[ExI] morality

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 1:24 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> I was thinking of how to build a moral system.  What should be the basic
> assumptions?  Start with the Bill of Rights?  Certainly a good place.
>
> Another is this from Pope John xxiii:
> https://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html
>
> I ran across this in Feynmann's book.
>
> Certainly more detailed than the Bill of Rights.
>
> Then I got to thinking:  who are the authors I occasionally re-read
> because they are just so sane.  Feynman, Robert Fulghum (Unitarian
> minister), Matthew Ridley, Stephen Pinker, Montaigne, Twain.  Who are your
> sane people?  bill w
>

Open Individualism, a.k.a. Universalism, is considered to be a potential
framework for a universal ethical framework. Many scientists and thinkers
have independently arrived at this conclusion.


"Inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you — and all other
conscious beings as such — are all in all. Hence this life of yours which
you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a
certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can
be surveyed in one single glance."
-- Erwin Schrödinger in “My View of the World” (1951)

"Enlightenment came to me suddenly and unexpectedly one afternoon in March
when I was walking up to the school notice board to see whether my name was
on the list for tomorrow’s football game. I was not on the list. And in a
blinding flash of inner light I saw the answer to both my problems, the
problem of war and the problem of injustice. The answer was amazingly
simple. I called it Cosmic Unity. Cosmic Unity said: There is only one of
us. We are all the same person. I am you and I am Winston Churchill and
Hitler and Gandhi and everybody. There is no problem of injustice because
your sufferings are also mine. There will be no problem of war as soon as
you understand that in killing me you are only killing yourself."
-- Freeman Dyson in “Disturbing The Universe” (1979)

"You possess all conscious life. Whenever in all time and wherever in all
the universe (or beyond) any conscious being stands, sits, crawls, jumps,
lies, rolls, flies or swims, its experience of doing so is yours and is
yours now. You are that being. You are fish and fowl. Deer and hunter. You
are saints and sinners. [...] Perhaps the spread of this knowledge among
the intelligent beings that are you can help you to stop yourself from
hurting yourself because you mistake yourself for another."
-- Arnold Zuboff in "On Self: The Logic of Experience" (1990)

"The traditional, commonsense view that we are each a separate person
numerically identical to ourselves over time, i.e., that personal identity
is closed under known individuating and identifying borders—what the author
calls Closed Individualism—is shown to be incoherent. The demonstration
that personal identity is not closed but open points collectively in one of
two new directions: either there are no continuously existing,
self-identical persons over time in the sense ordinarily understood—the
sort of view developed by philosophers as diverse as Buddha, Hume and most
recently Derek Parfit, what the author calls Empty Individualism—or else
you are everyone, i.e., personal identity is not closed under known
individuating and identifying borders, what the author calls Open
Individualism."
-- Daniel Kolak in “I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global
Ethics” (2004)


This idea leads immediately to something like the silver/golden rule, a
moral law which is nearly universal across different times and places
across human history:

"That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another."
-- Papyrus scrolls found in ancient Egypt (664 – 323 B.C.)

"Killing a living being is killing one’s own self; showing compassion to a
living being is showing compassion to oneself."
-- The Saman Suttam verse 151

"Love your neighbor as yourself."
-- Book of Leviticus 19:18

"The most righteous person is the one who consents for other people what he
consents for himself, and who dislikes for them what he dislikes for
himself."
-- Mohammad in the Hadith

"Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as
your own loss."
-- The Taoist scripture T’ai Shang Kan Ying P’ien (12th century)


Taken to the extreme, such thinking might lead to something like David
Pearce's HI: https://www.hedweb.com/hedab.htm (which seeks to abolish
suffering in the universe) -- which also happens to be a Buddhist ideal, as
well as the goal of ethics based on "negative utilitarianism". I don't
think ethical systems should be based entirely on what we do not want, but
positive attributes should also be considered. In the end, everything comes
down to states of consciousness.

I have written about some of these positive attributes, and their unifying
principle here:
https://alwaysasking.com/what-is-the-meaning-of-life/#All_Good_Things

Jason
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230516/c94acd2e/attachment.htm>