All of JackM's Comments + Replies

The Cosi is right on top of the Dupont Circle South Metro exit. 10 am?

Thanks very much for your help on this DSimon. I really appreciate it.

You say "Being guilty over having done something bad is itself a moral good, no doubt, but it doesn't replace the bad moral state that was arrived at by doing the bad thing, it's just added to it."

Are you saying that one can be in two moral states in the same moment? How can that be?

0DSimon
Sort of. I'm saying that one's moral state, as we typically think about it, can be modeled (in a simplified way) as a sum of the god and bad things you've done. So let's say you do a bad thing, pushing you from morally neutral at 0 down to -6. But, you feel correctly guilty about it, which is +2 good. Now your moral state is at -4, which is better but still not up in the positive numbers that we'd call "overall morally good". This is also why there isn't any flip-flopping back and forth: guilt in this model is about a particular historical action, not your current overall moral state. I can also approach this from the other side and show that a simple good/bad binary doesn't work as a model of our sense of moral evaluation. If you imagine the various combinations in the table I made earlier, it feels right (at least to me) to be able to sort them from most to least moral like so: * Didn't do anything bad, doesn't feel guilty * Didn't do anything bad, feels guilty * Did something bad, feels guilty * Did something bad, doesn't feel guilty If that (or any other single ordering) also feels about right to you, then it follows that you'd need more than just one bit of input (i.e. whether or not a person feels guilty) to morally evaluate a person; with only one bit of information, you can only sort people into two groups, you couldn't come up with an ordering for four people like above. Therefore your earlier statement that "believing you're bad makes you good and vice versa" can't be correct, because it only takes as input that one bit of information.
0Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)
Isn't this true all the time? Say you took money from your sister's wallet and lied to her about it...that's morally wrong...but you donated the money to charity, which is morally right.

I agree it may make sense to feign it. But to do it sincerely, to actually inflict the emotional pain of guilt on yourself, and not just feign it, seems irrationally paradoxical. When I isolate for consideration just the interior subjective phenomenon of feeling guilty, I can't see how to escape the paradox that believing you're bad makes you good and vice versa.

0DSimon
If everyone feigned it, then nobody would believe anybody else's feigning. It's a typical game theory pattern; cheating the system is possible, but if everyone or nearly everyone cheated then there wouldn't be a system. Plus, there are forms of self-punishment that are hard to fake, and these accordingly seem to get more respect. So are you imagining a kind of rapid back-and-forth state change here? I don't think that necessarily has to be the case, because what we think of as somebody's moral state has to be a sum, taking into account all the things they've done and are doing and adding them together. Being guilty over having done something bad is itself a moral good, no doubt, but it doesn't replace the bad moral state that was arrived at by doing the bad thing, it's just added to it.

The Starbucks venue fills fast by late morning. If we're going to meet later, then we need a different venue. There's a Cosi at 1350 Connecticut Ave that's struggling to fill seats because Panera moved in next door. That might be a better bet fore later in the day.

Guilt is not merely the acknowledgement of a mistake, is it? Isn't it self-punishment?

It's self-punishment that seems paradoxical to me. Punishment only makes sense if the punisher and punished are different people.

Another way to look at is that It takes a good judge to accurately judge someone as bad. So which are you when you're feeling guilty, judge or judged?

0DSimon
The OP disagrees with you; it points out that self-punishment can be a good idea if you're doing it in front of other people, because it signals that you have genuine regret over your actions, and makes it seem less likely that you'll do something bad again because you're precommitted to punish yourself again if you did.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe the way we evolved to demonstrate group loyalty and therefore, trustworthiness, was to forfeit our rationality as a rite of initiation. We agree to be irrationally loyal.

If so, can't we dispense with that by now?

I like Drescher's derivation of a logical foundation for the Golden Rule even when it benefits no one to abide by it. It's essentially the same logic that leads one to forgo the $1,000 in Newcomb's problem.

If I know you're committed to rationality, then I can trust you to abide by the golden rule.

It seems to me that guilt is inherently paradoxical. In light of the misdeed, if you believe you're bad, your good. If you believe you're good, you're bad. Seems a lot like the liar's paradox.

3DSimon
I don't think that's paradoxical. Consider table of the possible combinations: (Did a bad deed) (Feel guilty) (Morally correct?) * Yes, Yes, Yes * No, No, Yes * Yes, No, No * No, Yes, No* In other words, guilt is morally correct IFF it's a true indication of whether you actually did anything bad. That's in line with the OP's interpretation of guilt as a signalling mechanism; not being guilty when you ought to be is a kind of lying. *I'm less certain about being guilty when you haven't done anything wrong; I think this isn't considered particularly immoral, but at least in the cultures I'm used to it's considered pointless and somewhat egotistical, a kind of self-pity.
-2JackM
Maybe that's the point. Maybe the way we evolved to demonstrate group loyalty and therefore, trustworthiness, was to forfeit our rationality as a rite of initiation. We agree to be irrationally loyal. If so, can't we dispense with that by now? I like Drescher's derivation of a logical foundation for the Golden Rule even when it benefits no one to abide by it. It's essentially the same logic that leads one to forgo the $1,000 in Newcomb's problem. If I know you're committed to rationality, then I can trust you to abide by the golden rule.

Excellent. Now let's pick a place. Any suggestions? I like the Dupont Circle area, but anywhere else in town is good for me. Parking is free everywhere on Sundays.

0Benquo
I am flexible as to location, but if it's not inconvenient for anyone else, the 22nd and P Starbucks sounds like a reasonable location to me. Or anywhere else in the Dupont Area.

I agree to any and all conditions for a DC meetup. Push it out, later in the day, any other location.

I just wanted to get the ball rolling. Let's start with a date. How about May 15?

0atucker
Oops. I had just started this thread. Should we move discussion to over there?
0folkTheory
Works for me.
0drcode
That works for me too... anyone here have enough karma so that we can break this out as a separate top level post? :-)
0usyaf
I probably wouldn't have gone to the Baltimore one anyway, but I almost certainly won't knowing there's a DC one already being planned.
0Benquo
I can do May 15.

Benquo and falenas108. I live in DC also. Let's start a DC meet up. How about some Sunday morning 8 am Starbuck's 22nd & P, They have roomy upstairs seating. Or anywhere else convenient to you all.

Jack

0drcode
I'd attend a DC meetup, but maybe we should push it out a month or so at least- Otherwise it causes confusion about the Baltimore meeting, which has already been fully organized... no need to split attendance by having two meetings at the same time at two places so close to each other.
0folkTheory
8AM?? Have some mercy! I'm from the greater DC metro area...I can't make it so early.