Thanks for the advice. Yes, I see what you mean about a quote within a quote.

Just thinking though...

The idea is essentially that even on a strict consequentialism moral error is possible — Leontiskos

But is moral error, or just error, the same as immorality in the sense I was mentioning? I guess I could kill someone in error, or I could kill someone thinking it was a moral thing to do, but afterwards realize that I was wrong. But if being moral is about doing what is best for you, then making an error is not trying to not be moral, and therefore, it cannot be immoral, can it?

Maybe I've taken your point further than you intend, Banno
— 180 Proof

Not too far, perhaps. Talk of virtues and vices, dealing with here and now, ad hoc rather than programatic decision making, allowing for review of the outcomes, heuristics over algorithms; sounds about right. — Banno

:cool:

" Why be moral?"
Because, if you live within a society, it is in your best/self interest, in isolation morality is meaningless.

But is moral error, or just error, the same as immorality in the sense I was mentioning? I guess I could kill someone in error, or I could kill someone thinking it was a moral thing to do, but afterwards realize that I was wrong. But if being moral is about doing what is best for you, then making an error is not trying to not be moral, and therefore, it cannot be immoral, can it? — Beverley

The idea is that, if morality is doing what is best for oneself, then one can act immorally (err morally) if they fail to do what is best for themselves. Assuming they did not intend to fail in this way, their immorality would be unintentional and yet real.

What is "best for oneself" is usually conceived of as an objective target that can be hit or missed, such that one must refine their understanding over time in order to truly act in their best interest.

I’m not sure if it is about getting it right or wrong, but more about the motives for the actions. In other words, morality is doing what you think is best for you. This implies that mistakes are not immoral. Wouldn’t immorality be doing something even though you know, or think, it is not best for you? This is what I am doubting. Is this possible?

Why be moral?"
Because, if you live within a society, it is in your best/self interest, in isolation morality is meaningless. — boagie

I was just wondering, why does taking everyone else out of the picture mean that morality, or acting in your 'best self interest', no longer applies?

In other words, morality is doing what you think is best for you. — Beverley

If morality is doing what one thinks is best for oneself in the moment, and everyone always does what they think best for themselves in the moment, then immorality and moral error are impossible, as is moral success. But I don't think this is a common view of morality, and those who hold to such a view certainly have nothing to argue about or discuss.

The proper subject of morality is the security and well-being of the biology of the self, within society it is an expanded concept of the self. If one were to be in the wilderness/isolated morality would be meaningless, unless you applied it to the creatures you hunt and consume. Morality is a social construct and in isolation it is not relative to another self. Another way of saying this I guess would be there is safety in numbers, societies aid a great deal to the survival and well-being of the individual.

Everyone needs to grasp that Michael is assuming a moral position he doesn't necessarily agree with for the sake of argument. The thread is structured a bit like a reductio, although Michael hasn't stated the punchline, and that may not be his interest.

He was trying to keep his client from having to pay out what they owed. This lawyer does this everyday. It's what he does for a living. He tries to screw people over. — frank

What each side does is try to represent the interests of the other, regardless of whether you think their interests are worth protecting. If that lawyer didn't try to reduce the liability of his clients, then his clients would end up paying amounts that were beyond what they owed.

The caricature views aren't interesting, where the insurance company is painted as Satan and the Plaintiffs as these helpless figures getting abused at every turn. The other side being that Plaintiff's attorneys are all ambulance chasers and predators trying to extract the insurance money set aside for true injuries. That you think you can pick one of these sides and declare yourself a more moral person and ignore the not so subtle nuance that you will be necessarily aligning yourself with some pretty unsavory characters regardless of which side you pick just means you're unfamiliar with the territory.

But just to the basics: The American system of justice is an adversarial system by design. That is not the only possible choice, but that's what it has. That means that you have Person A versus Person B (quite literally) and each advocates for their side. They present their case in a way that most advantages their client (and calling Granny a greedy bitch probably will backfire, by the way), and a neutral (a judge or jury) hears the evidence and renders a verdict. It places trust in these neutrals to sort out the truth and be fair. This means that if that lawyer who you think is paid to screw people decides to have a nice streak and drop his defense, the other attorney will use that to increase the recovery beyond what is due. That is why it would be unethical for either side not to be zealous.

And there is another side to the Granny equation, and that might likely be some person who just didn't see the red light, made a mistake, and caused injury. He's not a terrible person and in need of a defense. You may find this hard to believe, but sometimes we have Grannys that haven't been able to turn their neck for years, have had arthritis up and down their spine for decades, and now this bumper tap is blamed for all their problems. Two and half years later, after orthopedists and radiologists have been deposed, the jury returns the obvious verdict that the bumper tap didn't cause these problems.

That's what I see every day, much more than the true injuries. The reason for that is because the vast majority of cases settle, with most real injury claims being settled prior to going into suit. I will only see the denied claims where suit has been filed. The insurance companies don't make money by denying legitimate claims just to have juries ring them up later. Their own self interest dictates resolution of the real claims.

And with this I could launch into the tort reform movement and why I do think it is necessary. The money that is being protected is the money of the commons whether you wish to think of insurance that way or not. That money does not come from the sky. It's the social security system of private enterprise, with each premium dollar paid a tax on those who seek stability in their lives in times of financial crisis. You don't have this sort of system in more socialist leaning countries because the government takes care of the medical bills and lost wages, but no one screams it is unfair when those systems don't hand out millions of dollars in recovery in addition to that, as if that is what fairness is about.

The practical implications have to do with eating, harvesting, and producing animals, as I already noted. — Leontiskos

They're practical implications of having the belief. I'm asking about the practical implications of that belief being true.

If eating meat is immoral and I believe that eating meat is immoral then I won't eat meat.
If eating meat is not immoral but I believe that eating meat is immoral then I won't eat meat.

Whether or not eating meat is immoral has no affect on whether or not I eat meat or on what will happen if I do or don't.

Yet you refuse to conceive of morality in a non-Kantian manner, and so instead of identifying a flaw in one very localized moral theory, you falsely conclude that all of morality is inherently flawed. — Leontiskos

Firstly, I am specifically addressing ethical non-naturalism, which states that:

1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
2. Some such propositions are true.
3. Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of human opinion.
4. These moral features of the world are not reducible to any set of non-moral features.

Secondly, I am only saying that if moral features are not reducible to non-moral features (e.g. pain, harm, suffering, etc.) then the existence (or non-existence) of these moral features has no practical implications.

And I'm not necessarily saying that therefore ethical non-naturalism is false. I'm only saying that if it's true then I don't understand the motivation to be moral.

Yeah, you introduced that only after folk showed the OP wasn't working. — Banno

I alluded to it on the second page, 7 years ago:

Presumably obligations are not identical to natural properties like causing harm, for example. "One ought not kill babies" doesn't mean the same thing as "killing babies causes harm". So it seems to me that obligations, if anything, are something "extra". So there's no prime facie reason to believe that there couldn't be a world that has the same empirical facts as ours but without these obligations (whatever they are). — Michael

I was then explicit about it on the third page, 14 days ago:

What are the practical consequences of having a true belief? What are the practical consequences of having a false belief? I can't see that there are – or could be – any.

It seems to be a necessary consequence of any ethical non-naturalism that moral facts are irrelevant. — Michael

I think it's just the case that some people aren't actually reading what I'm writing.

If I believe that eating meat is immoral, and eating meat is immoral, then I won' t eat meat.
If I believe that eating meat is immoral, but eating meat is not immoral, then I won't eat meat. — Michael

How do you define "immoral" in this sentence so I can substitute those words in where you've use "moral." It's not clear what you're referring to, especially in light of the non-naturalistic definition you're trying to use.

For example, if I used "that which causes more societal unhappiness than not" for the definition of immoral, we'd end up with this:

1. If (a) I do not believe eating meat causes (b) more societal unhappiness than not, and (c) if I believe morality is what one ought to do , then (d) I will eat meat.

2. If (a) I believe eating meat causes (b) more societal unhappiness than not , and (c) if I believe morality is what one ought to do , (d) then I will eat meat.

(a) is a statement of belief, with 1(a) being negative and 2(b) being positive.
(b) defines morality.
(c) is a statement of what you believe the purpose of (b) is.
(d) is your decision.

1(d) logically follows but 2(d) does not.

So which of (b), (c), and (d) do you not agree with? And, to the extent you don't agree with one, what do you substitue in to correct it? I beleive the insertion of (c) is what @Banno was getting at, indicating it was an assumed premise that was being ignored. I was focusing on (b) because I don't really know what it means in the context of non-naturalism, but there has to be something placed in (b) in order for this conversation to make sense. Otherwise you're left with the undefined term of "morality."

See the second section of this where I set out ethical non-naturalism.

Otherwise you're left with the undefined term of "morality." — Hanover

That is indeed one of my other gripes with ethical non-naturalism. It states what morality is not but seems to lack a substantive positive definition.

I suppose one account is to define it by saying that "X is immoral" just means "one ought not X".

If so then my statements above can be rephrased as:

1. If a) it is the case that one ought not eat meat and b) I believe that it is the case that one ought not eat meat then c) I won't eat meat.

2. If a) it is not the case that one ought not eat meat but b) I believe that it is the case that one ought not eat meat then c) I won't eat meat.

The practical implication of each b) is each c), but I can't see what the practical implication of each a) is.

What each side does is try to represent the interests of the other, regardless of whether you think their interests are worth protecting. If that lawyer didn't try to reduce the liability of his clients, then his clients would end up paying amounts that were beyond what they owed. — Hanover

The fact that there are people who want to scam the system does not make it ok for insurance companies to do the same thing. And they do. They try to get our of paying what they owe. They use the court system to intimidate people.

This is how morality works: If there was one single time when you attempted to or succeeded in screwing someone over, you have done something monstrous. That person was struggling, and you either tried to make it worse, or you succeeded in doing so. It doesn't matter that it was legal for you to do this. It was a terrible thing to do to someone else, and it wasn't the "system" hurting them. It was you. You could have done something else with your talents, but instead you worked it out in your mind that using the court system to intimidate and harass someone was ok.

You know in your heart whether you've done this or not. If you haven't, then that's great. I'm not sure if you're intentionally twisting my words to strawman me, or what. This is not about the system. It's about that person you either tried to hurt, or succeeded in hurting. If there is no such person, then great. Only you know the truth of that.

If morality is doing what one thinks is best for oneself in the moment, and everyone always does what they think best for themselves in the moment, then immorality and moral error are impossible, as is moral success. — Leontiskos

Wouldn't that mean that everyone is morally successful, since everyone does what they think is best for themselves? And even if, in the future, they realize that what they did was not best for themselves, this still would not mean they were immoral because, at the time, they thought they were doing what was best for themselves, and, from the future viewpoint, they would/could not do it again if they believed it was not in their best interests. Also, couldn't people keep making mistakes, believing that they were acting in their best interests, where in fact, they were not, and they were just unable to learn from their mistakes? In this case, they would still not be acting immorally. This only works though, if you believe it is impossible for people to think self destructively, or in a way that is not in their own best interests. If you thought otherwise, would there be a way of arguing for the existence of immorality? Maybe, but I think it would be tricky.

This is how morality works: If there was one single time when you attempted to or succeeded in screwing someone over, you have done something monstrous. That person was struggling, and you either tried to make it worse, or you succeeded in doing so. It doesn't matter that it was legal for you to do this. It was a terrible thing to do to someone else, and it wasn't the "system" hurting them. It was you. You could have done something else with your talents, but instead you worked it out in your mind that using the court system to intimidate and harass someone was ok. — frank

And if there were a single instance where an injured person overstated his injuries and recovered as a result, then that too was monsterous. I guess.

The whole system is a contrivance. The idea that my efforts reduced someone's pain and suffering from $100,000 to $10,000 can hardly be said to be immoral because that would suggest that $100,000 were moral by some objective standard. If you're interested, and I doubt you are, you can research the history of pain and suffering damages from their colonial roots to how they were advanced by Plaintiff's lawyers when automobiles arrived on the scene along with auto insurance. That is, pain and suffering damages as we known them today are a historical event arising out of cars, claims, and this new idea of insurance for the common man. Before that, they were a rarity.

From there, these attorneys needed to get paid, and their clients lacked the funds and it would do no good just to secure the medical bills, future treatment costs, and lost wages because the injured person would still be out of pocket his attorneys fees that he could not afford to front. The pain and suffering damages added a pad to that in order to pay the attorneys and greatly increase the amount of the payout. And that welcomed in the contingency fee, so that the attorney could receive 33% to 40% of the recovery, making it very lucrative to overstate the injuries as that would benefit the lawyer as well. That is, the pain and suffering are the attorney fees as much as they represent any actual pain or suffering.

And from there it became known that juries were computing pain and suffering damages based upon the amount of actual damages, meaning that if there were $100,000 in medical bills, the jury would award more pain and suffering than if there were $10,000 in bills, so much so that a direct statistical correlation has been shown.

And this ushered in sending Plaintiff's to doctors that worked closely with the attorneys who would inflate the medical bills beyond recognition and would peform procedures that were not needed. It's amazing to me how only the at-fault party seems to avoid injury in these claims I have. That is to say, if you incentivize conduct financially, it will happen. That's what capitalism is all about. If you get more treatment, you get more money, ergo, more treatment.

All of this is to say you can't evaluate morality in such a system except maybe to question the system. It's like saying a football team was immoral because it threw a trick play and won the game. If it's all a game, it's all a game. You may want it to be something else, but there are billions of dollars driving this industry and if you think it about something other than the billions of dollars, it's just because you don't know.

That is indeed one of my other gripes with ethical non-naturalism. It states what morality is not but seems to lack a substantive positive definition. — Michael

That's not just a gripe. That's a conversation ender. If you have an ethical position that lacks a definition of "ethical," then why should it come as a surprise that the position makes morality irrelevant?

Can you give me any example of an ethical system that claims itself non-naturalistic? Divine command theory, utilitarianism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, relativism, emotivism, or anything? If you can't identify the theory that's being shown to be irrelevant, then I'm not following what we've accomplished.

My guess is that any theory identified is going to be shown to be naturalistic at some level, but I'm curious if there's one theory that stands out as particularly non-naturalistic.

This is all fascinating to me. But the Granny I told you about didn't get any pain and suffering money. She just got the money to pay some of her medical bills, and she had to split that (50/50 I think) with her lawyer, so she just ended up getting a little bit to help out.

It's like saying a football team was immoral because it threw a trick play and won the game. If it's all a game, it's all a game. You may want it to be something else, but there are billions of dollars driving this industry and if you think it about something other than the billions of dollars, it's just because you don't know. — Hanover

You're misunderstanding me. I realize that Granny should expect the insurance company to screw her. This is all normal. This is how it works. What I'm saying is that the people who sign up to do the screwing are doing something monstrous.

At this point, I think you're not capable of focusing on a specific individual that you've hurt. You just refuse to accept that you have done this. All the explanation of the "trick plays" tells me you have. You need an epiphany.

I'm not sure about a specific moral system, but there's Moore's open-question argument, as explained here:

Moore’s “Open Question Argument” for the conclusion that goodness is a non-natural property is closely related to his worries about the naturalistic fallacy. Consider any proposed naturalistic analysis N of a moral predicate M. The Open Question Argument maintains that it will always be possible for someone competent with moral discourse without conceptual confusion to grant that something is N but still wonder whether it is really M. Whether goodness is co-instantiated with any natural property or set of natural properties is in this sense always a conceptually open question. If, however, N really was an accurate analysis of M then the question, “I know it is N but is it M?” would not be open in this way for a conceptually competent judge any more than the question, “I know he is a bachelor but is he unmarried?” can be an open one.

Another issue with ethical naturalism is related to the problem of deriving an ought from an is. If "this is immoral" just means "this is harmful" then "one ought not be immoral" just means "one ought not be harmful", but how can we justify the assertion that one ought not be harmful? Can we do so with reference to some other natural fact, or must we depend on some non-natural fact?

So there are good reasons to believe that if there are moral facts then these moral facts (whatever they are) must be non-natural facts.

Although, as you say, without a substantive positive definition this is a rather vacuous claim, and if, as I say, non-natural moral facts would have no practical relevance, and if moral facts must have practical relevance, then if there are moral facts then these moral facts must be natural facts.

Which leads us to the crux of the issue: natural moral facts don't appear to work and non-natural moral facts don't appear to work, suggesting some kind of antirealism, whether that be subjectivism (whether individual or social), error theory, or non-cognitivism.

At this point, I think you're not capable of focusing on a specific individual that you've hurt. You just refuse to accept that you have done this. All the explanation of the "trick plays" tells me you have. You need an epiphany. — frank

What you need to understand is that the system does not work if there are not equally passionate people on both sides of the case. That is how our justice system works, without which we would not have justice as we define it. The word "verdict" means to speak the truth and that is the role of the jury. Through advocating for both sides, that enables that verdict to occur.

What would be monstorous (and unethical, and likely disbarrable) would be for me to abandon my duty to zealously defend my client with the thought that I can transcend the system and do what I happen to think is fair. If someone is screwed, the screwing is by the judge or jury because they are the ones who entered a judgment or verdict, not me.

And the medical bills are inflated and fabricated often times, meaning that if the doctor charges $10,000, at settlement time, he'll accept $5,000, which then offers a windfall to everyone else. In fact, there's an entire industry of doctors who work on a lien, meaning they perform all services without requiring payment until after settlement is reached. The bills they create are intentionally inflated well beyond what they ever expect to recover. It's all a crazy shell game. There are also financing companies that lend money against the expected verdict, charging usurious rates. You'd be amazed how many hands are involved when a settlement is finally reached, owing largely to the fact that sums of money are so large and the profit margins so large that many people get paid.

You just see a single deserving woman being jerked around and you think it's unfair, but she is working within a system that is very sophisticated with a trained attorney working for her with all sorts of ins and outs you have no idea about. If you have this thought that people get in wrecks, go to their trusted family doctor, get a prescription, maybe get few rounds of physical therapy and then the insurance company tells them to fuck off, you are mistaken. Those don't decribe the claims that have driven this system.

If you have this thought that people get in wrecks, go to their trusted family doctor, get a prescription, maybe get few rounds of physical therapy and then the insurance company tells them to fuck off, you are mistaken. Those don't decribe the claims that have driven this system. — Hanover

I understand what you're saying, and you've opened my eyes to what you have to contend with. But are you telling me it's not true that insurance companies try to avoid the obligations they've entered into with people by allowing things to play out in a courtroom? Are you saying there's nobody at the insurance company who is trained to deny claims and then see what happens? My experience is that you have to call them back and threaten to get a lawyer. Sometimes you have to get a lawyer to make them pay what they've contracted to pay (this is with health insurance). Tell me that this doesn't happen, and that this isn't part of what you do. But if you tell me that, could you also explain how you've avoided being involved in that?

I understand what you're saying, and you've opened my eyes to what you have to contend with. But are you telling me it's not true that insurance companies try to avoid the obligations they've entered into with people by allowing things to play out in a courtroom? Are you saying there's nobody at the insurance company who is trained to deny claims and then see what happens? My experience is that you have to call them back and threaten to get a lawyer. Sometimes you have to get a lawyer to make them pay what they've contracted to pay (this is with health insurance). Tell me that this doesn't happen, and that this isn't part of what you do. But if you tell me that, could you also explain how you've avoided being involved in that? — frank

I'm not vouching for either claims adjusters, attorneys, judges, or juries. All do all sorts of wrong things.

Do they train the adjusters not to return calls and take risks with the hopes something will screw up the claimant, I doubt that. There is no loyalty among adjusters, management, legal departments, or really employees generally, so no corporation is going to formalize a training process that instructs how to engage in bad faith dealings. That is, even if management decided it would be best to be underhanded, if they teach you that, when you quit a week later, you get to expose the company to all they've been doing.

This has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with self-interest. You're suggesting that a multi-billion dollar insurance company with tens of thousands of employees might actually teach Billy Bob from Dothan, Alabama how to cheat from his cubicle. That's investing a whole lot of trust in Billy Bob. Billy Bob becomes, as they say in the insurance industry, a significant business hazard.

Are you asking if Billy Bob might not be an even tempered decision maker who might get into a petty arguments and make people's lives difficult? I'm sure that happens and my guess is that management would not want to see that happen and then Billy Bob becomes his manager's problem.

Insurance companies make their money by investing the premium dollars into the market. They act as a bank. As long as their return exceeds their cost to obtain their money, they profit. If for every $1 collected, they, for example, pay out $1.03 in expenses, but they get a 6% return in the market, they profit, even when operating at a loss. That is, they paid 3% for their money and they invested it at 6%.

Some of these carriers have 10 of millions of policies in force with billions in premiums, so their actual dollar profits are astronomical. As claims payouts increase, premiums rise to offset that, and as long as all competitors within the market are subject to the same forces, they're all dealing with the same profit margins. I'm telling you this so that you can understand that quibbles here and there over claims payments are not going to significantly affect profits. If the S&P drops, then that will really matter.

But, yes, if Company A has claims payments of a significantly higher percentage than Company B, Company B will see higher profits, but that's doubtfully the result of bad faith dealings by Company B in keeping claims payouts low, but it probably to do with a systemic problem in Company B's claims process where they either are inefficient, have bloated expenses, or they have a culture of over-paying claims due to risk aversion.

In other words if a company is losing profits, they probably first look to their investments and their expenses, as opposed to issuing a decree to reduce claims payouts.

Anyway, this idea that the way insurance companies profit is by hiring a bunch of cheap motherfuckers who screw people up envisions a very unsophisticated business world.

"Millions of Americans in the past few years have run into this experience: filing a health care insurance claim that once might have been paid immediately but instead is just as quickly denied. If the experience and the insurer’s explanation often seem arbitrary and absurd, that might be because companies appear increasingly likely to employ computer algorithms or people with little relevant experience to issue rapid-fire denials of claims — sometimes bundles at a time — without reviewing the patient’s medical chart. A job title at one company was “denial nurse.”" — PBS

Is the above giving incorrect information?

Is the above giving incorrect information? — frank

That deals more specifically with health insurance companies, and I can't speak as much to it. It's a very different industry, where quibbles over codings, limits over amounts paid for certain benefits, and the fine print in the policy come to play.

There is a different analysis when you're referencing 3rd party claims (i.e. when I sue you and try to seek recovery from your insurer (i.e. I am a third party to the contract)) versus 1st party claims (where I am seeking recovery under my own contract). The latter becomes complicated by the fact that arguments ensue over what you contracted for. It's not that common that the argument in the 3rd party dispute is over what the contract says. It is common in 1st party claims where someone is sitting there reading you your policy and telling you what you get.

Health insurers tend to be highly regulated in terms of the premium increases they can charge, so they have to reduce benefit payouts as much as possible to survive, but, as you know, those premiums rise annually. Health insurers are not subject to significant litigation like auto and premises carriers are, but they are in a constant battle to reduce benefits and to fight doctors over what they will pay for the services they render.

That's a whole nother ball of wax. It's the reason Obama made his effort, but that whole industry has its struggles, which I'm sure you're aware. There were counties in Georgia where no one would offer health insurance, although the state intervened and worked something out. But yeah, dealing with health insurers is a nightmare, but that whole industry is dysfunctional.

Ok. So maybe it's not happening around the clock the way I thought it was.

What I wanted you to understand is that though you describe it as an adversarial setting, that alone victimizes some people. Some black people won't even go to legal aid to get help understanding the system because they've been taught that it won't help and it could make them a target. If a car insurance company does engage in bad faith, the playing field really isn't level. I'm sorry I accused you of being involved in that. I was wrong.

I think it's just the case that some people aren't actually reading what I'm writing. — Michael

Perhaps; or perhaps your argument is not as clear as you suppose.

It seems that the topic has been lost - unless @Frank is arguing that since @Hanover's actions are sometimes dubious, we should not pay attention to his opinions concerning ethics. The problem is obvious.

Wouldn't that mean that everyone is morally successful, since everyone does what they think is best for themselves? — Beverley

Can there be success without the possibility of failure?

This only works though, if you believe it is impossible for people to think self destructively, or in a way that is not in their own best interests. If you thought otherwise, would there be a way of arguing for the existence of immorality? Maybe, but I think it would be tricky. — Beverley

Error is a difficult concept in general. When someone finishes a math problem they think they have the right answer, but they may have the wrong answer. Believing that something is true does not make it true. While falsehood is easy to identify, pinpointing error and culpability is more difficult, whether in math or morality.

In any case, I think most everyone recognizes that it is possible to act and choose in ways that are not in their best interest. Anyone who has experienced regret should recognize this.

Why would there be a motivation to believe empirical facts that are of no practical consequence? — Janus

This was not addressed. I think all this thread helps to demonstrate is the absurdity of the notion that there could be moral facts in any sense analogous to the way that there are empirical facts.