Can morality be absolute?
Given the recent societal disagreements about a number of morale issues, I have spent some time recently thinking about whether morality can be absolute. On a given subject, is one particular moral view objectively right and the others are wrong, regardless of what people believe? Or are people's beliefs and views central in the creation of morality itself, and thus morality is subjectively dependant on those beliefs and views.
I know this is a question that must have been discussed many times by philosophers, and my question is not particularly new. Coming from a science background, I have only recently started thinking more deeply about philosophy.
My current (perhaps unenlightened) view is that morality is the societal aggregate of subjective values, and hence is societally relative. I think this might also be called cultural relativism by some philosophers.
Any views on this topic, or about my position?
I know this is a question that must have been discussed many times by philosophers, and my question is not particularly new. Coming from a science background, I have only recently started thinking more deeply about philosophy.
My current (perhaps unenlightened) view is that morality is the societal aggregate of subjective values, and hence is societally relative. I think this might also be called cultural relativism by some philosophers.
Any views on this topic, or about my position?
Comments (360)
For example, killing a baby is usually wrong. But if a group is hiding out underneath the floorboards of a house where troops, who will kill them all on sight, are marching about, muffling a baby's cries to save everyone is the moral choice if there are no alternatives.
People have an intuition that there is underlying morality between all the relative situations, but the problem is no one has produced anything substantial that withstands logical examination. It is one of the unsolved mysteries of philosophy as of yet, so feel free to propose and think on any possibilities you wish.
The term 'cultural relativism' is bound to get you entangled in arguments that go beyond what you may have intended. As it is usually understood it means that the norms and values of a culture should not be evaluated in terms of the norms and values of another.
A more reasonable form of relativism is opposed to moral absolutes and/or moral objectivism. One problem is that those who posit an objective morality cannot explain how their version of objective moral evaluation can be established and known. Or, in other words, why we should regard their norms and values as transcending time and place.
Some will admit that they too are culturally bound but that they are moving toward an absolute. The same problem arises. While, to their credit, they acknowledge change, the claim that it is toward an absolute is without basis.
My understanding of morality splits the difference between subjective and objective views. As I see it, morality at its most basic is a reflection of human nature. We are social animals. We like each other and like to hang around with each other. We have empathy. Add on top of that the needs of running societies ranging from just a few people to millions and you get a complex mix of biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural.
I've linked to this video several times here on the forum. I think it's fascinating and tells us something profound about human morality. 13 minutes.
Don't think of wright and wrong. Think of how harmful it is. If one's moral view creates harm than good, then it is immoral. On a lesser intensity, it is offensive.
People who start a moral argument using "right" or "wrong" set the argument up so that it is intentionally contentious and designed to get a rouse out of you, without meaning to come to an understanding.
The main problem in this, is man's impotence to realize ("keep up with") the constant flexibility of objective morality. The reasons for this are so many that would need a whole another topic.
People (most of them) have understood that there is no fixed objective morality and they use this argument to jump to the opposite: moral relativism.
Man realizing the lack of inner power, understanding, self-knowledge in themselves they succumb to their weakness and use relativism to their own convenience.
Generally only theists and idealists believe that morality is absolute - because for them god/s or the Logos are foundational sources of all that is good and true. The problem with this idea is that we have no good evidence that there are god/s or that idealism is true. And even if they are, how do we know which moral beliefs are right? It will always be someone's personal preferences regarding idealism, or what they think a particular god regards as moral.
For most of the rest of us, there is no foundational anchor for morality. Morality is simply the term we use to describe codes of conduct we have created to support cooperation and our preferred social order. Further to this, we have empathy and we are a social species, so it follows that nurturing, collaboration and playing nice are rewarded in a multiplicity of ways and are therefore widespread across cultures.
To address your issue of relativism, it is possible to build an objective moral system subject to a particular standard. Many secular humanists today base moral decisions on using the standard of human flourishing as a starting point. Any behaviours assessed as detrimental to human flourishing are viewed as morally wrong. Why flourishing? Why not? Most humans would agree that happiness is preferable to sadness, health is preferable to sickness, life is preferable to death - it's not hard to see how flourishing might be a good start, but it's not perfect. Nothing is.
So what you really ask, and correct me if I am wrong, is whether we can make Objective moral judgments.....because the title of the thread is a bit vague.
If that is indeed what you ask, the answer is yes. Objective judgments can be achieved if we agree on what morality is and what it servers in human society.
Absolute morality in a theistic frameworks refers to absolute moral declarations.( killing is bad, stealing is bad etc).
If you refer to that type of morality then we agree that only those who don't have a good understanding of reality believe in absolute moral declarations. As a Methodological Naturalist I believe that any systematic approach that takes in to account the goal of morality in human societies and every situation as a distinctive case is capable to arrive to Objective Moral judgements (Situationalism).
Take the Ten Commandments: they seem to demonstrate absolute morality, and some are more absolute than others (in practice). The prohibition of killing people is honored in the breach by the most and least devout together. Or, the Seven Deadly Sins -- Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Gluttony, Avarice And Lust. The 7 deadly sins have 7 heavenly virtues: faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, temperance and prudence. These lists are distillations, not de novo rules handed down from Mt. Sinai, the story in Exodus not withstanding.
Absolute rules or lists of sins and virtues are touchstones. We 'touch base with them', we may attempt to observe the 'spirit' if not the 'letter' of The Law.
People living together develop a default morality, based on millions of interactions. When in doubt, we might look to whatever 'touchstone' we like to measure how off-base something was, is, or would be. And we consider the consequences. We might wish that some obstacle to our happiness was dead, but the price of getting rid of them is usually too high--but obviously not always.
We tend to be neither as bad as we could be, nor as good. We tend to seek workable compromises.
This doesn't really help. One person's harm is another's good.
Hey, PR. Howze about you respond to some of the responses to your post.
It does because there are fundamental reality for all humans. One, humans would not want their families massacred. That's reality. So, we can all agree that it's immoral to annihilate one's family members. There's self-preservation -- that's built-in in us. That's also true about animals, btw. They do protect their offspring from predators and attacks. I mean, I could go on. We just need to be honest about reality.
Now, killing. Is it always immoral to kill? No. There are cases when killing is justified.
And let's not use religion here since different religions have different views of killing. Some religion requires killing a family member for infidelity or whatnot. So, I want to exclude religion in morality. Just really, what's fundamentals in being human. All too human.
Rape is wrong and we agree it is wrong.
Drop the "because".
Now, is rape wrong? Do you agree? If so, we can get on with other things. If not, then... well, there are all sorts of possibilities.
Sorry, but this is a blatant disregard for humans' fundamental reality. I just said. There are fundamental things that we hold dear to us. Disgust with rape is not taught. The body knows without being told. So, yes, rape is immoral.
If rape is wrong even if we disagree that it's wrong, then you're arguing moral absolutism, in which case we agree. I think we don't though, but you may clarify
Your bold "you" misses the point, unless you suggest I, Hanover, have the godly power of decreeing right from wrong. I'd replace it with "anyone", and the answer is yes. If we let our prisoners vote, assuming voting is how we sort the good from the bad, in the district that encompasses the worst prison, rape is good.
Really? So, what is moral absolutism? That might be a good place to start.
Quoting Hanover
Well, who else will you trust? Who better?
And so those who aren't disgusted by rape, do we declare them evil? And they declare themselves not evil. So who's right?
Don't miss my point here: I agree the rapist is wrong, but I deny its wrongness is simply social convention or a genetically dominant trait. I suggest it's more than that
So we don't disagree. I thought you meant it's just a social convention.
Wiki knows all:
"Moral absolutism is an ethical view that all actions are intrinsically right or wrong. Stealing, for instance, might be considered to be always immoral, even if done for the well-being of others (e.g., stealing food to feed a starving family), and even if it does in the end promote such a good. Moral absolutism stands in contrast to other categories of normative ethical theories such as consequentialism, which holds that the morality (in the wide sense) of an act depends on the consequences or the context of the act."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_absolutism
Quoting Banno
And what am I trusting? If Joe says "Bob stole the money," am I evaluating Joe's character, Joe's motives, Joe's veracity, Joe's ability to have correctly seen the crime, Joe's intellect in assessing the many facts that have led him to that conclusion, or Joe's temperament in being able to rationally decide?
My point being that there are all sorts of things that I rely upon when evaluating other's contributions to my conclusions. If your suggestion is that I will look to my reasons to determine if rape is wrong and compare them to other people's, then you are offering, at least in theory, an objective, universal basis for right and wrong and describing my search for truth. That is, I'm not satisfied with just declaring my ability to self declare right and wrong. How I trust my reasons versus another's will be subject to all sorts of considerations (as in the Joe example), but I don't give myself absolute trust.
Not knowing what is morally demanded of us is something that causes most moral creatures occasional distress, and we do resort to others and our own reflections to try to figure it out, meaning we must be accepting there is some objective standard for what that moral reality is.
Moral statements are not preferences. So, for example I prefer a bit of pickle on my cheese sandwich. But I'm not going to insist that you should also prefer a bit of pickle on your cheese sandwich. moral statements are quite different to this. If whether one should have pickle on one's sandwiches was a moral issue, then we would say something like that "you ought to have pickles on your sandwich". So where a preference only applies to me, a moral statement is taken to apply to everybody, or at least those in the pertinent circumstances.
So moral statements are not mere preferences, because of preferences taken only apply only to apply to me, where as a moral statement is taken to apply to everybody.
I suppose one could think of this as meaning they are "absolute".
The Ethics Centre offers this:
Quoting 3 APR 2018
It goes on to explain how moral absolutism is a bit silly, and tell the funny story about Kant thinking it wrong to lie to save someone from being murdered.
In thinking about this, if draw a further distinction. Consider "one ought not steal" versus "one ought eat one's vegetables." The first, I'd submit is not a conditional. You ought not steal period. If you must add a conditional, it would be simply to reassert it's meaning: "You ought not steal if you are to be a moral person." Consider the second though, it's not a moral directive, but an implied conditional. That is: "You ought eat your vegetables if you want to be healthy and strong like your father."
It's the lack of conditional as well that elevates it to the ethical.
We can speak of absolutism in the generic or debate the nuances of the categorical imperative. I do think Kant's efforts are more successful than the consequentialist's, but I've posited him as the holder of all answers.
Focusing on the Ethics Center's definition, I don't understand what it means by "regardless of context " Even in a starkly absolutist system like divine command theory, killing is permissible sometimes. That sometimes is contextual
A better interpretation of Kant (and of absolutism generally) would be to say "regardless of consequence." That would mean whether you should lie to the murderer at the door to save a life is possibly answerable in the affirmative if you have a moral absolute that innocent life ought be preserved whenever possible.
The distinction being in prioritizing moral directives versus evaluating for preferential consequences.
Keep in mind here that this turn of the debate from your reference to Kant moved it from a debate of absolutism versus relativism to one of deontology versus consequentialism. How the 2 interplay is something I'd have to think more on.
I'd tend to agree that Utlitarianism is relativistic in terms of it evaluating a population's present pleasure/happiness, but the principle itself dictating such an evaluation must occur appears absolute, suggesting it is not acceptable to reject a properly computed Utilitarian result ever.
How Mill sustains his view that liberty is an absolute good, despite his Utilitarianism is problematic as well, but that's a Mill problem, as above was just a Kant problem.
There's a lot more to be said here, concerning the social intentionality behind property and theft. There's a reason stealing looks absolute. Theft requires the recognition of property. part and parcel of that recognition is that someone else's property is theirs to dispose of as they see fit, and not for you to do with as you will. Theft breaks that social function. It's more like breaking a promise, or moving the rook diagonally, than not eating your vegetables.
THe salient part for our purposes here is the extraordinary complexity of moral issues.
The notion of "subjective values" deserves some attention. The word "subjective" went through an almost complete reversal of meaning over the last century. it now is often taken as a synonym for
"personal" or "private".
To see the issue, consider what values there are that are not subjective.
There's a pretty unanimous opinion that rape is not a good thing; so is the view that rape is bad subjective?
Then consider dropping the word from the sentence: did you mean that "morality is just a social aggregation of personal values"? Or simply "morality is just a social aggregation of values"?
And if it is, then are protesters and other dissenters - those who glue themselves to walls in order to draw attention to climate change, or give comfort to persecuted minorities - acting immorally because they go against the "social aggregation of values"? Doesn't history speak to the aggregated values of some societies bing immoral? But how could that be, if mortality were that aggregation?
SO there semes to be more going on here, don't you think?
Well, morality is certainly concerned with interactions between people. Actions that do not invovle others are neither moral nor immoral.
But why bother to include the word "existential"?
Hmm. Couldn't human nature be immoral? There's plenty of examples of moral thinking that exhaults one to transcend or go beyond one's human nature.
Isn't this an example of the naturalistic fallacy? We can subject it to the open question: is it good to follow one's nature?
How is "This moral view is objectively right" different to "this moral view is right"? What does "objectively" add? If it is right, it's right, objectively or subjectively or what you will.
I identify human nature as one, and probably the most important, of the sources of morality. As I noted, we are social. We like each other. We have empathy. We need to be able to live together. So I guess the answer is human nature can't be immoral. If it were, we wouldn't have survived as a species.
Quoting Banno
From Wikipedia - "In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the mistake of explaining something as being good reductively, in terms of natural properties such as pleasant or desirable."
This applies to standards of morality. I've had nothing to say about that. My assertion applies to the source of morality. The question in the OP was "Can morality be absolute?" As I noted, since morality is based on fundamental human nature, in a sense it is absolute.
But you think that morality derives from human nature. SO you do not think that we ougth in some way seek to overcome our nature?
I've been as clear as I can be. This was the question I was responding to:
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
I don't see how your question is relevant.
Quoting T Clark
That's sad.
Quoting T Clark
the video says:
Yes, that does say something profound about human morality.
I think that's because under Scotty from Marketing, morality has been suspended in Oz.
It isn't and this is why I quoted the clarification he provided in the OP. My question was if he is arguing about object moral judgements(Situational morality) or absolute morality(an act is moral or immoral independent from the situation).
The title and his post are a bit in conflict.
I think it adds Ayn Rand.
Hey Nick - I was responding to the first part of this and was perhaps a little loose in the OP quote I used.
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
This is like a William Lane Craig rhetorical flourish, huh?
I think societies have 'agreed' it is wrong because in most cultures it is held that actions which harm human wellbeing are wrong. Is rape right in the worldview of, say, Islamic State? I think it may well be, particularly if it is held that women are property and do not really hold full citizenship.
As a moral realist, you hold that an action is right or wrong outside of human experience and whatever decision making processes we employ. Morality must in some sense be transcendental. I don't think we have any evidence that this is the case, nor can I see how in practice we can determine how this might be the case. How would you demonstrate, for instance, that rape is wrong based on moral realism?
As for objectivity, its range is restricted to what can be objectively validated. The dilemma for modern culture is that there are many ethical questions which cannot be so validated, hence are not objective, but that there are no shared criteria other than objectivity against which to make judgements. This is the crux of Hume's is/ought problem - that what is measurable is not the same as what is necessarily preferable.
Exactly, and I would imagine that in your case (and this is not a criticism) you would locate the source of transcendental values in idealism?
How so? Religious doctrine is written by people, no? Enlightened, divinely inspired, directly in touch with god...if you like, yeah. But still people.
So religious doctrine with regard to morality is to act as a past record of what people had found out about it.
Now. Why do we need a past record of what people had found out about it? Why not a current one? There are more people alive now than have ever been, so more people now should be directly in touch with god than have ever been.
Keeping a past record seems little more than archiving. If we want to know what's moral according to divine rule we'd be statistically better off consulting the current crop of religious cults than the written record of the previous crop.
Morality is the abstract concept that describes specific behavior capable to promote the well being of Society and its individual members
Specific metrics in behavior(altruism, truthfulness, respectful etc) is how we know that well being is reinforced among members of a society.
So if specific behavior undermines well being or the prospect of it then we can objectively make a judgment for its immoral nature.
-first of we can not prove that the universe was designed. Teleology in nature needs to be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt , not assumed.
Morality is the evaluation of human behavior not an intrinsic feature in the Universe. We as observers evaluate specific behavior as moral or immoral depending on the impact it has on the well being of the members of our society.
There is no need to introduce absolute concepts (truth, morality) in the discussion. Objective moral judgements can be produced by verifying specific metrics promoting our well being.
Quoting Wayfarer
-I am not sure that the term "true good" or absolute moral judgments are useful in our quest for morality.
We understand that moral absolutes don't exist.
1.The act of killing is not immoral under all situations.
i.e killing a murdered who is ready to kill your family is objectively a moral act.
2. The act of killing is not an absolute immoral act.
i.e. by stilling the bomb from a terrorist before he manages to detonate it is an objective moral act.
3. Having sex is not an absolute immoral act.
i.e. having sex with your wife is has not moral value...having sex with a woman without her consent that is an immoral act.
So the above examples prove that absolute moral declarations are factually wrong statements and Situational ethics is the best way we have to make objective moral evaluations for every act.
By independently evaluating each act and realizing if it is in favor or against the well being of members and their society we can arrive to objective conclusions about the moral value of an act.
Over what timescale?
Ok, ok! I'd like to ask two questions, my attempt to cut through the noise and get to the meat and potatoes of morality?
To minimize/eliminate possible sources of confusion, I'll use emojis.
Are :sad: :cry: good/bad?
Are :smile: :lol: :rofl: good/bad?
That's the secular take on it. But the religious believe in the principle of revealed truth, which by definition is the revelation of a true good. I'm not saying you or anyone should accept that, but it's worth noting the difficulties involved in its absence.
And anyway, consider traditional philosophy, as distinct from religious revelation. According to Pierre Hadot, in ancient philosophy 'The Sage was the living embodiment of wisdom, “the highest activity human beings can engage in . . . which is linked intimately to the excellence and virtue of the soul”. So in that view, the sage is able to discern 'the good' which the uneducated and untrained do not. In that understanding, humans don't possess an innate ability to discern the good, at least not without training in philosophy, which is concerned with discerning the good, and the curriculum of philosophy is in learning that skill.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I don't think they constitute any kind of proof, and actually I didn't use the term 'absolute'. What I'm asking is, what could be the grounds for certain acts or attitudes to be considered good independently of your or my or society's evaluation of them as good - a 'true good' if you like.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
which is basically an appeal to utilitarian ethics. Not that utilitarian ethics are necessarily bad.
I included that (plus divine revelation) when I said...
Quoting Isaac
...
The point is there are more people alive now than have ever been. So if some small portion of humanity are open to enlightenment or divine revelation, then what those people are saying about morality right now is a better guide than what a far smaller group said about it in the past.
In other words, why are you privileging ancient people's access to god (which they then wrote down) over modern people's access to god.
If some course of action causes harm in the short term but greater good in the long term is is moral or not?
-"I don't think they constitute any kind of proof, and actually I didn't use the term 'absolute'. What I'm asking is, what could be the grounds for certain acts or attitudes to be considered good independently of your or my or society's evaluation of them as good - a 'true good' if you like"
-if you don't imply anything absolute so you should use the qualifier "true" for good.
As I already pointed out if we all agree that morality is an evaluation of which acts promote the well being of individual members and their society as a whole then of course this standard allow us to arrive to objective moral judgments.
I believe morality applies to existence itself, not just human beings. Our own human morality comes from this.
Joking aside, In situational ethics it depends on ....the situation, I guess.
Your question could be a really good challenge..if only we can test it on a good example.
Do you think Chernobyl could be a good example?
The scenario is this. Young Ukranians lost their lives during their efforts to clean the area and contain the radio active core. Most of them were volunteers but they were not informed for the danger.
Let me know if you have a better example we can use.
:brow:
I don't know the circumstances well enough. Perhaps something more simple. Denying a child sweets. Clearly causes measurable harm in the short term (crying, loss of pleasure), but the aim is greater good in the long term (health, and perhaps learning forbearance).
All my favorite philosophers are dead. Their accounts of the source of morality are more satisfying to me than those put forth by living writers. I would think Wayfarer could make a similar argument.
An argument for preference, yes. The claim I took issue with was about the difficulties of not using religious doctrine.
That would be a bit like me claiming it was generally difficult to see how society could live without Talisker because it's my favourite whiskey. I would find it hard, but I've no difficulty understanding how society at large wouldn't.
There's thousands of cultists, gurus, prophets and Messiahs right now. You (or @Wayfarer) may not personally like what any of them have to say, but that doesn't make it hard to see how morality from divine revelation could work without religious doctrine. On the contrary, it's easy to see how, we just need to ask one of thousands of cultists, gurus, prophets and Messiahs we have with us right now what's morally right and what's immoral.
The Denial of a Pleasurable moment or activity is not always a moral or immoral act. So a kid crying or becoming sad is not an absolute metric.
i.e. denying a kid to play with matches or a wall socket or near a busy street may frustrate it but it is totally moral and justified.
What makes the denial of a Pleasurable moment moral or immoral depends on the situation.
Did that kid had any other sweets that day/week etc? Did we promise it as a reward for something, are other kids allowed to have some but that kid is not? etc.
So denying a child sweets can easily be immoral based on the specific situation.
I can give you a point here on the idea of timescale...since "situation" includes facts in different points in time that we need to include in our our evaluations.
Now Inflicting Harm is also not an absolute metric for morality/immorality or against the well being in general.
i.e. If I kill a murderer right before he manages to kill my wife....I did harm a person but can we say I did an immoral act. No, because an act that is in favor of the well being of our society and its members is moral by definition.
You will point out that the murderer was also a member of this society and that is true. But he is also an agent that undermines the well being of every other member and we need to address and solve the problem.
One thing I'm very curious about with respect to objective morality, is game theory. The logic/ science behind decision making is liable to have some underlying say as to which sets of moral principles are most prudent. Some existing moral systems will adhere to this better than others, but none perfectly in my current estimation.
(I also really like Nietzsche as a moral philosopher).
Right. So for any moral choice, one might say (using your 'metrics'). "Look, see how much harm action X is doing, it's surely immoral".
But someone else might say, using the exact same metrics, " Ah, you just wait another 20 years, you'll find that society as a whole has benefitted from allowing/encouraging action X more than enough to make up for the temporary harm it did"
Then someone else might say, using the exact same metrics, " Ah, you just wait another 200 years, you'll find that society as a whole has been harmed by allowing/encouraging action X more than that temporary benefit the first 20 years allowed us"
...and so on.
Rendering your 'metrics' utterly useless as means by which we can make morality objective.
If anyone is interested, there are other versions on the web which might be accessible there in Timbuktu.
The relevant chapter of the Handbook of moral development is also available online here
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/f/1145/files/2017/10/Wynn-Bloom-Moral-Handbook-Chapter-2013-14pwpor.pdf
[i]...You get up and wash
And come to breakfast served by a woman who smiles
As if you're first on her short list of wonders,
And you greet her as if she's first on yours.
Then you're off to school to fulfill your promise
To lose yourself for once in your teaching
And forget the clock facing your desk. Time to behave
As if the sun's standing still in a painted sky
And the day isn't a page in a one-page notebook
To be filled by sundown or never filled,
First the lines and then the margins,
The words jammed in till no white shows.[/i]
Here's a link to the entire poem if you're interested.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=39050
Which brings to mind another poem - "The Black Cottage" by Robert Frost, which I've quoted here previously many times:
[i]For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.[/i]
Again, a link to the whole poem.
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-black-cottage/
The formulation of the categorical imperative I like more is - "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end." He claims that the three formulations are equivalent, but they don't seem that way to me. This seems similar to the Golden Rule. I wouldn't mind if that were absolute. I'm willing to "will that it should become a universal law."
Thank you.
The same way a theist demonstrates the existence of his diety. He doesn't. Such is a foundational faith statement, from which all sorts of conclusions derive.
I'd submit without that faith foundation, nihilism and amoralism results.
You've got to have faith in something I suppose.
Certainly not an uncommon assertion. Would you class secular humanism as foundational?
- I am not here to promote my moral framework as flawless or absolutely true. I do appreciate your reasonable doubts and questions and I am far from sure that my morale framework includes all possible scenarios.
The fact is that in my conversations and my personal pondering on the topic I have never found an example where our objective evaluation can be suspended.
This is why I challenge my position by asking examples from you. Maybe you will be able to find an exception to the rule...and if I find some more then the rule stops being a rule after all.
Now let me address your reasonable scenario.
First of all lets assume that future societies do manage to find out that a currently "immoral" practice X does promote the well being of individual members and society's as a whole in the near or far future.
(like the example you gave with the sweets).
Such a "discovery" would be a problem for Absolute Morality, not Situational(objective) Morality....and let me explain.
The specific moral judgement that identified that practice "immoral" was the product of current available facts ,current limited knowledge, interpreted and evaluated by the principle of Well being.
So our conclusion was based on Objective Knowledge(shared and accessible by everyone) at our time.
New evidence forced a new objective evaluation that lead to a new conclusion. That doesn't mean that our judgement was not a product of an objective evaluation..right?
i.e. its like the geocentric vs the heliocentric model in science. Objective facts at that time forced people to accept geocentricism while future evidence pointed to a new objectively correct framework. Both models were and are based on Objective observations of their periods respectfully.
Now I can accept the possibility of your scenario but we need to agree that no immoral behavior against a specific population or members of a society can be justified as moral just because other larger populations (in future or contemporary) are benefited by it.
Slavery can be used as an example for this argument. Slavery was one of the main practices that enabled the accumulation of huge capitals thus allowed the transition of National economies from Mercantilistic to Capitalistic principles.
Even if we assumed that capitalism is a successful economical system, we can never justify the practice of slavery as moral.
So I am not sure that my metrics or the principles behind Secular Morality and Situationalism can be demonstrated wrong based on future evidence. The judgement always remains Objective!
Rocks are neither good nor bad. Morality is about what we should do around others. Hence, your view is wrong.
Which leads us to telling the Nazi's where the Jews are hiding if we know. God forbid we should ever usher in lying.
I have not fully written out the morality I'm speaking of. It is a little more than "rocks make bad choices" :) I will likely write up a forum post on it once Bob Ross and I are done discussing knowledge. I only have time and energy right now for one serious topic, and currently, that's it. When I finally write it up, I look forward to your critiques.
So an unconditional good is something you would find, something you would come across out in the world.
But that is not how moral statements work. They do not say how things are, but how things ought to be. Their direction of fit is the reverse of what you propose.
That's the problem, raised in our previous conversation, with suggesting that a religious doctrine is central: you must then choose a doctrine; the choice remains yours, not god's.
All the religious approach does is move the decision from "what ought I do now?" to "which creed should I follow?". The fact of moral choice remains yours.
The naturalistic fallacy again.
Why ought we promote the wellbeing of society?
There are moral systems that say the opposite; that what is right is the sovereignty of the individual, even at the expense of the greater good of society.
The point here is not to make a choice between these competing systems, but to realise that the good is not reducible to something else, it is neither the wellbeing of society not individual autonomy.
Despite that,
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
yes, ethics is far too complicated to have an algorithmic solution. Hence, the only viable response is to seek to make good decisions; to make oneself a better person.
The naturalistic fallacy remains: that babies act in a certain way does not imply that you ought also act in a certain way.
So important: even within the one creed, we only ever encounter the subjective preferences of believers - hence we see Baptist Protestants who may either hate gays, or fly a rainbow flag for Jesus. Even the term 'moderate Islam' reveals the human choices and construction work inherent in any spiritual belief.
Faith as bad faith. Go figure.
It has a nice ring to it.
Its a Pragmatic Necessity, no a fallacy. There is a huge difference there.
-"Why ought we promote the wellbeing of society?"
- Societies that do well inevitably promote the well being of its individuals.
Quoting Banno
I don't know what sovereignty has to do with the moral evaluation of behavior between human beings.
We are not addressing who has the power in a society or how it is structured and organized.
We are talking about what is morality and what it evaluates.
-"The point here is not to make a choice between these competing systems, but to realise that the good is not reducible to something else, it is neither the wellbeing of society not individual autonomy. "
Morality has to do with us evaluating our interactions and how our actions promote specific metrics that favor the well being in a society.
BY DEFINITION morality refers to the evaluation of acts that affect members in a society!
i.e. Most people identify stealing as an immoral act. Stealing by definition demands the act of taking things from other members of your society.
You will need an act to affect others in order to carry a moral value.
Eating a sandwich is a morally neutral act....eating other people's sandwiches without their consent is an immoral act.
So when our acts do not promote the well being of our society and the members in it, we must expect a kick back from them
i.e lets say I manage to expand my well being by stealing and tricking other people. My society will demand justice and take actions that will affect my well being.(put me in jail).
Can you see now how other members and your society as a whole are linked in this evaluation process?
-Ok I c you get which process enables the need of moral evaluations. So what exactly is you objection?
Maybe I misunderstood your argument.
Surely this is only the case if you already accept a presupposition that there are no transcendent foundations for morality and that moral realism is unrealistic unless we agree to set a goal (an inter-subjective choice) and base morality on that goal, e.g., wellbeing. The reason to do this is pragmatic (the adjective not the philosophy) and eminently contestable.
We descent from individuals who for thousands of years survived through organizing themselves in functional societies. Those societies became functional due to specific qualities and characteristics displayed by the behavior of their members.
Again, you have here claimed that the wellbeing of society is what we ought do.
Why?
You havn't grounded your moral system, just assumed it.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Well, no, it doesn't. Morality is about what one ought to do.
Perhaps we ought abandon the notion of society and instead return to living as wild, individual beasts. Or perhaps for the good of the planet we ought eliminate humanity altogether.
You've skipped from an is to an ought, without providing a justification. That we are social animals does not imply that we ought to be.
This is basic ethical theory. Ought be obvious... :wink:
There is a phrase that you will find in the sayings of mystical lore, 'the good that has no opposite'. The thrust of this is that what we normally consider good is always part of a pair - that is, good fortune, good luck, good health, and so on, are always paired with their opposites, in that either is possible. What is good always comes with the possibility of what is bad - good health and good fortune are with us only for so long as their opposites do not prevail.
The good that has no opposite is a good that is not subject to vicissitudes. That is what, I think, religious teachings intend to convey. Does it exist 'out in the world'? It's not a species of animal or some form of natural phenomena. But I think, for instance, the kind of unconditional commitment to charity that is found in charitable organisations indicates a belief in such principles.
Quoting Tom Storm
'Secular' means 'excluding religion'. So you're left with something like the common good, what works, greatest good for greatest number, or (here's a favourite) 'evolutionarily advantageous'.
I think there are ethical theorists who develop philosophies on such a basis - John Rawls, I believe, and probably also Peter Singer. But I've always had confidence that there is an unconditional good, and if that makes me religious, then so be it.
Good for you. So what.
It remains that the choice of creed is yours. It remains that you cannot just dump your moral responsibility on to god, any more than @Nickolasgaspar can dump it on the wellbeing of society.
Your systems have a gapping hole in them.
So, it addresses the question, although I do understand that your stereotyping contempt of anything you categorise as 'religious' has no gapps in it whatever.
My stereotyping contempt has nothing to do with the gap in your argument, beyond my finding it amusing.
Again, it remains that you have to choose your creed. Unless you rely on your creed to decide your creed for you...
Yes, and in a sense I am pulling your leg. I object to your reliance on creed, but find mcuh of what you have said congenial.
You and I ought be working together to show @Nickolasgaspar that there is more to ethics than physics. Have you noticed his profile image? The Scientism is strong in this one.
Well, true. But it's kind of the default, isn't it? Hasn't evolutionary biology rushed in to fill the vacuum left by the abandonment of traditional creeds? It seems very much taken-for-granted.
You're right that it's hard to 'find a creed'. When I set out on my quest, the last thing I wanted to become was a believer in anything. I thought that all creeds were the fossilised remnants of ideas. But it's turned out not to be so simple.
You wont find an "ought" in my statements. I never claims what we "ought to do". I only pointed out that what we understand as a morality refers to the implications an act has on the wellbeing of other members in a society.
Quoting Banno
-I described what we identify as morality. My system just uses this acknowledgment as a way to produce moral evaluations. Do you have a different opinion on what morality describes in our interactions? Do you believe that we accept acts as moral even if they do not promote the well being of others and our society as a whole?
Quoting Banno
Ok...what to do in relation to who/what and with what purpose.????
I stated that " morality refers to the evaluation of acts that affect other members of a society!"
and you responded "No"...while literally stating "Morality is about what we should do around others. "
So morality is indeed about how to act around other members and evaluate which acts are acceptable or not(what we should or shouldn't dot).
Now my argument is that what we "should or shouldn't do"(to use your wording) is defined by how those acts affect other members of our society..in short our well being in general.
Do you have a different opinion on how we define those "shoulds"?
Quoting Banno
- Sir......these "solutions'' are irrelevant to my points.
I am defining what aspects of our reality and social life are described by our moral evaluations and judgments. what on earth living as wild or individual beasts has to do with this conversation???????
Quoting Banno
I DID NOT!!!! I NEVER mentioned the word ought! Are you sure you are responding to the correct post????
I am pointing out what we mean by the term moral behavior. What humans value as a moral act and what those acts promote.
Why is this so difficult for you?????
-"This is basic ethical theory. Ought be obvious''
and it is irrelevant to my points.
Pls focus on my arguments. Pls tell me if Moral acts promote or are against the well being of the members of a society. IF not pls tell me what it means for an act to be moral.
First of all you seem to ignore the definition of scientism. I am the first to reject the basic premises of Scientistm (1.Science is the only source of knowledge and 2. Science can explain everything).
So lets put this strawman aside.
Secondly Physics has nothing to do with a byproduct of biology. Biology has....
Now pls work together and show me that ethics studies something more than the philosophical implications of a natural phenomenon....that of the meaning and value of human interactions.
If you are not telling us what we ought to do, you are not engaged in a moral discourse.
Hence, your posts are of no use in deciding what we should do.
Ethics is a lot more involved than just a bit of applied biology.
But you and I might well have a disagreement with them...
Ethics 101 includes a rundown on the is-ought argument from Hume, which is a basic starting point. The discussion, last time I looked closely, had reached the point of discussing the direction of fit of statements, and noticed that some statements are varied in order to fit the way things are - roughly, science and such; while other statements say how not how things are but how they might be, given our acts of volition - preferences and ethics and such.
But this part is dropped as folk rush in to defend one or other of the standard ethical football teams - consequentialism, deontology or virtue, or to ground ethics in a creed or in biological science.
SO the first ask is to show folk that ethics is not like physics, and is not a branch of theology nor of biology.
It remains to be seen if a forum such as this can progress beyond these basics.
I am not sure you understand the premises made by Secular Morality.
You view morality as being about " what one ought to do". So you assume that my point is "well being is what we ought to strive."
My answer is no. Again well being is only the principle we can use for objective judgments NOT what we ought to do. In Secular Morality we address the Descriptive NOT Normative aspect of the phenomenon.
We don't say what we "Ought to do", but we describe what type of acts we evaluate as moral and we identify their common denominator , which is wellbeing.
For a weird reason(not really), we seem to appreciate other people acts that do not undermine other people's well being!
So we understand that we humans identify moral behavior that which promotes the well being of members in a society. THis is NOT what we ought to do, this is what we find common in all acts that we accept as moral. (must I stress it some more?).
SO before we start making moral judgments we need to find a principle that can allow us to produce objective "oughts". This can be done by using as principle the common denominator we identified above.
SO my question is, do you think that we do have actions that undermine the well being of the members of a society and they are still considered to be moral? IF yes then we will have an exception in this rule. IF we find more similar acts then Secular Morality will be forced to get rid off this principle.
As I indicated in my post, the thing I like about Kant's formulation is that it puts the responsibility on me. Perhaps he interpreted it rigidly, although I find it hard to believe he would be that rigid. To me, what it means is that it's ok for me to set the rules, as long as I'm committed to applying them fairly, including to myself. Especially to myself.
Unlike yourself, I don't rule out the perspective provided by philosophical theology or religion generally, insofar as they provide a cosmic grounding for ethics.
I think I'm probably most drawn to 'natural law theory' but I'm not going to go to any lengths to defend it. (I note there's a pretty decent entry on it in Wikipedia. And with that, I bow out.)
Such a perspective is Unnecessary and Insufficient plus we have zero epistemic foundations to make that assumption rendering it a pseudo philosophical speculation.
I always heard that Kant was known for his fixated rigidity, both in his lifestyle (people set clocks by his daily walk) and by his rigid notion of duty which people have often satirized. I've understood the take home message of Kant as being Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus 'justice be done even if the world dies'. It's the opposite of pragmatic. Kant is a hard-core deontologist, an anti-utilitarian who eschewed consequentialism.
So Nazi's win with our help.... (edit: this refers to us telling them in which attics Jews are hiding)
Doesn't matter what Kant would do, it matters what he suggests we should do. People don't generally discount the American Declaration of Independence just because the signers owned slaves. Doesn't mean we should ignore it, but the words matter all by themselves.
So, your objection is overruled.
Quoting Wayfarer
...because my cynical eye tells me it ain't so; there can be no "cosmic grounding", it has to be all our own work. That's why it is important; if it were all down to god, our choices wouldn't be that important.
There is a small space for religion as metaphor, alongside art, poetry, gardening and tea, but it garners no special role of the sort religious folk seem to find.
Quoting Wayfarer
Oh, perhaps not. WIth being part of this-world, creating his own morality, re-embodying amoral aristocratic values, and generally living life as they want, this might as well be the Übermensch:
Or Freddy Mercury?
-I never told you what you ought to do. I am pointing out a common characteristic in all moral evaluations. Acts that are accepted as moral appear to promote the well being of our society and its individual members. If you disagree pls tell me why.
-"If you are not telling us what we ought to do, you are not engaged in a moral discourse."
-Of course I am not telling you what to do. I am only pointing out what principles appear to be able to produce objective moral judgments. By using those judgements we can objectively figure out what to we ought to do for our acts to be moral.
-"Hence, your posts are of no use in deciding what we should do."
-Maybe you need to revisit the Title of the thread and the content of the OP sir.
The subject of this thread is not a question on what what we should do, but it questions whether there is a way to arrive to objective (or absolute) moral judgments.
-"Ethics is a lot more involved than just a bit of applied biology."
-Ethics addresses the philosophical value and meaning of human behavior BY DEFINITION....so our philosophy analyzes the values we see in the spectrum of human behavior.
You keep claiming that well being is not a common characteristic of moral acts and that ethics is a lot more than the philosophical take on a specific natural phenomenon...but you avoid elaborating on those declarations.
(try pressing the reply or quote pop up window so that I can receive a notification).
By 'cosmic', what I mean is this. A typically early-20th century view (put by Bertrand Russell and later by Dawkins et al) was that Darwinism had 'proved' that the mythology of creation was false. So instead of an intentional act, the obvious alternative was the opposite - life as a consequence of chance, given a vast enough universe and enough random interactions of atoms, then life arises as something like a chemical reaction, which then becomes subject to the Darwinian algorithm, which leads to its elaboration into the forms we now see. This is the subject of vast amounts of 20th C literature. And it is still the view of neo-Darwinian materialism, close to the mainstream.
So what's the alternative. I mean, I never for a moment believed that the creation mythology was literally true. So the fact that it's not literally true did not, for me, have the earth-shattering consequences that Dawkins seemed to imagine would flow from The God Delusion. I always saw mythological accounts as just that - mythological, not simply uninformed empirical theories. But they do carry a profound meaning. One of them is conveyed by the 'myth of the fall', which is a myth about the groundlessness of the human condition, the fact that everything we know and love is subject to death and destruction, and the fact that human nature seems to have innate capacities for destruction and less-than-optimal behaviour. THe problem of evil, and the problem of the vast suffering of life, remains.
So in a larger sense one can perfectly well accept the findings of empirical science - big bang cosmology, evolution by natural selection - and still find that many of the problems of philosophy remain. So what the naturalist account needs to offer is some grounds for why all of this has happened, what it actually means. The existentialist-atheist answer is that it means nothing whatever, that we 'create meaning' and must be brave enough to acknowledge it. That's one answer.
The answer that I prefer is more Bergsonian - that the evolutionary process is an essential part of the Cosmos. We're not simply the accidental outcome of chance and necessity but our being is intrinsic to the unfolding of the Cosmos.
I cross posted whilst you were busy recycling that garbage photo, which again makes me wonder whether I'm simply wasting my time putting up coconuts.
That analogy doesn't work. A better example would be if the Declaration of Independence actually said 'human beings are all created equal, except for slaves and women' Then we would ignore it. :wink:
As I understand him, Kant specifically suggests we take on a proscribed, deontological approach that we should all implement so that a rigid moral code is established. He's really not into everyone having their own take.
Actually Nietzsche would have told the Nazi's to fuck off.
My point isn't what you think it is. It is about lying. Kant says you don't lie to anyone just to achieve a consequentialist greater good. Maybe I should have said Kant would recommend you tell the Russian troops where the Ukrainian women are hiding because lying is wrong.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Look again at this. See if you see a problem. You are not telling us what to do, but just how to "figure out what to do"...
You still jump from is to ought.
We can take another step. It is evident that meaning is constructed as we use words, but further, that our broader "form of life" is a construct. Meaning is constructed by the very fact of our being... (and the "We" is quite important; it's not a private construction)
Hence the importance of the analysis of direction of fit, to which I do not recall your response. It still seems to me that accepting this or that creed is mistaking the direction of fit.
According to biosemiosis, and pansemiosis, it's something inherent in the Universe. Life is the emergence of meaning. So this contention that life was 'the outcome of atoms which had no precognition of the end they were achieving', and that meaning is something 'we create', is, shall we say, deeply questionable.
Silence is indeed possible here. Perhaps you might give it a shot.
Quoting Tom Storm
In such cases we would tell Kant to fuck off.
In order to change our mind there must be good reason to do so. Moral deliberation is not capricious. Rape is not an isolated moral issue, it is part of the larger consideration of the value of human life, which includes minimizing harm and suffering and maximizing well being.
Quoting Hanover
More relevantly, "one ought to eat a plant based diet". There are some good reasons for this, including the environmental impact of factory farming. Moral considerations have led a significant number of people to consider the value of animal life and thus limit or eliminate eating animals and/or animal products. It is not unreasonable to think that in future generations killing and eating animals will be considered immoral by the majority of people.
-"A morality that does not tell us what to do is not a morality."
-lol what are you talking about????
Morality is an abstract concept...it tell us nothing on its own.If you are looking for moral declarations that won't happen.
We need a system or a method based on a common shared characteristic by known moral judgments to inform us what actions would be moral in different situations...that how we can reach moral judgments.
Quoting Banno
Correct, I suggest a method that can help us produce objective moral evaluations based on a common characteristic of known moral judgments.
-"You still jump from is to ought."
-lol no I am not. I am just suggesting a method that can point to what we should do if we ALL accept the same principle of well being as a metric in our evaluations.
So my question is DO you accept the principle? if not can you explain the reasons why not?
Pls don't dodge my questions again!!!!!!
You skip my questions and you make empty accusations for "jumping from is to ought" when I am suggesting a falsifiable principle and a falsifiable method for you to expose by providing evidence.... but you keep avoiding challenging your rejections.
Life is the emergence of specific biological process. Meaning is a quality that emerges in specific biological functions (brain functions). Organisms with brains seek meaning in their experiences.
You are committing Fallacy of composition. A property displayed by a specific part shouldn't be assume a general property of a system.
-"Quoting Wayfarer
-The Null hypothesis doesn't allow precognition to be assumed as part of our Default position for the emergence of life.
So... these objective moral evaluations don't tell us what to do?
I agree but I guess Hanover might ask you on what basis ought one to care for these values? The adoption of 'wellbeing' as a criterion of value is adopting a presupposition, is it not?
That is because you assume that thought is reducible to neuroscience, which is precisely the meaning of 'neuroscientific reductionism'. There are many criticisms of neuroscientific reductionism which are too voluminous to try and give an account of here. But I would argue that it's a mistake to ascribe semantic content to neurological data. Semantic content, which is the content of meaningful statements, is of a different order to the kinds of data the neuroscience deals with. Saying that neurobiological signals 'mean' something or 'transmit meaning' is projecting semantic value onto neurological signals. But neuroscience itself is nowhere near to understanding this process on a practical level. Overall it is concerned with much more specific functions of the brain, typically but not always concentrating on pathologies of various kinds. So neuroscientific reductionism is said to commit the 'mereological fallacy', that is, the ascription of what conscious agencies are able to do, to only one part of the organism, namely, the brain.
Besides, that is not the point of the emerging science of biosemiosis, which I referred to, which is the sense in which signs (and therefore meaning) are inherent in all living processes, even very simple ones like single-celled organisms. That is in turn connected with the view that rational sentient beings such as ourselves don't live in a world comprising physical objects, but a world comprising meanings - the meaning-world or 'umwelt' which is interpreted by us as (among other things) a physical domain.
Forget that part...we are NOT THERE YET! Whether we MUST follow an objective moral judgments is irrelevant.
Pls Focus on my question and try to weight in your answers.
Is well being a common characteristic in every single act you are able to identify as moral?
If not can you point out which act doesn't share this characteristic while being moral?
If we accept well being as our auxiliary principle in our evaluations does that help us identify which act is objective moral or immoral.
Pls argue for the position you take.
I think you're being as rigid as you claim Kant is.
Well, no. it is a logical error in your account. But we can come back to it later.
-No I don't really have to assume anything.
I only observe the objective facts provide by our epistemology and I use the Null Hypothesis to identify the default position on this subject.
Our current epistemology demonstrates the Necessity and Sufficiency of brain mechanisms for the emergence of human mind states.
On the other hand I have zero facts indicating the existence of an alternative Necessary or Sufficient explanation. Do you have any?
Quoting Wayfarer
-Criticisms based on metaphysical worldviews are useless in Epistemology. What they need to provide is objective independently reproducible evidence in favor of their alternative framework.
Quoting Wayfarer
-Your argument makes no sense from a scientific perspective. Meaning is a characteristic infused in our conscious states by an other property of mind known as Symbolic Language. it turns out that reasoning affections and emotions in to feeling and concepts has an evolutionary and survival advantage for organisms with brains. Not only its is a necessary ingredient of our conscious states,but we can accurately decode the semantic content of conscious thoughts by just read brain scans (Carnegie Mellon 2017)
Quoting Wayfarer
-This is a common misconception based on personal incredulity and the result of a wishful thought . A quick search in a popular databased of Neuroscience can reveal to anyone that we know a great deal of things on how meaning arises in our brains and which mechanisms are responsible for this mental property.
https://neurosciencenews.com/?s=how+the+brain+meaning
AND this is the best chance to point out how Pseudo Philosophy "looks like".
When people make claims that are disconnected for science and our current epistemology ...those claims are doomed to be unwise, wrong and pseudo philosophical!
Quoting Wayfarer
-This is an other factually wrong statement about science.
Mental properties are emergent phenomena products of the function of a complex system, so by definition a reductive approach is useless to study the phenomenon. This is why Complexity Science is the right tool for emergent phenomena.
You are trying on purpose (or due to ignorance) to promote a strawman picture of science that has nothing to do with the actual methodology used in the field.
Quoting Wayfarer
I guess my above remarks on your knowledge about neuroscience raise red flags anytime you attempt to criticize the science...
The mistake is to assume jumps.....when I describe the tools I use and you avoid challenging them.
That is not a rule of course....
‘It’ does no such thing. There is no such consensus. This is a philosophy forum, as such knowledge of neuroscience is not assumed or necessary, although at least some knowledge of philosophy would be considered desireable.
:up:
:up: Thanks for letting us know. Philosophers have blind spots, like everyone else I suppose.
Let me provide the definition of Pseudo philosophy.
"What is pseudo-philosophy?
Philosophy that relies on fallacious arguments to a conclusion,(premises that aren't verified)
and/or relies on factually false or undemonstrated premises. (scientifically ignorant)
And isn't corrected when discovered." (what you do by not correcting your factual wrong claims).
-"This is a philosophy forum, as such knowledge of neuroscience is not assumed or necessary,"
-By skipping epistemology and science, these two essential steps for any philosophical inquiry you render your claims pseudo philosophical by definition.
When a claim isn't based on knowledge or is in direct conflict with knowledge...it can never be wise!
Wisdom(wise claims) is the actual goal of Philosophy...its in the etymology of the term!
So lack of wisdom means lack of any philosophical value in your claims.!
Science has learned a lot since the 1700s and the questions we ask have changed, but I don't see that the fundamentals of epistemology have changed.
And not only that.....the available epistemology during their time was not enough to assist them in their work.
But in this case we are all posting opinions on a thread labeled "Can morality be absolute?
and no one (except me) talks about Secular Morality and Situational ethics that is the back bone of the modern Judiciary system (which if far from being adequate). Instead most of you visit ideas that they are either tautologies or factually wrong (based on modern knowledge) or metaphysical at best.
I up-voted Wayfarer's post because truth be told, our knowledege on consciousness is full of holes and so long as that's the case, people are justified in challenging any position one assumes on the nature of the mind.
Sure....but looking the holes will never allow ''you" to see what we know.
His actual statement was that:
Quoting Wayfarer
...when he can easily visit a neuroscience database and learn the roles of the Ascending Reticular Activating System and the Central Lateral Thalamus in establishing and introducing content in our conscious states!
Not knowing everything doesn't mean we know nothing....right?
Go to neurosciencenews.com and search the key phrase "how the brain does" and add any mind property you want...from memory, meaning to consciousness and pattern recognition.
The fact is that we known (science) far more things that philosophers want to admit.
I get it, consciousness and the mind in general is the last field of study that still justifies some paychecks to philosophers so its on their favor to ignore our epistemology.
:up:
This ought be compulsory reading for anyone entering into a discussion of ethics.
This makes me really happy to hear. Most individuals in here stick to their guns even when facts hit them in the face with a big metal sign with bold letter spelling "facts".
Now can you offer a critic similar to Hume's but this time on the system of moral evaluation I described or this is where our conversation ends?
But comprehending the is/ought distinction is.
This is a really cheap excuse sir. The goal of ethics is to define these oughts!
So you confuse subjective unfounded declarations with objective moral evaluations.
We need to agree on the principle and you avoid this conversation.
I think we are done here.
What?
As in, I do not understand what you are trying to say in that post.
Here's a principle for you: there is a difference between saying how things are and saying how they ought to be.
Do you agree?
:up: You stick to your guns as well! So, fair and square, oui?
Ok, ok, you're better than the rest of us. :smile:
NO sir! The difference is that Newton's idea is still established KNOWLEDGE with technical applications while in philosophy you will find pseudo philosophy, metaphysics, deepities, unfalsifiable speculations side by side with great ideas like Objectivism, naturalism, Humanism,Set Theory, Symbolic Logic, Reduction of Mathematics to Axioms & Logic, Transfinite Mathematics, Game Theory, Modal Logic, Bayesian Epistemology, Consequentialism etc etc.
So a more proper example would be if physicists DID pay attention to alchemy or astrology....
Do you agree?
This is a quite basic, pivotal piece of knowledge, don't you think? Something that could serve us well in this discussion.
So do you think that the distinction Hume articulates here is between ‘the quantitative’ (‘is’) and the qualitative (‘ought’)? That he is drawing a distinction between what is or is not the case, and what can only be inferred? Or would that be an over-simplification?
I am trying to evaluate the system itself...and you avoid this challenge.
My system doesn't use "what is" to arrive to what "ought to be". IT identifies a common characteristic shared by KNOWN acts with positive moral value and uses it as an objective standard in our future evaluation. The system arrives to the "oughts" through the principles without taking in to account "what is the case".
Why this is so difficult for you???
That is not polite at all....
Welcome to philosophy. It's not fun to have your assumptions questioned.
Well, actually, it is. It's kinda why we are here.
Anyway, the wider point is that those who take descriptions of the way brains work or of social dynamics, or of the evolution of cooperation, as grounds for a moral system have to jump from how things are to how things ought to be.
And that is no small distinction. @Nickolasgaspar is not by any means alone in not being able to see this.
This is not philosophy. This is pseudo philosophy.
I am the one putting my framework to the test...but you just tap dance without offering any challenges.
You do not look like you are here to question assumptions. You just declare them assumptions when they are descriptions. All I ask is for you is to check if they are accurate and point what is wrong if they are not.
But you attack a strawman.
So are you willing to support your objections with objective facts?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I’m afraid not. Anything I will say will be taken as evidence that I don’t understand neuroscience. But this is a philosophy forum, not a neuroscience forum, and the fact that you think neuroscience explains the problems of philosophy indicate to me that you don’t understand what kinds of problems philosophy seeks to tackle. Take a look at a couple of the pieces I pinned to my profile page, Anything but Human, and It Ain’t Necessarily So.
I don't.
A qualitative statement can be a statement of what is the case. "The clouds were fluffy" is a qualitative statement, setting out what is the case. The distinction Hume is drawing is between "the cloud is fluffy" and "The cloud ought be fluffy".
Similarly, an ought statement can be quantitative: "there ought be five apples in the basket".
I wonder, where did you get that idea from?
I had thought we had discussed direction of fit at length.
Ok, ok!
I'm not a philosopher so forgive me if I ask a stupid question. In brief dot points what are 'known acts with a positive value?'
How do you arrive at an ought through principles without taking in account of what is the case? Aren't principles part of what is the case?
From helping small kids cross the street to killing a terrorist before blowing up a school.
You will find out that all actions share one thing in common. They promote the well being of those who are benefited and those who perform the action.
So by investigating as many cases as we can think, can we might agree that "well being" for the members of a society is the common denominator in every case.
If not and we do find a moral act that reduces the well being of members but it is objectively moral can we agree that it is an exception to the rule.
Do we also agree that we will need at least more than one act t (objectively wrong but against our well being) for this principle to be rejected?
So if we agree on the principle....are we reasonable to thing that if we choose the act that increases our well being ..can we be sure we have a Moral system that can produce objective moral values?
If not why?
I'm not talking about finding out in future, I'm talking about a disagreement in predictions. If your metric is the harm to well-being an action might cause then you're always predicting the future since you're always talking about consequences. You say "hitting that person is bad because it will cause then harm, not "hitting that person is bad because it has caused them harm".
I'm pointing out that one could then say "yes, but it will cause them an even greater well-being further on"
It's not about updating our evidence. Lets assume we have a fixed amount of evidence for the time-being. We'd still be able to use that fixed amount of evidence to prove both arguments (the short term harm or the long term benefit). What I'm describing, in a roundabout way, is really just an example of the general problem of underdetermination applied to your 'moral science' - the same body of evidence can used to support multiple theories.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Possibly. But that begs the question. You're already describing the behaviour in question as immoral and we're talking about determining whether a behaviour is immoral or not. If what you mean to say is "no harmful behaviour against a specific population or members of a society can be justified as moral just because other larger populations (in future or contemporary) are benefited by it." Then clearly that's wrong (or you disagree with much of what's considered moral), because such behaviours are considered moral all the time, such as imprisonment of criminals, for example.
Yep! If Tom can do it, so can Dick and Harry!
To be fair, the article never made such a claim, but notwithstanding, I don't see how it follows.
The declaration that one ought to do X is a declaration, not only about a fit of desire to world, but of membership of a particular set of such fits. I'd like the world to be such that Whisky were free, that doesn't mean it morally ought to be that way, yes.
So there's a sub-set of such 'mind to world' fits which are 'moral'. In other words, there exists a set of behaviours {behaviours we ought to do} one of whose membership criteria are they act to bring about a world in our minds to the actual world, but clearly not the sole membership criteria (otherwise my Whisky desire would be a member and it clearly isn't).
So the leaves the question of what that second (or more) membership criteria is/are.
People have (here) suggested that it is that sub-category of aims/fits which reduce harm. I take issue with that because of the problem of underdetermination over time, almost anything can be made to fit by claiming it reduces harm in the long term.
I don't think there's anything fundamental to rule out the possibility that this second membership criteria is 'those aims which we are biologically programmed to have as such aims'.
You might say "Ah, but what if there's a thing we ought to do that is not biological in origin, that disproves the theory". True, but you'd have to a) show that there is such a thing, and b) show that you're not wrong about its membership of that set. It's (b) that causes the most problem for your argument. See, if I were to say "we ought to punch an old lady every day" you'd tell me, in no uncertain terms, that I was wrong, I'd made a mistake, that in spite of my feeling the world ought to be that way, I'm mistaken about the inclusion of that particular desire in the set of desire which are 'moral'. So for every counter-example you give of a desire which is not biological in origin, it's possible that you too are mistaken about its inclusion in the set of such desires which are 'moral'.
Ultimately, 'moral' is just a word we use to apply to a loose affiliation of behaviours, and personally I very much doubt there more that links all those behaviour than there is which links all the things we use the word 'game' for. Nothing more than a 'family resemblance'. But regardless of my own personal theory, I don't see we have the theoretical foundation as yet to rule out the possibility that the factor which, in fact, links all those behaviours we use the word for, is actually their having a specific biological origin.
Why send two/many people to do a job which one can handle?
A moral system do not offer predictions. It offers evaluations based on contemporary knowledge on the implications specific acts have on well being.
Quoting Isaac
-You will need to provide an example on that where the well being of people changes dramatically during time.
Quoting Isaac
-The principle is the tool by which we choose our "theory". The principle stays unchanged.
Quoting Isaac
We are drifting away from the point in question. Take any act you accept as objectively moral or immoral and check whether it shares the same characteristic with any other act that you can thing (promotes or reduces the well being of members). IF that is the case then we have a metric that we can use as a principles in order to judge different acts under different situations. Surely we can identify a list of acts that we both found moral.
Can you imagine other metrics that are affected by moral or immoral acts and can be used as an objective principle for new evaluations?
I am not saying that my metric is absolutely true. I am on a quest to find out whether we can agree on that objective standard.
Sure. As half-baked secular humanist, I've advocated wellbeing/flourishing for some years.
But there are still issues to iron out - hypothetically :-
Why make the choice to privilege wellbeing? Let's look again at your examples.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
What if we don't give a shit about the school or its children? What if we agree with the terrorist's aims?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
What if we don't like children? Do we need them around - snivelling little shits?
There's a choice made here to care about strangers who don't really matter to us. They are not our children, right?
Are you sure that your concern for wellbeing isn't just a form of sentimentalism based on a fading Christian ethic and its concern for underdogs and losers?
Why not just take care of ourselves and our own circle and not care about other's wellbeing?
Those evaluations are clearly predictions. "the effect on well-being of X will be", not "the effect on well-being of X was"
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I already have. Children and sweets. Well-being definitely drops just after being denied sweets, raises again on enjoying a healthy weight and full set of teeth in later life. A more extreme example is in every form of criminal punishment - the well-being of the person concerned drops during the punishment, but supposedly rises again as they enjoy being a member of a society in which their particular crime is thereby discouraged. On a larger scale, foreign aid for infrastructure investment benefits no-one in the short-term, but reduces the well-being of the country it's coming from (less welfare, education and health spending). In the long-term, however, the idea is that it helps those in greater need. Some may argue that whilst, yes, it helps those people in the long-term, it harms them in the even longer term because they become reliant on aid...
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
No. That's not what underderemination describes.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
That's what I'm saying. All such acts do in one timescale and do not in others. It cannot be determined. they all cause harm in the short term to individuals with the intention of reducing harm in the long term to society, but since the term is not fixed it cannot ever be demonstrated that they do, in fact, achieve this end.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
It's not about the metrics, it's about what we do with the uncertainty over their application. even if I were determined to cause no harm, such determination would not be sufficient as I would not have any way of knowing which behaviours avoided harm over any given timescale.
-I agree with that statement...this is why we are discussing it.
-"Why make the choice to privilege wellbeing? Let's look again at your examples.
killing a terrorist before blowing up a school. — Nickolasgaspar
What if we don't give a shit about the school or its children? What if we agree with the terrorist's aims?"
- Well for many "biological" reasons. For a start its the main reason why species evolve to be social. Being and well being is promoted through social organizations.
Our 3 basic biological drives in our biology are to survive, thrive and procreate.
Our urges to seek pleasure and avoid pain have powerful mechanisms in our brain.
Our mirror neurons, a mechanisms that reproduces the emotions experienced by other people's while we observing them, enable empathy and sympathy for anyone.
All these facts explain why we give a damn about our kids in that school and why we wouldn't want our society to allow our school to be blown up when we were kids.
Quoting Tom Storm
-Sure, we talk about total strangers in our society. Would it be at our interested if we lived in a society that allows people to blow up public buildings? Is this a society that would qualify as ideal?
Quoting Tom Storm
-No, morality is not that altruistic. ITs more about us not being pleased living in societies where our existence and well being can be affected by others at any time.
We value our existence and our well being and by allowing others not to value them that is a treat for everyone alive.
I don't agree that 'those aims which we are biologically programmed to have as such aims' is up to the task. More could be said, but to give a counterexample, we are presumably biologically programmed to drink, but drinking is not a moral act.The counterexample is not a moral case that is not biological programmed, but a biological program that is not moral. Being biologically programmed is not enough to mark something as moral rather then a preference.
I think the additional aspect that makes a statement moral is, at least in part, that were as a preference sets out what you want and hence applies to you, moral statements are taken as applying to others as well as to you. It's as if you were to claim that everyone ought drink whiskey. Preferences apply to you; moral statements apply generally, or at least to those in the same given situation. They apply to others as well as to oneself.
Now I think this is enough to mark moral discussion as different to mere preference, and contrast it with statements of fact. Moral discourse is about our relations with others.
The fact–value distinction is derived from the is–ought problem in moral philosophy as characterized by David Hume. This is the fundamental epistemological distinction described between:
1. 'Statements of fact' ('positive' or 'descriptive statements'), based upon reason and physical observation, and which are examined via the empirical method.
2. 'Statements of value' ('normative' or 'prescriptive statements'), which encompass ethics and aesthetics, and are studied via axiology.
So I'm saying that the former are primarily quantitative in nature, and hence capable of objective validation. The latter are primarily qualitative in nature and so are not subject to objective validation, although this doesn't imply that they're 'merely subjective', either. It is the orthodox interpretation of the import of the is/ought problem.
Interesting. No, I disagree. quantitative/qualitative differences are distinct from descriptive/normative differences, as the examples I gave show. I do not think values are primarily qualitative.
Is it though? Can we not think of mind-to-world statements about our relations with others that are still not moral statements? Perhaps "we ought to speak loudly enough to be heard". Not a mere preference (I'm clearly saying others ought do this too), but not a moral statement, I don't think, merely a pragmatic one?
Maybe you have a broader definition of 'moral' than I do?
As I said, I'm personally inclined toward the idea that 'moral' statements have only a sort of family resemblance in common, that there's no one factor relating them all, but rather some collection of factors any group of which might be sufficient.
Incidentally (to those who would cite neuroscience @Nickolasgaspar), the neuroscience clearly back me up here. Far from there being some 'morality' brain region, there are, in fact, several regions involved in moral decision making and all of them overlap with other aspects of thought (such as disgust, in-out group determination, empathy...) such that we can say with some certainty that more than one method is employed.
even it they are "predictions"what is the issue? The accepted principles and our extended list of examples remove the risk.
Quoting Isaac
Again Pleasure is not a metric for well being on its own. As I pointed out to you forbidding small children to swim alone in deep water, or playing with matches or doing drugs might limit their pleasure but NOT their well being....since well being except of being "well" also has the condition of "being" (being/staying alive).
So limiting the sugar intake of children only affects instant pleasure, not their well being.
Quoting Isaac
A criminal is consider an enemy of society and this is why he is isolated from it. They are people who undermined the well being of others and society's as a whole.
There are correction systems in Northern Europe where the well being of convicts is taken in to account . The main priority of their system is for the individual to be able to returning back to his society without suffering. So the correction period is much different from conventional solutions that aim to make those people value well being by depriving it from them.
Quoting Isaac
Again you are confusing a steady principle with fluctuating facts of different cases. The objective principle will allow objective evaluations independent of how different random cases are.
Quoting Isaac
-I will try, once again to bring some facts in this conversation of abstracts by listing two acts that are objectively immoral.
1. a society that allows kid raping
2. a society that allows owning other people as property
Can we agree that ending up as a slave or being rapped during our childhood years are both immoral under any context?
Can we agree that a society allowing such acts will reduce the well being of its members.
Can you identify any other metric that would be affected and that could be used as a principle in our evaluations on what is moral or immoral?
Quoting Isaac
-I feel like we are talking about two different things and the problem is that none of the interlocutors in this thread is willing to test the principle by checking whether well being is a common denominator in all our moral judgements.!
Here is a set of questions for you.
Do you care about your well being, are you ok with acts by others that affect it?
Do you know many people that do not care about their well being, are they ok with acts that reduce it?
How can you call acts that endanger your well being ?
Oh, let me be clear, I do not think that mind-to-world statements mark moral statements. Moral statements are a sub-class of mind-to-world statements, alongside preferences and a wide range of other such devices. John Searle hives a detailed analysis; that moral statements differ from mere preferences (your whiskey example) in being about other people, but yes, there may remain mind-to-world statements that are about others that are not moral. It's just that moral statements areat least mind-to-world statements involving others. I see what I said before could be misinterpreted.
I'll leave the brain science to you, but it would very much surprise me if there had been found some "moral region" in the brain. Morality is too much a part of our actions and our relations and our language for it to have been so localised.
These are the Sam Harris type questions, whenever he talks about Wellbeing as the basis for secular morality. I generally accept these sorts of arguments.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Not sure what this question means. Do you mean, 'What can you call...?'
Sure, in two ways: internally and externally...
Quoting Hanover
But rape is something that moral language has made an obvious example of "not good". So no, the language doesn't have to allow disagreement on the issue. Anyone changing their mind to the extent of wanting to call such a behaviour "good" will not be credited with having contributed to the system of usage. They are deemed simply not to speak the language. They don't know the meaning of "good".
This doesn't mean that a system exhibiting such internal absolutism can't allow internal relativism as well. It will rely on at least one buffer zone between obviously good and obviously wrong, which creates disputed borders, representing differing or changing minds, or differing contexts. (Lying surely lies on such a border.) But this may well serve to keep obviously good absolutely apart from obviously wrong. As explained here.
If you mean, rape is good when we change our system, or moral language... well, could we, just like that?
If you mean, rape is good when we or some alien culture develops or evolves a totally different moral language... well, maybe, but only until the different cultures meet. External absolutism happens because language systems are unbridled in their ambition. They presume to refer universally. So when they discover each other they have to merge, and contradictions have to be ironed out. Statements previously shown true are now shown false. Things that were acceptable in the 80's are now seen to have been wrong. (I guess the song has examples? lol. But obviously history has plenty of serious ones.)
And yes...that should be a "what"...lol
I have no need to make a case for something which is laid out in any textbook in plain English.
-that claim carries no epistemic value without defining the aspect the spatial designations you use.
Quoting bongo fury
-The correct question should be "is sex immoral" and the answer is "it depends"....proving once again that moral evaluations of specific acts can not be absolute. Now if one asks Is sex without consent immoral (rape) then the answer is yes for that specific situation.
The issue is as I've described it, one of underdetermination.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Sugar intake is not fatal, so excess does not limit 'being'. You're in danger of using the vagueness of 'well-being' to make it fit whatever act you've predetermined to be moral. To avoid this, give a clear definition of what you mean by 'well-being'.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I'm not in need of an explanation for criminal punishment, I'm pointing out that it harms the well-being of some in the short-term to benefit the well-being of many in the long term.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Well, no. Again, that's what underdetermination describes (did you read the link?). The 'evaluations' will always support more than one course of action in any moral dilemma (in your system) because the data on well-being will always underdetermine the theory (what course of action is most 'moral').
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
To the first question, yes. We can agree, but that's just because you and I already think that way. Others disagree and we cannot persuade them objectively, by using your 'metrics'.
We might say "keeping slaves harms the well-being of the slaves and so is immoral". Someone else might say "keeping slaves does cause that harm, but it is outweighed by the greater benefit to society's well-being brought about by the increased economic growth, so the slaves ought to put up with their bonds for the greater good". Both arguments use the same metric - the well-being of society - just over different timescales. We might say "but look at societies with slavery, they perform no better than societies without, that disproves your theory" and they could reply "wait another twenty years, the benefits take time to accrue".
If, on the other hand, you say that no-one's well-being should be harmed at all for the greater good, nor for any hyperbolic discounting, then you have yourself a definition of well-being that can only be assessed on the last day of one's life - did it indeed turn out that going through all that exercise was worth the temporary drop in well-being, or did I, in fact, just get run over by a bus on the way home from the gym?
All moral dilemmas involve some sacrifice in well-being either at the individual level, or the short-term. If they didn't they wouldn't be dilemmas, they'd just be thing we want to do anyway. So it's always a weighing exercise, which means that there's always an argument as to how much weight to give each part. You don't, therefore, resolve those decisions by telling people what it is they're weighing (well-being, harm, pleasure...whatever), because the real dilemma is how much weight to give to individuals vs others, to long-term vs short-term, to nation vs world... etc. Competing interests.
Absolutely, so we're left (are we not) with at least one factor that might be common to all moral statements that is neither their direction of fit, nor their subject matter ('how we interact with others'). Those are perhaps necessary, but not sufficient to qualify a statement as being a member of the set {moral statements}.
Even though I don't personally hold to the idea, I think that 'being a particular kind of biological urge' cannot be ruled out as a candidate for that additional factor.
It would, as you say, have to be a particular kind of biological urge, as just any old biological urge might not be sufficient (although together with those other two criteria...?). If, in theory, we could identify some sub-class of biological urge which satisfied a one-to-one relationship with all moral statements, then we would, theoretically, have shown that the full criteria for being in the class {moral statements} was 1) being of a mind to world direction of fit, 2) being about how we act toward others, and 3) being of a certain sub-class of biological urges.
Personally, however, I don't think we'll find such a sub-class. reason being, as I said, that moral decision making seems to involve a dozen or more completely unrelated 'biological urges' ranging from disgust through in-group identity, social norms, empathy, and plain old Machiavellian tit-for-tat reciprocity.
Hence, I think that last criteria for membership of the set {moral statements} is of a family resemblance kind. No one criteria, but any one of a wide set.
For clarity... I take a linguistic view. That which is 'moral' is that for which we use the word 'moral' and are understood. So if I say "punching old ladies is moral" I've not made a factual error, I've simply misunderstood the meaning of the word 'moral' it's not used to describe the sort of thing punching old ladies is.
The dot dot dot meant "please read on for clarification".
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Well yes, that was my starting point.
Still...it makes no sense to have more people than absolutely necessary to accomplish a given task.
[quote=Thomas Carlyle (Great Man (sic) Theory)]The history of the world is but the biography of great men (sic).[/quote]
An ought requires two conditions:
1. A set of values which serves as the standard for comparison.
2. An is i.e. the current state of affairs.
-" The history of the world is but the biography of great men (sic)."
What does that say for those great men, when our history is a mesh?
The fact is that majority of humans are not responsible for this think called human history.
:lol:
-And I've already explained why that is irrelevant to a system based on a core principle that enables objective evaluations on any given evidence.
Quoting Isaac
Obviously moderate sugar intake is not a problem but since we are in a middle of an obesity epidemic (for decades) any intake adds to the problem. In addition to that the mechanism of sugar in the brain resembles that of opioids.
Societies have all kind of rules that t put limits on human behavior, especial to those who don't have the brain to deal with more mature decisions (kids) and those who can become a victim of addiction.
Do you really equate rules that train people to avoid easy ways to reward their brains with morality and well being????
So according to your opinion, because guys who live in the city center enjoy speeding we shouldn't remove all the rules that govern those streets?
Seeking pleasure in life can have negative effects on our well being.
Quoting Isaac
Sure but that doesn't have an impact on well being as a principle for morality within a society. Criminals owe to society or a society needs to keep them away. Depending on the individual, either we can either train him to respect the well being of others or if that is impossible we need to keep him away for good. In both cases his actions turned society against him and his well being is located outside of his society.
Quoting Isaac
-Again no, underdetermination addresses evidence ,not moral evaluations based on an objective principles. There is a reason why our morality has being evolving for thousands of years....because we constantly have being dealing with new evidence (and old minds). The issue is more with outdated minds and biases than completely new evidence. I.e. there aren't any evidence that could render the act of owning other people as property moral. We are done with that.
Do I think that it is a recipe with a guaranteed 100% success and no room for improvement!? OF course not but the good news is that we have an objective foundation to work with even if new evidence might delay our decisions. Underdetermination is not an unmovable obstacle in interpreting evidence and you shouldn't present it as such.
Quoting Isaac
What do you mean "just because you and we already think that way. Do you think that you would like as a kid(would increase your well being) to live in a society where raping you was thought to be a moral act? Our thoughts are IRRELEVANT. ITs our biology and reality that decide what is moral and what is not( I explained that to Tom). Does it mean that there are ideas that affect our thoughts and moral judgments? Sure but that is the whole reason why I advocate an objective System.
A society that justifies kid rapping doesn't act in favor of its member's well being. Violated individuals will have to deal with psychopathy in the future....and you know what that means for that society.
-"Others disagree and we cannot persuade them objectively, by using your 'metrics'."
-no no no, others might disagree but that doesn't make our evaluation subjective
Don't present it as if it does. Those individuals do not use objective criteria and principles.
Quoting Isaac
-Do you think it subjective moral evaluation if your society allows you one day to become a slave?
You see most of you make a huge error in your moral evaluations. You talk about the act as if your are not part of the scenario.
You need to place yourself in the middle of this scenario and you should evaluate how an act feels when it affects YOUR well being.
I think this is the most important point I can stress in our conversation.
Quoting Isaac
-This notion of "greater good" is your artifact. I don't use it since, as I said before it sound like a political excuse used to undermine the well being of the society and all its members.
The metric is Well being.
Quoting Isaac
Are you including the suppressed sexual appetite of a child molester? You do understand that our well being must not to suppress other people's well being. You need to realize that from the moment a an individual affects the well being of others and their society, there is no DILEMMAS no matter how suppressed they feel.
This is why I constantly mention all the members and their society as a whole.
In what storyline do you think I'm someone who doesn't know that? I presume none (you may imagine a young child has joined, but a simple check of my vocabulary should eliminate that possibility). So simply telling me stuff I clearly already know doesn't constitute an argument. You have to relate it to the point being disputed, which, in this case, is your definition of 'well-being'.
How do you measure well-being? That seems key to the disagreement. You keep dismissing things (pleasure, desires...) but you've not replaced those with anything. If well-being is your key metric it needs a clear definition, no?
I think you have summarised nicely the shortfalls in the wellbeing argument. I have generally taken the view that for secular morality, wellbeing can work as a tentative foundation - subject to ongoing clarifications and refinements - which for me is an improvement on debating the putative will of gods which humans can't agree on. It's definitely flawed or incomplete, but I'm not aware of anything better for now.
I think that morality has more than one aspect and we often conflate them. My personal relations with others do not generally get modulated by any consideration of the greatest increase in well-being. I act toward others in a manner I think is virtuous (or at least I strive to). It's about the kind of person I am, not the outcome.
The problem, however, is that governments (and other institutions) are not persons and so have no virtue in and of themselves. Individual government officials can be virtuous, but government policy cannot. So I see a need there for foreseeable consequences to be considered and in that case, perhaps a loose idea of 'well-being' might make a good foundation on which to base one's arguments.
We still face the problem of underdetermination though. Most people already know the power of 'well-being' as a metric for consequentialist arguments, so most will already formulate their arguments using it. As such, the main problem of deciding between them remains undented by such an attack.
-"In what storyline do you think I'm someone who doesn't know that? I presume none (you may imagine a young child has joined, but a simple check of my vocabulary should eliminate that possibility). So simply telling me stuff I clearly already know doesn't constitute an argument.'
-So why do you use them as an argument against well being when by putting limits in their pleasures we expand their well being and ours.
Quoting Isaac
There are specific metrics like
1.our biological drives to survive( belong to a group,), to flourish(ensure safety) and to procreate.
1.our biological urges Address our biological need, Seek non destructive pleasure and avoid pain/suffering
3.Behavior fueled by our mirror neurons that enable sympathy and empathy
those are some of the most essential.
Quoting Isaac
-I don't dismiss them. The problem with them is that they can be destructive and they need to be managed. Many rules of our society help us keep them under control while you can not see that. Its the sweet spot that allows us to avoid destruction and maximize our well being through our pleasures.
-The shortalls he summarised have being debunked. MAybe you can point out which ones in your opinion still fly.
I don't disagree that the framework is "under construction" with huge holes but the excuses I hear for not accepting well being as the auxiliary principle of the system are disconnected from reality.
i.e. Well being doesn't have a destructive side, while uncontrolled pleasure can easily lead to destruction.(diminished well being).
If he asked why one ought to care about human life I would take the question as argumentative since it seems he does care. If he meant why those who don't care should there is no argument that would persuade them. That others do care may be a presupposition, but to care is not. That we ought to maximize well being may be a presupposition, but one's own well being is not. Well being is not a criterion of value but rather stems from the value of human life.
[Added: By maximizing well being I do not mean that everything we do ought to be done to maximize well being or that in every situation the goal is to maximize well being, but that if we care then we want what is best for those whom we care for.]
My own belief is that there is an objectivity to what is immoral. This doesn't mean that it's always easy to discern, but for the most part we can see the harm done if we lie, steal, or murder.
Anne and I are the only two remaining humans in the universe. We have a house and enough water but are short of food.
I tell Anne "Let us kill and eat our Dog."
She tells me "no that is immoral, I would rather starve instead"
From what I understand, these are the different ways of analysing that situation.
Case 1
God/Religion decrees that it is right/wrong to kill the dog. As God/religion has an infinitely superior morality to us, it is right/wrong to kill the Dog. Alternatively morality itself comes from God/religion, so we should always follow what God/religion says
If we disagree, we are simply wrong about the matter, due to our ignorance or flaws.
Case 2
There is natural fact of the matter that it is right/wrong to kill the dog, We may not know the answer, but there is an objectively correct answer, whether or not we know it.
Case 3
Each of us has our own morality, and both are right for themselves. So for me it is moral to kill the Dog, and for Anne it is immoral. We are both correct.
Case 4
Morality is whatever consensus can be achieve by the society. We talk between us and decide that it is right/wrong to kill the dog. Whatever we collectively decide is right/wrong, is objectively right/wrong in our society.
Case 5
Morality is derived from higher state objective laws. Such laws include:
-Maximise happiness
-Minimise suffering
-Treat people as an end in themselves and not as the means to your ends.
From those higher state objective laws, we can derive whether it is morally right/wrong to kill the dog. There is an objective fact of the matter based on the above laws, whether we are able to derive it or not.
Case 6
Morality is whatever rules and norms a society implements. Whatever is decided is then factually what was decided.
Each case may have variants, such as asking what a perfectly rational human what they would think, rather than asking a human what they think. Of course this brings up the question of what exactly is a perfectly rational human - does such a person even conceptually exist?
Some of the cases which suggest an objective morality, still leave open how we can know of that objective morality, and how we can be confident of our knowledge is in fact the correct knowledge.
Out of those options I outline above, the concept of morality that currently sits best with me is Case 4. I'm not sure if that would technically be cultural relativism, or not - perhaps someone will elucidate on that.
That is an interesting video. It suggests that even babies have a concept of right and wrong. I haven't seen the full study referenced in that video, but I imagine more babies selected the "nice" puppet that the "bad" puppet? I.e it was not 100% or 0%?
Let's say 80% of the babies selected the "nice" puppet and 20% the "bad" puppet. Here are three competing senses of morality:
a) 80% of babies were objectively right. 20% were objectively (and factually) wrong.
b) 80% of babies had one sense of morality, 20% had a different sense. None of there morally was wrong, they are entitled to their own sense of morality.
c) 80% of babies had one sense of morality, 20% had a different sense. None of there morally was wrong. however if the babies were to form a baby society, then in that society the 80% of babies will be morally right and the 20% morally wrong.
I get what you are suggesting, but the problem I have with is this. You are making an observation of nature, and of humans in nature. From this you say that humans want to preserve their family, and even animals do. I agree with you.
However how can we go from that to whether people should want to preserve their family? How do you go from the observation, to the "should" or "ought." If you looked around and say someone who didn't want t preserve their family, then you could either say:
1) I have observed a moral rule that you must want to preserve your family. You don't want to preserve your family, so you are objectively wrong
2) I have observed a moral rule that you must want to preserve your family. You don't want to preserve your family, so I have to change by moral rule to include my new observations of you.
Take the analogy of physics laws (my area). I observe that force applied on an object is proportional to it's mass multiplied by it's acceleration. People have observed that since newton, and it is one of the laws of motion he suggested. This has very accurately and reliably been shown to be true. I'm pretty confident in it. I can use it to make predictions.
However I cannot use it to say how nature should or ought to behave.
If tomorrow I woke up and found that my pen does not follow my Newton's laws of motion, then I can't chastise my pen for not following the correct law. In fact the opposite is true, I need to modify my understanding to include the new observed behaviour.
These are the affirmations of the secular humanist: https://secularhumanism.org/what-is-secular-humanism/affirmations-of-humanism/
I don't think these beliefs are foundational, but I think the foundation from which they flow is that humans are of some special status worthy of considering all of these matters and treating humans differently from all other things in the universe. We don't bother with secular rock-ism, secular porcupine-sim, or secular notebook-ism, but we focus only on those issues that affect humans and, for some reason, elevate them above all else and arrive at a moral system filled with all sorts of affirmations of how they ought be treated. We call this secular humanism.
To claim the secular humanist's beliefs about humans are foundational is to claim something special about humans, but they deny humans have any. If humans have no degree of magic in their constitution, then we'd need to treat human beings like the pool balls that they are.
So, either (1) admit that humans are special and worthy of special treatment and make that your foundation, or (2) deny that and stop with trying to create special rules for these ordinary physical entities. If you choose (1), you're not a secular humanist as they define themselves and you've not avoided any of the problems levied against the theist. If you choose (2), you're not a secular humanist, but some sort of nihilist, which is exactly what the theist expected to be the result.
The theist asserts human's special treatment arises from their being created in God's image and possessing part of a divine essence (soul). If a secular humanist were to accept #1 (and they don't according to what I've read), I might concede their views were foundational, but I'd also think they might be theistic.
@Isaac posted this link:
Quoting Isaac
I haven't read it yet, but I'm going to.
Most of us here are amateurs. Many of us have not read much philosophy. I started a thread about how you don't have to read philosophy to be a philosopher. You don't need to apologize.
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
The babies didn't really make moral judgements at all. They acted based on their preferences. I think that's true of all of us. I think what we call moral judgements are rationalizations we come up with to justify our feelings and actions.
I think our morality is different, and should be different, from laws and rules imposed by authorities.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I think all formal moral philosophy is metaphysics.
It introduces the dichotomy objective vs. merely personal/subjective.
"You may think you look good in that dress, but you're not being objective."
This goes too far.
By relying on others to clarify moral questions, we're only assuming that someone else might know better than we do, or, at most, that someone else knows better than we do.
I propose that the idea of objective morality has to do with
1. confusing power for authority,
or
2. a justification of particular actions that is intended to protect one's tribe or one's ego.
In short, the concept of objective morality has the function of one person or group of persons having or presuming to have power over other people.
I agree. In which case there can't be an absolute objective morality - one where I say you are objectively morally wrong in any instance.
So I suggest there are two kinds of morality:
- The moral valuation individuals perform, than is based on the individual preference.
- The aggregate of the above in a society that allows a society to set up norms that help it function
My claim is that there is no objective morality beyond the above two, and the above two are entirely dependent on the subjective value (or preference as you said) of the people in question.
Find an existentialist who
1. has not renounced his existentialism or otherwise moved away from it,
2. has not died by all acounts prematurely (so that the point of how long they would stick to their existentialism is moot).
Because if the past record of existentialists is anything to go by, they either ditched it eventually, or died relatively young.
Obviously only you are responsible for you own decision, but relying upon others to assist in figuring out moral questions only means your conscientious.
Quoting Banno
Only for the desperate prospective adult convert.
Don't forget that most religious people didn't choose their religion, but were born and raised into it. It's become part of their sense of self, part of their sense of right and wrong by default. They internalized it before their ability to think criticially has developed. Your above objection does not apply to these people.
It only applies to the undecided, the "seekers", who are a minority, and in reference to religion, an aberration. So they're not a relevant population as far as religion goes. Even if they are the ones who experience the moral and other doubts most intensely.
Quoting Hanover
because it goes too far.
Not necessarily faith, but a goal (although, arguably, this can involve faith). By pursuing a goal, nihilism and amoralism are not options anymore. Because by pursuing a goal, a person's actions are directed toward that goal, meaning that the wandering, confusion, inconsistency etc. associated with nihilism and amoralism are eliminated or at least minimized.
Talk about rigidity.
The point is not to lie. You seem to think the point is to have the conversation on the other person's terms.
That would be religious moral historicism. But that's not the point of religious doctrine. Religious doctrines tend to claim to be "timeless", "not bound by time", "for all times" (also for all places).
The point of refering to religious doctrine as a source or justification of morality is that only religious doctrine has the potential to provide the metaphyiscal framework needed for an action to be judged as moral or otherwise.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
And when we compare those new accounts to the more traditional, older ones, we find the newer ones usually wanting.
But for this comparison to make sense, one actually has to study both the old and the new. If you, for example, study the Pali suttas on the one hand, and what some modern mainstream Buddhist teachers are saying on the other, it's clear as day that the latter are inferior. The difference is as evident as the one between hot pizza and cold pizza. But to see that difference, you just need to do the homework yourself, summaries done by other people don't work.
No, I'm pointing to the fact that truth telling can kill people. If we ignore potential consequences we are a fools.
The cure for all existential doubt and for all the distress that might befall the philosophically oriented is to not be philosophical, but to be superficial. That is, ignorance is bliss. So, if you wish to cure your wandering and confusion by refusing to look behind the fact that the goal you're pursuing actually has no meaning, I guess you could temporarily deceive yourself into thinking you had real purpose and that would get you through the day.
I concure. Moral decisions cannot be decided in an algorithmic fashion - they are far too complex. Just as no rule can accomodate the definition of "game", and of "morality", no rules could cover the all possible situations we migth call "moral".
Why do you think many secular humanists are concerned about human rights and work hard to help others and improve human life? Do you think these impulses are the remnants of theism?
Agree. I think wellbeing's chief function is as a foundation for social policy and law.
I understand that "morality" is defined based upon the context or game upon which it used in, thus making the term inherently ambiguous outside the game upon which it is played. But what goes for "morality" goes for all terms, so I question why that would be a special case.
When you say that "game" cannot be defined, I assume that means that the definition of "game" is dependent upon the game that "game" is used in?
Why is "morality" and "game" within that special case of language games that they should be singled out? Aren't all terms on equal footing in this regard?
I think they do good because they are good people. I'm not terribly concerned with motives. If they're feeding the hungry, the hungry are getting fed.
I do think they're sincere in their motivations, meaning they may feel that it's the lack of there being a God that makes them even more moral in that they feel motivated entirely internally and needn't rely upon higher nonsensical powers. That is, I don't think they have deep seated unshakable theistic thoughts. I think they're true blue atheists.
As a theist, though, I do think their goodness does in fact come from a higher source, even if they deny it. Their beliefs (like mine) don't create reality. One of us is wrong regarding this whole theism thing, but I don't contend that theists are better people because they are theists. The idea that faith alone makes you a better person isn't something I subscribe to.
In relation to morality I don't really care for science or biology based arguments. I am not a scientist, so I don't know which tentative theory or source of data is accurate or not. Science based arguments just sound like those old advertisements for chewing gum- '4 out of 5 dentists recommend brand X..'
There are probably many scenarios where wellbeing is not all that helpful and I think Issac's question of 'whose wellbeing' is a good one. When there is competing wellbeing, whose are we chiefly concerned with?
If we can increase the world's overall wellbeing by 200% though the slavery of 5% of the world's population, do we do it?
What do you say to this argument?
Quoting Hanover
Thanks. This seems to be to be a balanced and generous view. Do you subscribe to any form of idealism?
So, in other words, belief in a higher power makes no difference to whether one is moral or not.
Whether your beliefs comport with reality doesn’t affect your moral worth. I'm aware that's a religious belief held by some though.
As I wrote in my first post in this thread:
Quoting T Clark
If morality is, as I claim, a reflection of human nature, there is a sense in which it is objective. It's how we're built by evolution, genetics, and development as supported by socialization and learning.
Yes, but even if that is the case, I suggest it is still subjective.
If I I think it is moral to kill dogs and you think it is immoral to kill dogs, you may tell me that I am wrong because we are built by evolution, genetics, socialization and learning to not kill dogs. Hence my position on this matter is objectively wrong
But I would disagree - the very fact that I exist as a dog kill loving person shows that I am not built by evolution, genetics, socialization and learning to not kill dogs.
(I love dogs, just using that as an example)
So every subjective view on morality that someone has, is the result of evolution, genetics, socialization and learning of that person. And hence no moral view can be considered immoral, as long as someone has that view. Isn't that a subjective morality?
I don't know that you and I disagree. As I wrote, there is a sense in which it is objective. That means there's another sense in which it is subjective. It's a matter of perspective. The important part for me is that there is something human about morality. It's not infinitely malleable and it's not rigidly determined because it's constrained by its relation to humanity.
Another way to express my view would be this.
There is an objective fact that can be observed about human nature. Your baby experiment is this. So in this sense morality is observational and it is objective.
Morality is also used to prescribe what should and ought to happen. And here is where I think it becomes removed from objectivity - because you are looking at the objective observation, then saying that observation is wrong and should be something else.
So yes I would agree with you that morality is objective in some senses and subjective in others.
This is based upon a false assumption of the universality of ethical norms. It is simply not the case that all cultures hold to the same moral rules, which would presumably be the case if morality was the result of genetic evolution (as opposed to social evolution).
You're making a claim that ethical knowledge is a priori, which, if true, would alleviate the need that we teach our children rights from wrong.
:ok:
Agreed.
No, it's based on the assumption of common human motivation.
Quoting Hanover
You have misstated my position.
Quoting Hanover
No, I'm not.
Quoting Hanover
As I've said, at it's most basic, morality is based on empathy. A sense of commonality with other people. I think a lot of that is built in. Hardwired. How much? I don't know.
I know you are replying to the other poster, but I'm playing with ideas here.
Objective Observational Morality
I observe the moral position of a group (a single person, a society, all of humanity, it can be any group). Based on my observation, I can specify an objective sense of morality for that group.
For example (note the numbers and specifics are made up to illustrate a point):
- Most people in the U.S think that it is wrong to sacrifice humans on a high alter because your religion specifies it.
- Most people in all of history think that it is wrong to sacrifice humans on a high alter because your religion specifies it.
-Most people in Mayan culture think is is right to sacrifice humans on a high alter because your religion specifies it.
In all those cases a combination of evolution, genetics, socialization, learning led to the above thinking. Morality is the result of evolution, genetics, socialization, learning and hence all the above are moral.
Subjective Prescription Morality
Where I elevate my values to prescribe the actions of others. This can also be where my culture elevates its values to prescribe the actions of other cultures.
For example:
-I think that human sacrifice is wrong. I think the Mayans were wrong to carry out human sacrifice.
But this is subjective morality based on my values. Clearly the Mayans didn't share those values, as evidenced by the fact they sacrificed humans. Can I somehow objectively overrule the Mayans? I'm not so sure.
Thoughts?
Then why the variation cross-culturally?
Quoting T Clark
How are you distinguishing a priori from "hardwired"?
Some cultures have purity rules, dietary rules, sexual prohibitions, caste systems, gender rules, body modification rules, ritualistic demands, etc etc. These ethical rules often violate progressive liberal views on what empathy demands.
I'm not disagreeing that my modern sensibilities don't prioritize empathy as an ethical criterion, but if I'm going to proclaim that the true way to determine morality for all cultures in an absolute sense, I'm not going to be able to declare that it arises from the natural human condition because it doesn't seem to when I look at the human condition across cultures.
I could only say that you are a victim of incorrectly attributing similarities where there shouldn't be. We are talking humans here. Let's get physics out of here.
I preface my post with, this thread is intentionally contentious, without wanting to come to a common understanding.
Quoting Hanover
Here's what I wrote in a previous post.
Quoting T Clark
Quoting Hanover
A priori generally refers to knowledge. When I say "hardwired" I'm talking about motivation, values, feelings.
Quoting Hanover
I wasn't trying to proclaim anything. I wasn't suggesting a way to determine right from wrong. I just gave my understanding of how moral feelings and judgements might have developed.
Which question? The OP is asking:
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
Well, in that case, we could start from incontrovertible truths, these being hedonic judgments, in re morality, oui? Let's keep things simple and begin with nobody likes to be physically assaulted. To that one could add psychological pain e.g. insults. These are universal and true across the board.
To complicate matters, though the indicators of good & bad are clear viz. :smile: & :sad: , the triggers are not. The classic spanner in the works for ethics is masochism which typifies one man's meat is another man's poison. This, let's just say, exception, thwarts any attempt at formulating universal laws with respect to morality. This state of affairs is what moral relativism is.
It's worth mentioning here that the differences mentioned vide supra seem to be intuitive in nature i.e. not much in the way of systematic analysis is done. There could be an underlying rationale that justifies the diverse values i.e. moral relativism could simply be an illusion and can be dispelled à la how Thanos sees through Dr. Strange's magical clone illusion in Avengers, Infinity war! :grin:
Those are not metrics. I'm asking you how you measure whether someone (or society's) well-being has been harmed. That measurement is required for the objectivity of your proposed scheme.
Possibly. I was trying to give a charitable understanding of the ethical naturalist position (despite not really being a fan). Personally, I've never found a truly satisfactory term for what they're trying to get at. 'Biological urge' doesn't really do it either (as if there were non-biological urges - what would they even be?). I think - to give a fully wordy definition - what they're trying to get at are urges which seem to occur to us without the influence of others - ie ones which are unaffected by culture. That's the motivation behind Karen Wynn's work, it's why she studies babies.
I think, despite the lack of an easy term, it is an important distinction (well it's important in Psychology - it may turn out to be irrelevant in Philosophy, we'll find out!) It's demonstrating that there are (possibly) some pre-wired beliefs (in psychological terms - tendencies to act as if...) and that would obviously have all sorts of interesting consequences. Morality, in some respects, is the hardest, but most interesting of these. Alison Gopnik is carrying out similar studies on beliefs about Physics. My wife's work, incidentally, is in a similar vein on certainty (lying, trusting sources, etc). I don't really know what implications these studies have on the various related philosophies, that's what I'm interested to explore, but it seems to me that we can't, in our philosophical investigation of morality, simply ignore Wynn's findings, they surely must have some meaning? I'm just not sure what. I'm pretty clear, however, that its' not the sort of simple one-rule ethical naturalism espoused so often, other studies rule that out.
Perhaps a more interesting question is the meta-question. What is it about "morality is..." type statements which so appeal to people? We hear dozens of them, all wanting it to be one single simple metric. Why? What's the benefit, or attraction, of it being so simple when it's abundantly clear that morality is anything but simple?
I see the studies you present as, unsurprisingly, showing the intrinsically social nature of humanity. Reinforcing this point is well worth doing, especially in the face of the myth of competition found in capitalist ideology. it also perhaps serves to demonstrate the pathological nature of egocentrism and sociopathy.
My answer to the "morality is..." approach is the same as for most of the trite, overly simplistic answers to philosophical questions. Folk think philosophy is easy. They read an article and think they have the answer. But they do not understand the process involved in criticism, and see any questioning of their reading as an attack. One only has to flick through this thread for examples.
That is, it's down to laziness.
Yeah, Karen Wynn is married to Paul Bloom (another Psychologist - we're all married to each other, it's quite unseemly!), and he works a lot on opposing that very narrative, so I think it's part of that, certainly is for me.
Far from resolving moral questions, these studies simply demonstrate the deeply embedded reasons why we ask those questions in the first place - essentially we have multiple, complex prosocial proclivities and, typical of our species, we try to resolve them socially. It's unfortunate that some (including some of my less enlightened colleagues) confuse the reason for asking a question with its answer.
Quoting Banno
Probably, yeah. Simple narratives have a strong appeal when pushed for mental bandwidth, and moral questions are so ubiquitous. For my twopenneth I also think there's a laziness in the art of persuasion too, it leads to an excessive attraction toward powerful answers (I've often referred to it as looking for a bigger stick with which to beat one's opposition). "God said so" is a pretty big stick, but "Logic says so" is favoured by many.
A favourite of mine. See ought/is, above. Of course, it is far more complex than I acknowledged in that discussion, but there is a point in raising what is a non-trivial problem that had been ignored.
Absolutely. I see it from a pragmatic, rather than logical angle (though the same problem, I believe). There will forever be a need for some language which can be used to discuss how things ought to be . We can say "morality is just a biological urge to reduce harm" or some such similar oversimplification, but then we'd just need a new word to use when we ask "ought we follow such an urge or not?" So we might just as well stick with the one we've got.
I am not sure you have the luxury to dismiss Knowledge from a philosophical inquire and biology from your efforts to understand a biological by product!
Both practices are the main ingredients for a pseudo philosophical soufflé
This may be true but I can't judge their merit, not being a biologist. I am very aware of people using what is rightly expert knowledge to argue a point on this site (be it advanced exegetical understanding of Plato or quantum mechanics).
(To borrow from the old joke) I don't know anything about morality, but I know what I like.
So Stress hormones or the presence of endorphins to deal with pain or the lack of metabolic molecules due to undernourishment or the absence of oxytocin during social interactions(lack of trust) etc etc are not objective metrics of well being??????
What do you even think well being is? How and why we value well being. Do you even know what Homeostasis is?
Do you really think that well being is a ''bubble" in our world without any connections to our biological nature? Actions affect our biology either physically or mentally and we can objectively measure the impact by observing our chemisty and brain function.
By identifying the evolved drives and urges we can easily learn what is valuable for an organism to survive and flourish.
Then how do you expect to arrive to WISE conclusions about a biological by product?????
This is what I am talking about in all the threads of this forum.
People want to participate in these discussions without bringing any facts in these conversations but they demand others to respect their opinions.
This is not an accusation for you since you have been one of the most rational individuals I have interacted in here.
The problem is much bigger since most people hold strong beliefs on ideas that are unfounded in zero epistemology.
Scientifically we can hook individuals in brain scans and analyze their bloods and diagnose frustration or happiness or anxiety or being in love just by studying basic metrics that give away their current state and by knowing the goals set by our homeostasis, our drives and urges.
This is a Scientific topic, not a purely philosophical one.
I suspect they probably are, but you'll find an increase in stress hormones in a child denied sweets, you'll find a decrease in oxytocin in a prisoner. You dismissed both as measures of well-being.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I do indeed know what homeostasis is, I'm not sure what it has to do with our valuing well-being.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
No, I doubt that.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
At the time we can, yes. How do you propose we measure the effects of our actions after a decade via observing our chemisty and brain function.
Homeostasis drives our chemicals responsible for our emotions and feelings. Feeling are how we are informed that we i.e. have low blood sugar, thirsty, suppressed, happy etc etc thus affecting our biological chemistry even more. its a top -down- top causation recorded by our chemistry and it can be used to objectively diagnose whether an organism experiences situation that promote his/her well being.
Quoting Isaac
-We agree on that.
Quoting Isaac
-Why should we do that? We already know from our biology what we "should value". What we need to do is construct a society that servers those values (our well being).
This is why Secular Morality stresses the need that our moral laws SHOULD serve the wellbeing of all members and the society as a whole.
i.e. kids might like sweets, but we know we need to limit their pleasure because it has implications to other members of a society.(health expenses, changes in brain chemistry). Do you know that the consumption of junk food(sweets) has been used as an argument in the court for the defense of a crime? (Stanford Molecular biology- Robert Sapolsky).
So we need to understand since morality refers to the impact human behavior has on others our judgments on well being SHOULD never be limited to one individual's seek for pleasure.
The quagmire I have with that line of thinking is as follows. We say it is an incontrovertible truth that people don;t like doing X. Nobody likes doing X.
Then we observe a person doing X. We observe a society doing X We observe a civilisation doing X
We can no longer simply dismiss it as an incontrovertible truth that people don't like X.
I'm suggesting incontrovertible truths about human nature are entirely dependant on our observation of human nature, and hence entirely dependent on the preferences, values, beliefs and actions of the individual humans.
it is an analogy, and I think an apt one as I am asking whether there are objective facts about morality.
If you think it right to do X, and I think it is wrong, how do we proceed to show who is correct?
If we are in search of objective facts of morality, then surely we can't simply dismiss the minority.
But the bigger problem for me is the majority thinking and minority thinking vary between cultures and across eras, hence pushing me towards cultural relativism ( I may be using that term loosely).
And happiness is subjective is it not? If you were unhappy in a certain situation, I cannot decree that you be happy as you are living the good life. The very fact that you are subjectively not happy, means you are not happy regardless of what I think you should be. Hence we can't escape subjective values.
If you were happy punching new born babies, I can't decree that you are not happy because it is incontrovertibly against human nature to be happy punching new born babies. The very fact that you are happy shows that it is in human nature, at least for you, to be happy punching human babies.
An act is moral when it promotes the well being of the society and its individual members.
Here are two statements that might help us leave those two arguments behind.
The act of keeping kids from satisfying their opioid rewarding mechanisms in their brains doesn't qualify as an act against their Well Being.
The act of isolating people (prisoners) who acted against the well being of their society is moral. Whether our methods of correcting are moral or not is irrelevant(an additional discussion). After all their well being is not linked to the well being of the society any more.
It can't, for the reasons I've given - 1) Underdetermination - there are too many uncontrolled-for factors for us to say which one caused the change in homeostasis, and 2) Timescale - some activities (like exercise) cause a negative change in homeostasis in the short term but lower the rate of such changes in the long term as the body adapts, so the valence of most factors cannot be determined by immediate assessment of the impact on biochemistry.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
We know nothing of the sort. Our 'biology' can only tell us that something in the entire current and recent past environment as caused a biochemical response which we, at the time, describe as a negative one.
It does not tell us which factor in that environment was responsible for the change in biochemistry, nor can it tell us how to value that change at the time compared to the value we might place on it afterwards. and none of that is even touching yet on the degree of construction between the lower level models interpreting bodily signals and the higher level models responsible for responses such as expressing negative emotions.
You said well-being was measurable by...
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
You will see spikes in those chemicals when you deny a child sweets. So are you now saying that's not how we measure well-being? In which case you'll need to revise your answer to that question.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Says who? I thought you were arguing all this was objective. Where's the scientific fact that tells us a prisoner's well-being is no longer tied to the well-being of society?
-what? nobody talked about what causes change in homeostasis. The argument is that changes in homeostasis drive behavior so that an organism can attend and "correct" those changes. Its time now to hear arguments that chemical do not drive behavior...because of Underdetermination...lol
2. Your comment is irrelevant to the matter in hand. Homeostasis is a desirable state that our organism strives to sustain.
The same is true for other desirable states like states free of pain, stress , anxiety etc.
Seeking states that promote our wellbeing means that our system is free from secretions of deleterious hormones like glucocorticoids, catecholamines which are the main cause of pathology and health issues in general.
So what we understand as well being is not arbitrary and subjective, it has strong biological (empirical) grounds. The actions that "ruffle" those fragile chemical balances can be evaluated. Again this doesn't mean that any action that affects the desire for pleasure of a kid qualify as immoral. As we have established in previous comments well being is more than pleasure and social rules.
Quoting Isaac
-Again...our biology receives all the "blows" from acts that are against our well being. Immoral acts do not manifest in a bubble above humans.
Quoting Isaac
Says our action to remove them from our society for a necessary period of time. Do you think that its not an objective fact that a child molester should be removed from the society and learn that members of it won't put up with his actions?
Sure its an other ethical question how our systems treat our prisoners and we do have efforts, mainly in European countries to address their well being but you need to understand that there is a disconnection between those two population's well being for practical reasons.(economical).
I won't disagree with you on this one. Maybe the disconnection from our society and our inability to understand human biology has justified immoral practices against prisoners for far too long.
But again the principle of well being reigns supreme and can help us see what we do wrong.
You argued that Immoral actions were those which caused a disruption in well-being which could be measured by a change in certain biochemicals. Changes in biochemicals away from base levels is a change in homeostasis.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
We haven't established that at all. I asked you for a definition of well-being which excluded a child being denied sweets and so far you've only provided me with a definition which includes such a response.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Right. So how do we establish, with the scientific rigour you're after, which of the many potential 'blows' was responsible for the chemical changes you're claiming as a measure of well-being?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
You claim has been one of objectivity. You can't cite our society happening to do something as evidence of objective moral facts.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Yes, absolutely. I don't think it's an objective fact that a child molester should be removed from the society and learn that members of it won't put up with his actions. I just think that a child molester should be removed from the society and learn that members of it won't put up with his actions.
-Let me clarify. You and Tom asked reasons why Well Being qualifies as an objective criterion in our moral evaluations. I argued there are objective ways to demonstrate that our basic biological drives, urges and setup have evolved to ensure the well being of our organisms and moral behavior happens to add on that. By quantifying specific metrics of our biology we see that conditions that favor our well being are promoted by moral behavior from our peers and us.
Quoting Isaac
-Of course we have. Pleasure is not a metric for well being on its own. Again the definition of well being includes all the members, not just the member who is affected by a rule. His parents will have to pay for his teeth, his insulin shots, his larger clothes and witness his unhappiness when his reaches the age of dating etc et. So monitoring sugar intake in children is a promoter of well being for kids,parents and society(healthy members) and we only reduce some experiences of pleasure.
Quoting Isaac
that is an irrelevant discussion IMHO. I referred to our ability to quantify Well being just to point out how moral acts reinforce those same metrics that our biological mechanisms strive to serve.
Quoting Isaac
I don't understand your question, can you elaborate?
Quoting Isaac
So you don't think that it is objectively good for the society to remove a threat for their children and try to retrain that individual so he won't be a threat in the future?
Apples and oranges. The method of observation and examination of human interaction is different than the one required of physics.
What metrics?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
OK, so to test whether some behaviour is moral we have to put all the members of the society it effects into fMRI scanners, test for cortisol, oxytocin, in every one (or a stratified sample?). Then what? Do we average the results, use consensus? What's the threshold above which an action is immoral? How much of these chemicals is worth individual autonomy? what a rise in oxytocin coupled with a rise in cortisol, how do handle such a complex reactions as that? What about temporary spike in stress response followed by a subsequent drop in the long term?
And finally, when we've got all these measures. Ought we follow them? Another round of tests I assume...?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I'm aware of your intentions, but the effort failed as you've failed to show that we have any such ability, nor that moral acts reinforce those metrics. For every metric you mention it seems moral acts reinforce some and worsen others depending entirely on subjective choices about long-term gains and the relative value of individual autonomy vs the rest of society.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
You're saying that some moral acts actually harm the well-being of individuals - sometime temporarily (as in the child denied sweets), sometimes in exchange for the well-being of society (as in the prisoner). It is then a subjective choice. Weighing short term loss against long term gain, weighing individual autonomy against societal harms. These are (as things stand in your theory) still completely subjective. You've offered no objective algorithm for deciding them.
If we find (using you biochemical metrics) that individual A doing activity X causes a massive rise in his 'well-being-o-meter', but a tiny drop in the 'well-being-o-meter' of the whole of society, is activity X now immoral? Does A's freedom to do X count for nothing? If not, then how much does it count and what biochemicals tell us what weight to give it?
If we find (using you biochemical metrics) that individual A doing activity X causes a small rise in his 'well-being-o-meter' now, but a large drop in his 'well-being-o-meter' in ten years, is denying him activity X now moral? Does A's personal hyperbolic discounting count for nothing? If not, then how much does it count and what biochemicals tell us what weight to give it?
Indeed. This is where the ethics begins.
No man! Why is this so difficult for you. Again as I told you many times,those biological metrics only verify to us that well being is an important principle for morality. Well being is contingent to those biological metrics. We know that our physical and mental health depends on specific values for those metrics.
We don't need to scan people in order to do a moral evaluation...lol
The only thing we need to do is study those metrics, understand why well being is linked to those metrics(why i.e. forcing the productions of glucocorticoids by putting people under stressful situations(immoral acts) is linked to documented pathodology) and use well being as principle for our moral judgments.
Quoting Isaac
First of all Its not my job to show anything. Its everyone's obligation to learn about basic human biology IF his intention is to talk about a biological byproduct of human behavior and be in the position to judge people's arguments. No matter what I "show" if one lacks relevant epistemic foundations my efforts will be a waste of time.
The best source on the topic (online) is the work done by Robert Sapolsky on stress, human behavior and biology. His first book "why zebras don't get ulcers" is a great introduction on stress in social species and their hierarchical societies. His monumental work "BEHAVE" is a book that contains all our knowledge (and our ignorance) on human biology. You will find his lectures at Stanford and his talks on the subject on youtube and other places.
Of course he isn't the only source on the topic, but its a good starting point.
Quoting Isaac
-No it doesn't, why must I keep repeating the same things. Those metrics just stress the importance of well being, they are not "tools" for individual moral evaluations.
In order to understand what well being is you will need to grasp the differences between Happiness and Pleasure.
Societies are a necessary evil in many aspects since they increase our chances of survival (Being-to be/stay alive) and morality is there to address our wellness ....this make up the term well being.
In societies we need to follow specific rules so that our well being won't be on the expense of other people's well being.
This is why in Secular morality we stress the importance of the well being of individuals in relation to the well being of the whole society. Those ups and downs you mentioned are inevitable but the well being of the whole society (not in the expense of the few) rewards everyone.
So striving for the well being of every individual and our society as a whole is an effort based on objective grounds and principles. It a work in progress for sure,way to many things to figure out but at least we have a point to start and a principle to make objective moral judgments.
i.e. we know that stress related pathology is the No 1 threat in human and social animal groups. If an act inflicts suffering and increases the chances of death then we can list which acts have this affect on human condition and evaluate them as good or bad(moral or immoral).
Since such acts affect our wellness and our ability to "be" (survive) we are able to identify a connection between well being and morality.
Sam Harris is wrong about science and morality
To be honest I can not see how an Analytic and systematic way of gathering and analyzing facts can NOT be the proper way to inform our moral evaluations but I do like any critique on Harris's ideas....because I disagree with many things he has to say (especially politics).
This is more sympathetic: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris
I point out specific biological metrics that render well being an objective principle for our moral evaluations.
Either way ...Even if we agree that Well being is a subjective standard for morality, from the moment we decide to use it as such we can arrive to objective judgments.
Its like the goal we assume in a game.
I will argue that the goal of a game, lets pick chess, is to win. You might argue that is to have fun or whatever.
So Winning can be a subjective principles(among other candidates) in a game of chess. From the moment we both accept that winning is the goal,we then can make Objective judgments on what moves favor a win or a loss.
Now I can argue that winning adds to the element of fun and that fun is contingent to the element of winning. I can point to personal experiences with siblings and friends or professional sports or challenges in a bar or at home, the established need of clear rules and officials that overview the process and how fun goes out of the window when people are exposed for cheating to win . The excitement is multiplied by the prospect of the outcome (the goal of winning).
The same is true for well being. We can say that Well being is a subjective goal but the moment we accept it we are able to produce objective judgments on which acts support or not that goal.
I go a step further and point out that Well being is also a "goal" for specific human biological metrics and social behavior.
Since immoral or moral acts affect those metrics, we are forced to link those two.(morality and well being). Acts with moral value promote beneficial states of our biology.
So science can "determine human values” or “tell us what’s objectively true about morality” or “give us answers about right and wrong,” by offering to our philosophy the facts needed to make those determinations.
In reality science doesn't decide what is moral or not. THe term being (being(surviving) and well(flouring) address two "goals" that our biological drives and urges serve.
Our drives "force" us to Survive (by emotions like hunger, thirst), to flourish(increase safety and meet energy demands, cooperate) and to procreate(sexual and social drives).
Seeking Happiness and avoiding pain are qualities that depend on our moral actions.
So the claim of the author "Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature ". is wrong.
(premise 1 1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.)
Its a sound philosophical argument supported by the above facts. but again as I pointed out, even if it was a subjective declaration,by accepting it we can arrive to objective conclusions on what acts promote our well being and what doesn't.
Again my argument on the objective nature of well being would be falsified only if you were able to point out cases where well being isn't contingent to those biological metrics.(Pathology and stress)
It would also help your case identifying immoral acts that can promote the well being of members and their society as a whole.
I know you do not agree with this example, but do you understand it? That the argument is that there is an evaluation in between "Rape occurs" and "Rape is wrong"?
The method of observing anything and formulating a theory based on that is the same.
-Observe X
-Create a theory matching my observations - "X happens" theory
-Observe X only happening some of the time, Y some of the time
-Update the theory to match the observation - "X and Y happens" theory
With morality, instead of updating their theory to reflect the observations in step 4 above, people sometimes maintain that the theory in step 2 is correct and that in 4 is wrong because Y is against human nature.
But the very fact that Y was observed in humans in step 3 shows that it is a part of human nature.
So the part of morality where we tell others what they should or ought to do, can't come from observing human nature, because if we see someone doing something we consider immoral, the very fact they are doing it shows it is human nature to do it.
We can't see someone committing murder and then say murder is wrong because it is against human nature. We have just seen that is in human nature.
Maybe there are better arguments for objective morality that avoid the above pitfall, but I am fairly new to the topic so have only just started reading about it.
Meh. They are an indication that I am eating dinner and watching the news. Maybe tomorrow.
Cheers. GO back to this, if you would:
Quoting Banno
Do you understand the is/ought distinction?
DO you agree that there is a difference in kind between saying how things are, and how things ought to be?
:scream:
You mean to say a prisoner will be released from jail feeling more bitter than when he was arraigned? No wonder recidivism is so rampant. Criminologists should talk to biologists/psychologists.
:rofl:
:brow:
How is this relevant to my position????
Nature stays indifferent on the topic of our well being. We as agents that value our well being investigate which biological metrics enable the state of well being and what kind of behavior among peers in a society promotes it.
In the above framework , we don't have to assume agency in nature and the is/ought is only relevant to what we value and want for all the members of our society.
This is the only way our list of oughts can be evaluated....under a shared principle.
The is/ought relation is a subject of study...you should dismiss it automatically because some philosophers did not have the science knowledge to analyze it.
It's well known that Banno is a marsupial Hobbit. It is rare he is not having a poached egg on toast with vegemite, or some such abominable snack.
I pointed out that those metrics are useful to show us that well being has biological foundations(not arbitrary) and moral/immoral behavior affects our biological negative or positive.
This topic interest me I have a science background. If I understand you correctly you are saying:
-We have values
-One of the things we value is our wellbeing
-We can then use science to investigate the best societal methods to achieve that wellbeing
Please correct me if I am mis-stating your position.
I mostly agree with you. However I would say that only the third point above is science. The third scientific point is dependant on the first two philosophical points to specify the values of the desired outcomes.
It is the conundrum I faced as someone form a science background where eventually I had to accept that philosophy was required in order to specify what is valuable, which science can then investigate. That is how I ended up on this forum!
Now if everyone agreed on the value of outcomes, there would be no issues. We would all just live happily ever after together. But the issue is people value things differently on the most contentious issues. You mention the shared principle - the problem comes when there is disagreement on what should be the shared principle. Science can't answer that question.
Once people have placed values on outcomes, then science can be effectively used to investigate how best to achieve that outcome, based on those values. We definitely should be promoting the use of science to analyse and improve society.
I still don't get it. If imprisonment messes up our brains, chemically, we need to look into how long the effect lasts; quite possibly the damage to brain chemistry is permanent or long-lasting. This means those who've been released from gaol (physically) are still doing time (mentally). :chin:
That argument also favors the role of "well being" in morality.
No, we can objectively prove that both premises are based on evidence provided by science. I have explained them and I can do that again if you like.
In short our biological drives, urges and biology (homeostasis) have evolved in a specific way that force us through affections and emotions to strive for specific things and conditions. What we strive for is what we reason in to the concept of "value".
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
-We are in agreement on that...but for our philosophy to be valid it must be founded on Objective systematic knowledge (Science).
I am not the one who tried to distinquish science from philosophy. I always state that you can not do science without philosophy and good philosophy without science.
The philosophy needed in this case offers us Sound Arguments since all the premises are founded on science.
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
-Of course it can. Our disagreement doesn't make the principle or its metrics subjective! In order to understand how we value things we need to explain how our biology experiences our environment, how those stimuli produce affections and emotions and how we reason them in to feelings, values, meaning.
We "value" specific things based on what our biological drives and urges are evolved to strive for.
Those are not as subjective as most people think.
:up: Prisons, I checked, can be traced back to the friggin' Bronze Age. I'm just shocked that it's still in vogue. Do you know of other Bronze Age relics that have survived the test of time? We need an upgrade and fast. Who's in charge here? Who's responsible for analyzing all the research papers on overall well-being of people, criminal or not?
You say:
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I fully agree with that. If we are following the scientific method, we then have to empirically observe the human species, to find out what they strive for according to the above paragraph.
And what we see empirically is that often they strive for working together. Sometimes they strive to fight each other and assert dominance. Sometimes they murder and rape. Sometimes they hold hands and sing together.
It is the way it is. So we can observe human behaviour objectively, I agree.
It is when prescribing action, that problems arise. When I observe a murder being committed, and I say that it was objectively wrong, I am saying the empirical world should change to fit my theory. However good science does the opposite - where empirical evidence and theory differ, you update the theory to match the empirical evidence.
Take the following example:
- I have a scientific theory of human behaviour, that says people in situation X would not want to kill each other. Due to the way we have evolved, humans will value not killing in situation X.
- I observe humans in situation X. I observe a human kill another in situation X
- Following the scientific method, I now have to update my theory. I can no longer hold onto a theory that humans in situation X will not want to kill - I have empirical evidence that my previous theory was wrong.
An objective morality theory, on the other hand, attempts to say that the empirical observation was wrong, and the empirical world needs to change to fit the theory. It is fundamentally different to science.
So science cannot say what ought to happen, if that didn't happen.
No. When it comes to people deliberately killing people, this is because the killer had the means the motive, and the opportunity to do so.
The Nazi scenario is emotionally loaded, but grossly unrealistic. If you think a Nazi patrol looking for hidden Jews would simply take a person's word for gold, and move on after a No ..
Relative socioeconomic wellbeing shouldn't be underestimated. Not as a goal, nor in its consequences for the person's metaphysical outlook. It seems such people actually are happy.
No. The Nazi scenario is not 'grossly unrealistic' - it happened to my grandparents in World War Two - German troops regularly went door to door asking locals if they had any information about Jews and/or resistance people in hiding. My grandmother also happened to be hiding people in her basement.
But this scenario applies to anyone who is asking you provide an answer to a question the true answer of which which could result in someone's harm. It's a simple way to dramatise the flaws in deontological approaches. Another good example would be a violent male asking if anyone knows the new address of his ex-partner who has fled his attacks. This comes up in my work a lot.
And the Nazi soldiers just took her word for gold?
This is what is so unrralistic about this scenario: that the soldiers would just belive people.
You are still letting the other person dictate the terms.
You could say any number of things in reply, or nothing at all, and they could all be true, and still not divulge sensitive information. You just need to be creative. Probably your granparents were.
SO that's a "no", then. You do not understand the is/ought distinction. So you have not understood, yet alone directly addressed, the main ethical objection to your program.
You haven't post a single argument. You just post irrelevant links.
This distinction is not an answer to Secular Morality.
i.e. start from wikipedia...check the long list of responses and follow the references.
Good to see you are doing some research on the issue. You are a clever lad, and you will eventually see the problem. Then you can start doing ethics.
It would help if you didn't prejudge this. Yes, they accepted her words. They had no reason to think she knew anything. These were weekly door knocks undertaken in the hope that neighbors would rat each other out. Three minutes at each house in the street.
If they suspected my grandparents, they would have torn the place apart and wouldn't have asked the questions in the first place.
-"Why ought we seek wellbeing?"
-This is what you are failing to understand even if I have explained it multiple times in these 11 pages.
We don't ought to seek wellbeing! Its like asking why do we ought to seek a state without pain!
We are preconditioned by our biology and our basic drives and urges! Do you choose to ignore your basic emotions of hunger or thirst or feeling too hot or too cold or to be isolated. By addressing those basic emotions and urges you promote your well being.
Why is this so difficult for you???
And this is what no amount of scientific evidence can address.
Great example. Why do you think pharmaceuticals decide to produce pain killers but not pain inducers to by over the counter? Because we value specific states without the need to convince ourselves that we ought to value states free of pain.
-"If smoking causes cancer, presumably it is also morally wrong to sell tobacco.... "
-of course is unethical for many reasons.
That is NOT an ethical question...its a given since we know we have biological drives and urges that "force'' to survive and avoid suffering.
We don't have a choice valuing well being. Science can even point to the biological mechanisms responsible for seeking wellbeing.
So your claim now is that people do not make choices? Is that really where you would go?
People do make choices...but they don't choose what choices they have.
i.e. we don't choose to have a strong urge to avoid pain or suffering.
Partly that's because what we call wellbeing is what we do indeed choose. There is at leat the threat of circularity in the notion of choosing wellbeing.
Partly it's because "wellbeing" is close to a synonym for "the good". That is there is also the threat of a slide between "we choose what is good" and "we choose wellbeing".
But it is not the whole of ethics. So for instance fairness enters into ethics as well. Consider “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” or "Brave New World".
So it's not that Sam Harris is wrong. It's just that his account is incomplete.
That's not a criticism of his account alone; I think it a more general issue. No moral system can be complete. Morality, and human choice and action more generally, are not the sort of thing that can be systematised. This should not be surprising, since it is clear that as soon as a system is posited, our creativity will find issue with it.
Maths provides a close analogue. We know that any mathematical system complex enough to encompass addition will be incomplete; there will always be mathematical truths that are not provable from within that system. Why would we suppose that ethics would be any less perplexing?
Any system that limits itself to how things are can never encompass how things ought to be.
If one were to posit that part of what we ought do is to seek wellbeing, I'd have no objection. But it is not the whole.
I think this may be the most important point to bear in mind when one is trying to 'solve' a problem that has preoccupied some of our greatest thinkers.
I suspect Harris was propelled by that question so beloved of fundamentalists - 'How can atheists have a morality if you don't believe in God?' In his earnest pursuit to provide a foundational basis to secular morality, I think he may well have overcompensated.
I'm telling you that you are mis-attributing "objectivity" here.
How do they do that? If those metrics are not themselves 'well-being', then you've got to somehow relate them to the concept of well-being you're using. You've still not actually defined well-being.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Here's a quick stripped down version of how one would design an experiment in any field of human sciences. I want to find out, for example, if being in the dark raises stress levels. I have to decide
1. How am I going to measure stress levels and what time period after the exposure to dark am I going to count as a response?
2. How am I going to control for other factors which might raise stress whilst the subject is in the dark, to be sure it wasn't those factors causing my results?
3. How am I going to ensure that any results I get aren't an artefact of my statistical analysis, rather than an effect of the exposure?
4. How do I avoid expectation bias - in this case stress levels being raised simply because the subjects expect to be exposed to something that raises stress.
5. How am I going to show that the factor I measured and the response I measured (both quantifiable terms) actually relate to the qualitative experiences I'm claiming to investigate?
6. How is anyone going to practically make use of what I've found out - how does it translate to the field of practice I'm aiming it at?
You want to claim we can do this with morality. That we can show immoral acts (the dark in my example) cause a drop in well-being (rise in stress in my example).
Yet you've missed virtually every step.
1. You've not said how well-being will be measured, nor at what timescale after the putative immoral act.
2. You've not said how you would work out that the act being tested would be isolated from all the other possible causes of a drop in well-being so as to show that this act (and not just a coincidence of confounding factors) caused the observed drop in well-being.
3. You've not provided any information at all on the statistical methods.
4. You've not said how to avoid the expectation bias in cultural ascriptions of acts as immoral and the accompanying expectation that they would affect well-being somehow
5. You've not related your measures to what we call 'well-being', nor what we call an 'act'. Nor have you taken into account any reinforcement feedback that might arise from those definitions
6. You've not answered@Banno's question about how you go from your results to any compulsion to act in the target audience (presumably those on the horns of a moral dilemma).
Answer issues 1-6 (although you can do as I do and just get a friendly statistician to do 3 for you!). Then we can see how your theory holds up.
Well being is a state which encompasses many different elements like positive emotions, good physical health and social connections. We can list all the emotions and characteristics that promote such a state and trace them back to our basic drives and homeostatic configurations and see that we are biologically preconditioned to seek a state of well being.
Well I haven't missed any step because none of you have admitted yet that you value well being as the main reason why we are positive towards moral acts and negative towards immoral acts.
If you do then we can take examples of acts and answer all the steps you list.
Unfortunately in that list you are repeating things that I have pointed out as unnecessary.
Again we need those metrics to establish biological predisposition towards a state of well being. From the moment we do that we can accept well being as an objective criterion for moral judgments.
The acts that promote our well being are moral, those against are immoral.
IF we agree with that last thing, then we can proceed on the temporal framework of our judgments since every act can affect differently our wellbeing as individuals and as a society.
Again Banno's question (is/ought) is irrelevant since we have already pointed out that biological predisposition to a specific state is not a matter of choice. We are the descendants of individuals with a genetic predisposition to seek happiness, physical health and avoid suffering.
Well our biological setup and markers dictate the preferable state and we reason afterwards. This is a fact that makes the concept of "free will" a bit shaky.
Quoting Banno
-Well being is a state while "choosing" what is good for our wellbeing is a different thing all together. This is where our role as agents is needed in order to evaluate what is good for our well being.
We need to understand whether an act is good for everyone so that it wont come back as a boomerang on our well being.
Our well being is contingent to our society's well being.
i.e. we can not promote our well being for ever by steal people's money. Our act is hurting other people's well being and they will act against us(put us in jail). So its important to understand how the well being of our society is linked to our moral evaluations.
Doing the good thing is what promotes our well being. We might have to choose what good thing to do but we don't choose the importance and connection of well being to our moral acts.
Quoting Banno
Fairness is a value we see in moral acts. Fairness is a promoter of well being of a society.
Quoting Banno
-How is incomplete?Fairness is not a competing principle. Its an evaluation of specific moral acts that can promote our well being!
Quoting Banno
I can not agree or disagree with an absolute statement without putting in to the test all known systems
and prove their incompleteness.
There are huge difficulties in their applicability but the point isn't to just prove their incompleteness but which one allow objective moral judgments.
The argument for systematicity but objectivity. We can arrive to objective moral judgements if we acknowledge an objective principle by which we can evaluate which acts are in favor or against it.
Will we find grey zones and inadequate data for many cases? Sure.
But we will be able to answer many of our moral questions and dilemmas .
Quoting Banno
-We need to remove absolute concepts from our reality. Absolute concepts are only there as beacons to help up strive toward a goal, but it would be irrational to think that we can finally arrive to an abstract or to abandon all efforts because we can't.
Identifying which acts affect the well being of a society and all its members is a good rule of thumb that we can build on.
Quoting Banno
-And again you return back to this deepity that has nothing to do with how our biology forces specific "oughts". Its not our choice to decide which acts promote our well being, that is already decided by our biology. Our job is to decide whether we care about well being and whether we bother to act accordingly.
Quoting Banno
The correct question is do we ought to seek morality? The question is simple. Since our biology forces us to value our well being ...THEN WE OUGHT TO SEEK MORALITY because our moral judgments essentially are the evaluation of acts that are either against or in favor our well being.
PhilosophyRunner, the brief answer to your question is, reality is objective, not subjective. In order for humans to survive and have a moral life, their philosophy must be based upon objective reality and it's demands. Or, to paraphrase a slogan, "science doesn't care how you feel about it".
Do your words and actions support survival, or impede it, that is the criterion.
The essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" by Ayn Rand states this better than I can.
PhilosophyRunner, you state, "...coming from a science background" about yourself.
This causes me to wonder about your education. I have no formal education, so no knowledge of how schools are designed. I was under the impression that a person with a major in the hard sciences was still required to take several courses in the humanities in order to graduate.
That raises the question: Which of the humanities do architects, physicists, engineers, programmers, chemists, etc. most require to live good lives, to have a complete education? Do schools at least require all freshman to take classes in logic, learn how to recognize and refute logical fallacies, regardless of their major?
I think that some of the persons involved in the Manhattan Project devoted all their brainpower yet never exercised their moral consciences until after that genie was out of the bottle. I expect plenty of contemporary scientists say what many former Nazis did after WW2. "I was only following orders".....or perhaps, "If I don't build it, I'll get fired and someone else will build it anyway"
I am not a Marxist, but I think that Marx referred to the worker under capitalism as being "alienated" from the product of his labor. Not just that his work doesn't give him a fulfilling life, but that it makes him callous and apathetic in general, with no moral conscience.
Of course, I'm not advocating a technocracy. Far too many "known scientific facts" have been overturned after years of blind adhesion and indoctrination in precedent for me to have any confidence in just scientists running government.
Go on then...
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Tautologous. If our well-being is constituted of those aspects which we are driven to maintain then it says nothing that we a biologically preconditions to seek them. You just defined them as those things we're biologically preconditioned to seek.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Because you've not defined 'well-being' yet, so we can hardly be expected to admit that we value it.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
That would be because I disagree with your assessment that they're unnecessary.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Doesn't follow at all. We establish that we are predisposed to a state of well-being. We can accept well-being as a criterion for moral judgements (though we need not - we could just as well accept hair colour as the criterion - nothing about being biologically predisposed toward a thing compels us to accept it as the goal of morality).
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Indeed. If we can accept 'air pressure', or 'tidal range', or 'fringe length' as an objective criterion for moral judgments then we can then go on judge the effect of acts on these criteria. The trouble is, we don't.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
And @Banno has pointed out that it simply being one of our predispositions doesn't progress in any way toward the decision to choose it from others.
It's really simple. You have two scenarios
1. We will always choose the course of which maximises everyone's well-being
or
2. We will sometimes not choose the course of action which maximises everyone's well-being
In the case of (1) you have no moral dilemmas, no-one will ever act in any other way than the most moral anyway. In the case of (2) you have a choice and so you need to give reasons for choosing the course of action which maximises everyone's well-being over the alternative.
-...for goodness sake!!! Do you even read what you write????
-"If our well-being is constituted of those aspects which we are driven to maintain then it says nothing that we a biologically preconditions to seek them. "
Why do you post a sentence that argues with itself?????
Our biology drives our acts to maintain our well being.
i.e. We are working under the sun during summer. We are dehydrated. DO we choose whether hydrating our organism is a good thing for our well being?No, Our biology drives our emotion of thirst, which we reason in to "I need to drink water". SO our organism VALUES our well being and drives our actions to maintain it. We can agree that if it didn't we wouldn't be talking about us being well...or being in the first place. We would be dry up dead.
Now if our action purposely prevents a dehydrated individual to have access to drinking water, we undermine his well being so we are committing an immoral act.
So I will stop here in order to let this sink in. Do you understand why this isn't a tautology but it describes what our biology "values" (drives serving our well being) and how that informs what we value.(moral judgements).
"Our biology values that which our biology values" is a tautology. To avoid the tautology you'd have to define well-being in terms other than 'that which our biology values'. Something you've yet to do.
If reality is objective, not subjective, and men are capable of perceiving it, the rest follows logically.
This is better expressed in the essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" by Rand.
The actual statement was we don't choose what our biology "values" or strives. Why is this so difficult for you?
Do you choose to enjoy a naked flame scorching your skin? Do you value the state you are after being burned?
Do you enjoy the emotions produced by an open wound, being starved, being humiliated etc etc etc etc etc etc.
Do you really feel you have a choice on deciding one day to enjoy all the above emotions?
So all those emotions help you avoid states that do not contribute to your well being (feeling comfortable, happy, free of pain, being valued by your peers, physically healthy etc).
Listen I have to repeat the same things to every single one of you who came with those nonsensical objections. I use a pretty common usage of the term "well being". From what I see in a quick google search there are not many common usages...there is just one. All refer to health,happiness and prosperity whether we are looking things from a Physical, emotional/psychological, social, intellectual or economical aspect.
I never defined well being 'that which our biology values'. I am allergic to the term "that which".
I only pointed out the fact that its not our choice to value well being or not . ITs what our biology dictates to us.
Your arguments appear like saying ' in order to talk about modern historical events we need to understand how our solar system was formed."
Whatever the ultimate nature of reality is ....its irrelevant to how we can arrive to objective moral judgments.
Whether humans can perceive the ultimate nature of reality is irrelevant to objective standards we need to or any moral evaluation.
We must follow the example of Methodological Naturalism and the reasonable Acknowledge that we have to work with what is available to us. Since we can verify Empirical Regularities we can establish frameworks that can describe phenomena within the limits of our observations.
I haven't read "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" but just read a summary of it.
You say If reality is objective, men are capable of perceiving it. Yes, I have no problems with this. I can strive to objectively perceive the human species, I agree.
The problem is then saying that reality is wrong, and should be different. There is certainly no scientific method for saying the observed empirical is wrong, and the counter factual ought to happen, so science can't be the answer. I'm struggling to find a philosophical way to justify the same, perhaps you have some suggestions?
I certainly have a sense of morality, but is it subjective or objective? that is the question I am trying to answer.
So here is the conundrum I'm trying to solve:
-I think X is morally correct.
-You think X is morally wrong
Is there a "fact of the matter" that we can strive to discover about this? Or is each correct for themselves?
I don't. Some people do.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Again, some do.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
You've yet to demonstrate that. Comfortable and free of pain I'll grant as being self-evident since such emotions are directly about comfort or pain, but where's your evidence that following such emotions leads to happiness, physical health and being valued by ones peers?
Sure there are...are they for a long time with us?
Quoting Isaac
-what emotions????? Dude you also need to do your homework, its not my job to explain to you why the pain of an open wound informs you for a crisis your physical health is experiencing and how it is connected to you being "well" and being able to ...continue to be.
Your biology makes it best to force you to care as an agent for your well being.
No oughts or musts.....just ISes.
ITs a fact that our biology "cares" about its well being and forces us to take actions by interpreting urgent issues with intense emotions.
You are just here to deny everything just from pure ego. I am bored addressing stupid objections.....seriously!
I'm not asking you to explain it, I'm informing you that you're mistaken.
Yes this is true. And this biology that "cares" about its well being and forces us to take actions results in friendships and murder, among many other things.
How do you go from that to prescriptive morality? By which I mean telling a murderer what they did was wrong, and people in that situation should not commit murder in the future.
If you are sticking to science, then seeing a murder should result in you update your theory of human behaviour to include murder as part of biology that "cares about well being.". Is that what you do, or do you say "murder is wrong"?
It isn't facts that you should be enforcing -- although it is part of everyone's argument: Fact: you killed my dog. But now comes the measure of the immorality of that act. And so on. We can now get to the issue of morality. Discuss it.
What you're supposed to be thinking of is to optimize the goodness (note I didn't say maximize). Optimize the goodness or the favorable outcome of moral acts.
And what is goodness?
What is a favourable outcome?
And what are your justifications for saying we are supposed to think of optimising goodness? Why are we supposed to do anything in the first place?
That's your job to figure out.
And what if I come to a different conclusion to you, on what is good? My previous question could be re-written as
I think X optimises goodness
You think X does not optimise goodness
Are we both correct? Is one wrong and the other right?
Or even the following:
I think we should optimise happiness
You think we should optimise goodness
Are we both correct? Is one wrong and the other right?
There is no such thing as a greater evil, only solipsist. There is evil which is stupidity by good and solipsist which is stupidity by self as if all next moves would be evil.
Morality is always absolute, but in primal times there may be a mistake third party in a special episode of misunderstood goodlessness.
"Murder" is a legal term. We use many terms to label the act of "killing" other humans and they depend on the situation. So your example already refers to an "immoral" act.
Murder is immoral.
Killing other people can be moral. (self defense, protecting your others or your country etc).
This is situational ethics.
If you have painkillers in your drawer...then you know that I am not mistaken....
:up:
We know what to do, but our nature gets in the way! Ethics is reason's struggle against, loosely speaking, unreason (not passion).