From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Nov 19 1999 - 14:39:24 MST
At 01:14 PM 18/11/99 -0500, Robin wrote:
>ethics only seems interesting to the
>extent some creatures want to be ethical.
As far as I can tell (as I posted somewhere recently, maybe here, maybe
>H), morality - ethics, if you wish - is prudential. If it isn't, you get
silly self-subverting loops like: `Tell me why I should be moral?' which
would then have to be unpacked into `Give me a moral account of why I
should be moral; repeat'.
To act prudently implies several subsidiary factors: that you have an
adequate model of your own current and long-term needs, desires, aversions,
etc; that you (can and do) know with some accuracy - ie, again, you can
model accurately - how the brute or unintentional world works; that you can
fairly effectively model the complex interplay of the brute world and other
intentional critters like yourself.
Failures in any of these subordinate competencies will tend to compromise
the effectiveness of how well you understand the likely impact of your
actions. And chaos limitations mean that even the best stocked mind and
heart is going to make errors in modelling anyway. But we adjust a tad and
start again.
None of this denies us the opportunity to reassess our goals; in fact, it
almost ensures that we must, from time to time, as more accurate
information about the world and ourselves is gathered, and as our
theoretical models are improved. I don't see any real gulf between Is and
Ought in that sense, except that we need to keep ourselves informed on what
actually *Is*, so as to optimise our chosen *Oughts*.
Damien Broderick
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