consistency and ethical positions

[gumpzilla]

One issue that crops up again and again in discussions here is the logical consistency of various ethical "systems." I use the scare quotes because I think most people here do not have anything that resembles a fully fleshed out ethical framework for making decisions that they logically work out from the ground up. It is assumed that such consistency is a good thing in and of itself. But is logical consistency of your ethical beliefs a necessary (it's clearly not sufficient) condition to be ethical? I don't think this is obvious. And if it isn't, then in what way (other than perhaps aesthetically) is a logically consistent ethics superior to one that lacks that feature?

[malorum]

Do ethically systems need to be complete and internally consistent?

Goedel might suggest an answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goedel

[gumpzilla]

What? What the hell does the incompleteness theorem have to do with anything? Or are you planning on showing me that some ethical scheme is strong enough to prove number theory propositions a la Principia Mathematica? I also am not sure that we should start talking about completeness of moral systems in this context because I don't think you can do so sensibly without begging the question by assuming that we should be talking about morals/ethics as formal systems. Did Goedel do some philosophical work that I'm unaware of (I didn't read the entire Wikipedia link, you're going to have to be more specific) that you're really referencing?

[malorum]

Hey I thought I was agreeing with you in a way:

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I think most people here do not have anything that resembles a fully fleshed out ethical framework for making decisions that they logically work out from the ground up.

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formal system??? should we number possible ethical scenarious given a set of moral axioms. perhaps we could use the ten commandments.
I'm sure that whatever set of axioms we use you will encounter a problem statement somewhere along the line.
Just the nature of our fallen logic.

Aesthetic considerations aside, systems that appear logically consistent have some psychological appeal at least to the post-enlightement western mind.
Systems that are at least substantially complete are useful for legislative and social purposes.

I as a biblical scholar use a system that acknowledges its lack of logical consistency. I like the honesty of this.

[gumpzilla]

Bump, I would like to see some actual arguments.

[David Sklansky]

If I remember my logic course correctly, if you have a system with two axioms that contradict each other ANYTHING you want can be deduced from that system. If you can deduce A, you can also deduce not A. Someone out there can remind me if this is true. If so that answers your question unequivacobly.

[PairTheBoard]

This is the view I gave here , and expanded on it in other posts on that thread.

There are often moral principles that compete with each other. An example of two, "It is good to help others" and "It is good to help yourself". What people do in practice is apply both principles using their best judgement to find some kind of balance. There may be a whole complex of principles and personal experience that go into that judgement. That's what causes the differences in opinion.

The personal decision process is based on mental processes that aren't even understood, much less modeled mathematically. The fact is that mathematics is a very weak tool when it comes to handling really complex systems. However, human beings can be very good at coming up with workable insights, conclusions, and decisions in the midst of a relatively chaotic mixture of information. They may very well be unable to give a logical line of inferences for how they arrived at their gestalt. If Sklansky induces them to try he can often make short work of them. But that is not because their thinking process is flawed. It is because Sklansky's method of linear logical inferences is inadequate to the task.

PairTheBoard

[Darryl_P]

[ QUOTE ]
But is logical consistency of your ethical beliefs a necessary (it's clearly not sufficient) condition to be ethical?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you are assuming that being ethical is a yes-no question, which is wrong IMO. But let's assume there is a point on the scale above which we could say a person is ethical. Then I'd say yes it's possible to attain that level with no more than an average amount of logic. But if your aim is to move higher along the scale, then logic can be an important tool, along with other tools like self-awareness, say.

The most important reason for using logic and avoiding hypocrisy, though, is not to attain a higher level of ethics but to simply avoid wasting valuable time and resources running around in circles when you could be using it to improve yourself or whatever part of the world you feel like improving.

As an example, I live in Hungary and we have a large and growing population of gypsies here. Most conservatives here do not like gypsies and don't want tax money going to finance their needs. They are also annoyed by their presence on the streets selling mostly stolen goods constantly shouting loudly to find buyers as fast as possible. Yet they shop from them in large quantities, so in essence they are contributing to the problem.

Then they spend valuable time lobbying their politicians, who in turn work hard to correct the problem by bolstering police patrols etc. If successful a lot of work will have been done just to get back to square one, with all those government resources being used just to protect the conservatives from themselves, their impulsive, irrational tendencies, and their hypocrisy.

If these conservatives would use logic to avoid internal inconsistencies they would either decide

a) Yes, I support the gypsies because while they are annoying, they provide me with good stuff at good prices and stealing really isn't all bad if I get some benefit from it.

or

b) No I don't support them because stealing is wrong and I want to live in country with peace and order, even if it means paying more for stuff that goes through proper channels.

A lot of unnecessary energy could be saved by just using a bit of logic and every citizen of Hungary would be better off for it. This is of course just one example, but it illustrates the main idea.

[PairTheBoard]

I think your example illustrates my view. In the example the conservatives have two Competing principles. One is, "we should control gypsy behavior". The other is, "I want to get the best price available for things". They then use their judgement to balance the two principles - with a whole complex of other principles probably involved as well though not so obviously. Arguing that their balancing process isn't logical is like pushing on a string. Even Sklansky, the Messiah of Logic, agrees that if the two principles are competing there is no logic for automatically determining their correct balance. You can point out to them that their principles are competing, but I suspect they already know that.

PairTheBoard

[Darryl_P]

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Even Sklansky, the Messiah of Logic, agrees that if the two principles are competing there is no logic for automatically determining their correct balance.

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If they are exactly equal and opposite, then I agree. But what if you can assign values or weights to the various values, like vector forces in cartesian space which go in different directions, but not exactly opposite? Then there is a nondegenerate resultant vector which indicates the appropriate action via logic.

If the two competing values are almost opposite and almost equal in magnitude, but not exactly, then a very precise determination of these values (using logic) is needed to get even approximate information about the resultant vector.

I think the gypsy example is a case in which the two are competing but not exactly opposite and the magnitude is similar, but not exactly the same.

DS was referring to two absolute statements (A) and (not A) exactly, not something close.

Do you not agree that there is a key difference there?