Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Morality and knowledge creation

Is morality defined as "the action that creates the most knowledge"? Let us imagine a situation, for example, in which a man who will die tomorrow may have performed on him an experiment which may provide scientists with a cure that will save thousands, but the procedure is very painful, and the man—even though he will die tomorrow—does not consent to having the experiment performed on him. Clearly the moral course of action is not to perform the experiment upon the subject, but this is not the course of action which creates the most knowledge.

I propose, however, that it is only the propensity of humans to be mistaken that makes this action immoral.

Conjecture 1: morality is theories on how to live best, how to make good decisions

Conjecture 2: morality is objective

Conjecture 3: that morality is objective means that in any given situation, with all current best theories that are available, there is one best decision to make, and that same decision is best to make from any perspective.

So in the situation described above, if we could persuade the dying man that it is best to undergo the painful experiment, and he were to consent, then it would be the moral course of action to perform the experiment. It would be moral because it creates the most knowledge. However, since the man has not been persuaded, the fact that we would have to coerce him makes performing the experiment immoral. Why is it immoral? Because we already know that coercion prevents knowledge creation. We are fallible. If we cannot persuade another person that we are right, it is infallibilist and inhibiting of knowledge creation to force our will on them anyway.

In both hypothetical situations—the one in which the man is persuaded and the one in which he is not—morality can be derived from whatever creates most knowledge.

19 comments:

  1. In what would coercing the man inhibit the knowledge the experiment might create?

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  2. Since I have specified neither the kind of experiment, nor the nature of the man's disagreement, of course I can't answer that directly. However, we can see right away that since we haven't managed to persuade the man, there's something lacking in our argument. Of course, maybe we're right, and the man is just very irrational. But in all our certainty that it is right to perform the experiment, we have still failed to actually persuade the man. We should err always on the side of seeking and correcting error in ourselves, rather than assuming that despite a failure to persuade we are still correct and force is our only recourse to goodness (this way lies dictatorships and a stifling of knowledge creation). Force never creates new knowledge.

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  3. Force never creates new knowledge for whom?

    How does force on an individual's mind affect the knowledge the other minds may gain by performing an experiment on his body?

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  4. Forcing the man makes no difference on the results found from the experiment. It makes a difference on whether the performing experiment is a good idea or not.

    If we force him to take the experiment and he had a reason that it was bad for him to have the experiment, we won't know that reason and will be forcing people to have experiments even though it's not a good idea for them.

    --Tommy

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  5. Leo --
    Imagine a situation where the man who will die tomorrow is in fact correct not to want the experiment performed on him. Respecting his wishes in this case clearly *would* create the most knowledge. And yet it looks exactly the same as the situation in which the man is wrong. Morality can't command us to act differently in situations that look identical. This is why we have to act according to principles and not according to supposed consequences of our actions in individual situations.

    (And as Tommy and Rihatsu have already said, a policy of not respecting the wishes of people on their death beds would remove critical discussion from that set of dilemmas. So even if he is wrong and we let the other patients die initially, other people would eventually be persuaded that the painful experiments are a good idea. Whereas if we had a policy of using force, no one would bother to argue.)

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  6. What if the cure to AIDS could be found by experimenting on this man, and he still isn't convinced. Does "coercion still not create knowledge" here?

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  7. in the above, he could be a Jehovah's witness or something - but, in either case, the man is Adamant he not be experimented upon.

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  8. What if the cure to AIDS could be found by experimenting on this man, and he still isn't convinced. Does "coercion still not create knowledge" here?

    We are imagining a society where it is permissible to force people into undergoing procedures they don't wish to undergo. There is absolutely no way that this kind of society produces more knowledge than a society which allows individuals to make up their own minds about what procedures are good to undergo.

    But, you say, we don't COMMONLY do this! We only do this when the benefits OBVIOUSLY outweigh the coercion!

    Yuck, utilitarianism. What this doesn't take into account is that the benefits are only obvious to us, and not to the person who doesn't agree. So, how do we know when we shouldn't force people into procedures and when we should? Answer: we don't. We've just completely eradicated criticism in all such situations. That's why forcing the man is immoral.

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  9. We are imagining a society where it is permissible to force people into undergoing procedures they don't wish to undergo. There is absolutely no way that this kind of society produces more knowledge than a society which allows individuals to make up their own minds about what procedures are good to undergo.

    Nonsense. Take a look at two possible societies dealing with that AIDS scenario.

    1) The society is as you say, we don't force that person to undergo AIDS experimentation. This society doesn't get the cure to AIDS.

    2) This society makes a SINGLE exception out of the AIDS case, and forces the person to undergo AIDS experimentation. This society gets the cure to AIDS.

    I'm really not sure how the 2nd society Doesn't have more knowledge than the 1st.

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  10. I rather feel I explained this in the previous response. We doctors in the second society force people—just SINGLE exceptions—to undergo procedures they don't wish to undergo, providing that WE think it's important enough to overrule their autonomy.

    This is pure and simple dictatorships. Freedom to choose for oneself at the grace of another person's willingness to allow you whether or not to choose, is not any kind of freedom whatsoever.

    Tyrannical societies never produce more knowledge than free ones.

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  11. Tyrannical societies never produce more knowledge than free ones.

    You keep making this claim, but you never actually address the counterexample that seems to prove the claim wrong. The society in which ONE doctor decides to force the AIDS patient to experiment gets the cure to AIDS. The other doesn't. It seems the society that made that one "tyrannical" decision ends up with more knowledge.

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  12. Actually, the AIDS one was not the best counterexample. A better one (it sounds silly) is if two people are trapped in a submarine. If one of them coerces the other into performing the experiment, they both (or, if you prefer, only the experimenter) live. Otherwise, neither will. The subject is once again a Jehoavah's witness (or something), and won't consent.

    Taking the poster's arguments that living allows for more knowledge creation, clearly the act that leads to greater survival leads to more knowledge creation. In this case, this is the coercion.

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  13. Isn't the man entitled to live his life as he wants regardless of what knowledge he creates for society?

    Isn't this knowledge creation principle an altruist one?

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  14. Leo, I'm arguing that the moral action is that which creates the most knowledge. I'm also assuming that morality is theories on how best to live.

    If a man creates knowledge, he can live better. It is more moral for him to create more knowledge. Note that it is also in one's own self interest to live in a good society; I would hate to live in Saudi Arabia, and if I did it would be entirely in my self-interest to try and create more knowledge and spread it around the society, so that I could be freer.

    I don't see how this is in any way altruism. One is not required to sacrifice anything of oneself in knowledge creation.

    Anon, I replied to your post in the TSR thread a while back. :)

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  15. I still think the growth of knowledge agenda is outside the self and can imply individual sacrifice.

    For instance, having dead bodies to dissect helps the growth of knowledge for humankind, as the collective, but not the individuals that died.

    Good parenting creates better, smarter people with better lives than the parents, which helps the growth of knowledge for humankind, as the collective, not themselves as individuals (parents will still get older, dumber, would have lived the great part of their lives in a worst world than their children and will eventually die.)

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  16. You don't think that living a life involving enacting coercion on other people is any worse than a life lived finding mutual preferences with them?

    What about in the future when people don't die?

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  17. My point was that up to now the growth favours the preservation of humanity and its pool of knowledge, not the individual. For that reason, isn't it better to stand for the individual because he is an individual, not because more knowledge is created without force? Is there a problem in doing that?

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  18. "You don't think that living a life involving enacting coercion on other people is any worse than a life lived finding mutual preferences with them?"

    Whether or not it is "worse" or "better" is irrelevant. The only question is whether or not it creates more knowledge.

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  19. Leo said: "For that reason, isn't it better to stand for the individual because he is an individual, not because more knowledge is created without force? Is there a problem in doing that?"

    Well, yes, because you'd then have to ask why the individual is good, and the answer being I presume because not being an individual requires coercion and breach of human rights, and then you have to ask why those things are bad, and the answer is because they're immoral, and then you're back to the question of what is morality.

    Anon said: "Whether or not it is "worse" or "better" is irrelevant. The only question is whether or not it creates more knowledge."

    Again, see my response to Leo. My argument here is that better = morally better = creating more knowledge. If that isn't true, then there is no reason to care about knowledge creation. What I'm interested in discovering here is, what is the moral? So in fact, whether or not a thing is worse or better is the fundamental, indeed the ONLY issue here. Far from irrelevant.

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