Darwinian Morality
In considering the topic of the thread on subjective moral values, I posted an idea that occurred to me around moral codes developing in relation to group selection.
Here is an article by someone who can actually support their argument.
Thoughts?
In my post, one of the points that occurred to me involved the narrative building that occurs to justify our moral precepts and how those narratives, as a stake in the ground justifying the precepts, become another part of the selective mechanism. How groups following a Christian ethos compete against Islam against Buddhism against Communism... and even the argument that I intend here, all become part of the mix.
The main point I made was that of being able to make predictive claims as to which mores will develop and whether this reflects a sense of an objective moral standard (objective is reflective of its predictive capability -- it is the encompassing standard that would be objective and universal, not any particular principle in any particular environment).
If I could, with enough information, tell you which moral principles will tend to develop in which environments (and possibly with what justifications) does that undermine theories of moral relativism?
Here is an article by someone who can actually support their argument.
Thoughts?
In my post, one of the points that occurred to me involved the narrative building that occurs to justify our moral precepts and how those narratives, as a stake in the ground justifying the precepts, become another part of the selective mechanism. How groups following a Christian ethos compete against Islam against Buddhism against Communism... and even the argument that I intend here, all become part of the mix.
The main point I made was that of being able to make predictive claims as to which mores will develop and whether this reflects a sense of an objective moral standard (objective is reflective of its predictive capability -- it is the encompassing standard that would be objective and universal, not any particular principle in any particular environment).
If I could, with enough information, tell you which moral principles will tend to develop in which environments (and possibly with what justifications) does that undermine theories of moral relativism?
Comments (122)
the link is bad.But if you're trying to suggest a Darwinian basis for values, then I'd listen to the sage advice of Richard Dawkins, who was asked about it in a televised debate:
Link fixed.
The question is implicitly darwinian. But I will try and find some time to read the article now that the link is restored.
Can this sense of 'good' as correlative of group success (within certain environments) be the basis for an 'objective' moral good? Two groups that are equally successful (equal against what measure and what time frame?) might still differ on this principle. Both A and ~A might both be 'good' if, within the confines of their moral system, their differences balance out. State ownership of capital in China and individual ownership of capital in the US might both be 'good' within their disparate environments.
Related is a cultural belief in an ultimate moral authority (God) and how this anchor impacts selective advantage. I've read on studies that related how the action of non-believers differ with respect to believers vis-a-vis rule following. A theory on Darwinian selection might be expected to tell us how the trend towards atheism in the US would impact our cultural principles as reflected in law.
I have no doubt this is not novel. I'm more interested in the critical issues surrounding this perspective on morality, or whether it is simply not well considered.
The article, "Darwinian Morality" is yet another exercise in infinite regress, as well as a complete misunderstanding as to what "reason" is. Seriously, the author utterly misunderstands formal knowledge.
If morality is a set of rules embodied by language expressions, then there is no way in which "reason" can discover what these basic rules should be. Mere "reason" can also not discover which derived rule (=theorem) can be proven from these basic rules. Pure "reason" is strictly limited to the ability to verify the proof that a particular theorem necessarily follows from the aforementioned basic rules.
The 1936 Church-Turing thesis insists that there must be a purely mechanical procedure to verify a knowledge solution. Otherwise, it is not knowledge; and if it is not knowledge, then the appropriate tool for the problem is not "reason".
The tool of "reason" cannot discover new knowledge. The tool of "reason" can only verify the justification of knowledge. Hence, the entire exercise in "reasoning" in the article will never lead to any new insights, simply, because that is the prerogative of other, unknown mental faculties.
The introduction is pretty straight forward.
So to the section Warnings of the Wary. Three points are raised:
Not self-interest, but survival through altruism.
There remain those who would indulge in eugenics.
Does the ability to predict a set of moral values confer objectivity to morality?
I agree that predictability indicates a rationale. I don't follow the step to objectivity?
Also what exactly do you mean by environment? I consider morality to be social being and in my opinion that makes environment synonymous with society itself. If that's the case then doesn't it amount to saying different people/societies develop their own unique morals and that sounds like subjectivity rather than objectivity. Perhaps you have something else in mind when you use the word "environment". Please clarify.
Understanding objectivity as truths, fixed and unchanging, and usually determined through consensus of opinion, I think we'd be better off looking for common moral values that cut across all cultures and peoples.
What comes to my mind is the 'anti-natalism' humbug as a perfect example of how truly complex things turn out with morality and reductionism isn't perhaps the best way to tackle these issues. Because I assume this thread isn't about the morals of one historical person and what he thought, but an idea that our morals are based things like evolution. Why stop there, why not go to physics and quantum field theory and look from there the answers and the causes for our morals?
Fashionable nonsense I would say.
Wayfarer quoted above ever so annoying Dawkins with a quote that assures me of how annoying Dawkins is. There he links "Darwinian society" and "Darwinian morals" to Thatcher, hence he likely isn't a great fan of the famous female politician, but clearly in his example shows how think of things 'Darwinian'. I'd say once things get as complex as morality, reductionism may not be the best way forward.
I agree. It may well be the case that what we call our sense of morality is the result of evolved mechanisms (I, for one, think it probably is), but it is also true that the weather is the result of all the interactions of all the air molecules from their previous state (or something like that). It doesn't mean that an attempt to analyse said particles will be fruitful in any way.
But nor does it mean we can't predict the weather to a 'better than guesswork' level. I think this is where we are with ethical naturalism. It's useful to a point and in a very particular context. Wondering why there's so much general agreement, even between cultures who have never met... ethical naturalism may be a useful way to think about that. Wondering whether to spend more on health care even at the expense of people's financial autonomy...I doubt ethical naturalism will be anything other than a pointless distraction.
Could not have said it better myself.
I think I can appreciate what you're saying about the infinite regress. In considering a normative theory of ethics and applying it to the present environment, one which seeks to consider actions from a Darwinian perspective gives rise to unresolvable regress, hence no clarity can be established as to how we ought to act. Did I get that right?
In contrast, my initial thought process entailed a descriptive theory, rather than a normative one. It still bodes poorly for applying any predictions on our present environment, in as much as the theory will take itself into account as part of the environment. Might this settle down to some equilibrium (dynamic or otherwise)? I suppose, or it could blow up.
But, if I may float a bit, there exists a hope of utility in the way I initially perceived it.
I am going to throw out the most rank of naive hypotheses, for the purpose of demonstrating a hypothetical benefit, and for no more. That hypothesis is that social acceptance of homosexuality is positively impacted by a broad perception of reaching population equilibrium. That the social "current" and its promotion of child bearing is strongest when there is a newly encountered expanse to be populated (or captured) and that this current wanes when neighbors encroach or resource utilization reaches its perceived limits (progressively, not acutely). That the weakening current allows the frustrated forces (eddies in the flow) to present themselves and sexual heterodoxy to gain a measure of recognition.
If this were not a straw dog hypothesis, I might look to collect data on cultures and periods, including where homosexuality was strongly inhibited and where, alternatively, homosexuality was accepted. I would have to consider the impact of other factors that might confound -- agrarian vs post-industrial, monogamous vs polygamous, evidence of religious dogma.
Say for the sake of argument that the hypothesis is eventually validated. Well, the good news is that we might be able to predict continuing evolution of social policy in the US towards acceptance of homosexuality.
But what does this indicate for the future? Look forward to efforts to colonize the stars. The Earth will likely get to and remain in a state of equilibrium, population-wise, in as much as getting any appreciable number of people out of our gravity well is infeasible (even with a Space Elevator - I read about the intractability of moving a human population off-world but can't find the cite at present).
Given our previous, fictional, result, in an environment with broad availability of resources (asteroids for mining) and energy, but with a need for workers, on our space ships/moons/terraformed planets, retrenchment could be a predictable result.
And this is where the utility lies. If we can predict the flourishing of discriminatory mores, based on our review of how people in a given environment evolve with respect to values and ethics, we have a chance to intercede. We can seek to inhibit what, without a thorough understanding of sociology and ethics, would otherwise typically arise. Public campaigns, anti-discrimination laws and charters, used proactively to anticipate and mold perceptions prior to the onset of negative signals. Using normative ethics (which it outside of theory scope) to impact a scientifically predictable, but undesirable, change in social mores.
With the last paragraph, I've stood my entire premise on its head -- that 'good' can be understood in terms of its statistical/predictive growth and perpetuation. Does this mean that by frustrating it, I am doing 'bad'? At this my brain gets just muddled by contemplating that the normative effort entailed in short-circuiting the predicted result might itself be incorporated as part of the descriptive theory -- but only after the fact, bringing it back to 'good' (assuming success).
Morality (the classification of human events as moral or immoral):
1) Is a human universal. (Brown, 1991)
2) Facilitates the survival of humanity by counteracting the inherent capacity for misinterpretation (bias, error, and illusion) which leads to social conflict.
Similarities between the moral codes and value systems of the World's major Book Religions and systems of Moral Philosophy form a consensus on morality which is likely to have a basis in human nature rather than human culture.
Quoting JosephS
Moral relativism is absurd, because if morality is different for every person and/or social group, everything and nothing is moral and immoral across individuals and/or social groups.
First, you don't support an argument, nincompoop. Arguments are supports. What, do you have crutches for your crutches? Is your wheelchair on a wheelchair?
Second, go back to my thread and show me how my argument fails - that is, show me that I did not support my claim. Having little snide digs on other threads - think I wouldn't notice!!
Quoting JosephS
Quoting JosephS
Quoting JosephS
Good essay.
There's really only one kind of broad ethical theory that underpins all these questions, and it is utilitarianism.
It is a good essay, and deserves a much more detailed response than I'm able to provide at this moment. A couple of passages jumped out, one of which was:
I think the ease with which a religious philosophy is categorised and cast off ought to be questioned here. It might have little utility, or even none at all - but that's not the point. Religious philosophies are in the business of ultimate ends, the summum bonum - just the kinds of things which biologically-centred theories either bracket out, or relegate to the personal or social. But the distinctive difference of evolutionary theory, is that it's a theory which is intimately bound up with human identity, goals and purposes.
I could say more, but will leave it there.
That would be about one particular element or rule in a system of morality, and not about the entire class of morality systems, which is what the article is about.
If you want to talk about one element across morality systems, for example, category theory tries to handle that, using functors between systems. Theories can be modelled as categories. Since theories are (axiomatic) rule-based systems, a morality is a theory. A functor is then a mapping between two such (morality) systems.
Still, I am absolutely not an expert on functors. I always hope that I am going to read something surprisingly effective when perusing that type of literature, but up till now, I haven't found anything that I can really use out of the box. Besides that functor approach -- which is not necessarily easy to use -- I don't know of any other attempt at juxtaposing (morality) systems.
I dont see how that makes moral relativism absurd. All you did was explain what moral relativism is.
It is different for every person and social group at certain times depending on the situation. Being part of the same species and the same culture can instill similar morals within each person.
Why do we have moral dilemmas if morals were objective? Morals are related to our goals as individuals. When our goals come into conflict we say that we have a moral dilemma. When we share a goal it can be said that we share morals.
Was this quote before or after he wrote The Selfish Gene? In the selfish Gene he explains how altruism evolved naturally. He also doesnt seem to understand that moral codes are a natural outcome of intelligent social beings with long memories.
Comparative Religion would be one.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I can't help you with that.
Carly Simon, is that you?
The baseline claim is that moral systems and the principles that are encapsulated by that system are selected for like many other Darwinian effects. It is normative in as much as if you value group survival in your environment (cultural, technological, philosophical, geographical=area+climate+resources, competitive) you will choose these principles (alternative configurations might give equally likely survival chances so this doesn't rule out multiple solutions). And if you don't -- you'll be replaced by a group that will. If you go extinct, voluntarily or not, you are maladapted -- objectively.
Objective truth is reflected in how the theory tells us if you adopt these mores in this environment you will (likely) thrive. If you don't, you will probably not. It does not rule out crosscutting rules, neither does it rule them in.
This effort stands like those who were trying to piece together the periodic tables. Disjointed islands that eventually came together. Is the logical conclusion of the questions asked an overarching theory of ethical selection?
I agree that what Darwinian Morality implies is a baseline utilitarian goal, the good of group survival, the ethical systems at work subordinate to that goal need not be consistently utilitarian, do they? I'm thinking now of how we value individuals, even the indigent, such that we take them to the hospital when they are in critical need, even in cases where the cost outweighs any obvious societal benefit (and then let them die rather than give them a million dollar heart transplant). There is a utilitarian argument there, but it strikes me as a bit tortured. It's easier, I feel, to defend it on deontological terms.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is an argument (I believe either Dawkins or Hawking voiced it) that suggested a disbelief in God because he is "not necessary".
Both in that as well as the quote you cite, the dismissive attitude is disappointing. I can appreciate a certain detachment, but the perfunctory declarative tone comes across as smug.
The structure and fabric of the universe may at once produce a species prone to create (many different) creation myths without denying the existence of a God. I prefer to contemplate the variety of faith beliefs as many avenues to wisdom.
It was from a televised debate in Australia in 2012 with the now-jailed Cardinal George Pell. Very disappointing affair from both parties in my view. That was the one thing Dawkins said that I agreed with, although I would have loved someone to have asked him ‘why, then, have you spent the latter part of your career attacking the foundations of the alternative to Darwinian morality’?
Quoting JosephS
The famous example comes from when Pierre Simon LaPlace (‘France’s Newton’) presented his master work to Napoleon:
[quote=Wikipedia]Laplace went in state to Napoleon to present a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. ("I had no need of that hypothesis.") [/quote]
I’m sure. The essay says that ‘everyone accepts’ that individuals are entitled to humane treatment - but I think it originates with Christian social philosophy. There’s no natural justification for it, it’s simply taken for granted, although whether it can be sustained indefinitely in the absence of its underlying rationale is an open question in my view.
After all, the most vocal advocates of evolutionary materialism, Dennett and Dawkins, never tire of telling us we’re ‘moist robots’ or what amounts to sperm carriers, as it if amounts to a ‘philosophy’. :-)
Agree. I subscribe to a kind of naturalism with respect to religions - that they're the expressions of encounters and epiphanies from many different cultures and periods (a la Huston Smith). It's 'naturalistic' in the sense that it sees these expressions as being natural to h. sapiens, but not naturalistic in the sense usually implied by scientific naturalism.
Ethical naturalism cannot tell us what we ought to do in particular situations, to be sure, other than the general dictum that we ought to do what we think is best for ourselves and others, for those, that is we consider to be our community.
People do, unfortunately, have limited feelings for, and hence, conceptions of, community. And there are situations where we genuinely don't know what would be best. But if everyone felt that all of humanity was their community, then humanity would have a far better chance of surviving long term, that is for sure. But that is probably impossible, given our (perhaps self-protective) limited capacity for empathy.
Just because something is relative doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Morality would be the relationship between multiple individuals or groups goals.
Now at least we have a bit of ethics, with the introduction of an ought:
(italics in original)
But then there is the curious use of "I-thou" and "us-them", which I find distracting; Buber, so far as I am aware, would not have thought of the "I-thou" relation as excluding groups of people; but that's what happens here. Perhaps someone with a better understanding of Buber can explain; in the mean time it just seems better to ignore the implied relation to him.
So I take the salient piece here to be the observation the evolutionary ethics applies to groups, not individuals.
I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I think it still places too much emphasis on the individual (within the context of ethical naturalism). In ethical naturalism, moral desires are no different to any other desires in that they provide us with impulse to act, they're not objectives to aim for, so it wouldn't be a matter of working out what we think is best and then doing it (in spite of any desires we might have to the contrary), it would be a matter of doing what we feel like doing, and that being best for society.
Otherwise you end up in this rather contrary situation where you say that people should suppress their basic desires in favour of some goal (social welfare, say), but that the desire for this goal is biologically programmed. Well, if it's biologically programmed, then why doesn't it form part of the first set of desires we're suppressing to achieve this higher goal, and even if its in a different set, if all we have by way of authority, is that it is biologically programmed, then by what authority does it override those other desires (which surely have an even greater claim to biological purity)?
One way out of this might be to say that the desire for social cohesion is biological but in modern society its complicated to see how to bring it about (so it gets left on the back-burner, so to speak). The other, my preferred, is to say that the biological desires are vague and adapt to changing circumstances. The circumstances we find ourselves in these days simply have a broad tendency to yield the kinds desires we see. We see evidence of this even in something like Zebra fish, which change coopertaive/competitive strategies according to resource supply.
Either way, the structure of the society we've created has to bear a huge burden of responsibility for the actions of the people within it, and that's something I find too often missing from moral discourse.
Your first quote reminded me of this one. I thought this was interesting considering of course, his Atheism:
"If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God."
Stephen Hawking
As it relates to the OP, if one assumes that the universe does not exist reasonlessly, 'goodness' may somehow be compelled to create a universe because it is good that it does so.
Through conscious Beings, the universe has generated self-awareness. Self-awareness creates a sense of goodness, morally and ethically.
Lower life forms may have a degree of sentient attributes from what we know about the small limbic system. But beyond that, there are no survival advantages to Ethics: 'how to live a good life'.
Sure, we can say that, but we'd be applying the very specific definition of "good" you have just outlined. We need to first define "good" before we can answer the question of what then fulfills these criteria.
Quoting JosephS
It would be an objective measure, at the least. The problem is how we get from an objective descriptive fact to an objective normative rule.
Honestly the search for "objectivity" in moral philosophy is kinda weird. What would it even mean for some moral rule to be "objective"?
Quoting Wayfarer
Well not necessarily only christian social philosophy, but in general most ideas of inalienable rights and equality are, at least historically, connected to religious ideas. Religious law was the first real check on arbitrary use of power.
Quoting Wayfarer
Where do you people get this kind of bullshit from. Have you done any kind of historical or anthropological research at all before spewing this covertly racist bile?
The white-western man comes to save the fuzxy-wuzzies from their barbaric savagery...please!
What does this have to do with racism? Religious law was important in all societies around the globe. The specific paths it took from there differed.
Christianity does have a message of universal equality that is absent from, say, Hinduism. It's difficult to say how operative this message was at any point in history, since there are so many factors influencing social norms.
The racism comes from the creation of a 'club' based on a white-western model. Graciously 'allowing' other cultures into that club on the sole basis that they're similar does nothing to diminish the extent to which the myth of the brutal savage is used to justify the systematic extinction of tribal cultures.
Ok, but this seems completely unrelated to anything I wrote.
I quoted the section...
Quoting Echarmion
To make the 'moral development' argument is to implicitly condone the idea that those less 'well-developed' are less moral. The only alternative is to include in your definition of 'religious law' any and all tribal spiritual beliefs which basically reduces to the original position of ethical naturalism you raised the point in opposition to - that all humans have a moral sense simply by virtue of being human.
Plenty. There’s nothing ‘racist’ about it.
When did I ever speak about development?
Quoting Isaac
That was indeed the point.
Quoting Isaac
Obviously all humans have a "moral sense", or else morals wouldn't ever form. The point was that religious rules were an important step in regulating society. This is especially true for ideas like inalienable human rights, since this implies an absolute limit to the use of force. Historically, such limits to power were almost always religious.
It is clearly associated with the Christian doctrine that Christ died for all mankind. Previous cultures had no such ideal, society was rigidly stratified. The whole concept of human rights as developed in liberal political philosophy was unarguably a product of the Christian west; other cultures don’t necessarily share it, the PRC doesn’t have such a concept to this day.
But the underlying worldview of Darwinian philosophy is inclined to attribute 'moral sense', like everything else, to a function of the struggle to survive. That's one of the reasons the essay was written in the first place. Max Horkheimer's book The Eclipse of Reason explores the philosophical implications of this. He argues that individuals in contemporary industrial culture experience a universal sense of fear and disillusionment, which can be traced back to the impact of ideas that originate in the Enlightenment conception of reason and the historical development of industrial society. Before the Enlightenment, reason was seen as an objective reality; now, it is seen as a subjective faculty of the mind. As a consequence, the Enlightenment undermined metaphysics in the sense of an understanding of final cause, and hence the objective concept of reason itself. Reason no longer determines the "guiding principles of our own lives", but is subordinated to the ends it can achieve. In other words, reason is instumentalized.
The effects of this shift are devaluing. There is little love for things in themselves. Philosophies, such as pragmatism and positivism, "aim at mastering reality, not at criticizing it." Man comes to dominate nature, but in the process dominates other men by dehumanizing them - treating humans as objects. He forgets the unrepeatable and unique nature of every human life and instead sees all living things as fields of means ('consumer society'). His inner life is rationalized and planned. "On the one hand, nature has been stripped of all intrinsic value or meaning. On the other, man has been stripped of all aims except self-preservation." Popular Darwinism teaches only a "coldness and blindness toward nature."
According to Horkheimer, the individual in mass society is a cynical conformist. Ironically, the 'idolization of progress' leads to the decline of the individual.
But correlation is not causation. There are other factors unique to western Europe.
Quoting Wayfarer
The stratification of society differed throughout history. In general, more complex societies tended to be more stratified. Basal Tribal societies are relatively egalitarian. I find it difficult to see much difference in the stratification until premodern times.
Quoting Wayfarer
The PRC is not the best comparison though, because the social and religious history of China is very different not just from that of Europe. The specifics of European feudalism and the strength of the Catholic Church also played a role in making western Europe significantly more individualistic than the rest of the world.
Oh, well I'm glad your racism is well researched, that makes all the difference.
Cite me a collection of anthropologists stating that all non- or pre-Christian cultures do not think individuals are entitled to humane treatment. In fact, just one single source from your extensive research showing that non-Christian cultures have no concept of humane treatment.
I think you are over-analyzing this, and making it more black and white than it really is. So, regarding the above what if what I feel like doing is not best for society? Say I feel like raping someone, for example.
Quoting Isaac
I'm also not concerned with the question of whether desires for social harmony are "biologically programmed". I haven't used that language at all. What I am saying is that mores evolve in the communal context where social harmony is obviously the underlying goal.
Mores, then would seem to be predominately socially conditioned rather than "biologically programmed". The underlying general feelings of desire for social harmony and empathy, for example, may be inherently biological as they can be observed in social animals as well as humans.
There is far more dysfunctionality and deviation in the linguistically, conceptually elaborated lives of humans than there is in the lives of other social animals, though.
Typically in ancient cultures humane treatment is predominately a matter of compassion, not of what was rationally considered to be fair and just treatment warranted by the mere fact of being an individual who is entitled to it. Think of Buddhist compassion, for example (although that is perhaps a movement away from mere arbitrary, uncultivated empathy to a culture of compassion).
It is well established that the idea of the importance of the individual did not hold much cultural sway in Eastern cultures nor in the West until the times of Socrates and the advent of Judaeo-Christian thought. The idea of the universal rights of the individual was first comprehensively articulated by Locke, if my memory serves, and more fully elaborated by Kant.
If you can cite some counter-examples I am happy to stand corrected.
That was my point also. All I'm saying is that it's easy to take for granted the concept of 'human rights' but it is very much the product of a Western cultural history within which the Christian ethos (in the broad sense as also incorporating many elements from other sources) played a foundational role.
Quoting Isaac
The development of the concept of the individual person is actually very much an aspect of culture. I bought a book on that a few years ago, although I must admit it was excrutiatingly boring. But the literary critic Harold Bloom, I recall, wrote a book on how Shakespeare invented the concept of the modern person - an intriguing idea which I don't know is widely accepted but he makes a case for it.
I've appreciated the responses in this thread as it is helping me get my head around the topic. I'd never come across 'ethical naturalism' prior and so this is helping me read further on the subject of ethics.
I would think that we look for an objective standard in order to justify applying that standard to others. If we regard moral propositions as purely subjective, enforcing law and order amounts to nothing more than 'might makes right', right? Even if that is what it means, it's not how we treat them or talk about them.
As distinct from 'the myth of the noble savage'.
Quoting Echarmion
Agree.
Quoting JosephS
This comes up very frequently on this site. I would say that in respect of ethical theory. we're dealing with questions that transcend objectivity. now that will seem a strange thing to say, so I will try and explain. Go back to Hume's dilemma about 'deriving ought from is' (mentioned in the essay). The fundamental issue is that we understand that factual judgements are the province of science and precise measurement. One of the reasons that theories grounded in evolutionary biology are thought to be superior to those grounded in cultural myths is because of the supposed 'objectivity' of science.
However, it remains the case that
Anything but Human, Richard Polt.
It seems to me that appeals to science, generally, and evolutionary biology, in particular, often fail to come to terms with this explanatory gap, because ultimately ethical decisions encompass qualitative judgements, which, again, transcend the bounds of what can be understood as the purely objective. That's why ethical philosophy, whilst it can and should be informed by science, is not in itself a wholly scientific matter.
You said "Religious law was the first real check on arbitrary use of power" ie, before religious law there was arbitrary use of power, after it less . That's moral development. It's the same argument that justifies missionaries going into tribal areas and wiping out their culture (and more often than not their actual population with foreign disease) but I suppose that's nothing to worry about too much if they were all backward savages anyway. All in the march of progress....
Quoting Echarmion
I'll ask you the same as I asked Wayfarer then. What evidence are you basing this assertion on?
You said "most ideas of inalienable rights and equality are, at least historically, connected to religious ideas. Religious law was the first real check on arbitrary use of power." So provide me with the anthropological evidence you're using to suggest that there is frequent abuse of power and no equality in tribal societies, or that where you find these sentiments, they are enforced by religion.
I wasn't saying that all things you feel like doing will be good for society. I'm saying that the things which will be good for society must be among the collection of things you feel like doing, otherwise the whole biological origins argument fails.
Quoting Janus
Why do they evolve, and why would social harmony ever be the underlying goal? Because...
Quoting Janus
So why would you "feel like raping someone" and need that feeling to be restrained by some rational consideration of the greater good? At the very least if the above were the case you might feel like having sex but also not want to put another through any great distress. Feeling like raping someone is a pathology, it arises when empathy is either not present or has broken down. It's not the background norm against which rational consideration has to fight.
Evidence?
Quoting Janus
Wayfarer wasn't talking about individualisation. He specifically said
Quoting Wayfarer
The very entitlement to humane treatment, he claimed started with Christian social philosophy. Not the locating of those rights with the individual, not the first articulation of it. The actual treatment.
As it happened, I did study anthropology at undergrad level for a couple of years, but it doesn't have much to say explicitly about the question. But the concept of human rights, in the modern sense, certainly didn't exist in pre-modern cultures, for a vast number of reasons. In fact as I mentioned before in many pre-modern cultures, there's hardly a conception of 'the person' or 'the individual'. It's hard for us to see that, living in such a pervasively individualist culture. But such fundamental things as jury trial, habeus corpus, the right to private property, and so on, were all things that were thrashed out over centuries of cultural development and mainly in the West (although cultures obviously influence each other also). Can't see how that is controversial. Although I do suspect it is politically incorrect to say anything generally positive about Western culture - covertly racist, or at least that is how it will be seen.
Why would mores not evolve with societies? Of course social harmony is the purpose of mores; what other goal could they have? Can you give an example of a society that valued mores that were designed to promote disharmony? What do you think the purpose of ethical and moral teachings in general could be?
I don't understand most of your objections; when I say things that are more or less established general informed opinion such as that individualism as we moderns understand it, is not emphasized or even existent in primitive and ancient cultures, and that the idea evolved out of conceptions that are more or less unique to Western culture, you seem to be acting purposely obtuse or objecting just for the sake of it. If you want to object to such uncontroversial statements you should provide counterexamples to support your objections.
There would be no point answering any of the rest of what you have responded with. One or two things at a time or it's going to become tedious.
It is social and political development. I think calling it "moral development" implies something about the people living in a system that is not warranted.
Quoting Isaac
I think it's hard to argue that there are different levels of social, political and economic development around the world. Stating this does not necessarily imply a value judgement. Modern tribal societies are not somehow stuck in the past. But they are more "basal" in that they did not develop more complex forms of social, political and economic systems.
If someone thinks that justifies wiping out their cultures, that is a problem with their moral development.
Quoting Isaac
Tribal societies are relatively egalitarian, and don't have large concentrations of power. There isn't much power to coerce that could be abused. Tribal societies also all already have religion. But since there is no judiciary and no other strong checks on "executive" power, what power there is can be arbitrarily applied, unless there are strong social rules against this. And such rules are usually religious. I am not aware of any secular structure of such rules in a tribal society.
You can compare China, India and Europe and see that of the three, China has the least organized religion. It also has no history of a "higher order" of law until contact with western civilization. Chinese "legalism" held that power rests only in the emperor, with no external limits. As a result, China's early states were extremely powerful and totalitarian.
Meanwhile, in both Europe and India, a strong religious establishment forced local rulers to compromise. Failure to compromise with religious authorities could mean a loss of legitimacy, as the investiture controversy illustrates. This lays the groundwork for the power of rulers to be limited in principle. And the effects are still visible when we compare the political situation in China, India and Europe.
That's your extensive research? A book you bought that you can't even cite and a literary critic?
Quoting Wayfarer
...yes, the main one being you've specified "in the modern sense", which pretty much precludes anything not modern from fitting the description doesn't it? But that's not the argument you originally made. You said
Quoting Wayfarer
That clearly states that before Christian thinking people did not think that others were entitled to humane treatment. It doesn't just say that there weren't things like "jury trial, habeus corpus, the right to private property". It does not just say something about individual vs tribal identity. It says that pre-Christian people did not think others were entitled to human treatment. Of course it's seen as covertly racist. It's barely even covert.
"The mere fact of Christian universalism is no argument for awarding credit to the religion for the conceptual or political possibility of human rights. ... Though its egalitarianism is famous, the cultural and political implications of Christianity from age to age and place to place were simply too different, in need of too much drastic transformation, to approach modern conceptions on their own.
The premise of accounts that try to claim more, after all, is that there is only one move from particular cultures to universal morality to be made - and Christianity is it. But once it is acknowledged that there were, are, and could be many universalisms, the fact that one or another movement or culture is universalistic - even floridly so, as Christianity is - lends it no necessary role in the prehistory of human
rights". (Moyn, [i]The Last Utopia: Human Rights In History).
Well, any goal whatsoever. You've not provided a mechanism by which they would be restricted to social harmony.
Quoting Janus
Nazi Germany.
Quoting Janus
To get people to conform to whatever set of behaviours the ruling elite think will be in their best interests.
Quoting Janus
That's not all you said though is it? You said "humane treatment is predominately a matter of compassion, not of what was rationally considered to be fair and just treatment warranted by the mere fact of being an individual who is entitled to it." You're claiming that any humane treatment in tribal cultures is the result of blind compassion, not rational thought. It has nothing to do with individualisation. It's to do with perpetuating this dangerous myth that tribal cultures are barely thinking brutes compared to the enlightened westerners who will come and save them from themselves.
This is the bit I'm asking you for evidence for. That such rules are usually religious.
No, it isn't. And yet I'm still waiting for any evidence at all to support your assertion that tribal cultures do not think the latter.
Give an actual example of an alternative goal if you want me to take your answer seriously.
Quoting Isaac
So, you claim that Nazi Germany promoted social mores designed to produce internal disharmony? :roll:
Quoting Isaac
So, you think that, for example, the paradigm ethical teaching of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is designed to "get people to conform to whatever set of behaviors the ruling elite think will be in their best interests"? Are you serious?
Quoting Isaac
This is imputing what I have not said and what is not even implied in what I said. I said that the evidence suggests that ancient and primitive cultures did not have an idea of individual entitlement comparable to the modern Western conception. This is by no means to suggest that they were not rational; they could have been rational in a different way than we are.
I am not an anthropologist. But you can probably look at every culture on earth and find strong, usually conceptually unalterable, social rules based on religion. Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, the ancestor worship of China or various Micronesian tribes. All these contain such social rules. Is that somehow not evidence?
If you want to say that this correlation does not amount to causation, you need to show examples of secular unalterable rules forming.
They could have the goal of making as many statues with massive heads to appease their Gods as it's possible to make despite using up so much timber that their entire civilisation is wiped out. For example.
Quoting Janus
You think the mores promoted by Nazi Germany were aimed a social harmony?
Quoting Janus
Where do you get the paradigm ethical teaching of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" from? Just name a source, a pedagogic source from which we 'learn' 'do unto others...' that does not then go on to teach entirely culturally manipulative objectives like religion, individualism, property rights etc.
Quoting Janus
No you didn't. I've quoted what you said several times, and it's not that. You said "humane treatment is predominately a matter of compassion, not of what was rationally considered to be fair and just treatment warranted by the mere fact of being an individual who is entitled to it." You didn't say anything about 'comparable to the modern Western conception". Then you'd have to define- how comparable.
Since the orthodox opinion is, as far as I am aware, that they don't think that way; the burden is on you to provide evidence that they do. As far as I am aware in tribal communities individuals are understood predominately in terms of the social roles, and what they would be entitled to would vary according to their roles (and their attendant importance to the community).
They were hunter/gatherers, not intellectuals, and no doubt most considerations were of a practical, not an ideal, nature. I think that view is fairly uncontroversial (although I'm no anthropologist) but if you have contrary evidence then bring it on.
You made the claim, why am I being required to find contrary evidence. Surely, if you've made a strong claim like that you have empirical data to back it up already, otherwise it's just prejudice. Your claim is that moral law is necessarily contained within religious law. You should have some evidence for this to hand.
Theories by actual experts (I know, unpopular round here) as to how Hunter-Gatherers maintained their egalitarian societies broadly fall into three camps. Richard Lee's and Christopher Boehm's concept of 'reverse dominance' where the majority act in unison to diminish even the slightest air of superiority a single individual might have, and thereby socially 'nipping dominance in the bud'. Then there's Peter Gray's Ideas about childhood freedom to play allowing a greater social exploration, or Elizabeth Thomas's ideas about the effect of indulgent parenting providing emotional support missing in later cultures. None mention religion even once.
That is not the orthodox view at all. It is your assertion of orthodoxy I'm asking for evidence of, not the actual view itself.
They were a totalitarian culture, but they did not promote mores such as their own people lying to one another, or murdering, raping and torturing one another. Of course they wanted internal harmony or else their regime could not have lasted long; if the people were unhappy to significant degree there would have been unrest and revolt against the regime.
Quoting Isaac
We are discussing mores, wherever they might arise, not the religions or secular cultures within which they may have arisen. What you don't get is that people are sometimes happy to live under strict regimes. The important thing is internal harmony within the community. We have been over this before. Murdering, raping and torturing members of one's own society, for example, are always considered to be moral evils in all societies. I bet you cannot come up with one counter-example.
So, what is the orthodox view according to you?
No, it's not. You're welcome to provide evidence for this claim, if you have it.
There are now three people in this thread who you misrepresent. I suggest you take a step back and look at what was actually written.
Quoting Isaac
I just gave you a bunch of evidence. What's wrong with that?
Quoting Isaac
Interesting, but I did not argue that religion was necessary to "maintain an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society". I was talking about how, historically, religious rules are the precursors of modern inalienable rights.
What? What do you think went on in Nazi Germany? They promoted mores which encouraged people to think of Jews as lesser humans. that, without a shadow of a doubt, created disharmony (which is a mild word for the murder of six million innocent people).
Quoting Janus
Did you know about the Second World War? There was quite a bit of 'unrest and revolt'.
I've outlined it for Echarmion above.
The Jews were not considered to be their own people. How many times do I have to explain what I mean?
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Echarmion
What there could be interpreted any other way than to suggest that people could do any action 'use of force' etc in the absence of religious laws?
Quoting Echarmion
What I read when I take a step back is three people furiously back-peddling from blatantly lazy colonialist ideas about the 'backward natives' by gradually refining their arguments to increasingly specific correlations. What started off as suggesting that people could arbitrarily apply power before religion, has now become "well, tribes don't have a written bill of rights like we do".
Quoting Echarmion
That's not evidence, it's stuff you reckon. evidence is the theory of experts in the field based on empirical study.
Quoting Echarmion
...
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Echarmion
How do you marry 'egalitarian society' with one in which the strong have no checks as to the arbitrary application of force over the weak?
Yes, and the idea of Jews not being part of 'their people' was a social more which caused disharmony.
If I declare that me and my mate both want to go around raping people and consider it to be socially harmonious to our social group (which we take to be just me and my mate), does that then follow your theory? If so, then what does it yield in terms of morality. If we're all free to define 'our social group' in whatever way we feel like, then any activity whatsoever can be condoned simply by altering the definition of social group.
Quoting Isaac
So, individualism is suppressed by "reverse dominance". Where is the notion of "rights of the individual" in that? I haven't said their societies were not in any practical sense egalitarian. On the contrary I imagine that primitive societies (but not ancient societies) would have been, if anything, generally more egalitarian, at least practically speaking, than modern Western societies are. I mean they were tiny groups by comparison, where everyone would have been very familiar with everyone else, and no one would have been dispensable to the life of the community.The argument has been over the idea of the individual and the individual being entitled to certain rights. Gray's and Thomas's ideas don't seem relevant at all to what I have been arguing.
Do you really expect me to take your claim that these three represent the orthodox idea of the history of the development of the idea of individual rights seriously?
Now I get it. I was referring not to individual use of force, but use of force by the tribal community, the chief, the king, the state etc. Something we might call "political power". I wasn't referring to just any and all behaviour. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Quoting Isaac
In that case, your condescending attitude is impairing your reading comprehension.
Quoting Isaac
Evidence is whatever the state of affairs is. Theories are based on evidence, they are not themselves evidence. The statements of experts are likewise evidence. Are you claiming that what I wrote is factually wrong?
Quoting Isaac
Egalitarian refers to the relative distribution of power and resources. Not to the limits on the application of said power and resources.
The Jews were murdered in order to achieve social harmony in the twisted minds of the nazis. Of course many non-Jews would have been horrified, and the judgement of the nazis was totally flawed. But they did not promote mores designed to create disharmony and that is the point.
As I've said before, if we want civilization to continue then the ideal would be that all people be considered to be part of one community. The economy is global now, but people still hang on to notions of national sovereignty, and continue to see other cultures as "other", so when the crunch comes they will promote the idea that we must look after our own, and fuck the rest. This might be misplaced but it is certainly designed to promote internal harmony. No one wants unrest within their own communities.
You said "and what they would be entitled to would vary according to their roles (and their attendant importance to the community)" was the orthodox view. Varying entitlements is not egalitarianism is it? Notwithstanding that, you asked me what the orthodox views are, so I presented them. I didn't claim all of them supported a notion that individual rights were a thought-out concept in hunter-gatherer tribes. Personally, I favour Peter Gray's theory. Children in hunter-gatherer societies are treated as individuals with rights far more than they are in modern Western cultures where they're treated more like th property of the parents.
Quoting Janus
Well, why don't you tell me what sort of evidence you've used to decide what you think is the orthodox view and I'll try to match that?
Right, well in that case you'd need some evidence that in the famously egalitarian hunter-gatherer tribes, the 'chief' regularly abuses his/her power for arbitrary reasons.
Quoting Echarmion
What you wrote doesn't even pertain to the first 200,000 years of human culture, so no, it is not evidence of the 'almost always' correlation you're claiming.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't understand what point you're making here. Your argument is that there can be arbitrary abuse of power. In an egalitarian society (one on which power is distributed equally), who is it that the abuse of power is forcing?
Right. And if 'their own communities' can be defined as small or specific as you like, then all you have is that people want harmony for themselves and anyone they fancy giving harmony to. That's relativism.
The piece you quoted speaks of "nipping superiority in the bud" it says nothing of ideas of individual entitlement.
Quoting Isaac
You know as well as I do what the orthodox view is. You can call it colonialist or chauvinistic or whatever you like, and I'll probably agree with you, at least in part, but if you want to offer another account that you claim is the new orthodoxy then you need to provide evidence of that in the way of quotes from texts, and evidence that those alternate views are indeed now the new orthodoxy.
That's your argument? "You know as well as I do".
What you are alluding to is the orthodox view among the uneducated. The orthodox view among experts is not that and has not been for at least 60 years possibly longer. If you want me to prove that you will have to provide me with some idea of what sort of proof you'd accept, but to avoid double standards, it will have to be the same type of proof that you used to arrive at your conclusion about the orthodox view.
Right action is the faultless performance of moral (good) action.
Quoting JosephS
Morality is a mental construct which has many subjective (personal) and intersubjective (cultural) manifestations. A person's morality construct develops in parallel with mental maturation, personal experience, and social influences (Kohlberg, 1983).
Ethical propositions are subjective; they are statements of, or pertaining to, ethical value.
With regard to ethics, only human events having a moral or immoral quality are objective (factual). So, there are moral facts and immoral facts.
Empathy (identification with, and the vicarious experience of, the thoughts and/or affect of another person) is a faculty of ethical awareness, having both cognitive and affective components (Rogers, et al., 2007) which informs a subject of an ethical fact (except in the case of mental disorders such as psychopathy).
So, there is no separation of "is" (fact) and "ought" (value), because awareness is both objective (fact-based) and subjective (value-based). Ethical fact and value constitute the two poles of empathy.
Conscience is the intuitive faculty which evaluates ethical options and self conduct (including motives and intent) in accordance with morality.
Questions of subordination and rebellion, while somewhat more complex than most other ethical questions, are not a function of cultural bias (individualism or collectivism).
It is if the list of things people want for various groups exhausts the list of things it is reasonably possible to want. It seems, depending on the group, people want anything from rape and torture to self-sacrificial altruism. So basically, all you're saying is that out of the range of behaviours it is reasonably possible to want who people want it for varies relativistically.
It wasn't, no, but it can be. I was originally talking about your direct quote in reference to it, which was
"in tribal communities individuals are understood predominately in terms of the social roles, and what they would be entitled to would vary according to their roles (and their attendant importance to the community)."
Ie that entitlement varies according to roles and importance within a community.
" Typically in ancient cultures humane treatment is predominately a matter of compassion, not of what was rationally considered to be fair and just treatment"
Ie that tribal cultures do not rationalise any humane treatment they may act out.
But if you want to limit it to the notion of individual rights, then we can do that too. Tell me what 'rights' a 10 year old has in our society, and we'll compare to the orthodox view of child-rearing hunter-gatherer tribes.
There isn't one. My point isn't that people don't want certain things for certain groups. It's that, if those groups are selected entirely to meet relativist notions of who's in and who's out, then the whole of morality becomes relativist. There's nothing an individual is constrained from doing which they feel like doing. If they feel like raping someone, just declare them to be outside your group and now you can. That's relativist morality.
Who is in who is out is determined socially, communally, not arbitrarily by individuals I would say. Of course in hunter/gatherer societies everyone is in and everyone is familiar with everyone else. That is the paradigm of community. There may be special priveleges, as there usually is within families, for the father and the mother, for elders, for tribal leaders, for the shamans and so on.
Murder, rape and torture would not be tolerated within those communities because such acts would undermine the harmony of the group.
I found an article by Gray here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways
Reading it I found it very interesting but found nothing in it that contradicts anything I have been arguing and I remain convinced that hunter/gatherers do not have ideals of individual human rights. Interestingly the Western conception of human rights involves private property, a notion of which would have likely been non-existent in hunter/gatherer groups. This is not to say that people would not have had their own clothes, or baskets, or digging sticks, weapons, dwellings or whatever, of course, but the possessive notion of private ownership would likely have been absent..
It's not really possible to argue based on how "regular" an "abuse" of power is, because all tribal societies already have religion. So we cannot make comparisons. What we can say is that, obviously, tribes have no judiciary. Conflict resolution is personal in tribal societies. That means that more powerful lineages are more difficult to hold accountable.
What we can also do is compare the trajectories societies took towards modernity and compare them. If we do that, we notice that regions with a strong religious establishment also have a tradition of secular rule that is, at least in theory, subordinate to a religious authority. In China, such a subordination never existed. This corresponds with a notion of "rule of law" in modern society, which again is much weaker in China.
If you want to dismiss this idea, fine. I am not going to be able to give you convincing evidence, because I am no anthropologist, and these are just things I remember from books I read, that seemed convincing to me.
Quoting Isaac
Right, but in those first 200.000 years, there was, so far as we know, no such thing as a declaration of universal human rights.
Quoting Isaac
Tribal societies are relatively egalitarian. But there are nevertheless more powerful and less powerful lineages and groups in a tribe.
But I don't really want to make an argument about the functioning of tribal society. What I am saying is that it seems to me that religious authority was an important ingredient for the development of western individualism.
Isn't this the current situation? When have humans ever had a true moral code that was applied equally to all citizens? It seems to me that if you have money and power you can get away with almost anything, or moral codes don't apply.
Moral codes are simply imaginary ideas to keep the general population content and in check, like religion.
Is this because we use "objective" to mean an impartial or fair assessment? Objectivity as the absence of undue personal bias? But that applies to people and the way they make assessments/decisions. It doesn't seem to apply to a body of rules.
We can say empirical science is objective insofar as it describes the relations between objects. It allows us to make accurate predictions, which is only possible if it at least describes the relations between phenomena objectively, which here means as they really are
But I don't think many people suppose there is a moral object floating around somewhere that we can describe.
Sort of a painfully obvious question occurred to me that is more of a 'houskeeping' matter: do you think Darwinian ethics included discussing all branches of Philosophy?
Events are as much fact as objects are.
The holocaust is an example of what was an immoral fact (perceived particular).
If it's an immoral fact, then there must be some facts that are moral and some that are immoral. That is, immorality needs to be established in addition to the facts. Therefore, it's not sufficient to just establish the factual nature of an event to establish immorality.
Given that establishing what is and is not a fact is all that empirical science is capable of, what other objective science do we apply?
Correct.
As explained here, empathy establishes what is moral and what is immoral.
In what sense can empathy be said to be objective?
Check out recent research on mirror neurons.
It's not considered a moral fact by everyone - hence the subjectivity of morality. There are some that deny the event even happened.
We cant see emotions. We see bodily responses and facial expressions which some people can fake or hide. So what is it that mirror neurons are mirroring?
We can share feelings because we are members of the same species, but we are also individuals that have goals that can conflict or work together. All humans experience sorrow, but not always about the same thing or in the same circumstance.
This is interesting, but potentially problematic, for me. If the in/out status of society members is not determined individually, then how do you resolve the sorties paradox? Are two people a community, three, four.. ? To go back to the hypothetical example of me and my mate deciding that we'd rape anyone except each other. Have we made a moral choice because we decided not to rape each other (our communally determined 'in group') yet if I'd made the same choice about just me it would become immoral. I don't think that really captures what morality is for you, so, is it just a numbers game or something else?
I'd need a better idea of the mechanism, how this communal decision comes about. I think, in Nazi Germany, for example, there was not only a concerted and deliberate effort to convince people that Jews were the out group, but many disagreed, so I can't see the fact of the matter arising organically.
Quoting Janus
What about the fierce defence of autonomy, even for children? Is that not a right held more highly there than here? I don't know how much of Gray's work is gone into in that article, but do you think, after reading it, that a 12 year old child in western Europe really has more 'rights' than one in the communities Gray describes? I fail to see what they might be.
Quoting Janus
Yes. This is something that interests me too. The extent to which private property is tied up with rights. I don't think the western conception of 'rights' is a healthy one, based as it is on individuals and their rightful accumulation of property, but that's probably way off topic here.
Really? The 'powerful lineages' are easy to hold to account in Christian/religious cultures? Do you know how many cases of child abuse the Catholic Church covered up? Do you know how many cases of child abuse have been reported in the entire time since (for example) the San bushmen came under the Botswanan legal system? I'll give you a clue, its hundreds (possibly thousands) and none respectively.
Quoting Echarmion
So now it's become an actual legal document we're supposedly referring to. You do realise this whole discussion started with a claim that there was no barrier to inhumane treatment in non-Christian cultures, now we're talking about the fact that there was no written legal document. And you suggest my feeling of furious back-peddling is my misinterpretation?
Quoting Echarmion
That's a far cry from what you started out saying. I don't have any problem agreeing with this much weaker claim, but I also don't think it was a necessary ingredient as @StreetlightX pointed out earlier, it just happened to be one.
I did not say that.
Quoting Isaac
I did not say that either.
Quoting Isaac
No, I don't realize that. Rather, it looks to me it's you, and only you, who keeps insisting that this is what we all must mean, for whatever reason. Despite being told numerous times that this is not what I am saying, you still keep strawmanning me.
Quoting Isaac
What I started out saying was this:
Well not necessarily only christian social philosophy, but in general most ideas of inalienable rights and equality are, at least historically, connected to religious ideas. Religious law was the first real check on arbitrary use of power.
Note that I said "historically connected", which was meant to specify that this was not necessarily how things had to happen, or that a similar system could not have happened any other way. Only that, historically, this is how it did happen.
As a descriptive effort, and this is how I first approached my question in the OP, it was a consideration from a meta-ethical perspective. I think the answer then is yes. Since that posting my mind has been flipping -- a la the necker cube. At one point I will see this as a matter of fact Darwinian process, wherein the various schools and strains of ethical thought are caught up in the neural web (not of individuals but of groups of individuals) working to an imperfect effort of group survival, in various degrees unreflective of their subordination to the true objective (those that die out can talk all they want about fact-value to their hearts content in their oblivion).
At the next moment it occurs to me how perfectly trivial and meaningless the premise is (my concept, not others' conceptions). And in those moments I look at my question as one of sociology, not precisely ethics, and how ethics, or morality, supersedes the descriptive effort.
I don't imagine this is new, but it is rather new to me.
My follow-up post in the thread talks about the utility of the descriptive effort and I think that one still makes sense to me. The descriptive/normative interplay as well as the self-referential aspect of an ethical theory that incorporates other ethical theories in the mesh has me grasping.
It got me to thinking about MC Escher and the Droste Effect. Escher left a hole in the middle of this work and it has been left to others to understand how it ought to be resolved. I imagine a hole in our ethical theories where the ought and is come together, perhaps never to be resolved.
I've also been thinking of computational ethics, in as much as everything I tend to do ends up falling back on data -- because that's what I do. I will work on a new discussion with that topic when I get a chance.
….interesting. Computer ethics is definitely an intriguing topic, particularly relative to robots and the marketing of products and services.
Accordingly, my friend has proprietary software that can predict many (not all) human purchasing habits with some success, among other things... .
I guess to that end, abstract computational abilities, as well as abstract philosophical one's (Metaphysics, Epistemology, etc..), what did Darwin say about those?
Perhaps I am not giving this idea its due or perhaps what I am talking about is considered elsewhere, but the premise I'm contemplating has the "ought" at a subordinate level of encapsulation. Peoples' ethical model include the "ought" in order to support the superior "is" existent within group selection. The "is", just in case this is too muddy, involves the statistical disadvantage of maladaptive principle selection.
Now, questioned about this, we must reject it. A contrived "ought" is no good. Normative theories only have true weight when we can implement them righteously.
Quoting Galuchat
My current conception:
Awareness is perception (sensation mental effect) and cognisance (perception acknowledgment). Perception is objective (fact-based), and cognisance is subjective (value-based). So, empathy is ethical awareness (awareness of morality and immorality). Ethical perception involves exteroception and mirror neuron operation. Ethical cognisance draws upon ethical knowledge (morality).
Another factor to consider is the influence of 'the Scottish Enlightenment' on Charles Darwin's writings. Recall that Darwin laboured over his manuscript for decades before publication, and often mused about its philosophical and ethical implication. The Scottish Enlightenment 'was the period in 18th- and early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. ....
Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason. In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief values were improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for the individual and society as a whole.
Among the fields that rapidly advanced were philosophy, political economy, engineering, architecture, medicine, geology, archaeology, botany and zoology, law, agriculture, chemistry and sociology. Among the Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period were Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid, Robert Burns, Adam Ferguson, John Playfair, Joseph Black and James Hutton.' (Wikipedia)
You see many influences of this not only in Darwin but also in the ultra-Darwinism of Dawkins and neo-darwinism generally.
Quoting JosephS
It's too contrived to be realistic. The problem is basically with Enlightenment thinking. It's great in some respects, produces fantastic technology, and I wouldn't want to be without it. But the issue is, it contains many deep assumptions about the nature of things which don't actually hold up, the consequence being a state of 'false consciousness', so to speak, which is deeply embedded in contemporary culture. Seeing through that is the aim of philosophy proper. Of this, Darwin has no inkling.
I imagine that hunter/gather groups were democratic, and were so naturally, without having any explicit notion of democracy. They probably would have been more democratic than our so-called democracies, because everyone would have had a voice, even children, as the article affirms. This is easy to achieve in, even natural for, small groups, where everyone knows and cares about everyone else. Sure, it is easy to there would have conflict and antipathies, but the rules or mores of the group would have been there to resolve such situations and re-establish harmony.
I think it is reasonable to believe that if an individual was anti-social to a significant enough degree to cause problems for the group, they would have been ostracized. If there were a leader then the leader may have decreed it, or it could have been the will of the whole of, or the majority of the group.
As to Germany, I agree that the ostrasization and attempted extermination of the Jews would not have been the will of the people, because it was a totalitarian state. So I am not arguing with you over that. All I am saying is that the motive would not have been to create disharmony in the society, but to eliminate what was understood to be, irrationally, a source of disharmony.
Quoting Isaac
I don't know about "fierce defence" I think that language is somewhat tendentious. If autonomy was granted to children it could have simply meant that those communities had no notion of adulthood and an age where individual moral responsibility is achieved in the kind of way we conceive those. Having said that, in Australian Aboriginal tribes, as far as I know, children were required to go through "initiations" when they reached certain ages, and I don't believe that would have been a matter of choice.
Quoting Isaac
I totally agree with you about that. The very idea of every part of the world being owned by someone is totally absurd; it does seem like a kind of disease which mankind, if it is to survive very much longer will have to cure.
This is certainly evidenced by the anthropological accounts, but doesn't this suggest that some moral feeling precedes a decision about who is in/out of one's community? The ostracised is, at the time of the decision, in the community, so the decision to ostracise is only beneficial to the harmony of some members (everyone who isn't ostracised) and not others (the ostracised) at the time of the decision. Post hoc, it can be said that the decision was for the goal of social harmony for the community (because post hoc, the community consists only of people who benefited from the decision). But at the actual time of the decision, this isn't true (if moral goals remain subjective). 149 people want the community to one way, 1 person wants it to be another, so ostracising them is not for the good of the community, it's for the good of the 149.
It seems that you want to exempt (or set aside perhaps?) the act of determining the in/out status of people from moral judgement. The fact that the Nazis decided that Jews were not a part of their community was itself an act. An act which avails itself of moral judgement. If we follow that what is 'moral' is that which is best for the social harmony of {your community}, then how can we make moral judgements on decisions about who is in/out of {your community}? Against which community's benefit do we judge the Nazi's decision to exclude Jews from what they considered their community?
Quoting Janus
Not according the accounts I've read, but there are conflicting accounts, so we can draw whatever conclusion to a point. There is certainly considerable social pressure to conform (which is no different in western cultures), but I've read accounts of young women who just walk away from it, no-one stops them.
But I asked, not for just a depiction of the tribal child's life, but for a comparison. A 12 year old child can be made to attend school against their will, forced to adhere to whatever rule the teachers at that school stipulate (without any say in them whatsoever), they are told what to wear, how to have their hair, what to do, how to speak, what time they must go to bed, what they can eat, who they can befriend...
Here in the UK schools have isolation rooms which are perfectly legal. Children can be put into isolation for disobeying a teacher. Treatment which is against the Geneva convention for prisoners of war.
We see 'rights' through the lens of our culture. We think we've granted so much because we have a myth of progress which tends to see all change as moving in one direction. I don't see things that way. Tribal (non-Christian) cultures have a great deal to teach us about humane treatment and individual rights, and most of what they can teach us is stuff Christianity (and other religions) has concertedly and deliberately sought to wipe from our culture the better to ensure obedience.
Yes, it seems reasonable to think that it would be a majority community decision, and that the perceived benefit of the majority would be the driver of such decisions.
Quoting Isaac
Moral judgements of such decisions could only come from outside the community in question, from some larger community perhaps. If we take a global perspective then we could ( purport to, at least) judge otsracizations from the perspective of humanity as such, I suppose.
In any case I have been more interested in the functional social purpose of mores, and I remain convinced that the general function of mores is to establish and maintain social harmony within the various communities within which diverse mores are to be encountered.
I am not denying that in some, usually more authoritarian, communities there are idiosyncratic mores which may be designed, or at least serve, to dis-empower classes of people. We may (purportedly at least) judge these from a larger perspective of humanity. If not from that posited perspective, then what?
Quoting Isaac
I agree with that. But the salient point is, in my view, that the very notion of universal rights is based on the rational principle of lack of bias, prejudice and privilege, and we have become a rationalist culture at least in the "thinking sphere" (and in theory if not in practice), for better or for worse. What could you imagine would be a viable alternative? Not embedded traditional or religious values, and not merely personal opinion, surely?
I think he missed the point by a long shot. Societies survive which are fit to survive, and humans survive which are fit to survive. "Fittest" is not a pinnacle at which one and only one specimen exists; "fittest" could be a group in which there are varying degrees of "fit".
Humans survive in human societies because they attain a level of fitness that is needed for survival.