I think, to form an ethical system that passes basic muster, you can’t only take into account the immediate good/bad effects on people of an action. That would treat the two cases “you dump toxic waste on other people’s lawns because you find it funny” and “you enjoy peacefully reading a book by yourself, and other people hate this because they hate you and they hate it when you enjoy yourself” the same.
If you start from a utilitarian perspective, I think you quickly figure out that there need to be rules—that having rules (which people treat as ends in themselves) leads to higher utility than following naive calculations. And I think some version of property rights is the only plausible rule set that anyone has come up with, or at least is the starting point. Then actions may be considered ethically bad to the extent that they violate the rules.
Regarding Good and Evil… I think I would use those words to refer to when someone is conscious of the choice between good and bad actions, and chooses one or the other, respectively. When I think of “monstrously evil”, I think of an intelligent person who understands good people and the system they’re in, and uses their intelligence and their resources to e.g. select the best people and hurt them specifically, or to find the weakest spots and sabotage the system most thoroughly and efficiently. I can imagine a dumb evil person, but I think they still have to know that an option is morally bad and choose it; if they don’t understand what they’re doing in that respect, then they’re not evil.
you enjoy peacefully reading a book by yourself, and other people hate this because they hate you and they hate it when you enjoy yourself
The problem with making hypothetical examples, is when you make them so unreal as to just be moving words around. Playing music/sound/whatever loud enough to be noise pollution would be similar to the first example. Less severe, but similar. Spreading manure on your lawn so that your entire neighborhood stinks would also be less severe, but similar. But if you’re going to say “reading” and then have hypothetical people not react to reading in the way that actual people actually do, then your hypothetical example isn’t going to be meaningful.
As for requiring consciousness, that’s why I was judging actions, not the agents themselves. Agents tend to do both, to some degree.
Ok, if you want more realistic examples, consider:
driving around in a fancy car that you legitimately earned the money to buy, and your neighbors are jealous and hate seeing it (and it’s not an eyesore, nor is their complaint about wear and tear on the road or congestion)
succeeding at a career (through skill and hard work) that your neighbors failed at, which reminds them of their failure and they feel regret
marrying someone of a race or sex that causes some of your neighbors great anguish due to their beliefs
maintaining a social relationship with someone who has opinions your neighbors really hate
having resources that they really want—I mean really really want, I mean need—no matter how much you like having it, I can always work myself up into a height of emotion such that I want it more than you, and therefore aggregate utility is optimized if you give it to me
The category is “peaceful things you should be allowed to do—that I would write off any ethical system that forbade you from doing—even though they (a) benefit you, (b) harm others, and (c) might even be net-negative (at least naively, in the short term) in aggregate utility”. The point is that other people’s psyches can work in arbitrary ways that assign negative payoffs to peaceful, benign actions of yours, and if the ethical system allows them to use this to control your behavior or grab your resources, then they’re incentivized to bend their psyches in that direction—to dwell on their envy and hatred and let them grow. (Also, since mind-reading isn’t currently practical, any implementation of the ethical system relies on people’s ability to self-report their preferences, and to be convincing about it.) The winners would be those who are best able to convince others of how needy they are (possibly by becoming that needy).
Therefore, any acceptable ethical system must be resistant to this kind of utilitarian coercion. As I say, rules—generally systems of rights, generally those that begin with the right to one’s self and one’s property—are the only plausible solution I’ve encountered.
I think, to form an ethical system that passes basic muster, you can’t only take into account the immediate good/bad effects on people of an action. That would treat the two cases “you dump toxic waste on other people’s lawns because you find it funny” and “you enjoy peacefully reading a book by yourself, and other people hate this because they hate you and they hate it when you enjoy yourself” the same.
If you start from a utilitarian perspective, I think you quickly figure out that there need to be rules—that having rules (which people treat as ends in themselves) leads to higher utility than following naive calculations. And I think some version of property rights is the only plausible rule set that anyone has come up with, or at least is the starting point. Then actions may be considered ethically bad to the extent that they violate the rules.
Regarding Good and Evil… I think I would use those words to refer to when someone is conscious of the choice between good and bad actions, and chooses one or the other, respectively. When I think of “monstrously evil”, I think of an intelligent person who understands good people and the system they’re in, and uses their intelligence and their resources to e.g. select the best people and hurt them specifically, or to find the weakest spots and sabotage the system most thoroughly and efficiently. I can imagine a dumb evil person, but I think they still have to know that an option is morally bad and choose it; if they don’t understand what they’re doing in that respect, then they’re not evil.
The problem with making hypothetical examples, is when you make them so unreal as to just be moving words around. Playing music/sound/whatever loud enough to be noise pollution would be similar to the first example. Less severe, but similar. Spreading manure on your lawn so that your entire neighborhood stinks would also be less severe, but similar. But if you’re going to say “reading” and then have hypothetical people not react to reading in the way that actual people actually do, then your hypothetical example isn’t going to be meaningful.
As for requiring consciousness, that’s why I was judging actions, not the agents themselves. Agents tend to do both, to some degree.
Ok, if you want more realistic examples, consider:
driving around in a fancy car that you legitimately earned the money to buy, and your neighbors are jealous and hate seeing it (and it’s not an eyesore, nor is their complaint about wear and tear on the road or congestion)
succeeding at a career (through skill and hard work) that your neighbors failed at, which reminds them of their failure and they feel regret
marrying someone of a race or sex that causes some of your neighbors great anguish due to their beliefs
maintaining a social relationship with someone who has opinions your neighbors really hate
having resources that they really want—I mean really really want, I mean need—no matter how much you like having it, I can always work myself up into a height of emotion such that I want it more than you, and therefore aggregate utility is optimized if you give it to me
The category is “peaceful things you should be allowed to do—that I would write off any ethical system that forbade you from doing—even though they (a) benefit you, (b) harm others, and (c) might even be net-negative (at least naively, in the short term) in aggregate utility”. The point is that other people’s psyches can work in arbitrary ways that assign negative payoffs to peaceful, benign actions of yours, and if the ethical system allows them to use this to control your behavior or grab your resources, then they’re incentivized to bend their psyches in that direction—to dwell on their envy and hatred and let them grow. (Also, since mind-reading isn’t currently practical, any implementation of the ethical system relies on people’s ability to self-report their preferences, and to be convincing about it.) The winners would be those who are best able to convince others of how needy they are (possibly by becoming that needy).
Therefore, any acceptable ethical system must be resistant to this kind of utilitarian coercion. As I say, rules—generally systems of rights, generally those that begin with the right to one’s self and one’s property—are the only plausible solution I’ve encountered.