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Worm Morality Debate Thread

Thrice.Great said:
I guess Kant never had to deal with supergods trying to blow up the planet. Because then he might have added an exemption or two?
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Well, the problem is that Kantian ethics as proposed by him also say that lying is wrong, and so if a guy running away from a murderer hid nearby and you saw him and the murderer came by and said, "Hey, where did he go? Do you know?"

In that scenario, lying is an immoral and evil act.

Edit: So no, he wouldn't have. He would have doomed all of humanity to fiery, painful death rather than do anything immoral or unethical, because if one person mind-controls everyone for a 'good cause' then we create a world in which everyone does it, society breaks down, game over man. So just let humanity die instead.
 
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The Laurent said:
Well, the problem is that Kantian ethics as proposed by him also say that lying is wrong, and so if a guy running away from a murderer hid nearby and you saw him and the murderer came by and said, "Hey, where did he go? Do you know?"

In that scenario, lying is an immoral and evil act.
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True, because you're denying the murderer the ability to make rational decisions based on his own judgment rather than the fiction you've forced on him.

So I guess you could say.... we Kant rely on a system like that.

 
In any case, I'm pretty sure that Wildbow is into western occult tradition, right?

So maybe it's not Kantian. Maybe it's Crowleyan.

Crowley makes a similar kind of ethical stance to Kant: The violation of free will is immoral.

Except he puts it differently: Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the Law. Love Under Will.

Meaning that you can do whatever you want as long as it's in accordance with your Will (meaning individual Telos, or true purpose. It's a little bit of a fuzzy concept, but it basically means acting in harmony with the universe and working towards self-understanding and enlightenment) and as long as those actions are taken with compassionate love as their guiding principle.

The only problem is that in a rules-based society this would seem kind of like anarchy. Also, does Taylor ever actually do anything out of compassionate love? Hard to say.

Not sure if I really commit to this idea 100% but I learned Wildbow is into esoterica and the conversation seems to have stagnated somewhat, so...
 
Thrice.Great said:
In any case, I'm pretty sure that Wildbow is into western occult tradition, right?

So maybe it's not Kantian. Maybe it's Crowleyan.

Crowley makes a similar kind of ethical stance to Kant: The violation of free will is immoral.

Except he puts it differently: Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the Law. Love Under Will.

Meaning that you can do whatever you want as long as it's in accordance with your Will (meaning individual Telos, or true purpose. It's a little bit of a fuzzy concept, but it basically means acting in harmony with the universe and working towards self-understanding and enlightenment) and as long as those actions are taken with compassionate love as their guiding principle.

The only problem is that in a rules-based society this would seem kind of like anarchy. Also, does Taylor ever actually do anything out of compassionate love? Hard to say.

Not sure if I really commit to this idea 100% but I learned Wildbow is into esoterica and the conversation seems to have stagnated somewhat, so...
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"Into esoterica" is pretty general. Have you heard specifically that he's a Crowleyite? Aleister Crowley is not the first or only philosopher to say that violating people's free will is bad.

As for things Taylor did out of compassion, well...when Shatterbird was about to hit the city, the first thing she did was race home to warn her father while using her swarm to also warn as many civilians as possible.
 
SeptimusMagisto said:
Almost everything, I'd say. It is at once her main redeeming quality and the source of most of the problems she causes.
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Hmm.... I could see that. But I can also see her operating from a place of arrogance, that is to say: She's the only one who knows the best course of action and everyone else is obstructionist.

Again, Taylor is a complex character, probably why we all love the series so much!
 
Thrice.Great said:
Hmm.... I could see that. But I can also see her operating from a place of arrogance, that is to say: She's the only one who knows the best course of action and everyone else is obstructionist.

Again, Taylor is a complex character, probably why we all love the series so much!
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Yeah, and it's interesting because in the Lets Reads it's become clear that early on she was a bit of a dumbass, and was a lot more morally self-righteous...but also less morally questionable.

So she always thought she 'knew best' but she was most wrong when she was least morally problematic.
 
Thrice.Great said:
Hmm.... I could see that. But I can also see her operating from a place of arrogance, that is to say: She's the only one who knows the best course of action and everyone else is obstructionist.

Again, Taylor is a complex character, probably why we all love the series so much!
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That, and the Undersiders remind me a lot of my own circle of friends (without the criminal part, fortunately).

For me, the most appealing thing about Taylor as a character isn't her moral complexity, but her intelligence. I love stories about smart people solving difficult puzzles.
 
Here's a thing that I thought was interesting, and I tried to bring it up earlier but the thread was being... disrupted maybe is a polite way to put it?

One of the reasons that Taylor seems immoral as a person is because she is completely invested in her own moral system. She has internalized certain truths (from her own model of reality) and applied them universally.

Lawrence Kohlberg said:
In Stage six (universal ethical principles driven), moral reasoning is based on abstract reasoning using universal ethical principles. Laws are valid only insofar as they are grounded in justice, and a commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws. Legal rights are unnecessary, as social contracts are not essential for deontic moral action. Decisions are not reached hypothetically in a conditional way but rather categorically in an absolute way, as in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.[18]​ This involves an individual imagining what they would do in another's shoes, if they believed what that other person imagines to be true.[19]​ The resulting consensus is the action taken. In this way action is never a means but always an end in itself; the individual acts because it is right, and not because it avoids punishment, is in their best interest, expected, legal, or previously agreed upon. Although Kohlberg insisted that stage six exists, he found it difficult to identify individuals who consistently operated at that level.[15]​

-Stolen from Wikipedia since I couldn't be arsed to dig out my Moral Development course reading.
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Again, just throwing grist into the mill for moral debate. Fueling discussion as it were.
 
Nietzsche's definition of the Ubermensch doesn't really fit Taylor, because of the whole Eternal Recurrence thing.

Basically, the idea is that we live the same life, over and over again. In order to be the Ubermensch, your reaction to being told that you will have to live through your own life again and again without end would have to be pure delight. It requires a total acceptance of your life, even the mistakes and failures, and to want to go through all of it over again.

And I think Eternal Recurrence would cause Taylor to get the rare Fourth Trigger.
 
Yeah, because isn't ultimately one of the lessons that a lot of the Hard Woman Making Hard Decisions choices weren't worth it? That if she were going back she'd change so much. So many things she thought were necessary turned out not to matter, and so many things she avoided doing needed to be done...
 
Axiomatic said:
Nietzsche's definition of the Ubermensch doesn't really fit Taylor, because of the whole Eternal Recurrence thing.

Basically, the idea is that we live the same life, over and over again. In order to be the Ubermensch, your reaction to being told that you will have to live through your own life again and again without end would have to be pure delight. It requires a total acceptance of your life, even the mistakes and failures, and to want to go through all of it over again.

And I think Eternal Recurrence would cause Taylor to get the rare Fourth Trigger.
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Only by some interpretations, Eternal Recurrence might also mean that the Ubermensch would appear in the future in "our darkest hour" or whenever the world needed one in the past or something
 
Here's a moral conundrum for you.

Let's say Panacea got over her "no tampering with brains" aversion. New Wave manages to capture Regent, and Panacea learns, either by asking him or by biological analysis, that Regent was turned into a sociopath by his father's abuse. She's confident she can undo the damage to Regent's brain and give him back the full range of human empathy and emotions.

Regent refuses to go through with the procedure, either because he likes himself how he is, or because he's afraid of feeling guilt for all the things he's done.

Would it be morally correct to heal him by force?
 
Blake Hannon said:
Here's a moral conundrum for you.

Let's say Panacea got over her "no tampering with brains" aversion. New Wave manages to capture Regent, and Panacea learns, either by asking him or by biological analysis, that Regent was turned into a sociopath by his father's abuse. She's confident she can undo the damage to Regent's brain and give him back the full range of human empathy and emotions.

Regent refuses to go through with the procedure, either because he likes himself how he is, or because he's afraid of feeling guilt for all the things he's done.

Would it be morally correct to heal him by force?
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Hmmmm.... I'm going to say no.

Sociopathy does not include a condition that removes the ability for self-awareness or rational thought, so he can actually provide informed consent. If Panacea were to ignore his consent (or lack thereof) then she's in violation of his free will. Considering that she would be rewriting his personality, this would be pretty much mind-rape in the most literal sense.

Even without empathy we still need to think of him as a human being, and therefore should not violate his will without just cause.
 
Thrice.Great said:
Hmmmm.... I'm going to say no.

Sociopathy does not include a condition that removes the ability for self-awareness or rational thought, so he can actually provide informed consent. If Panacea were to ignore his consent (or lack thereof) then she's in violation of his free will. Considering that she would be rewriting his personality, this would be pretty much mind-rape in the most literal sense.

Even without empathy we still need to think of him as a human being, and therefore should not violate his will without just cause.
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Are you sure his condition doesn't hamper his ability to give consent, here? His brain injury is what caused his sociopathy, and his sociopathy is what's causing him to not want the injury healed. Couldn't you say that, since a healthy Regent most likely WOULD want the procedure, Panacea has a moral responsibility to do it and save him from a life of cold apathy?
 
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Thrice.Great said:
Hmmmm.... I'm going to say no.

Sociopathy does not include a condition that removes the ability for self-awareness or rational thought, so he can actually provide informed consent. If Panacea were to ignore his consent (or lack thereof) then she's in violation of his free will. Considering that she would be rewriting his personality, this would be pretty much mind-rape in the most literal sense.

Even without empathy we still need to think of him as a human being, and therefore should not violate his will without just cause.
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Sociopathy removes the ability to reason from the position of society. Without the moral chip, your reasoning will always run afoul of society's. Then again, society's reasoning will always run against yours, but society isn't the danger or the one with the high recidivism risk.

But, to get a bit incompatibilist, why should we not violate his will? He did not choose his will, he simply follows it. So why can you not change a will that will be harmful to society in some way? After all, we constantly seek to affect the wills of others through logic, argumentation,shaming, torture,seduction and so on. The only difference here is the likelihood of success. If the only distinction is that we didn't have successful enough tools then maybe your will wasn't that important in the first place.
 
Cunuroi said:
Sociopathy removes the ability to reason from the position of society. Without the moral chip, your reasoning will always run afoul of society's. Then again, society's reasoning will always run against yours, but society isn't the danger or the one with the high recidivism risk.

But, to get a bit incompatibilist, why should we not violate his will? He did not choose his will, he simply follows it. So why can you not change a will that will be harmful to society in some way? After all, we constantly seek to affect the wills of others through logic, argumentation,shaming, torture,seduction and so on. The only difference here is the likelihood of success. If the only distinction is that we didn't have successful enough tools then maybe your will wasn't that important in the first place.
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:o:o:o

Forget everything I said. I need to go vomit now.
 
Blake Hannon said:
Are you sure his condition doesn't hamper his ability to give consent, here? His brain injury is what caused his sociopathy, and his sociopathy is what's causing him to not want the injury healed. Couldn't you say that, since a healthy Regent most likely WOULD want the procedure, Panacea has a moral responsibility to do it and save him from himself?
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Only if you assume that he's not reasoning properly.

His conclusions are different because he's starting from a different position. Reason is only a slave to the passions.

You've just shown that you privilege your own passions above Regent's. You reason from your passions and decide that Regent doing the same is not right because...your passions are right.
 
Cunuroi said:
Only if you assume that he's not reasoning properly.

His conclusions are different because he's starting from a different position. Reason is only a slave to the passions.

You've just shown that you privilege your own passions above Regent's. You reason from your passions and decide that Regent doing the same is not right because...your passions are right.
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Well no, his passions are wrong because his brain has been damaged by an outside force.

But apparently you're a person who thinks brainwashing is totes fine as long as society benefits, so I'm not sure we will ever be able to agree on any moral question.
 
Blake Hannon said:
Are you sure his condition doesn't hamper his ability to give consent, here? His brain injury is what caused his sociopathy, and his sociopathy is what's causing him to not want the injury healed. Couldn't you say that, since a healthy regent most likely WOULD want the procedure, Panacea has a moral responsibility to do it and save him from himself?
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What is a "healthy" Regent? Because from what I see the Regent we see in the story is Regent. What you see is who he is. Sociopathy is not some mind controlling brain worm or Dark Side corruption. It's a personality disorder. And considering he's so much easier to deal with than somebody like the Joker there's not exactly an urgency to make him :turian:"right".:turian:

Besides, Panacea was raised by the superhero equivalent of hardcore bible thumpers and her self control hangs by a thread. I don't exactly trust her judgement on who will and who will not need behaviour modification. That would probably put anyone even a little removed from her narrow upper-middle class purview at risk.
 
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