Mark S

Science does provide that evidence, based mostly on the remarkable explanatory power of Morality as Cooperation Strategies for cultural moral norms an...

:up:

Your subject sounds like what we somehow ought to do . My subject is 1) what science can tell us about the primary reason that cultural moral norms an...

Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains the primary reason why past and present cultural moral norms exist. There is no claim it explains your mor...

You are making an ought claim (about means and ends) of the normal kind in moral philosophy. Perhaps it is either a conditional ought based on a worth...

I am familiar with moral relativism. It had not occurred to me that the explanatory power of Morality as Cooperation Strategies for why cultural moral...

My claim is that Morality as Cooperation Strategies can contribute to rational discussions about which moral norms to enforce. Specifically, understan...

I don’t see the irony. Yes, “1) different definitions of who is in favored ingroups and disfavored or exploited outgroups and 2) different markers of ...

I like the scientific approach to understanding what morality ‘is’ because it avoids the ambiguity problem about moral language you mention. We can us...

I am not familiar with moral relationalism (moral relationism?). But yes, descriptively moral behaviors (behaviors advocated by cultural moralities) a...

] The word "it" is too vague, though I have often heard the question phrased this way. "What makes the behavior or moral principle moral?" would be mo...

Right.

Tom, While perhaps interesting to us, we have gone off-topic for schopenhauer1's thread Ad Populum Indicator of a Moral Intuition. Let's belay this co...

This agrees with the Encyclopedia Britannica “a hypothetical imperative, in the ethics of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, a rule of...

Traffic rules are laws; as you suggest, rule of law is an invention to solve cooperation problems. But laws coincide with what is moral only to the ex...

Moral philosophy has focused largely on goals. Given the lack of progress in convincingly defining an objective goal for moral behavior, we must face ...

Tom, Right, too often ingroups have cooperated to exploit outgroups. What if I described the function of human morality as solving a cooperation/explo...

You point out the biggest flaw in simple Utilitarianism, that it does not prohibit immoral means of achieving that end. Utilitarianism's end, the goal...

180 Proof and Tom, I'd phrase it as "Cooperation being a 'means' to a goal (wellbeing or flourishing), not the goal itself", but that is essentially t...

Because it is empirically true. From a bottom-up perspective, all past and present cultural moral norms (norms whose violation is commonly thought to ...

Aren’t moral intuitions simply our intuitions about what is moral? Moral intuitions are personal; their existence does not depend on what other people...

Thanks for the non-snarky reply. Heuristics Heuristics are usually reliable, but fallible, rules of thumb for doing something based on practical exper...

I'm not sure I endorse this thinking for reasons others have written, but best of luck hashing something out. I wonder if you need to drill down and e...

Thanks for the question. Understanding morality started as a retirement hobby. I wanted to understand why morality existed. Traditional moral philosop...

180Proof, Thanks for assembling salient issues. From my side, it is not always clear which are the most important points to respond to. I appreciate t...

The idea that what is normative is what all rational people would advocate is Bernard Gert’s (see SEP’s morality entry of the last 20 years or so), no...

Within an ingroup (Singer's circle of moral concern), all are morally equal. Some are more rational and better informed at knowing how to solve cooper...

Really? Perhaps you could comment on my reply to Banno.

What does your claim that "well-informed and rational are normative” mean to you? I can make no sense of it. That may be partly due to my background i...

What I am getting at is how conditional oughts can be helpful in defining moral systems. "Moral behaviour is defined as performing bad actions only if...

Bob, Why would you argue that? I can't think of any rational or instrumental (goal-related) reasons for doing so. That may be your intuition, but what...

Bob, Getting back to the moral realism question in your OP: Is Morality as Cooperation Strategies (MACS) a kind of moral realism? Does it determine mi...

Bob, No, it is not accurate. How about this version instead as explanation? P1: Virtually all cultural moral norms and our moral sense’s judgments and...

I agree that 'objective moral judgements’ are more than “a description of proclamations which are contingent on wills”. Objective moral judgments are ...

Not quite. You are missing a critical element: the subject of the objective facts. The subject is the function of cultural moral norms (norms whose vi...

The key to many miscommunications in moral realism discussions may be that one side is assuming the subject is "imperative obligations" and the other ...

I repeat, "Understanding what the function of cultural moral norms ‘is’ provides AN objective standard of what is good and bad." How could you argue t...

“… the only valid definition of “objective moral judgments” is essentially that it is a description of an involuntary obligation (of a will)”— Bob Ros...

Thanks for your careful reply. I am keenly interested in better understanding reasons for preferring your or Wikipedia’s definitions of moral realism....

Whether moral realism or anti-realism is correct is a function of how we define the terms. Assume we use your definition of moral realism as the reali...

That is an easy question to answer. We have an innate moral conscience (and an innate moral sense) because it enabled our ancestors to solve cooperati...

Heiko, I know of no reasons we should believe that a moral theory’s, even an objectively true moral theory’s, That sounds merely like your preference....

Perhaps I misunderstand you. I hear you objecting to all cultural moralities as, on balance, bad.

No, I don’t see the problem. Maximizing durable happiness by maximizing satisfaction and minimizing suffering defines an end. It does not define a mea...

Societies decide when “people will be forced to do X” when they advocate and enforce moral norms. For example, people will be coerced into not stealin...

My comment that the “means do not justify the end” was about moral means and ends, so let’s restrict the discussion to morality. If you are convinced ...

And neither the ends justify the means (as per utilitarianism's possible over-demanding ‘means’), nor the means justify the end (as I have read Kant a...

!80 Proof, “What is the difference between moral and non-moral "ends"? moral and non-moral "means"?” Gert proposes that what is morally normative (wha...

If we are going to effectively work toward achieving something, here a moral ‘end’, then we have to agree on what we are working to achieve – we have ...

Perhaps helping others and otherwise being kind could cause issues relative to autonomy or lack thereof, but wouldn’t that be rare? Why focus on possi...