A decision such as destroying one’s own private property and making oneself sad as a result are moral but unjustified in my view; from a consequentialist view, that would be immoral.
This confuses me: I self-identify as a consequentialist myself, but I wouldn’t call an action which harms you but no-one else “immoral” (but I’d call it stupid).
I’m not at all sure what it means for an act to be immoral, under a consequentialist moral frame, if not that it leads to the loss of value. Can you expand on this?
But deliberately harming oneself does lead to a loss of value (at least as much as if you did that). So, why do I think that harming you is not-evil if you do it yourself but not if I do it? I’m confused...
You said that if I perform an action that harms me, that’s not immoral. We agree that if I perform an action that harms me, that leads to a loss of value. So it follows that whatever it means for an act to be immoral, by your reasoning, it is not simply that it leads to a loss of value. Also, you’ve identified your moral reasoning as consequentialist.
So I’m asking: under your consequentialist moral frame, what does it mean for an act to be immoral, since you don’t think it’s that it leads to a loss of value?
It’s been suggested elsewhere that the key here is foreknowledge… that an immoral act is one that has negative expected value for the actor. I would agree that this is consistent with a (rule-)consequentialist moral frame, and that you might mean “I wouldn’t call an action which harms you but no-one else ‘immoral’ (assuming you don’t expect it to cause harm).” I would agree with that statement (though I would find it odd) but I doubt that’s actually what you meant.
Many consequentialist systems consider the morality or immorality of an action to be a function of the consequences expected by the agent at the time when it makes the decision. For any act, there is a possible universe where that act results in harmful consequences relative to the alternatives. What matters is how harmful it typically is, when executed by an agent in the same epistemic state.
I would guess that among humans we consider self-harming behaviour a sign of mental incompetence, since people don’t usually desire their own suffering. Hence someone who takes “stupid” actions is probably believing that the actions lead to excellent consequences, in which case you can prevent such behaviour through psychological treatment rather than punishment.
Well, OK, but if “better addressed through psychological treatment than punishment” is equivalent to “not immoral”, then it seems that by that reasoning my harming others isn’t immoral either, as long as I’m incompetent enough to expect an increase in value from my actions.
I guess so. But harming anyone at all can still be considered bad. “Immoral” simply has a connotation (or maybe even an additional denotation?) of “blameful” that means it can basically only be applied to competent agents.
This confuses me: I self-identify as a consequentialist myself, but I wouldn’t call an action which harms you but no-one else “immoral” (but I’d call it stupid).
I’m not at all sure what it means for an act to be immoral, under a consequentialist moral frame, if not that it leads to the loss of value. Can you expand on this?
But deliberately harming oneself does lead to a loss of value (at least as much as if you did that). So, why do I think that harming you is not-evil if you do it yourself but not if I do it? I’m confused...
I’m not sure what’s confusing.
You said that if I perform an action that harms me, that’s not immoral.
We agree that if I perform an action that harms me, that leads to a loss of value.
So it follows that whatever it means for an act to be immoral, by your reasoning, it is not simply that it leads to a loss of value.
Also, you’ve identified your moral reasoning as consequentialist.
So I’m asking: under your consequentialist moral frame, what does it mean for an act to be immoral, since you don’t think it’s that it leads to a loss of value?
It’s been suggested elsewhere that the key here is foreknowledge… that an immoral act is one that has negative expected value for the actor. I would agree that this is consistent with a (rule-)consequentialist moral frame, and that you might mean “I wouldn’t call an action which harms you but no-one else ‘immoral’ (assuming you don’t expect it to cause harm).” I would agree with that statement (though I would find it odd) but I doubt that’s actually what you meant.
Many consequentialist systems consider the morality or immorality of an action to be a function of the consequences expected by the agent at the time when it makes the decision. For any act, there is a possible universe where that act results in harmful consequences relative to the alternatives. What matters is how harmful it typically is, when executed by an agent in the same epistemic state.
I would guess that among humans we consider self-harming behaviour a sign of mental incompetence, since people don’t usually desire their own suffering. Hence someone who takes “stupid” actions is probably believing that the actions lead to excellent consequences, in which case you can prevent such behaviour through psychological treatment rather than punishment.
Or something like that.
Well, OK, but if “better addressed through psychological treatment than punishment” is equivalent to “not immoral”, then it seems that by that reasoning my harming others isn’t immoral either, as long as I’m incompetent enough to expect an increase in value from my actions.
I guess so. But harming anyone at all can still be considered bad. “Immoral” simply has a connotation (or maybe even an additional denotation?) of “blameful” that means it can basically only be applied to competent agents.