Is it immoral to give people the freedom to be immoral? Or is it moral to do so?

Set aside the impossibility of enforcement of laws governing morality. What does the law mean to us? Where is the dividing line between individual choice and morality? If morality is not hurting others (I agree with this) and maximizing happiness overall, then why shouldn't the law, at least in theory, perfectly reflect morality?

Should we force people to help others when there's no danger or significant cost, with so-called "good samaritan laws"?

Should we force people to be organ donors after death? Why isn't this mandatory? Organs don't benefit corpses but can extend the lives of the living!

Should we make lying(beyond "white lies") or adultery(it certainly causes a lot of undeserved damage to others) illegal? Why not?

If, as Lynet suggested, it's better to lift a few people out of extreme misery than to increase the happiness of a million already-happy people, then should we do so? Should we prefer a system that makes the whole nation poorer, or even poor (like Cuba), but leaves no one homeless or hungry? (I am not claiming Lynet was making this point)

Isn't it better to take 2nd and 3rd homes away from some so that others can have A single place to live?

We get more of an increase in happiness by lifting someone from 0 to 3 than we lose from reducing someone from 10 to 8.

These are just questions. I don't claim to know the answers, nor am I making a political statement.

For mcv:

First of: i was going to say the same thing Polly said - if you allow euthanasia in the case of terminal illness that who is to say that a particular person has no chance of recovering? A doctor? Two doctors? A board of doctors?

This is a tricky problem, but not a new one or one unique to legalized euthanasia. Doctors already make judgment calls like this - for example, deciding whether a critically ill patient could benefit from more hospital care or would be better off in a hospice. I think a reasonable solution is letting the patient's primary care doctor make the decision with the consent of a different physician not involved in the case, and possibly a hospital board of ethics as a court of appeal and for oversight.

For tobe38:

What measures would you allow to protect people from themselves? I think this one is a bit tricky. I would definitely want people strongly discouraged from suicide after say, a divorce, and encouraged to see that they do have something to live for. But actually, forcibly preventing themselves from commiting suicide would be very difficult without encroaching on their freedom. I'm not sure how to get around that.

Obviously, a person who decides to kill themself out of the blue and without warning isn't a problem we can solve, but in my understanding, most suicidal people give hints of their decision beforehand. I think that if a person has shown clear evidence of an irrational desire to terminate their own life (that is to say, in the absence of a terminal illness or some similar consideration), then I would not be opposed to forcibly committing them so that they can be watched over and treated. Of course, any person being forcibly committed would have to be given the opportunity to prove to an external overseer, like a judge, that they are not a danger to themselves and should be released.

For BlackSun:

I think universal utilitarianism can be used by collectivists to justify coercion against individuals in the name of the "greater good."

Yes, it can, and there are times when that is the right action to take. For instance, I don't think anyone would argue that the community using coercion to prevent individuals from robbing or assaulting others is the right thing to do, even if some individuals do not support this policy. Likewise, I don't think any libertarian moral philosophy seriously proposes that we should stand by and let the mentally ill commit suicide without any attempt to interfere. Any realistic moral system will include instances of coercion. The question isn't whether to permit coercion or not to permit coercion, it's when we should have coercion and under what circumstances it's appropriate.

For Polly:

What in UU would prevent the authorities, establishment, etc. from implementing clandestine policies designed to cover-up the measures taken for the greater good? In other words, if no one "finds out" about the forced vivisection where's the harm?

As I said, UU requires the morality of an action to be evaluated as if all relevant parties were fully informed and aware of it. (And if any person could be vivisected under such a policy, then the relevant parties include all of society.) You cannot change the moral calculus by concealing that act from someone who is or might be affected by it.

For Kullervo:

Not that this is really relevant, but I think if people are looking for a moral and/or ethical system that's always going to tell them what to do in every circumstance, they're going to be sorely disappointed. I think UU makes a decent attempt...

Actually, I don't agree. I don't think UU is an attempt to tell people what to do in every circumstance, so much as a framework within which competing arguments about the morality of an act can be made. I view it as similar to the scientific method - the scientific method isn't a list of answers to questions about the world, but a set of guidelines for how to think about those questions and how one can go about answering them.

I think this illustrates that even though from an utilitarian perspective the scenarios are identical...

ST, you are incorrect; those scenarios are not identical. They differ in a very important respect: namely, whether the death of the one person is an unintended but unavoidable side effect of saving the other five, or whether the one person is being deliberately killed in order to save the other five. That is a textbook example of the classic doctrine of double effect. It is most certainly a morally relevant difference, and I think it is the very difference that most people intuitively grasp when they say they would divert the train but would not push someone onto the tracks. I doubt that the lack of levers in our ancestral environment is the explanation.

I fail to see how considerations, with bearing on those consequences, that are unavoidable in practice, are less than fully relevant.

Actually, I found Ebon's post above, in addition to his discussion of Rawls's contractarianism to be adequate (for now), though I am anxious to see him expound on the idea as he mentioned.

Since, this is, in essence, an armchair discussion about how to develop a logically coherent philosophy of ethics, I thought that it was eminently relevant. It's one thing to say that an idea won't work in the real world, it's quite another to excuse logical holes by pleading pragmatism. A system ought to work in theory, first, AND in the real world, also.

Another problem is that ethical systems, while put into practice in the real-world, are accepted or rejected in the minds of men. Few people, and especially me, would accept a philosophy that prohibits the arbitrary vivisection of innocent people merely by the accident of circumstances not being favorable to sweep the deed under the rug. It stinks of hypocrisy. No. I want a system that will arm my conscience with the intellectual armaments of solid reasoning regardless of what the world may throw at me in my pursuit of the highest good.

You are, of course, free to disagree - that's what UU is all about! :D

Failure of effective logistics doesn't make for a satisfactory moral answer.

Given that morality is concerned with the consequences of actions taken in the real world, I fail to see how considerations, with bearing on those consequences, that are unavoidable in practice, are less than fully relevant.

In my opinion, the best (and most realistic) source for morality is empathy. It's not perfect, no, but neither (I would maintain) is any moral system. It has the advantage of being generally universal in basic principle (although there are always sociopaths and empathy can be channeled to exclude specific groups, etc., by society, culture, and system), and so based on that fundamental universality, empathy works best when it is extended to the furthest possible sphere, i.e. applied to everyone that you can apply it to.

No, that doesn;t tell you what to do. In fact, if you try to use empathy that way you'll probably be paralyzed with indecision or you'll just wind up with some kind of utilitarianism, and that's not what I'm suggesting. Instead, all I am maintaining is that empathy is a factor that almost all humans use in making decisions, and that decisions will be better made if empathy is considered more often and applied universally. It's a factor that should be considered instead of a kind of an algorithmic flowchart.

In the end, the individual (or group, as the case may be) has to make the decision and I think it is preferable to require the individual/group to adopt responsibility for the choice instead of passing the buck to an abstract system of morals or ethics that can't actually be held accountable.

(1) A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion — an abortion in which a physician delivers an unborn child's body until only the head remains inside the womb, punctures the back of the child's skull with a sharp instrument, and sucks the child's brains out before completing delivery of the dead infant — is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited.

taken from: Wikipedia article

In the USA abortions are legal. This procedure was barred not because we disagree with what it does but because, in Congress's words, it's "gruesome."
What?!? If, as a society, we've already decided that abortion is acceptable, why should a mere method be outlawed all of a sudden? And what about routine abortion methods that dismember the fetus in-utero? It's not "gruesome" if we can't see it? Strange system of ethics!

It takes an unusually lucid mind to overcome the "icky" factor, I guess.

In one dilemma, you are standing by a railroad track when you notice that a trolley, with no one aboard, is heading for a group of five people. They will all be killed if the trolley continues on its current track.

The only thing you can do to prevent these five deaths is to throw a switch that will divert the trolley onto a side track, where it will kill only one person. When asked what you should do in these circumstances, most people say that you should divert the trolley onto the side track, thus saving a net four lives.

In another dilemma, the trolley, as before, is about to kill five people. This time, however, you are not standing near the track, but on a footbridge above the track. You cannot divert the trolley. You consider jumping off the bridge, in front of the trolley, thus sacrificing yourself to save the five people in danger, but you realize that you are far too light to stop the trolley.

Standing next to you, however, is a very large stranger. The only way you can prevent the trolley from killing five people is by pushing this large stranger off the footbridge, in front of the trolley. If you push the stranger off, he will be killed, but you will save the other five. When asked what you should do in these circumstances, most people say that it would be wrong to push the stranger.

The last scenario reiterates the previous (you're still on the bridge, the only way to stop the trolley from killing five people is still the body of the fat guy right next to you. However, this time, you notice that the fat guy just slipped on something, and unless you do something to help him, he will fall on the tracks, stop the trolley and die. The man realizes he's about to fall, and looks at you, asking for help. You could help him, preventing him from falling. Do you save the fat stranger?

I think this illustrates that even though from an utilitarian perspective the scenarios are identical, there is something about indirect actions (pulling a lever vs pushing a person vs letting them fall) that completely affects our feelings of guilt. I think this is strong proof of the evolutionary origin of morality, since in evolutionary times only direct actions would actually harm someone (no levers in the savannah).