The grounding of all morality
I don’t mean to present any ethical norm, but to offer what seems to me to be a simple description of human reality: all moral precepts are an attempt to answer the question, “What best serves human flourishing?”
Any community of human beings who have collectively agreed that such-and-such an act or course of actions is moral, have done so in the final analysis because they believed these actions to be in the service of human flourishing.
Similarly, any community that has agreed that certain actions are immoral, have done so in the conviction that these actions harm or hinder the project of human flourishing.
Note that I am not of course arguing that all morals past and present actually did serve human flourishing, only that those who adhered to them believed them to do so. I am not arguing that human sacrifice, genocide, slavery, honor killings, inquisitions, you name it, are moral, nor that they served human flourishing. I am saying only that those communities who considered these sorts of behaviors to be moral, ethical, right, and proper, held that belief because they were convinced (rightly or wrongly) that they ultimately were in the best long-term interests of human flourishing.
Am I wrong? Can anyone provide an example of a moral precept held by any community past or present who did not come to that position on the belief that it served human flourishing?
Please let me know!
Any community of human beings who have collectively agreed that such-and-such an act or course of actions is moral, have done so in the final analysis because they believed these actions to be in the service of human flourishing.
Similarly, any community that has agreed that certain actions are immoral, have done so in the conviction that these actions harm or hinder the project of human flourishing.
Note that I am not of course arguing that all morals past and present actually did serve human flourishing, only that those who adhered to them believed them to do so. I am not arguing that human sacrifice, genocide, slavery, honor killings, inquisitions, you name it, are moral, nor that they served human flourishing. I am saying only that those communities who considered these sorts of behaviors to be moral, ethical, right, and proper, held that belief because they were convinced (rightly or wrongly) that they ultimately were in the best long-term interests of human flourishing.
Am I wrong? Can anyone provide an example of a moral precept held by any community past or present who did not come to that position on the belief that it served human flourishing?
Please let me know!
Comments (337)
I think antinatalism fits this. For a particular community, consider the Shakers.
You couldn’t be more wrong. At best, they may have been convinced that they served the immediate goals of their tribes. How else to explain the current human condition?
Morals are grounded in intuition, and then whatever moral framework we’ve been inculcated with.
Isis flourished in some sense as a community bound by shared precepts.
So flourishing is a nice word, redolent with positive affect. But that means it could be just a bait and switch where values taken for granted as “moral” now get submerged in an unexamined notion of “flourishing”.
This sounds like the work you mean to continue on to.
Well, I wouldn’t consider simply spending eternity in heaven flourishing. To me flourishing implies advancing, or progressing in some way; not just experiencing pleasure. But regardless, I think using the term in a relative way results in it becoming a meaningless term. If “flourishing” just means whatever a particular person or group thinks it means, then there’s no way to distinguish groups that “flourished” from those that didn’t.
I agree, but could it then be said that our intuition is to flourish? Perhaps the post hoc justification that occurs is just a recognition of this fact?
I think the point here would be to consider human flourishing in both the widest, i.e. global, and the narrowest, i.e. individual, contexts. Leaving those contexts aside, even within the local context it would be hard to make an argument that the activities of ISIS promote human flourishing
When I ask myself whether what ISIS is engaged in is a moral enterprise, I ask myself, "Does their work serve human flourishing?" If it is destructive to human flourishing, it is immoral.
Right, and as long as their tribe remains isolated from the rest of humanity, then their actions may be judged as to whether they serve human flourishing in that limited context.
But I like the word "flourishing" better than "well-being" because well-being is a subjective brain state that goes up and down and actually is influenced a lot by genetics. And anyway the mortality rate is running at 100% last time I checked. Life is suffering.
I think population metrics are a better yardstick by which to measure human flourishing, in the same way if we ask whether bison are flourishing in Yellowstone, we don't track the life history of an individual bison.
The other reason I like the term flourishing is because it seems to me a more active verb better suited to creatures like ourselves who have a certain agency, a level of input into our own trajectories. If you want to flourish you have to get out there and make it happen, and this is indeed what we do and part of what we consider a virtuous and fulfilling life.
Using this metric, I fail to see how the Shakers flourished... Had they flourished, they would still be around. Instead, they intentionally did the opposite of that; hasten their demise.
Shakers see a better world "on the other side", they believe serving God through celibacy and simple lives will get them there. Many religious people do crazy things because heaven is more real to them than this mortal life - look at suicide bombers.
Just as in the natural world, diversity means some paths lead to the flourishing of the species, and some lead to extinction. The project of morality is to figure out which is which.
My next point is that we can actually determine what best serves human flourishing through science and reason. This means if we can agree on the common goal, we have an objective starting point for ethical considerations.
Sure. That is why I used that example. As a great big question-mark counter to the OP's generalisation....
Quoting Thomas Quine
If Isis collectively agreed that its course of actions was moral, then – per the OP – they must have done so because, in the final analysis, they believed these actions to be in the service of human flourishing.
Which is why I then say, hmm, let's define flourishing shall we?
Quoting Thomas Quine
Again, I don't disagree with the commonsense approach of accepting folk definitions - except if I were to be claiming to be doing actual moral philosophy that wants to avoid building its conclusions into its premises.
Is there an objective definition of flourishing that would avoid us smuggling in our own culturally-subjective agendas? Isis would be an example. If it represents a community that believes humanity would be better off without the presence of the infidel, how do we rule out that as a valid definition of "flourishing" in its eyes?
If you were to bring in our own Western scientific and enlightenment tradition, then yes, flourishing can be defined in terms of things like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And it seems both sensible and empirically supported.
I could then cite even more abstracted models of flourishing like Ulanowicz's Ascendency. That would really strip away the cultural and subjective wrappings. It is where biologists would arrive at when they have to define "flourishing" in terms of ecosystems.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Or indeed, we might ask how the bison herd contribute to the flourishing of Yellowstone as an ecosystem. But you seem to agree that it is right to ask about flourishing in that more generic biological context of life in general?
Again, flourishing as a term does smuggle in these naturalistic connotations. It does rather question supernatural imperatives. We would be quick to say Isis is wrong-headed as its morality all based on religious mumbo-jumbo.
Which is fine. I'm all for naturalism. Once more, I merely point on the work still to be done to carrying on and cash this all out in a notion of collective flourishing. I already agree that flourishing in some sense is the right answer. It fits my prejudices wonderfully.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Yes. As captured by Maslow and self-actualisation as the highest good.
What evidence do you have for this? In the example of a tribe going to war with another to protect their resources (or capture more resources) what reason have you got to believe they consider the deaths of those other tribe members to be in the interests of humanity as a whole?
Quoting Thomas Quine
That's just manifestly not true. I think you would be hard-pressed to come up with more than a few and recent literary or documentary examples of such reasoning behind moral attitudes. No one thinks about "human flourishing" when they demonstrate a proper filial attitude towards their parents, for example - they do it because it's the right thing to do, period.
Of course, in the absence of firm criteria of how such beliefs should manifest, you could interpret just about any moral attitude to be a confirmation of your thesis. You could assert that human flourishing is the hidden motive, even when it is nowhere in evidence. (I think I see you already engaging in such creative interpretation in this discussion.) But then if anything fits your thesis, your thesis is vacuous.
I have read a lot of history and military history, and in every case I am aware of, those who support going to war or taking up arms believe their cause to be just. To say something like "our cause is just", or "Gott mit Uns" or "God/Allah is on our side", or we have the "Mandate of Heaven", or to call it a "Holy War", or a "Crusade", or really to offer any sort of justification, is to argue that there are universal values that we somehow embody, and that "they" don't.
Of course some primitive tribes might have a narrower view of human flourishing - many tribes name themselves using a word that in their language simply means "the people". Their view of human flourishing may not encompass the whole of humanity, but only the part of humanity that matters to them.
This is not much different from those who went to war and justified it on the basis of their own racial or cultural or religious superiority.
I also read a lot about chimp wars and chimp justification for war, and what you might call universal values of chimp society are simply this: might makes right. We are justified in wiping out our rival troupe because we are stronger than they are and we need what they have. It is just and right that we should flourish and they should not. So even among chimps, what is just and right is grounded on what serves chimp flourishing...
Don't worry, you are telegraphing the standard is-ought move loud and clear.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Yup...
So, if what you determine counts as 'humanity' determines how you treat others, then how's this any different from relativism? Different people have different views about who constitutes 'humanity', this determines how these people are treated. Which means in practice all you're describing is a relativistic system dependent on subjective views about who constitutes 'humanity'.
I think you might be replying to the wrong post, but either way If you consider including my name in the repeat of a post in which you insult me as a 'courtesy' then I dread to think what manner of thing you consider discourteous.
That this moral exercise has failed - people disagree on moral issues - can be chalked up to the flaws, myopia, prejudices, ignorance, and general incompetence of those who framed moral codes whatever they were/are.
What does man's flourishment attribute to? A more bustling planet? Lot's of flowers, flourishing? And what does that achieve?
We’re all prone to tribalism and the primary function of moral frameworks is to bond the tribe, in whatever form the tribe may exist. It’s a very successful survival strategy and based in gene propagation. It has little to do with human flourishing.
I suggest that you read Dawkins or the like.
Every community has its own understanding of what it means to flourish. The way to cut through relativism is through scientific analysis based on evidence. I can confidently argue that ISIS's project of a new Caliphate was wrong and immoral and contrary to human flourishing based on the outcome, which evidence shows to have been a historic disaster for pretty much everyone who was touched by it.
I can confidently argue that racism is wrong and immoral and contrary to human flourishing on evidence provided to us by the experience of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in WWII, not to mention the Confederate States in the American Civil War, or numerous less bloody historical disasters.
I think it is possible to broadly agree on criteria for human flourishing, criteria that pretty much any rational human being could agree on. Take for example health metrics, such as adequate nutrition, average years of good health in a lifespan, healthy birth weight, infant mortality, and so on. Science can tell us how to improve these metrics and thereby to serve the common good, and any country today whose population is doing relatively well actually does track these sorts of metrics and seeks to improve the numbers through science.
And I think most people would agree that to serve human flourishing in this way is the moral and ethical thing to do, and to take actions that hinder this effort or set it back we would regard as immoral. For example, if it were to be proven (and there is no evidence for this, so I don't believe it) that the novel coronavirus was intentionally released into the global population for whatever reason, I think most people would consider that to be immoral.
Why? Because a pandemic is harmful to human flourishing.
Yes, genes propagate when the species that carry them flourish.
For a great book on chimp politics check out "Alpha God" by Hector A. Garcia, highly recommended. There was also a great documentary by the BBC and Attenborough: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06mvpsw
Arguing for a moral claim "because it's the right thing to do, period," avoids the challenge of uncovering the grounds for making the claim. I thank you all for helping me to dig a little deeper in the search for such a grounding.
Confucius wrote a lot about filial piety and explicitly argued that it was essential to a properly functioning society, i.e., to human flourishing. He furthermore claimed that his ideas were nothing new, but that he was simply restating the wisdom of the ancients. The average Chinese might not be familiar with Confucius' arguments but they know instinctively or through cultural osmosis that filial piety is moral because the parent/child bond is the starting point of love and respect for others. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity make the same point in various ways, and most people in most cultures, without being familiar with the philosophical arguments, know that it's the right thing to do, period, but the grounding for this claim is that love and respect for others is essential to human flourishing.
Genes propagate when the carriers survive, merely. Our species is a significant line differentiation, but it’s only one layer out of many possible distinctions. We’re naturally more concerned with human flourishing than that of chimps, and then closer to home, we’re more concerned with national flourishing, then perhaps regional, religious, or political party flourishing, and then family. Does anyone regard all of humanity as they do their own family? Maybe some do ideologically but when push comes to shove genes always win favor.
See, you are doing precisely what I suspected you of doing: you are working backwards from your thesis (that the foundation of morality is 'human flourishing') to retrospectively rationalize people's moral attitudes. But you also hold up people's moral attitudes as evidence for your thesis! This is a perfectly circular reasoning. (Alleging Confucius's justification as support is neither here nor there, because most people who believe they ought to honor their parents do not adopt that attitude for that reason, as you yourself admit.)
Or more precisely, when the carriers produce viable offspring. Quality of life, which is what we usually associate with "flourishing," does not enter the equation.
Are you arguing that "it is nowhere in evidence" that human beings and the societies they create seek to flourish and prosper? As a human motivation, it hardly seems "hidden"...
I think the strength of the approach is that it explains a lot. Evolutionary theory also explains a lot, including my thesis, pretty much everything we know about the natural world fits the broad evolutionary thesis, does that automatically make evolutionary theory vacuous?
You will probably get more mileage out of arguing against or undermining the is-ought distinction explicitly, rather than trying to convince someone who strongly believes it that they secretly are in agreement with you.
There was a thread a while ago talking about Anscombe's essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" (linked in the thread) that takes one avenue of attacking is-ought. The rough picture of the argument (as I remember it):
There are two threads in it - a destructive/critical one relating to the is-ought problem, and a speculative/constructive one relating to the permeable boundaries between social facts, speech acts, norms and good conduct.
Thread 1:
(A1) Applying the is ought problem requires a framework of ethical reasoning in which "oughts" are applied to statements like divine commands or laws.
(A2) Our secular and skeptical age untethers the oughts of Gods and the oughts of laws from what we ought to do; there can be immoral laws and immoral alleged divine commands.
(A3) Because the influence of those two sources of moral authority has waned, it is not surprising that a problem that presupposes one or the other authority for its resolution finds anything it is applied to lacking.
Thread 2:
An analysis of speech acts like promising and buying stuff at a shop, if you wish to buy bread, you ought to pay for it. That sense of "ought" is entailed by institutional structure and felt intimately. Anscombe suggests that analysing the facts that institutional norms bring and our surrounding "moral psychology" will reinvigorate ethics away from the above pseudoproblem.
It's a starting point to getting around the is ought problem in a way amenable to virtue ethics anyway - focussing on "good conduct" in a socially contextualised manner, rather than trying to elevate "One ought not to kill" to the level of a divine command for its adequacy.
The IS-OUGHT distinction is important, we want to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, but it is also important to keep in mind that all moral claims ultimately derive their "ought" from an "is".
For example:
It IS the case that the holy book tells us X, therefore we OUGHT to do X.
It IS the case that human beings are governed by the desire to experience pleasure and avoid pain, therefore it OUGHT to be our guiding moral principle to maximize human happiness and minimize human suffering..
It IS the case that human beings seek life, liberty, and happiness as primary goals, therefore we OUGHT to enshrine the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness in the constitution.
It IS the case that laws and rules facilitate human interactions, therefore we OUGHT to obey laws and rules.
It IS the case that actions have moral consequences, therefore we OUGHT to judge an act by its consequences.
etc.
John Stuart Mill helps us through the IS/OUGHT problem when he argues that only human reason can tell us what our goals and objectives ought to be, but once we have decided on a course of action, we OUGHT to rely on science to tell us how to achieve it.
For example, it is our choice whether or not to fix the loose board on the picnic table with a nail or a screw, or to just kick back with a beer in the sun. However, there is a developed science of tool design, and if it IS the case that we have decided to drive a nail to secure a loose board, science tells us that we OUGHT to use a hammer. And if it IS the case that we have chosen to drive a screw, we OUGHT to use a screwdriver.
Of course, we could try to drive the screw with a hammer, or try to drive the nail with a convenient rock. We should not confuse the word "OUGHT" with the word "MUST". Science is authoritative, not authoritarian. Nevertheless, it is perfectly legitimate to derive an OUGHT from an IS where one has a clearly defined objective to accomplish.Mill gives us a simple summary of how science does its work. This understanding is compatible with Pragmatism, and one of the reasons I like it so much. It's also one of the reasons William James dedicated "On Pragmatism" to J.S. Mill.
So my thesis is that all moral systems are an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" (I look forward eagerly to a refutation of this empirical observation.) And if it IS the case that humanity seeks to flourish as a species, then we OUGHT to use science to tell us how best to achieve that. There should be nothing controversial about this claim.
But the implications are huge, because they mean science can tell us what is moral and what is not.
I think an interesting question to ask ourselves here is whether this flourishing is more aimed towards the community (or mankind as a whole) or with the individual?
If we're concerned chiefly with the flourishing of mankind in general we need to ask ourselves what's stopping us from picking up random, socially isolated homeless people off the streets and whisking them away in trucks to perform medical experiments on them, which if successful could save countless lives.
If we're more concerned with individual flourishing then I think we should largely be leaving individuals to decide that for themselves. It's still a tricky concept though: Someone with a personality disorder could perceive themselves as flourishing yet be insufferable to others around them. It's a good question whether "flourishing" should be defined in a more objective or subjective sense.
No. First, let's make a distinction between human beings and societies: the former are moral agents, the latter are not. Second, let's make a distinction between what one may wish for oneself or for people one cares about and what one may wish for "humanity." Third, the desire for flourishing does not analytically entail the adoption of certain moral norms (not without begging the question), and what I was pointing out was that you have not made a convincing argument that links the two.
Great. I’m just pointing out how it contradicts your broad generalisation in the OP. You now need to modify your statement to claim only a community of ideal rational thinkers can be sure of arriving at a morality based on human flourishing. And flourishing as you define it In terms of a quasi Human Development Index.
The claim becomes both more defensible and less general.
I would say just because a community truly believes they are doing what they believe to be in the best interests of human flourishing, doesn’t mean they are in fact pursuing human flourishing.
Quoting Thomas Quine
And it can be said that the paths that led to extinction were paths that did not pursue flourishing.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Only if you can pin down a more objective definition of flourishing. I’m fine with using population as a metric to assess this, as you suggested, but by doing so you have to agree that intentionally reducing one’s population is not pursuing flourishing. Otherwise, what would the opposite of flourishing consist of?
What's surprising is that so many folk think otherwise. That it is about following universal rules or seeking happiness.
It's a bit of a puzzle.
This seems to allude to what I think is a most important point. If a tribe thinks their actions which are detrimental to other tribes are morally justified because they contribute to the flourishing of humanity (humanity as narrowly defined by them as the tribe), then the broader view would be to consider the whole of humanity (the other tribes).
But that is not yet broad enough, so we really should be thinking in terms of the flourishing of all life if we want to escape the narrow anthropocentric perspective. I think this "escape" would ultimately be for the greatest benefit of humanity in any case. If we think only in terms of benefiting humanity considered as separate from the rest of nature, then ironically, we will fail to benefit humanity.
You seem to take the large social perspective on the origin of morality, as if there was once a lawgiver who could view a culture from above before that culture was even created and then introduce the measures that would make the system work on a grand scale.
But no one has ever been in any other position than you and me, born into a certain culture and taking part in it as an insignificant cogwheel. Have you ever asked yourself before acting, if your action would somehow contribute to the great product of human flourishing? I doubt it. We all operate on a microlevel, at best considering the direct consequence of the small act we are about to commit, or just behaving out of habit or from some preconceived principle.
Collective morality is formed by ongoing communal activity in a similar way to how a language is formed: No one controls it, and no one has any purpose that goes beyond the immediate act of communication. Only when we occasionally soar to a bird’s perspective in capacity of linguists or philosophers do we see a system and think it all makes sense. The language has grammar, and a culture has customs that make it all fit together into a whole contributing to its self-preservation. It looks like it is all there for the purpose of human flourishing, but that begs the question since you are already looking at a system, and any system necessarily works towards its own flourishing as far as it is a system. A system of human interaction, which is what a culture is, is no different.
Well no, different species have different strategies for passing on genetic material, and social species develop complex systems of interaction that create the conditions for successful reproduction, not simply of individuals but of the species.
Human beings have developed highly complex societies and highly complex methods of raising our children to adulthood, and mere survival is the least of it. As a result we are the dominant species on the planet.
If the species does not flourish the process of passing genetic material from generation to generation is set back or ceases altogether. Therefore Dawkins' "selfish gene" hard-wires the species that carries it to go out and find a way to flourish.
Without quality of life the production of viable offspring is challenged, therefore evolution produces species that seek to flourish. The evidence for this is that every species is full of individuals whose motivation is to stay safe, to find adequate sustenance, to find a hospitable environment, to reproduce, in short, to go forth and flourish.
As I see it the discussion is not about conscious individual purposes, but concerns the implicit logic of moral thinking.
The philosophical difficulty is articulating principles which don't ultimately reduce to 'doing well' or 'getting along together', which in turn begins to sound very much like utilitarian ethics, 'the greatest good for the greatest number'.
Absent a soteriological goal - a doctrine of salvation - I think that is the best that can be hoped for.
Quoting Thomas Quine
But most non-human animals, 'flourishing' really might just amount to surviving and breeding successfully. I mean, penguin colonies or beehives can be regarded as 'flourishing' but human cultures need many other elements in order to be considered flourishing - like cultural forms that support creative endeavour, social mechanisms to ensure equity, education, access to opportunity, and so on. And animal socities are also arguably not composed of social groups of individuals, in that non-human animals are overall (for better or worse) not possessed of a sense of individuality.
And then, look at totalitarian socieities, like the PRC - it's a 'flourishing' society in terms of economic growth and the number of people lifted out of subsistence farming in the last century. Yet disadvantaged minorities, like certain ethnic groups or social non-conformists might be excluded, imprisoned or persecuted despite the obvious economic growth of the culture. Even though 'the motherland' and 'the glorious Communist Party' no doubt trumpet the fact that 'the people' and their flourishing are their central concern, when any of 'the people' try to buck the party line, then their flourishing is not very likely.
So again, it ultimately comes down to a moral judgement - which in our cultural context is generally always understood as a matter of individual conscience. And that, in turn, is understood to be tacitly a personal matter, and therefore, a matter of opinion, rather than of fact. That's one of the binds of modernity.
People generally start in childhood with a focus on their own needs, because infants are needy and it is right that they should be self-interested above the needs of others who they could not help if they tried.
But over time they learn empathy (sometimes even in their teens), and by the time they are adults they recognize that their own personal fortunes are inextricably tied to the good will and well-being of others, and they adjust their behavior accordingly.
As a person experiences moral growth their sphere of moral concern for others grows wider, to their family, to their community, to their culture, to their nation, often to the whole of humanity.
Individuals seek to flourish, and as social animals we learn that we flourish best when we help others to flourish. Doing that requires adapting to the culture's ethical systems.
Just as a market is an emerging property of a society of individuals buying and selling in service of their own individual needs and interests, so morality is an emergent property of a society of individuals trying to get along together peaceably and in such a way that they can achieve some of their personal goals.
So to my mind the concept of flourishing lies on a continuum of progressively larger social spheres, starting from a desire to help oneself, to help one's family to do well, to behaving in such a way as to help one's community to do well, to serving one's country as a good citizen, perhaps even to finding ways to serve humanity and make the world a better place.
No species can be said to be flourishing unless the individuals within it are themselves flourishing. It is the process of a multitude of individuals out there all seeking to do well for themselves that lays the groundwork for a flourishing society.
I disagree, societies create cultures, morality is part of culture, societies are therefore moral agents. Some societies act in ways we consider moral and some in ways we consider immoral.
Species are also moral agents. We would agree I think that it is moral for a mother to care for her infant. That behavior is hard-wired into the DNA not only of humanity but really of any species in which mothers care for their young.This kind of moral behavior is part of deep species-learning. It is moral because it serves species-flourishing.
When I say "population metrics" I am not referring simply to the size of a population, but to ways of measuring how well a society is doing by using statistical data derived from large-scale studies of the population.
Population size is not always a good way to measure how well a society is doing. Obviously there are times when reducing population might help a society to better flourish.
Not really. At least twelve different brain regions have been shown to be involved in moral decision making, some of which are to do with reward (happiness) and rule-following. Others are related to social norms, social status assessment, most are related to theory of mind, intention and empathy, a few just to fairly raw visceral feelings. The idea that it's just about one simple thing is not supported by the scientific evidence...
...or did you mean to say "morality should be about caring for others"? Are you trying to describe what kinds of thing we actually use the term to cover, or are you trying to constrain language to suit your own philosophy?
What about divine command theory? To express that in terms of human flourishing, then you'd have to include flourishing in the afterlife as part of 'flourishing'. If that's the case, then science cannot be used to tell us how best to achieve it.
If behaviour is 'hard wired', how can it be moral? Morality relies on there being different possible courses of action. 'The idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism'. Again, your model equates moral choice with instinctive behaviour, and it ought to be abundantly clear that humans are not necessarily instinctively moral (otherwise, why the need for a legal code or police?)
You're confusing an instinctively moral desire with an instinctively moral outcome. We need laws and police because the behavioural result of any situational calculus is not always moral. It says nothing of whether any instinctive moral thought went into that calculus, only that other factors outweighed it.
...and then there are those who think what is the case ought be the case.
Yes, indeed, I'm just twisting language to my own needs.
Most mothers don't need the police or the law to tell them they should take care of their babies - they know to do so instinctively. But some do, instincts can obviously be overridden.
Are you suggesting there's a way moral decision-making ought to be? Isn't the way moral decision-making ought to be itself a moral decision (afterall, the outcome would have serious moral implications). How, then, would we work out how moral decision-making ought to be? Use our moral decision-making as it currently is, or beg the question?
You've completely failed to see the point. The point is, animals act from instinct - they do what they do out of necessity. Only humans can weigh things up, make choices, act better or worse. If a mother lion is negligent in the tending of her cubs, they may well perish, but no crime has been committted. Humans are supposed to know better, and to do better, and are held to another standard (leaving aside starvation due to poverty or some other calamity). If you can't see that, you don't understand the first thing about ethical theory.
And you know this how? Did your magic sky friend tell you?
An improvement.
Rather, I'm pointing out that there are ways that it is not.
Quoting Isaac
There's so much that is problematic with this. The simplest way to show this might be to ask you to explain the difference between a part of the brain that is involved in decision making per se, and these twelve parts of the brain that are involved in moral decision making.
Are you wondering how to use the word 'moral'?
Edit - in case it's not clear. I'm asking because the difference seems obvious to me - the brain regions involved in moral decision making are those which show consistent activity during moral decision making. Those involved in decision making per se are those which show consistent activity across the board (ie brain regions involved in moral decision making are a subset of regions involved in decision making per se).
But this just derives directly from the meaning of 'moral decision making'. I think we all know (as language users) that moral decisions are just a subset of decisions per se.
Then I'm confused by...
Quoting Banno
Ways that it is not doesn't seem to be part of that kind of confusion. Do you mean to say "ways it should not be"?
The point is that, as the term implies, it does so ‘selfishly’. This selfishness is expressed in your own theory that morality is based on human flourishing. Why human flourishing? If a morality that’s based on a narrower or more selfish scope is flawed in some way then a morality that’s based on human flourishing contains the same flaw because it‘s also limited. Why isn’t morality based on the flourishing of all life? Given that human life is inextricably dependent on other life, that would seem to be a wiser perspective.
And we’re currently engaged in the mass extinctions of other species, which in all likelihood will eventually effect human flourishing negatively.
It almost seems like you've heard about the "naturalistic fallacy" and about the "is-ought gap," and that the former is to be avoided and the latter is to be mindful of, but you don't really understand what those words mean. Because you manage to contradict yourself about the is-ought gap in the same sentence, and then (and throughout this discussion) wade neck-deep into the naturalistic fallacy.
Let's explore the implications of your position a bit. You say that biological evolution promotes flourishing (from which you conclude that promotion of human flourishing must be the foundation of morality - classic naturalistic fallacy; but I'll hold my nose for a while). Generally speaking, evolution by natural selection just tends to propagate and multiply our genes, which is a far cry from what we usually understand by flourishing.
Now, you say that in our particular situation (as opposed to, say, yeast) actual flourishing is generally conducive to successful replication. But how are you so sure? makes a good point about us having a very limited and biased perspective on which cultural attitudes promote flourishing on a large scale. Even if you could make an accurate universal observation about our moral attitudes, it is not a given that they are adaptive now, much less in the long term. Being innate is no guarantee of being adaptive either, because not every innate feature is adaptive. And even if it was adaptive for much of our existence as small bands of hunter-gatherers, that doesn't imply that it is still adaptive now that we have radically transformed our lifestyle and our environment. And even if it was and is adaptive, that doesn't mean that it's the best adaptation there can be. Evolution, powerful as it is, is a blind satisficing process, not an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent creator.
Just how well-adapted are we, anyway? Our Homo genus is pretty young, and almost entirely extinct. Our species is younger still, very nearly went extinct at some point not long ago, and has been going through rapid lifestyle changes since then. That doesn't exactly instill confidence that it will end up being as plentiful and long-lived as even a typical mouse species from the fossil record (a few million years). And keep in mind that the fossil record mostly yields species that "flourished" (in the technical sense), not those that went extinct before leaving much of a trace, like our Homo cousins.
Which brings me to the next point. Wind back the evolutionary clock ten minutes or so (i.e. a few tens of million years) and you will find that pretty much all animal species that existed up to that point have since gone the way of the dinosaurs. If you are going to derive an imperative from that fact, shouldn't it be that we are destined to go extinct and make room for whatever comes next? And while we are at it, why should we even be one of the long-lived, "flourishing" species, as opposed to evolution's many little blind alleys? Perhaps we are "meant" to drive ourselves (literally) into the ground, or let some plucky germ or a fortuitous geological calamity wipe us out?
I hope that the point that emerges from the foregoing exploration is that the maxim "let us do what nature does anyway, but more so" makes no sense. The way that you actually derive your oughts from your ises (including the examples in the post to which I am responding) is by smuggling in normativity and then ladling it out. It's the ultimate stone soup.
To be clear: humans do not flourish, ecologies flourish. It is as if a morality were to be founded on the flourishing of noses. Everything to be measured and judged as to its value to noses. Hearts are important because they pump blood to noses, legs are important because they take noses to the best smells, fingers have value because... well let's end the stupidity there. Get with the project chaps.
I'm wondering how you used it in your supposition. You're not keen on clarifying? That's why I asked you to explain the difference between a part of the brain that is involved in decision making per se, and these twelve parts of the brain that are involved in moral decision making.
Have you never owned a dog?
Isn’t that the deep ecology guy? If memory serves, he calls for a greatly reduced human population.
Hm. Its also an increasingly common translation of eudaimonia.
I think the use was at least popularised, if not originated, by Martha Nussbaum in The Fragility of goodness. It is intended to add an element of growth that is not found in translating "eudaemonia" as "happiness"; that element is apparent in the organic use Un suggests, too.
Hi Wayfarer, you are right, I dislike the current state of ethical theory and I want to kick over the whole gameboard.
But let me address the issue of whether animals have morals and whether some of our morals are instinctual.
Note that I never claimed than we are "instinctively moral". But I will argue that some of our moral instincts are the result of evolutionary adaptation, such as the mothering instinct, and I will argue that the grounding of all morality - the motivation to go forth in the world and flourish - is the result of evolutionary adaptation, is instinctual, and is embedded in the code of life.
Now of course every species has its own manner of flourishing and therefore its own instinctual understanding of what is right and what is wrong for a member of that species. I once had someone argue to me that animals had no morals, because, for example, lions will murder hyenas, and murder is immoral. Now you may think morality exists only for humans and not for other animals, and that human morality is the only morality, but bear with me for a moment and imagine such a thing as lion morality.
From the point of view of the lion, murdering hyenas and wild dogs and crocs and anything else that might be a rival for food or game serves lion flourishing, and therefore the ethical lion should do so at every opportunity. Lions would gladly commit genocide of all hyenas if they could. (I would gladly commit genocide of all mosquitoes, screwworms, bedbugs, coronaviruses, etc. if I could, these things inhibit human flourishing.)
Other things lions will do that we would consider immoral in human beings is kill rival lions to take possession of their pride. And when they do this they will often systematically kill all the kittens, so as to bring the lionesses sooner into estrus. This is common in social mammals, and has even been documented in wild domestic cats.
When chimps take over a troupe from an old alpha male, if they don't kill him outright, they will at least bite off his testicles, thus ensuring his genes will no longer go forth into the next generation. They will then often kill and sometimes eat his younger offspring.
Evolutionary theory explains this by suggesting that the species grows stronger if the genes of its strongest members dominate the next generation.
All this sounds horrific from a human point of view, but take a look at what is called the "Cinderella Effect" (https://bit.ly/32Wrv5Q), the tragic fact that stepchildren are abused and/or murdered at a rate far higher than that of biological children. We clearly have some ugly instincts that are vestiges of our evolutionary history that no longer serve the common good. We have, it seems, inherited some chimp morality. Just look at some of our contemporary politicians (or sports heroes), who seem driven to humiliate and vanquish their rivals and take all the beautiful women for themselves...
Now, also as a result of our evolutionary history, we have developed the sorts of brains that can adapt to all sorts of different environments and lifestyles. Animal brains are like screwdrivers, they are built to serve a very limited purpose. Our brains are multipurpose. Our brains take in the environment and figure out how we can flourish in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, and we adapt accordingly. Part of that is adapting to moral norms, and contributing to the development of ethical standards. We are capable of figuring out that biting off the testicles of our rivals is maybe not the best way for our community to flourish, as much as we might sometimes wish to do so...
All of which is to argue once again that the grounding of morality is not something we get from God or make up out of our own imaginations, but is grounded in the instinctual desire to flourish. And the reason we have disagreements about what is moral and what is not is that our flexible brains come up with different solutions to the problem. All I am saying is whatever the solutions offered, they are all propositions for solving the same problem...
Morals need not be grounded in a desire to flourish. In a negative rights or negative utilitarian approach one can say that it is a simply a desire not to cause unnecessary harm for others. This might lead (as I think it does) to conclusions of antinatalism. That is to say, to prevent the maximum amount of harm to someone else, prevent their birth. I see the prevention of harm as more important than causing flourishing to take place. No negative consequences ensue if no one is born to flourish. All negative consequences ensue if someone is born and (inevitably) is harmed or suffers.
I was inspired by Aristotle's eudaimonism, and do consider "flourishing" to be "the Good that is served by all other Goods". But I don't use eudaimonia, because Aristotle was not familiar with evolutionary theory, so I see my use of the term "flourishing" as an evolutionary adaptation of Aristotle's original concept.
Many cultures believe that the way to flourish is to follow God's commands. I think we stand a better chance by basing our decisions, including our moral decisions, on the available science.
I think its pretty clear that human flourishing depends on a flourishing ecosystem. Thus it is I think morally imperative that we care for the health of our planet.
I think causing unnecessary suffering is not in the best interests of human flourishing, but I am quite comfortable with causing justifiable harm to those who are responsible for actions which are destructive to the project of human flourishing. Otherwise there would be no such thing as a just war, or killing in self-defense, or locking up serial rapists, and so on.
So, where are we to place our moral priorities if a conflict of interest concerning the flourishing of present humans vs the flourishing of future humans, other species and ecosystems is encountered?
I think what the science is telling us is that there is no conflict of interest between human flourishing and a healthy environment, you can't sacrifice the latter and expect to get the former. We need to stop thinking there's a legitimate trade-off.
Every day is a freak-out with Trump in the White House, but what I am freaked out about most today is the plight of climate change refugees...
https://nyti.ms/301dWA2
That is exactly what eco-philosophy critiques as entirely backwards. It is the Judeo-Christian tradition of man the crown of creation and steward of the world. Everything is made for man, and morality is just the generalisation of human self-interest. But an understanding of geological history and how very recent a newcomer mankind is makes this untenable. Not the dinosaurs, not the trilobites, and therefore not the lion were made for man, but are their own measures of value. Hence the idea of wilderness - of places and things that are not, or rather should not be, available for human exploitation. This is not nature as adventure playground or nature as human support system but nature for itself and human-free. Not therefore the nature reserve as part of the system of exploitation - nursery for fishes or therapeutic holiday destination, but more the parents' bedroom where the children do not enter because not everything is for them.
It's not my supposition. Looking at the file from which I plucked that number, I have about 20 experiments, each involving say and average of three experimenters (a few research assistants and lab technicians thrown in, not to mention the peer review board). In all, I reckon we're looking at about 100 or so people, all of whom are competent speakers of English, all of whom are experienced experimental neuroscientists or cognitive psychologists. So when they say they're identifying parts of the brain involved in moral decision-making, I take for granted two things - 1) they know how to distinguish 'moral' decisions from ordinary decisions to no lesser an extent than any other user of the language, that they're unlikely to be using some special definition of moral the rest of us would find odd; and 2) they've taken at least some pains to control for blindingly obvious confounding factors like the possibility that such brain regions might be involved in all decision-making and so have no specific relevance to moral decisions.
Now, unless you're just after a lesson in neuroscience (which you've already deemed irrelevant, so I doubt it), you're after something more than just a simple list of those brain regions involved in decision-making per se which the scientists involved in these experiments will have ruled out testing for in the first minute of their methodology discussion. Hence my reluctance to answer the question in it's simplest format. I'm trying to understand first what you mean by asking it.
Since that's not forthcoming, however, I'll do my best. Just about every brain region is involved in decision-making because in its widest sense making decisions is all our brain does. There are several regions involved in different types of decision. For example deciding which turn to take in a maze utilises a recognisable pattern of activity in the hippocampus, striatum and orbitofrontal cortex. The experimenters in that particular case did not consider the decision about which route the rat should take in the maze to be a moral one. So the answer to that bit of the question (about the use of the term) is that I'm using it in exactly the manner in which the experimenters in each case jointly decided it should be used.
Does that answer your question?
And well you might, but your original claim was
Quoting Thomas Quine
Divine command theory is a moral systems, so it must be included in your set {all moral systems}, thus your definition of 'flourishing' must included the type of flourishing envisioned in divine command theory (otherwise your first statement is false). The type of flourishing envisioned by divine command theory is a long and blissful afterlife. Which makes your second statement false "it IS the case that humanity seeks to flourish as a species, then we OUGHT to use science to tell us how best to achieve that." substituting the meaning of 'flourish' intended by divine command theorists, it is definitely not the case that they ought to use science to tell them how best to achieve that. Science knows nothing about the afterlife, nor how to ensure a happy one.
You are equivocating over the meaning of 'flourishing' in your two propositions. In the first you have it mean whatever the ethical theorists involved consider it to mean, in the second you reduce it to your particular meaning (having the properties you think right here on earth). Sticking to the same meaning, it must either be the case that not all moral systems are concerned with human flourishing, or that science is not the default method for establishing how.
Your argument was that morality is not "really" about caring for others, the evidence being that there are 12 regions of the brain involved in moral decision making, only some of which relate to theory of mind... is that roughly it?
My questioning what it was that the scientists involved decided to count as moral decision making. It seems they had no agreed notion of what this was, but as you say, they "know how to distinguish 'moral' decisions from ordinary decisions to no lesser an extent than any other user of the language".
SO they are not using "moral" with any authority that comes from their position as neuroscientists?
Then the brain science seems to me to be irrelevant. Your argument amounts to "people use 'moral' to mean other things besides caring for each other - see, that's what these folk are doing..."
Yes. To a great extent, that's it. The reason I mentioned the neuroscience is to fend off what seemed to me (I think perhaps incorrectly now) an attempt to define what morality 'really' is by reference to what is actually happening, even in the widest sense of the term. There it would be relevant to point out that, no, in some senses of the word 'morality' we are thinking of rules or happiness as evidenced by those brain regions being active when engaged in a 'moral' decisions in that sense.
If the discussion is about constraining the meaning of 'moral' such that it might not include the senses involved in those particular experiments, then, yes, the neuroscience is irrelevant. I just don't understand the motivation behind constraining the use of a term to some specific subset of its current use.
You will doubtless agree that there is a difference between doing something because it makes you happy and doing it because it is the right things to do.
That is, the happiness is incidental to the morality of the act... no?
So, that the happiness part of one's brain happens to light up when one does what is right is also incidental...
And all this just by way of saying that there might be more going on here.
Maybe. It depends his you want to define it. Take Aragorn for example (out of Lord of the Rings). He undoubtedly does some stuff which is 'moral'. I grew up on those books and he's pretty much who I imagine when someone asks me to imagine a hero (a noble one, anyway). Even now, as an adult, those early impressions are ingrained in my mind. If I had cause to act in a way that reminds me of such a hero in any sense, it would make me very happy. It's likely all you'd see going on in my brain is the reward centres involved in the satisfaction of a personal goal. Yet the behaviour would be moral.
We could say (as I suspect you'd like to) that here 'moral' applies to Aragorn's fictional behaviour and thereby only incidentally to my copying it. That's fine, but it limits our understanding of moral decision-making because it eliminates a motive in those who may not have the mental capacity to calculate the correct 'caring-for-others' action to take, but who have been brought up to know who to imitate.
Likewise with rule-following.
I'm not opposed to your project of distinguishing the motive behind moral decision-making from the property of 'being moral' (which I suppose would attach to a behaviour or character, not a type of decision), but 'morality' the topic needs to cover both, I think.
Isaac, let me try to explain once again.
My claim is that all moral systems are an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?"
Not all attempts to answer this question turn out to be correct. I don't think following the commands in the Holy Books written by an imaginary God is more conducive to human flourishing than following the advice of science. But lots of people do.
Why should my definition of flourishing align with those of religious people, as you suggest?
I am saying, there is a great deal of disagreement about what is considered moral and what is not. If we agree that the problem morality is trying to solve is how best to flourish, my position is that learning from science is your best bet.
Let me give you an example of how science can tell us what is moral and what is not.
1. This pandemic is harmful to the project of human flourishing
2. The moral thing to do is to try to stop the spread of infection
3. Wearing masks around others and social distancing will reduce the risk of infection
4. Therefore the moral thing to do is to practice social distancing and wear masks around others.
What Holy Book can tell you that?
Did you see the video of the woman in the Walmart calling the curse of God upon staff asking her to wear a mask, calling them Satanists, and so on? Is it an accident that the most God-fearing of Americans are also those least likely to wear a mask?
The problem for those who believe whatever Holy Book has all the answers about morality, and Muslims are the most fervent in this regard, is that what is moral and what is not changes almost from hour to hour while the Holy Book does not. But what does not change is the grounding behind our moral considerations.
Another example: Last semester a girl in one of my classes had bronchitis, and loudly coughed her lungs out every class, three times a week for at least three weeks, always apologizing profusely, to the point where I told her, that's OK, don't worry about it, doesn't bother me, I know you don't want to miss class, etc.
Now if she showed up for class coughing like that in September, I think most people would regard her actions as irresponsible and immoral. The act of coughing didn't change - what changed was our moral perceptions. What didn't change was the fact that we ultimately base our moral judgments on what we consider to be in the best interests of humanity at that point in time.
Now a separate question is whether religion has at times helped human communities to flourish, and although I am an atheist and consider religion today to be a brake on human progress, I have to admit that at times religion has played a positive role - otherwise, from a Darwinian point of view, it would have disappeared long ago.
It helps societies to prosper if they have rules such as "Thou shalt not kill", if they practice charity toward the poor and sick and elderly, if they have social cohesion, if they do unto others as they would have done unto them, etc. None of this requires a supernatural being to figure out, but it is one of the benefits of religion that has allowed it to survive.
Good choice.
I find myself moving away from duty and happiness, towards virtue. It cuts out so much philosophical crap. That is also a move away from "the mental capacity to calculate the correct 'caring-for-others' action to take".
That doing the right thing is somehow algorithmic?
Quoting Janus
Drop the word "determine"....
Then consider The Three Questions.
Or read about Aragorn.
Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.
I still think that duty has a place in morality, as does simple rule-following, social norms, empathy. .. I don't think one approach covers it. But if I had to pick one, then virtue would definitely be it.
Quoting Janus
Need there be an injunction? Did anyone read Lord of the Rings and think Aragon the bad guy?
To say that virtue ethics is the right model for moral thought and action is the same as to say that we should be virtuous, no?
Quoting Isaac
I doubt it given that he was portrayed as the good guy.
The Orcs.
So there is some complexity here. Let me explain:
1. In the case of procreation, you would not only be preventing all harm, you would be preventing all harmful people, or the need to protect others from harmful people. Simple point, I know, but true.
2. There is another principle that is a part of the negative ethics I mentioned earlier, besides not causing unnecessary harm, and that is the non-force principle. Do not violate a fully autonomous person's life or property unnecessarily or unprovoked. When doing so, the 1st principle of non-harm is abrogated. They may be inversely tied. Force is granted, when harm is in play. Force is not granted otherwise.
2a. By forcing a child into the world, you would not only be violating the non-harm principle, you would be violating the non-force principle as well, doubly making this a bad idea.
As to your own idea of human flourishing, it is a positive ethics in the sense that it is trying to promote a positive rather than prevent a negative. However, I don't see any moral impetus towards positive ethics other than an after-the-fact heuristic for society. In other words, if you were to tell me that you would like to force autonomous humans to flourish, and possibly harm them at various instances along the way to achieve this, then no, this ethic is flawed. It is using people for a cause, unjustifiably. Only negative ethics respects the dignity of the person, and their autonomy. Any X goal (like flourishing) is a secondary value that people may try to take upon themselves once born, but there is no strong "should" other than it is probably a good idea to do things which promote positive feelings in the long run and perhaps there is some methodology that might bring this about. This is not a moral obligation though.
Muddled. Virtue ethics is about growth, becoming; encouraging courage, temperance, liberality, generosity, patience, kindness.
The problem with this is one person's virtue is another's immoral act sometimes. I see this with things like "courage".
In any case, since you want everyone dead, what is it to you? The dead cannot act virtuously; even less, those who never exist.
I don't think so. What I'm trying to point out is that all those virtues you mention basically consist in caring about others, and of course oneself (that's implicit in the idea that you cannot care about others if you don't care about yourself (caring about yourself, that is, in the sense of caring about what kind of person you are)). I can't think of any definition of morality that doesn't entail caring about others. To care about others is obviously to care about their flourishing, so I can't see how that definition could be wrong.
No applied ethics is when ethics is tested, in a way. But, I am just saying virtues in themselves mean very little, and what ends up happening is a hierarchy which then actually leads to a "rule", the very kind it seems which you are against. One person's courage is another's foolhardiness. But even more complicated is that one can be courageous yet by doing so, be intemperate or unkind, or cause pain to others, where does that fit in? Maybe causing the harm to others, is only the perception of the other person who thinks this to be unkind, but is not. Maybe they are not judging it correctly, etc. etc. and on it goes.
Quoting Banno
Not being born and everyone dead are two different things. You can conflate them for rhetoric sake if you want, but doesn't change that.
But anyways, this statement would be a straw man or red herring as, I don't think ethics entails virtue or any positive ethics as I explained above to Thomas Quine.
Yep, it's problematic.
That's what it is to be human. And better to be, to choose, to grow, than never to have been.
But it seems you cannot see this.
I'm not sure if you agree or not with the objection that it leads to a rule-based system.
My other main point was not only does it lead to a rule-based system, it is violating negative ethical principles possibly to do so (e.g. it is okay to harm or force others for X positive value-goal).
Quoting Banno
I don't see that as objectively true statement. There is no justification that people need to be born in order to grown. It actually (like any positive principle) becomes its own circular absurdity. People need to be born so growth can take place. Why? Because, because growth needs to take place damn it!! Just makes little sense other than what I stated earlier- once born, it is a good idea to maximize positive feelings in the long-run but has no strong obligation attached to it.
Maybe, but I didn't say virtue ethics was the 'right' model, and I don't think @Banno did either. Not with 'right' being used in a normative sense.
For me, it just best describes what's going on in moral thought a good deal of the time. We're trying to be like Aragorn. We employ a range of techniques to do so, but it's toward the same ends.
The exceptions I'd cite are basic biological responses - caring for a child, being sociable, cooperating. These may well be why Aragorn is the hero, but we needn't think about them all the time in complex situations, and I think it's only the complex situations where moral theory even matters. A moral system which deduces that we shouldn't beat a defenseless child has, in my opinion, been a monumental waste of time. We all knew that. What we want to know is what to do with the homeless, how much to give to charity, whether to buy fairtrade...
These are questions too complex to be solved algorithmically, they can only be approximated, and I think a general sense of 'character' is the way we mostly deal with these complexities.
Yes, it seems so. Quick, mention 'truth' or something...the audience are getting restless.
Quoting Banno
Whoa...meta...
It wasn't intended to be "objectively" true; just true. And I don't expect you to agree - but that is a fact about you.
"Best model" then or "preferable model"?
Quoting Isaac
Yes, but the question then is 'what is it about the way Aragorn is that makes you want to be like him?". It's no good just saying "His being virtuous", because that perhaps begs the question, but it certainly tells us nothing.
Quoting Isaac
I haven't mentioned algorithms, I'm looking at morality as consisting in caring for others; which just is to say to care about their flourishing. I think you're conflating the question as to how to determine what is moral in any given situation with the question as to what is an eliminable and most preeminent characteristic of the thinking that motivates moral questioning; in other words in moral thinking itself. I think the answer to that question is 'the human propensity to care (whether reflectively or pre-reflectively) about others and how one comports oneself in interaction to others.
Every moral action has function, to serve supernatural being at it best. This means having to do inhumane, wrongful actions, to gain the trust and love of supreme beings. And this is a way, how people gain happiness, and fill their moral duties.
Read up on the Euthyphro.
The common model.
Quoting Janus
It seems to be a range of factors for different people. Some might want to be like him simply because others want to be like him, or because he seems well-respected by his peers. Others might have a more aesthetic attachment... The majority, I suspect simply want to be in his gang, and the membership of that gang has certain characteristics.
We could go further and ask why we want to be in his gang, I suspect then you'd get to something about markers of success (for the gang as a whole) - both biological and cultural, but I don't think anyone actually thinks that far.
Quoting Janus
I see that, but this just examines it at one level of causation. The answer to the question "why do we behave that (moral) way?" might be "because we want to be like Aragorn". The answer to the question "why do we want to be like Aragorn?" might be "because his gang seems the nicest/most successful", or it might be "because I feel inexplicably drawn to that kind of character" (cultural/biological). We could answer the "whys" to each of those by saying that those groups care about each other's flourishing (your level). But then we could ask "why do we want to care about each other's flourishing?" and get one level deeper. The answer to that would be a lot of pre-engineered neurology, a big dose of cultural indoctrination and some guesswork. Then you could ask the "why" of all that - evolution and randomness.
So your particular level of analysis might not be wrong (I think it is, a bit wrong, but that's not relevant right now), it's just that it has no special claim to be the level at which we should look at moral issues, it's neither the foundational, nor the pragmatic end - just somewhere in between.
Are you suggesting the majority of people think in terms of virtue? If so then how do you think they represent virtue to themselves? Are you suggesting that most people just visualize Aragorn or some other persona they have adopted as a hero, or something like that? I guess, if they have never reflected on the question then they must have either an idea of, an image of, or feeling(s) for, what virtue is.
If they are unreflective could they even be said to be thinking in terms of virtue? Why not in terms of care? They might be moved by their perception of Aragorn as someone who cares. They might be moved by seeing him as nurturing; and to be nurturing is be concerned with the flourishing of what is being nurtured, surely?
I think it's common, but only with the caveat I introduced earlier (that we're talking about complex moral decisions, not whether to beat a child).
Quoting Janus
Yes, something like that. A huge amount of behaviour is dictated by social norms for particular groups, but these need not be a group one actually belongs to, but could be a group one wishes to belong to (reasons for which are varied, as I mentioned above). The point is that these behaviours are not copied blindly, it's an adaptive inference about some 'generalised trend' not literal copying. Even babies do this. I think 'virtue' is a good way of talking about what's going on here, but if you want to delve deeper into what it constitutes I think you're getting straight into sub-concious neural activity, not anything we could talk about phenomenologically.
Because if it doesn't then your claim that "alk moral systems are about human flourishing" is flat out wrong. Some moral systems are clearly aimed at achieving something which you would not define as 'flourishing'.
It may be that all moral systems are aimed at what they themselves consider 'flourishing', but this is barely more than tautology.
Quoting Thomas Quine
If we agree with your system, then your system is the best? OK.
Quoting Thomas Quine
You are kind of all over the place in terms of posing the question, which is the single most important thing in philosophy.
At times you seem to be arguing that morality - in the minds and actions of all people, as well as in all moral theories - comes down to the imperative of flourishing. This addresses the question of what moral behavior and moral thought looks like to an observer. (As I have pointed out, it takes only a minimal attention to contemporary and historical moral attitudes and moral theories to see that this is not the case; it is at best only one facet.)
You also put forward a more plausible thesis, which sees that same imperative as an emergent feature of our evolved psychology. This is still an empirical question, but this time concerning the origins and the natural explanation of morality. (I think there is some truth to it, but this is still an oversimplified, one-sided and overconfident narrative.)
Through all this you also seem to be advancing a normative thesis, which is that morality should serve the purpose of human flourishing. And the justification for this thesis somehow relies on the claim that that is what moral attitudes amount to anyway, and/or that this is what has in fact emerged from the biological evolution of human psychology. (The logic of this justification escapes me.)
Finally, when it comes to the concrete solutions, you give us astonishingly banal pronouncements:
- If we want something, we should make our best effort to achieve it!
- Oh! Oh! I know! Let's use Science!
- What a wonderfully refreshing thought!
Really?
I thought I made it pretty clear that there are many different, even contradictory views about what best serves human flourishing. It does not matter to religious people how I define flourishing, they have their own definition. They believe that following God's law is the way to achieve what is best for humanity. I believe we need to consult science to determine what best serves human flourishing. Why do you think that I agree with the religious people?
ISIS wanted to create a new Caliphate in the Middle East because they believed that strict Islamic fundamentalism was the path to human flourishing, in this life and the next. Do I have to agree with them, just because I make that observation? It seems to me it led to a bloody nightmare for everyone involved. Does this change the fact that their motivation was to create a better world?
I try to distinguish between people's intentions and the outcomes of their actions. The road to hell and all that.
Quoting Isaac
If you don't agree with my system, then I would love to hear why not. That's why I came to this board, to hear a solid critique from people who think a lot about these sorts of things. Thanks for your help with this.
It’s a very big mistake to assume that people are rational, or that we’re not all prone to social influence.
I was a little surprised recently to read about some politically fat-right and religious folks condemning the the Pope for supporting efforts to reduce climate change. Apparently, political identity can trump religious identity, in this day and age.
Moral systems tend to, or perhaps inevitably, become a group identity, and when that happens the group becomes primary and actual moral behavior secondary. The development of virtue is discouraged because that leads to independence from the group.
The right thing, in certain circumstances, could be considered a dereliction of duty, where the difference is between a moral sense of loyalty or responsibility and some other moral sense like fairness or care.
Quoting Banno
The stoics believe that eudaemonia is achieved with the development of virtue because, if for no other reason, it’s the one thing that we have complete control of and will therefore be satisfying and something that can’t be taken from us. Responsibility and loyalty are virtues, btw.
So if we take 'flourishing' to be a variable x (some thing), then your statement "all moral systems aim at human flourishing" becomes "all moral systems aim at something", which seems just trivially true - hence the confusion.
Quoting Thomas Quine
The most straightforward answer - the vast majority of moral decisions are either simple enough that we already know the answer (and so don't need a system), or sufficiently complex that linear univariate systems cannot consider all the implications of any choice to a degree significantly better than chance. Like the stock exchange, there's all manner of very detailed systems for working out investment strategies, but economics is sufficiently complicated that none of them perfom better than chance over the long run.
But that's the boring answer. The much more controversial one is James Blair. In 1995 he studied some of the world's most vicious psychopaths. Among other fascinating discoveries (I strongly recommended his work), was this gem - psychopaths can behave incredibly morally in many situations. What differentiates them from normal folk is that they don't distinguish between breaking a rule and doing something morally wrong. I seriously worry about any attempt to turn the whole of morality into a series of rules and calculations.
"Flourishing" is the constant, not the variable. The variable is the variety of moral systems seeking to achieve human flourishing; the constant is that all the varieties seek the same end: human flourishing.
My argument is that there is a grounding to all these varieties; they all are attempts to solve the same problem.
All moral systems say the same thing: "If we all just do X, we will flourish as a result."
For X insert any moral precept.
That makes flourishing of a different character than any specific moral value or system then, no? It plays the role of condition for the possibility of morality, a teleological structure operative within it, and a source of imperatives that does not constrain their character.
Thou shalt flourish - in what way? No no you misunderstand, any way is conceived of in terms of flourishing. What does that tell us about what to do or how to be? It doesn't tell us what to do or how to be, it simply is the purpose that any moral guidance or character growth will act in accord with.
Obvious reductionism aside you're absolutely spot on.
Yes, to flourish is not a moral system, it is the objective of a moral system.
My argument is that science can tell us how to flourish, therefore science can tell us what is moral and what is not by seeking answers to the question, "What helps humanity to flourish and what does not?"
Science tells us how to cure disease, what we need for nutrition, how to raise healthy children, etc. Social science seeks answers to questions like how to reduce crime, what causes violence, how to achieve political stability, how a society should respond to a pandemic, whether or not slavery is a viable societal or economic system, and so on.
To apply this approach to moral questions, ask in any situation, "What would best serve human flourishing?" To find the best answer, consult the available science.
We’re not an entirely rational species.
Here is the question: "Is there a universal grounding for morality?"
I look at the things that most people consider immoral:
Theft; murder; sexual abuse; pedophilia; breaking contracts; lying; corruption; slavery; you name it.
I ask, "What do all these have in common?" My answer is, they all are detrimental to human flourishing. Who am I to say? How do I know this? I consult the evidence from the available science.
I look at the things most people consider moral:
Kindness; charity; courtesy; honor; honesty; keeping promises; being a good parent; you name it.
I ask, "What do all these have in common?" My answer is, they all are helpful to human flourishing. Who am I to say? How do I know this? I consult the evidence from the available science.
I therefore suggest there might be a universal grounding for morality. We consider something to be moral if it we believe it serves human flourishing, and to be immoral if hinders it.
Of course people disagree about what best serves human flourishing, and therefore different cultures and subcultures have different moral standards. Some cultures and subcultures have believed or do believe things like racism, human sacrifice, killing infidels, acts of terror against innocent civilians, praying to your favorite God, etc are moral because they are in the best interests of human flourishing.
How can we tell who is right? Consult the available science.
Again, this can be attributed to violating a negative ethics of non-harm and non-force. Flourishing is only a secondary hypothetical imperative. IF you want long-run happiness THEN there might be some well-trodden ideas about how to gain this. It is not guaranteed, and it often relies on contingencies of various kinds (e.g. personality types, surrounding circumstances), but it can be construed as practical truisms that can be practiced. This (long-run gains) should not be misconstrued as a morality though.
Don't know much about negative ethics, but at first glance it appears to be more of a thought experiment than a moral system that any culture has embraced.
There is a reason most people think suicide is immoral: our DNA tells us we should be instead trying to survive and flourish.
It just means, either preventing a negative or not violating a right. So preventing harm to others or not unnecessarily forcing things upon others.
Quoting Thomas Quine
This sounds like an appeal to nature fallacy. For example, aggression is also a part of most human experience. It doesn't mean it is always called for. Humans tend to like feeling good.
It may be wise to maximize happiness in the long-run by downplaying short-term gains and emphasizing things that will build over time. However, this tendency to like happiness, and this folk-wisdom to try to maximize long-term gains does not necessarily amount to a morality, or how to treat other people in theory or in practice. Rather, it is just a sort of hypothetical imperative, that may be prudent.
OK, but I'm trying to drill down further; what does a virtuous person generally look like to the common eye? Cruel, indifferent, manipulating, exploitative, vicious, resentful, vengeful or kind, considerate, respectful, giving, loving, forgiving and so on? It seems obvious to me that people generally admire the second set of characteristics and not the first. And the former is a picture of someone who does not care for others well-being, for their flourishing, in fact may even take pleasure in hurting, punishing others, and the latter picture is of someone who does care for others, for their well-being and flourishing.
So, i think we can talk about this phenomenologically, and that it's quite easy to see the conceptual and associative logic behind moral thinking. Very simply a moral act is an act motivated by care, an immoral act is motivated by self-interest and an amoral act is an expression of indifference. Although it might be the case that many people will think that it is immoral to be amoral; that such a person, even if they do no harm, are still immoral insofar as they might fail to contribute.
I think it's more because such an act shows the person to be concerned with themselves more than others. The act hurts those who love the suiciding person. Do you believe suicide would be considered immoral if the person who suicides were outcast, totally alone and scorned by all?
It depends on whether a person would be miserable without indulging in those things. There is always a tradeoff.
This whole thread has a bit of a smell to me. Throughout this thread, this has been your general proposal. To some particular challenges to morality you have defended your general proposal by explaining how some particular moral precept which does not actually seem to serve human flourishing is, in fact, an attempt to answer the question of flourishing.
I would like to just start with the presumption that anything that anyone proposes, you would be able to fit to this thesis. So let's talk about that generically... what about the society of X-ists, who propose a moral principle of Y, which obviously is not about human flourishing? Well, here's the thing. Y might not really look like it's about human flourishing, but if you look at the X-ist society, their Y moral principle is an attempt to Z because they believe Z is the reason behind flourishing. This seems to be the generic recipe.
And that is where the smell comes in. So here's my challenge. If this is, in fact, a principle whereby you can always apply this recipe to defend your original thesis, then what is your general thesis actually saying? Another way to phrase this is, what sort of moral principles might we hypothetically find in some human society that would actually not follow from your thesis, but that we find in practice always (generally?) does follow? I would propose that if there is no such hypothetical violation, then the entire thesis can be dropped as being meaningless. The test of the thesis being useful is that there is such a hypothetical violation but we find in practice it's never (or maybe even rarely) violated.
I don't know about the OP, but I would say that it is simply an attempt to identity the basic logic underlying moral thinking. And it would not be the basic logic of moral thinking if there were exceptions, so your attempted critique seems to fail here.
Remember this is more phenomenology than science. Phenomenology says things like such and such is the way it is for humans and gives its reasons for saying that. It does not imagine hypotheses which generate predictions to be empirically tested like science does.
I'm more after meaning than science. Yes, this looks similar to falsifiability, but the basic idea is that if the thesis can explain everything, then it explains nothing.
I think it’s more a question of valuing sense pleasure/immediate gratification vs something more eudaemonic, which may be why I find this discussion a little frustrating or too one dimensional. Thomas seems to be claiming that we all seek well-being and that with the help of science, of all things, we could readily achieve it. Science cannot change our values, at least not until neural implants with mind control is invented.
You might take issue with the OP's thesis that this basic logic of moral thinking is evolved and encoded within our DNA. What hasn't evolved? So I would have no argument with that. However to say it is encoded within the DNA is a theses I would not attempt to uphold.
I don't see a difference. "X is what is basically going on" is the explanation. I'm suspecting the potential for illusory meaning... what exactly are you objecting to?
Quoting Janus
^^- FTR I made no mention of that.
Sure, but it is one.
Okay, so it's not a "proper explanation". Let's call it a clarification. But this clarification of morality proposes that moral precepts are attempts to answer the question about what best serves human flourishing. If all moral precepts, even hypothetical, even contradictory, could be argued in some convoluted sense to still be an attempt to answer the question about what best served human flourishing, then what value does this clarification actually have... what exactly is it clarifying?
That may be what the OP says, but it is not what I would say. I would say that moral thinking is driven by concern for human flourishing; so that concern is its underlying logic. The further questions then would be just what human flourishing in general consists in, and just what acts and/or kinds of acts contribute to or detract from that flourishing. That then would be the empirical part of the investigation which follows on from the basic logic of our moral intuitions and feelings. Actual moral deliberations in the everyday world then would be attempts to answer that second question, not in general terms, but in specific situations.
Well here's what I think is the value of this approach. For the sake of argument, bear with me, let's accept the following as true:
1. Human beings are active, agentic creatures who seek to flourish both as individuals and in community.
2. All morality is an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" What kinds of rules can we come up with that will help us to all get along and prosper?
3. Science can tell us a lot about what best serves human flourishing.
4. Therefore, science can tell us what is moral and what is not.
If all that is true, and I await a cogent refutation, we have an objective basis for morality and right conduct.
If true, the thesis poses a moral challenge to religion, to policy-making, to the way business is done, to ideologies such as American exceptionalism and constitutional originalism, to law, justice, political regimes, etc. To all the ideologies, policies, laws, and regimes that hinder human flourishing.
So I've no problems with 1. Regarding 2, "all" is a gigantic ask, and I'm not quite sure this is accurate. There are animal rights activists who favor the rights of non-human animals in their morality not from the perspective of human flourishing, but rather for the sake of the animals themselves. There are also in some moralities weightings of narrower groups, sometimes to exclusion of other human groups. We might also consider some moral precepts as favoring non-human groups (gods, the organization, etc).
Consider for example the animal rights activist. In particular, he might be morally against the avoidable torture of non-human animals. I would interpret your claim that his moral precept is an attempt to answer the question of what best serves human flourishing somewhere along the line of, if you were to convince said activist that such torture had no effect on human flourishing, he should be okay with it. But I'm a bit skeptical that once convinced of such a thing, your job is done; I equate that to his moral precept not being an attempt to address the question of human flourishing, but rather to be based on something else.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Not quite yet; it gets a lot muddier in the details. But we need not go there... one would have to agree that we're after human flourishing in particular to start down this road (i.e., agree with 2).
ETA:
Quoting Thomas Quine
I'm not quite sure this proposal is needed to analyze faults in some of these areas (see e.g. this thread).
Is someone obligated to prosper? No.
Is someone obligated to not cause unnecessary harm? Most likely yes.
That is why prosperity seems to not be related to morality. Rather, it is more related to folk-wisdom for what one should strive for. Even that is ill-defined and breaks down when looking at individuals. For example, in an ideal world, let's say, no one has to do any activity they didn't like. But this is not the real world. So, we must do the least worst thing we would like. What happens if even the least worst thing is incomparably not the ideal? So now it is just dealing with the least worst outcome. But what if there are many barriers? So now we are dealing with getting rid of the barriers that lead to the least worst outcome, and so on and so on. Why put more people in the world to deal with situations of removing barriers to the least worst outcome in the first place?
You are right, those whose primary concern is animal rights are a challenge to the premise. I am not a vegetarian but I support animal rights because I believe causing animals to suffer is not far from causing humans to suffer and once you get a taste for that bad things may follow. Where I come from up in British Columbia we had a serial killer who killed 50 women. He was a pig farmer and he slaughtered the women just like farm animals and fed them to his pigs. He had been traumatized as a child when his pet calf was slaughtered and butchered before his eyes.
I was struck by an article I read that noted that most soldiers in WWI and WWII were farm boys used to killing by hand, and war atrocities came easier to them as a result.
And it was noted that Heinrich Himmler, who set up Dachau, one of the first death camps, had formerly been a chicken farmer and an early adopter of mechanized chicken slaughter and butchery.
So from my point of view avoiding unnecessary suffering contributes to a more humane society, and this contributes to human flourishing. But I do know some animal rights activists who are far more concerned about animal rights than about human flourishing.
So perhaps I should say "almost all" instead of "all".
Then you should be able to substitute it for a synonymous sentence in all cases. So in all cases of moral systems what is a sentence we can use in place of the constant 'flourishing'?
Not sure why you believe this, Isaac, but I settled on the word "flourishing" because it is how Aristotle's word "eudaimonia" is usually translated today. It would take more than a sentence to explain eudaimonia, and my sense of flourishing adds some evolutionary theory to Aristotle.
But I've just been reading Heidegger and I've committed myself to writing clearly for the rest of my life, and I think the English definition of the verb is commonly understood. We know what it means for our garden to flourish.
The simplest dictionary definition is "to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way."
And by the way, I think not only humans seek to flourish, but every life form. It's part of the logic of the universe.
Your claim.
1. All moral systems aim to achieve X.
2. Science informs us about X.
A necessary corollary of your claim, therefore is that science informs us about that which all moral systems aim to achieve.
Divine command theory is a moral system.
Divine command theory aims at obedience to God's will.
Science cannot tell us about God's will.
Therefore some element if your claim is wrong.
Sounds like Aristotle, in many ways. Eudaimonia gets translated as "happiness," but flourishing is better. In that sense, human beings should strive for this and actions can be judged on its basis. However, that's not saying a whole lot -- what gets considered "flourishing" becomes an issue in itself, not to mention all the lies told to people by priests and authorities who want to simply promote a morality to enhance or maintain their power.
But overall I think it's a good start. Someone was making noises like this a while back; it may have been Sam Harris. Trying to link morality to human well-being, in the same sense as "health" in medicine, thus being able to open up a field in which we can study it scientifically. All interesting stuff.
Why would we need to link morality to human well-being in order to open up a field in which we can study it scientifically? Why don't we just study human well-being?
By "it" I was there referring to morality. The argument is that there is no fact/value or is/ought distinction, and that morality can be based in science if we simply accept a concept of "well-being" as we accept "health" in medicine.
Yes, I understood that, I was wondering why you'd want to do that. We can already study human well-being and carry out any activities that such a study might reveal as benefitting human well-being. What's the advantage in equating such behaviours with 'morality'?
Science tells us there is no evidence of God, also that people tell all kinds of stories about Gods and winged beasts and Cyclops and so on throughout history and the likeliest explanation is that the whole thing is just made up.
Now the fact that it was all made up by human beings doesn't make everything about it wrong, stories can tell us a lot. Also I think "Thou shalt not kill" is a pretty good moral rule of thumb, although obviously not valid in all circumstances.
Well-being usually refers to a brain state and thus is a subjective measure and a measure of how well an individual is doing. Morality operates at a societal scale and is concerned with not only what is good for the individual but for society and for all humanity.
It’s not entirely subjective, for instance, there ways to physically measure stress and serotonin levels, which correlate to mental well-being.
The modern urban lifestyle is typically regarded as being high stress, incidentally, which would be odd if the foundation of morality were human flourishing, or it’s an indication that the modern lifestyle is generally immoral?
If you were to follow the anarcho-primitivist, you would say that the modern lifestyle is immoral, based as it is on private property and exploitation of "human resources". On that account we are all immoral insofar as we can hardly avoid buying products whose production relies somewhere along the line on slave labour.
And if it is true, as is often claimed, that the modern lifestyle actually decreases general human (and obviously others species' and environmental) flourishing then it is immoral on that count as well.
It is not generally regarded as immoral though. The so called American Dream, for example, is highly praised by much of the world.
I doubt anyone would claim that Americans are among those with the greatest lack of well-being, at least not in the material sense. Millions of children die of malnutrition each year in other parts of the world. Basic needs come before grand eudaemonic schemes.
Is it because human flourishing is the foundation of morality that makes it so easy to turn a blind eye to human suffering? We are moral, aren’t we?
To say that the logical basis of morality is concern for others, for their flourishing or well-being or whatever way you want to say it, is not to say that everyone considers all others to be worthy of consideration in any way other than perhaps paying lip service to the idea. In other words I think the logic is the same, regardless of how widely it is applied, in principle and, not always the same, in practice.
You and I have both made the point that the logic should be applied to other species, to the whole biosphere; that we should endeavour to transcend anthropocentric moral thinking. Just what that would entail for questions about eating meat is another question. I think it's inevitable that we will privilege humans, at least somewhat, over other species, the practicalities of life seem to demand at least that much. I doubt we could all live as Jains, for example.
Whether God is real or not has no bearing on my argument. Even if a moral system aimed at something which was not real, that still defeats your claim that all moral systems aim at some constant. They don't. They aim at different things. Divine command theory aims at obedience to god which is a different thing from maximal happiness (ordinary utilitarianism) which is a different thing to rationally universalisable maxims (Kantian deontology), which is a different thing to lack of harm (negative utilitarianism)...
Quoting Thomas Quine
We can already study which societies flourish, or even how well humanity is doing by whatever measures we like. Still not seeing the link to 'morality'.
Quoting Janus
That's exactly what I just said. I don't understand how that's a problem with my argument, it sounds like just a repeat of it.
The problem with your argument is that the two Xs, different ideas of flourishing, are not the same. The fact that one of them is not subject to empirical investigation does not refute the claim that all moral thought is concerned with flourishing.
In any case to support the claim that science can be used to assess claims about flourishing the OP can say, as I already suggested, that the notion of eternal flourishing is groundless, and merely a matter of faith, with no inter-subjective power to convince anyone but those who have already accepted the idea.
Quoting Janus
How can you reconcile both these statements? If the two Xs (that which moral systems aim at) are not the same, then it is de facto false that "all moral thought is concerned with flourishing". It can't be, we've just established that the two Xs are different.
One cannot sustain both claims (that all moral systems are concerned with flourishing and that science tells us about flourishing) without equivocating over the term 'flourishing'. I the first claim it's taken to mean something wide enough to include eternal afterlife, yet the second claim is only true if it's taken in a much narrower sense.
Rather, if you force others in the grand old pursuit of the game of flourishing, and in doing so, force unnecessary harm and challenges on another person because you deem this worthy, or you would feel pain if you did not force this situation on another, that may be immoral.
Those who promote Divine Command Theory say explicitly, over and over, that if we only follow God's law, humanity will flourish, if not in this life, then in the next.
Let X be any moral theory.
Let "flourishing" be a constant.
My argument is, "All X are an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" "
Therefore, to use Issac's words, Divine Command Theory is a moral theory that aims at obedience to God's Will, and is an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?"
The way to defeat this argument is not by changing my constant into a variable. It would be by proving that the intention of Divine Command Theory is not actually to serve human flourishing.
I am saying no one has to force human beings to seek to flourish, by and large, for the most part, they do this on their own. (Note that trying to find the best way to flourish is not the same as actually flourishing.)
Nowhere have I said that seeking to flourish as individuals and as a community is what we ought to do, only that it is what we actually do.
I then argue that if this is what we actually are seeking to do, then science can help us find the best way.
Back to Divine Command Theory, I was struck by reading that the tiny nation of Finland, 5.5 million people, and one of the least religious nations on earth, has a record of scientific, economic, and educational achievement greater than the entire Muslim world, population almost 2.5 billion, which includes most of the nations on earth with the highest levels of poverty and violence. This I take as evidence of the failure of Divine Command Theory. It may deliver the goods in the afterlife, and good luck with that, but it sure does not deliver the goods in this life...
Well then that's wrong from the outset. Divine command theory aims to obey God. If God aimed to make humanity miserable, then that would be the morally right thing to aim for because God said so. It has nothing ti do with human flourishing in the sense you've been using.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Who says this?
Quoting Thomas Quine
No it doesn't.if God demanded something which caused humanity to suffer, that would still be morally right according to divine command theorists.
Quoting Thomas Quine
https://iep.utm.edu/divine-c/
Just to get off DCT for a minute. How far into the future does your "All moral theories are an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" go, and is there an equally constant degree of hyperbolic discounting?
Say science tells us an action could benefit a thousand people now, but carries a 60% risk of harming 10,000 people in 100 year's time. Science can't tell us what weighting to give to the risk. Are you suggesting that all moral theories apply the same risk weighting? If not, then aren't we just back to square one with irresolvable disputes over all the really complicated questions?
Closer to home and therefore more likely to share genes. This indicates that the foundation of morality is ‘selfish genes’ and the intuitions and moral frameworks that arise from them, and not human flourishing.
The fact that we must learn and practice well-being, and that it requires discipline, also indicates that it’s rather against the grain of our base nature.
I don't really understand what you mean. I'm not equating behavior with morality. Morality as judgment of "good" and "bad," or "right" and "wrong" applied to behavior (actions) is done all the time. We're constantly making those judgments. The question is "What is good?" If we say happiness (in terms of flourishing or well-being) is "good," then science can certainly help us discern "right" from "wrong."
Here you are asking the question: "What is common to all moral imperatives?" If there were such a common feature, I would not call it grounding, much less the grounding of morality, just on that basis. (All cats have claws... you get the point.)
Anyway, this is an empirical question about the practice morality - an is question. Your answer is not a good one, and the way you go about establishing it is not scientific (which probably explains the result). For one thing, you haven't actually done or referred to any science to support your main thesis (as far as I can see).
Quoting Thomas Quine
So when you approve of a moral precept, you count it as evidence for your thesis (never mind how you figured out that it does in fact promote human flourishing). Otherwise you just flip the argument around and say that the precept does not promote human flourishing (never mind how you you figured that out) because people have a different idea of flourishing, or they just go about it in an unscientific way. Heads - I win, tails - you lose. (Which @Janus says is OK, but I don't think he agrees with you that you are doing science. I am not sure what he thinks you are doing though.)
But this is all beside the point, because even if you produced a good empirical theory that describes common patterns in moral behavior, it would not tell you what you should do - not without a bridge principle: something like "Thou shall do as most people do." That would be the real meat of your ethical system, and it would not be derived from science.
The Quran tells us:
"...those who disbelieve, for them are cut out garments of fire, boiling water shall be poured over their heads. With it shall be melted what is in their bellies and (their) skins as well. And for them are whips of iron. Whenever they will desire to go forth from it, from grief, they shall be turned back into it, and taste the chastisement of burning. (22:19-22)"
There are more than 500 references to what awaits you in hell if you do not obey Allah in the Quran. Does it seem like you will flourish if you do not submit to Allah?
"The inmates of hell will also be punished by having to eat fire (2:174), or they will drink boiling water (6:70), or melted brass, or their drink will be bitter cold, unclean, full of pus (Gwynne 2002:416a). Their food will be the heads of devils that hang from the evil tree Zaqq" (https://bit.ly/2X0Vo0L)
The Quran also tells us that paradise awaits those who submit to Allah:
"The Quran gives an idyllic description of Jannah. It says that each person that goes to Jannah is greeted by angels from every gate with the words, "Peace be with you, that you persevered in patience! Now how excellent is the final home!" (13:24) Each person lives near to the Lord in a garden (3:15) of perpetual bliss (13:23), with flowing springs (88:10–16), and flowing rivers (5:119) of incorruptible water and unchangeable milk (47:15). Each garden is the width of the whole heavens and earth (3:133).In each garden is a mansion (9:72), a high throne (88:10–16) of dignity (52:20) in a grove of cool shade (36:56–57), an adorned couch (18:31), rows of cushions (88:10–16), rich carpets spread out (88:10–16), a cup (88:10–16) full of wine (52:23), and every meat (52:22) and fruit (36:56–57) that is like the food on Earth (2:25). Each person is adorned in golden and pearl bracelets (35:33) and green garments of fine silk and brocade (18:31).Each man is married to a beautiful woman (52:20), accompanied by any children that did not go to Jahannam (52:21), and attended to by servant-boys (52:24). The Quran does not specify any specific rewards for women, however." (https://bit.ly/330t5DG)
Does that sound like flourishing awaits if you submit to Allah?
What about here on earth?
"Saw?b or Thaw?b (Arabic: ?????) is an Arabic term meaning "reward". Specifically, in the context of an Islamic worldview, thawab refers to spiritual merit or reward that accrues from the performance of good deeds and piety.[1]"
"Usually any and all good acts are considered to contribute towards earning sawab, but for a Muslim there are certain acts that are more rewarding than others. The primary contributing factor on the extent of the reward is based on one's intention in one's heart - the silent, unspoken one that God is aware of and not the expressed, articulated one. These may be one and the same, but the articulation is not required prior to performing the deed.The meritorious acts in Islam can be divided into categories - the spiritual good and the moral good. There cannot be moral good without the spiritual good. Or at least the moral good will not have a high bearing if not accompanied by the spiritual good.Spiritual good includes the acts of worship including Prayer (obligatory and supererogatory), remembrance of God in the aftermath of the prayer or at any other time, acts of prescribed charity (zakat), reading of the Quran, among others.The moral good comes from treating parents with love and affection, and not with disdain; visiting sick people, keeping ties of kinship, spending money wisely in charitable causes, giving family their due rights, etc." (https://bit.ly/39Ame4X)
Are charity, filial piety, visiting sick people, spending money wisely, any and all good acts, the sorts of things that contribute to human flourishing?
Islam is the main proponent of Divine Command Theory. I could perform the same five-minute exercise for the other monotheistic religions, but I don't want to bore the readers.
Right. Now do that without the morality. Science can tell us what produces happiness (I don't really agree with this, but for the sake of argument...). If we want happiness we can consult science to find out how to get it.
Why have we gone through the additional stage of equating happiness with "good", what purpose did that bit serve?
Did you read the article I linked? I think you've misunderstood Divine Command Theory. It's not about rewards and punishments, it's about the source of moral goodness.
Of course the intention of Divine Command Theory is not to serve human flourishing. You might instead try to argue that the intension of DCT includes human flourishing. But your methodology is so flaky that the whole exercise is pretty meaningless.
"Good" as something valuable or desirable, a positive outcome of some kind. As opposed to bad, which is something undesirable, which one should like to avoid. It's another way of saying what we want or strive for versus what we wish to ignore or avoid, in my view. Traditionally, it's been thought that science has nothing whatever to say about values -- the is/ought claim of Hume and others.
But again, I don't see myself (or Aristotle) equating happiness with "good" per se. In his philosophy, happiness is perhaps the highest good in a hierarchical structure, but a cup of tea is good too. It's just a catch-all term to connect all actions, a way to encompass all actions in terms of what their striving for, ultimately. One may or may not accept this formulation, but it's fairly straightforward.
I am saying that all moral theories attempt to provide rules that if followed will serve human flourishing. Religion follows that up with threats and bullying to obtain compliance.
Science also attempts to solve the problem of human flourishing. Science doesn't always get it right, but it seems a whole lot more reliable than what religion tells us.
Mohammed tells us for example that one should say prayers when using public toilets, because genies inhabit dirty places. (https://bit.ly/2CZdqK2). Well when using a dirty public toilet in the eighth century, prayers might be your only protection.
But science tells us that proper sanitation can reduce the risk of diseases like cholera caused by dirty toilets. (https://bit.ly/39zBUWh).
Which is more effective, religion or science?
Hi sime, sorry, did not understand the question, can you restate in a different form? Thanks!
Yes, but you said...
Quoting Xtrix
I'm asking why we would do that 'if'. To say 'if' implies we have a choice (ie we might not make that association), I just don't understand why you think we would choose to make that association, what does it gain us?
Science. What's that got to do with morality?
Selfish genes seek to reproduce into the next generation. They do this by helping to create species that flourish.
To associate happiness with "good"? Because by doing so you can have a "science" of morality, which has been rejected for a long time.
To determine what the "right" action is, you have to have a context in which judge it. You have to have a goal of some kind. If one wants to be healthy, then you do xyz. If one wants to be happy (depending on what we mean by this), you do xyz.
I'm not seeing where you think an unnecessary step arises. Why associate "health" and "good"?
Right. Why do we need any more than this? Why associate either of those things with a universal concept, they work perfectly well as modalities.
If morality is an attempt to advance the cause of human flourishing, it needs to look to science for better answers. Not holy books, not convoluted philosophical thought experiments, but science. And by science I mean real-world evidence that some things work and others do not.
Are you asking me to prove scientifically here in the forum that theft; murder; sexual abuse; pedophilia; breaking contracts; lying; corruption; slavery, etc. are harmful to human flourishing? I did not pull these examples out of my imagination, nor are they expressions of my personal prejudices and biases. I chose them because most people consider them to be immoral, and they do so because they are objectively harmful to human flourishing. If you doubt the harm they cause, there is a lot of evidence to be found moments away on the Internet.
My goal in this exercise is to support moral precepts that can be shown scientifically to support human flourishing, and to deprecate those that hinder it or are useless. I don't need to reproduce the good science that is already out there...
They seek to reproduce genes that are most like themselves and that’s why the term ‘selfish’ is used. They do not seek to reproduce genes that are unlike themselves.
As I’ve mentioned already, it’s a matter of degrees of likeness, and that includes intraspecies likeness. Genes don’t seek to reproduce a specific set of genes, like all human genes, they seek to reproduce that which is closest to themselves.
As someone who appears to value science I don’t know how you can ignore this.
What is your position regarding moral intention, moral freedom, moral responsibility and moral competency? How are these things definable and measurable?
Presumably you don't consider social utility to be sufficient grounds for defining morality, for otherwise, morality is indistinguishable from luck....
Are both desirable ends? Yes. Thus, actions which lead towards these ends are therefore good or bad, right or wrong -- within that context. The meaning is the same -- they're just different words to judge actions. A "moral" action, according to this perspective, is one that aligns with one's values and goals -- be it health or happiness.
Nothing "more" is added.
So why take that perspective? That's what I'm asking. What is it that appeals to you about it, or are you just offering it as an option?
A bit of both. It seems almost like a truism to me. "Good" and "bad" aren't magic words, we use them all the time in everyday activity as a shorthand for evaluating our actions, and whether or not those actions take us towards or away from our goals, ideals, objectives, ends, etc. I don't see what's troublesome about it.
I don't understand what you are saying here. As I see it you cannot force flourishing on others; you can aid them in their pursuit of flourishing, though.
I can't see the point of bringing genes into it. All we need to flourish is a healthy state of mind and body. That is taken away from many, even most, of us by modern life, beginning with the advent of agriculture and private ownership. We only require discipline to reacquire what would naturally be ours, but for the dire state of the environment, overcrowded cities and pervasive neurosis and addictive behavior of most of those of us who are "prosperous" in the modern world.
A little string of protein, a complex molecule like DNA or RNA, a gene, can't survive on its own. It requires a living "host" to reproduce, (although I don't like the notion that genetic material is somehow like a parasite. It is integral to who we are.).
Genes reproduce themselves with tiny random mutations, and if they help the organism to adapt and survive, these mutations may persist through time to the next generation. A mutation might turn a bear's coat white, and this in turn might help the bear to hunt in the snow, and if it prospers and has many healthy bear cubs as a result, a new subspecies or species might evolve and white fur might turn into a permanent feature.
The secret to the gene's success is not that it reproduces itself exactly, but that it throws out the occasional mutation randomly. It produces genes that are like itself, but occasionally just a little tweak different.
Many biologists have criticized the notion of a "selfish gene" on the grounds that it seems to anthropomorphize what is basically an unconscious mechanical algorithm. But I am comfortable with saying that genetic material has a built-in purpose, and that is to reproduce itself. It is "selfish" in the sense that once you have passed it on to a new generation it does not care that you die. If the gene had a viewpoint, it would be that the only thing that matters is that it survives and reproduces.
I have personally reconciled myself to my own death, but the death of any of my four children would shatter me, the destruction of my community is even much more horrifying to contemplate, and the end of the human species would be tragic beyond measure. I think I feel this way because my genes have coded me to care about the future of my genetic material.
My genes have passed on to me a kind of mental program module that says, if you care for your children, if you help them to flourish, your genes will survive. If I behave in a way that almost every culture considers to be moral, my genes will survive to future generations.
If we look at the natural world, there are many different strategies for flourishing, and some of them involve pro-social behaviors that cannot be described as selfish. "Selfish" genes can produce altruistic behavior, and they can even produce species who puzzle over the universal grounding of moral behavior.
But I want to stress that the mutations in genetic material that survive are those that help the organism to flourish. Therefore genes will reliably turn up new mutations that help the organism to flourish, or the organism will eventually go extinct, and its genetic material with it, like 99.99% of anything that has ever lived.
As a result of this evolutionary process, the motivation to flourish is baked in to all life forms. Its in the DNA.
These questions are related to the free will question. I have heard some people argue that there is no such thing as free will, since our actions are determined by all that has happened to us in the past. Most of our actions seem to take place without the intervention of conscious thought, or happen too quickly, as in the case of speech, for conscious thought to physically occur.
This is plausible, but it fails to account for the fact that we program ourselves for future actions, and we are responsible for that. If I park illegally and get a ticket, I tell myself, I'd better not park there again. And I consciously or unconsciously avoid parking there, and if I do, I should get another ticket, in other words, I should be held responsible.
In the course of reflecting on the ticket, it may occur to me that if everyone parked illegally it would be a royal mess. Because I don't want to have to deal with that kind of mess in future, I make a decision partly out of self-interest, wanting to both avoid a mess and a ticket, and partly out of concern for others. I am responsible for this decision, it is an expression of who I am, in this sense I have the freedom to choose to act morally or not and should be held accountable because of that.
Either way I can trace a decision to obey a rule or not to obey it to a decision about whether such a rule serves human flourishing or not. The best rules are those that pretty much everyone agrees are in the common interest, such as stopping at a red light. The tricky problems are those where there are two rational opinions about what actually serves human flourishing.
There is a big debate in the U.S. about mask-wearing. Those who argue that mask-wearing is moral behavior when in close contact with others during a pandemic, believe that reducing the risk of contagion is more important to human flourishing than the temporary discomfort of wearing a mask.
Those who argue that to mandate mask-wearing is immoral believe that individual liberty and personal choice is more important to human flourishing.
Science can tell us who is right.
Like Aristotle I think virtue is a habit. But it is a habit you have developed through a combination of your life experience and your rational reflection.
I used to volunteer at a maximum security youth correctional facility. A high proportion of the kids were chronic liars, they lied about everything. An experienced worker told me they do this because they are trained all their young lives to do so. They were raised in chaotic environments with inconsistent parents or care-givers, and they found the best way to cope - to grow and develop - was to lie yourself out of every situation. And where there is no stability it's hard to think about future consequences. The criminal mind is always in the moment.
In this sense we can see how there are extenuating circumstances that have shaped the behavior of these kids.
Some will figure out that the best way to flourish as individuals is to tell the truth and stay out of trouble. But some will not. I am also listening to a great podcast true crime series from Pushkin about an FBI agent who infiltrated motorcycle gangs. It is clear there are people out there who deal with conflict through intimidation, violence, and even murder, who deal with sexual desire through rape, and so on. These people are the products of the same sorts of chaotic childhoods, they were probably abused and became themselves abusers. They have chimp morality: might makes right.
Similarly there are serial pedophiles who are repeat offenders. Possibly they were also the product of abusive homes.
There are psychopaths and sociopaths. Possibly their behavior was genetically influenced.
Punishment does not work to change these sorts of behaviors, but society needs to be protected from these types. In my view as someone who has worked both in prisons and in law firms, the only legitimate reason to put someone in jail is to protect society from the harm they are likely to cause. So I do think all people should be treated humanely, but some people need to be put away for life.
Sorry, I have gone on too long and touched on these issues only superficially, gotta go now, what do you think? We can continue the discussion later...
I bring genes into it in order to help understand the foundation of all morality. I don’t believe that it’s human flourishing because if it were then why aren’t we all flourishing? We’ve been around for thousands of years. There are signs of progress but there are also signs that we may be on the brink of self-destruction. Could it still be said that the foundation of morality is human flourishing if we all end up buried under the ashes of a nuclear winter? That or a similar fate is a possibility, and we are moral.
You say that “we only require discipline to reacquire what would naturally be ours“ but is that true? Would a hunter-gatherer society have the knowledge and discipline to flourish if an abundance of alcohol or high fructose corn syrup were made plentiful to them? Doubtful. We have a natural craving for sweetness, for example, that in the wrong circumstances will tend to lead away from flourishing.
We have a variety of moral intuitions that I assume have developed for particular circumstances, just as we have a variety tastes that fulfill various bodily needs. Perhaps our moral intuitions fulfill various specific social needs, like avoiding rejection or discouraging freeloading, and in the wrong circumstances can be counterproductive to flourishing.
The simple answer to that puzzle is that once we became reflective about these issues and we were already in the post-agricultural situation of greatly amplified conflict of interest, we have not been able to implement any solution; even if we have been able to understand what kinds of social arrangements would satisfy the requirement for universal human (and environmental because the human is impossible without it) flourishing.
Quoting praxis
I meant on the individual level, not on the social. Of course more than mere discipline would be needed for universal flourishing in the latter domain.
Quoting praxis
Probably not but I don't see the relevance, given their lack of sophisticated understanding of what is good for their health.
But moral "good" and "bad" are about judging other people's actions also. They act like instructions or categorical claims. The claim is that science can tell us what is morally right, not just how to achieve it once we've decided what it is. If I had a goal of becoming a ruthless tyrant with hundreds of slaves, science could tell me how best to achieve that too. Science makes models which have good predictive success, that means that if you want to do something to the world, you'd be advised to consult the latest scientific model to find out how. None of this has anything to do with determining what your objective should be in the first place.
If we want to make everyone happy we could (theoretically) consult science on how best to do so. If we want society to flourish (whatever that means) we could theoretically consult science on how best to do so. But if we wanted everyone else to suffer horribly, we could also consult science on how best to do so. Nothing in science tells us which of these objectives to choose.
I agree, but I'm trying to understand what @Thomas Quine is presenting here and it appears that he thinks they do not differ, but are rather a "a constant". It seemed for a minute that you might have some insight into this position, but it seems not.
Quoting Janus
Can it? How would it go about doing that?
Really? So what scientific model would you be using to tell whether individual liberty or mandatory mask-wearing is more important to long-term human flourishing? Science can tell us how many more people might die if we don't mandate mask-wearing (let's say studies converge on an average of 10,000 extra deaths with a 95% confidence). Now how does science tell us how many extra deaths at what confidence level outweighs individual liberty?
This global pandemic is hell everywhere, but compare places where the pandemic is raging out of control at least in part because of a libertarian resistance to mask-wearing and quarantine with those places which at least partly contained the virus by restricting individual liberty. This from today's NYT: https://nyti.ms/3hGIME2
I'm not sure all Americans realize how shocking the U.S. response to the pandemic looks to the rest of the world. This video is worth watching to the end, only a couple of minutes long. https://nyti.ms/3fciI1S
It seems pretty clear that draconian measures, which American libertarians describe as "trampling" on rights and liberties, such as those implemented by China, South Korea, New Zealand, and other countries, are the most effective at both reducing deaths and permitting early partial economic re-opening.
Other countries such as Germany and the Scandinavian countries, and Canada, rely more on appeal to good citizenship, widespread testing, and contact tracing, than to harsh mandates.
Where I live in British Columbia, Canada, population four million, we had 26 new cases yesterday. Across the whole province, only nine people with COVID are in hospital. Two deaths all week. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law, who lives in Alabama, has just yesterday been admitted to the ICU with COVID-19, so forgive me if I get a little agitated. Economy is devastated here as elsewhere but most businesses are functioning with social distancing. We live in fear of opening the border to the U.S. and joke about the need for "a big, beautiful wall".
Meanwhile the U.S. has seen drastic, truly devastating downturns in every measure of human flourishing you could come up with. A downturn from which America's standing in the world may never recover.
This I take as compelling scientific evidence that the primarily American ideology of libertarianism, of which Trump is at least partly an expression, is a failed moral system, failed because it does not serve human flourishing.
Like pretty much all moral systems, Divine Command Theory is an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?"
For DCT, the answer offered is, "Submit to God's will and follow God's commands."
I think that that 'exception' is not one. Animal rights activists are themselves long entrenched in human flourishing, otherwise they'd not be comfortable enough to concern themselves with the rights of animals.
Where there has never been human flourishing, there have never been animal rights activists.
Flourishing is as good a practical basis as it is an involuntary one for human morality. I think that you're definitely onto something with very strong ground.
Do you understand what 'science' is? Controlled trials, models, theories, predictions, experiments, statistical analysis, refined models... It's not you reading some newspapers and having a guess.
Notwithstanding that, I asked for the science that tells us that mask-wearing is better than personal liberty in the long term. All you've presented here is a load of anecdotal evidence of how you reckon the conflict played out in the very short term. If you think that's science then please, please don't get involved in anything important.
It would have been better to say that science has shown the way, but that it is philosophy that tells us. So the practice of science has clarified the fact that there can be no inter-subjective force to claims that predict nothing that can be observed and agreed upon. This would seem to be the case with the claim of eternal flourishing.
You got me Isaac, I'm not a scientist. That's why I look to people who are.
https://wapo.st/3fdqWXy
Are you serious? Do you need to see it? Have you not already? Have you been living under a rock? You're being a dick to the OP for no reason at all. It pisses me off, particularly coming from someone who is a self professed psychologist whose job - so s/he says - is to make people 'feel better'. You've yet to impress me. I personally know professionals in that field who are in very important and powerful positions of oversight and they act respectfully and honorably, particularly towards others regardless of disagreements. Your words here are anything but respectable or honorable. Duplicity of that nature is reprehensible and disgusting. Your behaviour and word choices here are a disgrace to the discipline.
:rage:
The medical experts, you know, the most knowledgable people regarding infectious disease, they most certainly wear one. They most certainly strongly advise wearing facial coverings and changing and/or disinfecting/sterilizing them as often as possible. They most certainly have stated in no uncertain terms that if the public does not follow the guidelines, including but not limited to masks, that this pandemic will inevitable take far more lives than need be.
Certainly better for everyone else for me to wear a mask... Seeing how it's about everyone else, and it's all about what counts as acceptable/unacceptable behaviour from/by me regarding it's effect/affect upon others... it's of moral import. It also dovetails nicely with the notion of human flourishing.
Isaac is being a dick.
Of course he is.
"Better than" is a value judgement. Science doesn't make value judgements.
Agreed on the principle, though I'm not sure how 'science' showed this, unless you're taking a really broad definition of science. But the point here is that in order for this "science can show us the way" approach to have normative force, it too has to make predictions, the results of which can be observed and agreed upon, and I see no evidence of that in terms of human flourishing which are clear enough to provide guidance in any real moral dilemmas. For example...
Quoting Janus
Obvious to you, maybe, but if you're going to extend the meaning of 'science' to cover 'stuff you reckon after having a look at the newspapers' then I really think that's too broad.
The science on mask-wearing, as I understand it (I'm not following it with spotlight, so I could be wrong) is that there is a reasonable likelihood that mask-wearing will reduce the R value and therefore spread of Covid-19, and that Covid-19 spreading at a high rate will probably cause X number of excess deaths.
Actual experts in their field disagree with both of these positions (the likelihood with which mask wearing is effective overall, and the value of X)
I don't know what the confidence intervals are in actual numbers, but they're not high.
Risks are taken with people's lives for the sake of individual liberty (your freedom to drive a car for example). So it is not the case that 'human flourishing' (among all those who agree with it as a metric) requires that no one's lives are put at risk by anyone's activities - it has been agreed upon that 'flourishing' will contain some activities which carry a risk to others - that sometimes we need to risk life in order to gain a level of freedom which we think worth the risk.
If I take that level to be a 1:500 lifetime risk, where someone else takes that level to be a 1:100,000 lifetime risk, how does science tell us which risk level is worth taking for the benefit of greater freedom? All we've had so far is a furious spewing of data telling us what the risk is. I'm asking how science tells us which risks are worth taking.
What is it in that article which tells you what level of risk is scientifically proven to be appropriate to take relative to the value of individual liberty. I've read it, but it only seems to point to what the risk is, not how we decide whether to take it.
Isaac is perfectly capable of speaking for himself, but since you answered...
So what? I mean, that's not even in question here... is it? What difference does that make to the discussion here?
Science is not an agent. Science doesn't think, believe, wonder, or anything else that agents such as ourselves often do. Science doesn't make any judgments. That's not even in question, and I seriously doubt that the OP meant anything of the sort.
He was simply claiming that science could be used as a reliable means to help us make better moral decisions... how to act in order to minimize unnecessary harm and how to act in order to increase human flourishing. If those are moral concerns, then science, can be rightfully and reliably used as an important tool for doing so.
Science is the most reliable means of acquiring information from which to better make our own judgments, including the ones under consideration here regarding the ongoing pandemic and what we must do if we want to contain it and be able to get on with our lives on the other side of that task.
Science doesn't tell us that we ought do everything in our power that we can to minimize the death and suffering from the pandemic either. It does however offer us the best knowledge available regarding how to do so.
That's the point.
It's precisely what's in question here.
This was the original claim:
Quoting Thomas Quine
Isaac is (in my view perfectly reasonably) disputing this claim.
To be clear, I'm not actually disputing the claim so much as trying to find out how the OP (and others) believe it to be the case. I haven't particularly (nor do I really intend to) forwarded my own opinion on the matter, though I'm not hiding it.
That said, you have hit the nail on the head when you say...
Quoting ChrisH
If the claim were merely that science can provide useful information to help us make judgements then I doubt even divine command theorists would disagree. The position is clearly that science can somehow actually distinguish a (single?) 'right' answer. It is that position I'm probing.
Apologies for inadvertently misrepresenting you.
No problem at all, it wasn't that clear, that's why I thought I ought to clarify. My preferred methods for getting at why people believe what they do can be quite confrontational and are often mistaken for an argument in it's own right. I don't avoid making positive claims, just that it's not what I'm doing here.
Did I address this? I lost track of the conversation. I'm not sure we have a point of contention here...
Were you suggesting that the virtues somehow emanate from some other principle?
Let's see if we can pick up the thread here.
My assertion was only that mask-wearing was more conducive to human flourishing than to assert personal liberty as a justification for not wearing a mask. I provided some articles quoting scientists and experts that supported that point. I thought my point was clear from the context, but let me correct any wrong impressions here.
Let me then go forward and make the case that this refusal to wear masks is one piece of a jigsaw puzzle that if assembled can show us a picture of what I think is the main cause of American decline: the over-glorification of individual liberty.
There is always a tension in society between the individual and the collective and the balance is difficult to achieve. Totalitarian societies seek to squash the individual in the name of social harmony, libertarian societies privilege the freedom of the individual. China is not a totalitarian society, it is a society in which the government seeks total control over political life but gives much more freedom over capitalist enterprise than the U.S. or Europe. You can start a business in one minute in China with a minimum of paperwork, you don't have to pay your employees for three months or longer, you can ignore regulations if there even are any, you can advance your interests through rampant corruption, and so on. It's the kind of enterprise freedom Republicans dream of.
Total state political control means that the government can implement the kind of lockdown that really stops an epidemic in its tracks. Cowboy capitalism starting virtually from scratch unleashed economic growth of 7-10% per year that the rest of the world could only dream of, and raised the standard of living of the average Chinese citizen like a rocket, lifting 800 million people out of poverty. So we should be careful about sneering at China, in many ways it is a human success story.
I don't think the Chinese are looking at America under Trump and saying, wow, I wish we had that kind of liberal democracy here, their system is really a shining city on a hill, how can I get a green card?
None of which is to say I am a fan of the Chinese system, because I think the lack of independent civil society organizations, suppression of freedom of speech and assembly we are seeing in Hong Kong, etc. will eventually catch up to them. You need freedom of speech, even if it is a challenge to the government, and the best example of this is how the government tried to suppress warnings about the coronavirus until it was impossible to hide. This led to an massive economic decline not only in China but globally and hurt China immensely.
On the other side of the coin, American Libertarians are fond of contrasting their freedoms with those in China, but are less alert to the damage an obsession with the rights of the individual is causing to their own society. Let me briefly just list a few:
An over-emphasis on liberty is used as justification for deregulation. Since most regulations are created to serve the common good, human flourishing is set back. Best example is deregulation of environmental standards.
An over-emphasis on personal liberty is used as a justification for union-breaking through "right-to-work" laws. The virtual destruction of much of the labor movement in the U.S. has exacerbated income inequality and is a huge contributor to job insecurity and economic stress.
An over-emphasis on personal choice is used as an argument against universal health care. I don't need to list the damage this causes to human flourishing, especially in the context of a pandemic. Just let me point out that as a Canadian I have never thought twice in my life about medical costs. My 88-year old mother has been battling cancer for three years, in and out of hospital, immuno-therapy, CAT scans once every six weeks, radiation therapy, hip surgery, various other medical treatments, a daily nurse visit to assist with showering, you name it. Cost: NOT ONE CENT.
What about the individualistic (and narcissistic) American heroes who are lionized for "disrupting" various industries so they can get super-rich? Look at Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber, who disrupted the taxi industry so successfully that he drove hundreds of thousands of desperate people to drive for him at below-poverty wages, and drove a wave of suicides of taxi drivers who were left holding worthless licenses they had paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for?
And what about Donald Trump, the Travis Kalanick of politics, who disrupted the political system and became a leader of all the mask-refusers and "no gummit gonna tell me what to do" militias in the country? It's not some freak accident that Trump is the darling of the Republicans, he is a perfect expression of narcissistic individualism, admired for his willingness to break any law to serve his personal interests and step on the face of anyone who stands in his way.
The flip side of the Libertarian ideology that anyone can succeed in America if you just put your back into it, is that if you do not succeed, it's your own damn fault. This is the ideology behind, for example, Ivanka Trump's campaign for the unemployed using the slogan, "Try Something New!" Maggie Thatcher's famous quote that "There is no such thing as society" is a belief that runs through Repubicanism. It says that there are no social problems, only individual problems. American refusal to deal adequately with social problems, from health care, to the pandemic, to the social safety net, to climate change, to mass incarceration, I could go on, are a product of this libertarianism, and have all contributed to American decline.
Therefore my claim is that libertarian ideology and all its manifestations represent a failed moral system, failed because it does not serve human flourishing, and the proof of that is American decline. And Donald Trump is exhibit A.
Now with respect to the long-term effects Isaac is concerned with, we will see what the future holds, but I can use probability theory and the great scientific tool called induction to conclude that unless this ideology is corrected, America will continue along its downward trajectory.
Quoting Thomas Quine
No, it was more than that.
You said:
Quoting Thomas Quine
Science cannot "tell us who is right".
I do have a broad conception of science in mind. I am thinking of everything we know as science. We know, for example, that raping your neighbours' daughter, killing their dog or breaking into their house and robbing them of all their valuables will not normally be likely to contribute to their temporal flourishing.
You might want to argue that it may be a pivotal aid to their eternal flourishing, or even lead to events which increase their overall temporal flourishing, but these would be indiscernible for our present moral deliberations. It's not some arcane science, but just commonsense, most everyone knows what's right and wrong if they care to give it some thought. Not, though, that this is to deny that there are some tricky subtle moral problems involving conflict of interest. There's nothing certain in human life.
Quoting Isaac
Of course I agree that humans, mostly due to the abiding infrastructures of societies, cannot but indulge in activities which are risky to themselves and others. Most of us simply need to drive cars, for example; but we don't need to refrain from wearing masks, if the predominant medical opinion is that that is what we ought to do.
Not emanate, but more consist in, or relate to, the basic principle of care or concern.
But there are limits, and we all know them. We draw the line where we recognize that certain types of speech are harmful to human flourishing. Think hate speech, threats, slander, false alarm, etc.
Similarly we should recognize limits on defense of individual liberty, for instance where they threaten the health and safety of others. We don’t defend the right of the individual to run a red light, but we see hard libertarians arguing against health measures that science tells us will protect oneself, others, and human flourishing in general, such as mask-wearing, and even quarantine of COVID patients.
If our goal is human flourishing, we must defend individual liberty, but not past the point where it threatens human flourishing.
Compelling argument against placing too much value upon personal liberty/freedom/rigged individualism.
As @ChrisH has already said, you holding a view as to the damage the upholding of personal liberty has done during this pandemic has nothing to do with your claim that
"Quoting ChrisH
To uphold that claim we would need a falsifiable scientific theory about the correct relative values and a controlled trial to test that hypothesis.
It seems to me that, in common with the majority of moral realists, what you really mean is not science but 'common sense'. The trouble with 'common sense' is that whilst a very useful concept on a broad scale (we do not need a scientific test to tell whether rape is a bad thing) it starts to get co-opted into political or personal ideologies at a fine scale ("it's just 'common sense' that we should protect our borders", "it's just 'common sense' that we need schools to teach children how to read" etc.
Exemplified by
Quoting Janus
Where 'giving it some thought' means thinking about it until they come up with the same answer you have.
This is why, to make it's case, realism always has to turn to extreme examples...
Quoting Janus
No, I wouldn't want to make that case and nor would anyone nowadays, but that's not because an objective morality exists for all moral dilemmas, it's because an objective morality exists for this particular moral dilemma. We have in-built tendencies toward empathy/sympathy, cooperation, and care for those weaker than us. If any of those are transgressed we feel a sense that something wrong needs to be righted, we fell compelled to act to correct this mistake because our beliefs about the world are such that interacting with it in this way has the result we expect.
But there's absolutely no reason at all (and in fact very compelling psychological evidence to the contrary) to believe that these in-built tendencies solely inform all decision making about moral dilemmas. As I've said before, one thing 'science' can tell us is that moral dilemmas involve parts of the brain responsible for valuation, disgust, group identity, dopamine cycles, habituation, and rule-following. All of these areas are highly adaptable and modified by the society and method of your upbringing. It is telling that for people so heavily invested in what 'science' can tell us about mask-wearing, you all blithely ignored what science actually can tell us about moral decision-making.
What sense of "objective" are you using here? I may be mistaken but I get the impression (not just from you) that overwhelming intersubjective agreement is regarded by many as convincing evidence of 'objective morality".
The use of 'objective' is complicated and gets into long arguments about realism, but roughly...
By 'objective' I just mean something outside of any individual's mind which can act as a truth-maker for propositions about it. That we all need to inter-subjectively agree that thing exists outside of our minds is secondary - everything that exists in the human linguistic world does so because we agree it does to a sufficient extent that we can use it to cooperatively get stuff done, so it is trivial to concern oneself with the categorisation of what 'really' exists unless one is involved in something like neuroscience, or perhaps cognitive psychology where such a distinction might be useful to one's investigations.
What's important, I think, is that there are things which we agree are outside of individual's minds, and there are things which we agree are within (or properties of) people's minds, even though all such agreement is fuzzy and it slightly underdetermines. The source, or reason, for such agreement need not always be a concern.
So, in morality-talk, 'objective' would be a fact about something which that group of language users agree is outside of individual's minds, and in this case, the structure and function of our brains is a property of objects outside of individual's minds.
Everyone agreeing on some moral imperative, by this definition, would still not make it objective because those same people would still all agree that the only place that imperative could possibly be was within the minds of each individual, and if it arrives, or varies with culture, then it cannot be an innate property of those minds as objects (brains).
Basically, agreement is not sufficient for objectivity. Imagine if, for a time, all trains were green. The fact that, at that time, all trains happen to be green wouldn't make 'greeness' an innate property of trains. For that to be the case we'd need some necessary connection to some property already defininitive of trains. Having wheels, for example, is not just something all current trains just happen to be similar on right now, it's integral to the definition of the object (remembering that definitions are always fuzzy, so integral here is not universally the case - think Wittgenstein's example of Moses - 'greeness' is not one of the props, wheels is).
So with opinions or beliefs, it just happening to be the case that everyone in some group has the same, or similar, one is insufficient to assume having such an opinion is a property of the object (in this case, the brain). Them having such beliefs from birth, universally across cultures and a plausible mechanism by which they're propogated, is sufficient to assume objectivity.
This looks a little circular. How do we determine what is an "innate property" of minds other than by observing overwhelming intersubjective agreement?
We check to see if it's present from birth, we see if it changes in response to cultural changes, we see if we can find a plausible neurological mechanism whereby it would be necessitated. Not an exact science, of course, but better than nothing, I think.
How do you define human flourishing? Sorry if I’ve missed it, the topic is long. In the materialistic sense it could be said that Americans, for example, are flourishing, so things are good the way they are.
To the question, "Does mask-wearing during a pandemic serve human flourishing?", science can indeed tell us the answer. I provided evidence from scientific experts to support this claim, and saw no evidence to the contrary.
To the question, "Does defending individual liberty through mask refusal serve human flourishing?" likewise. One need only compare the current states of success fighting the pandemic between states whose leadership fought mask-wearing on the grounds of individual liberty - i.e. the U.S. and Brazil - and states whose leadership and citizens largely adopted it.
Popper's approach can be very useful in such matters. Popper recognized that the absolute truth of a scientific claim was almost always impossible to prove. His great insight was that falsifiability should be the grounds for evaluating whether a claim was scientific or not.
My claim that "Mask-wearing during a pandemic serves human flourishing" is falsifiable, and is therefore a scientific claim. There is lots of evidence supporting this claim from experts (otherwise I would not have made the claim), and I have yet to see valid evidence to contradict it.
This is in fact my argument; that all moral claims can be held to the standards of science, judged to be falsifiable or not, and if they are genuine scientific statements, they can be tested against reliable evidence.
The implication of Popper's argument is that since one cannot prove absolute truth, one must make decisions on the basis of probability. This is why Bayesian probability theory has come to play a central role in modern science. And as a Pragmatist I love it, because it is eminently pragmatic.
If one had to conduct a controlled trial to resolve every fleeting moral question, such as "does mask-wearing during a pandemic spread by respiratory emission serve human flourishing?", such questions would be irresolvable. However, if we take the Bayesian approach, and gather the best available evidence, we can make a valid scientific claim - this is how science does its work every day.
Practical science usually starts from intuition, but only as a starting point for work that needs to be done. A scientist has an intuition, formulates a hypothesis, and sets about to uncover evidence and test the hypothesis against the evidence. But I think we should reject approaches to resolving moral questions that stop on intuition alone.
Any scientific claim, by Popper's definition any claim which is falsifiable, can be tested against the evidence, and found to be true, which by the definition of Pragmatism means can reliably achieve its objective, or false, meaning it fails to do so.
My argument is that moral claims are claims about the best way to achieve human flourishing, and can be put to the same standards as any scientific claim: do they achieve their objective or not?
I said in an earlier post that the simplest definition of "to flourish" I could find in online dictionaries is "to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way."
It is hard to argue that what America is currently experiencing can in any way be described as "flourishing". Growth has taken a historic step backwards and as to health...
Certainly Amazon is flourishing, but even if we take standard measures of business success, such as GDP or average corporate profits, the U.S. has taken a massive hit, like all countries but on many measures by far the worst of any developed country. This is in part because of a pervasive fetishization of individual liberty which makes containing the pandemic that much harder.
Steven Pinker makes a pretty convincing argument in Enlightenment Now. In any case, your definition is still foggy and how wise is it to aim for an unclear target?
Flourishing could mean that basic needs are met, including healthcare and education, and be measured by indicators like sustainability, relative level of happiness, having a sense of meaning, etc., none of which depend on economic growth.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Strange that you equate GDP growth with flourishing. Climate change, the mass extinction of species, and other environmental degradations aren't usually considered conducive to human flourishing. Your own dictionary definition of flourishing includes, "..., especially as the result of a particularly favorable environment." Also, there are currently cultures that don't fetich individual liberty as we do, such as China and India, that are currently experiencing GDP growth that's lifting millions out of extreme poverty. But like other developed economies the growth will eventually decline. The point being that there's no apparent reason to conclude that the rugged individualism of the West has anything to do with economic decline.
Pinker argues that Enlightenment values lead to flourishing. I imagine that you would agree with that. This centers on values, however, and how can anyone be the judge of cultural values, much less force our own onto others?
Praxis, you are quite right to question the value of GDP, lots of work has been done on this to prove that economic growth can sometimes produce results that are harmful to human flourishing. I mention GDP as just one indicator among many, and I would defend that by pointing out that an annualized decline in GDP of over 30% is an indicator of immense human suffering in the U.S., millions out of work, millions losing health insurance, millions in danger of eviction, I am staggered when I read about it.
I like the word "flourishing" because it does suggest the human need for a healthy environment.
The economic downturn as a result of the pandemic has smashed the global economy, but I would point out that in Germany, where I lived for eight years, "...the unemployment rate has increased from 5% to 5.8% from March to April. In the U.S., it surged from 4.4% to 14.7%." (https://bit.ly/3k1WOC3)
Let me share with you a little story about German cradle-to-grave health care. A co-worker of mine there went through a difficult divorce with two young children, was under tremendous stress, got pneumonia and was laid out for six weeks, all of course on full sick pay covered by the health care system. As she recovered, her doctor decided she needed some stress relief, so sent her on a three-week holiday at a German seaside resort, with her children, all meals and daycare provided, fitness classes, pool, hobby classes, walks on the beach, all paid for in full by the health care system. She told me she had not taken a sick day since. Can you imagine that in the U.S.?
I am a big fan of Stephen Pinker, actually I went to McGill at the same time he did, though we never met. You say:
Quoting praxis
You provide the answer yourself. Just like Stephen Pinker, one can be the judge of cultural values based on how well they serve human flourishing. I would argue that the American value of so-called "rugged individualism", a value that leads some to think it is virtuous for the poor to struggle and their own damn fault if they fail, is one of the values that has led to opposition to universal health care.
I remember the libertarian Rand Paul being asked by Wolf Blitzer what should happen to someone who can't afford medical insurance, should we just let them die? Rand's supporters in the audience shouted out "Yeah!" https://lat.ms/34WapDX
Will anyone argue that values like that serve human flourishing?
No, Eugenics assumes we know which human qualities best serve human flourishing, and it turns out, who could have guessed, the people who want to make these sorts of decisions tend to conclude their own qualities, even their own race, are the best. But for sure there is a lot of promise in gene therapies.
There's a lot of disagreement about population control, I tend to think we need to leave these decisions to the individual, and as it turns out countries with an adequate social safety net, so people don't have to rely on the support of children in their old age, show a falling birth rate.
I think you’re conflating evolutionary biology with ethical philosophy. Your ‘flourishing’ is only ‘surviving with style’, to paraphrase Buzz Lightyear. The human situation is also a predicament, in that humans alone can fully realise the fact of their own mortality and the transient nature of all existence. A philosophy that doesn’t at least try and reckon with this, is not truly a humane philosophy.
Indeed, two, one of whom died about 6 weeks ago. And, no, dogs cannot speak or reason or weigh up courses of action, except in the most rudimentary way. They can fret about being neglected or hungry or in pain, but they can’t fret about whether they really are ‘a good boy’ or what that actually means.
You are right, I am trying to marry ethical theory to biology. My critique of traditional ethical theory is that it has little or no objective grounding. For the most part it is "I think we should do things THIS way," accompanied by some made-up story like God wants us to do it this way. Or more commonly people will say there is no objective foundation to morality, we need to make it up as we go along.
Well yes, we create rules and norms, but we do so on a solid biological footing. I think pragmatically human beings are active agents and create rules and norms in the service of objectives. The objective of moral rules and norms are, it seems to me, to create conditions that are conducive to the instinctual biological imperative to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, in short to flourish.
I'm not trying to propose a set of new norms, as I stated in the original post. I am talking meta-ethics. I am proposing that the universal root of all moral systems adopted by any community larger than the fingers on one hand is an attempt, not always a successful attempt, but an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?"
Now let me call down the wrath of the trolls upon me and say that it seems to me, as an empirical observation and not as an ideal, that the purpose of life, all life top to bottom, is to flourish.
Sorry about your dog!
I have said, and this as far as I know has not been remarked upon by anyone else, that the main difference between humans and animals is that humans store their memories outside of their bodies.
Animals run mainly on instinct. Of course they have memories of a greater or lesser capacity depending on the species. But mainly they rely on instinct. Therefore all their memories and all their learning is inside their bodies.
We know about short-term memory, long-term memory, but I see instinct as reeeaaallly long-term memory, species memory, memory of countless previous generations. Instinct is the species-learning of the organism.
What does instinct do for an animal? Provide a ready-made set of heuristics for how to solve the problem, "How best can I flourish?"
Instinct is a set of Swiss Army knife modules designed by evolution to equip the animal with the tools it will need to flourish in life, based on the experience of countless generations before it.
The instincts tell the animal what is the right way to behave if it wants to flourish, and what is the wrong way. Therefore I argue that every species has its own innate morality. The lion knows instinctively what is right for the lion, the wolf, average lifespan a mere four years, knows instinctively what is right for the wolf and for the wolf pack, and what is wrong for it.
The dog, after millennia of breeding, knows instinctively to please its human master, because to do so is vital to its flourishing. Therefore the dog knows very well what an "attaboy" from its master means, and it quickly picks up how to behave in the "pack" in which it lives.
https://youtu.be/uuumHb8yUvk
Human beings of course store memories not even in our brains, but on the Internet, in photos and videos and books, in text and image, and therefore human beings can do much more on the basis of the experience of all of humanity than they could hold in their own limited capacity brains. Language itself is human knowledge and memory that is stored outside the brain and can be accessed by any speaker of that language.
We therefore have a much greater capacity and resources to draw upon when trying to answer the question, "What best serves our own flourishing and the flourishing of our species?"
But the grounding is the same.
But, in so doing, you're actually relegating what has always been understood under the heading 'philosophy'. Yours is a great, if unwitting, example of 'biological reductionism', which is precisely the attempt to explain everything about the human condition in biological or evolutionary terms.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a ID proponent. I know that Biblical myth is exactly, that - myth. But under the umbrella of Christian doctrine was included almost everything of worth from pre-modern culture, including a great many ideas that are fundamental to any kind of real culture and philosophy (like, dealing with loss and death and not flourishing). In the emergence of modernity, much of that was rejected in the emergence of so-called Enlightenment values. But implicity, all that remains is a form of utilitarianism or pragmatism - whatever works, the greatest good for the greatest number, and so on.
I have been perusing a very interesting recent book on ethical philosophy, The Quest for a Moral Compass by Kenan Malik, which 'explores the history of moral thought as it has developed over three millennia, from Homer’s Greece to Mao’s China, from ancient India to modern America. It tells the stories of the great philosophers, and breathes life into their ideas, while also challenging many of our most cherished moral beliefs.' I haven't read it yet, but from the reviews I've read, it makes a point of considering the role of the transcendent in belief systems - for instance I note there's a chapter on Nirv??a. Is that a 'made up story' also? I notice the ease with which most people on this board will simply relegate most of the religious history of ethics to that category, but I wonder how much about they actually know about it.
You mention Steve Pinker. I actually rather like Steve Pinker, his book The Blank Slate was the last meaningful Christmas gift I ever received from my dear departed mother. And I generally agree with that book. I like that Pinker presents the case for Enlightenment ideals and scientific progress. But I question that Pinker is philosphically literate. In her critique of one of Pinker's scientistic manifestos, Gloria Origgi notes that
_____
Quoting Thomas Quine
Thank you.
Quoting Thomas Quine
That's where we differ. Furthermore, I see this as one of the malign influences of evolutionary biology on modern culture - this flattening of the distinction between humans and animals. Humans are blessed, and cursed, with reason, language, technology, the ability to shape the planet, or even destroy it. In evolutionary history, h. sapiens crossed a threshhold when these abilities burst forth, and became something more than, and other than, just another species. That is something which various 'myths of the fall' re-tell in mythical form, and by disregarding them in favour of a purely external account, the underlying tension or predicament of 'the human condition' is also forgotten, or more likely just suppressed, to emerge again in various malignant forms (like many other eruptions from suppressed unconscious traumas).
So I'm sorry, I find your presentation thus far amounts to a kind of paean to material well being. And hey, material well-being sure beats poverty, no contest there. But isn't it simply the ideal of progress? Whilst I think there are much larger and more desperate issues at stake - like how the new generations emerging at the peak of the greatest population explosion in the world's history, are going to be able to deal with climate change and resource exhaustion, without falling into global conflict, for instance.
What you describe here might well be "eugenics gone wrong". But since you rely on science for flourishing and consequently morality, you must rely on some form of "flourishing eugenics", giving the best chances to the individual for individual flourishing, eg. being born the smartest, healthiest that can be, as one cannot imagine anyone dumb and weak to accomplish anything at all in life.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Reading this, the movie "Idiocracy" comes to mind.
In all, I think that your concept of "flourishing" bears a resemblance to Nietzsche's "life affirmation", although I doubt that N. thought of it as being equivalent to anything moral.
But beyond this, such morality seems like subjective validation of humanity existing. We want to exist and do well, and we like that. But "good" or "moral" seem to imply something more than an assertion of a desire, but should try to explain why we should act in that way despite our personal desires.
Morality in essence is asking, "What makes one action or existence special over another action or existence?" I think that question goes beyond humanity. If humanity vanished, the universe would still exist. Would we say that morality disappears with them? It would be irrelevant at that point if a plague then wiped out all other living plants and animals on Earth? I think our intuition would say that such an event would be tragic and wrong.
After the plants and animals were gone, what if next the Earth would disappear? Then the galaxy? Then the universe itself? What if an event would happen that would cause all of existence to vanish? Would we find that a tragedy as well? We as humans sometimes forget that we are an organization of atoms combined into a particular expression within the totality of existence. "To flourish", means "we should exist". But I don't think stating, "We should exist, and do everything in our power to continue to exist", really answers the question of why humans should exist as an expression in the sea of existence.
I'm a fan of a foundational approach. I believe our morality, or what we should do, is based off of the blocks that make us. Back when the big bang occurred, existence was expressed in many ways. If we are to assume there is no higher guiding force in the universe, then there was no reason matter should, or should not have formed. We can theorize that some matter formed that faded out over time. After all, the inception of the universe should be a completely lawless event. Matter and antimatter clashed, and about an estimated 1% was not annihilated in this crash. That matter and energy which continued to exist billions of years later has not expressed itself as us, and everything around us.
The existence within us is the stuff that won't quit being. And slowly over the eons it has formed itself into a unique expression called "Earth", where it has then over time formed itself into greater and greater complexities of interactions called, "Life". This expression of existence is not merely a reaction that burns out, but reactions that actively act to sustain themselves, and have gained sentience over what they are.
This is the existence expression of Earth. I think morality is the continuation of existence, for the alternative, is the void. Further, existence on Earth seems to want to express itself in more complex reactions. Yet it does not express itself in just ONE life, but many lives and the complications of ecosystems. Finally we have one portion of existence that has gained self sentience, humanity. Humanity believes it should continue to exist, because the matter building us continues to express its existence instead of going quietly into the night. But this is also the other plants, animals, and non-life around us too. I think morality is how we as humanity, continue to express our existence in a way with other existences, that elevates the complexity and results to something greater than just ourselves.
Just like the pattern of existence has done, so we should continue to do.
I think you are right to see a pattern, to see human morality as just one expression of a deeper logic at work in the universe. This is a departure from our current topic, and I might start a new thread at some point.
I'm still trying to figure out how the second law of thermodynamics sustains the motion of the universe, and how the laws of physics create an algorithm that requires all things to either persist or perish. But I think this is the motor driving the imperative for all living things to flourish, which I see as the motivation of all morality.
Well, most scientist agree that life exists somewhere else in the universe, because given an apparently unlimited number of planets, the conditions that brought forth life here might well have brought life elsewhere.
Again, given the vast number of possibilities provided by an infinite universe, it is not unreasonable to speculate that a species of intelligent social creatures may have arisen on some distant planet.Such a species might be similar to our own, or it might be very different, but let's imagine a species that is intelligent and social.
Now if this species were both intelligent and social, it's not unreasonable to think that they might have worked out a matrix of social rules to enable them to get along together and to flourish. I can't imagine creatures with a level of sociability and intelligence comparable to ours without such rules to smooth social discourse. Let's call this set of social rules and norms "a moral system".
Well if there are moral systems out there in species unlike our own, this means that morality is species-specific, this means that morality has a natural grounding, this means that humanity did not invent morality out of the air, and this means morality arises out of the logic of the universe.
In which case Philosophim has a point.
Thank you for your time Quine, I did not mean to detract from the current conversation.
If someone intentionally released this coronavirus into the population, yes, that would be immoral.
If someone launches a suicide attack on innocent civilians, or someone is a serial child molester, or steals from charity, etc., these sorts of things harm humanity and are immoral.
If someone's actions are completely neutral, if they are not harming anyone else without just cause, then obviously they are not doing anything immoral. It is I think just to do a certain amount of harm to those who are committing immoral acts, there is self-defense, there is jail, there is such a thing as a just war in the service of human flourishing, but if someone does not want to contribute to human flourishing, or to their own flourishing, then they can be left to their own devices. If they intend to do harm to themselves I think we are justified in trying to intervene.
So, substance has a poetry but poetry has no substance? What is or has substance for you?
The the "messily evolving work-in-progress called morality" could be seen to be a linguistically mediated evolution or elaboration of that basic pre-linguistic social logic.
Tim, if I understand you correctly you believe that the evolving work-in-progress called morality is somehow not a product of the logic of the universe.
Of course morality evolves, as far as I can tell pretty much everything evolves, evolution is part of the logic of the universe, visibly at work wherever we care to look.
So can you explain why you think the evolution of morality is following a different logic?
I wasn't suggesting the universe is social, but parts of it, i.e. social organisms, are. So, the logic of sociality would be inherent in those.
The universe proceeds along a recognizable trajectory, the laws of physics are called "laws", not because they are written in some universal statute book but because they appear to be obeyed pretty reliably throughout the universe, stars are formed, planets are formed around them, some planets form an atmosphere, some are stable enough to maintain water, some undoubtedly contain the essential ingredients of life. Cosmologists say that galaxies evolve, solar systems evolve, and planets evolve.
One of the physical laws appears to be that those things that have whatever it takes to survive tend to persist, and those that do not tend to go extinct. Persist or perish.
Life arose from things that had the necessary qualities to be able to persist in the face of a madly swirling and ever-changing environment. Once life got a foothold, those qualities that allowed lifeforms to better adapt to their environments tended to persist through generations, in other words, those qualities that enabled the lifeforms to flourish tended to persist. Darwin was able to identify this logic. It's called evolution, and it is an expression of the logic of entities governed by physical laws interacting with each other over time.
It's called a logic because it proceeds in a systematic, logical fashion, following observable and reliable laws - he universe does not jump about in an absurd or illogical fashion. This logic is what allows most scientist to infer that if life evolved on earth, it probably evolved on other similar planets as well.
Now why I would argue that the evolution of morality is an expression of the logic of the universe is that moral precepts arise like any other entity or lifeform, and if they are adaptive and serve their purpose they tend to survive, and if they are maladaptive or harmful to human flourishing, such as human sacrifice to the Gods, they tend to die out.
We should not view moral information as very different from genetic information. A universal moral code is not fundamentally different from DNA. Both are forms of information that will survive across generations if they help the organism to flourish, and will be discarded if they don't. This was Dawkins' insight when he came up with the concept of the "meme".
I myself consider a concept of morality close to this to be correct, as I think morality is essentially an urge and a phenomenon that helps to sustain life, while today’s concept of morality is essentially just the norms necessary for the oiled functioning of human society, nothing more.
After all, the war hero who killed many members of the enemy army, so he killed masses of people, is also considered moral…
Morality cannot be the subject of human bargaining, but a factor independent of human will, because its main purpose and meaning is to sustain life.
Hi András - this is an original approach of mine inspired by Aristotle and Darwin. It has no resemblance to utilitarianism apart from being consequentialist.
The theory that happiness is the proper aim of morality has been rightly criticized by an army of philosophers since Bentham and Mill.
Mill and Bentham wrote in a time where there was little hard science on happiness, on the motivations of human beings, and on the motivations of other sentient beings. We know today that happiness is only ever fleeting, and is normally achieved in the pursuit of goals other than happiness. On the achievement of these goals, happiness tends to dissipate, until new goals are set. Individuals therefore tend to have a happiness average set point, influenced by genetics far more than Mill understood, and although the happiness of an individual may go up and down, it tends to return to about the same average level over time. This makes general happiness difficult to measure accurately or usefully. Happiness thus appears to be far less tractable through social policy that Mill understood at the time. Sam Harris's "well-being" is just a modern variation on the theme. And in any case, as the Buddhists remind us, life is suffering, man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upwards, and the mortality rate is running at a steady 100%.
I think Aristotle's eudaimonia, or flourishing, is much more promising as a starting point for a couple of reasons. Firstly it is the product of active human agency. Feelings of happiness or well-being often arise from circumstances completely out of one's own control; to flourish generally requires active goal-setting and determined effort on the part of both individuals and the communities of which they are members.
Secondly, in Aristotle's eudaimonia, the good life is objectively rather than subjectively determined. An immoral individual can live a life of happiness and well-being having made a fortune in drug-smuggling and sex-trafficking, but in Aristotle's approach this could not be considered a good life.
Aristotle does make the point that the whole purpose of politics is eudaimonia, but I don't buy into Aristotle completely because he was of course unfamiliar with Darwinism. I think to have a working concept of the Good, and an objective measure of what it means to flourish, one has to move up a level from the individual to the species, to humanity as a whole. If this is understood, the individual cannot be said to serve morality, to serve human flourishing, no matter what their personal subjective feelings of happiness or well-being might be, if their activities, like those of the rich drug-smuggler, cannot be said to serve that goal.
Aristotle's eudaimonia also specifically excludes other species and is concerned only with human flourishing. My approach says that all species seek to flourish, each in their own way.
By the way I am writing this up in a paper I hope to get published, and if anyone want to read it and provide honest feedback let me know.
The Nazi's believed that genocide, military expansionism, racial purification, and totalitarianism were moral because they believed these were in the best interests of human flourishing. Were they right about this? How did that work out for Germany, Japan, and Italy, and for the world? I think the verdict is in...
The moral arc bends towards justice for the simple reason that justice serves human flourishing and injustice does not.
It is, of course, utilitarian in a general sense - not quite in the way Bentham and other classical utilitarians framed it, but then few modern proponents of utilitarianism would own its classical formulation. Framing utilitarianism as an imperative to promote human flourishing is actually quite common.
But yes, I neglected to mention the naturalistic fallacy used as a justification (good = adaptive = flourishing), which again is quite common. (Just as a note, Social Darwinism followed the same justificatory logic. I don't mean this as a smear by association, but I think the only reason you don't follow the same track is that you are unwilling to pursue the less appealing implications of your theory to their logical conclusions, which betrays extraneous moral considerations at play.)
“…[H]ow “good” is to be defined, is the most fundamental question in all Ethics. …[T]he gravest errors have been largely due to beliefs in a false answer. And, in any case, it is impossible that, till the answer to this question be known, what is the evidence for any ethical judgement whatever.”
Like many philosophers, Moore gives up trying to define the Good. This is my main criticism of contemporary ethical theory: how can you make any ethical judgement whatever, if you cannot define the Good? We can describe lots of things with the adjective "good", as in "happiness is good", but Aristotle asks, what is the higher Good that is served by all lesser goods?
Moore attacks classical utilitarianism directly. To say that a natural phenomenon such as happiness can be described using the adjective “good”, does not mean that the noun Good equals the noun happiness, in the same way that to say a banana is yellow does not mean that the colour Yellow is a banana. One cannot argue that because happiness is good, it constitutes THE Good; that would be to commit the Naturalistic Fallacy.
This is precisely what classic utilitarianism does. It takes a natural phenomenon like happiness, finds it good, then moves without justification to claim it as the supreme Good.
Many philosophers follow Moore's logic to an extreme, and insist on a distinction between facts and values, and between science, which is descriptive, and ethics, which is normative. Some think science cannot possibly have anything to say about morality. I disagree - I think all norms and all morals are grounded in the natural world. They are an attempt to come up with rules of human interaction that will best allow us all to fulfill our natural, instinctual desire to flourish as individuals and as a community.
My argument in this thread can be summarized as follows:
1. All living species, including Homo Sapiens, seek to flourish. (I did not say all individuals, I said all living species.) The verb "to flourish" is defined in the Oxford Dictionary online as "To grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way." For any and all living species, to flourish constitutes the Good.
2. All moral precepts and moral systems are an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" In this life or in a mythical afterlife. All are attempts; not all are successful.
3. If we wish to flourish, as individuals or collectively, or as a species, science can offer useful advice. If it IS the case that we seek to flourish, we OUGHT to consult the evidence available from science as to how best to achieve this.
One can undermine this argument by raising valid objections to either 1, 2, or 3. It would be very helpful to me if someone could do so.
I've been looking around to find anyone making the same arguments I am making here. If you can direct me to a source you are familiar with I'd be grateful.
People consider something to be moral if they believe that in the final analysis it serves human flourishing. Their beliefs are not always justified.
People consider something to be immoral if they believe in the final analysis it hinders or sets back human flourishing. Again, what people believe is not always justified.
There will always be disagreements between people about what serves human flourishing and what does not. Science and evidence can help us tell who is right and who is wrong.
We've been through all this, so it's obviously not 'helpful' at all.
1. Is false. Living species do not all seek to flourish, they seek to propagate genetic material. If you want to use this pseudo-Darwinian approach to moral objectives then the only common objective is to have as many offspring as possible which are fit enough to themselves have as many offspring as possible. Some niches will result in a complex, co-operative or even altruistic solution to this problem, other will not. As for this flourishing constituting 'the good', I've not read a single reference to it in any ethical text, nor any common conversation. He's a really good man doesn't mean he had as many children as possible, nor that he caused the survival of as many children as possible.
2. Is also false. Divine Command Theorists do not determine their principles of the basis of human flourishing either here or in a mythical afterlife. They believe that God's commands
should be obeyed because they are God's commands -regardless of their consequence on humanity in any way shape or form. Studies in the neuroscience of moral decision-making show conclusively that we do not always (or even commonly) consult any moral system dealing with consequences before acting morally. Babies can act morally - are you suggesting they calculate the effect of their actions on human flourishing?
3. Is only true if you undermine your definition at (2), you can't have both. If you're going to include people's beliefs in a mythical afterlife as demonstrating that all moral theories are about human flourishing, then it cannot also be the case that science can tell us how to achieve it. For those that believe in an afterlife, science has no information to provide on the matter. Notwithstanding that, science actually has very little to tell us about human flourishing that could really help in any real-world moral decision. In almost all cases of complex systems there are disagreements among scientists as to the long term consequences and the vast majority of human systems (economics, social dynamics, ecosystem interactions...) are sufficiently complex to be chaotic in the long term and so beyond accurate predictability. Science might be able to tell us what is flat out wrong, but it certainly cannot tell us what is right.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Geoffrey Scarre's writes in "Utilitarianism" (Routledge, 1996) that "most forms of utilitarianism are welfarist, concerned that lives should flourish or prosper according to some specified criterion of well-being" (noting along the way that not all utilitarians are hedonists).
Or coming at the question from the other side, Gilbert Harman asks in "Human Flourishing, Ethics, and Liberty" (1983):
Harman critically assesses various approaches to ethics that fit this criterion, utilitarianism being one of them:
It seems from the latest post though, that @Thomas Quine is equating 'flourishing' with nothing more than long-term population numbers.
Quoting Thomas Quine
So that would put him more in the camp of Michael Ruse (generously), or Herbert Spencer (less generously), I think.
I think you are mistaking me for Isaac...
Super busy today but will reply as soon as I can...
The strategy every living species uses to propagate genetic material is to flourish.
Every species has a different approach. Some fish and primitive forms of sea life gather in large numbers and on a biological signal of some sort they squirt billions of eggs and sperm into the water and boom, that's the end of their parenting.
The semi-living creature, the novel coronavirus, displays the kind of strategy you are attributing to the whole of life. It has one simple program, reproduce, reproduce, reproduce. But higher forms of life don't work that way.
Most species do not just drop their offspring randomly, but engage in greater or lesser amounts of parenting. Why? To help their offspring to flourish, and in so doing to help the species to flourish.
Why is it that in human society we regard parental care as a moral obligation? Because without it the children and by extension the whole of society would struggle to flourish.
Why is it that the wealthier the parents, the fewer children they tend to have? If the biological imperative is simply to propagate more genetic material, why don't they just have more and more children, surely they have the resources? Why are they fighting against what you have described as their biological imperative, to reproduce, reproduce, reproduce? If they have children at all, why do they make an effort to give them the best care and nutrition, lavish them with gifts, make sure they get the best education, pull strings to give their children a head start, etc. Can it be perhaps they wish to use their resources to ensure that they and their children flourish? Can it be perhaps that evolution has shaped them to behave in the most effective way to ensure that their genetic material will propagate, i.e. by seeking to flourish?
Millions of young women seek abortions because they recognize that they are not in a position to give birth and live a life in which both they and the child will flourish. Perhaps they are poor, maybe they don't have a reliable father for the child, maybe they are incapable of caring even for themselves at that point in life. If propagation of genetic material were the biological imperative rather than flourishing, how could there even be such a thing as an unwanted pregnancy?
Many historians of the Rwandan genocide have pointed to over-population on scarce farmland as a contributing factor. How did propagation of genetic material in Rwanda without consideration for the flourishing of Rwandan society help the species?
I could go on, there are endless examples from the natural world where evolution privileges the flourishing of the species over the mindless propagation of genetic material.
Can someone provide an example of a living species that does not seek to flourish?
OK, this is very useful, thank you for the references, dammit, now I have to go back and check what they say.
Lots of philosophers talk about flourishing, but I've only ever seen it refer to the individual, I'm unaware of anyone bringing the species and evolutionary theory into the equation. But I will check out these sources.
So how would we know the success of any given strategy other than by measuring the extent to which it has successfully lead to propagation of genetic material?
Quoting Thomas Quine
Who said anything about mindless? If you could even be bothered to actually read what I write before spouting off your barely related script you would have seen that the very sentence you quoted is followed by...
Quoting Isaac
Tell me how you interpret "Some niches will result in a complex, co-operative or even altruistic solution to this problem" as mindless propagation.
Why do you need to cover all species? You invite a lot of complications. Why not sentient species or something similar? After all, you are discussing an ethical system and trying to lift animal behavior from instinctual or biological to ethical is a heavy task. Likewise, your notion of flourishing seems to imply a level of quality. not mere quantity as Isaac is asserting. Limiting your scope to humanity is more in keeping with that qualitative assertion.
Two parts here, religion and neuroscience.
Religion: If you are asserting human flourishing as your standard, you have all you need to remove religion from consideration. In a view sensitive to the well-being of humans on a large scale, religion is amoral at best, but probably fully immoral. Your desire to use science as a tool in determining morality would also lead to an exclusion of religious beliefs as moral systems that increase human flourishing.
Neuroscience: I think the best answer to this criticism lies in the distinction that you are making with regard to scale. Isaac's example cites a lack of moral consideration in the acts of individuals, but you have specifically stated that you are describing a species-level moral system. Even if people do not consult moral systems in their personal behaviors, they will typically espouse them to other people, and the power of these systems is in their normative character, not in their effect on individual decisions.
I think the adjustments suggested above deal with the concerns raised here. Religion is out, and even if science is able to tell us that some things are false, that makes it a useful tool without needing to provide absolute truth.
A bit too much formal optimism regarding humans here. "Values," and that's what they should be called, usually arise unconsciously through culture.
Quoting Thomas Quine
Too much credit to humans, we do not think in terms of flourishing or species consciousness, don't get me wrong, we should!, but we don't. Many of our values are based on superstitions, traditions, psychological defenses. However, human flourishing is an excellent concept from which to begin, though it doesn't take us in the direction some might think. Here idealism is not king, instead the authority of its world is lost, being inescapably superseded by the importance of concretion.
It seems to me that people generally do think in terms of flourishing when they think morally. That is not to say that they apply the criterion of flourishing broadly enough, though.
When you think morally you deliberate as to whether your actions will help or harm others that you understand your actions will affect. The problem is that we seem to have an inbuilt limited capacity to genuinely care about more than a certain number of people.
Is it asking to much to expect people to care about the whole of humanity, much less the whole of future humanity? Are most (if not all) people able to do any more than pay lip service to such concerns?
Such a lot to cover in these recent posts but let me start with this.
Aristotle defines the ultimate Good and goal of life, Eudaimonia, as “living well and faring well”. I like Aristotle not least because as a student of biology and zoology he understood that species seek to live well and fare well. I prefer to use the modern word “flourishing”, lots of meaning in that word, but keep it simple and take the dictionary definition, “to flourish” means “to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way.”
Now keep in mind that I have said all living species seek to flourish. But just because they seek does not mean they succeed, otherwise we would not need the word “extinction”.
Let me bring up the case of the domestic turkey, one of the most numerous species on earth. (I was reading that they are very popular in Afghanistan, where they are called “Elephant Birds”.) If we take “successful propagation of genetic material” as a measure of success, the domestic turkey (not talking about the wild turkey, a noble bird) is one of the most successful species, and as long as we have Thanksgiving and Christmas its reproductive success is guaranteed.
Now the domestic turkey is an animal I am familiar with, having run an organic farm in the past. I can assure you the domestic turkey is one of the sorriest animals on the planet. It has been overbred for heavy breast meat to the point where it can barely walk. As a result it suffers from chronic joint failure and if you try to keep them free range as I did they will eventually become crippled. Their breast meat is so heavy that the male can no longer mount the female to mate, so all turkey offspring are the result of artificial insemination performed by the turkey farmer.
The list of diseases turkeys suffer from is longer than your arm, therefore in commercial farms they must be kept pumped full of antibiotics and other medications.
Turkeys are so stupid that a big problem in large farms is that a sudden noise or flash of light will cause a stampede in which 10% of the flock might be crushed to death. My turkeys were so incompetent that during a rainstorm, when all the other animals including the chickens would head for shelter, the turkeys would just sit out in the rain all day. Similarly they would sit in the hot sun panting while all the other animals found shade. I eventually took to picking the poor animals up and carrying them to their pens at night, I am sure they could never find their way back the way chickens do. One was crushed when stepped on by a horse. I gave up on turkeys.
Now if not for the constant care of farmers, if the species of domestic turkey were suddenly turned into the wild, the species would be extinct within a year or two.
So the domestic turkey is an example of a species that propagates its genetic material very successfully. But can anyone say this species is growing and developing in a healthy and vigorous way?
Emphatically, of course not! But here the capacity of mentalization, which is a psychological capacity, hinges on the social structure into which one is born. Hence, if you want to make a better world, humans must first learn how to provide, more specifically, intelligently organize, better social conditions for their progeny.
Of course some people are able to at least genuinely care about their progeny. If everyone has progeny and everyone cares about them and everyone has a grasp of the actual situation we face, then there would be universal motivation to organize for a better future for those progeny, which if comprehensively thought out, would ensure a better future for the whole biome.
And that said, what about caring about the future of the earth itself and all the species that make up the biome per se (and not merely insofar as it it affects us)? Is such broad-based care possible, emotionally speaking, to people who are not motivated by ideas (that is, most people)? Or do even intellectually motivated carers genuinely care enough emotionally, if their comfort or lifestyles are threatened or if they are called upon to sacrifice much? Looking around, I see a lot of talk, but not much genuine sacrifice.
I agree. I do not believe that people without children have a right to set the rules of the future for society
Quoting Janus
I agree, man's entire life hinges on the earth.
Quoting Janus
Yes, because we have now largely figured out how people's personality structures are devolving into pathological behavior.
Quoting Janus
I so very much feel your complaint here, I have the exact same one. As a philosopher I stand against arm-chair intellectuals and philosophers, mere theorists. However, this doesn't mean that thinkers are supposed to hold up signs in the streets, no, their cultural vocation is a bit different.
The first thing is for one to orient themselves to social reality, the next step is to figure out what kind of social actor they are, the third step is to innovate in order to maximize the power of individual action, many times this means aligning oneself with a group or institution. "Most philosophers have merely analyzed the world, but the point is to change it."
I do agree with this quote from Marx, but not all of us are called to vigorous action in this regard. If we are involved with ideas and engage with others in this involvement, either by writing, speaking or teaching then we are certainly playing a part in the move to get as many people as possible to start thinking for themselves, and facing up honestly to the human and biological situation we find ourselves in.
One of the most important things is to call out bullshit and distraction from the issues wherever we see them. Solidarity is important and more effective than individual efforts, but I have found it is not that easy to find a satisfactory group or institution to align oneself with; they always seem to get mired in politics, virtue signalling, political correctness and power struggles.
Yes friend, I completely agree with you, this is what I was talking about, intellectual work. This is a problem I have thought a great deal about, and have arrived at some exceedingly practical solutions.
Quoting Janus
I have found exactly the same thing.
OK, I read the Harman piece very quickly, great article, great critique of utilitarianism, but again two problems pop up which all these philosophers seem to assume, firstly morality is all about the individual, flourishing is taken to be something either done by or happens to the individual, and the society is scarcely considered, and secondly, flourishing is taken to be a norm. If it is just a norm that someone thinks would be a good idea, why is your idea better than my idea?
So Harman retreats to the default ethical position, that morality is just something we make up along the way, it has no grounding other than that right-thinking people have agreed about it.
My argument is that to flourish is more than a norm, it is a biological imperative for the species. The individual can decide to flourish or they can decide to commit suicide, but what the community thinks is moral is what the community thinks will best serve human flourishing, and what they think is immoral is what they think will hinder it.
Of course what will help one community at one point in time to flourish will differ from what will help another community in a different era. This is why we have different moral systems - but the grounding never changes.
I want to read the Harman article a few more times but I am not at home today.
Hi Pro Hominem, nice to see a Pro for a change instead of an Ad...
I go to the species level not to make things complicated but to make them simpler. I mentioned in an earlier post that the only important difference between humans and other animals is that we store our memories outside of our own bodies. We have language, we have text, we have images, we have the Internet, we have a recorded culture, we have a recorded morality and ethical standards and we have philosophy forums to discuss them.
Animals have standards of what is right and wrong for their species, but it is stored in their short-term memory, it is recorded in their brains, and most importantly it is coded into their DNA. But it is stored in their actual bodies. Animal morality is a species-learning, learning of genetic material, about what it takes to flourish as that kind of animal.
So I would argue there is Lion morality, which says you can kill hyenas and it’s OK to eat a newborn calf alive, you have mosquito morality, which says it’s OK to suck the blood of an unsuspecting mammal, and so on. It is the genetic material plus some limited memory capacity that tells the animal what is right and what is wrong. All of which is stored inside the actual body of the animal. But the grounding of that animal morality is the same as that of human morality, we just have means to circulate our common understanding of what is moral in the form of laws and norms.
But for both humans and other animals alike, what is right is what serves the flourishing of the species, and what is wrong is what hinders it.
Yes, you are right, flourishing implies quality, and quality of life differs from species to species, but it’s pretty easy to identify qualities associated with the flourishing of a species, personal security, access to food and water, health, hospitable environment, stability, reproductive success, specifically for humans we might agree on a few more, etc.
You might say, well these are all just more norms, to which I reply, people do of course invent and agree or disagree on norms and moral precepts. My project is not to invent or propose new norms. I am interested in meta-ethics. Why agree on norms at all? My answer: all norms and moral precepts are an attempt to answer the question before humanity: what best serves human flourishing?
Hard to see how one could refute this, precisely because it's premised in the material nature of being.
It is possible that in classes on the philosophy of religion Divine Command Theory has nothing to do with human flourishing in this world or the next, but out here in the real world, ask any religious person, and they will tell you that they follow God’s Law because God knows what is best for us, because God wants us to live well and fare well, because God is all-powerful and can send us to the lake of fire for all eternity if we disobey his commands, and can send us to an eternal life in paradise if we submit to Him.
By the way I always thought it was charming how in the Quran, paradise is always a shady glade with a cool stream running through it... How idyllic for a desert people...
Obviously we are fitted with instincts right from birth like any other animal. Our instincts can provide subconscious guidance when confronting moral challenges. We are coded to behave in ways that are conducive to human flourishing.
My three-year old grandson is the most selfish little critter, he is struggling to learn to share and he has crazy tantrums when he does not get his way. He’ll grow out of it.
But from a species level, toddlers are extremely needy and they are programmed by evolution to be extremely demanding in order to have their needs met. Toddlers are selfish because they have to be. Toddlers are takers and parents are givers because that’s how it has to be to raise a healthy child. He’s learning that others have needs too, he’ll grow out of it.
We need to judge the morality of his behavior not by the U.S. constitution, not by Divine Command Theory, not by whether his tantrums contribute to utilitarian happiness, but by how evolution has shaped three-year olds to do what they have to do in order to flourish.
This is the the first stage of consciousness in an advanced species.
Many people believe that life is hell but there’ll be pie in the sky when you die. This is a human aspiration for a better life, that seems impossible to obtain here on earth. Just because people believe something doesn’t make it true. What science can tell us is there is no evidence of an afterlife. There is lots of evidence that belief in the afterlife can lead to harmful consequences - think 9/11 World Trade Centre towers. Think suicide bombers. There’s lots of evidence that magical thinking has harmful consequences: think Trump. I think there was an atheist theorist in the 1800’s, Clifford I think, who said the greatest harm of religion is that it increases credulity in the population. Lots of evidence for that.
Science can always inform our moral decision-making, and sometimes it can provide definitive answers. But again, as I said in an earlier post, the role of science is to provide authoritative answers to practical questions, not to dictate to us what is moral and what is not. “Does XYZ behaviour help or hinder human flourishing?” is a practical question. Does mask-wearing and social distancing help reduce the spread of infection during a pandemic? Does childhood sexual abuse have a negative impact on both the child and society in general? Is widespread distribution of opioids a benefit to humanity? Does high social and income inequality lead to prosperity? Does prayer heal the sick? Does the death penalty lead to reduced crime?
Name any moral challenge and tell me that access to truth and evidence won’t help us resolve it...
I have literally no idea what you're talking about at this stage. Are you asking me if I'd like to be turkey? Or if farmed Turkey's are healthy? Either question I'd have no idea how it relates to my criticisms. Your argument is that all species seek to flourish and you define flourish by growth in a healthy and vigorous way. What has this got to do with the fact that turkeys are subjected to onerous conditions by a more powerful species?
The criticism I'm raising here is that if you define things like 'health', 'vigour', and 'flourish' in terms of biological markers then you fall to either measuring those think by numbers, or measuring them by human sensibilities and so begging the question. Maybe turkeys are 'flourishing', how would you know other than by judging the quality of their lives by the very feelings you're claiming to thus identify?
Your claim, remember, is that all species seek to active this state called 'flourishing'. You've dismissed pure population size as a measure of flourishing, you've dismissed human values as a measure of flourishing. You've trued to imply that its something to do with biology (but all that leads to is that 'flourishing' is that which a creature strives toward, which makes your claim tautologous).
So, as clear as possible, what is the commonality in the term 'flourish' as you're using it? One minute you seem to suggest it's common to all creatures, the next you're invoking how awful it would be to be a turkey to argue that they're not 'flourishing' as a species. Do you think bacteria would care uf we treated them like turkeys?
OK.
Whether to help a friend in trouble. Two year olds know to do this, no science is required because the challenge has been resolved before we can even talk.
Whether to distribute rewards fairly. Even chimpanzees arguably know this one, certainly infant humans do. No science required.
Whether to care about the emotional state of others, whether to befriend or punish those who don't, whether to be generous in fortune, whether to cooperate for mutual goals, whether to deceive for personal gain... I could go on. All of these are developed in infancy, none require so much as a grain of scientific knowledge.
We may, at any time, require science to tell us how best to achieve these goals in complex situations, but that's nothing to do with meta-ethics, it's justvto do with efficient goal- achievement strategies, it would be no less true of an evil genius trying to destroy the world.
I interpret your repetition of "as many offspring as possible" as implying mindless propagation, because you say that the only common objective of all living species is reproduction for the sake of more reproduction. I call this mindless reproduction because there is apparently no logic to this reproduction.
Remember that the Greek word "logos" can be translated as "the reason" or "the point". We need to go Meta. We need to ask, what is the point of all this reproduction? Why do living things reproduce and die? Why don't they live forever?
Evolutionary theory gives us the answer. Reproduction of offspring results in occasional genetic mutation. Genetic mutations can sometimes help offspring to better adapt and survive. If an individual is better able to adapt and survive, it will pass on its genetic material to its offspring, helping them to better adapt and survive. If the genetic variation is robust enough, it will become incorporated over X number of generations into the genome of the species. Which will help the species to flourish.
The entire purpose of having offspring is therefore not to have more offspring, but to serve the flourishing of the species.
Let's look at an example, working backwards. The Norwegian Rat, otherwise known as the common rat, is a highly intelligent, highly adaptable, highly successful species. It is said that for every human being on earth there are 10 rats within 100 meters.
One of the adaptations that helps the rat to succeed is that it has evolved the ability to eat any foul offal without getting sick, and is in fact physically incapable of vomiting. How did this ability evolve? Through generation after generation of genetic variation, introduced into the species through reproduction. A species that does not reproduce does not evolve and is therefore less adaptable, and therefore less able to flourish.
Now this discussion again highlights my main critique of most of contemporary ethical theory, and indeed most of contemporary evolutionary theory. Most want to deny that there is a point, that there is a logic behind the evolution of species, or behind the evolution of morality, but prefer to argue that it's all just happenstance with no Telos in sight.
Well science is all about evidence, and I think before you go to help a friend in trouble you should be sure you have reliable evidence that they are actually in trouble.
But I take your point, we do have moral intuitions, some of which we absorb from the culture by osmosis, some of which are instinctual and put in there by evolution. Don't forget, instincts are species-learning validated through real deep-historical experience and natural experimentation.
Of course we don't run to check scientific journals before making daily decisions, but we should respect scientific advice based on good evidence - mask-wearing during a pandemic being a case in point.
Ok, so I repeat my question. Why do you insist on including animals? They weaken your argument considerably, as your diversion into turkeys and Isaac's responses demonstrate. If you want your argument to be useful in some way, then refine it at least so far that it doesn't fail to just casual reasoning. Please read that last sentence again. You have asked for responses to help you formulate your concepts, but you don't seem to be listening to any of them.
You say that all species "seek" "flourishing". Seek implies intent, and flourishing implies some knowledge that one IS flourishing, because one must have some sense of the abstract condition of one's species to know whether it is happening or not, or even to formulate the very idea of it. Animals don't do these things. They just don't. There is no lion morality. There is 'do what it takes to survive in the moment', overlaid by a biological imperative to produce offspring. In the majority of species, they care very little for their offspring's individual survival, except for some mammals.
Your point about the difference between humans and other species drives this point home even further. By saying that morality should be considered on a species level, you are acknowledging that morality has an inherently external nature. Morals are projected by the community at large and then (theoretically) acted on by the individual. As you have stated that humans are the only species that externalize their ideas in a way that allows them to be apprehended and considered by others of their species, why do you persist in the idea that, say, toads are somehow paying any attention to the flourishing of toaddom. It's facially nonsensical.
I continue to respond because I like the idea of individual humans considering the welfare of their species as opposed to their limited families, communities, or nation-states. I wish you would expend more effort on the scaling of that idea, and less on turkeys getting happy endings.
Start over from here, and develop and defend only this.
Quoting Isaac
I was talking turkey.
You suggested that the success of a species should be measured only by the extent of propagation of genetic material. This is a quantitative measure.
I think a better measure of success is whether a species is flourishing or not. This is a qualitative measure. Note that I earlier included reproductive success as only one element of what it means to flourish - I disagree that it should be the only measure of the success of a species. To say that evolution develops creatures that seek to flourish, and that this is how it ensures that genetic material is propagated, is not to concede your point that the purpose of evolution is nothing more than propagation of genetic material. It's to say that unless a species finds a way to flourish it will not have reproductive success.
Quoting Thomas Quine
So I gave the example of the turkey, a sorry creature that has succeeded in propagating its genetic material, but whose quality of life cannot be described as favorable. Did I mention that a favorite hobby of the domestic turkey is pulling out its own feathers? Or that it is so prone to cannibalism that farmers must cut off the tip of their beaks with a special tool?
Because the turkey does not have to find food or evade predators, it has become so dumb that it will die of heat exhaustion before seeking shade. You can't have a pond on your property because the turkey will just walk into it and drown. It is so prone to disease that it must be pumped full of medication before it will survive long enough to be sent to market. I can't consider a species that would go extinct if turned loose into the wild to be in any way successful.
I judge the quality of life of the domestic turkey not by human standards, but by comparing it with that of the wild turkey, and I am ashamed at what people have done to the breed.
Isaac, let's cut to the chase. Do you think evolution has a purpose, and if you do, what do you think it is?
I stated way back that just as "the market" is an emergent property of countless people engaging in transactions with one another, so morality is an emergent property of countless people trying to find a way to get along harmoniously.
What the heck is the market? Can you touch it, feel it, pick it up? Is it something supernatural? How can we say that the market sets prices, goes up or down, doesn't like instability, etc.? How can an abstract thing like a market have intentions? Because the market is a real thing, an emergent property of the interaction of countless people that is much larger than the individual can grasp.
First understand that DNA learns from the experience of a species, and that we may therefore speak of "species-learning", and that there exists such as thing as "species-intent" as an emergent property of individual animals unconsciously pursuing individual goals that collectively serve the species.
For example, herd animals or school fish will rush to be close to one another when threatened, instinctively and without self-reflection or consideration of the available science. This behaviour results in a herd or a school that serves to protect the individual from harm and helps the species to flourish. Herds or schools are emergent properties of herding and schooling behaviours, they are an emergent property of a behaviour that is specific to their species. I have no trouble saying that species have intentions of which the individual member of the species is unconscious. One of these emergent properties is the existence of herds of animals and schools of fish.
But the ultimate intention of the species is to flourish, and evolution produces behaviours and emergent properties of a species that serve that intent.
We should get away from the idea that intention requires a conscious mind. I think of it more as a trajectory. I think of intention in the same way Aristotle did when he said the intention of a rock is to succumb to gravity and fall towards the center of the earth. The novel coronavirus intends to infect as many people as possible, it has the intent to flourish, it has that intention without ever having a conscious thought.
We have an advantage over animals in that we can quickly disseminate information and learn as a species - our response to the pandemic is a case in point. Whether you wore a mask or maintained social distancing in public didn't used to be a moral question. Now it is, because spreading the virus hinders human flourishing. Human morality evolves very quickly.
The information stored in DNA about how a species should flourish is not fundamentally different from human information about how humanity should flourish. The difference is that we communicate this information at warp speed, so that we should be able to control this virus within a few years.
Animal morality evolves extremely slowly, because all the information it has is limited to its own body. An animal species will also learn to control a virus, but because information is transmitted through DNA, it can take a thousand generations to develop immunity, if the species has not gone extinct before then.
So I say animals know instinctively what is right and what is wrong for their species, that what is right for their species is what serves the flourishing of the species, and what is wrong for it is what hinders that flourishing. The experience of countless generations has taught them. This is the sense in which I think we can speak of animal morality, and my argument is that in this respect animal morality and human morality are not that different. Human are animals too, we just have better technology.
Yes, it is fundamentally different. Your own arguments undermine your conclusions. Essentially, you are arguing that there's no difference between natural and artificial selection - but, there is, there just....is. It's why we have two separate concepts.
All you're describing with your animal examples is a gene model of natural selection which only serves to propagate reproduction in animals and pass on the genes, which opens you up to all of @Isaac's criticisms, which are well-founded.
The virus response example further underlines this point. Humans, by virtue of their intelligence, possess an agency in approaching events that all other organisms on this planet absolutely lack. We are different, period. This difference is exactly why we have conversations about, and feel a need for, morality or ethical systems. Animals don't do these things.
I'm sort of amazed that instead of actually trying to develop your thoughts about morality in a human context which is the only one that matters or even exists, that you would rather spend your time pretending that a herd instinct has a moral dimension to it.
If you want to talk about the interesting part of your idea, which I see as "what is the proper scope for systems of human morality?", then I am happy to do so.
If you want to keep trying to convince me that every fish in the ocean is deeply concerned with living his best life and hopes all his fish friends are doing the same, then I'm out. You might find a more sympathetic audience at a screening of Finding Nemo.
Well I want to show that morality is grounded in the logic of the natural universe. In a nutshell, that logic says, "Persist or perish". That is the logic that drives evolution.
We are not different than any other species in that we have a biological, instinctual imperative to persist in this wildly gyrating universe. Like all other living species we seek to flourish.
I include animals in this just as a simple observation.
If you believe this weakens my position I would be interested in hearing why you think so.
We tend to view behaviours that harm human flourishing as immoral and behaviours that serve human flourishing as moral. This should tell us something about the grounding of morality.
I want to completely get away from the idea that morality is just an accidental happenstance. Of course we make up norms and moral systems to suit the circumstances, but the root is always the same.
When I read the news or venture into the world I see that everyone I meet or read about is trying to do what Aristotle said they were trying to do: to live well and fare well. Of course people will disagree about how best to flourish, and we have ways to resolve disagreements, including science. But very few people will disagree that the human project is to live well and fare well; to flourish. I have read Darwin and extend that to the human species and to all living species.
Well we disagree about morality being grounded in natural biological imperatives, but perhaps we can move on from there.
Do you think there is a capital G "Good" that all moral precepts serve? If so, what might it be? If not, why not? Is morality grounded in anything? Does it come from God? Or do we just make it up as we go?
Quoting Thomas Quine
Which is it? This is the heart of my criticism.
I trust you know the adages about serving two masters or chasing two rabbits?
For my part, I think the first one is your best bet.
The second one is a pandora's box of concepts that will be very difficult to defend or even explain. If you do decide to go this way, I'd focus on the idea that complexity tends to accrete in the universe. Look into modern AI theory, or maybe Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach since you seem to enjoy a certain poetry in your thinking.
Morality arises out of human consciousness as means to try to organize our increasingly complex systems of interaction. It is agreement reality, but part of the agreement can be to give it a sort of transcendent power, as in the veneration of the US Constitution, or the notion of human rights.
Well, that's "how", but my question is "Why?" Why is it that we try to organize our increasingly complex systems of interaction?
If only it were so intelligent.
I'm trying to go a little deeper. I see what you're saying, complexity requires rules.
But I'm pretty sure you're not saying, the purpose of morality is to reduce complexity. I'm pretty sure you're not saying, one should behave morally because that would serve to reduce complexity.
I'm pretty sure you don't believe that reducing complexity is the target that Aristotle's moral archers should aim for. I can't imagine that one should advise citizens not to kill each other randomly or release a deadly virus from the lab because complexity demands it.
So I want to ask the next level of Why? Why would human beings want to reduce complexity?
Or perhaps you are saying there is nothing more to it than this, morals and laws arise only to solve ephemeral and fleeting problems and there is no larger reason why. In which case how does one reply to G.E. Moore, who said that without a definition of the Good, it is difficult to justify any system of morality?
Or perhaps you are saying that really morality does not have any greater purpose, you are rejecting moral teleology?
So could you clarify, do you think that morality has any greater purpose other than to reduce complexity or solve other practical problems?
Sorry, something got crossed up there. I absolutely do not want to see complexity reduced. I don't think I agree with your notion of a "higher purpose" or some kind of "Good", because these tend to rely on some sort of outside influencer and lead in the direction of theology, which is fruitless.
I don't think that the desire to lift the condition of humanity as a whole even requires a justification. It is self-explanatory. I don't think humans are special per se, but I think sapience is and we should do our best to use it to increase the general well-being of ourselves and our environment. The accretion of complexity is just the "how" as you put it. The "why" is that it is clearly a better option than any of the alternatives.
This is precisely the kind of down to earth common sense that has been marred by religious abstraction and abstraction in general. Yes, it is self-justificatory! 'Should we make life harder for ourselves?' Everyone will deny it, but so many are engaged in precisely this vocation through the medium of abstraction.
There is little need for us to contend with each other, we all agree with this. The enemy is abundant in the world, mindless superstition, wisdom dictates forces united to stop the advance of stupidity.
Well I said in earlier posts at the start of this thread that all moral systems appear to aim for this end, whether they express that explicitly and literally or not.
I feel the need to ground the claim that what is moral is what serves human flourishing in science, because my next move is to say that science can help us determine what is moral, because science can tell us a lot, maybe not everything but a lot, about what serves human flourishing, and what hinders it.
We need to bring science into the equation as an objective referee between competing claims about what actually does serve human flourishing.
For example, climate change - is it addressing climate change that will "lift the condition of humanity", or accelerating economic growth?
Are LGBTQ rights harmful to society? Is immigration?
At what point does freedom of speech cause more harm than good?
Does the death penalty deter crime? Does mass incarceration make society safer?
Is it better to wear a mask during a pandemic, or is it better to refuse a mask to champion individual liberty? Is quarantine an unjustified violation of the freedom of the individual?
You mention the veneration of the U.S. constitution. Right now the justices decide cases mostly on a close reading of the constitution, literally as if it were a holy text, or on case precedent. Imagine if instead the justices said, "OK, let's decide this case on the following criteria: what judgement would best serve human flourishing? And let's get some scientists in here to present some hard evidence before we decide..."
And so on.
I'm all in favour of competing ideas, that's how progress and evolution happen. But unless you have an objective standard of moral behaviour and an objective arbiter, there's no response to those who say, well what makes your idea any better than mine? You won't be able to get past the moral relativists and the magical thinkers - and today they seem to be both in power and in the majority...
You still haven't made any progress whatsoever on this this.
1. Your notion of what exactly constitutes 'flourishing' is just your personal opinion. Some people think a 'flourishing' society is one in which we have amazing technological advances, everyone is wealthy, others focus on happiness, others health, some see spiritual fulfilment, some the pure measure of population numbers. Most people have a varied mix with different emphasis placed on different aspects and it is this different emphasis which causes disagreement in moral dilemmas. You saying we should seek 'human flourishing' hasn't added anything useful at all in terms of objectivity. We all agreed on that in the first place. What we disagree on is what constitutes 'flourishing', what features (and in what measure) a 'flourishing society' has.
2. It's the same with bringing in scientists. Only an absolutely tiny and insignificant minority of people make moral judgements that are contradicted by all of science, no-one seriously thinks the earth is flat, or the moon is made of cheese. Scientists disagree, and their disagreement becomes greater the more complex the system and the further into the future you want them to predict consequences. Gathering scientific evidence will serves absolutely no purpose at all toward increasing the objectivity of moral decision making beyond the state it is already in because you will simply obtain a range of opinions wide enough to encompass all the options already being discussed. Nothing in there tells you which option to choose.
With all of your examples the key questions remain -
How far into the future do we extend the predicted consequences?
How much certainty do we need of some negative consequence in the future in order to sacrifice some positive consequence now?
With the possible exception of the last one, I don't think "science" has much to add to any of those conversations.
All the science we have on climate change is easily available. It has not changed that most people still hold beliefs based on their political or economic interests, not anything to do with science.
The rest of them don't really involve science at all. Social science, I suppose, but that's not really "science". Statistics can be made to tell whatever story the person choosing the statistics wants to tell.
It is obviously scientifically verified that it is better for everyone to wear a mask during a pandemic, but that has not stopped countless people from choosing not to do so.
There will always be disagreements about what is the best thing for humanity - except in cases of mass extinction, science often can go either way. If you are asking what I think is important, it is education. It is not required that we all end up with the exact same definition of human "flourishing". It is important that we are all at least conditioned to ask such a question and try to view major issues through that lens.
Actually there is quite a lot of work done on what constitutes human flourishing, and we should never rely on personal opinion on these matters, but rather consult the available science.
Social science is quite a well-developed field and capable of producing valid testable and reliable indicators of human flourishing, such as average life expectancy, average years of good health, years of education, poverty levels, income inequality, gender equality, crime and violence statistics, and so on. https://bit.ly/3gxmX91
We can see that societies that are faring well track and measure these indicators and try to improve their numbers. Northern Europe, with its strong social safety nets, typically dominates these lists. Societies that can't or won't track these indicators tend to do poorly.
There are about 20 global indices of human flourishing, based on good science, all measuring things in a different way, but trying to get at the same things I am getting at. One of the most respected is the U.N.'s Human Development Index: https://bit.ly/32sYBZe
If you look down the page you can find a list of similar indices. Another one talked about a lot is the Gross National Happiness Index: https://bit.ly/2YExr0e
The way to get people to buy into a moral system is to demonstrate how it personally benefits them. For example, science tells us how to respond to a pandemic. Non-scientists, such as Trump, the GOP, various evangelical organizations, etc. have told us the pandemic is a hoax. We can explain to the population, and we can explain to lawmakers, that we need to rely on science, and not opinion, because science can tell us not only what can help humanity to flourish, but what is in our personal best interests:
https://nbcnews.to/32Ae09U
Quoting Thomas Quine
Nothing here tells us that they are indicators of human flourishing. That's your own personal opinion. What scientific, objective fact tells us that education or gender equality are measures of flourishing? The existence of identifiable measures does not constitute proof that those measures are measures of human flourishing, you've just labelled them as such.
Notwithstanding that failure, even if we agreed on the list, which is most important, and to what degree? If a policy promotes reduction in poverty levels but at the expense of income equality (as many wealth creation policies do) how do we decide how far it is worth pursuing it?
Besides which you've failed to even address the most significant question which forms the basis of most societal moral dilemmas...
Quoting Isaac
This could not be more cynical, well, perhaps it could, you could say God is the only one who can define what a quality life means for man.
However, the indefensible and hypocritical skepticism contain in this position is clearly unconscious of itself. Individuals without children should have no say in what constitutes human flourishing, their negative egocentrism doesn't count.
Having clean water and healthy food are axioms of human flourishing, do you deny it?
Hi! In my opinion there cannot be moral precept held by a community but a moral precept held by one, some or all the individuals that are members of a community. An individual, consciously or subconsciously, espouses moral values that promote its own progress and improvement. Happily, there were humans that understood that a thriving community can be beneficial for them. But these moral precepts could at the same time be damaging for the individuals of another community. And there were also humans who pursued success by harming other members of their own community. In conclusion, there is no humanity;there are humans with various needs and purposes.
My argument is that out of these individual pursuits there emerges a common understanding, and phenomena that are not reducible to the intentions of individuals alone. The best example in human society is "the market". What is this magical thing that sets prices? It is what emerges when you have countless people each trying to sell high and buy low. None of these people is doing anything other than pursue their own self-interest, but something emerges, by an invisible hand, that regulates them as if it were a supernatural power.
Law and morality are emergent properties of countless people trying to work out better ways to interact with each other. Moral precepts are not the product of your personal imagination - the common moral precepts of your culture were worked out collectively in hard practice and presented to you ready-made as you grew up. Morality is an emergent property of a culture, not the private domain of an individual that somehow accidentally is shared by some other number of private individuals.
I would say it's too strong assumption for people in general. Equally likely (or even more likely) it can be result of an evolutionary like process. We are trying to evaluate moral value afterwards, that's a major source of distortion. In case of long term process, reasons and outcomes could be vary in different points in time.
For example at the beginning you can find something like an Abilene paradox and it could be spread widely afterwards. The main reason could be a reverse in some cases, I mean moral principles could be preserved because of absence of disagreement. The only example that come to my mind right now is fashion.
I personally think that main benefit from the moral rules are rules themselves. Almost any moral rule can be helpful if it isn't destructive for community, helps to understand easier people around you or stabilize people behavior.