Where Does Morality Come From?
I have been pondering these questions for a while. Specifically, why is it that moral codes are different depending on where you are? If there really is a universal moral code then why is it that it is different depending on where you are? Also, where does Morality come from? Did it come from religion or did it come from our evolutionary past? I am curious as to what some of you think.
Comments (238)
First, I disagree with the claim that the moral code is different depending on where you are. The concept of the Golden Rule, do unto others and you want them to do unto you, occurs in some form in nearly every religion and ethical tradition. Source.
Now the source of moral code that is the Golden Rule, is our conscience, or sense of duty. E.g. if a baby is drowning and the situation is such that you can safely rescue it, I am pretty sure you and everyone else will experience a sense of duty to do so. That is not to say that everyone would actually choose to save the baby, but everyone would experience the duty of doing so.
Finally, everyone seeks justice and rejects injustice, at least to themselves. Combine this with the Golden Rule, and it follows that there is a universal way of acting that is righteous. E.g. nobody wants to be lied to, so we ought not to lie.
Morality is a loosely defined concept that provided some guidance as to how one might act in a community. Every community is different as are its members, and everything is constantly changing which will coax morality to change with it. We all have our own value systems which need to work somehow in the communities we choose to live in. But everything is always changing, though I find personal value systems rather constant within a single lifetime.
One answer would be: constant conjunction, to borrow a phrase from Hume, of confused and false ideas reinforced by one's family, culture, religion, etc.
Quoting Matthew Gould
It wouldn't be. If it's universal, then it doesn't change. What's different would be other behavioral systems that claim to be prescribing what is moral but are in fact not.
Quoting Matthew Gould
This question is too vague. Are you asking what grounds moral behavior? I would answer that it is compassion.
I don't think there is a universal moral code, or any that comes even close. Some larger communities, e.g. religions, do attempt to adopt one, but still communities and individuals pick and choose.
Certain moral stances are forced upon people by governments, usually for the benefit of those in power. To what extent people actually adopt these codes depends. Life can be quite a mess.
I don't know much about psychopaths, but will attempt to explain it anyways. Sure, maybe they lack a sense of duty, but it does not follow that objective morality does not exist. Much like most people will see the red of a red chair, colourblind people will not, but this does not change the fact that the chair is red.
Quoting Matthew Gould
This depends what we impose. If we impose our subjective preferences on others, then it is tyranny. But if we impose justice on people, then it is not tyranny, because tyranny is unjust by definition.
Quoting Matthew Gould
There may be different moral laws in different places, but then it could say something about the quality of the law-making of the place, and not of the universality of the moral law. Some regions have the caste system. Would you not agree that this system of law is unjust?
That there is no universal moral code does not entail that morality is as arbitrary as you portray it!
There was a good essay on this question in the NY Times by philosopher Richard Polt, called Anything But Human:
The issue is, evolution carries the prestige of science; enlightened people are supposed to understand their existence in its light, in a way analogous to how they used to see it in light of the Bible. But that’s a kind of category error - evolutionary theory is first and foremost a biological theory, not an ethical one, and to try and re-interpret ethical questions in its light is invariably reductionist. That isn’t to say that evolutionary perspectives can’t be brought to bear, as they often can; but it doesn’t comprise an ethical theory per se.
I've been thinking about this too. There are many reasons to be moral, to be good. We don't like being hurt, mentally or physically. That could be a basis for morality - a system that promotes and protects human (even animal) happiness and, in the same breath, limits and extirpates suffering. Another reason for morality could be as a cohesive force because without morality, society would be impossible. I think almost all moral theories can be reduced to the two reasons I've outlined above.
It seems, however, that these various reasons for morality don't converge on a single set of rules/codes. Even if they do, they contradict each other, rendering all moral systems pointless.
It seems that rationally speaking, to be good one must, paradoxically, abandon reason itself.
I would query that view, it is negative and defeatist. It would be better to consider what ethical systems have in common - which is actually quite a lot - rather than to say that they all negate each other.
Yes, I understand. I'm being negative. Philosophy has, to say the least, revealed important features of morality...consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, all, unveil crucial details on what morality is about.
What surprises me, and I hope you have something to say about it, is why these various moral theories don't see eye to eye.
Think for a bit on what would be involved in a universal moral code. Would we have a set of rules that for every possible situation told us algorithmically what we ought to do?
That would be less than human.
Well, one factor is historical - in a very short time-frame all of the diverse cultural and ethical systems are jostling one another in the global village. Each are confronted with the difference of the other. Hence the constant emphasis on ‘encouraging diversity’. But there are challenges in doing that; and the global village is also getting very crowded.
The fact that especially the monotheistic faiths each claim to have the exclusive truth also plays into the argument that they can’t all be right, so why should any of them be? I suppose one answer to that is that it is up to individuals to wrestle with these issues and try to make the best and most meaningful choice. After all one of the attributes of liberal democracy is supposed to be the ability to engage in principled opposition.
There’s also a lot to be said for ecumenical movements that try to find common ground between different systems.
Are they the only choices?
Could it be from the need to do what is good?
I do not think that moral codes are completely different and unrelated. For instance, I think that all nations can agree that murder is wrong, but the issue remains the differing definitions of murder. If you come from a Westernized/ Christian nation, then you may see human sacrifice as murderous. Those who practice it see it as returning something to their god to obtain its favor. However, as soon as they learn that their god does not exist and that the killings are meaningless, they cease. So the universal definition of murder might be that one killing another without purpose or for evil motivations (such as a thief killing the victim). I think that most true murderers have a strong sense of guilt, especially at first, unless they have a very corrupted conscience.
As for where the moral codes came from, it must have come from the same place that the first thought came from. Information cannot be created or destroyed, at least in this physical world; so from an evolutionary standpoint, thought and moral code remains impossible to achieve. Information cannot come from non-information, moral code cannot come from nothing.
Actually, this is more of a myth. For as much as it is publicized that different cultures have different moral norms, they aren't generally radically different. Most cultures have the same general views on morality: seeing the acts of hurting people, stealing, lying, breaking promises, disobeying the law, disrespecting God, murder, rape, incest, etc as wrong are all basically universal.
Quoting Matthew Gould
No, I don't think it primordially comes from religion, as if we required an organized hierarchy of robed men to tell us what we ought to do. Nor are the sociobiologist (cranks?) right when they say our moral beliefs and behavior are entirely explained through an evolutionary story. Really, morality stems from an alien, but not necessarily hostile, relation to the "Other" which cannot be consumed or manipulated into the Same. That's the essence of "Ethics".
I guess it's a work in progress. I wonder how things will turn out though. Will it be reason that'll decide which ethical system will ''win'' or will it be power, cultural or military, that'll decide which ethical system will be universally adopted. I ask because Western ethical systems, religious and secular, seem to overpower other ethical systems. For instance, pedophilia over child marriage, etc. Is this trend based on rationality or is it cultural and military dominance?
Quoting Wayfarer
What if the individual is prejudiced through religious, cultural and political indoctrination? Can we trust an individual to find his way through the moral labyrinth? The answer is probably no and this suggests the need for, as you said, an ecumenical effort.
Immorality.
If morality is taken to be a code of conduct, then it comes from us and it is entirely about what's considered to be acceptable/unacceptable thought/belief and/or behaviour.
You say morality comes from us, so then it is not individual. It arises in our relationship with others, a "code of conduct" a sense of fairness , justice., history.
If so then moralities's ontology is that of a objective political act, one in which the "code" subjectively transcends and guides our acts. Moral acts exist within our normative construction of a world, a world which contingently depends on the history of our shared relationships.
Then there is no moral nature, morality alienates us from nature. Our interest in justice is a shared motivation to do good, something we can all understand. A motivation to do good, each guided by their own conscience.
A passionate motivation to do good.
Rousseau "The mistake of most moralists has always been to consider man as an essentially reasonable being. Man is a sensitive being, who consults solely his passions in order to act, for and for whom reason serves only to palliate the follies his passions lead him to commit"
Morality naturally arises because we are interdependent social creatures. One's 'sense' of fairness, justice, and history are cultivated via common language. The same holds good for one's moral 'sense'. We come to understand such notions with a richness that only complex language can provide. That is not to say that everything we talk about is existentially contingent upon our awareness of it... contents of the focus within moral discourse notwithstanding.
Quoting Cavacava
Clearly I disagree.
Quoting Cavacava
Man is both. Those are not mutually exclusive. The sheer number of utterly inadequate dichotomies that continue to pervade philosophical discourse astounds me...
We are social creatures only negatively. Human's by nature are desirous, greedy, needful, spiteful, weak creatures. We are social creatures because we have no other choice but to negate our natural inclinations, to alienate our self from our nature.
Morality is an action, it may be described by language and language may give rise certain biases, to certain points of view, but the being of morality arises only in our actions with others.
Reason is a tool, it is neither good nor bad. Our passions: love, hate, jealousy, kindness ...these are good or bad.
The theory of energy flow put forth in the chakra system is relevant here, as you probably know. It is not quite the mysterious secret in Western civilization that is was many years ago. But there don't seem to be many proponents of it that are taken seriously, or given much credibility beyond "therapeutic healing". It may strike some as "too religious-based" or "new age-y" or just plain "voodoo". It seems the acceptance of chakras, chi, and many other Eastern-type ideas was hindered greatly by the both terrorism and the resulting "war on terror".
But a damaged circulation of vital energy in a person will do as much damage if not more, than the damaged flow of blood, oxygen, or nutrients. Multiply that by a thousand, by a million, or by 7 billion...
and the result is what we are experiencing and dealing with at the present. Is this a simplification? Yes, like a pattern, algorithm, or model is simplified to its essential parts. Could it help untangle the knot if understood and applied to the situation? That seems to be the question at hand.
Any other view on morality is not really about morality, but about what people perceive as consensus on personal hedonism. In that case morality is just a label that serve to purposefully disguise the truth in atheistic universe - that ultimately there is no good or bad, but only what personal state of a human sees as useful or not for him or her. "Don't do me harm, and I won't do it to you, so I can get most out of this life" type of a contract. That type of "morality" comes from man, but it is not what people generally understand as morality, so it would be sort of a scam word (if we would actually be living in atheistic universe).
This relies on the premise that fulfilment of justice can't be unjust.
Plato's Georgias
I think of Qi as the sound of that lyre. The rhythm of life, its vibrations, with all its harmonies and disharmonious parts. What we share in our interactions with others either rings true or sounds out of tune, the disturbing rhythm of being "at odds with myself, and contradict myself".
By what standard are you determining human nature?
Humans are both, reasonable and sensitive creatures. The Rousseau quote implied otherwise, as if we could not be both.
Aristotle. The following from Leo Strauss "The City and Man":
Yes, I think affects are blind without reason, but reason is practical, the only 'ought' it subscribes to is its own soundness and validity,
What is the criterion which when met, counts as being by nature?
It sounds reasonable to me, hardly gratuitous.
As stated our sociability is necessary for our survival, even though this sociability goes against our natural impulses to satisfy all our desires.
The distinction has to do with nature's forcing us to be social, in spite of our natural instinct to act as we see fit. It is a defensive maneuver that sets man against nature, this maneuver enables man to attempt to conquer nature to make life livable.
The most coherent description of morality is that it's a a cooperative strategy between two or more parties that is designed to be mutually beneficial (the prevention of conflict/harm and sometimes the promotion of happiness).
In order for a moral agreement/system to actually exist between two or more parties, they must necessarily share some beliefs about what constitutes harm and happiness. Where conflict might arise that can infringe or damage our mutually shared values/beliefs, it becomes rational and appealing for us to come to an agreement in order to protect those values.
Under this view, the bulk of moral persuasion comes in the form of questioning and appealing to these starting shared values, and also by exploring whether or not a given proposed moral agreement (i.e: don't steal, don't murder) is actually successful or efficient. A further simplified conceptual model of morality can be positioned as such: All moral problems concern harm inflicted upon individuals (harm defined by starting values) and whether or not that harm is strategically avoidable (without causing some other harm, which may be justification for carrying out a harmful action).
Most moral thinkers seem to intuitively engage moral discussions according to this framework, although it is very common to get lost in one's own set of singular (and sometimes unexamined) starting values, which then makes the ensuing discussions about actual moral policy deeply confused from the outset.
One typically confused starting value goes something like "the most important moral value is to keep the gods happy" which is perhaps the single most misguided belief in all of human history. Every Shaman and their pet iguana has a different idea about what makes god happy, which has caused there to be constant and conflict generating disparity between mutually exclusive theistic moral platforms.
A better but still somewhat misguided approach goes something like "the most good for the most people". Broadly this is the crux of utilitarian moral systems, which do seem to have some merit as an approach to moral reasoning, but tend to generate disagreement concerning what is the "most good state of affairs" that we should aim for and "how we should get there". It is much easier to agree about states of affairs which are ultimately undesirable rather than what is ultimately desirable, and creating strategies about how to avoid particular states of affairs is inherently easier than creating strategies to achieve particular states of affairs (it's easier to agree about what we don't want, and how we can avoid it than it is to agree about what we both want and how to achieve it, although it's easy to conflate the two which leads to confusion).
"The least harm for the most people" is in my opinion a much more appropriate moral maxim; It still lacks clarity but at least it sends us in the direction of communally seeking to reduce harm rather than the more complicated affair of large scale social mobilization for the greater good. In theory the most beneficial mutually cooperative strategy we can make would have us all making personal sacrifices and taking positive actions that benefit us all in the long run, but that strategy is far too complicated for us to successfully and comprehensively devise (and we have tried earnestly a few times. See: Stalinsim for an example). The free market, for instance, is regretfully a better option than massively centralized economic planning because market complexity confounds long term planning, and likewise, moral reasoning is much easier to do with singular and minimalist claims about what not to do rather than what we all ought to be doing to maximize our moral praiseworthiness and state of well-being. Freedom is an efficient system of maximizing moral value/human happiness/well-being because it allows individuals to pursue (and change) their own version of happiness rather than a set of imposing instructions which cannot possibly function for every individual and in every circumstance.
If there is a true and ultimate moral strategy out there, it would be infinitely comprehensive and beyond complex. One last analogy:
Let the game "Tic-Tac-Toe" serve as an example where perfect strategy can be formulated: Any smart fifth grader can figure out how to always draw (or win if the opponent makes a mistake), making it the objectively best strategy to achieve victory and avoid loss.
Now consider the game of Chess, and imagine if we could program an AI to learn every possible result of every possible set of moves from the starting positions... If this was possible then it could become undefeatable by knowing the end results in advance of every possible variation and how to bring the game to a checkmate or stalemate. The number of possible variations in chess games is staggeringly large though, and both humans and AI are far from mastering it in the same way we can master Tic-Tac-Toe.
Now consider real life, where our ideal end conditions are not well defined, where there are more moving parts than we can count, and more combinations of moves between then than we can possibly imagine. This is why what they call "objective morality" or "the absolute best strategy" has been so enduringly impossible for us to find. Like Chess, the ideal strategy and next move is highly context specific and not always possible to calculate, leaving us to do the best we can in many cases. The strongest and most persuasive moral arguments are those that appeal to the most basic and commonly shared values and entail minimal amounts of compromise (compromise to one's own values). "Don't cut out people's eyeballs" is a claim that you would be hard-pressed to find an objection to. There may be a circumstance out there where the cutting of eyeballs is required for survival (like sacrificing a queen in Chess), but such circumstances do not exist in modern society aside from extremely rare medical cases. We can create strategic and moral rules-of-thumb and best-practices that may apply in general, but unique circumstances can always offer exception, and the values and strategic needs of a society as a whole can evolve or change (I.E: we're running out of fish that people need in order to live). This isn't to say that morality is relative, just that it is situational and depending on the needs, desires, and circumstances of the moral agents in question and the challenges of the environment they are in.
Being social then, according to this, is not acting as we see fit...
Doesn't make sense.
Well ... yes. Unjust justice is a contradiction, and so the fulfilment of justice, that is, being just, cannot be unjust.
Nature forces us to be social, but to be social means that we respect of the rights of others, we become moral, the topic of discussion. The laws of nature are swapped for normative laws, the laws of men.
Makes a lot of sense.
How?
Could you provide an example? I don't see how one could fulfil justice without being just. Note, I don't mean here mere legal justice, which could be unjust; but real justice.
Quoting Cavacava
Codes of conduct, rights, and notions of self are existentially contingent upon language. Being an interdependent social creature requires only being born and taken care of. Being born and taken care of does not require language.
I'd like to think that we agree upon much here, despite the differences. Those seem to be more about human nature, or perhaps what we ascribe to be such. We disagree there. I find the notion of natural and/or nature to be untenable(or not helpful if strictly adhered to), but I do not think that that needs to stop the conversation from gaining ground. The disagreements seem more about the ontology and/or taxonomy, and less about getting on with it...
Are there any relevant/significant common denominators shared by all known codes of conduct? If there are, then I would say that focusing upon those would lead us to statements about morality that are true, regardless of the individual particulars.
I actually take issue with the notion of normative as it pertains to moral discourse. On my view, any and all statements about what's considered acceptable/unacceptable thought/belief and/or behaviour are moral claims(claims about morality). When we limit what counts as a moral claim to only utterances of ought, we continue to work from an archaic impoverished notion of what counts as a moral claim.
I think we all make moral claims to objective rightness, which must be judged on the basis of rational arguments based on our convictions and beliefs regardless of normative contexts. Arguments to support our beliefs, feelings, and convictions can be measured against one another and judged based on their soundness and validity. Defective judgements do exist.
I don't support a naturalistic, causal explanation of this process.
@VagabondSpectre
I am not sure that this is the case. I think that all actions require a cause or a reason, and that some reasons for actions are better arguments than others regardless of whether or not we share the same value or belief system.
It is precisely the persuasive answer to that question that I am seeking to clarify.
The "reason" is the value; the why of the ought. Not all choices are moral choices and not all actions and decisions have moral components, but of all the decisions which we might classify as belonging to the realm of moral reasoning, there are none that cannot be most persuasively boiled down to an appeal to starting and core values.
(If we happen to be making the same decision using different moral starting values, it is not really a moral arrangement between us but instead a happy coincidence that our goals are aligned.)
Ultimately "morality" only successfully exists when it is shared, and so those moral tenets which appeal to the most commonly shared values have the most broad appeal and hence the most acceptance. Bring up any moral dilemma and I think it should be downright easy to locate and examine the starting value (which then makes it clearer how to appraise the efficacy of various possible decisions). The abortion debate revolves around the importance of protecting life and when life actually begins (the moral value and right to go on living); the gun debate is a classic dilemma between freedom and security (and how to maximize/reconcile both). The gay marriage controversy is about how it somehow damages the (godly/societal?) value of traditional marriage (freedom from harm in a nut shell).
Can you give an example of a moral agreement that is not based on some shared value?
How about honor killing, or suicide bombing..I guess divine command theory in general?
It's really important to pull this one out in the open and yank down it's trousers. "Making god happy" is in my opinion one of the most misguided values that humans have ever concocted because of how much bull-shit and variability is involved in making up what actually pleases god in a given circumstance. It would have long since failed and eradicated itself as a viable starting moral value, but it is in the end adaptable; it can superficially change itself into any other value as needed (it's resilient but risky).
Honor killing is done with the intention of protecting some notion of eternal position. It's utterly stupid to believe in such a metaphysical system, and so the best way to dissuade someone from engaging in honor killing is to convince them that their conception of what honor is ultimately does not serve their other more real values or is itself inaccurate/faulty.
The only way I know that you can convince someone to do a suicide bombing is to convince them that there's nothing left for them in this world and that by killing themselves they're guaranteed a spot in the afterlife (you can extort/force people to do it, but that's not them making a moral decision). This kind of decision appeals primarily to "makes god happy" to justify the actual killing, but it also appeals to the personal desire to live and be free (ironically), in heaven, on the part of the suicide bomber.
The rebuke following from my approach is to attack the notion that god wants the killing to occur (the existence of the value), and that the afterlife is a retarded delusion.
Metaphysical and otherwise superstitious foundations don't always need to be challenged, but they will always be rationally weak from the get go given the tall order of inventing an argument for a divine command.
The examples you give are "moral decisions", but the values which support them are not widely agreed upon at all, which is what makes them easily contestable and weak.
Well, certainly everyone presupposes that their own thought/belief is true... moral claims notwithstanding.
Not sure what you mean with the last statement. I think we agree on the rest.
:-O
Are you a priest?
I mean it needs to be shown for what it truly is, which is an embarrassingly naive superstition based mine-field of self-delusion.
Ridicule of one whose belief system that calls anything contrary to it "evil" and holds that world is a better place without evil, and further holds that it is one's duty, as a servant to Allah, or God, or some other supernatural entity to rid the world of such evil will not likely work.
Ridicule has no place being used against someone who cannot yet distinguish between their thought/belief system(worldview) and themselves. For those who would willingly die for their belief system, their entire self-worth and self-identity are wrapped up within that system...
Separating them from it requires care... genuine care.
In that way, and in others, we are all on the same ground. The above is true of everyone, regardless of individual particulars.
Ridicule isn't meant to sway the indoctrinated, but it is meant as a persuasive tool to ward away readers from falling into the ideological pitfalls I point out.
Not always. As I alluded though, straight up ridicule isn't how I go about dissuading those who it would embolden. I will definitely reciprocate ridicule, but my main avenue will be in serious address of the ideas regardless of how cantankerous an exchange becomes. Take pro-capital punishment/anti-abortion Christians for instance. They argue on the one hand that thou shalt not kill means humans don't have the right to decide who dies and when, but when it comes to the death penalty the pro-life tenet goes flying off the gallows pole. Rather than calling them names for holding somewhat contradictory positions, I will first try and get them to recognize the contradiction.
If I really want to persuade a religious ideologue that abortion is not necessarily morally harmful in any way, mainly I will try to demonstrate that until a certain point of development a fetus cannot actually feel or perceive anything; it's not even a vegetable because its nervous system/brain doesn't even exist yet (not 'alive' in the important human sense). If they default then to the "potential life that is interrupted is the same as murder" position, then I will use that logic to again show inconsistency: If you happen upon a rape in progress, then interrupting it could potentially be interrupting potential life that would come into existence if you didn't intervene. In a way it's insulting because I'm averring that their moral reasoning would have them be bystander to a horrendous act, but it also actually follows from the potential life argument, which is what makes it a persuasive point.
If we get stuck on either of these two points things may naturally descend to ridicule, but what if they finally settle on the defense: "God says contraception is wrong"? Openly challenging their belief in and conception of god becomes my only rational angle of approach, but it is an angle so well guarded that to be successful requires a broad spectrum of emotional appeal. Ridicule is one of the only tools left with any sting once the goal posts have been relocated to the moon. It has to be done right of course. You don't simply insult someone, you demonstrate why the position they hold is ludicrous and worthy of ridicule.
Always in the relevant cases.
That seems like a fast and loose rule. What makes you say this?
Regarding honor killings:
I think morality arises somewhere in the distinction between justice and utility, where some actions we take may be viewed as being just but not serving a public sense of utility (serving the public's interest). Societies where religious and familial values are manifest in daily life view what is just differently, and not primarily based on a notion of utility.
Wikipedia also suggests that in some societies, very little, if any social stigma is attached to honor killings. Defense of the family honor is considered just in these societies.
I don't think it is a weak claim, even Christ brought up honor killings. It is an established tradition some societies, part of a very different belief system. So how would that conversation go...I don't think it would go well or very far. It is perhaps in a way similar to the conversation between a slave owner and an abolitionist in the 18th century.
Old traditions don't change readily or all that rationally, unless new value systems are systematically enforced. Ultimately, I think it was establishment of a multiplicity of laws which have evolved over many generations that have changed public opinion, and continue to shape our considerations
Reason has no value other than its own inherent utility, but what is moral/just is not always what is most reasonable.
The utility is there, it's just not our own idea of what is actually useful. Different environments and different world-views can lead to drastically different notions of what's valuable/important, and how to protect them. The practice of human sacrifice is a good example (pleasing the gods strikes again): a village might sacrifice what they know is an innocent child because they believe a good harvest depends upon it, and because the survival of everyone depends upon a good harvest, they see it as both useful and just to do so.
Quoting Cavacava
Challenging honor for the sake of honor is difficult, and it starts with asking "why?" Why is honor so important that you're willing to kill your family (and vice versa) to keep it?
I have liked to think of Japanese honor culture as largely the result of a dangerous and feudal environment where reputation was the only available metric to judge a stranger (especially if the legends of samurai prowess are to be half-believed). Perhaps there are so many niceties/pleasantries in Japanese culture because everyone went out of their way to not cause offense (thereby not threatening reputation and honor). The oft mentioned "seppuku/harakiri " suicide of a samurai to regain honor I reckon wasn't done primarily out of irrational devotion to the samurai code, but rather because to live dishonored in a world where reputation means everything is already a grave prospect, and also because it was the only way to fix the damaged reputation of one's own family (which meant everything, including their physical safety).
If someone supports honor killing for no reason other than it's what they were told, I think I can very easily get them to question whether or not it's actually a good idea just by asking "why?". In some American jails and prisons though, where reputation can actually mean the difference between being raped and murdered or left alone, honor/reputation related violence is regrettably justifiable from the perspective of the individual (explicit honor killing perhaps not, but many other forms of violence).
The best rebuke I can presently come up with is as follows: Since we no longer live in a dangerous environment where we need to take justice into mob hands or pre-emptively kill in self-defense those with bad reputations as they approach. We are generally more free to live our own lives in peace and we're only made less free by being forced to conform to arbitrary social standards that were once a partially useful response to widespread violence, uncertainty, and oppression inflected on the masses by the warrior class. There's no earthly reason to carry on with honor killings since we can show that organized courts do a much better job of producing "justice" on a given day and in the end keep us all more free AND safe. If I can convince someone that the only good reason to retain honor is to retain freedom and security in society, but that there is now a much better way of doing so (or that honor killing no longer even works as they think it does), then won't hey submit to reason?
What people think is moral is often quite unreasonable (see: all superstitions that have moral ramifications). Sometimes starting values are inherently unreasonable (pleasing god) and sometimes methods are unreasonable (honor killing), and sometimes both (honor killing to please god), and so I would posit that such positions, being unreasonable, are not actually moral by rational standards.
It's also noteworthy that in many senses our desire to please god in whatever arbitrary way can sometimes be build upon more basic values such as our desire to go on living and to live in excess. We sacrifice the human to please god, but we want to please god because of what we think it can do for us (heal disease, bring good harvests, prevent disaster).
During WWII Stuart Hampshire, an English philosopher, was in France working with the French Resistance (WWII examples are the best). He was tasked by the Resistance with questioning a man about German plans but the Resistance told Hamphsire that after he spoke to the man they would kill the man regardless of what the man said or didn't say.
When Hampshire quizzed the man, the man said that he would give him information if he promised that he would be handed over to the British. Hampshire said no he could not promise that, and the man said nothing and he was latter shot.
The most reasonable course of action, the one with the most utility, in this situation would have been to lie to the man, which might have saved French lives, but Hampshire could not compromise his ow integrity (read honor) and lie to the man about such a thing. Can you question his moral position.
I think the identification reason=utility=justice, leaves out some critical moral aspects of what it is to be a moral agent.
If his position is that it would me immoral to lie to the man, then yes. "What's more important Hampshire: your integrity or the lives of French children? What will their parents think of your integrity?".
I don't think it would be morally obligatory to lie to the man. In fact I would rather live in a world where we all make the moral agreement to not torture and lie to prisoners of war (in case we ever find ourselves in such a situation), but in survival situations quite a lot can be persuasively justified.
I mean that I don't think that evolutionary explanations, or explanations of actions which rely on the physical happenings in the brain, or its chemical composition are explanations of moral behavior. They may illuminate what is happening or even provide a basis upon which to view actions, but they do not explain why people act morally or immorally.
It leaves out the starting values, which sometimes differ from human to human and culture to culture.
This is what I mean when I say that a moral system can only exist between agents when they have some shared values to base them on, and the more universally shared the value, the more universally persuasive the ensuing utility/reason/justice based moral arguments based upon them will be.
Sometimes two people stuck on opposing starting moral values can never reconcile their moral differences, but if they were open to scrutinizing their starting values more deeply they might actually reach common ground to start from. Values like "the right to go on living" and "freedom from oppression" are almost universally acceptable in the basic sense (they can get complicated in practice but as general goals they're broadly appealing); these are the most persuasive objectives of moral agreements between parties and they often underlie other values associated with morality like honor and honesty. Amorphous moral values like pleasing god may at times have somewhat broad appeal but have always been rife with inconsistency. Peculiar moral values like the need to self-flagellate to feel the divine is at least well defined, but it has very little broad appeal, making it weak in general (and rationally weak when empirically examined). Some starting values are better than others...
Because you supported your "not always" claim with something other than the case we were discussing.
You mean purely physicalist explanations? If so I agree. However, I also hold that thought and belief have efficacy, so I wouldn't reject causality as an element.
You asserted that ridicule only ever emboldens those it is meant to disarm, and I retorted with the idea that this isn't the case. Sometimes ridicule (especially of bad ideas) is effective.
We are discussing all cases of ridicule broadly aren't we?
I cannot say ridicule would be my opening salvos when confronted with a suicide bomber with their finger on the button ("Hey man, there's no need to blow this religion thing so far out of proportion!"). But maybe if the suicide folk had been exposed to effective ridicule at some point prior to their indoctrination and radicalization, they might not have done been so effectively manipulated by it (effective ridicule isn't just insulting, it's also humorous because it points to truth).
Ridicule isn't what primarily motivates suicide bombers or anyone adhering to some sort of divine moral theory. Charlie Hebdo was identified as a target for terrorism because they engaged in ridicule, but that's not what actually motivated the terrorists. It was a political, ideological, and religious worldview combined with their own psychology, upbringing and circumstances which turned them into irredeemable murderers, and it cannot function without the notion of serving god's will (which was the context of my ridicule). If you would have me put on kid gloves because overly sensitive lunatics might snap at any moment, I simply refuse. I would rather not let terrorists win the right to be free from criticism or ridicule by means of murder and violence.
I'll yank down the intellectual trousers of anyone arrogant enough to stand before me wielding the idea that they have access to god's mind and any accompanying divine moral commandments they think apply to me. It's a stupid idea with no rational foundation and it's been muddying mankind's moral waters for millennia. When will enough be enough?
I put genuine care into my ridicule: I use a scalpel rather than a rapier (as Dawkins advocates in the video); I substantiate and qualify the ridicule itself.
You say to croon them in hushed and sensitive tones, I say to shock them with vivid and stinging rebuttals. Different people can be suaded via different means; there is no right answer. In some cases, ridicule is effective, and I've seen it work in real time.
We are veering a bit off topic though, so let me try to bring it back on point: Morals derived from some kind of divine command theory are rationally unreliable because we have no rational access to any real set of divine moral commands. The real world is populated by diverse and mutually exclusive moral systems built from allegedly revealed and eternal knowledge, and most of them are want to arbitrarily mutate according to internal and external pressures. The fundamental adherence to such moral systems is hubris at best, and at worst genocidal. We should look elsewhere to found morality.
Just to be clear, I've not promoted divine command theory.
I suggest looking to all moral systems as a means to identify and isolate the morally relevant and/or significant common denominators.
Common ground renders ridicule unnecessary and opens the door for reasonable more respectful dialogue.
You cannot reliably find common ground with a divine moral system when that system is founded on an irrational starting premise:
One religion says be pacifist, and another says spread by force. One religion says sex is bad, another religion says sex is good. Divine command theory is mutually exclusive with itself.
What does paying currency, self-mutilation, invading and conquering foreign lands, and refusing modern-medicine, have in common? These have all been paths to divine absolution which people carry out on a regular basis still to this day.
That you seek to find common dry ground with divine command theory is laughable. There is no dry land; it's just a large debris field of mostly useless old world refuse, floating on a sea of naive and emotional over-confidence.
May I suggest looking elsewhere?
At conception, we are all void of any and all thought and belief...moral belief notwithstanding. Some thought and belief are extremely complex. Others are not. Calculus cannot be understood prior to understanding arithmetic. Moral belief systems cannot be understood as such by an agent until s/he has one to talk about. Thought and belief begins simply and gains in it's complexity. We all adopt our first worldview.
Agree with this so far?
Just theoretically, there might be an event where the action of fulfilling the justice is a part of the circumstances itself, and thus making one action would change what would be the just way to act in such a way that justice can never be reached.
I could be completely off the mark, but are you saying that sometimes, an action to fulfill justice could move the goal post elsewhere, effectively requiring more actions etc; like a horse attempting to reach the carrot on a stick? I am not sure if such a scenario is necessary in reality, because even if the rules of a system were set up to produce such an effect, then we could always change the rules.
Take the Prisoner's Dilemma scenario. The rules are indeed set up such that the prisoners, despite making rational decisions, can only fail. But this is not a logically necessary situation. We just need to change the rules of the game so that justice is compatible with rational behaviour.
The illusion of morality comes from misguided expectations that lead to suffering.
Sorry for the delayed response. I wanted to take some time to thoroughly ponder this question.
On the surface you're right; before we grasp our own moral systems we're not in conscious control over their development, leaving them vulnerable to arbitrary influences. Our first consciously understood moral positions are generally given as commands when we're children (don't hit, don't lie, don't steal), but before we're given coherent and rigid moral instruction or are able to analyze our own moral systems, can we still exhibit moral behavior?
Consider the following:
Does the sharing of the nuts in the above video actually depict ethical/moral behavior?
If so, what might this indicate about early human morality?
Firstly, the nuts themselves are inherently desirable to the monkeys due to their biology (they want and enjoy the taste and satisfying feeling of eating them); nobody had to impart the idea that nuts are valuable to the monkeys. For the monkeys in this situation, access to nuts is like a starting value or goal, and it's presumably nearly universal to all monkeys who find themselves in such a situation.
The intriguing question is then "why were the nuts shared?". It just so happens that in-group food sharing is a mutually beneficial cooperative strategy, and could possibly have been selected for in the evolutionary past of monkeys and great apes, which presumably would have generated biological mechanisms to facilitate that behavior. I surmise that it is primarily an intuitive and emotional understanding which causes the monkey to share the nuts; one monkey see's the other upset and longing for some nuts, and sympathizes. It is most likely an intuitive feeling which entices the monkey to share, rather than a conscious understanding of the strategic upshot of doing so. That the monkey was able to divide the six nuts into two exactly equal shares probably has more to do with the number 6 being very easy to intuitively/visually divide than it has to do with any careful or conscious consideration on the part of the monkey
What the video does seem to demonstrate is that the intuitive "moral" decision making of monkeys can emerge naturally from biology and circumstance, without the need for formal language or reflective analysis on their part. Without knowing it, the monkey is naturally carrying out a mutually beneficial strategy of cooperation that brings about long term and mutual success in many environments (basically any tribal environment). Rational agents are able to recognize the strategic moral value behind such forms of cooperation, but evolution discovered it long before we did, and it has imbued hominids with a biological capacity to unconsciously employ cooperative (and competitive) strategies.
Just because something is an evolutionary devised strategy doesn't make it a moral strategy though, because not all strategies are cooperative or entail mutual benefit. The more a given strategy/moral arrangement necessitates an unequal or one-sided distribution of burdens and benefit, the less mutually agreeable it becomes from the perspective of the losers. We can indeed thank evolution for designing things like empathy and compassion, which emotionally and intuitively push us in the direction of cooperation where possible, but we can also blame evolution for human capacities like xenophobia and violent aggression which cause individuals and groups to exclude others from moral consideration. Specific groups and individuals can form exclusive moral clubs, but from the perspective of the morally excluded (example: the "untouchable" caste of historical India), what could rationally persuade them to buy into a moral premise that is harmful or un-beneficial to them? (note: it's fully possible to indoctrinate someone into an ideology which oppresses them, but intuitively, and by appealing to more persuasive and universal starting values (life, freedom, well-being), it's quite easy to bereave one's self, or be bereaved, of such positions). (note: it's possible to incorporate competition into a "moral" arrangement, but it will only be morally agreeable to everyone if it can be seen to benefit them (see: the economics of capitalism)).
In practice humans refer to quite a large variety of things as moral or morality. A virtue ethicist might say morality comes from virtues, a consequentialist might say morality comes from outcomes, and a theologian might say morality comes from god. All three of them might deny that we can think of Virgil the Capuchin as capable of moral behavior because he cannot understand virtue, the long term ramifications of it's actions, or god's will (traditionally we think of most animals as amoral). And yet, as if by coincidence, Virgil demonstrably engages in the exact same act that the virtue ethicist, the consequentialist, and the theologian would all argue is the right and moral course of action; understanding the what and why of Virgil's moral intuition encapsulates the origin of what our own moral systems are actually servicing (our basic human needs for survival, health, and happiness).
The kind of intuition that Virgil must have relied on to make his decision is the same kind of intuition that most humans rely on when making moral decisions of their own. The realm of conscious and higher moral thought and study contains a plethora of varying postulates and approaches that tend to frame morality as serving something greater, but inexorably they are all attempts to serve the very same set of nearly universal biological drives that spawns our moral intuition in the first place. A consequentialist appeals to the intuitive desirability of certain outcomes and possible states of affairs, while a virtue ethicist appeals to the power of certain virtues to actually bring about those intuitively desirable outcomes and states of affairs. Theology takes many and much more indirect roads, but generally the hope that an all-loving god has your back and has reserved a place for you in eternal paradise is the form of the appeal (it's not surprising how committed religious people are to their ideas given that religious ideology powerfully exploits the nearly universal human desire to go on living and to be happy; what could possibly be more valuable than eternal life with infinite happiness to boot?).
So much confusion and and contradiction tends to result when conscious moral systems are not constructed with a clear and reliable conception of what they're really trying to service. Strictly religious moral systems not only conflate and pervert our starting values with unreasonable intermediaries (example: "pleasing god is the most desirable" because god will then please us out of gratitude), they also pervert the strategic aspect of actually getting to a state of affairs which pleases god (and subsequently us). Example: "God's nature is heretosexual, therefore it is beneficial for every individual to also be heterosexual" (this particular example contains a mixed bag of irrational indirect appeals to intuition such as "god knows what's best" and "displeasing god will bring about the worst case scenario").
What actually caused me to leave religion and theism behind was a lucky ability to recognize the importance of my own emotional and intellectual well-being. As a child with no formal moral system aside from religious commandments (which are absorbed on authority), I was trapped by the painful lie that to disobey meant I would have to suffer in hell along with the rest of my somewhat non-religious immediate family. Ultimately cognitive dissonance forced me to conclude that my beliefs were not rational, but more importantly, were not healthy (hell was the most memorable of what I came to view as harmful beliefs but there were a broad collection of them that contributed to my present day state of irreligiosity).. And from what I know now, it turns out I was intuitively correct. Strict old world religious moral tenets only tend to result in successful communal living in primitive and chaotic environments rife with uncertainty and lacking science of any kind. Out of my own condition and reason I was able to come to the position that my previous religious beliefs were at the very least, not the best or most correct way of doing things; immoral.
I agree that our first worldview is more often that not thrust upon us, but our biology gives rise to a moral intuition that precedes any coherent worldview and is often the well obscured root appeal of moral systems based upon any formalized world view.
P.S: Sorry for such a lengthy response to such a simple question, I just couldn't help it (I might have made a great preacher!). Hopefully some of the ground I've covered will be relevant to where you're present point.
Neither.
Suppose that we have evolved to behave in a certain way.
It remains an open question as to whether we ought behave in that way.
This is Moore's open question argument, and so far as I am aware, no solution has been offered.
So basing you moral choices on what you have evolved to do, remains a moral choice.
History tells us how we have behaved for the last 5000 years, and we are still looking into it, still going to war, still making the same mistakes we have always made.
I think we know what we ought to do, we just don't do it.
The question has to do with the meaning of intent, as in should behave a certain way. It is my opinion that the phrase should behave a certain way is a partial expression of a more complete sentence should behave a certain way in order to achieve a certain outcome.
The shortened version is a summarized aggregate of experiences with an implied acceptance that the proposed outcome is desirable; for example not getting eaten by a tiger. Those that got eaten no longer exist to express their opinion - which got them eaten.
This describes intelligence as a classification of behavior, a definition that gives some support for the Intelligent Design theory camp, but not in the manner they usually attempt to convey.
Instrumental oughts are ends justify the means. When the ends justify the means, then to hell with what's right, good, fair, just, harmless, etc.
I was simply showing the common denominators in morality, some of them anyway. I mean, you strongly asserted against the notion, so...
What makes you think and/or believe that Virgil's behaviour was governed and/or driven by moral intuition? Why not just plain 'ole attribution of causality, that giving to the others produced results Virgil wanted, inferred, and expected?
Or it could be like sorting where each path goes and choosing the destination ranked highest. And that ranking system seems to have more than one axis: One for a motive that inclines toward action and another that measures cost.
So perhaps terms like 'right, good, fair, just, harmless, etc' are categorical bands across the plane described by that two-dimensional pair of axes.
That we evolved to be the way we are isn't what's important, it's simply that we are the way we are.
That we feel pain and pleasure and want to go on living are the basic evolution-endowed facts that we can use as a moral foundation. We cannot appeal to evolution to establish the value of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, or to continue living; we can only establish those values individually and subjectively (but the good news is just about everyone will naturally affirm these values, so moral agreements based on these similarities can be constructed between individuals).
Say evolution designed us to be generally more greedy and less intelligent than we currently are and as a result we repeatedly fail to share resources in tribal settings... Moore might consider it to be "moral" from the perspective of an innately greedy agent, but from the nearly objective and more universal perspective of avoiding pain and pleasure, and going on living, such a strategy may result in extinction and on those grounds be immoral.
Actually I pointed to the most common starting values, and explained that the starting value of "serving god" is in reality a confused and bastardized version of those most common starting values (life, liberty, happiness).
By ridiculing away someone's devotion to god and showing them their own happiness and well being was it's function all along, they then tend to happily trade in the old world strategy of theistic morality for a much more rational and successful one.
Quoting creativesoul
Evolution has oriented Virgil's intuition to be a certain way (with inexorably strategic results), and in this case his evolution endowed intuition has lead him to make a counter-instinctual decision that was strategically beneficial to his well-being in the long run (many animals would simply horde all the treats for themselves). The mechanical causality of Virgil's derision making is secondary to the strategic ramifications of his actions. We can describe the "why" of the specific action in terms of biological and cognitive processes, but we could also explain the "why" by pointing to the fact that such behavior is prevalent in hominids because it is an extremely successful strategy for preserving life and well-being, which has resulted in creatures with such dispositions to become prevalent.
The notion of should do something implies motive toward a goal, as in if I wish to accomplish A then the best known route to do so is pathToA.
The cliche describes a situation where the witness has already ranked the set of possible goals and chosen A as the desired outcome. It presents the situation of explaining reasons for action afterwards, and people are notoriously creative and inventing reasons.
How would you know if any of this is true?
What makes you think and/or believe that Virgil's behaviour was governed and/or driven by moral intuition?
Why not the much simpler and adequate explanation of just plain 'ole attribution of causality; that giving to the others produced results Virgil wanted, inferred, and expected?
Indeed, as you've just shown.
Some people people claim they meant to do that afterwards, and some people claim they mean to do that beforehand. Would you care for some popcorn?
Consider a game universe: In the game Starbound it is necessary to first steal things in order to get the blueprints to make them for yourself. And in the game Rimworld it is a reasonable course of action to take enemies prisoner and remove their organs until they die on the surgery table, as spare parts for the colony.
Those actions are 'good' within the context of their universe, but not 'good' in RealLife(tm).
History shows that that would be all of us.
We measure what's good about things with different metrics, depending upon the candidate. For example, when thinking about what sorts of actions are acceptable/unacceptable, we measure in quantities of harm. Notably, we minimize as best we can the sheer amounts of unnecessary harm. When we do this, we offer ourselves the best insurance possible. It guards against hatred. Such a shared understanding instantiates good feelings and a basic well-grounded sense of giving a fuck.
When we want to measure whether or not a thought, belief, and/or action is acceptable/unacceptable we can also think about what would happen if everyone did that... whatever that may be. If it helps promote goodness for goodness' sake it is good in and of itself. It doesn't matter who murders. It is bad in and of itself, by definition even. A priori justificatory ground, if that's your cup of tea.
It's basic common sense.
Game theory is another ends justifies the means construct.
If moral intuition is the biology driven emotional response when confronted with a moral dilemma (a situation where someone else is suffering or may suffer) then the description fits perfectly.
Quoting creativesoul
"Causality" is not an adequate explanation, or even an explanation...
"What Virgil wanted" is incorporated in my explanation: he wanted to help his friend due to his emotional response to seeing him wanting.
"What Virgil inferred" assumes more than my appraisal of the situation does. Is Virgil actually making inferences about moral strategy? I don't think so.
"What Virgil expected" is a possibility, but you haven't explained why he expected that. Perhaps Virgil has been trained to share and expect praise for sharing. That's possible, but something tells me that Capuchin monkeys really do have an unconscious and intuitive/emotional sense of fair play.
Quoting creativesoul
Evolution did the strategic thinking for Virgil by endowing him with unconscious and somewhat hardwired emotional responses like empathy. And evolution is no simple thinker; it's more than sophisticated enough to figure out that in-group resource sharing is a successful strategy.
Indeed it's not. Nor was that the whole of my answer. Misquoting, blatantly even, is bad form. Red herring. Non-sequitur. Strawman/dog. None of those are acceptable.
The primate draws a connection between his/her own mental state, it's actions, and what happens afterwards. The effects of the act are imprinted into the mind of the primate affecting it's subsequent mental connections.
Moral thinking is a metacognitive endeavour. It is thinking about what counts as acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. That primate is incapable of thinking in such a way. That is not to say that the primate does not exhibit thoughtful behaviour. It is to appropriately temper our talk of what that consists in/of.
Some of the content of moral thinking exists prior to our awareness of it. For example. Some moral belief is true, others are not. Some religious based. Others are not. Just as it is the case with all our thought and belief, we only first discover that our thought and belief can be true/false. It is false prior to our becoming aware of it. It is true prior to our becoming aware of it. Our becoming aware of it does not make it so, either way. All of this is necessary for moral thinking.
The outlined content in the second paragraph above doesn't require language in order to form, happen, or take place. It is both necessary and sufficient for roughly outlining the primate behaviour we're discussing. It doesn't mistakenly attribute complex thought and belief to an agent incapable of forming and/or holding them. That is the only kind of content that that primate can have within it's mental ongoings. Simple.
Just as we once were, it is not capable of complex thought. It merely acts upon it's own mental ongoings. We describe them.
:-}
I haven't misquoted or ignored any part of your response. You, however, seem to have completely missed my point.
I offered a causal explanation of why Virgil behaved the way he did: A strategy, devised by the trial and error based mind of evolution, encoded into the genetics of Virgil, which expresses itself through the intuitive and emotional tendencies of the overall organism (I.E hard coded nuero-chemical and hormonal regimes designed to promote specifically cooperative behaviors; innate empathy for lack of a better term).
I never at any point stated that Virgil is cognitively aware of the long term "moral" ramifications of his actions. I made it clear I believe he is not
Your response of "it's a better explanation to just say: causality; what he wanted; what he inferred; what he expected" is then flabbergasting.
So my overall point is two fold: Firstly, the "value" (life and well-being) which evolution has caused Virgil's actions to serve is the same most universal/persuasive starting value that we base our actually conscious moral systems on, and secondly what makes Virgil's actions moral is that they happen to be mutually beneficial to both Virgil and Vulcan in terms of preserving life and well being
(which I am positing is the best moral value, essentially).
Quoting creativesoul
And then what? The primate distinguishes between outcomes which it desires and outcomes which it does not and acts accordingly? The problem with this is that the payoff for being altruistic is indirect and may never come (hard for simple minds to connect with the altruistic act itself). And I don't think that Virgil's keepers conditioned him to be altruistic with direct encouragement...
Quoting creativesoul
I don't think Virgil is capable of moral thought; his biology and instincts do the thinking for him unconsciously and mechanically. It just so happens though that a very beneficial strategy (re: life and well-being) for communal living is to behave altruistically to members of your group. It's an objectively successful strategy that evolution has long since imbued into many hominids (to varying degrees). Consciously though, humans are able to come up with their own strategies for survival (What's the right course of action if I (or we all) want to go on living and be free from strife?), and it's very easy to see the rationale behind in-group altruistic behavior (both from a species level evolutionary perspective, and from a selfish or individual perspective).
For the sake of clarity, the reason why I always include the "mutual benefit" clause in what I refer to as moral is because unless we extend consideration to people other than ourselves (even if the primary reason to do so is selfish) we might simply destroy one-another in pursuit and according to our differing moral platforms (making them shitty moral platforms IMO, which is also one of the reasons why I value persuasiveness in and of itself when it comes to moral reasoning).
Quoting creativesoul
I agree with this although you could be a bit clearer in the way you describe some moral belief as true and untrue. Moral belief can be untrue if it is based on factually inaccurate information (I.E: sacrificing the lamb ensures a good harvest, therefore we must sacrifice the lamb; it's strategically wrong) but it can also be a different kind of untrue: the starting moral premise that "gods will is what is best" isn't even wrong. It could be the case but it cannot be proven or dis-proven, or elucidated upon in any rational or empirical fashion. It's not even reasoning; it's just a random starting assumption that people point to and insist "this is the most important, and therefore moral, concern".
Quoting creativesoul
Hopefully I have made it clear by now that the objective moral component of Virgil's actions doesn't stem from his own conscious mind, but instead that they stem from the strategic serving of a certain set of nearly universal values which we humans ourselves consciously use as a foundation or starting point for our own moral systems.
This does not imply that we are the way we ought be.
But my most simple and direct response which carries my point would be that any of the things you think is wrong or is right is just something that "is" and there is no truth value to any label of right, wrong or moral. They are perspectives. That is all.
You have and you did once again. Not much more can be said, except to point it out. An astute reader will take note.
I'm not missing your point, I'm refuting it based upon Ockham's razor amongst other things. Here, you'r attributing agency where none exists. Evolution is a process. There is no warrant for either intent, nor purpose. You preach intelligent design in evolutionary terms. An abuse of language.
As is this... Yet another misquote. You seem to still fall prey to not being able to correct yourself when your belief is wrong in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm setting out what's basic for all thought and belief. Thought and belief is accrued. What's basic to simple is basic to complex(in terms of it's basic constitution). What's true of the simple is true of the complex(in terms of it's basic constitution). You've put forth ideas and notions that are contrary to what basic thought and belief consist in/of. Thus, I reject what you've said. That rejection is grounded upon Ockham's razor and the fact that you're attributing complex thought and belief where none is warranted, where none can be had... yet.
How about you point out how I misquoted you then? This is the second time you've griped about me misquoting you, and the second time you've failed to explain how I've done so.
Quoting creativesoul
First of all, obviously "evolution" is not a creature with a mind or intelligence; the mind of evolution is a figure of speech used to assist the portrayal of an evolutionary perspective. Secondly, you have not successfully employed Ockham's razor (which is itself vague and unreliable): saying "the much simpler and adequate explanation of just plain 'ole attribution of causality; that giving to the others produced results Virgil wanted, inferred, and expected?" does not offer an alternative explanation and frankly says nothing interesting at all.
Quoting creativesoul
What evidence? And how have I misquoted you?
The nutritional value of your word salads are rapidly declining...
Quoting creativesoul
Honestly I have no clue what you're even trying to say here.
What does "Thought and belief is accrued" and how is it relevant to my point?
What does "What's basic to simple is basic to complex(in terms of it's basic constitution)" mean?
What does "What's true of the simple is true of the complex(in terms of it's basic constitution)" mean?
Quoting creativesoul
Such as? You've got to clarify which contrary ideas I've put forward and how they are contrary to what you can demonstrate about thought and belief.
Quoting creativesoul
Do you mean empathy? Because that's a feeling that even dogs are capable of. Please try to realize I'm not suggesting Virgil is capable of conscious moral thought. If you're now referring to my reference to evolution as able to devise strategies, then you just don't understand evolution.
"we are the way are" because that is the way we imagine our self as acting in our relationship with our self and others.
How "we ought to be" suggests to me a mysterious tableau somewhere outside "the way we are", and I suggest that our code of conduct already contains this tableau ( & others) which are already manifest in the way we are.
The ancient saying "know thyself" applies.
Of all things said thus far, this is the most significant.
Would you care to?
No, but we can take the way we are and use it to make arguments about how we ought to behave.
Should we be creatures who almost universally have the desire to go on living? I cannot say, but we're trapped in this form so we've got to play the cards we were dealt.
I would like you to communicate whatever it is you are trying to say clearly and succinctly,
"What's basic to simple is basic to complex(in terms of it's basic constitution)" is not clear or succinct, and it sounds a lot like equivocation between moral intuition and conscious moral systems or perhaps a compositional fallacy.
Agree with this so far?
Consider the following:
Does the sharing of the nuts in the above video actually depict ethical/moral behavior?
If so, what might this indicate about early human morality?
Firstly, the nuts themselves are inherently desirable to the monkeys due to their biology (they want and enjoy the taste and satisfying feeling of eating them); nobody had to impart the idea that nuts are valuable to the monkeys. For the monkeys in this situation, access to nuts is like a starting value or goal, and it's presumably nearly universal to all monkeys who find themselves in such a situation.
The intriguing question is then "why were the nuts shared?". It just so happens that in-group food sharing is a mutually beneficial cooperative strategy, and could possibly have been selected for in the evolutionary past of monkeys and great apes, which presumably would have generated biological mechanisms to facilitate that behavior. I surmise that it is primarily an intuitive and emotional understanding which causes the monkey to share the nuts; one monkey see's the other upset and longing for some nuts, and sympathizes. It is most likely an intuitive feeling which entices the monkey to share, rather than a conscious understanding of the strategic upshot of doing so. That the monkey was able to divide the six nuts into two exactly equal shares probably has more to do with the number 6 being very easy to intuitively/visually divide than it has to do with any careful or conscious consideration on the part of the monkey
What the video does seem to demonstrate is that the intuitive "moral" decision making of monkeys can emerge naturally from biology and circumstance, without the need for formal language or reflective analysis on their part. Without knowing it, the monkey is naturally carrying out a mutually beneficial strategy of cooperation that brings about long term and mutual success in many environments (basically any tribal environment). Rational agents are able to recognize the strategic moral value behind such forms of cooperation, but evolution discovered it long before we did, and it has imbued hominids with a biological capacity to unconsciously employ cooperative (and competitive) strategies.
Just because something is an evolutionary devised strategy doesn't make it a moral strategy though, because not all strategies are cooperative or entail mutual benefit. The more a given strategy/moral arrangement necessitates an unequal or one-sided distribution of burdens and benefit, the less mutually agreeable it becomes from the perspective of the losers. We can indeed thank evolution for designing things like empathy and compassion, which emotionally and intuitively push us in the direction of cooperation where possible, but we can also blame evolution for human capacities like xenophobia and violent aggression which cause individuals and groups to exclude others from moral consideration. Specific groups and individuals can form exclusive moral clubs, but from the perspective of the morally excluded (example: the "untouchable" caste of historical India), what could rationally persuade them to buy into a moral premise that is harmful or un-beneficial to them? (note: it's fully possible to indoctrinate someone into an ideology which oppresses them, but intuitively, and by appealing to more persuasive and universal starting values (life, freedom, well-being), it's quite easy to bereave one's self, or be bereaved, of such positions). (note: it's possible to incorporate competition into a "moral" arrangement, but it will only be morally agreeable to everyone if it can be seen to benefit them (see: the economics of capitalism)).
In practice humans refer to quite a large variety of things as moral or morality. A virtue ethicist might say morality comes from virtues, a consequentialist might say morality comes from outcomes, and a theologian might say morality comes from god. All three of them might deny that we can think of Virgil the Capuchin as capable of moral behavior because he cannot understand virtue, the long term ramifications of it's actions, or god's will (traditionally we think of most animals as amoral). And yet, as if by coincidence, Virgil demonstrably engages in the exact same act that the virtue ethicist, the consequentialist, and the theologian would all argue is the right and moral course of action; understanding the what and why of Virgil's moral intuition encapsulates the origin of what our own moral systems are actually servicing (our basic human needs for survival, health, and happiness).
The kind of intuition that Virgil must have relied on to make his decision is the same kind of intuition that most humans rely on when making moral decisions of their own. The realm of conscious and higher moral thought and study contains a plethora of varying postulates and approaches that tend to frame morality as serving something greater, but inexorably they are all attempts to serve the very same set of nearly universal biological drives that spawns our moral intuition in the first place. A consequentialist appeals to the intuitive desirability of certain outcomes and possible states of affairs, while a virtue ethicist appeals to the power of certain virtues to actually bring about those intuitively desirable outcomes and states of affairs. Theology takes many and much more indirect roads, but generally the hope that an all-loving god has your back and has reserved a place for you in eternal paradise is the form of the appeal (it's not surprising how committed religious people are to their ideas given that religious ideology powerfully exploits the nearly universal human desire to go on living and to be happy; what could possibly be more valuable than eternal life with infinite happiness to boot?).
So much confusion and and contradiction tends to result when conscious moral systems are not constructed with a clear and reliable conception of what they're really trying to service. Strictly religious moral systems not only conflate and pervert our starting values with unreasonable intermediaries (example: "pleasing god is the most desirable" because god will then please us out of gratitude), they also pervert the strategic aspect of actually getting to a state of affairs which pleases god (and subsequently us). Example: "God's nature is heretosexual, therefore it is beneficial for every individual to also be heterosexual" (this particular example contains a mixed bag of irrational indirect appeals to intuition such as "god knows what's best" and "displeasing god will bring about the worst case scenario").
What actually caused me to leave religion and theism behind was a lucky ability to recognize the importance of my own emotional and intellectual well-being. As a child with no formal moral system aside from religious commandments (which are absorbed on authority), I was trapped by the painful lie that to disobey meant I would have to suffer in hell along with the rest of my somewhat non-religious immediate family. Ultimately cognitive dissonance forced me to conclude that my beliefs were not rational, but more importantly, were not healthy (hell was the most memorable of what I came to view as harmful beliefs but there were a broad collection of them that contributed to my present day state of irreligiosity).. And from what I know now, it turns out I was intuitively correct. Strict old world religious moral tenets only tend to result in successful communal living in primitive and chaotic environments rife with uncertainty and lacking science of any kind. Out of my own condition and reason I was able to come to the position that my previous religious beliefs were at the very least, not the best or most correct way of doing things; immoral.
I agree that our first worldview is more often that not thrust upon us, but our biology gives rise to a moral intuition that precedes any coherent worldview and is often the well obscured root appeal of moral systems based upon any formalized world view.
I've responded to every single point you've raised, and what I'm waiting for is for youto construct a relevant argument. (not an analogy, not the promise of an argument; an argument). If you've got some grand and deep and bold and revolutionary moral understanding, then just state it. This all started with you trying to convince me that ridicule never works, and now I'm wondering if you're about to tell me of the wonders of the great Hare Krishna mantra...
Stop asking me if I'm ready to listen or if i "agree with you so far" and just type out your actual argument.
I'll grant you this, sure, but we're not devoid of "feeling" at birth (is feeling a kind of thought?). We're born with fixed emotional and physical responses to certain stimuli (I.e, cry when hungry, suckle when nursed).
Quoting creativesoul Since Virgil's understanding is not relevant to my description and argument, what is the relevance of this?
Quoting creativesoul
We're born with an intuitive system that induces us to behave morally. I fail to see how you have addressed my point.
We're born stupid and then we get smarter, gotchya, but Virgil's moral behavior never came from his own understanding, it came from evolutionary happenstance.
Virgil's behavior was the objectively moral behavior if mutual survival and well being is a starting moral consideration because it is the most effective course of action available to him to ensure those ends (or avoids a threat to those ends)
It's like making the right or wrong move in a chess game.
Two problems here. The first is that Virgil's behaviour is driven by his thought and belief. He is not thinking about acceptable and/or unacceptable behaviour. Therefore, Virgil does not have moral thought and/or belief.
The second is that behaviour can be both mutually beneficial and immoral. Thus, being mutually beneficial does not constitute being moral.
His actions were driven by his instincts, his "intuition" not his "thought and belief".. This is a critical distinction you have consistently neglected to address.
Quoting creativesoul
Care to give an example?
Actually I'm making it. All thought and belief consists entirely in and/or of mental correlations drawn between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or the agent's own state of 'mind'.
What counts as instinct or intuition?
If you prick the foot of a newborn baby, there is no mental correlation between foot pricking and crying, the response of crying due to pain is hardwired directly into the mind and nervous system of the baby.
Quoting creativesoul
It's the set of emotions and isntincts that naturally guide us toward mutually beneficial regimes of behavior. (I.E: sympathy and empathy providing an emotional reward for sharing).
I'm still waiting for an example of something that is mutually beneficial but also immoral...
No?
When did I say that autonomous reflexes(which is what you're talking about is) were thought and belief? I didn't. So, yet another red herring, non-sequitur, strawman. You'll have to do better than that.
Capitalism rewards mutually beneficial but immoral behaviour. Have a look for yourself. Being mutually beneficial doesn't require being fair, nor just, nor good, nor moral.
Set it out. Enumerate these emotions. Articulate exactly what those instincts consist in/of. Involuntary reflex is irrelevant.
Emotions. The experience of pain and pleasure. The sensation of liking or not liking something. These aren't thoughts or beliefs, they're feelings. We have a hardwired biological capacity to feel emotions. Fixed action responses demonstrate that our behavior isn't always the result of belief or thought.
These are what we might call "instincts", and some of them guide us toward moral action, such as in the case of Virgil. That's what moral intuition is.
Can you give an example of such behavior? Broadly pointing to capitalism isn't sufficient. What kind of actions are mutually beneficial and also harmful, specifically?
Obviously his behavior and the behavior of those who stayed silent was not beneficial for his victims or possible future victims Please try again.
You want me to make a comprehensive list of all of our instincts which promote cooperation?
No. I pointed to innate empathy and I think that's enough, refute that and I'll offer more, but until then I only need one example to make my point. We experience something painful and feel it as painful due to hardwired biology. Then when we see someone else going through that thing which we think is painful, and we empathize or sympathize with them, again, due to hardwired biology, sometimes seeking to help them as a result.
This is a much more comprehensive, specific, and useful explanation of why Virgil behaved the way he did than "all thought and belief consists of mental correlations drawn between objects of physiological sensory perception and/or the agent's own state of 'mind'" You might as well have said "just because".
Well, that's not true. They aspired to financial success, and achieved it, by virtue of keeping quiet and letting him make them lots of money. But I digress, I'll grant your objection because it's implications are such that you'll be special pleading or will find yourself unable to find an example of behaviour that meets your criterion...
So, then moral behaviour must be mutually beneficial to everyone?
You're a twit.
Empathy is being able to put yourself in another's shoes... That's most certainly not innate.
So was it a consensual transaction? Were the women not harmed by the abuse?
Quoting creativesoul
For a moral agreement to exist between two parties, each party must perceive the agreement to be beneficial to them. If a particular party is irretrievably harmed and not benefited by the agreement, then they deem it immoral.
The most inclusive moral agreements therefore extend moral consideration to as many as possible. As a result they are universally appealing and persuasive, and better for everyone overall.
Quoting creativesoul
Empathy is being able to share the emotions of another, and I see plenty of evidence that it is innate. When my dog see's me upset and tries to comfort me, he is not "putting himself in my shoes". He is being driven to act because seeing me upset makes him upset.
Why are you calling me a twit though? I thought ridicule never persuaded anyone?
Yes, I do. You asserted that instincts and emotions are both innate and count as moral intuition...
Justify your claim.
I already did. Empathy. Our penchant to feel something when we see others being harmed. At it's core it's an emotion, not something you learn.
How is that not drawing mental correlations between an 'object' of physiological sensory perception(another person in this case) and oneself?
Emotion is fraught. Sure emotion is innate, at least fear. The rest are contentious matters. None-the-less, what you're describing requires thought and belief formation.
Twit: A silly or foolish person.
Foolish: (of a person or action) lacking good sense or judgment; unwise.
You're accusing me of changing the subject by bringing up moral agreements, but moral agreements are fundamental to how i communicate my own moral system. I brought up moral agreements in the second paragraph of my first post in this thread, well before you asked me if I was a priest. If you would like to understand how it's related to your question, go read that post.
You've unwisely demonstrated that you lack the good sense to read and respond thoroughly, and your judgment is thusly rendered poor and silly.
You're a twit.
[edit] Look at my magical powers of responding before you even submit! (something went wrong and i lost a reply to creativesoul)
No, we don't. There is a logical gulf in your argument.
Understanding that someone is suffering is mental. Feeling something yourself because you understand that someone else is suffering is emotional. It's a capacity we're wired for.
I wish you would be really specific about which part of my account you disagree with. Is it so hard to believe that Virgil felt a bad emotion when seeing his friend upset and was thusly motivated to act?
Yes there is. Because there's no logic that can produce an ought out of thin air; we've got to make a starting assumption somewhere.
Humans nearly universally want to go on living, and so taking that for granted as a starting moral premise makes for a nearly universally appealing moral framework.
What's the point of considering it a possibility that we ought not continue living? why not just reject such a premise and resulting moral argument out of hand?
I don't want an objective morality, I want a morality that objectively serves humans.
A baby does not understand the source of it's mother's sadness.
If one does not understand the source of emotional states(pick one), then one does not understand emotion. Layers upon layers.
Babies think people cease to exist when they leave the room, so I'm not surprised they cannot easily recognize the emotions of others.
In this corner, we have Judy. In that corner, we have Jane. Jane is a year-and-a-half old. She is Judy's grand-daughter. Judy is sad. Janes sees the expression of sadness and tries to help.
Some want us to believe that Jane does all of this without ever making a connection between mamaw's behaviour and her own memory of times just like these.
:-}
There's more than one hole here.
Rubbish. Now babies have conceptions of existence? Next you'll be saying that they perform calculus.
Babies know whether or not they're content or discontent. They do not know how to say it. They experience it. The attribute and/or recognize causality by virtue of drawing correlations between being pin pricked and pain if they see it occur. If they do not eye-witness the first occurrence, there will be no visual connection drawn between the pain and the pin.
Babies do not understand emotion in any way that is even remotely close to the kind necessary for having empathy for another.
Specifically I'm pointing to what Jane feels as a motivator of action. Figuring out how to remedy the bad feeling is learned, but feeling the bad feeling itself is not. (Assuming Jane can indeed recognize the emotions of others).
Virgil was motivated by the bad feeling of seeing his friend suffering. Presumably the bad feeling of seeing his friend suffering overpowered his greed or desire to keep all the nuts for himself. That Virgil needed to make the connection between a lack of nuts and Vulcan's unhappiness is secondary to my point, the empathy is what motivated him to try and remedy it in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence
Quoting creativesoul
And yet, dogs exhibit empathy, so they must understand emotion in a way remotely close to the kind necessary for having empathy, right? (the ability to recognize it in others)
You can want whatever you like, that does not make it right.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
So morality is expediency.
That's exactly wrong. Morality begins when one starts to take the other into consideration.
recognition =/= feeling.
If you're incapable of addressing my argument that's fine, but you might want to refrain from direct name calling. That's not effective ridicule at all ;)
Well said.
Not quite. In my view successful morality is by necessity functional strategy (strategy which serves some initial value)
Quoting Banno
Well, mutually agreeable morality begins when one starts to take the other into consideration. Depending on who you ask though, "moral consideration" need not apply to them.
What does it mean to take the other into consideration though? How should we treat them per moral consideration? (according to their human condition perhaps?)
The singular hard-working mole takes note of your blatant mental exhaustion...
Good questions. Now you are starting to think ethically.
But you've looped me back onto the surface!
Do I treat people how they want to be treated? What makes how they want to be treated morally right?
By framing consideration of the other as the inherent game of morality, you've implicitly appealed to that very set of nearly universal human desires that I'm always on about.
Every moral system I've encountered converges around the same basic formula: offer people a way to make decisions that benefits them and those around them (or more simply, does not harm those around them). Even the most esoteric moral systems serve these same ends if in roundabout ways (not always rationally or successfully I should add; obeying god can be perceptually for one's own good even if it really isn't).
And most of the actual meat and potatoes of moral systems aren't even in the strategic bits (the actual positions and prescriptions/proscriptions) it's the persuasive groundwork designed to convince people to stop being selfish assholes in the first place and to actually consider the other.
If the only starting premise we need for morality is consider the other, how do we justify it?
How do we persuade people to do it?
I think I do it by being honest: because if you don't consider other people then they will likely retaliate, so if you value life, liberty, prosperity, and happiness, you might want to consider cooperation instead of conflict.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Again, you are not doing ethics, you are doing game theory.
Does morality require language?
Morality is conventionally understood as a code of behaviour. Do codes of behaviour require shared meaning? I would say so. Shared meaning requires a plurality of agents with common meaningful language.
There is no such thing as innate moral intuition.
There is no such thing as innate moral intuition
As a system of applied ethics my approach is very persuasive. It's very hard to not be suaded by an argument appealing to basic values like life and liberty. It's the meta-ethical bits that I haven't figured out how to get people to swallow....
Quoting Banno
If I practice game theory while extending consideration for the loss/win conditions of others, how does that differ from your own normative approach?
It seems to me that convincing people to extend moral consideration to others is the very crux of (mutually agreeable) moral frameworks. It matters more that we persuade people to adopt this position (while being clear on what's nearly universally beneficial) in the first place, than it does the means of our persuasion (so long as they are well persuaded). The idea that the most selfish strategy is actually a long term cooperative strategy is the basic root of how I would persuade someone to be moral in the first place, and it's a strongly persuasive form of appeal (rationally and emotionally).
Yes. Just like how someone can make the correct move in a chess game without thinking strategically (it can be coincidence or the result of factors other than conscious understanding/thought).
Quoting creativesoul
It's not merely that we say so which gives the act moral relevance, it's that our most important goals are to continue living, freely and happily, and that the action is objectively strategically beneficial to these, our most important goals. We need language to consciously deconstruct the moral framework I describe, but human emotions are such that they push us toward strategically beneficial habits even before we understand that certain actions are strategically beneficial (sometimes evolution pushes in immoral directions, moral on that later though).
To consciously explore and consciously construct morality, we need language or symbols of some kind, but deferring to one's emotions and intuition doesn't require formal language.
Quoting creativesoul
We can describe particular moral systems as codes of behavior, but not all moral actions are the result of following linguistically codified instruction. Shared language is fairly essential for the social sharing and communication of moral systems, but even where formal language doesn't exist, if shared values (desires, goals, needs) exist, and we come to realize that we have these shared values, the cooperative strategies can become obvious and highly appealing.
What happens when two uncivilized humans who do not share language have a chance encounter with one-another? Are they incapable of moral interaction because they do not share language?
What's really the reason that two strangers who are incapable of communication might try to avoid conflict and violence when confronted with a novel encounter? Is it because each of them thinks "morality is a code of conduct that I should adhere to, and my code of conduct says be nice to strangers"? Or is it because each of them thinks "I don't want to die in battle with this stranger, and they may not want to risk battle with me; therefore I should not risk escalation to violence"?
Side tangent: evolution doesn't always let us have rational and peaceful encounters because it will happily trade in a cooperative strategy that is beneficial down to the individual level for a violent and competitive strategy that is beneficial on what we might consider a species-wide level (where most individuals suffer and die while the better adapted few proliferate). For example, when confronted with a surprise, such as a chance encounter between two primitive hunters, biological reactions such as a flooding of adrenaline into our system from the stimulating surprise and possibly emotional fear can easily overwhelm our mental faculties and lead to an escalation of violence. If they can remain calm though, then the rational course of action is to threat the other as they themselves want to be treated (others are more likely to treat you as you like if you treat them as they like), which is the strategic nut-shell of why we try to piece together mutually beneficial codes of conduct in the first place; it avoids the prosperity and life destroying ramifications of conflict, which are de facto bad and unappealing outcomes for those whose life and prosperity is destroyed.
There are a set of hard wired instincts and emotions that indirectly nudge us in some cases toward behavior that just so happens to be strategically beneficial to ourselves and others.
Emotional attachment to others; bonding or "love", if you will, is a big one. Pity, leading us to console and comfort and sometimes assist random strangers for our own emotional reward is another (heretofore labeled: empathy). Reciprocity is another (the natural desire to scratch the back of another who has scratched your own). Fear is also a large stabilizer of behavior that sometimes indirectly leads us to cooperate, although sometimes it is the very source of conflict.
"The human condition" is a mixed bag of norms provided by evolution, not mutually agreeable strategy, and some of it is constructive and good and some of it is destructive and bad. If there is a moral intuition, it has the capacity to grant us innate compassion and consideration for others, but it also has the capacity to grant us the will to plunder and rape (to dis-consider others).
Codes of conduct are great avoiding conflict in general, but when specific conflicts do arise the best we can do is appeal to the context and specifics of the specific case in question (moral exceptions to absolute rules or codes of conduct are famously easy to contrive, and we need lots of careful and rational consideration to get the the bottom of complex moral conundrums (i.e: a court system)).
I think the best approach to resolving moral dilemmas is to clarify exactly what it is morality is supposed to be doing/serving in the first place, and once we agree on that we can make some moral judgments as a matter of empirical fact. If morality is supposed to be about making decisions which are mutually beneficial to our survival and well-being, then we can appraise whether or not a specific code of conduct/virtue or contextual moral decision is beneficial (or not harmful) to any given individual.
If an individual is selected as a subject for superstition based human sacrifice (to make the crops grow, let's say), then that individual might decide that they don't like the whole system of human sacrifice altogether because it is about to cost them everything (it's not beneficial to them, and hence not agreeable; immoral). Additionally, if you can show that human sacrifice does not actually lead to a better harvest (or that the gods do not exist), then you might persuade them that the harmful action they propose to carry out is not necessary, helpful, or justifiable.
False analogy.
Acting X without thinking X. Let X be morally. There is no equivalent in your analogy.
What you're doing is attributing your label to another. You're attributing your own personal moral value system onto another creature's behaviour. You think it is moral to do X. You see a creature doing X. You claim that the creature acts morally.
All you've done is show that you can pass moral judgment.
Your wording here is a bit unclear, but here is the equivalent I think you are looking for: "acting in the mutual interest of yourself and others (via instinctive or emotionally driven in-group sharing in the case of Virgil) without thinking (understanding) that it is in the mutual interest of yourself and others"
Quoting creativesoul
If it is moral to do X, and a creature does X, then yes, regarding X the creature is behaving morally.
Isn't the capacity to cast moral judgment a useful component of a formally constructed moral system?
One cannot move correctly without thinking correctly. Acting in a way that does not break the rules isn't equivalent to following them. Following the moral rules is behaving morally.
The dandelion's behaviour doesn't break any moral rules.
This is a meta-ethical distinction that I don't necessarily agree with because in practice we CAN move correctly without thinking correctly.
Sometimes - often times - we just move how the world and our biology tells us to move without actually thinking about it. When as a baby you suckled on your mothers breast or bottle, you did not need to think about the correct muscle movements, you just started doing it. You quickly became conscious of what was happening and learned why you're doing it and how to do it better, but initially it might as well have been coincidence.
Biological hard wiring nursing infants leads them to perform the act of suckling. Suckling is not an action with a distinctly moral component, but from the perspective of the health and welfare of the baby, it is the correct move to make.
So my point about morality and it's origins is two fold. Firstly, the goals of most or all moral systems inexorably are designed to promote or preserve human welfare (despite insistence from some moral camps that their moral system serves some objective higher moral authority) and so can be sensibly appraised by questioning whether or not a given system, postulate, or action, adequately or satisfactorily promotes or preserves human welfare. Since moral systems, postulates, and actions which are considerate of the genuine welfare of everyone are the most universally appealing, they tend to be the most practical and effective as well.
Secondly, the starting value of "human-welfare" which fundamentally grounds the various courses of human moral reasoning, happens to emerge from biology as an intrinsically valuable premise to almost all individual humans (and Capuchin) which has been shaped by evolution in a set of biological imperatives and maintained by our hard-wired instincts and emotional.hormonal predispositions (less so in humans since we gained sophisticated rational intelligence).
All I wish to point out is that the actions of Virgil are the same actions that a rational moral agent would likely take given similar circumstances, and that this coincidence between Virgils actions and what we would consider to be moral actions is ultimately created by the fact that in the evolutionary history of Virgil's biology, animals that developed a genetically programmed capacity for "in-group altruism" in environments where social life was a better survival strategy wound up being more successful.
"Morality" for conscious and rational humans seems to be all about us figuring out what it means to make a "correct decision", why we ought to, and what those correct decisions actually are. But we often get so bogged down in what it means to make a correct decision and why we ought to that we barely have time to put our ideas into practice. It is then of ultimate utility to boil down the what and why of morality to something that is as universally agreeable as possible (including removing the surface scum with reason and ridicule if necessary) , that we may get on with the what of moral decision making, which is the bit that actually impacts our lives.
Morality has to do with human welfare - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and you ought to be morally engaged because it will serve your own life, liberty, and happiness. You should treat others as they want to be treated because then they will likely treat you as you want to be treated.
If we can just accept that this is in fact the socio-ethical game that is shared/shareable morality, we would save so much time and effort while avoiding the kind of enduring confusion that superstitious, irrational, and non welfare oriented moral systems have wreaked upon the world since the beginning of recorded history.
Could be a purchase could be a marriage could be a boarder, could be the use of the same property (public property), could be the ten commandments (which are called a covenant which is a agreement or contract) a certainly can be a contract or an agreement between a gov and its people. law is a part of if not the agreement.
Any party in said agreement must hold up his end of the bargain. Should any party fail to do so is in breach, or has offended, or has “sinned”, if you will, against the others in the same agreement.
If there is no agreement of any sort between two, then one can not sin against the other, or offend the other nor is morally obligated to each other. Like animals they are not morally obligated at all. Animals can eat each other their young and there is no revenge of any act. There is acts of defense but not revenge. Without an agreement there is no such thing as revenge or cause for revenge, and no cause for restoration or expectation of restoration, either.
You're neglecting the facts of the matter. Morality is rule based. If one follows the rules, s/he is behaving morally. Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them.
The dandelion...
Your position depends upon attributing moral behaviour to creatures who act in ways that you call moral, but those creatures do not know the rules. So, in order for your position to make sense, you must claim that one can follow the rules unknowingly and/or unintentionally.
Accidentally being moral...
Doesn't make sense to me.
Indeed.
The content of which is always about what one considers acceptable and/or unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Do you disagree?
Quoting DPMartin
This presupposes a false moral equivalence between following the rules and establishing those rules to begin with. I agree that one ought keep their word. Do you agree that we have not yet come to establish the necessary terms. Namely the distinction between making a promise and a moral code.
Do you recognize a distinction between voluntarily entering into an agreement and involuntarily entering into an agreement?
Quoting creativesoul
I'm not sure how constantly restating your belief is of much use on a philosophy forum, could you explain why you think morality is this? If it's just a premise you happen to believe in, that's fine, but trying to debate with people who do not accept your premise from a position which nonetheless presumes it's the case is a bit pointless, no?
If you accept that for an action to be moral it requires an understanding of the fact that although alternative actions are available this one has been determined by some unnamed rule-makers to be the one you should follow, then Virgil's actions could not possibly be moral (as there would seem to be no rule-makers in his society), but only if you accept that premise.
Personally I don't accept that premise, nor do I see any argument made as to why I should.
Invoking Occam's razor is itself a straw-man. What a person considers to be the simplest explanation is entirely a result of their culture, upbringing and personal world-view. To me it is simplest to presume we're just like any other animal until proven otherwise. To me it's simplest to presume that if primate interactions can be explained by the results of algorithms carried out by complex intuition put there by evolution without deep consideration, then so can ours. If Virgil's apparent morality is just 'Game Theory' despite the fact that it looks like morality on the surface, then I think it's simplest to presume that our morality is just game theory too, dressed up by some fancy language to sound distinct and pamper our illusion that we're somehow special.
What we have is direct evidence of another primate carrying out the exact same behaviour which, if we saw it in a human, we would describe as moral. The simplest explanation is to presume they're the same thing. If you want to add anything more complex to it (like some magical attribute that humans have that we can neither see, nor detect in any way, but which we nonetheless somehow 'know' is absent in all other animals) then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate what this attribute is and how we know it exists only in humans.
"Moral codes are not always voluntarily agreed upon. In fact, one's first moral code is entirely adopted. That holds good for everyone regardless of individual particulars. "
I'd agree with Inter Alia in respect to:
"I'm not sure how constantly restating your belief is of much use on a philosophy forum, could you explain why you think morality is this? If it's just a premise you happen to believe in, that's fine, but trying to debate with people who do not accept your premise from a position which nonetheless presumes it's the case is a bit pointless."
____________________________________________
living is voluntary, so what. Submitting or adopting is also voluntary even if it’s to sustain living.
And if one enters some one’s household, by default one agrees to their rules by submission, no matter where one’s heart maybe, even if one is born into the household. And if one is in disagreement with the household but needs the household, one might try to come into a new agreement with the authority of the household.
There are certainly some differences, and occasionally bizarre differences, but if you think of it from the basis of zero and all the possible social rules that are imaginable from that basis, human beings actually do generally follow quite similar social rules all over the world (for example the incest taboo is pretty much universal, so are rules against murder, and so are property rules).
This was actually the origin of the idea of "natural law". When Alexander and then later the Romans conquered large parts of the world, philosophers and legal thinkers were surprised by the similarities between the social rule systems they came across, so the idea came about of there being some things that are fairly constant, which they thought of as natural law, natural morality.
Stephen Pinker has some stuff about this IIRC, where there's a tabulation based on data.
Morality is rule based. That's just the way it is. Look around the world and you'll find that that's the case everywhere. Morality is always about what's considered to be acceptable and/or unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Morality is subject to individual particulars, and varies accordingly.
What's pointless, on my view, is holding that all one needs to do is reject another's premiss.
Compare the premisses. Mine corresponds to fact. It's true.
Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them. If it were, then dandelions would behave morally, because they do not break the moral code. Reductio... Either behaving morally requires knowingly following the rules, or a dandelion behaves morally.
Anyone here who denies that?
It can be.
Adopting one's first worldview is not voluntarily done. It's part and parcel of language acquisition, and it comes replete with morality. One cannot doubt what their being taught during this time, for doubting is belief based, and we're all forming that baseline during language acquisition... Without pre-existing belief about 'X', one cannot doubt 'X'...
"Deontological morality" (rule based morality) is just one approach of many, an approach that like most others captures one important aspect of moral systems but misses the bigger picture; the only sensical and persuasive moral basis for a rules environment is to cause human welfare to emerge from those rules.
Many moral thinkers outright disagree that morality is about consciously following the rules. Some posit that it is about displaying virtue and having virtuous intent, regardless of the rules. Others say morality is about outcomes as opposed to intentions, virtue, and rules.
I want you to realize that these different moral frameworks begin with fundamentally different and mutually exclusive assumptions as starting points, but their actual persuasiveness all comes from the same obscured place: benefit or prevention of harm to individual and social welfare.
Virtue ethics indirectly appeals to individual and social human welfare by appealing to sets of virtues which intuitively promote human welfare (i.e: charity, patience, kindness) when wielded in action. Deontological ethics is just a slightly different strategy: instead of navigating moral dilemmas using a set of virtues, a standard set of instructive rules generalizes moral outcomes into specific codes of conduct. Consequentialist morality cuts straight to outcomes (and tends to ignore the impact and importance of "means" as well as "ends") to render it's appeal to human welfare, but if you could argue that your own idea of applied ethics leads to the best outcomes, they would accept it as the moral course of action. Similarly, I could likely break down your moral framework until you accept the idea that "promoting and preserving individual and social human welfare is the ultimate rule toward which our behavior must morally conform" thereby revealing that it is not following the rules which is important, it's our individual and societal welfare.
To reiterate, many moral frameworks, including your own, tacitly amount to varying strategies of promoting individual and social welfare. I don't like the framing of these moral systems because they confuse their beginning strategic direction/presumptions with the root moral justification for the system itself (i.e: "morality is about following the rules" as opposed to the more sensical: "following 'moral rules' is about promoting individual and societal welfare".
Would you rather be the champion of following the rules for the sake of following the rules, or, following the rules for the sake of common good?
If you want very persuasive evidence that consciously following the rules isn't the proper root of moral reasoning, simply choose any specific moral rule and then imagine a moral exception to that rule (or state the rule and I'll provide the exception). Exceptions to moral rules like "do not kill" illustrate and illuminate the fact that "consciously following moral rules" isn't necessarily of moral value in and of itself.
Quoting creativesoul
The dandelion is an actual non sequitr. Virgil is not a Dandelion. Since Virgil makes choices (lets not get into whether or not Virgils volition is one of "free will" because the results will color both our positions on Capuchin and Humans.) we can make the simple assessment of whether Virgil's choices are moral or immoral. We cannot attribute morality to the decisions and actions of dandelions because they don't make decisions of any kind or have sentience or complex range of possible actions.
Quoting creativesoul
It is possible to unknowingly act in a way congruent with the "rules". It's impossible to consciously follow the rules while being unaware of the rules (a direct contradiction), but yes, you can accidentally follow them.
When we tell a child "don't hit", the moral rule I reckon you would reduce it do is actually something like "don't physically harm others unless it's necessary in defense of yourself and others". We give the child a placeholder commandment that they follow instead of the actual moral rule though in order to cause their behavior to be moral rather than their understanding. Following general moral rules is best justified as a strategic approach toward promoting human welfare, but it isn't perfect and lacks moral understanding when people consciously obey the rules for the sake of obeying the rules
Oh, but it's not. If Virgil can accidentally act morally then having sentience and/or decision making ability to do what's moral is unnecessary for acting morally. Virgil can accidentally act morally. Thus, since sentience is unnecessary for acting morally, it would follow that dandelions act morally. In fact, dandelions don't hit. So, if not hitting is acting morally, then dandelions act morally.
Special pleading...
Your position depends upon attributing moral behaviour to creatures who act in ways that you call moral, but those creatures do not know the rules. So, in order for your position to make sense, you must claim that one can follow the rules unknowingly and/or unintentionally. And now it requires special pleading on top of it all...
Dandelions do not "act" at all though, at least in the sense of action to which we might attribute a moral component. You should have addressed my point about why the dandelion is non-sequitir instead of just labeling it special pleading."We cannot attribute morality to the decisions and actions of dandelions because they don't make decisions of any kind or have sentience or complex range of possible actions.". Capuchin DO have some kind of sentience and exhibit a range of complex possible actions, dandelions do not.
Quoting creativesoul
You have not addressed my position, and repeating yourself while ignoring the majority of my posts (and the points/objections contained within) is very disheartening.
Your position depends upon the assumption that morality starts with moral rules, which is a demonstrably shitty moral position as evidenced by the countless moral exceptions which reveal the fallibility of any given rule. "Morality is about rules" is your own assumption that you haven't discussed or demonstrated in any reasonable way.
If you cannot see how that shows that sentience and choice making isn't required for acting morally, then I cannot help you...
I haven't argued my position here, by the way... I'm critiquing yours.
Dandelions cannot produce accidents; yet still you miss the point: I am making a distinction between the moral component of actions themselves (relating to human welfare) and the conscious decision to actually seek to promote human welfare (or follow the rules as you would put it). There's nothing inherently untrue about my statement that Virgil's actions are congruent with individual and group welfare, or what we might consider a moral state of affairs. At best your objection is semantic: whether "following the rules" means being aware of them and obeying them or merely not breaking them is trivial.
Quoting creativesoul
Since your criticism keeps taking the form: "No, morality is about consciously following the rules, therefore..." you need to actually support the "morality is about consciously following the rules" part.
na creativesoul morals are simply an agreement, rules are a product of agreements. to come into an agreement with someone with the full intention of not keeping one's part agreed to, is unethical simple as that.
everything else associated to that is usually a peaceful coexistence between persons, or entitlement for restoration or vengeance for offence of the agreement.
Whereby morality is defined within the context of human life, our welfare is not the only faculty which morality is involved.
How might your understanding suffice when within the context of another animals life?
Other than mere altruistic behaviour and fitting in to a larger whole, it begs the question as to why it is important for humans to sustain the planet outside of the context of human greed and selfishness, an expectancy that everything we give we will get back?
In the case of caring for animals and ensuring their welfare, I'd say that a purely human-oriented morality falls flat on it's face.
Even if we might conceive it as serving our own base-ends, that conception is limited by a presupposition that 'human nature' equates to no more than securing our own interests, and by fulfilling this naively accepted purpose we are somehow doing good.
Our conceptions of goodness contribute to our character.
We make actions that correspond to our character based upon our conception of goodness.
Thus, subjective morality.
We, determined by our character, make our actions within a system of morality based upon our agreed conception of goodness.
Thus a societal ideal, a political conception of 'objective morality'.
Just because we agree upon our subjective conceptions, this does not establish objectivity.
Socrates said that self-knowledge was the key to being moral, arguably because it contributes to further understanding our character and how to use it.
He said that the truly wise man knows what is good and so will do what is right, and in doing right, the truly wise man will be happy.
This means that being happy is a result of doing what is right, which is a result of knowing what is good.
I'd say the 'pursuit of true happiness' is futile, because if you are pursuing something then it does not currently exist within yourself.
If true happiness is an internal state that you desire, are you not furthering yourself from that state by conditionalising happiness on external occurrences?
If so, can you ever be truly happy unless certain conditions are met?
This, for me at least, disregards the whole idea of true happiness, and if we follow, the same can be applied to our agreed conceptions of goodness.
Find goodness within and it need not be conditioned by externals.
=)
It's not at all trivial though. Everything we say is semantic, or at least relies on semantics.
If following the rules does not require knowing them, then one can follow the rules simply by acting in ways that does not break them. You're bringing sentience into the matter doesn't help, it just continues to move the goalposts. If Virgil can act morally by virtue of acting in a way that you think is moral, but he does not need to be aware of the fact that he's following the rules, then the notion of choice making is moot as well. That would be to say that one can make a choice to act moral without considering what's not. Choosing presupposes volition. Virgil has none. I suspect you know that and that's why you glossed it over earlier...
At the heart of it all, your position, at a minimum, is one where the ends justify the means. This has always been the case with what you've been proposing. On the old forum, there have been numerous people with numerous examples of behaviours which meet your criterion but are clearly immoral. Here, you've neglected to answer my earlier objections regarding that, and instead moved the goalposts.
If you wish to talk in meta-ethical terms, regarding what counts as being moral or not, then what methodology do you find fit to do so?
I say, we look to all morality(codes of conduct) to see what they have in common that is morally significant. We can set aside all the individual particulars and look at what remains extant after doing so. What's left would be universally extant, that is - what's left would be a part of all morality. We could then make statements that would be true of all codes.
You seem to be taking a similar route with the bit about what you claim all morality has in common, promoting social and individual welfare(or words to that affect/effect).
Nah. I cannot equate the two. Agreements can be immoral.
So, one person can simply do whatever s/he chooses to do to another and it would not be right nor wrong - so long as there is no agreement?
Rubbish.
What's at stake here is the difference between being moral and being called so. I'm charging Vagabond with calling Virgil's actions moral and confusing that with the action actually being moral.
In order for there to be moral acts performed unintentionally by creatures who do not have or know the rules, being moral must be inherent to certain kinds of acts. In other words, a moral act would be so not as a result of our calling it so, but as a result of it's being so. There would need to be a clear difference between being called "moral" and being moral; something akin to being called "true" and being true. A statement is true regardless of whether or not the speaker believes it to be, regardless of whether or not it is called "true". That's because a statement's being true isn't determined by our calling it so. I'm saying that the same must be the case regarding what counts as being moral if Vagabond is able to correctly attribute moral content to Virgil's behaviour. Otherwise, Vagabond is just imposing and/or projecting his own moral belief onto other creatures.
If Virgil's actions are moral, then the act must be moral in and of itself. So, what is it that makes an action moral?
There's a whole lot packed up in there. The simplest explanation has nothing to do with culture. It is determined by virtue of working from the fewest unprovable assumptions. But, Ockham's razor doesn't stop there. Explanatory power is necessary as well.
I'm not sure what you're going on about here...
What we have is direct evidence of another primate behaving. What we do not have is a clear and meaningful distinction being drawn and maintained between behaviour being called "moral" and behaviour being so.
"Nah. I cannot equate the two. Agreements can be immoral."
according to who's judgement? yours? morals, fulfilled or not, are measured by those who are in the agreement, or bound to the agreement. not by those outside of it. disagreeing to come into an agreement doesn't put you on moral high ground. it only leaves you outside the benefits of the agreement (if there are any).
"So, one person can simply do whatever s/he chooses to do to another and it would not be right nor wrong - so long as there is no agreement?"
correct, no one is bound to something they are not a part of, or in agreement with. but again one can be in agreement with, by virtue of standing within a sovereign's territory. therefore, bound to the laws thereof.
Americans are not bound to Russian law unless an American steps on sovereign soil that is Russia's. then by default the American agrees to the morals explained in the laws of that land.
I'm just repeating here so, have a nice day
Two groups of people agree to obtain another groups natural resources. The two groups know the financial value/worth of those resources, but the group who owns the resources does not. Two groups convince the owners to relinquish those resources, all the while knowing that doing so will inevitably harm the owner's. The two groups do not communicate all of their knowledge regarding the harm that will come to the people as a direct result of agreeing to relinquish the resources.
Who here would judge that that is the right thing to do; that that is moral; that that is good?
Rubbish. I can look at the agreement between certain American settlers and certain native American tribes and clearly know that the agreement was manipulative and deceptive, but the tribe trusted that the settlers shared certain beliefs, and in doing so, didn't take note of the difference between owning and using the land that they agreed to allow the settlers to use. The tribe had no conception of land ownership, for in their worldview, no one owned land...
Some laws are immoral. Laws and morality are not equivalent.
So, to be clear, according to you:One can rape pillage and plunder another group, so long as they do not have an agreement that stops them from doing so, and that would not be immoral.
:-}
Sure hope you do not have any real power over anyone...
I'm reminded of Sheryl Crow here...
It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you have...
I extend moral consideration to animals (where possible) even though they cannot reciprocate.
If I was in their situation I would not want to be abused is probably the best explanation I can come up with as to why at the moment. Ultimately it's an appeal to empathy, but if we were to encounter an advanced alien species that made us look like cattle by comparison, we would definitely want them to be considerate of us even though we can offer nothing in return.
Quoting Qurious
From the perspective of an individual, securing our own interests is the very content of life. Individually, we do good by securing our individual interests. Socially we do good by securing everyone's interests (the realm of morality).
Sustaining the planet for the sake of the elephants and tigers is noble and all, but it's much more important to me that we sustain the planet for the sake of humans. We are locked in a struggle for survival, against nature, in what is in many ways a zero sum competition. In order for humans to eat, many animals must die. One day we may be technologically and logistically able to take the most morally praiseworthy path without sacrificing actual human lives, but until then extending all possible moral considerations to animals leads to a breakdown of morality when survival and health dilemmas arise.
Quoting Qurious
The real value of my moral approach is that it is very clear from the outset regarding the "subjective" element of moral judgments: nuanced and subjective conceptions of "goodness" are less persuasive and therefore secondary to a specific set of basic values/desires which are nearly universal to all humans (and most animals too). The desire to go on living, the desire to be free and free from strife, and to pursue happiness (in Locke's sense).
Moral arguments concerning and critical to the very preservation of life take utile and persuasive precedence over all other moral arguments. The few exceptions where individuals contend that they value something more than life (excluding valuing the lives of others above one's own, which emotionally many humans are geared for (see: in-group altruism)) are, A), predominantly the result of delusion or mental disorder (I.E: heavens gate), and B), of no moral consequence, given that individuals who do not desire life, liberty, or happiness (yes I realize the contradiction), generally don't care a whole lot about anything else either.
Because they are nearly universally subjectively held by all humans, the enlightened ideals of life and liberty become functionally objective in practice.
Quoting Qurious
What makes pursuing something that does not currently exist in yourself futile though? Humans have achieved much.
Quoting Qurious
Life and liberty are dependent on external sources, and they are both required for happiness. So in many ways, no, by conforming external sources to our will we are improving our odds at achieving higher states of happiness. It may be possible through meditation to hijack the cognitive and emotional stimulus-response reward system that produces happiness and achieve it with nothing more than a bowl of rice and a tree to sit under, but really both approaches work!
Cheers!
It wouldn't be to say that "one can make a choice to act moral without considering what's not" because I never said Virgil's decision was to act moral. His decision was to not hoard and share the nuts. Virgil certainly does have some degree of volition.
You're still appealing to your own unsubstantiated assertion that morality is only to do with consciously choosing to follow the rules. I never suggested Virgil made a decision to follow the rules, I suggested he made a decision to not keep all the nuts for himself, which corresponds (corresponds, not "is equivalent to") to what you would describe as the result of following the rules. The fact that Virgil could have acted otherwise per his volition is the same basis of why we bother entertaining the question of how we morally ought to act in the first place, otherwise we would just accept our behavior as inevitable and unalterable.
If monkeys have no volition then children certainly don't, which leads me to think that young adults don't either, nor adults for that matter. Hard free will is an illusion you know...
P.S I had to bring up sentience because you compared Virgil to a dandelion. I
That's not what I said, nor does it follow from what I've said.
I said that acting morally requires thinking morally.
The problem here is clear. Either there are moral behaviours, in and of themselves, or not. In order for Virgil to be acting morally even though he cannot think about the moral rules, then it must be the case that certain behaviours are moral in and of themselves.
You're attempting to argue that some behaviours are moral in and of themselves. The problem is that your criterion admits of clearly immoral behaviour.
Admitting ad hoc isn't compelling you know.
X-)
I've gone out of my way to clarify the ways in which the ends may not justify the means, to whom, and why. Here it is again: the moment an individual unwillingly becomes a scape-goat sacrifice is the moment they reject the moral framework which would go against their own interests, potentially leading to a breakdown entire social moral systems. The ends don't justify the means in situations where individuals are unwillingly harmed because to them it is not agreeable and decidedly not beneficial; harmful.
I'm not responsible for every spec of ridicule that gets haphazardly shat into digital existence. If you would like to criticize my own actual behavior, please do so, or if you would like to use the behavior of others in an argument showing some contradiction in my own moral framework, please explain their behavior and point out the contradiction once my moral approach is applied.
Quoting creativesoul
A clear and agreeable starting point is the most successful. Acknowledging that morality is to do with our survival and welfare rather than some kind of divine or eternal truth goes a long way.
Quoting creativesoul
I've already brought up several moral systems which inexorably are proliferated precisely because they promote human welfare in given environments, but also because they are intuitively persuasive based on the idea that following them will somehow lead to desirable future outcomes. All superstitious morality is selfish and self serving at heart, virtue and deontological ethics similarly so (virtues rules and rituals are supposedly/intuitively good/persuasive because of their products, not because of what they inherently are). Can you think of an ethical or moral framework which is not persuasive based on it's direct or indirect appeals to life and welfare?
Quoting creativesoul
What's also not compelling is comparing a living creature with a nervous system and conscious mind, capable of complex and varied behavior, to a dandelion.
Quoting creativesoul
It's precisely what you said. Here:
"Morality is rule based. If one follows the rules, s/he is behaving morally. Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them."
And here's where you evoked this idea again, just above:
" If Virgil can act morally by virtue of acting in a way that you think is moral, but he does not need to be aware of the fact that he's following the rules, then the notion of choice making is moot as well. That would be to say that one can make a choice to act moral without considering what's not."
You imply here that one cannot choose to act moral without considering what's not moral when the conscious choice to act moral (the conscious choice to follow the rules per your description) was never a part of my description of Virgil's behavior and what makes his actions moral. It's your own enduring presumption that morality is about choosing to follow rules.
It's not the behavior in and of itself that is "moral". It's the fact that the behavior is mutually beneficial toward the shared interests of Virgil and Vulcan both, which is also dependent on the environment they are in. You might argue that in-group resource sharing is a moral rule, but I can actually explain what makes it intuitively persuasive and in which environments it is actually beneficial to carry out, and why: it's that it strategically serves the mutual long term interests of all of us, making it mutually agreeable as a standard of behavior going forward in social environments.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I'd say the error here is that you still presuppose humans must live against nature to survive.
Humans are a part of nature, not apart from it. It's to our greatest interest to sustain nature because we are it. Our survival struggle is no longer a struggle to survive against nature per se, that's too primitive.
Our new struggle appears to be in clambering up the socio-economic ladder by increasing our wealth and social position, thereby establishing some amount of seeming superiority over another, but isn't that primitive too in relation to the big picture?
So what is morality within our context?
The phrase "What is normal to the spider is chaos to the fly." comes to mind.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I like this. I would agree there are some values/desires which are virtually universal to humans and most if not all animals, and I think if anything this highlights the commonality of different organisms, and despite their different context, a sense of universality.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
The point is that it wouldn't exist in yourself. That's the problem.
Humans having 'achieved much' has done little but increase the problem of trying to satisfy everyone.
Let's say satisfaction and true happiness are two different things.
We are satisfied when our survival needs are met, when we achieve something, or when we crack a joke and someone laughs.
We have a choice, however, to be truly happy. We can choose true happiness over mere satisfaction.
I think Bruce Lee said it best: "Be happy, but never satisfied."
We must be mindful, however, of what it is we consider satisfactory.
If satisfaction doesn't equate with moral goodness, then we are met with a dilemma
It's not all about humans, y'know? After all, we are some insignificant speck of dust spread amongst trillions of billions of other specks of dust in a vast cosmic abyss, why should we have all the answers?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I don't extend such conditions to true happiness. True happiness is something I give myself, whereas satisfaction is something received from external things or occurrences.
Nonetheless, whatever works for you in this journey of life, my friend.
That's not precisely what I said.
Morality is ruled based. Behaving morally is only to do with following the moral rules. Behaving morally is not morality.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
So, being moral equates to being mutually beneficial toward the shared interests of Virgil and Vulcan. Writ large that would be to say that moral behaviour is behaviour which is mutually beneficial towards the shared interests of the behaving agent and... someone else... anyone else... or everyone else effected/affected by the behaviour?
P.S.
The SEP defines morality exactly how I've been employing the term...
What I'm saying is that in order to describe any action as moral we must presume at least the 'goodness' of the outcome and it must be an action which at least appears to be one selected from a range of choices. The first requirement distinguishes 'moral' actions from 'immoral' ones, the second ensure we're only applying such judgement where they could serve any purpose rather than to inanimate object or inevitable events. This is entirely pragmatic and does not require any ontological justification (I might have one, of course, but it isn't necessary). There are arguments about whether intent is also required but again these are not necessary, it is entirely possible for morality to function as that subset of behaviours which bring about a 'good' state of affairs out of a set of behaviours which it is possible to exhibit.
The distinction you make between "being moral and being called so" is irrelevant. Every action, human or otherwise, is something we 'call' moral in the hope that we have correctly identified it as moral. The fact that we're 'calling' Virgil's behaviour moral because it looks like it is obviously doesn't automatically mean it is moral, we might be wrong, but we might be right also, I'm not sure what pointing that out does for the argument?
We can get the two requirements I've outlined above for moral behaviour out of Virgil's actions. We can postulate that sharing would be 'good' for his society (it seems something we think is 'good' for our, so it follows that the presumption is not an unreasonable one). It certainly appears to be an action that is selected from a range of possible actions, animals do not always share. Hence we can conclude it is moral.
You might not agree, you might decide that intention is an important part of morality and Virgil didn't intend to me moral, or that other primates don't have free will so didn't really have a range of options. But neither of those are necessary and neither are simpler. They're just your opinion. The simplest explanation, the one with "fewest unprovable assumptions" as you put it, would not add something to morality which is not a necessity. It would not ascribe something to humans which is not present in primates which is simply assumed to be there and unprovable.
So the simplest explanation for Virgil's behaviour is that it is moral, that uses the minimum unprovable assumptions about what morality is and the minimum unprovable assumptions about the differences between humans and other primates.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, that's exactly what morality is, you have another definition?
I took issue with the "consciously choosing" bit, not the "rule based" but, in this particular case. When I say "Virgil behaves morally" I mean to say that his actions conform to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons, and there's nothing untrue about that observation.
This is the semantic issue: you're merely using a different definition of "behaves morally"; I'm referring to the strategic/situational component of the actions themselves while you're referring to a conscious choice/intention to carry out actions because they are moral. If you switch to my definition, you will see there is no issue.
Quoting creativesoul
Basically, yes. Descriptively, groups of people make agreements which are beneficial for their group and they call it moral (religions and states carrying out wars of aggression is a great example) but obviously individuals and groups who are explicitly dis-considered or harmed by a particular moral agreement will contest that it is immoral, and will not agree.
Moral systems which are more inclusive in their consideration are better because they inherently benefit more people (or harm/dis-consider fewer) and can be agreeably held by more people, which enables them to function in broader social environments.
Quoting creativesoul
If you would take the time to read the entire article, you would find there are many dilemmas and areas of disagreement when it comes to defining morality. That said, I don't feel the need to explicitly challenge the "code of conduct" description because my own framework can easily incorporate and overlap upon it. I would however like to point out that "rule" and "code of conduct" is rather ambiguous; does it mean instructions for specific situations or a set of ideas that acts like a formula to tell us the correct moral action in any given circumstance?. Perhaps it refers to the very rational foundation of morality itself and the rules of logic that govern it which when understood allow us to be genuinely consciously moral?
I could say "follow the rules of consequentialist utilitarianism" or "virtue ethics is about codes of conduct"; it matters not because I'm not disagreeing that morality is about somehow governing behavior, my point is about what morality is for (the aims and impact of the behavior) and what moral behavior actually looks like as prescribed by a moral system designed to be mutually beneficial to the basic interests of all individuals living in a social/tribal setting.
One behaviour(doing A) of group X mutually benefits everyone in group X while harming everyone in group Y.
Doing A is not moral. Otherwise, you've just invented an unnecessarily complex way to state what's already obvious. This group thinks A is moral, and that group doesn't.
It points out that either being moral is wholly determined by what we say it is, or we can get it wrong. If you do not see the significance of that, I'm not sure I can help... Either X is moral in and of itself, or X is moral simply because we say so. The difference strikes right to the heart of the thread... the origen of morality.
Many of our moral principles do come from religious ideas, but some do not, depending on the culture or society. Other moral principles or rules come from theories of morality, and there are different competing theories about what's moral and/or immoral.
For me, what's immoral or evil, and this takes into account intentional and/or accidental immoral acts, as well as natural evil, always involves some kind of harm to those involved or even those not involved. In these cases the harm done can be objectively observed, at least most of the time. Sometimes it requires a great deal of thought to understand that harm as occurred. For example, the harm done to one's character or psyche is hard to quantify, nevertheless I believe it does occur.
Moral actions are closely connected to what we value as humans, or what is intrinsically valuable. For example, kindness has intrinsic worth, and most people recognize that it does. Thus, we value it as part of a ethical code of conduct. Furthermore, I believe it can be demonstrated that kindness is not a matter of subjective beliefs, but has objective characteristics that can be demonstrated. Also moral actions are always intentional, which is why they are praiseworthy. One doesn't praise someone for a good that results from their unintentional acts. It's a good, just not one that resulted from a morally good action, that is, an intentional moral act.
If we define a moral thing as a thing which has some properties (x,y,and z), then (presuming we all still agree it has those properties), it is possible for everyone in the world to be wrong, they could all call X moral, but it does not have properties x,y and z which they have all just agreed a moral thing has so they have all made a logical error.
But we have not yet agreed on the properties a moral thing has, that's what we're discussing, so it is possible for me to call a thing moral because it has properties x,y and z; yet you might not call it moral because you're looking for properties a,b and c, which the action in question does not have.
So of course X could be moral just because we say it is. We could define moral by first deciding properties x,y and z and then going around looking for everything with those properties, or we could define moral by collecting all the things we'd like to put together on the grounds of sufficient similarity and then look for what properties are both necessary and sufficient for membership of that group.
I'm saying (and I think Vagabond is too) that I think the behaviour exhibited by Virgil goes in the set of 'Moral things' I think it is similar enough in shared properties to be lumped in with all the other things we call moral behaviour. If you think it lacks some property that should be a necessary property of moral behaviour, that's fine, let us know what that property is, but we might not agree.
There are then only two ways of resolving that disagreement. We could either take an ordinary language approach and ask whose set of properties is most like the set used by most people when they use the word 'moral', or we could take an analytical approach and ask what job the word 'moral' does and which set of properties are necessary for it to do that job.
I think you've missed the point, but maybe not. I may be missing yours. I think we're close, regardless...
I'll try explaining it another way. I'm not saying that we 'get it wrong' by virtue of making a logical error(I'm not even sure what that means in this context). I'm saying that if being moral is not existentially contingent upon our awareness of it, then we can get it wrong by virtue of (misconception). Contrary to many, I hold that we can define things incorrectly. The types of things that we can define incorrectly are any and all things which are not existentially contingent upon our awareness of them. So, getting it wrong in all such cases would be for us to form and hold false belief about that which is not existentially contingent upon our awareness of it.
Quoting Inter Alia
That's not the only method of approach.
I'm drawing the distinction between defining that which is existentially contingent upon our awareness and 'defining' that which is not. Those are two completely different sets of circumstances. We first need to establish whether or not it is even possible for a creature to act morally accidentally. If a creature can act morally despite it's inability to think morally(accidentally), then thinking morally isn't necessary for acting morally.
Either, the creature's behaviour is moral because we say so, or it's moral in and of itself.
Vagabond denied the latter. Are you agreeing? Thus, under all the overcomplicated explanations... he's just passing moral judgment. He thinks Virgil's behaviour meets his own standard of what counts as moral.
Quoting Inter Alia
Focusing upon the word 'moral'... as a means to argue whether or not Virgil's behaviour qualifies as being a case of acting morally despite the inability to think so...
I'd like to see you or Vagabond come up with a sensible notion of moral behaviour that requires neither morality nor volition. Put one forth and it will surely suffer from a reductio. Ad hocs won't save the notion. Can't. A criterion for acting morally that requires neither morality nor volition woud be forced to admit all sorts of absurd examples of creatures acting morally(by virtue of meeting the same criterion). In the end, it would still be a case of being called "moral" as opposed to being so.
Moral acts that require neither morality nor volition. Kinda like apple pies without apples and crust.
That's the question. Morality, as it is currently defined in academia, is a term used in order to talk about either current codes of conduct(descriptively) or a proposed code of conduct that all rational people would assent/agree to put forward(normatively).
So, where do codes of conduct come from?
How about us? People invent codes of conduct. That's a starting point. Seems like a perfectly reasonable answer. It is clearly supported by empirical evidence. No unprovable assumptions. Simple. Let's move on then...
But why?
I mean, if we're going to look for the origen of morality, it makes all the sense in the world to consider why and/or how(if you prefer) codes of conduct('morality' as it's currently defined) came to exist. Certainly, there was a need for governing human behaviour. So, we can surmise that not everyone was behaving in a way that was accepted by those who initially decided to write the rules. Note here that that is not to say that the behaviour in question was not good. Those who write the rules are not necessarily good actors to begin with. Not all rules are good. Some rules forbid good behaviour. Some rules reward bad behaviour. So, I want to only note that those who write the rules may not be promoting good behaviour or good things in general for that matter. As a result of this and this alone, we can be certain that being a rule that governs behaviour is insufficient for being a good rule.
Acting morally, requires acting in a good way whether that be a result of deliberately following a good rule, or whether that be a result of acting in a way that is good in and of itself. The latter includes the former but not the other way around. All cases of following a good rule are perfect examples of acting in a way that is good in and of itself. Not all cases of acting in a way that is good in and of itself are examples of following a good rule. There's more to being good than following a good rule.
There's more to being good than being rules of conduct.
We could say rules of conduct were necessary because putting them forth was good for the community of people. That wouldn't work though. I mean, lot's of rules aren't good, lot's of rules hurt most of the people. Putting forth rules that aren't good cannot sensibly be called good for the people, can they? Rules must be good for the people in order to be sensibly called "moral". But we learn as we go, right? If we once thought this or that behaviour was moral/good, but later came to realize that it wasn't, it could be that knowing the good required knowing the bad. So, when we become aware that something we once thought to be good is not, upon what ground do we change our mind? Consequences of the rule? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Consequences, if they are to be used as a means by which to measure goodness, must be an affect/effect of the rule in question. A system is only as successful as it's implementation, morality notwithstanding. The point here is that consequences alone are inadequate ground to base moral judgment about the rules themselves unless those consequences are clearly and undeniably a direct effect of properly implementing the rule being judged.
We could say that morality was/is beneficial to the success of our species. But... not all rules are good. So, being good isn't necessarily a part of being beneficial to the success of our species. At the very least, we must admit that our species has succeeded to the degree that it has despite having clearly bad rules in place. We can all surely think of senseless deaths that followed the rules. But we learn as we go, right? If we once thought this or that behaviour was moral/good, but later came to realize that it wasn't, upon what ground do we change our mind?
If the behaviour is clearly immoral, but it follows the rules, then the rules are wrong.
This begins to lay out the crucial distinction that needs to be drawn and maintained between codes of conduct(which are entirely subject to individual particulars) and being good/moral(which is not). Being moral/good is something that obtains regardless of the individual particulars. For example, being helpful is good regardless of familial, cultural, and/or historical particulars. Being helpful is always good, in every case. It is good in and of itself. A behaviour is helpful regardless of whether or not anyone is aware of it's being so. In other words, being helpful is something that is not existentially contingent upon our awareness. It is good/moral in and of itself. It is something that we become aware of, if we pay attention to the right sorts of things...
Virgil is being helpful.
X-)
'Appears to have been selected from a range of choices' is not adequate for having been. Being moral as a result of being selected from a range of choices is much different than merely appearing to be. In order to select from a range of choices, the selecting agent must first know of those choices. In this case, it's moral choices. Virgil does not have what it takes to conceive of acting in a way that follows codification.
Virgil does have what it takes to behave in a helpful manner.
It's not contrary to many, this is the fundamental tenet of analytical philosophy, it quite well supported, but it is the second option I describe. You're saying that 'morality' has a set of properties first and that if we define something as moral that does not have that set of properties we have made an error - misconception. The question then is how did 'morality' acquire that set of properties, was it given them by God? What logical process of the world has ascribes these properties to the thing 'moral behaviour', how did it become a thing?
You keep repeating that moral behaviour is a rule, but that cannot be its sole property, 'Pawns can only move forward in chess' is a rule, but it's not moral, what's more, any pre-defined guide could be described as a rule, so anything other than entirely spontaneous or instinctive behaviour could be described as 'following a rule'. So. it sounds to me like you are asserting an analytical statement that the thing 'moral behaviour' must have three properties - it must be the result of 'free-will' (in your words, it must be a rule i.e. not spontaneous or automatic), it must be beneficial (to distinguish it from other types of rule such as the rules of chess), and it must be known to the perpetrator that this action meets this definition and other possible actions would not. That's fine, but you've not provided any further analytical statements to help us understand why you think it must have these three properties.
I personally think it requires only two properties, as I've explained above. I think that because that it the smallest number of properties that distinguish such actions to the outside observer. And this leads to the crux of my disagreement with you.
Quoting creativesoul
I simply disagree with this assertion, you have absolutely no evidence for it apart from an anthropogenic prejudice.
Quoting creativesoul
This just seems to undermine everything you've just been saying You state quite clearly "being helpful is...good/moral in and of itself", "Virgil is being helpful". That's about as basic an analytical statement as it's possible to make. Doing X is being moral, Y is doing X therefore Y is being moral.
I find that defining morality as a code of conduct is problematic, personally. I work with it to grant it as a means for checking consequences of holding it... as my second to last post showed.
On my view, acting morally requires thinking morally. Thinking morally requires metacognition. Metacognition requires written language. Virgil does not have what it takes. I've argued for that, despite the fact that it has went neglected. Evidence for that? There's plenty, and we could get into that of you so choose.
Virgil is acting in a way that he has acted before. On my view, that particular behaviour left him with good impressions/memories. He liked the results. When the situation arose again when he could share again, he acted accordingly.
So tribal peoples are not moral, that's quite a claim. One I think the colonialists would have some sympathy for but few others.
There is a definite case of confusion here. Let's see if we can clear it up.
It concerns the difference between what it takes for an agent to even be able to think morally, and our calling another agent's behaviour moral.
Would you agree that these are not the same?
If Virgil's behaviour is moral, and Virgil has no code of conduct, then either his behaviour is moral in and of itself and you're both correctly assessing the situation(aside from it's being moral in and of itself) by calling it "moral", or you're both simply passing moral judgment according to your own conception/criterion regarding what counts as moral.
Anthropomorphism.
So, with regard to the tribal peoples... we would all most likely agree that they behave in some ways that satisfy our own criterion for what counts as moral behavior. However, that is significantly different from acting with the intent to be moral; to do what's right; to choose what's good; to follow the moral rules; etc. That is acting morally as a result of thinking morally. That requires written language.