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I don't know about that. Maybe people who truely believe morality is divine will never give up on their moral values, even if it means enduring (moderate) hardship to save others from worse hardship. I don't think it makes sense to believe that, but some people probably will. Because by...

One thing you could conclude is that moral values are created by applying the same method we apply when taking any decision: comparing positive and negative consequences. If the negative consequences disappear, so will the corresponding moral values. Every sane person will give up their moral...

To come to certain conclusions, among them a few which you just mentioned.

Yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

Yep, everyone weighs the determining factors differently.

Excellent post. :tup:

To me it makes sense. For this particular man, the emotional fulfillment he gets from saving those children (or the downside of the emotional suffering he goes through if he didn't try to save them) overcompensates the downside of the risk he's taking. A man who would be defined as 'more of a...

No, it's a general discription that explains the motives behind everything we choose to do. It all comes to the same principle, even with morality. But with a lot of things that are morally wrong, the downsides are so subtle that a lot of people don't grasp them (or at least not consciously)...

That's a looong video you got there, Martin. :D I don't know what it's all about, but I probably have a whole other point of view. This is the way I see it: The risk of something bad happening to you always plays a part if it's there. But sometimes that risk is outweighed by the reward of...

You could be right about everyone having a sadistic personality burried deep inside. But that's not even the point. Sane people don't act like psychopathic sadists because they'd experience too many downsides in a lot of ways. Obvious punishments are of course legal persecution and social...

Exactly. And I believe that almost every sane person (if not every, but it's of course kind of hard to define sane) would give up his beliefs/faith for a certain price. The only way to never give up your beliefs, is when you believe that you will always get punished more severely in your...

But I'm convinced that every person working in Abu Graid who tortured and humiliated the prisoners derived pleasure from it. Emotional fulfillment is one of the biggest advantages man can have. And there were obviously no disadvantages here, since they thought they could never be caught or...

Yes, this pretty much says it all. I think morality comes down to weighing the potential advantages over the potential disadvantages. Everything has it's price.

The funny thing is I took the idea from another forum where they discussed the same question, but I reformulated the hypothesis to make it way more clear and to make the downsides of doing the 'morally right' thing look even worse. Still the concept was grasped way better on the other forum. It...

No, but I find it extremely annoying that basically every time a topic is discussed in this subforum the majority of people who post in the thread feel the urge to derail the thread by cracking jokes, make mocking or insulting comments or start talking about something completely else. Why post...

Yeah, kind of like asking a retard to raise his left hand.

Stop it Aaron, you might confuse a lot of people.

I know, I thought this hypothesis was extreme enough but I guess not (though if it would happen for real I'm sure it would be). I should have written something like having your legs amputated. :P At least you know where I'm going at. Thanks for your useful insights, very relevant indeed. I...

There are no negative consequences whatsoever.