Anyway, nice to meet you, @Green Syndicalism

I need to sleep.

Good night, all.

Interesting discussion, but I have a couple of questions about the consequences: what is the criteria for a

good consequence vs a bad consequence?

And how would you rank them?

it depends on your ethics, of course

a christian would value consequences differently to me

I went and made a pizza and you're still going damn

Would it be fair to say that if you were operating in a purely consequentialist model, that the ranking in preference of consequences would be a set of principles? For example, killing someone would be a worse consequence than property damage

you could certainly approximate "principles"

but you dont have to treat them as principles

Jesus fucking Christ, I spend 8 hours away and this place Hiroshimas...

like killing a dictator could be a great thing

just because in general killing has bad consequences, doesnt mean it should be treated as a principle in a hierarchy that isnt to be violated

if you say, "well killing bad people would just form another part of the set of principles," this is when your principles become way too convoluted to set out

i personally am an ethical egoist, so i think i should only do things which are in my self interest. its my only principle, and from this principle i can derive what behaviours i should implement, and these are fluid over time and space

so am i principled? not in the deontological sense

all moral theories start with a premise

but deontological theory has not just an original premise, it also has a code of conduct (duties/principles), which lists out your behavioural imperatives in advance of consequences. egoism doesn't have this addendum

So I would still consider those to be principles, not just an approximation thereof.

the issue is they're fluid

they change on a whim

so its the opposite of a principle

determing what is in your self interest is an evaluative process

Self interest is your principle. Still a principle.

but its not a principle in the *sense that i was referring to*

then you're referring to a different sense of principle than I am

you're right in that its technically a principle

but i was referring to post-moral principles

which are "principles that come *after* you've defined your morality"

(you require an original principle to define *any* moral theory)

brb

Could it be that the 'putting principle over consequences' that you were talking about earlier is just a different ranking order of the consequences in question? It doesn't seem to require post-moral principles to me

not to answer for him but as an assumption I think you can do both. Make moral claims without thinking about them, and putting them over their consequences

Sure, you can do that and make those claims. But you can also defend the same action from a consequentialist perspective, and those are different frameworks

*it could be*, but the problem is you get an infinitely complex ethical code of conduct

(which wouldnt make too much sense to draw up in advance)

but also, as an evaluative entity, your preferences change with each split second

so one ordering a few seconds ago, could now be completely different

whereas a deontologist would say "nope, my principles are still the same as before"