I'm just demurring at posing a juxtaposition between trans folk and those with disabilities. We should look for mutual support rather than antagonism... basic intersectionality. And it looks as if there is a mutually agreeable solution - more accessible gender neutral toilets.

Meh. Take your brilliant ideas over to the What is a "woman" thread and show us what use they are.

Some of those distinctions are arguably worth preserving, like perhaps the locker room or sports teams examples. — Hanover

Your OP was not in jest? This ridiculous thread got to five pages overnight. You must be so proud.

Here's a read for all of you. It won't be that easy for those with little background in philosophical thinking, as it covers ground from Aristotle and Kant through analytic treatments of reference and necessity and natural kinds and Kripke and Rorty and Heidegger before pulling the issues together using the later Wittgenstein. At the very least, this article summarises the real philosophical issues that sit behind the trivial, pop-culture posts that make the bulk of this pathetic thread.

There's even a paragraph for you, @Hanover, explaining who your simplistic xx and xy "solution" ignores.

Trans folk are challenging us to reappraise our assumptions. This is not about chromosomes or genitalia or societal expectations so much as it is about urinals and stalls and keeping people safe.

Read this: Are Sex and Gender Natural Kinds? A Wittgensteinian Investigation

Cheers to , , and those others who show compassion for trans folk.

My point is this: providing gender neutral accommodations--toilets, locker rooms, and so on is not a trivial expense, and the number of beneficiaries doesn't justify the required spending, especially when we have not met all the very definite needs of 60 million disabled Americans. — BC

Accessible toilets are gender neutral.

So here's your answer: make accessible, gender neutral toilets a norm.

It's ridiculous to frame this discussion as a fight between trans and disabled folk.

Love how folk just make shit up.

This ontology stuff is so easy!

You have no idea about the darkness that lies within. — Hanover

For many of us, it seems; the result of the Good Lord putting the playground next to the sewerage works. Evolution, of course, would never produce something so ad hoc.

Good OP, by the way; enjoyably satyrical.

...modesty... — Hanover

If the issue is modesty, then design dressing rooms for modesty. Put up more dividers.

You are way overthinking this.

Or is "modesty" a proxy for some other problem, unaddressed?

So, substitute for bathroom, gym locker room, which does in fact have fully naked people walking about. — Hanover

And what do you think is the issue here? What's the problem that results from folk wandering around naked? Fill it out.

How has it been in Australia? — frank

We have more important issues, such as drag queens reading books to children in public libraries...

No one ever checks your biology when you go take a piss. — Tom Storm

Actually, the built environment does, by differentiating the room you use based on your genitalia.

One presumes that urinals are cheaper, and faster, which perhaps explains the shorter cues for men's toilets at intermission.

Thoughts? — Hanover

The difference between a men's and a women's lavatory is the urinal.

Odd, then, don't you think, that this sort of discussion is posed as about women's bathrooms, when it is men's bathrooms that are problematic?

No one ever checks your biology when you go take a piss. — Tom Storm

Indeed.

Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains fast moral thinking, not slow moral thinking. — Mark S

So you posit ad hoc distinctions in order to circumvent criticisms of your hypothesis. Until now your theory has been about the whole of morality, but of a sudden it is restricted to gut reactions rather than considered decisions...

If anyone cares to read what I actually said, the next part of my comment points out your incoherence in accepting science to be useful, but rejecting the science of morality as necessarily useless. — Mark S

It will be clear to those readers that I have not said anthropological studies of moral behaviour are useless. What I have maintained is the obvious point, that anthropological descriptions, in themselves, do not tell us what we ought to do.

Your scientism runs deep, preventing your noticing it's superficiality. I'm not seeing any progress in these discusses despite nine threads. It was perhaps an error for me to engage with you, given the fixity of your thinking.

Have a read of Mary Midgley, if the opportunity arrises. Or Tolstoy. Or just about anyone outside of your scientistic milieu.

Cheers.

The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect

The origin of the tram, and much else besides, together with Ascombe's reply.

...or to paraphrase, moral issues tend to be intractable rather than vague; and hence to treat them as tractable... is to misconstrue or even misidentify what is at issue.

And yet we must act.

I think Mark is putting up a valiant fight against the vagaries of morality in the current world. — Tom Storm

Sure, and I'll add kudos for Mark's addressing moral issues at all - it's unfashionable to even frame discussions in ethical terms, so even addressing these issues shows some courage. One is expected to frame such issues in either legal or financial terms.

But there is a scientisitic feel to Mark's argument, the implicit - and at times explicit - derision of the historical and practical exegesis of ethics, as if it could all be replaced by Mark's extrapolation from evolutionary theory. Such a lack of depth.

If the fight against vagaries leads only to superficiality, then let's stay vague.

Pushing the large man off the bridge will reduce trust between people (if you stand next to someone they may kill you) — Mark S

Or will it increase trust, in that those who comment on the event after the fact will see pushing the large man off the bridge as showing that you can be relied on to make difficult decisions, and as an exemplar of how one ought act?

Perhaps things are not so clear as you suppose.

Foot's Trolley problem was conceived as a way of showing some of the limitations of consequentialism. The trolley was to be contrasted with the case of killing a healthy person in order to harvest their organs to save five terminally ill patients. Same consequence, differing intuitions. (I see Rogue is aware of this).

Cooperation seems of little use here, in line with 's strategy of asking for explicit and practical examples of the use of a cooperation approach, in order to test it's utility.

@Tom Storm, et al., what do you make of this:

The most reasonable foundation for morality is what morality is and always has been - the rules we live by to maintain cooperative societies. — Mark S

Has Mark presented a cogent argument for this contention? Is he right?

Of course, that we desire to cooperate with each other does not imply that we ought cooperate...

It's not easy...

Claiming science is, therefore, useless would be silly. — Mark S

Of course, I've done no such thing. What I have done is simply point to the is/ought distinction, and warned against taking what humans have done as evidence for what they ought do.

And before you start going off again about imperative oughts... — Mark S

This gave me a laugh. "imperative oughts" is not a term I would use, except in response to your use of it.

Deontology, after Kant, distinguishes between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. A hypothetical imperative is couched in an implication, as "If you want B, you ought do A". A categorical imperative is not so couched; it sets out a duty, as in "everyone ought do B".

I gather you use "imperative oughts" to mean what most English speakers would call "duty", or something close.

You seem to think I'm advocating deontology; I'm not. Perhaps that's baggage you've brought in from elsewhere.

If anyone is "going off about imperative oughts", it's you.

I'm not anti-science. But I do advocate clarity.

What might be of use in what you have cited is the notion that cooperation serves as a strategy for survival. That's not new. You add the notion that "cultural norms" - morality - is (all of it) mere cooperation strategies. That's not firm science, and even if it where, it does not follow that we ought cooperate. What might follow is that cooperation sometimes enhances survival. That's a pretty weak hypothetical imperative: If we would survive, we ought sometimes cooperate.

Sure.

But within the corpus of ethical and moral reasoning, that's pretty superficial.

Anyway, that should stir the pot and piss you off enough for now. There might be an argument buried here to the effect that cooperation leads to reciprocity and hence to justice. Now that might be interesting. But The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas might have a say here.

Free logic has wider application than just imaginary objects, addressing the difficulties you mention.

Free logic allows us to talk of things that do not exist, hence treating existence as a property.

For the non-philosopher, what do you recommend as a reasonable foundation for morality? — Tom Storm

Not a question that can have a back-of-an-envelope answer. Not least because it's not clear what that question might be asking... but with my being of the analytic persuasion, that sort of vacillation is to be expected...

I'm disincline to talk of foundations or answers in this regard; it seems absurd to expect moral issues to be addressable by what one might loosely call an "algorithmic" method; one in which we can set out, beforehand, rules or methods that will give us the right thing to do.

Hence I am somewhat sceptical of both deontology and consequentialism.

But despite such considerations, we are obliged to make decisions of a moral sort, and so must muddle on as best we can. So one tries to do the best one can, and perhaps to do better on each new occasion than on the last, and so some consideration of the development of the various virtues has a place. A heuristic, not an algorithmic, approach, if you will.

As you said,

I can well imagine the ambition to discover some kind of secular and universal formula for morality — Tom Storm

We might agree that such ambition ought best be avoided, and perhaps confronted when it is encountered. Hence these posts.

All of which might be taken as condescending twaddle, but you asked.

Ah, so your account, @Mark S, does not tell us what we should do?

...and yet "...science can provide useful instrumental (conditional) oughts for achieving shared goals"? Despite nine threads on the same topic, perhaps your account is not as clearly expressed as you think?

If your goal can be obtained by cooperation and you wish to act consistently with those objective moral values that sustainably maintain cooperation, then you ought (instrumental) to act consistently with those objective moral values. — Mark S

Let's look at the logic here. Is this it...

If P can be obtained by cooperation and you wish to P, then you ought to P.

The clause on cooperation doesn't appear to do anything here. Your argument looks to be that if you want to do something then you ought do it. But not only is it, as Mick pointed out, that you can't always get what you want, sometimes you ought not get what you want.

Sure, if you have the urge to pee you probably ought, but in the appropriate place and so as not to inconvenience others. Of course we might well let folk do as they want, unless there is good reason not too; and that, what is to count as "good reason", is what ethics is about.

Descriptively moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies — Mark S

I put it to you that rather, cooperation strategies may be part of achieving our goals. You've got it the wrong way around.

Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others. — Mark S

What is claimed here... needs unpacking. "Universal moral behaviours" is a problematic term, and obviously, contrary to what is implied, folk can cooperate in order to exploit others. Your "Universal moral behaviours" are presumably those found by anthropological examination of what people do; and you agree, at least sometimes, that a description of what we do does not tell us what we ought do. Your term "Universal moral behaviours" carries the insinuation that these merely observed behaviours bring moral weight. But any such moral weight must be argued for separately. I don't see where you have done this.

As for the relation between cooperation and justice, take a look at “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K LeGuin (thanks, @unenlightened), and consider those who cooperate in the plight of the child.

So sure, cooperation, games theory, and anthropology might well be a useful part of a moral perspective; but they are not the whole.

I can well imagine the ambition to discover some kind of secular and universal formula for morality. — Tom Storm

Here's were Arendt's "banality of evil" is pertinent. One might well anticipate a future Eichmann justifying himself in the terms used in the OP: "I was only cooperating using the cross-cultural universals within descriptively moral norms and judgments..."

Here are the two problems with the view espoused by @Mark S.

1. Regardless of how sophisticated it might be, no description of what we do can imply what we should do.

2. That an act is cooperative is not sufficient to ensure that it is moral. Folk can cooperate to act immorally.

The lesson I take from Foot is the intractability of moral issues. There are no simple solutions here, no algorithms or methods with universal applicability. While cross-cultural descriptions of moral norms might be interesting, perhaps allowing us to understand something of human diversity, and games-theoretical problem solving may be of some nerdish assistance, they do not form anything like the whole of morality; indeed, they hardly even begin to address the issues.

Look instead to Rawls, or Hanna Arendt, or even Peter Singer for more comprehensive accounts.

So, oddly, you are now saying that it is not the case that we ought cooperate?

I'm not too keen on the term, but that looks rather mote-and-bailly. Somehow this tells us

about right and wrong — Mark S

without telling us what to do? You commence your argument in the bailey of right and wrong, but when challenged retreat to the motte of supposed "objective science".

Well, Sartre suggests that existence proceeds essence - that one determines one's own "nature". I offer this only in order to point out that it is not obvious to all that the notion of human "nature" is unproblematic, let alone what that nature might be.

To which again we add the further point, even if one grant that there is some coherent sense in which humans have a "nature", it remains an open question as to whether that nature is to be followed, or to be overcome.

And again, these are part of the discussion that is absent from the account in the OP.

What hostility?

As for living in harmony with one's nature, that leaves much hanging. Should one live in harmony with one's nature, as a Stoic might say, or stand against it, as Nietzsche, Sartre, Kierkegaard &c. would have it... And if we were to discuss these chaps, then we would be doing philosophy.

Which is part of what is missing from the OP.

I dunno if there is much point. Whatever I say will sound condescending. I presume you are at least aware of the discussion of is-ought in Ethics... what you call the "bottom-up" is an example of the naturalistic fallacy in which it is presumed that what we ought do is just what we have previously done. Gather whatever data you like and normalise it how you will, it does not tell us what we should do. You've acknowledged this, but still apparently think that your "bottom-up" shows us what to do. It just doesn't. I don't see a way to make this logical gap more apparent to you. I gather that you don't see as it is of any import. Well, taking what you have always done as what you ought to do is a nice vaccine against self-improvement; a self-satisfying recipe for conservatism. That might be what you are looking for. What else would one want in the comfort of retirement.

To you, if you like: there's a free sample next to you. I can provide as many as you need.

I have a regular supply of apples that don't exist, which I will happily on-sell.

Verbal fumbling.

,

Interesting that you mention Philippa Foot, a philosopher who perhaps above all others showed us the intractable nature of moral questions.

You say you "post here to understand better how to present conclusions from the science of morality to people familiar with moral philosophy but perhaps not with this science". You seem to think you are providing "answers from science", and are puzzled by their reception. Perhaps what you propose is not as novel to those old fuddy duddies as you supposed, and perhaps the questions they are asking are not the questions you are answering.

It's not so much that what you have provided is wrong, as that it is so very incomplete.

Indeed, in so far as what you offer encourages the development of the virtues, we are in agreement. But it should be of concern to you that what you espouse might be used to explain away acts of collective, perfunctory evil, as easily as it does acts of virtue.

Perhaps you might begin to see that there is more going on here than you might previously have supposed.

Why do you imagine that is a problem... — Mark S

Just checking the pretence that science tells us what we ought to do, highlighting a point you yourself made, that "...the science of morality cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be".

There is extensive literature on this other, much more difficult puzzle, unaddressed by your approach.

Sure. If...

Ought we want to live harmoniously in a community?

Ninth thread on the same topic; same problem as the first thread:

At the core, that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate. — Banno

...my action only originates ex nihilo, out of nothing/negation. — quintillus

Ah, so there is no reason or explanation for your actions.

That helps make sense of your posts.

Right, OK.

You have one idea; and it's a bad one.

Sure, one's actions are not determined by the law. But one can chose to follow the law, or not; and the law sets out what folk will do with you next.

The argument in the OP is ridiculous.

When folk hereabouts think rocks conscious, evidence is extraneous.

Laugh and walk away.