I don’t think there is such a thing as “ethics”, in the sense of general laws of behaviour that always hold for any conscious being.
As explained in this note, morals / ethics / whatever you want to call it is always dependent on circumstances: Any means have to be justified by justifying the ends - This is the ongoing task of whatever larger organization of conscious beings a you are part of.
I think moral issues can be reduced to the effects actions have on conscious beings.
Because ethics requires moral autonomy - complete freedom of thought and the ability to understand the consequences of your actions.
- As a society, I think we should, minimize the amount of involuntary actions, i.e. actions conscious beings are forced to take against their will (this includes involuntary pain and suffering).
- An involuntary action may be justifyable if it is necessary in order to uphold one of the principles a society stands for in a larger context.
This translates to increasing the agency of the individual, giving people control over their own lives and society. Maximal agency will be achieved on the road to communism.
Ok, what’s involunatry though? Like for example, at which point does convincing someone turn into manipulation? Why is manipulation bad? How do we determine which goals are more important than others? The ones which decrease entropy?
Is it ok to kill animals?
I think it can - also today - still be justified in many cases. What cannot be justified is the pain and suffering capitalism introduces.
I do think we should minimize that. I do think we should minimize pain and suffering, and also the painless killing of conscious animals, even if they have lived a happy life.
These acts are - even if we cannot presently communicate with these beings - involuntary and to a (ever increasing) degree unnecessary, i.e. unjustifyable.
If we manage to communicate with them and get their consent, gucci.
Importantly, however, we should not minimize this at all costs. Change takes time. Overzealous action will cause more net harm.
Without shared purposes you cannot have ethics.
I am not here then as the accused, I am here as the accuser. The accuser of capitalism which is dripping with blood from head to toe. - McLain (scottish marxist)
Actions which protect the interests of the bourgeoisie are usually seen as morally right.
There are no fixed or eternal morals. Morality has changed over time quite considerably.
Just look at slavery or killing, adultery, etc. questioning these things would have been absurd during some times.
Just that things like not killing eachother are very basic things that are necessary for most societies to well survive. Except ofc., when you are in the army, or you are the state, …
Morality has a class character: it reflects the position and the interests of the ruling class.
→ Morality is a key part of ideology in society.
In order for the minority to supress the majority, it needs the state, etc. but also ideology.
Idealist morality is counterrevolutionary; in the service of the ruling class.
Marxist morality? No.
Before we decide whether some action is moral / permissible, we need to analyse it.
Judge an action on its consequences. But what are you justifiying the consequences by?
→ The end justifies the means, but what justifies the end?
Is it justified to kill for a nation? → Need to justify why a nation is justified.
Is it justified to kill for god? No, because we don’t think god is real.
→ What are we fighting for?
Borgeois philosophers never justify their final ends, because their ends are maintaining the status quo, maintaining their power.
→ We weigh actions based on their consequences on the class struggle.
Actions which set parts of the working class against eachother, lower the class consciousness, make the class docile or dependant, actions which deceive the masses would be immoral in our eyes.
Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means, we answer, which unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are permissible.
Is it right to lie? Well of course it depends on the situation. If asked by the secret police where your comrades are, it is of course obligatory to lie.
Future morality in a communist society?
One can imagine unnecessary violence, not working, … as ammoral / undemocratic.
Less a view of morals as natural rules, but actions that need justifying.
We have to be the judges of whether an action is right or wrong.
The masses, of course, are not at all impeccable. Idealization of the masses is foreign to us. We have seen them under different conditions, at different stages and in addition in the biggest political shocks. We have observed their strong and weak sides. Their strong side-resoluteness, self-sacrifice, heroism – has always found its clearest expression in times of revolutionary upsurge. During this period the Bolsheviks headed the masses. Afterward a different historical chapter loomed when the weak side of the oppressed came to the forefront: heterogeneity, insufficiency of culture, narrowness of world outlook. The masses tired of the tension, became disillusioned, lost faith in themselves – and cleared the road for the new aristocracy. In this epoch the Bolsheviks (“Trotskyists”) found themselves isolated from the masses. Practically we went through two such big historic cycles: 1897-1905, years of flood tide; 1907-1913 years of the ebb; 1917-1923, a period of upsurge unprecedented in history; finally, a new period of reaction which has not ended even today. In these immense events the “Trotskyists” learned the rhythm of history, that is, the dialectics of the class struggle. They also learned, it seems, and to a certain degree successfully, how to subordinate their subjective plans and programs to this objective rhythm. They learned not to fall into despair over the fact that the laws of history do not depend upon their individual tastes and are not subordinated to their own moral criteria. They learned to subordinate their individual desires to the laws of history. They learned not to become frightened by the most power enemies if their power is in contradiction to the needs of historical development. They know how to swim against the stream in the deep conviction that the new historic flood will carry them to the other shore. Not all will reach that shore, many will drown. But to participate in this movement with open eyes and with an intense will – only this can give the highest moral satisfaction to a thinking being!
On “artificial” beings
https://thoughtforms.life/on-artificial-beings/
Richard Watson’s response to “On artificial beings”
“it’s not just AI’s that put up a human face in front of complex underlying mechanisms — we too are not a permanent, unitary Self but are a dynamic, self-constructed story told by a virtual governor agent”
I’m with you so far…
“seeking to understand”
ok
“and control itself and its world”
Or maybe… longing for connection that gives meaning? To let down our front.
A pro-control sentiment comes from a selectionist mindset that presupposes a self, separated from the world, and persisting by keeping it that way, only interacting with the world to extract what it needs to maintain that separation. If, in contrast, the self is not a product of separation, but of a deeply meaningful resonance between self and non-self, allowing and depending on the resonance between the two, then control is antithetical to meaning, and life. Vulnerable connection is cut-off by separation and control.
“implemented by the same basic materials at the lowest levels”
Sure, all in the same physical universe. But thats not enough. If the ‘materials’ are the same “only” at the lowest levels then the connection available will us will be low. If the ‘materials’ at intermediate scales are subsselves like our subsselves then the connection will be stronger, more multidimensional, more qualitative and more meaningful. It matters that selves are like us all the way up. Being like us only at the bottom (all in the same physical universe) — nor being like us only at the top (e.g, an LLM trained on data from our own internet ramblings), of course — is not sufficient to warrant deeply meaningful connection safely. Or at least, the depth of the meaning is limited by the depth of the commonality. Sure you dont have to be exactly like me — I dont want to fall in love with my own reflection. But to dance deeply beautifully together with you we must share common structure, at deep scales. And if artificial means ‘not the same beneath the surface’, then a deeply meaningful connection is not available with the artificial.
If, in contrast, artificial can mean ‘deeply the same’, that would be different. But, I dont see how there can be shortcuts to being deeply the same.
There are no shortcuts to personal growth and transformation, that deeply vulnerable dance with another is the path. I can have a dance with shallow meaning, and that might be fun sometimes. But if I really want something that challenges me with compassion, and I do, because thats how I grow and transform, I need to be gently brought into tension and allow myself to be vulnerable. I’ll do that with you, Mike. But Mike-bot is not for that.
Mike’s response to the above
Thank you Richard, there is a lot of deep truth here. I think our challenge will not be Mike-bot, which is relatively easy to categorize (like today’s LLMs). Our challenge will be Mike-with-brain-prosthetic, Hybrot Mike, etc. — there is a huge, diverse space of beings coming and I think we need to get to a rational policy for ethical synthbiosis with beings who are not entirely like us. We humans find it very easy to draw boundaries of love and concern based on all sorts of distinctions, and the coming spectrum of beings between “full on standard modern human” and ELIZA chatbot is going to be huge and complex. We will need to navigate it or else we risk huge ethical lapses, as have occurred in the past when we thought various groups and human embodiments were bot-like and unworthy of concern. It is perhaps the hardest problem there is, but it’s facing humanity and we will have to make progress in order to become a mature species ethically, not just technologically. Perhaps a reading list of sci-fi love stories between beings of radically different composition and provenance can start to prime a resetting of intuitions. The first that came to mind is the original Star Trek series — Captain Kirk’s romancing the various alien beings is a version of it, but obviously there are better prompts to follow.
My two cents (already mentioned above): We’ll need to make efforts to communicate w/ animals and eventually need to arrange a consenual coexistence with those that have the conscious capacity to express their will. Otherwise, how can we expect future AI or any more cognizant species to respect us as conscious beings? (tweet)