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Notes -
If you have a secular ethical framework that is not utilitarianism or something utilitarian-adjacent (eg consequentialism), what is it? I’m having a difficult time imagining a system that can’t be understood through some broadly-conceived utilitarian underpinning.
I don't really live by this system, but for several years now I've believed all ethical frameworks are bunk. That, for all frameworks, if you keep asking "But why do you believe that's good?" you eventually arrive at "Well, it just is okay!" or "Because God says so!" without sufficient proof that God actually exists.
But I don't think that means we should be pure nihilists where no action is any better than any other. That is because, just because we don't know any ethical framework with actual evidence behind it being meaningful, does not mean it does not exist. So I think the only ethical thing to do, in a world where we don't know what is ethical, is to search for what is ethical.
And it's possible perhaps that we can discover what is ethical through standard philosophy that we've been doing since Ancient Greece. But I think it's more likely any new break throughs will come through physics and mathematics break throughs. So in practice, the most ethical actions are whatever most quickly leads to our total understanding of physics and mathematics.
You might ask, what makes me think there's any possibility mathematics and physics could lead to ethical knowledge? What makes those spaces better to search than just choose a random spot in the ground, digging, and hoping I somehow find a note with a complete explanation? That is because physics and mathematics have often found knowledge I would've thought unknowable, yet have proven things true beyond a shadow of the doubt. The nature of atoms, the nature of galaxies, imaginary numbers, etc. all sorts of things that are true and we can use to real effect in the world like making planes fly or creating nigh-unbreakable codes have been found with physics and math. So while it may seem impossible that it could discover an ethical framework, I don't consider "seeming impossible" a guarantee it is impossible.
But in real life I don't want to be too weird so I just live as a rules-based utilitarian.
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