Taking my premise and applying it to human society, the quintessential question becomes how do we manage to act in the presence of potentially conflicting value systems.

Let us consider specifically how one individual may incorporate into their analysis of value, the value systems of his neighbors. The individual may anticipate some values of one of his neighbors purely by tentatively projecting your own values onto them, suitably transformed. By this I mean, If you value your life, you may directly project your values onto others assuming they too value your life. But the asymmetry of this condition in the relations between value holder and value may well lead you to transpose both holder and direction so that you presuppose the other values his life in the same way you value your life.

Note that of these two ways of projecting your values, neither is inherently better in the sense of some external value system. But your decision to pay attention to the values of your neighbor inherit a value driven intent which will weigh one over the other. One may assume that the more likely of the two presuppositions better serves your intent if the act of considering at all does. In that case the transformed case has a higher correspondence, it is the most covariant assumption.

Also note that this is a form of moral relativity. (Not to be confused with moral relativism. )

[After a long time away…]

I just saw a professor’s lecture [will look up an cite here] where he summarized in an ultimately simple paradigm, human interactions into two categories. Seduction and Rape. Here’s how he described them:

• Seduction – “You make me feel good and I’ll make you feel good”
• Rape – “You make me feel good or I’ll make you feel bad”

Now this dichotomy, a.k.a. “the carrot and the stick” has been recognized far longer but what I appreciate is the elegant symmetries of this formulation. Also this phrasing invokes guttural feelings, making the point in flashing neon rather than say framed cross stitching. Most of us have a visceral repugnance when we hear “rape”, and a sense of titillation when we hear “seduction”. The author used these loaded terms in pointing out that Government, even with the most beneficent stated intentions can never “seduce”, they can only “rape”.

Of course (so far as I’m concerned) this is a too simplistic view in general but in the context in which it was used, namely economic policy and behavior it is most certainly apt. A parent needing to punish a child to dissuade them from behaviors which are imminently dangerous but where that danger is too sophisticated for the child to understand at his age, may legitimately believe it is best to explain to the child “If you eat that I will spank you, and not just a little slap on the wrist!” rather than trying to explain about carcinogens or lying to the child. (Children learn to lie quickly and as soon as they conceive of lying they understand that they can be lied to.)

But, now, getting back onto the main discussion, we have these two means of affecting others behavior. Our moral agency extends not just to our own direct actions but our ability to influence the actions of others both with carrot and with stick, both by acts of seduction and acts of rape.

(Another side-note and distinction between the two formulations of interactive paradigm. The “carrot or stick” is an allegory with literal reference to treatment of a beast of burden, typically a mule or donkey. The “seduction or rape” one may note is less hierarchical in that both actor and subject are implicitly persons. So that’s something to consider.)

Well, I am clearly rambling here, but this is a blog and not a PhD thesis or book. I’m exploring –out loud– my thoughts and reasoning on this subject. So, rambling on… Trying to maintain a perspective of pure moral agnosticism (which is very difficult) what can we say about the nature of how many actors with diverse ethics may interact. Importantly how each acting in this context should act according to their own ethics.

To begin to answer this it might be useful to begin classifying general groups of individual ethics. Next we could consider classifying how the value systems of many individuals may relate. To fully realize such classifications is daunting. A simpler preliminary step of simply identifying ordinal qualities may help us get started. (Ordinal qualities are qualities which define an ordering or ranking. For example “left” vs “right” has been a political ordinal quality, vague as it is sometimes.)

Delaying Gratification

Alice lends Bob $50 with the promise that Bob will pay Alice back plus a little extra, say $55 when he gets his paycheck at the end of the month. While we can speculate on the circumstances we can all agree that Alice valued the future $55 more than the immediate possession of the $50. Likewise Bob valued the immediate $50 more than the future $55. And we can further agree that the amount to which they each valued their alternative was at their estimation of the present value of that future $5 interest payment.

In this example Alice has deferred the immediate gratification she could obtain by spending the $50 on… well… some gratifying item, say a back massage, or expensive steak, or whatnot. Bob’s circumstances including his value system dictated that immediate use of the $50 was of more value than the future use.

Now we should be careful in two respects. Firstly not to equate the value of the money to Bob with that same quantity of money to Alice. Secondly we should not assume $50 or even $5 is of value to either except as circumstances, which of course change over time, establish what each could accomplish with the use of that money. There are also nuances of trust in future fulfillment of the promise made and trust of each in their judgement of the future circumstances in which they value the utility of the given amounts of currency.

Having said all that, we can then in some sense average over or ignore details of circumstances to assert that some individuals, as a matter of temperament value immediate gratification over gratification delayed. Let us also, here, define gratification as the achievement of that which is of [relatively] direct value. That depends also on the value system, but in a different way. We are keying in on the recognition of time and dynamic evolution of values for the actors. Uncertainty of the future is a major factor in the propensity of individuals to delay gratification [see Marshmallow Study]. This is an obvious result of the fact that deferring gratification is risking the actualized now for the sake of a hypothesized future. In our Alice and Bob example, Alice could always keep her $50 and yet still wait to actualize its value until the future. Clearly risking the possibility of Bob’s defaulting on the promise can decrease the extrapolated value of Alice’s investment.

Ethical vs Pragmatic Altruism (and Egoism)

A soldier, let’s call him Carl, is in a bunker standing near the door, he sees a grenade tossed through the doorway. He reacts according to the values he has instilled in him via his ethical code and/or habits of training and takes one of two actions. He either dives for the door (while shouting a warning to his comrades) or he dives upon the grenade sacrificing his life for the sake of his comrades. We assume in both choices that the soldier values his fellows. Now we can argue about conditioning and reflexive actions, but let us, for the moment, assume the soldier has sufficient time to quickly evaluate the two courses of action and make a free-willed choice. He believes the grenade will, if left in the open, will kill all in the room. He believes there is no chance of him grabbing the grenade and tossing it out to thereby reduce the chance that everyone in the room will die. He believes that he, having seen the grenade is close enough to the door that by diving out the doorway he can reduce his risk of death a significant amount, and finally he believes that by diving on the grenade he can attenuate its effect so as to have a significant chance of saving many of his comrades.

Now we can speculate on various scenarios where the soldier jumps upon the grenade for the sake of his family and children whom would face obliteration if his side of the presumed conflict lose. Or that his love for his fellow soldiers is all that motivates him. Likewise we may speculate on the motivations behind a soldier who dives out of harms way leaving his compatriots to die. He may have abilities or knowledge instrumental to the war effort which outweigh the lives of his fellow soldiers. He may simply value his own skin over theirs. There are an indeterminate range of other circumstances which may qualify his actions. But let us, examining the action itself out of context, qualify the act of fleeing as egoistic and the act of diving upon the grenade to save his companions as altruistic.

We often see actions taken by individuals which, at face value, and in-so-far-as their commonly understood immediate effects are, a sacrifice of the individuals interests for the sake of others. We thence label such actions as altruistic. Likewise failure to act altruistically in such circumstances we deem egoistic. But lacking the full analysis of the actors ultimate goals and values we cannot distinguish fundamentally self-sacrificing actions from those whose purpose is a delayed but egoist’s value. So let us allow for the qualification of these ethical directions of action.

There is a wonderful serial program “The Good Place” on NBC which cleverly sneaks in some serious moral philosophy in a clever and entertaining way in their situational comedy. I recall one episode “Don’t Let the Good Life Pass You By” in Season 3, where an individual, played by Michel McKean discovers the “point system” for one’s disposition in the afterlife and bases all his actions on maximizing his score. He is acting altruistically in a superficial way for the sake of his eternal self-interest. He is what I’m calling a pragmatic altruist which is to say an egoist delaying gratification by way of immediate acts of altruism.

We’re all going to die… aren’t we?

So here’s a cynical view of most religions. In order to promote a healthy, it is in the interest of future generations that some individuals behave altruistically, in the immediate sense described above. So investing in a belief system wherein the individual’s will and values and personality survive the death of their body, allows for the perversion of their egoism toward a fundamentally altruistic value system. In a nut-shell “Love thy neighbor or you’re going to burn in hell for eternity.” is the message that dictates pragmatic altruism in one’s actual behavior but is motivated –explicitly– by the egoistic aim of avoiding infinite pain and achievement of infinite pleasure. let us call this the martyr’s promise.

I remind the reader again (as I also remind myself) that our goal is to remain agnostic as to values but merely to describe their nature.

[ANOTHER Digression… Here’s a great story premise. Imagine, say, Bob is in Heaven and he is there due to his honestly altruistic actions which is the ultimate moral ideal laid down by the creator god. His epiphany occurs when he realizes that all the rewards of heaven are hollow so long as others, no matter how much they deserve their punishment are condemned to eternity in a torturous hell. He realizes also that the infamy of Hell is principally due to the character of those whom have been involuntarily condemned to reside there. He starts a campaign to get all the heavenly residents to volunteer to leave paradise and reside in Hell and make of it the best place possible under the circumstances. Their goal is to endure the sufferings there but to minimize those sufferings for all the other, involuntary residents. The story would then be that this action, Bob’s crusade of beneficence. This action would be, in hindsight, the culmination of all of existence and ultimate fulfillment of God’s purpose. Basically all the Heavenly Hosts, under Bob’s guidance become Peace Corp workers in Hell. Their actions ultimately redeem not only the lost souls but the fallen themselves. The climactic ending would be Lucifer’s realization that God’s favor toward mankind was justified. That he, (Lucifer) did not recognize the profoundly deeper value of infinite moral potential of mankind vs that of the angels because the angels no matter how (pragmatically) obedient to the will of God would never have even conceived of such a sacrifice.

Hmmm…. WOW that’s a powerful narrative. I’ll have to see if I can write it up in a full story. END DIGRESSION]

Well, at this point I’m exhausting my imagination and should stop. What I want to get to next is the role of both pragmatic and fundamentally virtuous individuals in a society of diverse ethics. (and to play the same game with the short-sighted egoists and longer term, gratification delaying egoists.)

For now, that’s all I have to say.