Podcast - Forrest Landry and Daniel Schmachtenberger on Neurohacker Collective

Forrest Landry and Daniel Schmachtenberger

Morality vs Ethics

• What differentiates morals from ethics?
  • Moral looks like context specific rules (e.g. 10 commandments)
  • Ethics is expressed in general principles, from which morals can be derived (e.g. “Treat others as you’d like to be treated”)
    • Principles are more general and abstract but can be translated into any context
    • Principles can help us devise and update rules as the environment changes

Objective, Existing or Real?

[[ ontology ]]

• Exists: Content/context relationship

• Objective: measurable by more than one person (intersubjective)
  • Basis of the [[ science| scientific method ]]
• Real: Subject object relationship/interaction (capacity to sense)
  • Choice and ethics rely on what’s real more than what’s objective (?)
  • Not necessarily looking at what’s repeatable, but unique situation

Symmetry & Continuity

Symmetry

• Sameness of content, difference of context (water bottle has same amount of water before and after you drive it to a friends’ house… conservation law)
• Scientific laws are formulated around the concept of symmetry, using the = sign
  • Allows to predict the future in some situations
    • Not useful for subjective problems/questions
    • Doesn’t allow us to know what is better

Continuity

• Sameness of content, sameness of context (concept of no abrupt shifts)
  • Useful for subjective perspectives
  • Inner subjective experience has a continuity (I feel the same person as I was yesterday)
    • [[ Neuroscience ]] takes a third person (symmetry) perspective on subjective experience, not a good proxy for the first person perspective

Ethics

• Symmetry concepts dominated the discussion because external phenomena are easier to see
  • Many of our ingrained assumptions are based on symmetry
• Today’s problems require a different approach to deal with them
• [[ Utilitarian ethics ]] is dominating the discussion using the concept of optimization, not accounting that the context is continuously changing (what worked in the past won’t necessarily work)
  • 2 contexts we should take into account: The world, the subjective (previous experiences, choices, values)

• choice-making more as a search problem, than an optimization one

• Symmetry ethics: I deal with you in a way that I’d be willing to be on the other side of the deal
  • Golden rule
  • I slice the pie you choose
  • Talking about a topic, I should say the same thing whether I talk to this person or this other (otherwise it would be a deceit)
• Continuity ethics (concept of time is involved)
  • Giving notice before leaving an apartment
  • Severance after firing an employee
  • Talking through decisions before making it
  • The same person (subjective context is the same) in the same situation (same objective context), should respond (content of expression) in the same way
    • In a slightly different situation I should respond in a similar way and be able to account for the difference

Choice

• Choice as a search function, not an optimization one
  • What is the thing we dream of?
• 3 aspects of choice
  • Potential - There needs to be options to select from
  • Selection - One option is selected
  • Causation - Non-reversible outcome (if choice doesn’t create change in the world it’s as if it didn’t happen)

Choice vs. Decision

• Decision - de-cide - to cut off available options
  • Assume there’s no win-win possible
  • Assumes completeness of information
• Choice is about increasing the field of options available until the right option becomes obvious
  • Assumes we can never have perfect information
  • Assumes win-win choice is always possible (we may not be able to find it, but it exists), which makes it worthwhile to search

Integrity/Aliveness/Meaningfulness

How I connect to the world should build the world’s integrity (aliveness/meaningfulness), my integrity and the relationship between Self and World integrity

• Integrity as full realization of actuality (what we can do) and potentiality (what we could do)
  • (eat the cake and have it too)
  • A choice that has no actuality (no outcome), is indistinguishable from not having made a choice at all
  • A choice that restricts all your future choices (restricts potentiality), a choice that does not further (i.e. evil)
• We want a choice that has consequences, and that begets future choices (for us an others
• Full actuality removes all potentiality and viceversa
  • Empty garden is full potentiality and no actuality
  • We want to make actuality and potentiality work together in balance
    • Committing to a choice but being open and flexible to changing it
    • Being, Doing, Becoming model for Personal Development (Meaningful Life)

• Sacrifice self for other, other for self, future for now or now for future, are all theories of trade-offs that don’t equal the best consideration

• A good choice is one that you can clearly think and feel through in a positive way

Love

[[ Love ]] is that that enables choice

• Not making choices for the people we love, but enabling them
• If we love our children we want them to be wise and able to make choices on their own
• Love is irrational
  • If you tell someone “I love you because…”, they will be afraid that if they stop that you’ll stop loving them

Clarity & Desire

• If I want to be in right relationship with other people I need to be in right relationship with myself (among my parts)
  • Develop continuity of self
  • Developing clarity
• Buddhist idea that “desire is the cause of suffering”, may be mostly referring to desires that are not fully clarified.
  • Clarity in desire
    • form desire vs feeling desire

Meaningfulness

• Notion of Meaningfulness contingent on a first person perspective
  • Not about “this is only meaningful if they’ll remember it after 100 years”
  • About “Am I appreciating and honoring the gift of life?” (Meaningness)

Created on: 2021-10-31 Source link:https://neurohacker.com/what-is-ethics-an-exploration-of-choice-and-love