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kontra5 t1_isnlgbs wrote

Reply to comment by Bookswinters in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

Preference for harm reduction? Harm is in practice defined in the eye of the beholder so it's not useful to talk about it as universal. On top of that once you add context and scrutinize it - it doesn't even hold water. Nobody will prefer living under a bell shielded as much as possible from any "harm" because then they would be the weakest. Suddenly there are obvious conditionals to this "preference for harm reduction." My point is the phrase is too vague and relative to be useful anchor of explanation unless contextualized with specific content and boundaries. Taleb's concept of antifragility comes to mind why this doesn't hold much weight without additional conditionals.

Why I seem pedantic or even petty about these distinctions? Because we could have seen in last decade term "harm" being used and abused for all sorts of ideologies to bully in changes into societies that otherwise people would never democratically agree upon under the pretense this is something universally good, almost like holy good - dogmatic and not to be questioned. And that's not good...

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Bookswinters t1_isokot3 wrote

I'm arguing the perception of inflicting harm has moral weight. I'm borrowing the term from Jonathan Haidt and others. If the arbitor of the morality of the action perceives the action as causing harm, then the action is more likely to judged as immoral relative to an action that does not.

Here's an example - which man has acted more morally?

Man A walks down the sidewalk to his home and steps over a sleeping dog in his path.

Man B walks down the sidewalk to his home and kicks a sleeping dog in his path.

Most will not consider the actions of man B to be morally equivalent to those of man A because most consider man B to have caused harm.

This pattern can also demonstrated in the animal kingdom, many social animals will go out of their way to perform actions that do not harm third parties, all other things being equal. For example, lever A delivers a treat while lever B delivers a treat and a painful electric shock to the animal in the next cage.

This does not mean the perception of harm cannot be subjective or absolute harm reduction is the ultimate goal.

Edited for spelling and clarity

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