Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Because we have good reason to coexist with others; it's in our interest to have friends, family, and the like. Obviously Rick Sanchez is at least superhuman (and, correspondingly, fictional). Essentially no one can live without other people, and almost no one really wants to; even those who give it a serious go can never transcend the fact that their present independence requires substantial past dependence (on caregivers as a child, on a linguistic community, on a pre-existing economy, etc.).
Actually this is substantially what drives people's interest in Rick Sanchez as a character--he does not embody independence so much as he embodies ambivalence about his independence. He doesn't strictly need other people, but indulging this fact dehumanizes him, which he's not entirely on board with. If he wasn't constantly dragging Morty around, helping his family even though he totally doesn't care about them, etc. the show would be... well, not necessarily boring, but at best kind of power pornography. Imagine a Just Rick show in which he transcended all connection to everyone--his family, alt-Ricks, gods, whatever. He never has to justify himself to anyone else, he never shares his joy or pain with anyone else, he just goes places and does things without regard for what anyone thinks (good or bad!). Without the desire to justify his actions to others, he would become totally unrelatable as a character.
Instead, we have Rock and Morty, in which Rick is relatable precisely because he cannot transcend his need to justify himself. It's not that he craves love or approval, exactly, but he embodies the tricky emotions we all have about our interpersonal relationships. The people closest to us bring us the most pain! Relationships are effort, and often thankless effort! And yet they are also the site of our most desired and celebrated victories, our greatest joys and pleasures. I think I mentioned in a comment on a different topic recently the movie A Monster Calls, which explores the same themes from a slightly different angle (spoiler: the kid is conflicted because he does love his mom, deeply, but he kind of just wants her to die already, because her protracted illness is really screwing with his emotions).
I often encounter people who respond to contractualism in approximately this way--"what if I don't feel the need to justify myself to anyone, ever?"--and while it is maybe possible in theory, in practice we would identify such a person as a true sociopath, who still needs to pretend to justify themselves in most cases, since even sociopaths do usually need some support from society to live. The vast majority of people, on reflection, find that they do feel the need to justify themselves to a spouse, parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, someone whose good opinion of them matters to their overall well-being. This is why I draw human hedges around "universal" morality; I can conceive of some alien being that is wholly self-existent and self-sufficient, while also being eminently rational, that may have a separate form of morality I would find, well, alien. But even the least-connected of humans will probably fail to rise to that level.
Thank you again for your continued indulgence.
I think we agree that Rick Sanchez is an interesting character in part because it explores the limits of self-sufficiency. I disagree he is supernatural, however, at least in-universe. I think the setup is that he is someone whose intellect is so far off the chart as to render physical constraints non-existant. I also think part of the show's message is questioning whether, why, and what morals might apply to such a person.
When I was a lad I read a short story about a character who couldn't get along in society and committed some crime. As a result he was exiled to a kind of penal territory with no rules, but also no access. He was allowed to take with him anything, and ended up taking a completely reliable RV will full armor and food and ammo and energy to last a million years. Upon exile, he was promptly relieved of it entirely through a rogue's wiles (no force needed), and thereby forced to engage with his peers in exile. Ultimately he redeems himself by snitching on his new pals to the Republic. After our conversation, I expect this author (can't remember who) was exploring the contractualist ideas.
If I understand you correctly, contractualism's final authority rests on a particularity of the human condition where individual humans must, innately, remain part of the collective?
How does contractualism resolve Coases' lake problem?
It's final authority rests on reason. But yes, in the sense that "what we owe to each other" logically depends on the existence of a "we," contractualism doesn't have anything to say about what morality might look like if there were not a "we."
You'll have to be more specific. I think you might be asking questions about externalities, but first of all contractualism is a moral theory, not an economic theory. That said, my guess is that it would resolve the problem in the same way it resolves all problems, by conducting an analysis of the weights of interests and the objections individuals can raise on their own behalf to various principles for action.
This looks a little like a dodge. I don't understand how "reason" can be a final authority on anything, since reason requires premises? It would seem that perfect logic can produce widely different regimes and outcomes, depending on what question we ask of it, or what context we provide it. Intuition suggests this might be related to the paperclip machine problem.
The lake problem is a conceptualistic framework to determine resource allocation (including dealing with externalities), and as such is an economic question, but strongly implicates moral values.
The hypo goes something like this, paraphrased for my curosities. There's a lake in a mythical land where few people exist. The first person to find the lake is an old man, who fishes in the lake for subsistence. Some years later, another comes along and decides the lake is a fine place to grow yeast to feed his family. The new guy won't eat fish for religious reasons. Growing yeast kills all the fish the old man catches to eat. For the purposes of our exploration, there is no way the yeast can be grown that does not kill the fish. There's no other food for the old man to eat nearby.
The question is, who gets to use the lake, how, and why? The answer, it would seem to me, requires moral judgments.
You can read about Scanlon's "reasons fundamentalism" in his book Being Realistic About Reasons.
That seems right, but how you analyze the hypothetical will depend in large measure on whether you're writing a Hobbesian "state of nature" story, or whether there are further background details that can be discussed. As written, the hypo doesn't seem like a hard question at all; the old man needs fish to live. If he truly has no other alternatives, then he has an extremely weighty objection to a principle allowing the brewer to kill all the fish. You didn't specify that the brewer actually needs the lake to live, presumably the fact that he has a family means he's already got other resources, so he does not appear to have an equally weighty counterclaim. Now, if you're precommitted to some view preferring the "highest" or "best" use of something (utilitarians, for example), then sure, the question might seem hard. But it's not really hard at all, as you've written it: the old man needs the lake to live, the brewer doesn't.
We could easily go back and forth for a long time, modifying the hypothetical to pump intuitions in one direction or another, but the reason we could do this is precisely because morality is reasons-responsive, and adding or changing the relevant reasons can (and should!) change the moral judgments we reach on the matter. This is a very human process, but it is only one that even arises when we are committed to coexistence, at least in the abstract. Otherwise we would just shrug our shoulders and say "guess whoever kills the other one first gets to use the lake."
I think you read things into my hypo that are not there. For example, TNG is growing yeast to feed his family, not make beer. The implications are that one, he is vegetarian, and two, he has a family. I'm not sure you could draw the implication you did about outside resources, but let me be explicit, there are no other resources in the universe.
I'm not sure it matters, though, as you seem to have a presupposition regarding the primacy of human life. How do you move from pure reason to human life matters most?
Then how the fuck was this guy feeding his family before he "came along?" For that matter, where's the rest of the "mythical land" you specified?
My goal is not to fight your hypothetical; I'm happy to do my best to constrain myself to only the impossibly limited range of facts that you happen to find persuasive for whatever reason. But you keep losing the thread; whatever else these hypothetical characters are, they are not recognizably human, in the world you've described.
What makes you say that? Because it's wrong. I'm not assigning metaphysical primacy to anything. And I sure as hell haven't suggested that we're engaged in "pure reason." Go back and re-read the thread; you will find no mention of "pure reason" anywhere in it.
All I've done is stake a claim on morality as we understand it being a human activity undertaken by humans through reasoning processes, that is, through the activity of justifying ourselves to one another. You keep trying to challenge or argue against that for some reason (despite haven taken no clear or coherent position yourself), but your objections are complete misses; you don't even seem to understand enough to meaningfully doubt. Which would be fine if I felt like you were trying to improve your own understanding, but you strike me as far too busy being blindly contrarian to ever glean any insight, either into any particular moral theory or into the more specific things I have claimed.
Well, I'm certainly saddened you have taken such a dim view of our exchange. I am learning a lot, but not enough to parrot "this guy clearly has it all figured." The hypo is meant to be a highly distilled, but if it disturbs you, you're obviously under no obligation to answer.
I did unfortunately miss the part until now where you say that morality is only relevant in a human context.
You did claim that the foundation for all morality is "human reason," which phrase I transliterated to "pure reason." It is an unfortunate mistake.
It raises a line of questions you glanced off earlier. What about other beings whose reasoning may be equal or greater to that of humans, but not necessarily the same? Does one or the other groups owe anything to the other? How are we to discern that such a group might be in our midst?
Another question that I haven't been able to understand from our repartee or the entries you linked, is who gets to decide what a reasonable objection is? Is it presupposed that "human reason" is everywhere always the same?
Edit to add: I have not stated a position, rather asking you to clarify yours so that I might gain a deeper and truer understanding. I have intended to be careful not to ask you necessarily defend your position, but rather state it with greater specificity and explain it. If we reach a point where you are willing to go no further, I will state a thesis and submit myself to the same treatment as I have given you, so long as we can agree to refrain from cursing, mocking, belittling. I would ask that we begin a new thread though, as this one is getting hard to read for all the indentations.
It doesn't disturb me, and I did answer. You're the one who was complaining about how I answered.
The answers to these questions will depend, inescapably, on the nature of these beings and their compatibility with human existence, especially in terms of the ability to give and receive acceptable justifications for actions. The desire and ability to coexist lead quite naturally to reasons for action. Without that desire and ability, it's all pretty moot.
We do, through the process of reasoning together.
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