That will be a subjective judgement made by people.
Again, prudence is a judgement.
I don’t understand why you try to remove people out of everything.
Either ‘what is moral’ is established by God - which you don’t believe. Even in this case, people decide who is a true prophet of God and who is not.
Or it is discovered by people (like universal gravitation) - in which case people write it down in a book and pass it on.
Or it is fabricated by people for what they believe is a practical purpose - in which case they write it down in a book and pass it on.
On none of these cases is ‘moral’ floating around without context or reference to people. People are the judges of what is moral.
I didn’t say anything about the ‘number of people’. I said wise and virtuous people decide. Presumably they guide the direction that societies take and therefore most societies consider stealing to be immoral.
Are you suggesting that there is some other process for adopting moral codes?
If wise and virtuous people are wrong and dumb people are wrong then how can you know what is moral? There is no longer any reference point to use for calibrating moral action.
Then you are deciding what is right.
But how do you know that you are not wrong? After all, you just said that the wise and virtuous may also be wrong and they also used prudence.
Only one way that I can see. Compare your evaluation of the situation to the evaluation done by wise and virtuous people. If they disagree with you then you are probably wrong.
I don’t think harm need be committed. I think if you have sex with a six-year-old and it’s loving and mutually satisfactory, it’s still immoral, and I think you do too, no? Because we probably agree that sexual activity is something that requires informed consent, and should ideally involve an attitude of mutual respect, and that’s not there with children and animals - regardless of the consequences.
Prudence, on the other hand, insofar as it is about foresight, is consequential. The negative consequences of having mutually pleasurable sex with a sheep is that people will find out about it. I don’t know many moralists, even hard-line consequentialists, that hold that things are only immoral if there’s a risk you’ll get caught.
What about just you? If you judge the benefit to you outweighs the cost to the bride? You could fake it well, and have considerably more pleasure in your life.
That’s a long argument, with quite the pedigree.
I’m talking about selfishness here, not prudence. It’s not selfish for me to brush my teeth and floss every night because it doesn’t inconvenience anyone. It’s selfish to use up their toothpaste and floss.
Let’s assume for a moment that “prudence” and “morality” are interchangeable terms, as you propose. The reason you give that it’s immoral to screw a sheep because if other people were to find out they’d think it immoral… for the reason that it’s immoral… which is because if other people were to find out they’d think it immoral. So people think acts are immoral because other people would think they’re immoral because other people would think they’re immoral… That’s pretty circular. So why is it immoral?
I’m not assuming anything, I’m offering the suggestion that it might be considered one way or another. The point implied being that many people find the respect towards others of not using them as means to an end generally outweighs the hedonic calculus.
There’s a reason why fucking a sheep is immoral, if it is immoral. That’s for you to come up with, not me: it’s your example, afterall. That reason why it is immoral is going to be the same reason why it is imprudent. That’s my suspicion. And the reason for why something is immoral isn’t just that other people think it is immoral—as if they had no other reason for thinking so, other than what other people think. I’m not sure why you think there’s any regress at all.
If you want to separate prudence and morality, then come up with an example that does so. But after you make an example that I show to be a bad one, don’t immediately say, “well, I don’t really know if X was immoral, afterall”----because your example was supposed to be of something THAT IS MORAL but not prudent (or vice versa). —That’s how you’d separate them.
And btw, it should strike you as odd if what you are doing is trying to define one of the most famous moral theories (Consequentialism) as prudence. And as for Kantianism, which holds that you are fundamentally a rational being, there’s no doubt that acting according to the Categorical Imperative is what is prudentially good for a being whose fundamental nature is rational—since acting according to the CI just is how you exhibit your rationality.
In a nutshell: I’ve got no doubt that people tend to think there’s a difference between prudence and morality. What I doubt is that they have coherent conceptions of both that actually do differ, in any essential way.
You keep asking the same questions, but never objecting to the good answers, only to re-ask the same question. It’s not cool.
Wise people have reasons why they think what they happen to think. We can examine those, starting with consistency, coherency, and how they correspond to what the nature of creatures such as us actually is. Other wise people can bring reasons why they think those reasons are wrong. This is how we’ll proceed.
But excuse me for having no time for someone who objects to the idea that there are better and worse answers for no apparent reason other than loyalty to some relativistic dogma, which is the fashion here.
I think of it like this. Wise and virtuous people tend to think what they do for reasons beyond mere subjective opinion. I can examine their reasoning to make sure it is sound and prudent. Even the wise and virtuous aren’t infallible. I mean, Confucius was wise and virtuous, but I don’t particularly want to live like Confucius. And if you’re willing to accept anything posited by people you consider to be wise and virtuous simply because you consider them to be so, you’re bound to repeat their mistakes. What makes someone wise and virtuous, in my opinion, is not just that they say neat things. It’s that what they say pertains to life in profound ways. In other words, they have wise and virtuous reasons to think what they do.
I haven’t presented a circular argument, and if you are giving an example of something moral that is not prudent, then it is YOUR JOB to say why it is moral or immoral. Why is that not obvious to you?
For a Kantian, (again, this was YOUR example), acting according to the CI is the prudent thing to do----because it’s the halmark of a rational being, and you are a rational being.
