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If punishment is not merely an incentive or a corrective, then what else is there, particularly in the "good for you" scenario? Suppose I'm an incorrigible psychopath who already did wrong, you punish me in secret so that it is not a counterincentive for others and does not provide catharsis to anyone - how is it good for me? (I imagine it would still provide catharsis to you, the thought experimenter, but that can't be helped.)
If you're tempted to answer with something like "God" (paraphrased), first recall your rage when a trans person told you the definition of a woman is whoever wants to be a woman.
This would not be sufficient punishment because it does not deter potential criminals from first doing the crime and then being force-repented. If this was the sole punishment for murder, I believe the Luigis of the world would be many more in number. This example of yours demonstrates the importance of the deterrence part of punishment, not the esoteric goodness you're hinting at but haven't explained.
Yes, it's axiomatic. Being punished when you do wrong is good. The cosmic scales are balanced. It simply is good.
Why is pleasure good? Why is pain bad? Why is fulfilling preference good? As you well know, at a certain point we all must defer to some axiom of what is right and wrong, whether it come from god or preference or whatever.
I simply see punishment for wrongdoing as axiomatically good. Indeed, your hypothetical incorrigible psychopath deserves to be punished and suffer. If he does not learn, being incorrigible, he will do more wrong and deserve more punishment. It is simply obviously good to me that this occurs. It is good when evil and wickedness are punished. It is bad when they are not.
That the psychopath does not recognize this no more changes this brute fact than does his opinion that killing people is fine, actually, makes that actually true. But, of course, it is superior if punishment also effects a moral change. And the most significant and greatest punishment is not that which is externally and bodily administered, but that of genuine guilt and shame for understanding one's own transgressions. But it is extraordinarily for the good when someone does, in fact, recognize their guilt and repents it, even if this causes them to suffer greatly.
It is far, far superior for a murderer to repent their ways out of genuine contrition than to be given a magic pill that, say, makes them forget their crimes while also causing extreme pain in addition to making them model citizens, even if that has the same deterring effect.
And since it is important to the overall calculus, if you are a calculating sort of person, I would be remiss if not to mention the obvious. If you believe in an afterlife where all imbalanced mortal scales are finally put to rights, any wrong someone does where they do not suffer the appropriate punishment in this fleeting life will surely be addressed in the long run.
Also, I don't believe in true incorrigibility. Everyone has the potential for redemption. "Members of His faction have frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by Love, the war would be over and we should re-enter Heaven." - The Archdemon Screwtape
Our reward systems, as evolved from those that reproduced best, respond to certail stimuli with seeking more of them.
Our reward systems, as evolved from those that reproduced best, respond to certain stimuli with avoiding them.
It's not always good. For example, many people prefer to do hard drugs, but fail to predict and conceptualize that they will develop a tolerance, overdose and die an early death in a ditch, which they don't prefer now and wouldn't prefer later.
Punishment may result in net higher pleasure and/or net higher reproduction for the punished individual, but whether it does is quite far removed from whether the punishment was actually just. This leads us back to incentives.
The very fact that it is "simply obviously good to you" betrays that what we're observing is the retributive effect of punishment, not a cosmic axiom of its goodness. You imagine evil being punished, you feel good. If you imagined good being punished, you would not feel good even if it was, unknown to you, actually evil. It would be the furthest thing from obvious.
The incentive societies face is to indoctrinate their constitutients with the idea that punishment has a cosmic axiomatic importance, along with their particular definitions of wickedness, of course. This is to persuade the members of society to act according to the rules even if they are sure they will not get caught.
Sometimes shame is good for the immediate survival of the individual. Sometimes it is good for the immediate survival of the society, which usually benefits individuals and their reproduction long-term. Other times, shame is an instrument that only serves a particular layer of society at the expense of others.
Examples are left as an exercise to the reader. Given the role shame plays in the toolbox of the left-dominated society you wished destruction upon, the exercise shouldn't be hard. Your compatriots who were shamed by leftists have felt the exact same shame that wicked people supposedly must feel for understanding their own transgressions. Shame does not have a hash code that decyphers to "good" if it was a wicked person feeling shame for wicked deeds and to "bad/fake/wrong" if it was a righteous person misled into feeling shame. It is the same mechanism.
Because I'm a calculating sort of person, I do not believe in the kind of afterlife where finite wrongs done in life are punished infinitely/many times over what would be the punishment in life. This is exactly the kind of afterlife I would have people believe in if I wanted them to voluntarily seek punishment in life, because I actually only cared about what they do in life. I would also be susceptible to believing in that kind of afterlife if I wanted to cope with wickedness not being punished on earth by imagining how it's punished in hell (and then, because I wanted to be a righteous person, convince myself I feel sorry for them and regretful for them not repenting earlier). But as it happens, I want my enemies punished now, and I want to avoid letting them run amok by convincing myself they'll get their due in the afterlife.
Why is that good, as opposed to merely feeling good?
Why is that bad, as opposed to merely feeling bad? I think you don't recognize that such a difference could even exist, which seems to me very... empty and sad.
No, it would not matter whether or not it was observed or imagined by me, or you, or anyone. That it is obviously good is because we have a moral sense.
You can't seem to disentangle your own belief that everything must merely boil down to meat preferences in the end. It has nothing to do with feeling good or feeling bad. It has everything to do with being good or being bad. Feeling guilty doesn't feel good. It actually feels quite shitty. It would be much, much easier and more pleasurable to simply decide that the thing you are feeling guilty and shame about is actually not bad at all and it's just your irrational guilt/shame that's the problem, not your bad actions correctly causing them. Believing this would feel a whole lot better, it would feel good, but it would be bad.
You can make a just-so story about why such and such moral beliefs must have been adaptive (except when they weren't), but what I am trying to say is that most people don't believe this. They believe that they have a moral sense (perhaps imperfect) and that through the exercise of this moral sense they can discern right and wrong. Almost everyone believes this unless it is deliberately taught out of them.
Well I don't want to get into a whole discourse - but there is a whole discourse on sorts of wickedness that are inflicted on others vs. internal wickedness (which is nowadays called victimless - nonsense, as if you yourself can not be a victim of your own actions - and therefore not wickedness). Both are wicked, but the correct response to both is very different. I also do not believe in an afterlife where finite wrongs are met with infinite punishment.
Is it sad that I don't recognize that a set can both have members and be empty? That two could be the same as one? That yes could be the same as no?
It is in this sense that I do not recognize that "good" and "bad" are things that exist outside of moral agents.
But you are imagining it. It would be literally impossible to "morally sense" something you do not imagine.
I'm aware. Curiously, in all societies I've seen including the most robust ones, children are deliberately taught to discern right and wrong in the correct way as described by the society, often significantly differing per society.
You seem to either be bluntly reasserting your belief or pointing out a contradiction. I see no contradiction. Wicked men feeling shame is good for others, not them. Of course the shamed person is not supposed to feel good.
I'm still awaiting your method for discerning the shame you feel at having done bad things from the shame you feel because a part of your correct (obviously) moral sense has been deliberately taught out of you.
My method, if you were curious, is that there is no difference and that exaniming and understanding the source and mechanism of shame is important if you want to reach anything that could be described as "good".
Those things would indeed be sad to believe if they were false, and furthermore that believing the false thing stunted your capacity to properly engage with the most important aspects of existence.
Do you ever meditate?
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Yes, it's impossible to consider a thing without... considering it. I can't consider the truth of falsity or a proposition without thinking about it. This is just tautologically true, Cogito ergo sum level stuff. I don't understand why you're bringing it up.
The ways in which they differ are less than the ways they are the same, but I already know your explanation for that. Cultures that practice horrendous human sacrifice are rare, (and unstable - though I suppose that explains their rarity).
But this is the fundamental disagreement. Wicked men feeling shame is good for them. It is, among other things, a necessary step towards contrition and redemption.
But, nihilist that you are, I suppose you think that it is equally well and good that a man be a monstrous tormentor of others as a benevolent saint, provided their internally coherent self-satisfaction is the same. Being a moral relativist, it isn't as if you believe the man could actually BE good, so BELIEVING he's good is the closest thing.
Careful meditation, introspection, reflection, thought, and mindfulness. It is a lifetime a hard work and it never stops. Nobody said being good comes easy. I fall short in many ways (as do we all), but I don't then declare that my moral failings are fine, because it's all just relative.
That certainly seems easier, a shame it is wrong.
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It is not good. There are many times where I would prefer not to have my preferences culminate in "what is, somehow, predicted to make more of those specific genes or at least some of those other similar genes". It merely is. There is no cosmic scales in it, however, of justice or otherwise.
The difference in our beliefs seems to be that you believe the world is just and balanced. Maybe you even believe that even if it's not true, it is best for you to believe it is.
Sorry I submitted early and had a much longer reply if you want to reread.
But OK, it's just the standard subjectivism/solipsism/moral relativism.
OK, why do you believe it? Because you think it's true? Why should that matter, all morality being subjective. Why is believing true things better than false things? Because of its utility? But what if it has no utility. What if it has anti-utility.
Moral relativism is a self-defeating viewpoint if there ever was one. If you're a great believer in evopsych as it applies to culture, you surely recognize what a doomed meme subjectivism is, even if it is true? How can a society where no one believes their cultural norms have any actual force or truth possibly survive against societies that do?
"All cultures are equally valuable" says the dying, suicidal culture before it is extinguished forever, all light it might have contained or provided lost, to hordes of people who say, "Actually, my culture is more valuable."
"But if you look at it from a purely physicalist point of view you'll see that there's really no objective reason for you to assert your culture over ours, and although I also believe there is no objective reason for you not to, I'd really prefer that you didn't kill all of us, even though I don't have any objective objections because such things can't exist, subjectively-", last words of the last cultural relativist, as recorded in the Great Holy Annals of Our Final Victory Over the Silly People, by Muhammed Muhamed Mohamed.
I believe it because I observed it. I believe being aware of this truth has utility to me. "What if it doesn't" - well, what if it does. You certainly haven't convinced me yet that it doesn't.
I don't spread it widely because of the reasons you stated, that if everyone thinks there are no real rules then I won't have a nice society to live in and many people I like will have an existential crisis. I don't fear accidentally turning the whole society subjectivist and suicidal because societies are resilient to that, since as you said societies need to have most people believe in their cosmic justice.
I'm aware that some beliefs I have are not the best for reproducing genes or societies, but I do not care. In creating reason, the blind idiot god that is evolution has created, finally, a rock that it cannot lift. I'm more interested in seeing with clear eyes whether we can, after all, create a god to replace evolution than I am interested in caring whether society persists after me.
Actually, my culture is more valuable, and I pay taxes to support my country's military against Muhammad. In any case it is useless to scare me with the extinction of my culture even if I cared about its persistence after my demise. If it goes extinct, nothing says another like it won't be able to exist again.
Well there's not much to argue about. As far as utility goes, I think your nihilistic worldview is not only wrong, but cleaves you off from the most important and fulfilling parts of life. I think you don't even know what you're missing.
If I were to talk to someone who was, for whatever reason, seemingly congenitally incapable of love - and they argued about how, really, they preferred it this way... how could I possibly disabuse them of that notion when they don't even have a concept for what they're missing out on?
I know my arguments sound dreary, but just because I think I know why I have certain beliefs and preferences doesn't mean I don't have them, or that I wish to be rid of all of them - merely some. Conversely, many religious people who have achieved the supposedly most fulfilling things in life look quite sad to me.
It is a common misconception to think nihilists are worse off than you just because they're less uncritical of their feelings, or perhaps less evolutionarily fit.
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