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Sullivan's Moral Theory

Sullivan
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Posted 01/12/08 - 02:59 AM: Subject: Sullivan's Moral Theory	#1
All persons have one fundamental, irrefutable, initial right – the right to one’s self; and no other man, nor institution, can rightfully take that from them. To elaborate, the right to one’s self includes the following: (1) the right to life; (2) the right to mind; (3) the right to body; (4) the right to autonomy. In the fourth right, it must be noted that no autonomy, as already expressed, may rightfully breach another’s rights of self. The application and defense of these rights are designed to produce goodness, but first we must define “good.” There are two types of good, (1) natural good and (2) conditioned good. The natural good is instinctual; it’s the individual’s independent rationalization of making good decisions. The conditioned good is made up of learned morals known to be good; the conditioned good is comprised, but not limited to religious, parental, and cultural influence. These goods are best utilized together, rather than separately – natural good reasons standards for a conditional good, which is subject to reason and modification through natural good. The Right to Life: Survival is a natural instinct, observable even in nonhuman animals; this implies that reason is not necessarily required to establish one’s will to live. Nonhuman animals observe an ethical nature by protecting their life and the life of their kin. As rational creatures, we can take this instinct of survival further and rationalize that because most persons have the desire the live, it is beneficial to all, including the individual whom desires life, not to take another’s life from them; doing so subjects them to modes of recourse equal to their action, much like Newton’s Law of Cause and Effect. This rationalization is a natural good, as it benefits not only the individual egotistically, but society altruistically as well. As a natural, and by definition, rational good, its concept can and has (historically) been applied to become a conditional good, being cited in religious and cultural moral systems. The Right to Mind: It is undeniable that our thoughts and ideas are of our own; they cannot be taken away because they are of an intangible nature. While the argument may arise that another person can give an idea to another and create influence, that doesn’t take away the receiver’s ability to cognitively produce that idea on their own; and, unlike a tangible object, when that idea is given to another person, it is merely duplicated since the original owner of that idea did not lose it in the transfer. The transfer and maintaining of ideas allows one to confine an idea, to which they cherish, to themselves and observe and egoistic course of action; the expression and transfer of these ideas allows the opportunity of expanding and understanding alternative perspectives, ultimately aimed for the good of others in an altruistic sense. As intangible things, one’s mind cannot harm another – an idea can influence a harmful action, but the idea itself is harmless. Thus, no proposed authority can rightfully forbid or punish an idea. This right to your own mind is a natural good, in that it exists only as a creation of one’s ability to reason and produce thoughts; the influence and expression of ideas and thoughts is a conditional good, because while the idea of racism has correlations with acts of violence, all those who subscribe or express such an idea prone to acting violently because of it. The idea, by itself, is harmless. Ideas of the natural good that predominantly become conditional goods are those of virtue – an admirable trait as observed by others. An idea that has beneficial influence, such as one that an individual has experienced and observed the rise in good in oneself egoistically, can be expressed altruistically and influenced into a conditional good, one which many may live by. The Right to Body: Our body is our own; we are given one, and no individual can take another person’s body, as it is the physical container of the other three rights. As a tangible object, an individual can give its body away – such as donating an organ. The Right of Autonomy: The self governing of the individual’s self is the self governing as it pertains to the right of life, mind and body. One has the right to decide how to live – in both the manner and conditions in which they live. With right of mind, an individual has the right to think any thought, to express any idea, and the right to value ideas as they see fit. With right of body, the individual’s body is at their own disposal; they may ingest any substance, whether it be a particular food of preference, a substance, or even a battery if they will it. The individual reserves the right to enrich or destroy their body. It is crucial to distinguish the specific applications and intentions with the Right of Autonomy to avoid conflictions with other moral issues. To reiterate: The Right of Autonomy pertains only to the rights of mind, body, and life. Through one’s autonomy, an individual may, only through a conscious, independent decision, forfeit or sacrifice any number of these rights. In reference to The Right of Mind, such sacrifice has least impact; you may forfeit an idea or thought, one which you could otherwise maintain only to yourself, to others; by forfeiting Right of Body, you may donate organs, hair, or semen; by forfeiting Right of Life, you submit yourself to being euthanized if put in a physical condition deemed undesirable as defined by previously constructed terms you yourself construct. By forfeiting your Right of Autonomy, you allow others to place you in controls and systems to which you must abide or face punishing consequences. Examples of this are mandatory schooling; if you desire to learn in the public school system, a certain amount of your autonomy must be forfeited. The opposition to this proposition is that by providing persons to the right of life and the right of autonomy, it is impossible to provide limitations on what an individual may do with their life and autonomy. By this, persons are entitled to the right to act immorally – which would include, in this case, inflicting negative impact on another’s rights, such as murder. Also, conflictions with the autonomy claim is that when one does act against another’s rights, no other individual may [morally] take action against the offender, or else commit, hypocritically, the same offense. Thusly, the following actions are permissible by one’s Right to Self: suicide, euthanasia, racism, and drug use. In contrast, the following actions are impermissible through the breach in one’s Right to Self: capital punishment, abortion, establishment and greater punishment of hate crimes, and any enforced laws set forth by any institution or figure of authority which demand a certain act of living that does not pertain to the protection of others, such as mandatory schooling or illegality of drugs. First, we address the issue of capital punishment by making the claim that no institution, morally, may extinguish another’s life, or else conflict with their Right to Life; note that legality and morality, while legality often tries to derive from morality, are not related in cases of making moral claims. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” However, if the offender consents to an execution for whatever reason, the action may be followed. This delves into the category of suicide, protected by one’s Right to Life and autonomy of it, and doctor assisted suicide in that some are without the means to take their desired course of action. Controversy arises in the morality of abortion. The state of the morality of abortion is when the being becomes a person. Humans are different from persons; humans have no rights, in that they have no qualities other than physical composition that make up a person. Being incapable of having autonomy over your body removes your Right to Body; being incapable of having autonomy over your thoughts, or the ability to produce thoughts, removes your Right to Mind; being incapable of surviving on one’s own or do what one wishes to with their body, mind, and ultimately life, removes the Right to Life. The counter for this claim is that a child is not self sufficient, or capable of autonomous actions over body and mind, until a period after birth; very few would argue that it is morally permissible to kill a newborn child. Furthermore, it can be said that the growth of any being is movement, thus movement of the body, which entitles the being to Right of Body. It would follow, then, that at the being is entitled to Right of Body and Life at the moment of conception when the being begins to grow. Whether the being is conscious of this growth is irrelevant, as that only pertains to Right of Mind, and only the Right of Body or Right of Mind is necessary for Right of Life. In response, if the opposition accepts that consciousness is irrelevant to the Right of Body, then the child’s movement in the womb is sufficient to support that the being as Right to Body. Growth, however, is not a form of movement – it is not autonomous, it is natural and at the point of conception through many weeks of growth the being has no movement of oneself, conscious or not. The common ground found between the two arguments is that, regardless of where the line of life is drawn on the being, it is impermissible to deny it the Right to Life. Even more controversy arises when on the subject of euthanizing humans in a state of vegetation. Certainly, unlike in the case of abortion with the problem of when a human becomes a person, is the problem of when the human is no longer a person. Looking at Rights to Self, a human in a state of vegetation no longer has their Right of Body, in that they cannot move or make decisions on what to do with it. It follows that the human has no Right of Autonomy. Brain activity, however, is difficult to determine where Right of Mind falls. First, let’s differentiate between Right of Body and Right of Mind and the autonomy of each. Right of Body is limited to actions you have autonomy over; waving your hand in the air is an autonomous action entitled to you through Right of Body; your heartbeat and digestive system are not autonomous actions, you have no control over them. Right of Mind, then, is contingent on the development or production of thoughts, not regular brain activity which you’ve no autonomy over. It’s necessary to specify that euthanizing humans in states of vegetation is only permissible when it’s concluded that in no way will the human regain any physical and mental condition or control. Counters to these claims are that within the brain are memories and images produced and stored in the mind from before falling into the vegetative state. Furthermore, it is impossible, as stated earlier, to bear witness or confirm the activity of the mind, and therefore immoral to act on the unfounded possibility that the person no longer has Right of Mind. The opposition to the counter argument is that memories and images must be conjured up autonomously through the Right of Mind in order to exist; memories are not permanent, they fade and disappear. Also, claiming our impossibility to disprove that a vegetated being has mental capacity is a clear cut case of the Appeal to Ignorance fallacy. We can deduce that all persons are entitled to specific rights – Right of Body, Mind, Life, Autonomy, all elements of one’s Right to Self. These rights can be dissected in several ways and applied to contemporary moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia, murder, suicide, and further applied in legal issues of the same nature like drug use and hate crimes. Having defined and related these rights to specific issues, we can now move on to the direct and practical application of these rights into a mode of action. Moral philosophers have struggled, proposed, and refuted with ethics since the beginning of philosophy; popular arguments have been supported and applied, but with all ethical theories there have been gaps, unanswered questions, alternatives, and refutations exposed to the argument. In what will follow, I will argue the practicality and reason of the resolution of Kant’s categorical imperative and Utilitarianism, creating Utilitarian Intent and combine it with the resolution of Kant’s categorical imperative and Utilitarianism, creating Utilitarian Intent. It has been regarded as a difficult task in philosophy to combine the views of Immanuel Kant and James Stewart Mill, a challenge I intend to overcome. The Utilitarian Intent system works – not as a static system – but as a contingent one. The main component of Utilitarian Intent, the tool if you will, is situational action. The concept has been previously defined as situational ethics, but because situational action is a component, a tool, rather than the highlighted ethical system, I look to regard the two as different, but similar. Utilitarian Intent is simple, given an already existing understanding of Kant’s categorical imperative and Mill’s Utilitarianism. You apply your best intentions into your action, provided those intentions include the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. The five step system of Utilitarianism assists the judgment of the consequences of one’s intentions. However, there are bolts left loose in the Utilitarian system which should be tightened; for instance, Utilitarianism fails to solve moral issues in regard to only two people – yourself and another. There is no greatest happiness to be had, only happiness for oneself, the other, or none. Furthermore, Utilitarianism’s focus on pleasure and consequences alone provides room for actions otherwise regarded as immoral: present the alternatives of lying to your wife and skipping dinner so you can go bowling with three of your friends; through Utilitarianism, and the greatest happiness principle, lying to your wife to go bowling is correct, despite an almost innate knowledge that lying isn’t good – which by Kant’s views isn’t. Therefore, a coalition of Intent and Consequence must be had, guided by situational action. In my use of situational action, its concept is as implied by the title, but taken further. In a single confrontation with a moral issue, you establish the intentions you intend to accomplish, and use the Utilitarian system to guide you to said intention. It must be noted that it’s irrelevant which tool you use first, utilitarian or Intent; it only matters that your intentions are for the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. When the consequences present themselves, those consequences must further be analyzed, rather than simply discarded. If said consequences prove to not provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, though your intentions were good, then using situational action, you calculate and weigh the alternatives and the results. You do the same if said consequences prove to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. When a similar or exact confrontation arises, refer to those statistics as a guide to the action you’ll follow. If said consequences prove to once again not provide the greatest happiness, further alterations must be applied. If said consequences prove to show greater happiness than before, those results can be mentally (or physically) documented as a guide to refer to. As situations change, the issues confronting you varying between people and circumstances, it isn’t practical to always abide to a strict and universal action to be had. Because our social world is crowded with exceptions between personalities, environments, and other incalculable and unpredictable variables, one must be prepared to apply alterations to previous working systems of Utilitarian Intent. While our Intent may remain constant, the system of going about achieving that intent is rarely ever so. As a reminder, John Stewart Mill indicates that there is pain and pleasure, and our goal should result in the latter; with Kant’s intent applied to this, our intent and results should provide pleasure and not pain. With this, our dilemma of whether to lie to your wife or go bowling is solved by having intentions not to bring pain – while there are three friends who will be pleased by you attending the bowling game, there is greater pain produced by your wife than by those friends in your absence; furthermore, by not lying to the wife, you’ve avoided a moral dilemma whereas you can simply tell your friends you’re not attending. Only one lie is to be made, and by Kant’s categorical imperative, lying is wrong; combined with Utilitarian belief, because lying to your wife and not having dinner with her produces a greater amount of pain, despite only being contained to a single person, it would be right to stay and have dinner. Utilitarian Intent’s applications in respect to previously defined Rights of Self are best explained through example. First, to resolve the issue of Autonomy, one should always act – although provided the right to act otherwise – with intent to produce the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people; with this, such virtues as sacrifice are created. It follows that taking another’s life, murder or abortion (provided the aborted is classified and provided these rights) are immoral, as taking a life does not produce happiness for others. One’s Right of Body is further complicated through simply Utilitarian Intent, because the only action implied is pain or pleasure on the individual’s part; however, when one’s autonomous actions in respect to their Right of Body have an emotionally negative affect others around them, the greatest happiness is not found in said actions. Situational action is utilized here, where actions in respect to Right of Body are contingent to the variables presented. Our Right of Mind is perhaps the easiest to resolve; while in most cases our thoughts and ideas are inconsequential to others, in situations applied to hate speech directed specifically to another person, or other words that offend or otherwise emotionally affect a greater number of people negatively, those variables must be calculated and measured into your Utilitarian system, regardless of your intent. Through understanding the Right to Self and Utilitarian Intent in cooperation to situational action, while (because of unknown variables) it may not be universally applicable, it is certainly a practical solution to several issues otherwise unresolved by previous ethical theories. Our autonomy, in respect to our intentions of the utilitarian principle, is the core of other distinguishable rights to mind, body, and life.
We exist in infinite infinities. You've already lived for an eternity. Changing Faces & Change The World Philosophy Tomorrow

Zero132132
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Posted 01/12/08 - 03:55 AM:	#2
How does this theory judge actions taken to protect another's autonomy against their will (paradoxical as that sounds...)? For instance, if you stopped someone from killing themselves to protect their future ability to make decisions for themselves and otherwise act, have you done something wrong by temporarily combatting the ability to make decisions for the self? Another example would be helping a drug addict, someone who has expressed a general desire to end dependency, by removing their ability to obtain a substance, despite a constant desire to obtain that substance? Basically, can inhibiting someone's basic rights as stated for the sake of protecting the same rights in the future be ethically justified in this system?
"Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other." - the Principia Discordia

Sullivan
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Posted 01/12/08 - 04:07 AM:	#3
I was wondering if someone would bring that up. It was a point I intended to address while writing the paper, but I was forced to condense it to 11 pages and was cut short. I suppose the best answer would be to use a gauge of responsibility. Surely it can be agreed that youngsters are not capable of making reponsible decisions at all times. If it were a child trying to obtain a substance, it is justified to stop them. A fully matured adult, with a sound mind (that part is crucial), is responsible for their own actions and their autonomy should not be infringed upon. The most paradoxical situation is in the case of murder, where the murderer knowingly inhibits the victim's rights and acting in self defense inhibits the murderer's autonomous decision to kill your ass. I've yet to find an ethical theory that can't have a hypothetical situation applied to it in which it does not work (or does not seem to work, as though there's some innate trigger in our head that says "no. wrong"). That said, devising my own moral theory at the ripe age of 20 was a difficult task. I didn't realize how daunting of a task it would be until I began approaching moral issues with conclusions contradictory to my belief prior to constructing it. How arrogant, foolish, and blind I was (am). This essay will surely be expanded and revised by the time I submit it into my compilation for publication.
We exist in infinite infinities. You've already lived for an eternity. Changing Faces & Change The World Philosophy Tomorrow

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