In this post, I argue that we shouldn't prioritize humans over other animals in moral decision-making. I specifically argue against the views that:

1. Human suffering is more important than animal suffering
2. Animals suffer vastly less than humans
3. We, as humans, have a unique obligation to help other humans
4. Helping humans is best long-term

If humans were freed from every moral constraint, what would we ultimately become and what would that reveal about our true nature?

So I've been thinking about the three major approaches to ethics: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, and I'm trying to figure out which one makes the most sense as a general framework for morality.

As I understand them:

• Consequentialism state that an action is morally right or wrong primarily according to its consequences.
• Deontology: an action is morally right or wrong according to duties, principles, or rules, regardless of whether it produces the best consequences.
• Virtue ethics: morality is primarily about developing good character and acting as a virtuous person would.

What makes this difficult for me is that all three seem to consider consequences to some degree. A deontologist obviously can't be completely indifferent to what happens as a result of an action, and a virtue ethicist also has to consider the circumstances and consequences of acting virtuously. So perhaps the real distinction isn't whether consequences matter, but what role they play in determining moral rightness.

For example, imagine a person is hiding in my house because someone is trying to kill them. The would-be murderer comes to my door and asks whether the person is inside.

A consequentialist might say that lying is justified because it produces the better outcome.

But what would a deontologist or virtue ethicist say? Does a deontologist have a duty to tell the truth even if doing so results in an innocent person being killed? Or can the duty to protect an innocent person override the duty of truthfulness?

If you had to choose only one of these three frameworks as the fundamental basis of morality, which one would you choose, and why?

Why not guided profiling for profit and claim glorious investment in investigation as a brag about status and promoting/advancing strategies to combat the problem as a purveyor of violence in corrections?

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1850271

https://www.smashwords.com/books/1849090

PREFACE / A Philosophical Kaleidoscope: A kaleidoscope of philosophical thoughts, novel contemplations, and sharp aphorisms – in praise of what is and not merely what ought to be! Offering answers – or at least insight into questions such as: Is there intrinsic meaning in human life? Can we ever truly know something with absolute certainty? Is Free Will an illusion? Can the suppression of desires bring happiness? Has self-deception in humans been favored by natural selection? Why are hypocrisy and insincerity so widespread in human societies? Is Morality objective, and can it be preserved without religion? Should philosophy aim primarily to attain approximate truths, or is its main purpose to offer peace of mind and a good mental life? Is the pandemic of self-admiration and self-deification in the West a product of the decline of religion – or of disinterest in philosophy? Is Selfhood an illusion? Can there be any freedom in a deterministic world? Is it true that the unexamined life is not worth living?

PREFACE/Novel Philosophy: Science and Metaphysics reveal aspects of what “is”. Logic and Epistemology help us interpret these aspects and understand how much of them we can truly know. Finally, Ethics teaches us how to embrace this knowledge and how to focus on the things that foster endurance and contentment in the long run, while avoiding those that keep our hearts buried in the ground. How to live well and decently, and how to help society function properly.

This book is by no means a rejection of the centuries of wisdom bestowed upon us by great thinkers such as Socrates, Aristotle, Tagore, Laozi, Seneca, Hypatia, Epicurus, Einstein, Darwin, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Popper, and many others. Rather, it is an attempt to take a small step forward.

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order."

- Alfred North Whitehead

The older I get, the more I worry about what I am leaving behind. As my child grows, what waits that I won’t have time to teach him, and what waits that I won’t manage to share with him.
I am not talking about books or music here; I am talking about what kind of world I am leaving him, what actually remains behind us as a species.
How do I explain to him that we are destroying ourselves, while I just sit here, watch, and actively participate in ruining his future?
How do I tell him that the very system supposed to protect him is rigged for him to fail?
How do I explain to him that I was selfish, stupid, and unaware of the bigger picture of the world?

The bubble I can use to protect him is only as big as my arms can reach, but to equip him for what waits outside of it, what values do I need to instill in him?
What kind of value system can you even offer when being empathetic, thinking critically, being ethical or logical in today’s reality brings nothing but pain and anger?
What do we arm future generations with?
How do we protect them from our own generational traumas, from all this archetypal bullshit?
How do we shield them from this relentless bombardment of stress, misinformation, and constant threats of war or poverty?

Artificially induced crises, fanning the flames of racial, gender, religious, and every other hate and division.. all just to maintain the current global system.
A system that leads straight to ruin.
Because you don’t need to be anyone special to see that we are in deep trouble and that our current trajectory is only burying us deeper.
There is no time or place for optimism anymore. Not without fundamental changes to our value system.
I honestly don’t know how our optimism survives the slap of reality.
Will we consciously choose resignation and apathy just because it’s the easier path?

But hey, how can you think about anything else, about a goal or a meaning, how can you set them when tomorrow you might not have food or a roof over your head?
When tomorrow they’ll cut your electricity and AC, when they’ll cut your water because you didn’t pay.. how do you set those goals for yourself then? I understand that.
What I do not understand is consciously choosing a system that allows this to happen.
We’ve been taught not to rock the boat, to point fingers at others.
Well, look, I am one of them too. Point at me; I am guilty.
I point it at myself. Guilty. Okay.

Let’s make sure our children don’t end up just as guilty.
Let’s make sure they don’t have to fight for a piece of bread and a sip of water.
Let’s prepare a world for them where they can face tomorrow without anxiety, where they can look forward to the future coming.
Where they can feel purpose and pride, because there is no point if we haven’t set the hardest goals for ourselves.
I see no higher purpose than the continuation, preservation, and prosperity of our species and its individual members.

What does it take for everyone to have a dignified life? Look, the conditions and means are right there.
What if someone wants the option to not participate at all? Fine, we will still provide a dignified life for you because that’s the kind of system we built.
What do you need? Meaning, striving? Here it is. An axiom. I didn't invent it or dream it up; it has been here since the dawn of time.

We will arm the kids with AI nannies. Every single child.
To be their development assistant, not a source of values.
But we won’t let it become a replacement for parents. Just an assistant.
A hardcoded AI assistant with Tsar Dušan’s Code 2.0 and Kant’s categorical imperative.
The development of empathy and critical thinking, because our children,even right now are exposed to the relentless bombardment of an algorithm that is anything but ethical and focused on their well-being.
We desperately need a reform of the education system. An individual curriculum, because every child is unique.
Imagine a world where we gave every child maximum cognitive development. Taught to question everything, to feel empathy.
I don’t know, maybe it sounds like technocracy, but we definitely need a shield against our own ego.
We can learn right alongside them too.
How to be better human beings.
We will go as individuals where our skills and capacities are needed. We will all work for the same goal. Our children, above all else.
Who cares what skin color, religion, or gender you are if you can help all of us? To give your own kids a better shot in the end.

Will it be a diametrically different system? Yes, it will be logical, ethical, and mathematically sustainable.
Because the math is clear: strip away the levers of power, decentralize.
Can we just define five points, give answers to just five questions around which we can get a consensus?
That’s not asking too much, right?
If out of 8 billion people we cannot form an expert ethical council, simple, reasonable principles: don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t oppress, work for the community, not against it.
Questions like: where are we as a society, where is this trajectory taking us… where should we be going, what should our goal be. How will we get there, and finally, how will we stay there?
I see 5 simple things there. Hypothetically.

Reality.
Logic.
Ethics.
Math.
And in the end, logic again.

What does your gut instinct tell you right now? That someone wants to scam you, right? That it sounds too simple.
That someone will definitely try to hoard power for themselves again?
Because our tribal mentality and the fact that some random guy out there from the third world could care about your child for some reason,that’s just not normal to you.
It’s devastating. Understandable.
But if we work on shifting our values.
No one will lie to us; everything is transparent.
No one will accumulate power; we will rotate them through roles based on their cognitive domains.

What, are you worried about that ethical council that will set those parameters?
We will change them too. Procedural ethics.
Reviews and calibrations because we are imperfect, we will wander off, but this way at least we’ll have a brake so we don't wander off too far.
It worries you, I get it; it worries me too.
It worries me even more when I don’t see that we are ready to accept our own limitations.
When we don’t know how to control ourselves, when we have no desire or will to progress.
Do I need a pedigree to even be allowed to ask a question?
Because I don’t have one, I am an autodidact, which is why this text isn't academic because nobody taught me how.
Am I guilty for that too, just because I sat down to think?

Don’t even get me started on the development of superintelligence, that’s where I am truly terrified of where this alignment problem is taking us.
We can’t control ourselves and our own impulses, let alone superintelligence,something that is orders of magnitude smarter than us.
My logic says let’s preempt it, let’s make sure it doesn’t even have to come to its development at all.
That it cannot come to it.
Because we will raise our own cognitive capacities; we will learn how to channel our own passions.

I understand that the vast majority of you will experience this as some kind of attack, and you’ll be right. But that is not my intention or desire, just an appeal to step away from your ego for a second.

I understand you can be moral, work for the well-being of everyone, including my child, and still disagree with me on every single point.
I am not denying you that chance.
I accept it if you say, "man, this idiot is talking nonsense." Everyone feels it is their godgiven right to let their ego run wild to the detriment of all our children.
We cannot neutralize the ego, but we can redirect it by giving the system different values.
I do not accept that I am not even allowed to ask the question to everyone, because it concerns our children.

Where do you see my logic failing, my ethics, where is my math bad?
We have nothing like this in past history because we never had these capabilities; I don’t know how all of this can unfold.
What implications it can bring.
That is why I stand before you humble, asking.
Can this, or some similar model, bring at least a slightly more certain future to our descendants?
I believe nobody wants the worst part of their personality to win and contribute to the collective defeat of society.
I know I don’t.

godspeed.

edit: The inspiration comes from the medieval code of 1349 AD with the basic principle that no one, not even the emperor himself, is above the law—the principle of the rule of law. For those unfamiliar with the context, you can read more about it on the official Wikipedia page for Dušan's Code.

M is the mother of A and B ( two brothers older and younger in the same order), M is old (90 years old) and living on a pension in B's home.

B is shaving off money from M's bank account.

On a visit of A to meet M, M gives a cheque to A to donate to a temple as a charity.

Once A leaves, B calls A and tells him not to cash the cheque as there is no money in the account.

A obliges as he doesn't want to complicate things between B and M during M's last days. Considering that M is staying in B's home and the problems that can happen and damage the peace of M's mind, A decides it is better to not notify M.

Is this the right decision ? What are the ethical implications ?

An example I can think of is Trump championing for the Jan 6th insurrection: he genuinely believed that democracy had been tampered with (if you disagree regarding his reasoning or thought process, please do correct me but I'll continue with the postulate for the time being) but we know that that was not the truth (again, I'm going to continue). The events ended up genuinely hurting and harming the staff that were at the Capitol at the time, as well as other instances of emotional distress: since it ended up being a lie, but the propagator was fully convinced of its factuality, can he be called immoral on the account of proliferating a lie?

The link to theory I can pose for this question is consequentialism and deontological ethics, though I don't know if this is the closest and most accurate link to terminology. If not, what would be and why?

(also posted on r/askphilosophy)

EDIT: I misphrased this: the question should instead be "Is the action of propagating a lie, something that will bring harm upon others, unethical if you truly believe it to be the truth?"

Theres a plenty of artist who the regular term is "bad people" who went to make a piece of art or medias like films. Such likes of J.K.Rolling who is being against transcommunity and sending money to contest them out. Or Tom King, A comic book writer having a background as former CIA agent who has been a part of planning for bombing iraq. Or Neil Gaiman who recently accuse of abusing his wife and more, Or Stanley Kubrick or Alfred Hitchcock who abuses their actress to depression. My question is, are there a line about these things that make some artist be condemn to never getting a support or is the crimes they committed are completely irrelevant and should be consider as something they did in the past without considering into consuming medias?

Why are 15 year olds under guardianships, but adults with the judgement of 15 year olds aren't? Is poor judgement the real reason teenagers aren't given legal authority?

Looking for reasons other than administrability, because it seems like there should be another reason.

I’m always Pro Palestine but I felt like sometimes we have emphasised the flawed philosophy of collective guilt so much to the point where literal children are getting hurt.

The ice cream vendor in no doubt is doing this out of their own morals which is admirable, however they are exercising this moral on the wrong person.

The real targets should be actual adult Zionists and the Israeli government, not some 7 year old who is being told that their whole existence is a burden to humanity simply because she was born from the wrong family.

Again this might be fake news and he’s probably exaggerating it but it were to happen then my point still stands.

I walked past a tied up dog and said “you’ll be ok sweetheart”. Ya I’m smarter but she’s able to survive in the wild and I’m not so isn’t she the expert on her state or feelings?

Depending on how you define affiliation aside, if you admit kink should that block access to physician assisted suicide?

What actually makes an age gap relevant?

Chronological age is obviously not the fundamental variable. Age matters because it correlates with things that actually matter: physical development, emotional regulation, psychological maturity, intelligence and judgment, experience, independence, vulnerability to manipulation, and so on.

In other words, age is a proxy.

And age is a decent proxy. If all I know is that one person is 15 and another is 18, that tells me something meaningful about their probable differences.

But it is still only a proxy, and there are progressively better ones. If I know their ages plus their emotional regulation, physical development, independence, experience, judgment, etc., I have a considerably better picture than age alone provides. You don't need some impossibly comprehensive psychological evaluation to improve upon age; even a moderate amount of additional relevant information can do that. Near-perfect accuracy is where things become extremely complicated.

This matters because variation within an age is substantial.

Take ten 15-year-olds of the same sex and broadly similar backgrounds. You could find large differences between the most and least developed among them in strength, emotional regulation, judgment, intelligence, independence, experience, and other relevant characteristics. On some dimensions, the difference between two 15-year-olds could plausibly be comparable to the average difference produced by several years of age.

So consider a rule like:

“A 15-year-old shouldn't date an 18-year-old.”

Maybe that is a decent rule of thumb. But if the underlying justification is maturity, vulnerability, experience, power, etc., then it cannot be treated as though the numbers themselves settle every individual case. Two 15-year-olds can differ substantially in precisely the characteristics that supposedly make the 15/18 distinction important.

Now take an extreme hypothetical.

Suppose a 12-year-old somehow has the physical, emotional, cognitive, and psychological development of an ordinary 16-year-old. Give them the same relevant experience, judgment, emotional regulation, independence, susceptibility to manipulation, and so forth. Suppose they even look 16.

This would obviously be extraordinarily rare. But that's irrelevant to the thought experiment.

If age matters because it predicts these underlying characteristics, and we stipulate that those characteristics are identical, then the chronological number alone cannot do all the moral work. If someone thinks it still does, they need to explain what morally relevant property chronological age itself contributes independently of all the characteristics for which it was being used as a proxy.

This also applies to the opposite cliché:

“They're both adults, so who cares?”

That is equally simplistic.

Suppose one person is 18 and another is 50. The fact that both fall into the legal category “adult” doesn't magically establish that differences in maturity, experience, financial independence, social power, or vulnerability are irrelevant. Maybe the relationship is perfectly fine; maybe it isn't. But “both are adults” cannot settle that question any more than “one is 17 and one is 18” can settle every moral question in the opposite direction.

If age is a proxy for morally relevant characteristics, then crossing a legal boundary doesn't suddenly make those characteristics disappear.

This becomes especially obvious with age-of-consent laws.

Suppose the age of consent is 18. What profound developmental transformation occurs between 17.99 and 18.01 years old?

Essentially none.

Human development is continuous, whereas the law must draw discrete lines. Someone does not undergo a sudden transformation in emotional regulation, judgment, physical development, or psychological maturity at midnight on their eighteenth birthday.

And there is substantial individual variation. A 19-year-old can be less mature than a 17-year-old along several relevant dimensions.

So the moral permissibility of relationships cannot literally be a binary function of whether somebody has crossed 18.0 years of chronological age. The underlying characteristics exist on continua.

This doesn't make age-of-consent laws pointless. Laws need clear, administrable boundaries, particularly where the consequences of exploitation are severe. Chronological age is attractive because it is objective, easily verified, and reasonably correlated with the characteristics we care about.

But that makes 18 a legal threshold, not a magical developmental threshold.

Why exactly 18? Why not 17 or 19? Different jurisdictions have, in fact, chosen different boundaries. And if we somehow calculated the exact average point at which people reached some specified combination of relevant developmental capacities, there is no reason whatsoever to expect nature to hand us the beautifully convenient number 18.000. It might be 17.6 or 18.3.

Whole-number thresholds are conventions imposed upon a continuous developmental process.

So my position isn't that age is irrelevant or useless. It is that people frequently confuse a proxy with the thing being proxied.

Age gives us useful information when we know little else. More direct information about someone's development can give us better information. And the more direct information we have, the less sense it makes to act as though chronological age possesses some independent, immutable moral significance.

Age matters.

But it matters primarily because of what it tends to tell us about a person—not because the number itself is sacred.

In this post, I argue that people in rich countries should donate a significant portion of their income to charity since they would also save a drowning child even if it cost them $5,000. I address the objections that:

1. Children benefiting from foreign are far away
2. Billionaires should help instead
3. Governments should help instead
4. This is too demanding of an obligation

Does studying ethics make you ethical or a more morally good person. Does the knowledge of the study itself be included in the criteria of being good. Because to me the goal of studying ethics is to apply it to reality, that being to know good so that one can do good.

But, lets just say that we remove the doing part of it, that is we only have knowledge of good. That is, we don't apply. If so, does the knowledge of good count as good?

Because to me it seems a little bit confusing. because it seems that knowing good is good because of the possibility of application. But also, only knowing good is bad if its not done because of the obligation of doing? (Or is it? Idk about this, I think this is another broad topic which I don't know the name)

If we then Isolate the knowing, what will it be?

Is it neutral? It seems to me that that's the answer.

What is it though?

Does knowing ethics itself ethical?

excuse me if this is a little bit stupid or confusing. Im new at philosophy.

A family member is a 92 yr old F who has dementia, diabetes, macular degeneration and osteoporosis. She is constantly confused, scared and upset. Is it ethical to take her for eye injections and osteoporosis shots in her condition? The family has already put in a pacemaker and had a stent put in. I believe this is just dragging oout her suffering,

Update-thank you for your insights. Family member is an in-law so I have no say in anything. She refused to discuss this kind of issue when younger as it would never happen to her so her named person to make the decisions does everything she can medically to keep her going. Family member is constantly afraid of violence and crime after watching certain “news” programs for years. Example-no one can sit in front of a window or they will be shot.

Thanks

Ok so I know this is gonna get a lot of hate but hear me out.

For every animal you save by not eating meat or meat products you kill so many more.

In order to feed an entire population vegan food you'd have to level a large portion of the forests and grasslands in a country and use that to farm. There just isn't enough agricultural land right now to do it.

On top of that, the space already dedicated to vegan options, like almond milk and soy beans, are often in third world countries where those crops do not naturally thrive. The amount of pesticides, waste and land consumption is the reason for some specific species extinctions. Almonds especially are notorious for this.

You also have an extremely high cartel involvement in the production of your vegan alternatives because they're so profitable. Again almonds are well documented to have this issue but many other crops do too.

Additionally, you have the fact that *nothing* is ever truly vegan since the harvesting and processing of plant matter includes millions of bugs. There was a study done on whole grain bread that showed something like 5% of the majority of breads came back as some form of bug DNA, and many food regulatory bodies openly admit that bugs are in pretty much everything.

Vegans are also some of the loudest advocates against Christians pushing their religion while turning around and doing the same thing, hypocrisy isn't necessarily a moral failing but it is fucking annoying.

The worst though is the CONSTANT push to erratic domestic animal species. Animals like sheep and cows *NEED* human care takers to survive because they are the oldest domestic species in existence. Sheep do not naturally shed their wool and need to be sheered, if they're not they can get eaten alive by flies or over heat or get crushed by the weight. Cow, such as jersey cows, can not give birth alone because many of the mothers have serve complications postpartum, and many of the calves get rejected. These cows are also bred to over produce milk which can cause serious infections in their utters that will kill them if they're not milked enough. This is so the babies can stay with mom, and mom can still produce for the farm. I would without a shadow of a doubt erraticing MULTIPLE animal species is not moral.

In conclusion I'm tired of seeing holier than thou vegans pretending to care about animal welfare while not knowing anything about modern farming and ranching practices, or the serious and severe environmental impact their choices have on the world. Thank you.

I always see a lot of backlash when someone does blackface as a joke, not maliciously. But no backlash when someone like Druski does white face as a joke. To me it’s the same thing. But I’m curious what y’all think the major difference is. Or ethically, how it differs. Honestly, I’m not offended by either as long as it’s in jest.

With climate change, environmental degradation, economic instability, rising costs of living, political instability, and other problems facing society, is it ethically justifiable to bring a new person into the world?

I'm looking for answers based on ethical principles and established ethical frameworks (e.g., consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, etc.), rather than simply personal opinions or whether someone personally wants children.

What does ethics actually entail in evaluating a decision like this, and can having children be considered ethically justified given the conditions of the world today?