All of curioux's Comments + Replies

"Justify" has a similar problem. Justifications may be mistaken, even intentionally so. Calling something a justification emphasizes persuasion over accuracy.

ETHICAL INJUNCTION: Any moral reasoning that results in "...and I will be miserable for the rest of my life" that is not extremely difficult to prevent and has few other tradeoffs is probably not correct, no matter how well-argued.

I don't consider it moral for two people to make each other suffer for years instead of admitting their mistake and moving on with their lives. That's the result of pride, not forbearance. Still worse if one party suffers while the other remains pleased. If there are severe practical obstacles to divorce then that's one thing, but even then there are ways around that. It's nothing unusual for a couple to separate while remaining married. For example, Warren Buffett had such an arrangement for nearly 30 years--until his wife died. --Meatloaf

No, since "no matter what changes the future brought" includes changes of religion.

File this under "things that could probably be said better, but which might be better said than not said given I won't action it for later". Whenever I see a post or question of the type "is X moral", I have an instinctual aversive reaction because such questions seem to leave so much that still needs to be asked, and the important questions are not even addressed, so even taking a potshot at the question requires wheeling some rather heavy equipment up to do some rather heavy digging as to the values, priorities, risk tolerance, etc of the person asking the question. Re "the important questions are not even addressed": Fundamentally, are you trying to satisfice or maximize here? Are you trying to figure out the "optimal" action per those values that you group in the "morality" category, or are you trying to figure out which actions have an acceptable impact in terms of those values (such that you're then going to choose between the acceptable possibilities with a different set of values?) Once the meta's taken care of, what are the actual things that you value? Inferential distance is often pretty humongous in this regard, so more explicit often is better. Maybe a more concrete example will be useful. If I ask you "what computer should I buy?", I should not take an immediate answer seriously with no further info, because I know you have no way of knowing what my decision criteria are (and its kinda hard for your recommendation to align with them by chance.) As such, I would probably want to give you a decent amount of information regarding my relevant preferences if I ask for such a recommendation...am I going to play games? Office work? Might even be useful to specify the type of games I'm playing and whether graphics are a biggie for me, etc. When I don't see this type of info flow occurring, it feels like a charade, because if I were the one asking the question I would have to discard any answers that I got in the absence of such info about preferences, etc.

This assumes that different kinds of religiosity tend to converge on similar ethics about marital commitments and fidelity. You could become "deeply religious" in a way which allows for divorce or outside relationships. This also assumes that your religion's doctrine on these matters remains stable over many generations. If your religious community accepts 22nd+ Century medicine and permits its members to seek treatment for engineered negligible senescence and superlongevity, then you could live long enough to see your religion undergo a Reformation-like event which allows for a more flexible view of marriage and sexual relationships. I think I've mentioned this before, but I find Ridley Scott's portrayal of Future Christians in the film Prometheus interesting. The space ship's archaeologist character, Elizabeth Shaw (played by Swedish actress Noomi Rapace), wears a cross and professes christian beliefs at a time when christianity has apparently gone into decline and christians have become relatively uncommon. Yet as a single christian woman she has a sexual relationship with a man on the ship, which suggests that christian sexual morality during that religion's long twilight will tend to converge with secular moral views.

This sounds like a place where Kantian ethics would give the right answer. I think, there is some point at which it would be stupid to not seek divorce, and some point at which the promise you made is indeed more important, and the thing that differentiates those two states is not whether you want divorce now, but whether which procedure would it be better for people to follow - the one that has you stay married here, or the one that has you divorce here.

Assuming they only married me because they knew I was never going to leave them, no it isn't.

Identity may be continuous, but it is not unchanging. You are not the person you were back then and are not required to be bound by their precommitments. No more than by someone else's precommitments. To be quasi-formal, the vows made back then are only morally binding on the fraction of your current self which are left unchanged from your old self.Or something like that.

The issue is with the decision, so asking "Is it moral?" is a potentially misleading framing because of the connotations of "moral" that aren't directly concerned with comparing effects of alternative actions. So the choice is between the scenario where a person made promises etc. and later stuck with them while miserable, and the scenario where they did something else.