• @[email protected]
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        18 hours ago
        1. I am a sentient creature that feels pain and pleasure

        2. Others appear to be sentient creatures that feel pain and pleasure

        3. Pain is bad, so I should avoid inflicting it

        You don’t need empathy as an axiom to derive it rationally

        • Dragon Rider (drag)
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          151 minutes ago

          Pain and pleasure are passions. You said you were gonna use pure reason. Not use reason as an aid to passions.

        • @[email protected]
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          4 hours ago

          Statement #3 is hearsay. I would argue the only thing you can know is that you personally do not like pain. There is no absolute good or bad, only what aligns or doesn’t with your passions (using the term loosely here).

          The Golden Rule of “treating others as one would want to be treated”, is a logical conclusion that comes from experiencing the world and seeing that there’s a high probability that others will return actions in kind. It’s not perfect since everyone has different preferences (just look at the variety of sexualities and kinks out there).

          • @[email protected]
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            14 hours ago

            It is the logical extension of noticing the similarities between yourself and others, and noticing that you do not enjoy pain. It’s certainly not mathematically rigorous, but it follows from simple reasoning nonetheless. If you wanted to be rigorous, you can’t even claim that you don’t like pain, only that you haven’t liked specific instances of pain in the past. Some estimations are necessary for a functioning framework of any kind, including ethics.

            • @[email protected]
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              14 hours ago

              I agree that it’s possible to arrive at the conclusion “pain is bad” as an individual, but I guess what I’m arguing is that there’s no absolute hard line on what is and isn’t ethical. Each individual person might have their own personal line, but there is no guarantee that line will be the same as another person’s. Case-in-point, a psychopath is someone with reduced or no empathy for others. They may very well not consider pain in others bad at all.

              • @[email protected]
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                12 hours ago

                So? Just because someone chooses not to follow the reason, that doesn’t make the reason invalid. If anything you’re only proving the failures of a passion-driven ethical model, if the psychopath’s passion is inflicting pain there’s nothing to keep them from behaving unethically.