Poster (whose post should not be lost to time):
I do not have "justice" as a separate goal from pleasure. It is just one of many behaviors that bring me pleasure.
What I know from developmental pediatrics is that the sense of justice is not learned-- it is innate. The sense of empathy-- innate. The specific ways your culture will develop practices to express justice and empathy can vary a lot, but the basic sensation of pleasure in justice and empathetic actions, and pain at injustice and nonempathetic actions-- these are not taught.
Further, either you have empathy or you don't-- on a spectrum, yes, but we know of no way to make a biologically low empathy person care about others. We can modify their behavior to a degree, but we can't cause them to have feelings their brains don't produce.
So that brings me to the conclusion that it is always an error to wonder if a typically empathetic person will be cruel if advised to seek pleasure. The answer is no, because that would cause the typical person pain.
I think people ask this question for two reasons-- first, a worry that they themselves will become a type of person they don't like. No, of course not, because that would be pain. Nothing needs to be added to the philosophy to rescue you from that pain-- you'll naturally avoid it. No god or absolute moral is needed. This is good not because it keeps you from being unjust but because you won't have to worry about that particular pain. I hope that relieves you of any anxiety over that question.
Second, people worry that non-empathetic others will become criminals, since they would be advised to seek pleasure and they are NOT typical-- they don't biologically care about justice for others. So we would be in danger.
The answer to that concern is what Elli quoted above, that laws are to protect typical just humans from the unjust. Since the unjust, low empathy types are already not motivated by caring, being told there's no absolute morality does not take away empathy that wasn't there. It could take away their fear of afterlife punishment, but punishment is generally a minimally effective deterrent anyway. Look at all the religious criminals in jail, whose desire to commit a crime overrode their fear of hell. Part of that is because most current religions allow last minute forgiveness-- very convenient! Lol.
I think we are better off using evidence based deterrents for the non-empathetic, such as Japan's system of restorative justice, which has low recidivism. Which is in line with taking action in favor of our own pleasure in safety. It does not trigger any sense of injustice pain in us to do that, because our innate justice sense is based on a tit for tat strategy.
