Sure it is egotistical in some sense, since it is your own happiness you are after, but if there exists some activity that does not full within the purview of how you should live your life then by definition (as far as I can see) it is not a moral obligation.

I'm just saying that if you're motivated to ask how you should live your life because it's more ethical than asking for lotto numbers, the difference in ethicality is miniscule compared to the difference in ethicality of asking for the cure for cancer and asking how you should live your life. You don't have to think you're obligated to ask a maximally ethical question, but then I don't understand why you'd want to ask a question that is one Planck unit more ethical than another, assuming that lotto numbers will make you happier than whatever the answer to "how should I live".

You ask the question "how should I live" not because it is justified or imposed by some independent ethical doctrine, but because you want to know the best way to live. So that you can live it.

If there is an answer to the question (which is not a given, per Nietzsche), then that answer implies some absolute standard of goodness (otherwise "best way to live" makes no sense).

If for example the answer is "experience as much pleasure and avoid as much pain as possible" then the implication is that pleasure is the highest good for man, so there is evidently no reason to entertain other ethical or moral obligations beyond the need to avoid the pain of guilt or shame.

If the answer is Socratic or Aristotelian or Kantian or Christian or Islamic, same deal. The answer will tell us what if any ethical or moral obligation truly exists.



Maybe you don't like the implication of the question, which is that there might be a natural ethical or moral truth, rather than one that exists only with reference to a particular doctrine. Or you are already a utilitarian and don't want to risk a great opportunity to benefit the greater good. But if your utilitarianism is wrong and you should be a hedonist, you're really going to be missing out. (Actually probably not, hedonism is easier said than done.)

Now I want the absolute answer. Why do we have Absolut Vodka?




Edit: how absolutely careless of me to vaste the Absolute Question on that

Thanks, Kant.

So would you rather have the lotto numbers or know how you should live, and why? The lotto numbers ensure you make 100 million dollars, "how should I live" could produce an answer like "sell your possessions and move to the mountains". It's possible that for you the latter will actually maximize your happiness more than the former, but that's not the same motivation as thinking the latter is a significantly more ethical thing to ask than the former (or ethical at all).

This depends on what the range of answers is to "how should I live". If the range is of the kind "quit your white collar job and raise sheep" then you have no idea what is being endorsed. Maybe you should raise sheep because that's for the greater good. Or maybe you should raise sheep will maximize your happiness and yours alone. You couldn't infer either from just the advice that you should raise sheep.

The entity giving the answer is omniscient (and presumed to be honest), so the answer to the question, if there is one, is necessarily THE way you should live your life.

That 'should' incorporates whatever ethical obligation may exist in life.

You seem to have the idea that ethical means altruistic, but it does not (at least not necessarily). That belief is a Judaeo-Christian innovation. See Aristotle for the clearest statement of the classical alternative to altruism.

I'll grant you that for some of the possible answers you will wish you had asked for the lotto numbers, but I don't think that is the issue here.

Let's say you ask: "How should I live in compliance with the ethical theory you (the omnisicnet being) know to be right?" If one of the instructions you get is "never lie even to murderers" then maybe you can infer what the right ethical theory is. But if the omniscient being tells you to quit your job and raise sheep, although you will know that this is necessarily how you should live your life, you will still have no idea what ethical theory is right. If that's the case, you will have used up your question to ensure only that you live a maximally ethical life. To put it another way, all other things being equal, is it better that just you know how to live a maximally ethical life or is it better that everybody knows how to live a maximally ethical life?

You should be careful what you wish for because if you are dealing with a peripatetic being, the answer to “how should I live my life” could be die in battle with courage or be a slave. The end of Aristotle's ethics is the fine (and how you should live your life is to strive for the fine), but what grounds the fine is not anything I know; I'm just appealing to base sentimentalities. If you had a chance to cure millions of people of cancer and the cost to you was giving up the chance to know how you and only you should live your life, wouldn't you opt to know the cure for cancer?

?

the answer can only contain information and the extra information is useful so why would I ask for less?

That being an anchorite is either the best way to get others to live the way they should or is better than influencing how others should live.

If it were better to tell the world how they should live their lives, the omniscient being would have told you to do that.

But again, if the *omniscient* being tells you this it must be TRUE, not just true relative to his peripatetic beliefs.

Again you seem to have closed off your mind to the possibility that the actual ethical truth is anything but utilitarianism.

We are not asking the omniscient being for some kind of relativistic answer, we are asking him for the truth. If there is a truth, he will tell it to us. If that truth is utilitarian or religious in nature, then we might wish we had asked for the cure for cancer (but then again religion usually implies that wellbeing in this world is almost irrelevant).

One thing it's helpful to remember is that according to classical ethics, a bad life is not worth living in the first place. As in you are better off dead than living a bad life.

nah, if he telld me to murder my fitrst-born he can get stuffed. It doesn't make it true it just means that the omni one is a git.

It seems like there is an actual problem with whether the omniscient is also malevolent and gets to define 'good' for as 'whatever makes humans most miserable'.

I think for the purpose of the question we should assume the omniscient being is either indifferent to man or benevolent toward man. I think that encompasses all the ethical possibilities humans have posited.


ETA - Actually now that I think about it the omniscient being doesn't get to define anything. But still he could be reporting the will of a malevolent god.

Its a problem in that soemthing nasty has power over us. its not a problem ethically.

I think we shouldn't and I've explicitly made sure that in the given scenario it has to play by my rules. Maybe it will have to tell me how to kill it.

Having it play by your rules eliminates the possibility of learning that your rules are wrong.

right/wrong is a mistaken concept here.

You take that premise for granted when it is in fact a philosophical position (nihilism or maybe relativism) that may or may not be correct.

No. Its meaningless in the same way it would be meaningless for you to tell me I'm not in pain.

Are you're taking some kind of Wittgensteinian position that these things cannot be spoken of? (Which is yet another arguable position.)

Or are you saying that one person's "ethical system" or whatever cannot be wrong? If you're saying this then that it is relativism, deriving from Nietzsche, and quite arguable.

No

dunno, doubt it because what I said was basically unarguable

The only possible mistakes can be in reasoning from inarguables like feeling pleasure/pain but the question relies on the omni not to make mistakes so that can't happen.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your position.

I thought when you said you would have it play by your rules you meant you would ask it, for example, "how should I live as a hedonist?" if you are a hedonist. In other words looking for more specific details on how best to live up to your personal ethics.

Are you just saying you would ask it "how should I live among the possible ways of life I would ever be willing to pursue?", for the sole purpose of excluding malevolent answers?

Everyone is a hedonist. many just have a very restricted view of what hedonism is - I've already used up my good press joke.

yes but malevolent is what I understand it to be. edit: e.g no god can come along and tell me that Hitler as I perceive him was a good bloke really, it could be my perception is mistaken but that's covered by the omni.

Meh the problem is your broad understanding of hedonism simply amounts to a pointless redefinition of the term so that it means something we already had a concept for.

Are you really going to argue that the mother sacrificing her life to save her newborn is a hedonist?

If so what is the term for a psychopath who truly values nothing more than physical pleasure? Also a hedonist?

Clearly under this conception of hedonism we are all hedonists. But then we can rationally make the differentiations among different versions of hedonism that were traditionally made among different versions of the good life.

Thus you can posit classical hedonism where one regards the highest pleasure as coming from being excellent, Judaeo-Christian hedonism where one regards the highest pleasure as coming from serving God in an altruistic fashion, hedonistic hedonism where basic bodily pleasures are the the highest pleasure, nihilistic hedonism where there is no correct ordering of the pleasures, etc.

Its really not the case. Dismissing hedonism for a failure to understand its rich stucture is just weak.

of course itt is, she isn't doing it despite prefering not to.

Of course,

Yes exactly. But then everything else I said also follows in the same way.

Of course you can. Those who would do whatever god wants are in fact doing so because that's what they want.


Now we've got all that guff out the way we can see that the question gets the right answer.

Despite your first sentence you seem to be conceding my point about redefinition. It's just a semantic question. Traditionally there is a distinction between what one wills and what it pleases one to do.

If you think a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire is an act of hedonic maximization, you are free to adopt the definition of hedonism that makes that belief true.

For my part I think your definition, rather than allowing for a richer conception of pleasure than most people have, reduces pleasure from a tantalizing end of many human actions to a mere psychological abstraction known as "will".