then they effectively are a government themselves. — Pfhorrest

I think this is true.

The original socialists, libertarian socialists aka anarchists, think we just need to stop there being governments that do that kind of stuff, or any other kind of coercive stuff, in the first place. State socialists in contrast think we need a powerful monopolistic government (a "state" in the usual terminology) in order to keep private owners from effectively becoming little warlord states of their own, or else using their influence to corrupt a nominally democratic state. — Pfhorrest

Until humanity loses its desire to force its will upon others (a distant, distant utopia), I think anarchy can achieve only chaos until the power vacuum is inevitably filled up and new governments are formed.

However, powerful governments are something I am strongly opposed to (unless it is somehow based on strict consensuality between it and its subjects!). As we've discussed, while I can accept governments as a necessary evil in the absence of a better alternative, I see their power as illegitimate. Power has a tendency to consolidate, grow and corrupt; none of these things I wish to see happen to something I find undesirable in the first place.

Furthermore, a look at history warns us of the dangers of powerful governments. We tend to forget that when we say much blood has been spilled in the name of religion and ideology, all of those wars have a common denominator.

The choice between coercion by the individual and coercion by government is an interesting one, but there's not a doubt in my mind that the evils committed by individuals are utterly dwarfed by the evils committed by governments.

But I also think, and I wonder if you would agree, that inequality just as inevitably breeds authority, so allowing inequality to fester inevitably foils the libertarian objective. — Pfhorrest

I think this is true, but I also think it is a very interesting discussion in its own right. This reply is already getting a bit more lengthy than I had intended, but maybe we can come back to this at some later point.

I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised with how open-minded you've been about all of this in this discussion. I hadn't been paying close attention to you before, but I had the impression that you were the usual right-libertarian capitalism apologist. So far, you seem much better than that, and I'm enjoying our conversations. — Pfhorrest

That feeling is mutual!

I look at self-defense as follows;

First, there is no question to whom one's physical body belongs. It unequivocally belongs to the individual. The individual and their body cannot be seperated.

Second, the essence of self-defense is preventing oneself from being violently coerced, and there is an element of necessity (perhaps linked to the protection of that which belongs unequivocally to you) and involuntariness (which intuitively seems to be the key here). I would not consider blocking a strike to be an act of violence, for example. As long as the act of self-defense continues in that same spirit, I think there is a distinct difference, though this is certainly a good question. When elements of retribution or revenge are added, I think it turns clearly into an act of violent coercion in its own right.

Like, if someone tries to take something that belongs to you, you don't just have to let them, right? (Is that itself violence/coercion, them taking something from you?) It's okay for you to stop them, right? Is it okay for someone else to help you stop them? Or for there to be an organized force of people who help people stop people from doing things like that, taking things that belong to others? — Pfhorrest

Hmm...

I am not sure I would consider stealing an act of violence or coercion. When done consciously I certainly find it immoral. It seems linked to coercion, yet distinctly different. If objection to the theft is met with reprisal, then it is clearly coercion. Without that last element, I am not so sure.

It is exactly the element of reprisal that makes governments coercive. Do not pay taxes and one gets fined, or worse, thrown in jail.

When something was taken from you without objection, does one still possess the right to take it back by force? I'm not so sure.

When something was taken through coercion, does that make a counteractive act of coercion justified? In other words, do two wrongs make a right? I'm not so sure either.

Then there's the issue of determining what rightfully belongs to whom, which our hypothetical situation has already shown to be in contention. Who should determine this, if it can be determined at all? Who or what can be trusted with arbitration of such things? These are great obstacles for me, since humans are fallible, governments prone to corruption over time.

Certainly this produces a lot of food for thought.

So we have established that governance is coercion, or 'violence', if you will.

But is it good, legitimate violence (if we accept, which you and I both seem to, that there is such a thing), or is it bad, illegitimate violence? — Pfhorrest

I'm not so sure there is something as legitimate violence. I consider all types of violence to be undesirable and inherently problematic. But it seems sometimes some amount of violence is better than the alternative. I wouldn't go so far as to say that legitimizes it.

Violence is about forcing one's will upon others (or hurting others; this is why I prefer the term 'coercion'), and there is no just basis for that. My will is no better than yours. The will of the group is no better than the will of the individual. A government's will no better than that of their subjects.

A political system that cannot recognize this, and instead sees violence as instrumental; a tool to be used to achieve it's goals based on it's own conceptions of right and wrong, I can only consider as tyrannical and deeply flawed.

Before you mention it, I am not saying capitalism is any better. In fact, all '-isms' seems to be deeply concerned with telling other people what to do.

What a cop-out.

Is this a fair judgement? What if one individual’s sense of evil differs from another’s? — Legato

It sounds good as a personal creed, but due to the subjective nature of good and evil it is entirely unworkable beyond that.

Anarchism is a form of socialism (the original form, actually), so I already answered that for the most part. The difference between anarchism and statist forms of socialism is just the state, which thinks it’s the only one who gets to use violence and that it is justified in using violence to prevent anyone else from doing so, or from otherwise disobeying it. — Pfhorrest

If we consider capitalism a form of violence, surely governments that take the belongings of their subjects as a means of achieving their goals can be considered violent, no?

Apparently you do, at least in the case of practicing good driving habits. — praxis

You seem to be completely hung up on this driving thing, huh?

Well then, practice your slavish obedience.

By such definitions, against what does socialism support violence? :chin: