Who owes the world morality? Clearly a pig doesn't, but somewhere between pigs and humans lies some variation that makes us ethically accountable.What is it? Is it the ability to put yourself in other people's shoes (and thus that your actions have consequences on others)? In that case, is there a continuum in ethical accountability between species?

Also, this all seems like one of the inevitable outgrowths of the fact that morality is a human fabrication. Why aren't we all moral nihilists?

Nobody owes the world morality. That implies that it's better to be moral because it's fulfilling some kind of duty. It's better to be moral because that makes people happier. This is true whether you understand morality or not.

Sure, and maybe my wording was misleading, but were does that leave morality and non-human animals?

Hi,
I think we can break the question down into two simpler ones.
1) Are non-human animals actions good and bad? The answer is that of course they are. If a non-human animal saves a person from a painful death for example, it doesn't matter if this was intentional or accidental, it is a very good thing. Even if rain falls, thereby breaking a drought, this is better than continuation of weather that causes suffering! So good and bad are terms that I'll happily apply to non-human, non-living events.

2) Should non-human animals be rewarded and punished for their good and bad actions? This is the utilitarian equivalent of the question "are non-human animals responsible for their actions?". The answer is that we should never punish an animal whose future actions can't be changed. Suppose that a dog is disposed to chase wild animals, thereby scaring them. You can train the dog to stop scaring other animals in this way using a water pistol. In my opinion, there are three considerations. Is it possible to train dogs in this way? How much suffering will it remove? How much effort will it take?

I hope that helps

consequentialism IMHO

in the end it is all about consequences, the end result.

does it pay to help people?
does it pay to be nice?

these questions are easily answered by asking yourself
what am i getting out of this ?
do i want to pay the price for this?
how bad do i want this?
am i comfortable with this?

even animals must ask this question at an instinctual level
animals will do what needs to be done in order to preserve themselves.

i feel that in essence consequentialism is a self preservation philosophy.
and sometimes self preservation means banding together other times doing things on our own.
doing "good" or Doing "bad"
in the end whatever gets me to what i need at the price i want to pay.

it sounds harsh and very uncouth but in the end it is fact.
it sounds subjective to us because, we dress it up with "only good" or setting limits because we dont want to be seen or treated like douchebags or "animals".

bears will not make excuse nor try to apologize to the kin of the fish they ate nor will a snake apologize to the victim of its poisonous bite because in both instances they did what they had to do. nor should we feel sorry if they had to die because it was a matter of self defense.its not like they do it for sh*t and kickers or just for the hell of it.

people might see this and say that "jungle law" is the rule of law so i should do whatever i want because that is what jungle law is all about.

said people should live in the jungle with no clothes tools or food and realize their mistakes.

animals do what they have to in order to survive, they dont kill for the many reasons that we do, like drama, gossip or because someone said something stupid.

animals are guided by actions where we are guided by words.
this is why in the end animals are prime examples of consequentialism

I would look at it from the perspective of earth, animals & evolved animals (humans) -

The earth doesn't care for good or bad. An earthquake is bad for humans but it is just part of the earth's growing up process. Global warming is bad only for living things on earth, not for earth itself! So also, rain is good for humans but it means nothing to a stone.

Animals, they act on instinct to preserve their lives. Rightly said by whatisgood - animals don't feel any guilt for killing another. That's all that they know.

We humans, with our ability to think, created rules to protect ourselves from the law of the jungle. What protects us is good, what harms us is bad. Often it translates into a myopic view - what benefits my family is good & what doesn't is bad, even if it is not aligned with what is good & bad for the society.

Here's an argument : It is good for me to wear leather boots even if it means it is bad for the animal whose skin it is. It is bad if you question this choice of mine & hurt my sentiments even if your intention is for a greater good.

In short, ONLY what is good for me is good... it boils down to the jungle law in a sophisticated manner. Its all very convenient. Considering humans (& often men) get to make the laws, they are often skewed in the favour of the law-makers.

Good & bad will exist as long as we are sentimental about our existence. And if we must have laws & believe in the concept of good & bad lets be really honest in our approach and ask those really uncomfortable questions that make us swallow hard.

So, who owes the world morality? No one. We owe it to ourselves.

Ryan, well put. I think you can be a consequentialist and still believe in something like "responsibility" though, so you can believe that one person is morally better than another because their intentions were better, even if this would have no impact on how you or anyone should treat them. (I haven't explained that very well but I'm just gonna leave it.) So I would say to Copacetivist (what does that word mean, by the way?) that, depending on how you understand the term "owes": either everything owes the world morality, but only those who are aware of morality are morally responsible; or only those who are aware of morality owe the world morality. It all comes down to awareness of morality, not species. So Adam and Eve didn't actually 'deserve' punishment for eating from the tree, because before they ate from the tree they had no knowledge of good and evil(!)

i feel that in essence consequentialism is a self preservation philosophy

I disagree. You might believe that morality is about self-preservation and one form of consequentialism might be all about self-preservation, but consequentialism is not intrinsically about self-preservation, since "consequences" often refer to all consequences, not just those that affect the moral agent (e.g. some utilitarians want to maximise happiness for everyone, not just for themselves).

very judaeo christian question.

no one owes it, its just a potential for giving . there whaddya think. oh theres the law to answer to as well.

...
so the law should be moral alwys as its imposed {
consistently hopefully}

...
+ pretentious moral philosophers

...
by that i mean deontologists

...
like me

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i would be happy if you like me everyone...do you owe it to me?

...
by potential i mean opportunity

edit: I have condensed these posts into one (Ryan)

Hi Frazer, just letting you know I deleted your last 6 posts and combined them into your first one. I don't like editing others' posts without their permission but when you write seven posts in a row without waiting for a reply, I feel I have to step in to make it a bit easier to read through the thread. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Also, I'm confident you'll learn the ropes here quickly enough. Welcome, and I hope you enjoy yourself!

On topic, As LadyMorgana has said, Whatisgood is misrepresenting consequentialism. What he's criticising is just one particular variety of consequentialism called egoism (or perhaps nihilism). Egoism (concern for only one's own interests) and nihilism (scepticism of morals) aren't things that many/any of us believe here at felicifia. Rather, when we suggest evaluating consequences we mean the consequences of an action on everyone. This kind of universal consequentialism isn't vulnerable to whatisgood's criticisms.

no worries on the editing of posts, your work is better than mine. sorry to trouble you.

on a tangent.... what is curious to me is why there is such an emphasis on consequentialism when there are clearlypotentially related ethical and moral positions. the way i see it at the moment is this....imagine a little world.\

in this world lets say,
At the beginning of human time, we can plump for a guess that there were no rules, no morals no ought to dos no must nots. In this era, primitive ape like collections might have created social order via quarrel and alpha dominance.. Some of the contestants might have faired badly. So might some of the bystanders and eggers on.

From this experience a moral intuition or preference might develop in humes sense of the word eg…(as in I don’t want to see that death thing again, especially not to happening to me)….from then on alpha challengers took flight quickly and saved most of their puff to run for their life should the need arise.

Over time, the reason for the intuition falls by the way side and now its just the way it is, betas get beaten, not eaten.thats common sense.

Everybody likes it a bit and also a bit not. There is pleasure and pain but moreover between contestants ,a contract here.

e. Eventually, a genius is born and decides not to fight evertone. The tribes too big now. Thinking slowly, he wonders whythey don’t all fight all the time, then he remembers lunchboy. Now hes got a consequentialism cos he worked out the rule of why we don’t eat losers.

Helping the rest to see it platocrates explains to rest that they ought not kill eachother and act naturally like tradition had it. some think hes well behind the times and fantasise about proving him physically wrong, others agree and now they’ve got a contractualist ethic as a result or consequence of conjectural history. Still theres pleasure and pain.

This strikes a clever monkey the second who thinks …this is what its all about after witnessing a good thrashing….but too much pain is bad. Everyone agrees more pleasure is better so now their all utilitarian consequentialist intuitive empathetic contractualists or perhaps simply prudent egoists and not to menstion common sense rationalists. Its like it is because of a reason. Or irrationalists. Its just like it is.

and finally they have some decent rules. When they get good enough, someone suggests the problems of the past were caused by conflict and they each take a mate or 4 ( that’s 2x2) each with a minimum of fuss.

Now it occurs that there were rules all along! they just didn’t follow them so they derived rules consequentially to operate consequentially. or they were deontologically pre-existent but and became apparent through consequences. oh im tired. i do apologise. am i rambling or do i have some points?

ah yes....is the derivation of rules from consequences part of consequentialism

2) are the establishment of rules of thumb into human emotion separable from consequentialism

3) implicitly therefore are all rules disentanglable via consequentialist reasoning

I have trouble with the question, like others.

"Who owes the world morality?"
What do you mean by owe?
What do you mean by morality?

The concept of owing is hard enough used on non-concrete abstractions, let alone something as 'morality'. I don't think I owe morality to anyone... Owe... morality... i.e. principles of right or wrong conduct... I don't comprehend possible insight of the question *shrugs*.

Don't you mean to ask what beings are moral? What beings follow principles of right or wrong conduct? You can't give morality to a being that is not morally capable... Owing morality to those would be silly, like owing dollars to a plant. And a moral being receives morality one way or another, since it's moral... whether we owe morality to it or not...

Or, maybe you're asking, what living beings are to be valued morally?

As it stands, my answer to the question
"Who owes the world morality?"
is the following
"Whoever is moral owes morality to the world".

Also I deeply disagree with the perspective that morality is a human construct. Moral philosophy is a human construct, but primitive principles of right or wrong conduct are found in many species, not humans alone.

I think by "Who owes the world morality?", Copacetivist was asking something like "Who is bound by moral rules?"/"Who is morally responsible?"/"Who has a duty to follow the principles of morality?"

Frazer, I think part of what you were saying is that what we call "morality" is simply a set of rules that humans have invented and which have evolved over time, and Copacetivist said the same sort of thing. I'm of the opinion that in many areas, not just morality, Evolution and Reason are in some sort of battle. Reason is our only escape route from Evolution - the only way we can break free from acting as Evolution demands is to follow Reason. Similarly, certain habits/tendencies/patterns of thought have become hard-wired into our brains because they have been naturally selected, but just because they are useful for survival this does not mean they are reasonable. With morality, I think we have more of a memetic (as opposed to genetic) example: Reason tells us that utilitarianism is right (IMO), but over the generations other ideas about what we should do have become more popular, have been better at "surviving" and so many people adopt those instead. And if utilitarianism is correct, it's easy to see how people can quickly come to believe that the rules of thumb derived from utilitarianism which are suitable to particular circumstances, are in fact the ultimate, immutable principles of morality. So I think that evolution has affected our sense of the right morality, which we access through Reason, not that morality is reducible to evolving rules of conduct created by humans.

Another example of evolution interfering with reason on the moral front is our tendency to opt for the nearer good, even if we know that it would be better for ourselves overall to choose the good that's further into the future (procrastination being a prime example). This may be the result of an evolved rule in our brains that was useful to us many many years ago when humans had far less certainty about their futures, less security, less ability to plan ahead etc., which says, "Go for the nearer good, cos there's a high chance that when the time comes for you to have the later good you won't actually be able to get it." Like Harry, in When Harry Met Sally, when he says that he always reads the last page of a book first so that way if he dies, he knows how the book ends even though if he doesn't die, it would have been better for him overall to wait til he's read the rest of the book to read the ending. This one is kind of a weak theory but I hope it helps you get the gist of what I was saying about evolution interfering with our true sense of morality in general.