• commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    if you don’t know anything about the world, your ethics system might as well be empty.

    i suppose so, but if your axioms depend on the future, which by definition is unknowable, then it is empty.

    • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 months ago

      Consequentialist axioms impose an ordering on world-states, almost all of which will never exist. I don’t understand how you can think the axioms themselves depend on future events; by definition they wouldn’t be axioms.

      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        if you must do what will cause the most pleasure (or least displeasure), then your axiom depends on knowing the future.

            • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              7 months ago

              Every ethical system requires knowledge of the world.

              Knowledge of the world includes knowledge of the probability of future world states.

              Future world states are subject to doubt.

              Present world states are also subject to doubt.

              There is no fundamental difference between the degrees of uncertainty about present and future events.

              We can know with a high degree of certainty that without intervention, the sun will be destroyed. I can know with a high degree of certainty that your arguments come from a mind that is not part of a mind that I am part of. I can know with a high degree of certainty that the place I am currently located will not be subject to an event that will destroy me.

              Privileging the certainty of nearer-term events is fallacious. It is true that any particular chosen event becomes more probable as its proximity to us increases, because there are fewer ways to avert it, but that does not mean all further-future events are less probable than all nearer-future events.

                • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  7 months ago

                  Are you claiming that in a particular physically real situation, the categorical imperative can can tell you the correct course of action with 100% certainty? If so, please explain how that’s possible when your personal certainty of the situation is (necessarily) less than 100%.

                  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    7 months ago

                    if you’ve decided that a certain course of action should be universal law, then complying with that law is moral. The categorical imperative is incredibly simple to apply