You could be Phineas Gage, minus the massive brain injury

[gwahir]

Say there was a button you could push that would, in an instant, remove your conscience. You'd be free, as it were, from feelings of guilt, shame and sympathy forever. You could be as cunning and terrible as you wanted in order to get what you want. Nobody even needs to get hurt -- it's by no means a guarantee that you'll turn into a cold blooded murderer -- it's just that you wouldn't feel bad yourself if someone did suffer on your way up. You will also, as it happens, be excellent at faking it. Nobody would ever know, and you'd be a lot happier.

Would you push it?

Explain your answer. If it's yes, well, the reasoning is pretty obvious. Who wouldn't be happier without that shame-foisting guilt-mongerer's unseemly mitts all over their anterior prefrontal cortex? But if you said no, why did you say no?

Would you rather be good or happy?

[gwahir]

by the way i know it's the internet so most of you don't have consciences but let's skate over that inconvenient truth alright

[simonj]

So I only have to explain if I choose no?

[gwahir]

Well, this is a discussion forum. The rationale behind "yes" is fairly obvious, but if you have anything to add to the discussion, add it.

[Syme]

Tempting, but I don't like the prospect of becoming totally willing to hurt or get over on people I care about. Of course I wouldn't care about that once I had no guilt, shame, or sympathy, but since I currently do have those things, I wouldn't willingly turn myself into someone who doesn't and might therefore freely screw his loved ones, friends, and so forth.

If I had some prior guarantee--in which I could be confident--that I'd only use my abilities to scam on strangers, I might consider it a bit more seriously.

[mutton]

Originally Posted by gwahir

Who wouldn't be happier without that shame-foisting guilt-mongerer's unseemly mitts all over their anterior prefrontal cortex? But if you said no, why did you say no?

I don't think this is a clear-cut good or happy dilemma:

- Choosing to have a conscience doesn't mean choosing to be good.
- One may push the button merely to be rid of certain feelings, not to be more happy.
- One may feel compelled to abide by ethical guidelines even after pushing the button, for purely theoretical reasons.
- Pushing the button doesn't make you automatically crave power or wish to harm people. It's not like we feel so restricted in our every day lives that we can't do certain bad things, or that the only thing stopping us is our conscience.

- You'd miss out on all the happiness that arises from having a conscience, both from doing good things and from the contrasting effect that the suffering you receive from guilt/shame/etc makes your happiness seem that much more amplified.
- Getting everything you want is commonly thought to not be the way to increase happiness (I imagine there are many plays with this moral), though maybe this is true only for people with a conscience.

[Rick Scarf]

I voted "no" because if you couldn't feel guilt, you couldn't feel love, hate or hope either. If you can't feel love (or hope for love) then there isn't really anything to live for.

[simonj]

Is guilt necessary for feeling the emotions of love, hope or hate?

[Syme]

I personally don't see any reason to believe that to be so, but I guess Rick Scarf does.

[gwahir]

Originally Posted by mutton

I don't think this is a clear-cut good or happy dilemma:

- Choosing to have a conscience doesn't mean choosing to be good.

It means choosing to feel bad if you're not good.

Originally Posted by mutton

- One may push the button merely to be rid of certain feelings, not to be more happy.

I am talking about the freedom to pursue happiness when getting happiness conflicts with decent behaviour.

Originally Posted by mutton

- One may feel compelled to abide by ethical guidelines even after pushing the button, for purely theoretical reasons.

May one? Curious. I would think that someone without a conscience would understand and appreciate the theoretical reasons, but without the desire to be good, why would they follow them?

Originally Posted by mutton

- Pushing the button doesn't make you automatically crave power or wish to harm people. It's not like we feel so restricted in our every day lives that we can't do certain bad things, or that the only thing stopping us is our conscience.

Indeed not, but, as I said, it diminishes any happiness gained at someone else's expense, and stops you from doing things that harm others. Mostly.

Originally Posted by mutton

- Getting everything you want is commonly thought to not be the way to increase happiness (I imagine there are many plays with this moral), though maybe this is true only for people with a conscience.

Exactly my thinking.

The point of the question, flawed though it is, is to imagine that you have a choice between being good and being happy. Which would you rather?

Syme's reasoning is what I guess the common reasoning would be, but I don't share it. I don't find it strong enough, because the moment I press that button I don't care about any guarantees of not hurting friends and family. (In fact, doing evil things to friends and family is no more or less unconscionable to me now than doing evil things to strangers.)

[Syme]

Originally Posted by gwahir

I don't find it strong enough, because the moment I press that button I don't care about any guarantees of not hurting friends and family.

Right, but it's a reason not to push the button in the first place. When you are standing there debating whether to push it, you obviously can't view the decision in the way you'd view it after pushing the button. Because you haven't yet. You necessarily have to view it as the person you are before pushing the button. While the post-button person may not care about hurting friends and family, the pre-button person does (at least pre-button Syme does) and THAT is the person who has to make the call. So the button doesn't get pushed. I'm not saying you should join me in refraining from pushing that button, but it doesn't make any sense to say that you--pre-button Gwahir--would be willing to push the button because of the attitude that you would only attain after pushing the button. That almost seems to be skirting Catch-22 territory.

[MrShrike]

I'd push no.

The reason why, is not because I enjoy being saddled with sentimental feelings, but rather because I believe that conscience and the associated emotions like empathy, sympathy, guilt and remorse are essential to successful decision making process in humans.

In modern psychology, decisions in humans are believed to be chosen from a range of possible decisions based on two factors: these are typically labelled Intution and Conscience.

Intution (which is different from what you might normally call intution AKA guessing or having a "hunch") is essentially a measure of how advantageous or disadvantageous we believe a particular action will be for the self. Conscience is similarly a measure of how advantageous we believe others feel a particular action is for themselves.

All decisions can therefore be described as lying at some point on a spectrum between between Intution and Conscience, and which particular action we take depends upon how much we weight Intuitive and Conscientiousness in each decison, or, where on the range between Intuition and Consciences we choose to make the decision.

In some decisions ( e.g. what colour underpants to wear today) we might weigh Intuition very heavily and Conscience not at all, because it doesn't matter to others, or it's none of their business. While in other decisions, we might weight the 2 factors in a more balanced way (e.g. whether or not to drink the last of the milk in the fridge).

My point is; Conscience has a purpose.

That purpose is to allow us to estimate how others might react to our actions, and whether it might therefore lead to positive or negative actions. It also protects us from actions which have long-term negative consequences, that might not be immediately apparent.

If we are lacking in Conscience and we decide that killing someone is extremely advantageous thing to do right now, then we can end up being in prison, or even being killed ourselves. So conscience is actually vital to long-term success in life. The key is finding the right balance between Conscience and Intuition, between what is good for us and what is good for others.

In conclusion, even discounting the needs of others completely in choosing whether to press the button or not; that is, abandoning Conscience already before I press it or not, my Intution alone, my sense of what is good for me, is sufficient to tell me that it is not a good idea.

[Syme]

The question then must be, is "conscience" in the sense you've described here (the faculty used to guess at how others will perceive our actions) the same thing as "conscience" in the colloquial sense. I think it's clear that it isn't. The sort of "conscience" you're talking about seems to be nothing more than the ability to think things through to their logical conclusion and accurately surmise how other people will react to your actions. A purely intellectual or calculating faculty, with no moral dimension at all. Simply weighing pro against con, or looking beyond immediate advantages to see more distant drawbacks.

A person could lack any sort of "conscience" in the colloquial sense--a sense of moral shame, a sense of right and wrong--but still be perfectly able to make use of the faculty that you're calling "conscience". For instance, unless a person is mentally defective, they could probably deduce that killing another person would have negative effects (imprisonment, etc.) that would outweigh the immediate benefits no matter how advantageous those might be. But making that determination isn't "conscience" in the normal sense of the word. A person who has "conscience" in the normal sense of the word would refrain from murder not because the cons outweigh the pros, but because they think it's morally wrong. So while the definition of "conscience" you're using here may be the proper one within the context of modern psychology, it seems to differ substantially from the normal common-usage meaning, and doesn't seem to be very relevant to the OP.

TLDR: Gwahir is asking whether you'd give up your moral inhibitions against treating others badly, not your ability to make rational cost-benefit judgment calls like "murdering this guy would get me thrown in jail so it's not worth it", or "drinking my roommates milk would cause him to become angry at me". Any non-retarded person can still make those judgment calls even if they have no moral inhibitions against murder or milk theft or whatever else.

[gwahir]

Originally Posted by Syme

Right, but it's a reason not to push the button in the first place. When you are standing there debating whether to push it, you obviously can't view the decision in the way you'd view it after pushing the button.

But see, a consequentialist can view any and every situation that way. Look at the circumstances after the event and make a judgment about whether they will be better than the circs before it.

I understand that your pre-button conscience wants to prohibit you from doing something that will result in immoral and harmful actions. But consciences are only mildly prohibitive; it's more accurate to describe them as punitive. It's not hard to disobey your conscience -- it's just, let's say, unpleasant. You feel horrible doing it. But you could make yourself feel horrible for an instant in order to make you feel great for the rest of your life. Indeed, that makes a lot of sense. Therefore it actually doesn't make much sense to follow what your pre-button self's conscience tells you to do. What I'm saying is not that you should press the button. What I'm saying is that "my conscience does not want me to do it" is not a very good reason not to.

Ultimately, it should be obvious to any rational being that there are reasons other than "that we have a conscience" to be morally good. Having a conscience is not a necessary (though it is, in a sense, sufficient) reason to act morally.

[MrShrike]

The question then must be, is "conscience" in the sense you've described here (the faculty used to guess at how others will perceive our actions) the same thing as "conscience" in the colloquial sense. I think it's clear that it isn't. The sort of "conscience" you're talking about seems to be nothing more than the ability to think things through to their logical conclusion and accurately surmise how other people will react to your actions. A purely intellectual or calculating faculty, with no moral dimension at all. Simply weighing pro against con, or looking beyond immediate advantages to see more distant drawbacks.

Actually no, intellect is something completely different. Mental models relating to the outside world are not necessarily intellectual and include such emotional-response-feedback systems as Conscience and Intutition. For example, we may learn from our parents from a young age that "hitting is wrong", even though we have no intellectual appreciation of why it is wrong. But once we have learnt the "wrongness of hitting", we will usually just "get a feeling" that it is the wrong thing to do and tend to avoid doing it, without necessarily knowing why. That is our Conscience emotionally informing our decision making process.

Our Conscience model is typically informed by intellect, particularly as we get older and become an adult, through direct experience and acquired knowledge including learned responses, but it is a independent faculty and has a direct emotional response relationship to our related emotions such as guilt, sympathy etc. We can easily do something that we intellectually know is morally correct, or which a cost/benefit analysis tells us is the best for everyone (or best for ourself), but still feel a sense of remorse over our actions. This what we call " having a conflicted Conscience" and is what we mean sometimes by a "moral dilemma".



Gwahir is asking whether you'd give up your moral inhibitions against treating others badly, not your ability to make rational cost-benefit judgment calls like "murdering this guy would get me thrown in jail so it's not worth it", or "drinking my roommates milk would cause him to become angry at me". Any non-retarded person can still make those judgment calls even if they have no moral inhibitions against murder or milk theft or whatever else.

I think you misunderstand me; I'm saying that Conscience tends to help leads us (in combination with Intuituion) towards the optimal (WRT cost/benefits) actions, but it is not itself a logical faculty.

To give up Conscience means you may well intellectually know that your roommate might become angry if you drink the rest of the milk, but you are unable to experience any emotional impulse that would cause you to act in a particular way as a response to that knowledge. In other words, you would lose your moral sense of rightness or wrongess about the action itself.

[Syme]

Originally Posted by gwahir

But see, a consequentialist can view any and every situation that way. Look at the circumstances after the event and make a judgment about whether they will be better than the circs before it.

I think this is maybe a bit different though, because the event itself crucially changes the standard by which you evaluate circumstances. To pre-button me, the circumstances after I push the button AREN'T better; they are worse, because they entail me acting in ways that I, pre-button Syme, don't want to act. To post-button Syme, who would have no qualms about acting in those ways, those may indeed be better circumstances. But he ain't me.

To expand on my answer, though, I also don't feel that I need to be entirely without guilt/shame/conscience to get where I want to get in life in the first place. So even if I was okay with the person who I'd become after pushing the button, I wouldn't feel much of a desire to.

Originally Posted by gwahir

I understand that your pre-button conscience wants to prohibit you from doing something that will result in immoral and harmful actions. But consciences are only mildly prohibitive; it's more accurate to describe them as punitive. It's not hard to disobey your conscience -- it's just, let's say, unpleasant.

I think you may find that when it comes to certain things, certain people will find the strictures of their conscience more than mildly prohibitive. When it comes to certain things, some people would even rather die than do what they think is wrong.

Originally Posted by gwahir

You feel horrible doing it. But you could make yourself feel horrible for an instant in order to make you feel great for the rest of your life. Indeed, that makes a lot of sense. Therefore it actually doesn't make much sense to follow what your pre-button self's conscience tells you to do.

Again, for myself personally, I'm not really convinced that being conscience-free would make me feel great for the rest of my life (that presupposes that real joy is nothing but the absence of shame/guilt), and that it's not possible for me to lead a life I'm happy with unless I have no conscience. I'm not convinced that an unlimited capacity for guilt-free scheming and scamming is the ticket to a life of happiness.

Originally Posted by gwahir

What I'm saying is that "my conscience does not want me to do it" is not a very good reason not to.

I wouldn't say "my conscience does not want me to do it"; that seems to imply that there's some discrete entity in my head, separate from the "real" or "core" me, trying to make me act in ways that the real/core me might not want to. I don't really see it that way. It's not that my conscience doesn't want me to do it. I don't want to do it. My desire not to do it isn't being imposed on me from the outside. It comes from within my mind just as much as any other desire or thought I have.

Originally Posted by gwahir

Ultimately, it should be obvious to any rational being that there are reasons other than "that we have a conscience" to be morally good. Having a conscience is not a necessary (though it is, in a sense, sufficient) reason to act morally.

My own view, if I was asked for it, is that ANY behavior according to moral principles isn't rational. Any person who sets for themselves (or accepts from others) genuine moral principles, who really honestly bases their actions on ideas about what's right and wrong, isn't being rational. I don't think there's any way that ideas about right and wrong can be supported rationally. This doesn't mean I don't still have ideas about right and wrong, of course. But I don't pretend that I arrived at them by some rational process.

[Syme]

Originally Posted by MrShrike

Actually no, intellect is something completely different. Mental models relating to the outside world are not necessarily intellectual and include such emotional-response-feedback systems as Conscience and Intutition. For example, we may learn from our parents from a young age that "hitting is wrong", even though we have no intellectual appreciation of why it is wrong. But once we have learnt the "wrongness of hitting", we will usually just "get a feeling" that it is the wrong thing to do and tend to avoid doing it, without necessarily knowing why. That is our Conscience emotionally informing our decision making process.

Our Conscience model is typically informed by intellect, particularly as we get older and become an adult, through direct experience and acquired knowledge including learned responses, but it is a independent faculty and has a direct emotional response relationship to our related emotions such as guilt, sympathy etc. We can easily do something that we intellectually know is morally correct, or which a cost/benefit analysis tells us is the best for everyone (or best for ourself), but still feel a sense of remorse over our actions. This what we call " having a conflicted Conscience" and is what we mean sometimes by a "moral dilemma".

....

I think you misunderstand me; I'm saying that Conscience tends to help leads us (in combination with Intuituion) towards the optimal (WRT cost/benefits) actions, but it is not itself a logical faculty.

To give up Conscience means you may well intellectually know that your roommate might become angry if you drink the rest of the milk, but you are unable to experience any emotional impulse that would cause you to act in a particular way as a response to that knowledge. In other words, you would lose your moral sense of rightness or wrongess about the action itself.

Then yes, I have misunderstood you. I thought you were using a definition of "conscience" that referred purely to mentally modeling other peoples' reactions to our actions, and avoiding actions that will provoke undesirable reactions. That was the impression created by this example:

"If we are lacking in Conscience and we decide that killing someone is extremely advantageous thing to do right now, then we can end up being in prison, or even being killed ourselves. So conscience is actually vital to long-term success in life."

A person wouldn't need a conscience at all to determine that killing someone is disadvantageous in the long run (due to risk of imprisonment, etc.), they just need a logical grasp of probability and consequences. So I thought that's what you were saying "conscience" consists of in your model.

[mrbazoun]

Vote NO. Being a psychopath disgusts me.

[Slash Dragoon]

My town already had Phineas Gage, so they don't need another one.

[Vengeful Scars]

I feel odd for being the only yes.

If you don't hate, love etc. there really is no reason for you to become angry. Happiness isn't sidelined just because you can't feel the opposite feeling. I mean, just because I can't cry doesn't mean I can't smile.

Also, since I already try to live semi-apathetically then this decision would just guarantee my place permanently.

[simonj]

I voted yes because the idea of being truly evil has always appealed to a dark part of my soul that I'm not comfortable admitting is there. That, and I want to play devil's advocate in this utterly banal debate.

[Vengeful Scars]

well I mean, you could be truly evil(by killing/raping/rapping) and not give a fuck....


or truly good by doing good deeds for no self satisfaction whatsoever

[simonj]

Originally Posted by Vengeful Scars

or truly good by doing good deeds for no self satisfaction whatsoever

Yeah, that aint me.