The entire human race except you has been injected with a mind control chip that makes them unable to use force against other humans. In a fit of irony, this makes it voluntary for you to undergo the operation since you are the last man standing.

Do you think it is unethical to not undergo the operation? Do you think it is ethical to undergo the operation? It would be great if you expanded on your answer.

Remember that everybody else already has the chip implanted! Assume the operation can not harm you. There is no "ulterior motive" for the thread. This is just for fun.

I do not think it is unethical to forgo being implanted, and I would choose not to be implanted. The reason for that is the value I place on human freedom, by which I don't mean necessarily any sort of libertarian free will, but just freedom from external coercion. The chip is something external to my "self", for just about any definition of "self" that I would find meaningful. I would also say that this value of freedom is not absolute, but in the scenario presented it seems more important to me as an ethical consideration than any argument I can think of for why I should take the implant.

I am more ambivalent about whether or not it is ethical to undergo the operation as a general rule. I would say that it is not absolutely unethical to choose to undergo the operation. There are other ethical considerations besides freedom, and I don't know how to weight them for someone else. As a matter of fact, I do not have a rational framework for evaluating those considerations even for myself, it's just that in this case it doesn't seem like a very close decision.

It's certainly unethical if I plan to use my unique force-using abilities to my advantage (a la Homer Simpson and the Amish).

Otherwise, I can't see it, unless your ethics compel you to plan against your possible future defection from them. As in, I should take the operation because I might go mad with power in the future.

My mother wants to know if everybody jumped off a bridge would it be ethical?

I don't know, but I'd write her out of the will just to be safe.

I kind of think the part about what happens to everyone else doesn't much matter. As in, while I suppose what you are eliminating is a sort of tit for tat defense of force (I am justified in using force, because others are or may use force against me), I don't think that is too commonly used by people to justify their use of force. Or at least I don't use that argument.

I think it is a bit of a hodgepodge of issues, and I marked it LC as I'm not sure it is that fruitful and I have never read much on ethics, except research ethics and that doesn't go very far here.

Well Named touched on what I would call the "humanity" argument, that there is something intrinsically human about ethics that some might think a machine can remove. I think this is intriguing because maybe it carries over to the usage of psychoactive drugs?

We have what AiF briefly touched upon; is giving up the gun the ethical equivalent of never firing it?

And then there is what Bladesman humorously hinted at. Is ethics an merely an implicit agreement between people? Or is it something you determine for yourself. Which I'm thinking is where you are coming from too? Or am I misunderstanding?

Wouldn't such a model be one that compelled you to conform to it because the logic couldn't be faulted and it had no flaws? If there is no model such as that, and you dont believe that morals have a divine authority behind them, then perhaps it's just a matter of personal preference?

Does this chip prevent people causing harm other than through physical force?

The first question I will leave to Bladesman, as for the second...


I know it annoys some people, but I always play pretty loose with terms when I'm in discussion mode. This is because I think it is more interesting to explore the issue and then do definitions based on what we find - doing definitions and then exploring will tend to close doors.

So I have no set terms for what constitutes force, instead you get to propose your answer with your caveats or lack thereof. Is it force to push somebody out the way on a subway station? In Germany doing this might be constructed as extremely impolite and close to an assault, but in China it is accepted social interaction.

Is force then defined by something more than intent and consequence? Is force maybe not determined by action, but maybe interaction? Is force then a form of communication? Could a chip that blocks us from forcing eachother might as well constructed to make us not perceive force?

I don't know then. Unless I subscribe to a moral theory like Ethical Egosim, I'm probably going to do what's in the best interests of the majority, or what I consider the 'good' thing to do, and I can imagine a scenario where it might cause others concern that I haven't allowed the modification and unless I plan to take advantage of my freedom to use force on others, I should go ahead and accept the chip. On the other hand, I can imagine another scenario where someone has contracted a deadly disease but refuses to accept either that fact, or that they should voluntarily restrict their contact with others to prevent the spread of the infection, and I would be performing an act that is to the benefit of the majority to forcibly remove them from circulation.

So perhaps it's of greater benefit to remain able to use force.

That is a very good reply, and I think it also shows the strength of using an exploratory angle instead of a fixed perspective.

In our quest for individual liberty maybe we overlook that force isn't necessary unethical. In an analogy we can look at cytotoxic t-cells, one of the most important part of the human immune system which basically work by killing other cells.

I think the general problem of ethics is that it's somewhat easy to come up with consistent ethical systems but there is no absolute compulsion as an individual to subscribe to them.

I would consider it something like economics where we can come up with lots of pragmatic systems in which there are "good" and "bad" economic choices (given the workings and goals of that particular system). We might even go as far as to say that if you want to participate in advanced society then an involvement in economics is a necessity. However, money remains simply a creation and economics is not some fundamental property that by virtue of its logical consistency we must be compelled to live by. Some chaotic anarchy or state of nature is not better in an absolute universal sense even if it has lesser pragmatic value.

So all the people in the world but me performing action X doesn't leave me with any genuine compulsion to do X myself, even if it is "unethical" in a given system.

Usually I put myself in the amoralist kind of camp because the thing that interests me is whether there is any fundamental reason why I ought act in some certain way. And I don't think there is.

We can take ethical egoism and say that "one ought to act in ones own rational self interest". I don't think this leads to any kind of logical inconsistency; we just don't have any good reason to actually be ethical egoists.

What about issues that affect your own survival? Whilst there may be no good, obviously fundamental external reason for why you should survive (but whilst saying that I'm wondering if there's a strong case to be made for exactly that given our biological imperatives), is it not desirable to you anyway?

If it is desirable, shouldn't you therefore act in a way that is beneficial to your own survival and have we not got, at this point, the beginnings of a moral theory/framework?

I feel like you answered your own question. There's no reason to think that because I desire something that it is morally good to desire.

Probably not the place to do into this in detail, but I pretty much agree with this analogy. A lot of the problems in traditional moral philosophy dissolve once we stop thinking of morality as a thing that exerts a force (like magnetism) and start thinking of moral philosophy as an approach to solving a certain subset of problems (like economics, engineering, medicine etc).

I'm starting at 'I desire', desiring my survival, and working out what I consider good from there. I'm not saying that desire itself, or survival itself, are good or bad but instead trying figure out if there is something that could generate a fundamental and compelling moral value, and it seems that it's normal to want to survive so it's a good starting point.

So if I desire my own survival, not because that's good or bad, just because the alternative isn't desirable, and there is a thing X that benefits my survival, then that thing X is good, e.g. if it turns out that being honest and benevolent to others benefits my own survival, and them being honest and benevolent to me in turn, also benefits me, then aren't honesty and benevolence now fundamentally 'good' character traits?

I'm not saying that there couldn't be times when there are compelling reasons not to be honest or benevolent, I'm generalising.

What you're proposing is on the lines of what I said before. You might have a logically consistent system of morality. It's just that there's no reason to use your system instead of any other.

I thought I was addressing what you said, isn't survival a reason to choose a system?

you can define that as "good", yes, but its still only good from your perspective. I also dont see how you can say "my own survival isnt good or bad, but something that benefits my survival is good", which is what you are saying in the above paragraph.

them being honest and benevolent would still not be moral tho

It might be a reason why I'd prefer your system to one that wanted to exterminate me.

It's not a reason why it's better than any other moral system that would keep me alive.

Yes, but it's a reason for not being amoral, right? Which is all I've been trying to say, not that X system is the best, but that there may be a requirement for a system rather than none.

I'm responding to this: And your survival is a possibly a reason why you ought to act in a certain way, although which way that is, i.e. which system you actually subscribe to, hasn't been agreed.

And if it's something that most people would agree is 'good' for survival, doesn't that now become a desirable character trait/behaviour?

Societies aid individual survival and honesty aids the survival of societies, therefore honesty is a desirable trait in a person, it's morally 'good' to be honest.

I can say it because I'm not trying to ascribe a value to survival, I'm simply using it because I think it can generally be agreed to be dersirable. Now I have a reason for needing a moral code and within that code I can start to determine what is good and bad.

Well, if morals are simply a guide to how we should behave, then isn't anything that influences our behaviour, a moral issue?

Unless by 'moral' you meant 'good', then yes, it's entirely dependent on whether or not those specific behaviours aid our survival, which is my original reason for needing a moral code at all. If they do (which they generally do) we can call them 'good'.

Only because you have previously defined moral goodness as that.



Calling survival desirable is ascribing a value to it......

Who gets to say how we should behave? If we just go with the majority view, then fine, but theres nothing special, nothing that makes that view extra correct, or extra morally good.

What you're doing is framing a specific goal and then saying that I ought do something if I want to achieve that goal. That doesn't make that goal necessarily morally good. Just because I want to survive doesn't mean that my survival is a good thing, even if there are better and worse ways to attempt to survive in a pragmatic sense.

I also don't need to apply moral value to my survival. Why can't I just survive because I want to and not because I ought to?

Not just me. I think you'd struggle to find anyone who didn't agree that honesty is a 'good' character trait, even people who are habitually dishonest. The dishonest can only profit from their dishonesty in a generally honest society. If everyone were dishonest there would probably be no society.

Not really, desirable and good are not equivalent. Desire is just a state of wanting.

But, desiring my own survival now gives me a reason to have a system of behaviour to follow because it benefits my survival. Within that system, whatever it may be, I might be able to determine what I consider 'good' and 'bad'.


My response was to this that you said - "them being honest and benevolent would still not be moral tho " and I was simply pointing out that anything that has reference to our behaviour is necessarily a moral issue, because morality/ethics is about how we behave.

No one 'gets to say' how we should behave. Ideally there would be a moral system so logical and compelling that we would have no choice but to subscribe to it but it would still have to operate within some kind of paradigm/framework, and our survival seems to be a common one.