Should ethics apply to other conscious animals?

Then you shouldn't be making arguments that are, in effect, based on morality.

djbt, Mass murderers think their experience is also important.

Everybody's experience is "important," but not in the way you seem to believe.

"Other conscious animals" cannot impact the whole world by their actions, whereas man can.

By that simple conclusion, individual actions of humans are very different than "other conscious animals" when talking about "ethics."

Perhaps I should say; I am unclear what you mean by 'morality' or 'moral importance', since you use those words as if you know, while, to my mind, there is little consensus on the issue.

Regarding step 5, since I do try to act in this way, and I don't have to act in this way, it follows that I think I should. For the sake of argument, I'll put humility aside, and say I think you should too.

I didn't say I don't know what I mean when I use the word (if I were to use it as part of an argument, I would define it in the context I was using it). I said I don't know what you mean by 'morality' and 'moral importance'. If you could define these terms, I will be able to either take issue with your definition, explain why my position satisfies your definitions, or concede that your definition is the cruz of morality, and my position has no moral grounding.

Otherwise I could just take the definition of 'moral importance' as being 'relating to the experience of conscious being'...

To try to take the discussion forward:

Is your experience not important to you? I someone were to torture you, would you not that think it were important that your experience of pain ceased? And if something makes you happy, do you not think it important that you continue to experience this happiness?

What is the difference between 'importance' and 'moral importance'? Can anything that is not 'morally important' be 'important'?

You should act this way, because if you do, it is likely that everyone's experience will be more positive and less negative. For the same reason, everyone else should, and you should hope that everyone else will.

It seems to me that the three least arbitrary positions one can take with regard to this are:

(1) No-one's experience is morally important. Nothing is morally important.

(2) My experience is morally important.

(3) The experience of everything that can experience is morally important.

Again, though, I think we will move forward faster if you would define your terms.

If your position, in essence, is "I don't know what you mean until you define your terms," then you couldn't hold even a simple conversation with someone.

Obviously, the word "morality" has a well-established meaning, even if the concept of "morality" is open to debate. When I use the word "morality" I use it in its popular, well-established sense: a system of the principles regarding right and wrong conduct.

If having lots of money is important to me, does that necessarily mean that having money is right or good? You've claimed that having experiences is important; I don't disagree.

Just because I like to have lots of money doesn't mean that having money and obtaining more money is somehow the right thing to do. After all, a racist would claim that it is important to discriminate against minorities. Does that make discrimination the right thing to do?

Then you're a utilitarian?

Personal experience is important, but not of primary importance.

Should and hope are unreliable as they pertain to morals.

Quote, "Are you saying that morality in general is unreliable?" Where in my posts did I ever even suggest such a thing. It's all in your head.

In society, what the individual experiences is subservient to the whole.

In the larger context, even the moral imperatives of your group is not important to other groups, and they will follow what they think are "moral" and right. That's the reason why we still have the death penalty in the states, and not in most other developed countries.

OK, we'll go with that. But can I remove the 'the'? Or do we already know what the priciples of right and wrong conduct are?

Assuming I can remove the 'the', if I say that it is 'right' for a person to take the experience of others into consideration, and 'wrong' not to, I think you would agree that my position is a moral one, is that right?

Can I take as your definition of 'moral importance':
(1) Affecting morality, that is, having an affect on a system of principles regarding right and wrong conduct
or
(2) something that morality applies to, that is, a thing that a system of principles regarding right and wrong conduct would have something to say about.

I'll assume the later, please correct me if this is wrong.

And I can't say by what standard we can judge the value of one 'morality' over another, unless we think there is a 'universal morality' against which moralities are judged.

We can, of course, look at the assumptions that underpin a morality, or the steps taken from these assumptions, for inconsistencies, or too great leaps. I favour the system I outlined, because it seems to me that the assumptions and steps are reasonable.

Certainly my position is consequentialist. It is quite possibly utilitarian. However, I say this wearily, because their are of course numerous forms of utilitarianism, and many bad arguments for it as well as good ones. I don't want to be faced with a straw man argument!

To sum:

My position is a system of the principles regarding right and wrong conduct, a 'morality'.
Experience, in my morality, is morally important, because it is integral to how the morality differentiates between right and wrong. In fact, experience is not just the only thing that is morally important in this system. It is the only thing that is important at all! Everything else is important only insomuch as it affects experience.

Thoughts?

Are you suggesting that you are a moral relativist?

I'm just trying to figure out what your position is. If it is similar to something that has a traditional label (such as utilitarianism), so much the better.

Would you say, then, that we owe no duties to something that is incapable of having experience?

dj, Would you say your personal experience is more important than your family's, your church's, your community's, your state's, or our federal government?

If everybody thought like you did, we would have chaos.