I think we are talking at cross purposes. You seem to be trying to hypothesize the origin of ethical impulses, and I'm just concerned with describing what is going on for people when they are motivated to think ethically.

There is more than enough money available to keep everyone safe in relative isolation, through no cost of their own until the virus is contained and we are well enough prepared to keep it that way. — creativesoul

The US population could just refuse to go to work, to socially distance, to wear masks and wash their hands. The US "ethic" surely says that in a society based on some collective notion of rugged individualism, folk wouldn't need federal government to be telling them anything. And if the CDC does give rational federal advice, the typical such individual would do the opposite out of @Metaphysician Undercover's spite.

The Swedish population made its own choice that surprised a lot of people expecting a more Volvo-like, public safety first, response to Covid. The Swedish social culture seemed to make that a viable approach to limiting death without tanking the economy. That is an experiment still in progress.

As far as my entropic hypothesis goes, the pandemic is simply too exceptional event to have been built into anyone's social system - apart from those like Korea who have had a few recent scares like SARS, or New Zealand, which has had to eliminate multiple biosecurity threats like Mycoplasma bovis.

There, the consequences have been thought through. So go hard, go early, is a concept that both governments and the population understand.

That is why "ethics" seems such a poor lens for this kind of geopolitical discussion. As @Janus demonstrates, this starts the discussion off as a standard Western philosophical drama of "what should I do?"

If you boil ethical systems down to personal choices then you are simply buying into the fundamental tropes upon which the aggressive and competitive Western way of life became based. You are going with the flow that was precisely the one that set us on the path to colonial expansion, coal burning industry, neoliberalism, climate denial and a general belief in a right to be "spiteful" as the ultimate expression of personal freedom.

So any discussion of the ethical choices has to recognise that we are all individually already grounded in an ethic. We are not the starting point when we make personal choices. We are the end-point. Our world has already been shaped by a succession of increasingly specified constraints that start at the brute physical level, work their way up through biology, sociology and culture, and right on through in terms of our community, our family history, every other aspect of our world that is shaping out habits of thought.

That doesn't mean we can't then make "ethical choices". It just points out that mostly we don't make thinking choices at all. We are already deeply embedded in layers of evolved and cultural habit. What is left is the making of self-interested calculations. We have the "freedom" to weigh the balance of multiple factors and come out with some plan that has a probability of success. A constraint that we impose on the world ourselves.

And that personal choice is the cherry on the cake. It is evolution's way of keeping the learning going and not becoming rigidly bound by habit. It is part of what is natural.

But personal choice only makes sense in the context of a set of habits that reflect much longer timespans of learning. There has to be that established flow first. A way of life has to be some form of success. Then the ability to act sharply "otherwise" can count as a meaningful action - an experiment that will have an outcome that can be judged. Something will be learnt as being either the right or wrong thing to have done.

Like maybe the US should have put health before money. Or perhaps even that the US should have had a leadership that could actually make a simple binary choice if it couldn't manage a more complex weighing of the factors like Sweden.

The problem in the US is not about the ethical choice it made, but about the confused inability to stick to any choice at all.

The problem in the US is not about the ethical choice it made, but about the confused inability to stick to any choice at all. — apokrisis

The point is that there is not at all merely one ethical choice being made. One law could be imposed, yet there would still be dissent. The ethical question would then be as to whether it is acceptable to imprison together those who refuse to cooperate, or shoot them, for the common good.

One law could be imposed, yet there would still be dissent. — Janus

Sure. There can be a definite act of dissent because there is that one law. You have confirmed what I just said. What would dissent even look like if it wasn't in opposition in this fashion?

Sure. There can be a definite act of dissent because there is that one law. You have confirmed what I just said. What would dissent even look like if it wasn't in opposition in this fashion? — apokrisis

Yes, that seems obvious; but to me the more interesting question then would be as to what should be done with dissenters.

but to me the more interesting question then would be as to what should be done with dissenters. — Janus

Well what should be done with dissenters then?

The US population could just refuse to go to work, to socially distance, to wear masks and wash their hands. — apokrisis

I asked if the American government should do everything it possibly can to minimize the harm caused to Americans.

I don't have to come up with an answer to that, because I am not in a position of power. The point is that, as an extremely problematic ethical question, there will be many conflicting lines of interest. It's a genuinely tough question, and I can't see how any thinking about thermodynamics would throw any light on it.

We are in one kind of thermodynamic regime - powerlaw - and not in another - Gaussian. As an example that makes one of the things we view as a big problem - gaping inequality - just a natural part of what is going on. Therefore eliminating that inequality is going to be hard as it is basically swimming against the tide.

So contra your pigheadedness, my point is that understanding the actual thermodynamical flow that entrains humanity is the only thing that actually could create a “choice” - ethical or pragmatic.

If we want to resist the “is”, and construct out own “ought”, one needs an understanding of history a lot more sophisticated than thinking it is one damn thing after another.

History has a Hegelian structure. It is a dissipative flow. We now have a science of all that. Time to leave your metaphysical nonsense questions in the past where they belong. — apokrisis

I agree that a choice is not a real choice if it is uninformed by how things actually are. As far as I can tell, you’re using ‘hegelian’ simply to mean that history has a direction -& while I think it’s a confusing word-choice (‘Hegelian’ carries a lot of meaning) I agree that history has a direction.

If ‘ought’ is taken to mean a suprahistorical (platonic) set of norms that can be applied indifferently to any situation, I also agree that it is mistaken lens through which to view things.

But I can’t understand your above post without some wedge between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ - if, as you say, It is by understanding how things are that we become able to make a choice and ‘resist’, then there is a space in which to choose that isn’t inevitable. There’s a ‘gap’ in the ‘is.’

Well, maybe not. Is it the commanding aspect of ‘ought’ ( that there is a ‘correct’ choice) that you are most objecting to? If so, I agree (& not as an anything-goes relativist.)

For a while I’ve felt that if ‘free will’ means anything, it involves learning to observe patterns and cycles, including the weak/unstable points that would allow for the disruption of the whole, thereby allowing actual change. and then to ‘wait’ for that moment or part of the cycle to come around again, and act (with and against the pattern.) I have a sense that this is probably a cumulative thing that finally (as Hegel would say: quantity becoming quality) leads to kind of phase change, but one you’ve nudged in the right direction. (The ‘ought’ that leads to nudging in this direction organically bubbles up as discontent before finding this means of finding a way forward.)

I don't have to come up with an answer to that, because I am not in a position of power. — Janus

That reply is as lame as it gets. You say it is an interesting question until the moment it gets asked. Then run away.

It's a genuinely tough question, and I can't see how any thinking about thermodynamics would throw any light on it. — Janus

It's an incredibly easy question. Laws tell you what the penalties are for dissent.

If you want a more interesting answer, that is why you have to step out of the whole is-ought schtick where nature is presumed to operate by deterministic law and that then makes human choice an existential drama.

As I have already said, constraints are inherently permissive. You can do anything that isn't in fact limited, because the system is merely indifferent to your choices beyond that.

And being a systems deal, constraints evolve. They are learnings made habits. Peirce 101. So "dissent" becomes part of the learning side of the equation - the experiments that keep the system open and developing.

Modern western society was all about institutionalising a rational framework of laws and penalties. But the natural sense of such a philosophy can be seen in the way learning is still built into an apparently deterministic system. Law is implemented in hierarchical fashion. In the US, Congress makes law, the President can write regulations. A judiciary exists to interpret as well as enforce. Voters get to change those making the laws if they seem incompetent. There are are multiple recognised channels for dissenting and achieving change.

All this is the bleeding obvious again.

I asked if the American government should do everything it possibly can to minimize the harm caused to Americans. — creativesoul

I replied that the US likes to say the government should keep its nose out of people's business. That is the social context that in fact constrains US choices.

I could say the US should be more like New Zealand, Korea or Sweden. Or I could dig even deeper into the contextual constraints to give you an answer in terms of the recent Western fossil fuel story, or the longer run agrarian revolution, or the perspective of the past million years of hominid hunter-gatherer evolutionary biology.

In fact I did.

I replied that the US likes to say the government should keep its nose out of people's business.. — apokrisis

I did not ask what "the US likes to say". I asked if the American government should do everything it possibly can to minimize the harm caused to Americans.

As far as I can tell, you’re using ‘hegelian’ simply to mean that history has a direction -& while I think it’s a confusing word-choice (‘Hegelian’ carries a lot of meaning) I agree that history has a direction. — csalisbury

In history circles, it is well understood as a term. And the idea that history could have a direction, a trajectory, is also highly disputed.

Hegel's actual finality was the arrival at a rationally organised society - an optimisation function that would deliver Maslow's hierarchy of needs, pretty much.

I say that is what is happening, but for another deeper underlying reason. The negentropic dividend is being paid for by the greater entropy that it manages to produce.

But I can’t understand your above post without some wedge between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ - if, as you say, It is by understanding how things are that we become able to make a choice and ‘resist’, then there is a space in which to choose that isn’t inevitable. There’s a ‘gap’ in the ‘is.’ — csalisbury

You will never understand my position until you manage to let go of the position from which you are trying to understand it. Give up on this is-ought nonsense - a metaphysics that opposes determinism and freedom as irreconcilable opposites.

My approach is based on dialectics - the unity of opposites. Your language has to start reflecting that logic to get a purchase on the argument.

Constraints are not laws. They don't dictate. They just limit. And thus that which is not limited is free. Or at least, a matter of deep indifference. :smile:

In practice, that is how human law works. And even natural law.

For a while I’ve felt that if ‘free will’ means anything, it involves learning to observe patterns and cycles, including the weak/unstable points that would allow for the disruption of the whole, thereby allowing actual change. and then to ‘wait’ for that moment or part of the cycle to come around again, and act (with and against the pattern.) — csalisbury

You mean tipping points? Bistability? Butterfly wings and chaotic attractors? All the good things provided to us as mental models by the modern science of non-linear dynamics?

This is exactly the physics that employs a probabalistic and constraints-based view of reality.

How does one ever jump off the high diving board? Or even find the will to get out of a warm bed?

Do we just command ourselves, now is the moment? Or do we get tipped into the act at the very moment we finally forget our fears for an instant?

(The ‘ought’ that leads to nudging in this direction organically bubbles up as discontent before finding this means of finding a way forward.) — csalisbury

Yes. You are describing what I've been saying. Change often happens because some random event is the straw that breaks the camel's back. You can then either blame the straw or recognise that there was some deeper constraint coming under such tension that "anything" was going to release it to do its equilibrium rebalancing thing.

I asked if the American government should do everything it possibly can to minimize the harm caused to Americans. — creativesoul

And who are you asking that question of now?

God? Some Platonic abstraction? Some random dude on the internet?

Why so much resistance?

Anyone who knows how to use the English language, particularly those who know what a representative form of government is supposed to do, already knows the answer to that question.

Why so much resistance? — creativesoul

Because I really have no idea who you want to be answering.

I had assumed you wanted the answer from "entropy's point of view", so that is what I gave.

What about you... personally? Set the unquenchable thirst for explanatory power aside...

Answer the question.

It speaks to the OP in so many more ways than are obvious at first blush. This pandemic and it's effects/affects, are symptoms of much deeper problems with the US... as is Trump. Symptoms of the unraveling...

Yes, I know that’s what you’ve been saying! I have a good sense of your view, and, having a good sense of it in all its dimensions, it does not surprise me that you see me as blinking, waking up to it. I think you’ve misunderstood how much we agree on, which has led to previous confusions about the points we disagree on. Anyway, my butting-in was simply to try to point out that Banno’s responses aren’t nonsense and to tease out the space where one can make a reasonable response. I also agree with a dissolution of the is/ought along similar lines, but it takes some explanation, rather than indignation.

I’m indifferent to the degree it doesn’t impact on my freedoms. That is the “personal” answer anyone would give who is unable to talk about a wider view.

This pandemic and it's effects/affects, are symptoms of much deeper problems with the US... as is Trump. Symptoms of the unraveling... — creativesoul

Maybe you missed the point at which I entered this conversation. My geopolitically informed view is that even a buffoon can’t damage the US in an end times way. The US starts with so much advantage that talk of its unravelling are premature.

@apokrisis Let’s get into some of the thornier stuff. What do you think of Fukuyama’s treatment of ‘thymos’ as the inevitable bone in the throat of a utopian Maslow-satisfying society?

How is it the bone in the throat? Do you mean that if everyone self-actualises as the highest personal good, then no one is left to give them respect. Everyone is Superman, no one the crowd?

I think what that says is respect is a two way street - given and earned. If we are to biologise thymos, then I would point to the fact that social animals are adapted to make smart choices in terms of social dominance and submission. Our neurobiology is designed to promote hierarchical social order. That was the “ethics” that proved entropically functional.

So self esteem has to be situated within a hierarchical social order to be meaningful. And it has to be essentially permissive in that constraints based fashion.

Of course we can deny our biological heritage. Just as folk like to deny geopolitical national advantage - Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis where the world could be viewed as a single flat market of opportunity.

Denying the constraints that in fact historically shape our freedoms “for a reason” always works out well, doesn’t it?

How is it the bone in the throat? Do you mean that if everyone self-actualises as the highest personal good, then no one is left to give them respect. Everyone is Superman, no one the crowd? — apokrisis

You've tossed around Fukuyama recently - have you actually read his book? I've long had a general suspicion about some of your references...

If you haven't, I'm happy to recapitulate what he said, just let me know.

Oh I see. I didn’t think much of his first book and so I should have read his latest?

Here is a previous discussion anyway....
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/226840

Oh I see. I didn’t think much of his first book and so I should have read his latest? — apokrisis

Wait, what? If you've read The End of History, you'd know instantly I was talking about a key part of that book. Did you just google "fukuyama+thymos" and see Identity pop up? (of course that came up first and almost exclusively...think of how many online pieces were written in reaction to that book!) Which book did you read, Apo? It would have been a better look if you hadn't doubled down on having read it, and just come out with it.

Instantly? Gee, I’m impressed by your memory for books you might have read 30 years ago that failed to capture your imagination.

Well, clearly you are itching to explain your point?

In a sec, I have to google the relevant parts.

That reply is as lame as it gets. You say it is an interesting question until the moment it gets asked. Then run away. — apokrisis

It's an incredibly easy question. Laws tell you what the penalties are for dissent. — apokrisis

So, for you the legal answer just is the ethical answer. Incredibly subtle of you!

Alright, done.

The problem with utopia, Fukuyma says, (jk, there's no way to actually know what fukuyama said) is that those with the right model of the world have to explain it. And they have to explain it to those who don't get it. Without the gap between those who have the right view and those who don't, those who do have the right view can't get the kick of explaining, scolding and berating those who don't. If they don't get to explain, scold and berate, what do they do with their understanding?