Arguments Wiki sample page: Morality

This is going to be one of the most important pages on this wiki, because everything that includes anything such as goodness, idealism or permissibility will reference this page

Looking at the table of contents made me say "oh my god", groan and snort snickering and holding my head in disbelief

Definitions

I reeeeeeaaaaaally think we need to define morality before we even start on what the true state of it is. I don't know what page I'd put the moral stances in, but this one should be dedicated to discussing the different interpretations of what the definition of morality is in the first place.

And... I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START \(π_π)/

I'd like to say what I've stashed away from the description into an HTML comment:

Morality is a set of ideals and guidelines upon which agents base their actions.

But is that even accurate? First of all, does it mean a specific set, or is it indefinite, like it can refer to any set of ideals and guidelines?????? And if it's the former, what set would it be referring to? If there's a particular one, wouldn't that make it automatically objective, like the rules of addition (changing the rules makes it not addition) or the formula of the Mandelbrot set? And then wouldn't that make it totally arbitrary?

One of the points I want to get to is: why be objectively moral, when you can be objectively scrumumdiddlydaddlydoodlyumumptious? Like, I know being immoral is the wrong thing to do, but being scrumumdiddlydaddlydoodlyumumptious is the scrumble thing to do and not doing that is yorn!!!!!! That's why I'm gonna do it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also I'm looking at a bunch of philosophy pages and holy smoke, let me just say, they are a doozy. I'm pretty confident I can just summarise each stance of morality into one sentence and contrast them by saying what features they do have and what features they don't, so why does it have to be so difficult???????????? I don't think I want to ask ChatGPT again, because it seemed to get just as lost as I did when I tried to dive into morality and all of the different interpretations and aspects of it...

By the way, if morality is based on "truth values" - THAT MAKES THEM CONTINGENT ON EPISTEMOLOGY AND LOGIC SYSTEMS. And your choice of using classical logic, paraconsistent logic, fuzzy logic or some other logic system is subjective, so that means things like objective morality are an even bigger nonsense craphouse than they already seem like they are!!!!!!

This is one of the most important topics that so many other topics are going to be contingent on, and it's making me lose my goddamn mind (>‸ლ)

General

Table of moral interpretations

I know!!! A table.

Absolutism

Moral absolutism holds that there are actions (potentially all) that are intrinsically moral or immoral, regardless of subjective opinions, local customs, context or consequences.

Counterarguments

• Absolutist morality has no merit due to it's definitional independence from rationality and consequences. This makes it completely arbitrary.
• Any conception of "absolute morality" is only absolute according to the person who holds it, making it externally subjective.
• It sounds like a very dogmatic pure simulacrum.
• Absolutely all actions being intrinsically moral or immoral entails that there are binary moral values for activating certain neurons, displacing your ear lobes, digesting food or committing quantum collapse in the molecule at the tip of your median-length eyelash. Something about ontology or prime/composite actions or whatever. I'll get more into this later but think about how absurd it is

Objectivism

Moral objectivism holds that there are objective moral principles that are independent of subjective opinions or local customs.

Universalism

Moral universalism holds that moral are independent of subjective opinions or local customs.

Relativism

Subjectivism

Moral subjectivism is the view that morality is a subjective phenomenon based on the beliefs of individuals.

• The adoption of any particular moral framework is subjective. Regardless of the implications of adhering to any particular framework, everyone's perception of all frameworks is based on perceiving, processing and interpreting an arbitrary set of information - in other words, the subject becomes subject to the subject. The concept of any moral system that isn't subjective to at least some degree is utterly superficial.

Consequentialism

• The adoption of any particular moral framework is ultimately consequential. Regardless of anyone's specific reasons for doing so, the ultimate reason for someone following a certain form of morality is that their brains were trained, programmed, manipulated or otherwise convinced to do so, and so they do it. The concept of any moral system that isn't based on consequentialism is utterly superficial
  • I'll sort this out later but also - adopting any moral framework means that you've focused your consequentialism on whether you're following the framework or not.

Realism

Scepticism

• External world scepticism applies to the validation of abstract ideas as well as physical entities.

Rationalism

Constructivism

Intuitionism

Nihilism

Moral nihilism is the view that morality doesn't exist, and moral values don't apply to anything.

Emotivism

Utilitarianism

Kantianism

Wait, but if Immanuel Kant gets to have his own view of morality officially published and formalised, why not all of the rest of us?

Optimised Value-Theoretical FireyDeath4eanism

1. Ensure that the population is predominantly rational, then get them all to agree on a well-ordered set of well-defined common values sorted by priority.
   • An example of such a set would be: wellbeing, rationality, contentment, integrity, fairness, freedom, diversity, prosperity, creativity and entertainment.
2. Allow individuals and groups to append their own values to the list and use their extended lists for personal/communal use, as long as the additional values don't contravene those in the main list.
3. Enable all action that does not appear to contravene any of the values in the list.
4. If a situation occurs wherein all of the values can't be upheld at once, prioritise the higher ones.
5. Use mathematics, logic, epistemology, formalised philosophy and empirical evidence to solve any moral disputes.

Egoism

Cognitivism

Non-cognitivism

Oh come on! There are so many interpretations! And I thought explaining them would be a breeze, but nope, I'm still stuck on trying to understand them and tell them apart! Am I just being an idiot or something? Gourdsh gourmndangmnabbit

Prescriptivism

Centralism

Non-centralism

Empiricism

Institutionalism

(sort these most to least significant, probably absolutism at top and nihilism at bottom)

Some other kind of definitions I don't know how to categorise

General term for any set of rules and guidelines

Illegal chess moves are immoral. Yyyyyyyyeah, I rather think forms of morality are a subset of this

General term for any set of rules and guidelines that applies to general circumstances

Reference to actions that would maximise a reward function

Because of course it's moral to do drugs kids

Lol, nah fam - doing drugs also makes you feel very, very bad if your euphoria is unsustainable

Oh come on

I looked up what the difference is between morals and ethics, and some sources say that morality applies to individuals' own principles (subjectivism) while ethics apply to rules provided externally (relativism/authoritarianism),^[1] while other sources say it's the other way around...^[2]

And there are all these other interpretations too
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/moral-vs-ethical
https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-morals-and-ethics.html
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ethics-vs-morality/
Shouldn't we be able to agree on what these things even refer to? Either I'm just being an ADHD-driven idiot, or AntiCitizenX was entirely right about the stagnation of philosophy

(or both)

Also if all of the above interpretations on this page are about morality, wouldn't that just make it synonymous with ethics?

Come on \(-_-)/ \(-_-)/ \(-_-)/ \(-_-)/ \(-_-)/ \(-_-)/ \(-_-)/ \(-_-)/

By the way, we have to make sure that all the interpretations are actually assigned to the appropriate categories - for example, morality, ethics and meta-ethics

References

1. ↑ https://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals
   • https://benjaminspall.com/ethics-morals/
2. ↑ https://theconversation.com/you-say-morals-i-say-ethics-whats-the-difference-30913