PWIP 38

Ethics Dynamics

Utopia is a state by which all individuals are happiest and living the easiest. Such a social state appears to have some issues. First, Utopia appears mundane. Entertainment and the arts can’t maintain an audience’s focus on utopia, save perhaps in pictures. People are turned off by the unreality of the state and may become resentful of the lives of the utopians. Secondly, Utopia takes a great deal of effort because of its numerous requirements. The happiness of the populous would have to be the main priority of society. Those who reach the peak of social life would need to come back down for others. A threshold for knowledge concerning the self, other, and world must be passed before such a process could even begin. Lastly, though utopia would appear to be mundane, the difficulty of generating the state requires work, which is not mundane. The state implies a transcendent peace, but happiness for all is a mess of parts. Is the thing an exciting mess of motion or a mundane stable state?

Dystopia is on the other end of the spectrum, but it is not a lack of civilization. Rather dystopia is a society that maintains vices. Some virtue is necessary for cooperation. For no society can exist without a kind of honesty, peace, or respect for ownership. Regardless the main characteristic of dystopias is that they are maintained by particular vices. The vices of dystopia are subjugation of groups within the society or aggression towards those outside the society. In this light we can see that no utopia has existed hitherto, every society has been a dystopia. The homo sapiens can’t claim utopia if any contemporary civilization isn’t utopian, and civilizations can’t claim utopia without virtuous societies, societies can’t be virtuous without virtuous individuals.

Each ethical concept has a particular interaction with the utopia idea. Kantian ethics would likely get the most out of a robot’s utopia. Because of the artificial nature of robots, they can be made physically equal. They can be given the same knowledge, thus holding to equality in thought. But, of course, if all agents are of the same mind and, essentially, body, then in a sense there is only one being and no need for ethics.

A utopia for relativistic aesthetics is pure freedom. One can imagine it as a paradise without consequences. Only in a state of complete anarchy can there be no restrictions on the expression of the self. Though a world without consequence can be considered a utopia, it may be perceived as less meaningful or valuable than a world with suffering and loss. What does one become in a world one can have no impact on? This utopia is closest to the paradise many claim exists for those who acquire god’s favor.

Virtuous psychologies may find utopia onto themselves, being always at ease with the self and world. Virtuous psychologies need not be perfect replicas of each other as they can work within reason by either conceding to others or working out a solution. The ultimate nature of ontology is nihilism, thus the virtuous agent doesn't find the need to cling to any thing. Without knowledge, one can achieve a passive virtue where one avoids doing harm and helps whenever necessary. A more active virtue requires knowledge of the world. So one can also choose to explore the non-nothingness within the bounds of ethics.

Because utilitarian mathematics requires a more practical approach it is the hardest to parse out. One must mix the large and small, the qualitative and the quantitative, the concrete and the abstract.

Epistemology

The hard problem of consciousness seems to be that this biological machine built with molecules has feelings when machines can operate without feelings. Evolutionary biology appears to say any function that manages to survive does so because it is well fitted to the environment. Anything without pain is likely to be careless towards its own body. Sophisticated thoughts or an understanding of the world can help in alleviating pain. However, all these tools are developed by the DNA molecule, i.e. they are given or gifted, not created or innate. The consciousness appears to be the result of background processes. The background seems prebuilt by evolution and updated by experience. The consciousness itself isn’t privy to the workings of the background beyond their effects.

How is the hard problem of consciousness, i.e. why do we have qualia, and the brain in a vat problem, i.e. the uncertainty concerning the realness of experience connected? Consciousness appears important in the former, but incompetent, if not guileful, in the later. The problem appears to be between experience and consciousness. The consciousness is uncertain whether the experience correlates with what is actually going on in the real world. This is perhaps due to a perplexity with the variation in states of consciousness or differences in reports of experiences by others. There are also observations that appear to us from science which are judged to be our structural limitations. Regardless is the attempt to deceive the consciousness through experience an explanation for qualia (though the obvious next question is why deceive at all)?

If qualia is meant to deceive the consciousness via the brain in a vat then we may ask if qualia is innate or additional? Consciousness could be a calculating machine not requiring qualia. Experience would then be a means of control by a higher authority. If one perceives experience as something disconnected from consciousness, what keeps consciousness itself from becoming untrustworthy? Being a brain in a vat would allow one to have all the tools necessary to make a calculation, but no problem or content to work on if no communication is coming from the world. Both problems seem to assume the essential nature of consciousness is the ability to calculate, and not the content being manipulated. In the brain in a vat problem there is no possibility for exploration of the world. The brain can calculate but the signal is feigned. The hard problem allows for calculation and signals from the world. Yet it claims the resolution of the world’s signals ought to be purely mechanical.