The costs of living ethically

[@jeremyhennessee6604]

I think that ethical reasoning can be fittingly described as mentally skiing a wasteland of various slippery slopes in a world of what -ifs? would've/should've/could've's. You mention your belief that there are objective Moral Facts in all situations, or conclusions that one might reach after appropriate analysis leads them to the right deduction etc. and (from my own admittedly non-academic/autodidactic understanding of things) i can see why you and others might hold that belief. What i wonder personally is if there can ever be any compatibilism involved in the trickier moral/ethical dilemmas? Do/can personal life circumstances ever play a role in the rightness or wrongness of a choice? And how do you know if something truly MATTERS ultimately? Is that always arbitrary/subjective? Leading back to the realm of what-ifs, what if a group of individuals were intent on making the world/environment a better place,( not only for themselves but future generations) so they decide to Strike the Airlines and successfully lead to said airlines bankrupting or losing a lot of money. What if said airlines had before donated a lot of money to the university said strikers study at, but they are unable to do so now, which leads to the university cutting funding for lower income students going to college who wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Among those would-be students Could've -been an individual who (with assistance from the grant formerly funded by said airlines the Ethical-Minded strikers shut down) would've invented a green-friendly device that saved the environment and millions of people. I realize that is likely a ridiculous example, but its what came to mine as i was enjoying your video. (and i DID most certainly enjoy it. You're a good speaker) I'm a landscaper/construction worker who quit school at age 15, so my asking is out of simple curiosity. Im fully aware of the many limits of my own understanding. So i like to consensus- gather and ponder things because i feel It helps with my mental growth. Ty in advance sir, and forgive me if i just murdered several grammatically incorrect sentences above. Liked/subscribed.

[@frankavocado]

I think that my own psychological and physical well being could be considered as just one moral factor among many. After all, if I suffer to such a great degree that I can no longer act morally, or think morally, then I have defeated that objective. And when I say 'among many', I mean many. The flight example is a good example for a seemingly simple ethical choice but one has to factor in things such as: someone else just taking my seat, the impact on airlines and the economy, the trends in carbon mitigation and new technologies, my reasons for the trip, the benefits of taking time to travel, and so on and so on. I am not saying these are favourable or unfavourable, just that they are some of many weights on the decision metric for good action. Indeed, I think that every single act is a nexus of so many moral factors and their relative weights that I would tend to reject 'commensurable' ideas such as the normative or utilitarian in favour of Aristotles 'clear eyed understanding' of each situation and its moral factors.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Yes, How to decide in any particular case is often hard. Here I'm wondering about cases where we're pretty clear that an action isn't morally the best, but decide to do it anyway for whatever personal reasons. Most people tell me that those things aren't so bad in the first place, ie, they seem to think most things they do are ethical. I think many things I do are ethically questionable, or at least not the best course of action, but maybe necessary for living a well-rounded life.

[@frankavocado]

@@AtticPhilosophy So, having assessed the particular situation, it is when one choses a lesser ethical action nonetheless - this is the situation you are discussing. This assumes, I think, the availability of a way of independently measuring the ethics of your options in the situation. Kantianism and Utilitarianism could offer such measuring guides. But it may be that while ethical values - goodness etc... are objective in some sense, specific ethical actions are more relative. That said, a more extreme 'pretty obvious' example, would be say, firing a gun in a busy street, just 'for fun'. Perhaps here there is no well-rounded life clause.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

​@@frankavocado Right, that's a very clear case! It's the kind of case that pushes me towards the view that moral facts are objective. So even in less clear-cut cases, I think there's often an objective moral fact, but it may be harder for us to work out what it is.

[@frankavocado]

Well, I argued myself out of my own moral framework, and that's probably a good thing :) @@AtticPhilosophy

[@pinecone421]

Great video! Though I wonder to what extant one’s normative ethics will influence these kinds of decisions. A utilitarian, as you’d know, would have the hardest time, but I wonder whether a rights-theorist or an intuitionist would have any moral quarrel flying on a plane. I also wonder whether not flying on a plane is supereragatory or morally obligatory. It’s also likely that neither of these questions are really relevant to the concerns of your video though too!! Cheers Also-and you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want too-but do you purchase animal products? Because it seems like flying on a plane, for example, is relatively less immoral than purchasing meat, milk, and eggs from factory farms.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

It's true that utilitarianism will be very demanding in many cases. But I think pretty much any moral theory will give some cases like these (maybe different examples), where you feel you have to do something that isn't (by the lights of that ethical theory) the best action. The question then is, how to think about your moral self?