[ppfpooghn]

Good observation, most people will choose easy way with deontological ethics than put themselves in pain agonizing over moral dilemmas.

Yeah, I suppose I could go into depth and argue that deontological ethics are more naturally fit to the human condition... I mean, it's easy to argue consequentialist ethics if you are a philosopher who has the luxury of knowing how all of your examples end, but in the real world, we observe patterns and make rules based on them, and then debate those rules. I think that's the proper paradigm to work within.

That’s right; it is only a problem from deontological perspective. Group will always set its survival, therefore morality, above an individual.
Rights mostly cater to group survival and not individuals anyway. Surely, individuals, the citizens have rights in today’s societies. We have rights and we feel important, better self esteem, better citizens,…not sure, can’t put my finger on it yet. Maybe we have only these rights that are not in conflict with group well being.
One thing is for sure, as soon as individual rights threaten the group, there goes your rights, prohibition, suspension of driving license, imprisonment.

I agree mostly... I like to think of rights as a sort of implicit contract that an individual holds with a group, where the individual is guaranteed the ability to perform certain actions without restrictions, and all other individuals are guaranteed that the individual will allow the same for them.

It's an interesting related question: Why do we set up rights systems? For the health of the group primarily? I think that that's mostly true; you can't derive a rights system without observing how humans act within their groups, and how they best function within them. Basically, when humans have the sorts of learned rules and guarantees that a rights system provides them with, they function better than when things are uncertain, and an improvement in the sum of individuals, in most cases, will improve the group as well.

But I don't think that adhering to a rights system is always what is best for the group. Extending those rights to individuals outside a group can be especially counter to group interests, and yet something makes us want to say that it's a good thing to do. This has major ramifications into how we understand what is right and wrong. Can we condemn these things when we are within a group, even if they were helpful to the group?: Torture of members of another group, civilian massacres, slavery. I would hope that we can.

Yep, the genocide, I still wrestle with this… Many times I don’t like the consequences I’m arriving at… I would still have to go with consequentialism in this regard.
Often we have to uncouple ourselves from human emotions to understand forces of nature. They work same way if we like it or not. And yes I know it is not easy, it doesn’t feel right, but it might be the only way to do it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you're saying that because morality and human nature are inseparable (which I agree with), therefore morality is only human nature. I don't see how this follows. Isn't it possible for a better ethical system to have rules that run counter to human nature in some cases?

Don’t take my word for it (even from my personal experience in both economic systems). Millions of people in many countries in Eastern Europe and Asia has spoken, decided and switched the sides.

I'm pretty capitalist so you don't have to convince me personally. My question was more targeted at your consequentialism: how do you decide which system is more ethical? It sounds like you're going by maximization of preference. That runs into obvious problems, like an uninformed populace preferring something that's worse for them in every way just because they don't know better. At least it's more measurable than most consequentialist goals, like maximization of happiness or minimization of suffering...

Sparkey, my all heart goes to you bud. I wish the world was the way you see it, and if I was a god I would create it exactly using deontological ethics.

Yeah me too.

I think, though, that philosophical ethics has something to say about how people should act, rather than just describing them as they do act. So even if people still act badly, it's okay for me to suggest rules that I think would keep them from acting badly, no?

According to GSML both groups will see it as right to kill enemy, both will see it wrong to be killed by enemy. It was always like this, till maybe end of twentieth century when many "citizens of the world" were born. We (me included) want to see it as a wrong thing.
The question is “Why do we like thinking this way”. The answer might be, because we are very socially motivated creatures, we care about well being of all people on earth. We wish all well, and this feels really, really good. Does it bring benefits to human kind, is it right or wrong? We honestly don’t know that, it just feels good and right.
But, when the dust settles few centuries later, only history and evolution of human kind will tell us if our way of thinking and acting was the right one. Our right and wrong is arbitrary and subjective. The truth is more relativistic and consequential like the whole universe.

Hm, this makes me uneasy... I don't want to live in a world in which we've decided that we can't make judgments on the fly. Isn't that what you're saying? That we can only judge actions based on their retrospective consequences? Can we still punish people, and on what grounds? How will anyone know what to do?

I don't disagree, by the way, that morality is relative, and that it's something that we're always working on and improving our understanding of, I just don't think it varies a whole lot based on culture (or time period). Humans tend to have the same needs, because we're all closely related. So, some basic rules are appropriate for huge majorities of human groups. Unfortunately, it's hard for us to conceive of a radically different morality, because we're the only species on the planet that can cooperate within a communicated ethical system in the way that we do. Perhaps, we can imagine a species of psychic computer people for whom nothing but universal consequentialist ethics make sense. Or maybe those computer people see radically different aspects of the future depending on their group, so their ideal ethical systems vary more radically than humans'. But I don't see humans as being like that.

PS. Really appreciated your comments.

I've studied ethics a bit so I found this a really interesting topic. Thanks for starting it.