Eh, as much as emotion is disruptive of moral frameworks (eg: genitals vs God, genitals always win), reason re-stitches them - propagation of an insight is something cognitively involved. — fdrake

Sorry, I went down a rabbit hole for a couple of months. I've produced three entire albums in the interim, with two more on the go. Insert caterpillar cliche here, heavily dosed with apologies for apparent rudeness.

Edit: the above is really just a gloss on what fdrake said about reason's 'restitching’ — csalisbury

My suspicion is that this is really just the post hoc rationalisation I referred to phrased in a way that is extremely generous toward reason. I'm not saying reason is uninvolved, just that it is more often after the fact and its importance is wildly exaggerated. It is a story we tell to ourselves and then to others to derive a position we already hold for entirely separable reasons. I think this is a very human compulsion, entirely unavoidable in fact, but it's helpful to me to understand that, had my experiences pushed me toward a diametrically opposed moral position, I would likely rationalise that position with equal fervour. The reasoning, then, is far less important than the experience in terms of explanatory power.

I apologise for messiness. — fdrake

Can't be any worse than mine. :)

That sense of nearness brings in ideas of connection of moral-evaluative conduct; it may be that some possible worlds (moral-evaluative conduct) are unreachable from our current one; whereas they are reachable under mere logical possibility. If some aspect of human being curtails our moral-evaluative contexts to ones sufficiently similar to our current ones, there will be the question of whether these aspects block transition to evaluative contexts in which some privileged domain of moral statements are false. — fdrake

I'd turn this around and say: isn't it simpler to postulate individual morality from common natural history and more or less arbitrary social history than worry about why and whether there are objective values for contexts that are possible but never realised? Especially given that that natural and social history is already extremely contextualised, removing the need to postulate an effective infinity of contingency-chaining variants of the same moral questions. That's the headscratcher of moral objectivity for me.

The daily contexts of moral dilemma are, in my experience, much more similar to this than "What I did was right!" and "What I did was wrong!"; aligning growth of character and moral wisdom with re-evaluating what we believe is right and wrong. — fdrake

Would you agree a) that this makes perfect sense if we evolved an amenability to be socialised by a single culture throughout our lifetimes, b) that this will likely have influenced the common view that moral questions, however contingent, in terms of absolute magnitudes or metrics, have single-valued answers, and c) that this common view might not have been thoroughly questioned by traditional moral philosophers?

The modelling exercise component is consistent with cognitive mediation of sentiment in the production of evaluation. The causal sequence goes (affect+cognition)-> evaluation, rather than affect->cognition->evaluation. — fdrake

I'd put it more like affect plus optional cognition -> evaluation. Which is more or less in keeping with how Kahneman describes S2: an optional process that has less input than it makes us believe, but, when it does useful things, is brilliant!

An emotional stimulus resonant enough to change my position is also likely to be associated to that emotion thereafter. It's not a moral example, but I never particularly liked pigs. Then one night I had a very emotive dream about a pet pig. Now I love pigs! Point being, I never rationally concluded that pigs were great. I didn't "change my mind", except in a literal sense. I was conscious of all of the data, but reason didn't effect or affect the outcome. Most of my recent moral epiphanies seem very similar: a strong emotional reaction to some stimulus that similar stimuli resonate, with post hoc rationalisation. But yes sometimes you just gotta work it.

The strict distinction between descriptive and normative is also quite undermined (replaced with a weighting) by undermining the distinction between cognition and affect; facts come with feelings and norms, norms come with feelings and facts and so on. — fdrake

I think this is a good way of putting it. The argument about how much is rational, how much associative, how much genetic is less important than accounting for it all.

The fundamental rule can apply only to moral agents. — Luke

That's not making a different point. Me: "50% of the fruit is apples." You: "Actually, 100% of the apples are." ???

It was a hypothetical. I'm not so much interested in discussing the actual papers (you've clearly got a very broad grasp of the issues in developmental psychology, but, as I've said, I only find these kinds of discussions worthwhile under very limited, usually professional, circumstances. Online it's just too much effort for too little gain). I was just trying to get at whether you felt compelled by the evidence to take the stance you do, or otherwise. Can I ask, did you have some other theory before reading Kohlberg. Did he compel you to change your original position, or did he confirm what you already suspected? — Isaac

I think you're overstating my position on Kohlberg. I referred to it because it's a well known system and I just happened to have selected punishment as an example. There are other, later ones (including Tomasello's), but, while there's a lot of overlap, they don't all focus on the same things. I actually get the impression that punishment is a touchy subject in psychology, but it's par for the course in parenting research and teacher training.

Gopnik's analogy between how children build models and how science theorists do so is compelling, which is why I was surprised that you thought that not only were Kohlberg's explanations wrong, you thought that his punishment stage was overthrown, because I've never seen Gopnik really touch on that subject. (Again, happy to learn otherwise.) Tomasello, unsurprisingly, a huge influence, although I think he makes up for lack of knowledge about our ancestors by looking to modern humantiy which, as you know from my other posts, I think is a mistake. Sapolsky, obviously.

So, just to explore these beliefs... Say I could present evidence of babies exhibiting second-personal agency, would you prefer that to be the case? You'd have a choice then - look for the flaws in this new evidence I presented (there will be flaws), or accept that it demonstrates Kohlberg et al are not necessarily right, and so open up alternatives. Which would you choose? (or just decide you're not going to waste your time indulging me in hypotheticals - up to you, of course!) — Isaac

Yeah man, chuck it up. It'll be interesting to discuss.

The idea that children make associations between behaviours and badness before they have fully-developed rational models of morality is not necessitated by the empirical evidence. — Isaac

I think this is somewhat back-to-front. If children were fully functioning moral agents from day one, that would be distinguishable, not just in the data, but in everyday experience. That isn't what is observed. It wasn't observed by Kohlberg. It wasn't observed over the last twenty-five years by Tomasello. The delayed manifestation of second-personal agency (~3 yrs), and the further delayed manifestation of reasoning about groups, inductive moral reasoning and moral self-direction (~5 yrs) are not consistent with the hypothesis that children are, even if fully equipped, fully functioning moral agents. But structured "naughty step" type punitive measures do have short-term efficacy before this.

Is Johnson, the UK prime minister, in the pocket of the Russians? — Punshhh

Boris and Putin have the same goals, it's like he is a puppet. — Punshhh

I don't think they have the same goals. BJ is an opportunist. If there's a personal advantage to be had, he will agree to anything to anybody. That is his modus operandi. I would be extremely shocked to discover he'd avoided agreeing to something undesirable with Dobby, even if he hoped he wouldn't have to deliver. But it being the sort of thing he'd do don't make it so.

what are we going to do about it? — Punshhh

The political mood now is limited to ever-more targeted sanctions at the most punitive end to ending sanctions entirely at the most fawning end, when we should be talking about Russia being persona non grata in the West, politically, economically, residentially, and in the media. Booting them out of the G8 was a start. They should be booed off the world stage now altogether.

I also think that propaganda within one's own borders from actors working on behalf of a state that is a major national security threat should be taken seriously. Currently we just shrug it off, as we've shrugged off everything Russia has done for decades. It is itself a national security threat and should be treated as such. That includes the media, traditional and social.

What interests me far more is how you arrive at your beliefs, especially if you've read the more modern research, what compels you to stick to an obedience and punishment model? What attracts you to that idea. — Isaac

I don't particularly. I don't think punishment says anything more than how punishment works. It's not a general theory of child development, just an example selected at random of how children begin making associations between behaviours and badness before, or rather as part of the process that, they have fully-developed rational models of morality.

That really is all there is to that, I don't understand how it got so misinterpreted, but I apologise for being confusing. — Isaac

No need dude, didn't mean it in an angry way. I'm pretty sure you've read more into what I was saying than I intended, and it sounds like I've misread what you were saying in response to boot. 'thappens :)

100% of moral agents should behave reciprocally, That's the point. — Luke

No, it's besides the point. This argument of yours is like responding "You're wrong, all bananas are curved" to the statement "Not all fruit is curved".

But, as the OP goes on to say, "100% of moral agents should behave reciprocally" is also wrong, for feasibility issues.

It does in psychology. When research methods are shown to be flawed, or problematic (such as Kohlberg's), the data coming out of that research is considered less robust than it was. — Isaac

Kohlberg's data is known to be limited. This is why his interpretation which generalised more than it could is faulty. (For instance, Kohlberg wrongly defends the timings of stages which are not seen in different cultures.) But you'll find that in most psychological research and it's done quite deliberately now. One has to control for variables not under study that might affect the outcomes. This is particularly important in small sample sizes. Gopnik is worse than Kohlberg at this in some ways. She typically uses very small sample sizes that are dominantly from one demographic but includes a small number from others, then only breaks the data down by gender. Kohlberg's data at least tells us a lot about Western white boys, being based on large samples of Western white boys. Gopnik's is harder to assess because she over-relies on small samples without controlling for some of the very variables that Kohlberg has been shown to invalidly generalise to.

Agreed, but the aspects of the ideas of Kohlberg relevant to this discussion are the degree and form of socialisation involved in the development of morality. — Isaac

Right, and less so Kohlberg's explanation or generalisation of it, which is not consistent with my description. So to the extent that I agree with Kohlberg that there exists a stage of child development of morality in which classical conditioning precedes the child's ability to morally rationalise -- which by no means excludes their demonstrated elementary empathetic capabilities -- what do you think exists in Gopnik's research that demonstrates this not correct? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

As I said, I only thought you might be interested in some newer research, nothing more. I really wasn't expecting such an odd exchange. — Isaac

I'm totally open to newer research; as I said, Gopnik and Meltzoff's ideas were what I had in mind for how children build moral models, and Meltzoff was one of several citations in that first review I sent you. It seems odd to me to infer from an additional reference to older, still cited theory that my awareness of child development ended in the 80s. I don't mean this in a "you hurt my feelings boohoo" way; it's just an odd response, although it would perhaps make more sense if you could state why you think Gopnik ruled out punishment as an element of moral development, or rule out that it precedes moral reasoning. There is up-to-date research you can read on this in APA's journals that demonstrate that this sort of associative learning not only occurs, but is effective.

Anyway... we've probably derailed the thread enough :rofl:

The "killer blow" is that you have excluded 1% of the population from consideration for being "qualitatively different": "Psychopaths are not outliers, they are qualitatively different." This means that 100% of the population under consideration are capable of practically follow the rule, making the rule categorically objective and not statistical. — Luke

If I consider a population of 99 fully-functioning social humans and one psychopath, 99% of them are moral agents, not 100%. That is, if I, as a fully-functioning social human (says I!) were to attest a rule that one should behave reciprocally, knowing that 1% of the population cannot do this, I can only expect a maximum of 99% to follow that rule, not 100%. I think you've gone off on a mental tangent that might make sense to you, but has nothing to do with the OP.

However, if it's categorical then it's not a matter of statistics or degree. — Luke

If 99% of the population can practically follow a rule, the rule can hold statistically, not objectively. This is the point you are countering but I'm not seeing what you think the killer blow is.

What is the cutoff for being amoral instead of immoral/moral? — Luke

To be immoral, you need to be capable of having moral agency. A chair is not immoral for tripping you up. A douchebag sticking his leg out to trip you up is.

A definite dividing line between those categories is not something "empirically observed" in nature. — Luke

However resolved the line is, it is there in nature. Chairs are not moral agents. Psychopaths are not moral agents. The reasons for both are the same: both lack a functioning sociobiological capacity.

Basic moral conceptions are ill-informed and often inaccurate approximations to sociobiological responses that we are otherwise unaware of.
— Kenosha Kid

Really? Was there a general consensus that sociality and altruism were bad prior to these scientific insights? — Luke

Do you think that sociobiological drives for empathy and altruism will only switch on once we're aware of them? That's quite a ridiculous interpretation, and incredibly anti-scientific.

You defined them as synonymous. — Luke

Where? In the OP I said that one underpins the other. I did not say they were equal; quite the opposite.

Your field is Physics I believe. Imagine if I cited some old ideas about black holes or quantum mechanics and you said "Oh there's been a lot of new developments since then", citing the latest research and I just said "Oh yeah, but these old guys are still cited so your new lot haven't done a very good job have they?". I think we both know that's not how science works. — Isaac

Data doesn't expire. Ideas are developed, rarely overthrown. That's not how science works, except on TV. No, if you referred to a 40 year old theory that is taught in college courses today, that is written about in books today, that is still regularly cited to this day, whose ideas are still present in the current vocabulary, I don't think I would patronize you about it even if I disagreed with it, especially if you were referring to it as common knowledge, and especially if you also cited later research. Rather, I'd cite something that I thought contradicted you. Wouldn't it be simpler and better to post something that's more up-to-date that contradicts what I wrote?

Then your assertion of the OP: "Even the nearest to a fundamental rule -- do not be a hypocrite -- is not objective but statistical" is false.

The near-fundamental rule of 'do not be a hypocrite' is not statistical, but categorical: one is either social or antisocial. Yet your claim is that this rule is "not objective but statistical". — Luke

Why do you believe that statistics is impossible with categorical data? I do statistics with categorical data all the time. My point was that one cannot consider a psychopath to be immoral but rather amoral since they mostly lack the practical possibility of engaging in reciprocal altruism. An objective moral imperative, such as "A person must always maximise happiness in the world" cannot apply to a person who cannot infer happiness in the world but his own with any other result than he maximising his own happiness, potentially at the greater expense of others.

The "fundamental rule" (or near-fundamental rule) in question here is 'do not be a hypocrite' which you have defined or equated with being social or with not being antisocial. How is being social "not the foundations of socialisation"? — Luke

Because the rule does not drive our behaviour; our behaviour gives rise the observance of a rule. That's the entire point of the OP: that social biology precedes moral theory. Basic moral conceptions are ill-informed and often inaccurate approximations to sociobiological responses that we are otherwise unaware of. The question then asked is: what sort of moral rules can we suggest knowing what we know about our natural history and biology? Those are the ones I propose. You're mistaking something derived in a less certain schema with something empirically observed in a more certain one. I do associate them: I do not equate them.

To which "error" are you referring? It's not just a typo; it appears to impact your argument that the fundamental rule of hypocrisy is statistical rather than objective. — Luke

Not at all, the difference between social and antisocial is categorical. Psychopaths are not outliers, they are qualitatively different. The word "moral" crept in from constantly typing "moral frame of reference" in that and the previous 116 drafts. You can accept that or not, it's no big deal.

So you define hypocrisy as failing to reciprocate altruism or as being antisocial? That's not a typical definition, to my knowledge, but okay. — Luke

It's the definition given in the OP.

If you're making the claim that morality has a natural explanation via a bottom-up scientific approach, in which you describe hypocrisy as a "fundamental rule" — Luke

No, I did not describe hypocrisy as a fundamental rule of naturalistic morality. If you read the OP in full (which, fair enough, is understandable if you don't), what is fundamental is the biological drives and capacities selected for by nature to improve our chances of survival. I then discuss how small hunter-gatherer groups would not need such rules to maintain coherence because such groups cannot sustain diverse socialisations. However if we from our post-agricultural, morality-obsessed vantage point wish to characterise how those drives and capacities work in conjunction with some constrained but otherwise arbitrary culture, those "fundamental rules" are how we might do it: i.e. they are the precursors of rational morality, not the foundations of socialisation.

Most of Gopnik's work, together with say, Tania Singer's and Karen Wynn is about overthrowing Kohlberg's stages. — Isaac

Terrible job done then, since Kohlberg is still cited regularly to this day and his terminology (e.g. "post-conventional") is well and truly in the mainstream. Variations on the same theme still go strong, through Hoffman's four-stage system which also has full empathetic development at adolescence, to Commons & Wolfsont's seven stages which more or less maps to Kohlberg's but with the emphasis on development of empathetic capacity rather than moral practise, still identifying the same key stages of non-systematic efforts to help, interpersonal development, and reciprocal altruism. Details have changed, much has been filled in, but at the end of the day data is data: babies do not slop out as fully formed moral agents; they arrive at that in stages.

Newborn babies show empathy, one year olds show signs of Theory of Mind etc... — Isaac

Yes, I mentioned the findings about babies to you already above. In the literature I've read, these are considered precursors to empathetic reactions: they are not the complete hardware and software ready and rolled out day one, and they're certainly not considered fully formed moral models. I don't think any of that is too surprising: we are biologically wired for empathy, altruism and detecting causality. It would be weird if child development went: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, EVERYTHING!

Thanks. I think you'd enjoy some of the more modern works on child development. There's been a considerable amount of progress since the likes of Rosenhan and Kohlberg, much of it up-turning the older models quite radically. Alison Gopnick has written a few good books 'The Scientist in the Crib' and 'The Philosophical Baby' are the best, I think. Alternatively I can give you some paper recommendations if you prefer the original sources. Either way, I think you'll find the developments interesting. — Isaac

Yeah I've read some of Gopnik and Meltzoff. The Scientist in the Crib was a recommendation I was going to give you, but I find books aren't usually very helpful in these sorts of discussions. Review articles are best I think, as they both summarise and cite the broadest range of research. Both Gopnik and Meltzoff have done work on how children develop causal inferences and how they construct the sorts of cognitive structures I was talking about, some of which is summarised in that first link, which I recommended more for its bibliography.

I'm not aware of any radical overthrow of Kohlberg's stages themselves. His interpretations are old hat, but the empirical data and the broad structure and concepts of his theory are still cited regularly today. It is, after all, just Pavlovian learning, something even babies are capable of, and which will always precede any learning based on later psychological development. But if you want a better citation, there's Schultz, Wright & Schleifer (1986) whose experiments also showed that knowledge that X leads to punishment precedes knowledge that X is immoral.

Agreed, but it it's your oxymoron, not mine. As you stated in the OP... — Luke

Mea culpa! It's a long OP. There will be errors, sorry.

Okay, but why is hypocrisy so terrible? — Luke

If you have no confidence that an altruistic deed will be reciprocated, there is no personal benefit in making them. Nature selected for altruistic drives precisely because what is good for the group is good for the self. But nature cannot guarantee outcomes. Group dominance is a purported selected-for trait that subdues hypocritical behaviour. Relativistically, it is "terrible" because we are built to treat it as such. Socially, it is terrible because it threatens the coherence of the social group. Naturally, it is terrible because it caused my ancestors to expend effort doing good deeds with no reciprocity, or, worse, with negative reciprocity, hurting their survival chances. If your question is Why is hypocrisy objectively terrible?, then the question has no meaning. As I've explained to Pfhorrest, it is unreasonable to revert to an objectivist idea of morality when investigating a scientific naturalist idea of the same: the two are incompatible on that level.

Firstly, I get the sense that's not how morality works. We, as a social group, don't agree - or, at least, we aren't acculturated to accept/believe - that psychopathic serial killers should be allowed their own individual moral frame of reference. — Luke

This is oxymoronic. If psychopaths have no emotional empathy, and no cognitive empathy reflex, their frame of reference cannot be considered moral. How would describe the moral frame of reference of a chair, or a bucket of water, or the sequence of letters 'KJJDFHSLKLWOHPPBCA'? Naming something is insufficient to make it a moral subject. As per the OP, empathy, altruism, intolerance of antisocial elements, and socialisation are the ingredients of human sociality, which in turn is the basis of morality.

Secondly, why is being a hypocrite such a terrible thing? Is it worse than killing people? — Luke

"hypocrite" here is as defined in the OP. It does not preclude the possibility that one hypocritical action can be worse than another. Killing people would usually be hypocritical, although there are exceptions (killing in self-defense, for instance, or killing Hitler's grandfather, or being as happy to be killed as to kill), which is why it's more useful to illustrate generalities than to endlessly refine specifics.

Thirdly, if the same moral truths are arrived at from either bottom-up or top-down approaches, then what's the difference? — Luke

That is a good question. There are strong similarities between Pfhorrest's account of his conceptions of morality and mine. And yet we have entirely opposite descriptions of it. Some examples of why I think the distinction is also important:

• Having the wrong metaphysics can yield claims that antisocial behaviour is social: Moral objectivity sits upon an object of faith. That there must exist a single-valued answer to every moral question has given rise to centuries of argument about what those answers are. These answers vary according to theory, and, since at root each is based on faith, no one theory can justify itself more strongly than any other. This weakens the case for a morality based on empathy and reciprocal altruism by reducing it to a subscription to an ideology. Facts are good when it comes to discerning between theories, such as the categorical imperative, utilitarianism, consequentialism, Kierkegaard's or Nietzsche's existentialism, errorism, individualism, socialism, social constructivism, or relativism. Being able to dismiss all theories depending on moral objectivity, good and bad, would be beneficial if we have the good covered by better theories.
• Scientific theories of morality may be predictive: For instance, in the baboon study cited by Isaac earlier, it was found that egalitarian subcultures reported lower stress levels than lower-rank subgroups in hierarchical cultures. The same is probably true in humans, and can be tested. For instance, a paradigm shift from hierarchical working structures to flatter structures or cooperatives might be beneficial to mental health.
• Understanding morality should help practise it: While I think we are naturally inclined to build models of non-existent objective moral reality, we can learn that differences between people from different backgrounds are just that: differences. I think that starting from a position of "that's different!" instead of "that's wrong!" would lead to better, healthier, more respectful relationships between people of different cultures.
• Understanding trends: Because moral objectivity cannot effect anything we know (since we cannot know what the objective truth values are), it cannot advise on the interpretation of data. (What we've seen in this thread is the repeated application of 'what's better in my frame is objectively better'.) We see long-term trends (as enumerated by diehard optimist Steven Pinker) and short-term trends (as evidenced by the to-ing and fro-ing of nationalism versus internationalism) and I think we can better interpret these if we know where they originate from.

Just out of interest, what sources are you relying on for this take? — Isaac

I didn't note sources, sorry, but I'll do what I can.

As I understand it, our original conceptions of good and bad in childhood are based on what feels good abd bad. Two gamechangers are the development of empathetic responses, which I have read are astonishingly profound in many cases, and the ability to identify agency. 'It is bad for me to cut my finger' becomes 'It is bad for Alice to cut her finger' and 'Billy cutting my finger was bad' which become 'Billy cutting Alice's finger is bad' and finally 'Billy is bad for cutting Alice's finger'. It is one of many model-building capacities we simply exercise without the necessary intervention of reason. — Kenosha Kid

So the first part of this is, I think, uncontroversial: children show signs of distress well before they show signs of responding to others' distress. [There are exceptions. Babies react with distress to the sound of other babies' distress. It's worth remembering that some phenomena, like babies crying, are inevitable and can therefore be selected for, while others, such as Billy pulling Alice's hair, are not.] The magnitude of this development of what amounts to the total of cognitive and emotional empathy, as well as the development of empathetic responses, are summarised here: http://local.psy.miami.edu/faculty/dmessinger/c_c/rsrcs/rdgs/emot/McDonald-Messinger_Empathy%20Development.pdf which has a good starting-point bibliography for more reading.

In terms of how children build social models of morality, you can take a look at social learning theory, such as Aronfreed J. Conduct and Conscience or Rosenhan D. Some origins of concern for others (1969). Old stuff, but still regularly cited. (Probably best to look at review papers that cite those.)

This extends to socialisation. Punishment is an apt example: Drawing the crayon mural on mum and dad's bedroom wall felt great, but the judgement, the yelling, perhaps the hitting afterwards felt bad, so drawing on people's walls becomes bad. We're forced to identify ourselves as the agents of the bad thing, say sorry, be told we are bad. This too is added to our mental model of morality. — Kenosha Kid

So this is stage 1 of Kohlberg's moral development schema: pre-conventional morality, in which moral rules are implemented pragmatically to avoid punishment. (Obviously moral rules can also be implemented to increase rewards, however, as Daniel Kahneman has pointed out in his psychology of risk work, we are much more risk-averse than reward-oriented.) Kohlberg's model is quite old, but it's still relevant, i.e. still cited across the board in papers on child development of morality. It's also very broad, so more modern research (such as that above) should hold more weight.

What I don’t get is how you get from us having those intuitions to any manner of evaluating moral claim, UNLESS it’s simply that any way anyone is inclined to morally evaluate anything is correct simply by virtue of them being inclined to evaluate it that way. — Pfhorrest

As I understand it, our original conceptions of good and bad in childhood are based on what feels good abd bad. Two gamechangers are the development of empathetic responses, which I have read are astonishingly profound in many cases, and the ability to identify agency. 'It is bad for me to cut my finger' becomes 'It is bad for Alice to cut her finger' and 'Billy cutting my finger was bad' which become 'Billy cutting Alice's finger is bad' and finally 'Billy is bad for cutting Alice's finger'. It is one of many model-building capacities we simply exercise without the necessary intervention of reason.

This extends to socialisation. Punishment is an apt example: Drawing the crayon mural on mum and dad's bedroom wall felt great, but the judgement, the yelling, perhaps the hitting afterwards felt bad, so drawing on people's walls becomes bad. We're forced to identify ourselves as the agents of the bad thing, say sorry, be told we are bad. This too is added to our mental model of morality.

From that model we can draw conclusions about our behaviour and that of others. To us these seem at least approximately objective, that we have learned some things about the world. Until we meet someone with a different model.

So... if there were gods, and they did something that made us inclined to evaluate things certain ways, would that then make them the phenomena underlying our morality? Or, if they didn’t actually MAKE us inclined, but just gave orders and offered rewards and punishment, would that be enough? — Pfhorrest

I've never been religious, you're better placed than I am to describe how such people think it works. It never made much sense to me. I gather some people believe that the Bible is the source of our morals, which I assume means that pertaining to what is moral or not: the ten commandments, the teachings of Christ. The underlying reality would presumably be God's divine plan. 'Good' is then good-for-the-plan by definition. To ask whether an element of this is really 'good' just because it's part of the divine plan is erroneous, since that already assumes that good is other than that which is good in the theory entertained. This is merely a mangled way of saying that 'good' is actually something else.

If your meta-ethics isn’t capable of handling the true claim that Hitler did something wrong (even though he and his society thought it was right), then that looks like a pretty serious problem. — Pfhorrest

Again same problem. You assume there must exist objective truth values for moral claims about Hitler's actions, and measure any other moral theory with respect to that. But a different theory to yours is only obliged to account for what we see, not what you think.

In fact Hitler would be classified as antisocial. Whatever frame of reference Hitler measured 'good' in, it could not be a moral one, since it was not based on any human social capacity. (One could argue he had some sociality, given his welfare reforms, but then again not, since he sent millions of Germans to die for no reason.) Part of our sociality is how we deal with antisocial elements. In more natural circumstances, Hitler would have been attacked, exiled or murdered. His safety to proceed with exceptional antisocial ambition was a result of power. Power is a perversion of sociality, in which the better instincts and older, more social cultures are subdued, overruled, corrupted and destroyed for the good-for-me.

But that's not the real issue for you I feel. If everyone in the world ever except for Hitler and his thugs agreed that Hitler was immoral, and if the better angels of their natures were really individual empathy and drives for reciprocity and natural intolerance toward the Hitlers of the world, that would not be sufficient to capture how immoral Hitler was. What I suspect you want is not a multitude, even an infinitude, but something singular: a one off, infinitely authoritative 'Hitler was evil'. I think that's understandable because he's an extreme case, and I think that understanding what morality is at root should satisfy that: he was categorically immoral imo.

Superb post!

23 days later: "And another thing..." :scream:

This seems to be getting at the core of the contention here. What would it mean for gods to be the phenomena underlying our morality? Would it be enough for there to simply exist gods, who issued commands? Or would those commands have to have some kind of magical imperative force that psychically inclines people to obey them? — Pfhorrest

But it is of course a nonsense claim. As I said, the proposition is absurd. You may as well ask me what it would mean for morality to be made of cheese. I assume the religious answer would involve souls and divine plans somehow.

I think this line of inquiry will really help tease out what you think a claim that something is moral even means (which is the topic of this thread). Does it just mean people are inclined to act that way, so anything people tend to do definitionally is moral? Does it just mean people are inclined to approve of other people acting that way, so anything people tend to approve of definitionally is moral? Or what? — Pfhorrest

If you want to understand a bottom-up theory of morality, you have to ask what moral questions look like in such a theory, and why, and whether that corresponds to observation (empiricism). Some examples:

- is 'the cold-blooded murder of ginger people is good' true? What moral reference frame can that possibly be true in? None.
- is 'wearing a cauliflower leaf on your head on a Tuesday is good' true? Can there be a moral frame of reference for this? Yes. Is there a real person, culture, group with that perspective? No.
- is 'silence is good' true? Can there be a moral frame of reference for this? Yes. Is there a real person, culture, group with that perspective? Yes.

Reasonable questions might be: does this describe the world? are there situations where it doesn't hold? can we understand our moral ideas this way? Unreasonable questions are: who is right and wrong? what makes their good good? since these assume objectivism in a relativistic theory.

:up: :heart: :strong: :100: :clap: :sparkle:

All the good emoji! First things first... how to convince people that cooperation is not a commie plot?

There is an inherent inadequacy hereabouts in the language being used to account for morality. — creativesoul

Ah. So by:

Maintaining a social norm(rule of behaviour) is acting to do so, which is endeavoring in a goal oriented task of maintaining some norm for the sake of it. — Kenosha Kid

it should be inferred that:

Not all continued practice of some social norm amounts to "maintaining" them. — creativesoul

and not that the person maintaining the rule is "endeavoring" to do so, but rather that someone may be "endeavoring" to make them do so.

Yes, I agree, your language is sloppy. You seem very prone to making ambiguous statements in which the least likely interpretation ends up being the correct one. Which is fine, except you're quite rude about clarifying your ambiguities for some strange reason. Anyway, good knowing you. I'm sure you're busy.

Social-vs-antisocial is a first-order difference (“what should we do?”). Fundamentalism-vs-science-vs-relativism is a second-order difference (“how do we figure it out?”). Any of the second-order methodologies could in principle reach any of the first-order conclusions. — Pfhorrest

Fundamentalism is an answer to the question "How do we figure it out?" Fundamentalism is itself a strict adherence to dogma about what we should and should not do.

I don’t “believe in moral objects” at all, which again makes me think you’re not understanding what my position even if. — Pfhorrest

I didn't mean it as analogous to physical objects; I merely meant whatever elements are in the morality you believe to be objective.

I just think it’s possible for one moral claim to be more or less correct than another, in a way that doesn’t depend on who or how many people make that claim. — Pfhorrest

Yes, and you've described the methodology (ish) but not the verification stage: how you know that the refinement you implement is parallel to an objectively better moral claim.

Scientists aren’t using a different kind of knowing, they’re just better at using the ordinary kind. — Pfhorrest

But, as I've said, it is not the kind of knowing that marks natural phenomena as distinct from moral realism: it is what they get out of it separates them. Science wouldn't exist unless phenomena could be modelled with predictive theories, such as the speed with which a ball dropped from the Tower of Pisa strikes the ground. What kind of empiricism tells you that a moral claim "X is preferable to Y" is likely true, such that it can impact your persona beliefs?

So if gods actually existed, would divine command theory be a fine meta-ethics, and the Euthyphro a bad argument, because “is what the gods command actually good?” is asking for “real magic” when the priests are showing you the only “magic“ there actually is, these commands from the gods? — Pfhorrest

That wasn't the easiest to parse, but I think I can safely say yes: if gods were the actual phenomena underlying our morality, it would be meaningless to ask if what the gods command is itself good. And if that seems an absurd conclusion, check the quality of the proposition :rofl: I believe this is commonly espoused among the devout, and was the basis of Kierkegaard's "Knight for God" notion in which the good of a command from God is always good, even if it seems evil to those around you.

Even within your bio-social relativism, what if the body and society give different directives? Which should we listen to and why? — Pfhorrest

Yes, body and society conflict. The example I gave before was Abu Ghraib, in which soldiers who felt that what they were doing was very wrong did it anyway because that's what the group did, which is a powerful incentive (fear of retribution or outcasting are long-standing socio-biological fears, presumably meant do deter us from antisocial behaviour - boy, did that backfire). This is one of the effects I see in living in large, co-mingled groups: cultures become diverse, leaving the field open for a power-grab, in this case as in many by violent thugs.

In smaller groups, culture is more homogeneous, making it unlikely that you will encounter someone cultural different from yourself, so the problem should not arise... in principle.

I've just realised I am rewriting Genesis! Small social groups being the natural state of moral ignorance allowed by homogeneity, with our fall from grace related to an awareness of good and evil thrust upon us. If I can just work in a snake...

I wrote "almost entirely" because there are undoubtedly some beliefs which are part of one's initial worldview that they do not adopt wholesale. — creativesoul

Ah. Thanks for resolving the ambiguity.

Welp. There go my aspirations of being the Stalin of Political Correctness. — fdrake

Yeah, you're outted now :rofl:

as we seem to agree comparisons ""X is preferable to Y" is true" have better evidentiary status
...
On the other hand, comparative evaluations tend not to have that universality to them; they contrast within the context of evaluation rather than evaluate over all such contexts. — fdrake

I need to check I follow you correctly. The perceived additional context-dependence is that just because X > Y, it doesn't follow that Y is bad, right? Because obviously X > Y itself is not more contextualised than "Y is bad" or "X is good", just more forgiving of the less preferred element of that context. The extent to which this can be any more objective, even if forgiving, still raises the same question: if culture A prefers X to Y and culture B prefers Y to X, and both cultures are self-consistently social within themselves, who is to validate that X > Y?

"keeping one's head down is better than murdering gingers" is different, because the two are not just quantitatively different, which requires a metric which will always practically speaking be subjective, but they are qualitatively different: one is social (although one could argue that it's freeloader behaviour); the other is antisocial. The dividing line is categorical.

I think that in the past, before cultures collided often enough for it to matter, one could perhaps argue that "helping Stig and Steg is better than just helping Stig". But I think back then, if there was a choice to be made, the thinker would justifiably assume he was not the only one available to help Steg.

My intuitions regarding moral claims is realist for the same reasons as I think knowledge is contextual; we can say something is right or wrong and be right in doing so so long as the context is appropriate. — fdrake

This might be a good time to ask, if I haven't already: what is the difference between "x is objectively true in context A", "y is objectively true in context B" and "the truth of x and y are relative: true/false in A, false/true in B", since clearly a relationship exists between x and A and between y and B? (x, y here may be inequalities.)

Your apprehension here is based upon a self-defeating, untenable notion of what counts as a worldview. One need not have a view about all elements of the world in order to have a worldview. They are all limited... incomplete. — creativesoul

And yet you said "almost entirely". That was what I was questioning. (I misquoted it as "completely" in my response.)

Yet that seems vulnerable to the same Euthyphro-esque attacks as Divine Command Theory: is what culture says is good good just because they say it is? (if so that seems rather arbitrary and unjustified) or do they say it's good because it actually is? (if so then it's not them saying it that makes it good and we're back to where we started: what actually makes it good?). Subjectivism also seems to undermine a lot of the point of cognitivism in the first place: if everybody's differing moral claims are all true relative to themselves, then it doesn't seem like any of them are actually true at all, they're just different opinions, none more right or wrong than the others. — Pfhorrest

This reminds of Dennett's dig about "real magic": "real magic" isn't real, doesn't exist; the magic that's real (that you can see on stage) isn't "real magic". He was making this in response to dualists who insist that, whatever scientists discover about the relationship between brain and consciousness, i.e. the consciousness that's real, that isn't "real consciousness".

"is what culture says is good good..?" is another example: it insists upon the existence of an external measure of the good of a cultural good. Most of the difficulties described in the OP arise from that insistence, since they deal with "real morality" rather than morality in the real world.

I don’t want to be on record as claiming that. Biology may take care of escaping, you know, ....run like hell....but that’s not the same as understanding how not be in a position to have to escape. — Mww

For sure. :up:

There being a black and white of white and wrong actions is a poor description of moral conduct; tagging moral actions as purely right or purely wrong is part of the game of moral conduct. I don't think trying to come up with meta principles that filter actions into WRONG and RIGHT bags is a particularly justified endeavor, given that the pretense to universality is already part of the clusterfuck of moral conduct; it stays in the territory of moral conduct. — fdrake

*black and right :rofl:

I am not pointing fingers at absolutism in particular though. One can add a finite number of contingencies to a moral rule and still find disagreements that, were they between real people, could be put down to cultural differences. At the absurd limit, one could add further contingencies to uphold both. At the other limit, an objective moral rule could uphold one or none. At either end, moral objectivity fails to makes itself known.

But, I still think it is possible to cultivate moral wisdom in that territory - that we can learn to be more right or at least less wrong in how we treat others. I'd guess you'd agree? — fdrake

Yes, I think the schema I proposed in the OP could be better worded along these lines. It is much easier to state that something is objectively (contingently) immoral than it is to state that something is objectively morally. Killing gingers for fun is immoral: it is antisocial, hypocritical behaviour that causes harm for personal gratification and fails to demonstrate human social capabilities for empathy and altruism.

Perhaps a simple test case is the straightforward act of helping someone. At first approximation, one might say: while it is not immoral to keep one's head down and expect nothing of anyone, it is more moral to go out of one's way to help someone. Again, we can consider two cultures, A and B, each perfectly socially self-consistent individually, but utterly opposed to one another in every respect. Is it moral for an outsider to help A and not B? Depends on your point of view. If you were socialised by culture A, yes. If by B, no. If by another, it depends but mostly yes. One could apply this to the question of, for instance, whether to help an abortionist or a disruptive pro-life protest. (Just to clarify: I have my own moral frame of reference and it's a pro-choice frame. But I do not think pro-lifers are immoral.)

I'm coming at it from the perspective of imploding the distinction between rational and non-rational conduct - to replace it with a weighting. — fdrake

Sure. The functionalist in me is saying that these distinguished operators are doing different things with different information though, and one of them is dealing with more raw data than the other, although I agree to the same end. If it helps to reclarify, I take no issue with the role of rationality after it has received the data: I do think rationality is vital. I just don't think it's the reliable source of our knowledge of what morality is that older-school rationalists like Mww claim it to be. It seems overwhelmingly likely to me that the non-rational remainder of us plays the actual role of what a priori knowledge was supposed by rationalists to be. Beyond that, I grant reason most of the credit any rationalist would, not just in determining what the moral outcome and means to realise that outcome are in any human situation, but in determining how an outcome can be considered moral or not in our current environment. It is necessarily rational, because stimuli-response behaviours cannot deal with this sort of ambiguity, that is: it is insufficient to feel what is right.

That aspect of the OP was aimed squarely at the notion of reason having a priori moral knowledge. However it is precisely the necessity of reason -- that ambiguity that our non-rational selves cannot deal with -- that advises my relativistic argument. I have a ways to go on this, but I think that our instinctive interpretations of what we are doing when scrambling around this moral space are inaccurate, commensurately so with the inaccuracy of our rational conceptions of moral knowledge. Beyond the limits that we all probably agree on (for me, the social/antisocial boundary), I think there's a sort of politician's fallacy about moral judgement. It is not the case that we have an incomplete view of the moral universe and must refine our views as our experience dictates. Rather, we have inconsistent views and must relax some, tighten others, move others, in order to figure out a way to fit in a new environment that contains those sorts of experiences lest our consciences cause us pain or our peers reject us. It is a practical issue using a practical tool, not something that needs to be subscribed to or that one can fall short of in any objective way. When we take on new experiences, it is part of reason's job to determine whether we can be flexible, or whether this would make us hypocrites too. Obviously this does not always work, or else antisocial ideologies would not exist in the first place, e.g. radicalisation could not occur.

How has nature justified belief in an objective existence? Was it via rationalism or reason itself? — Luke

By demonstrating herself to be accurately described, in part, by scientific models. If there was nothing "out there" underlying the phenomena we observe, we are left with needing a much more complex explanation for why those phenomena behave like there is.

That’s not the first and second order I’m talking about. The first order I’m talking about is “what should we do?” Answers to that are certainly often informed by the drives you mention. But the second order is “how do we figure out what we should do?” — Pfhorrest

Ah, mea culpa. In that case, it occurs to me that I perhaps misunderstood your original "where are the oughts" as meaning "where are the moral imperatives" where you possibly meant "how do we get from drives to deciding on what to do?" If this is the case, then I think the majority of cases come down to reason, even in small social groups. However, this is not reasoning what 'good' is, but how we make the good thing happen. No argument from me that reason is chiefly involved in the latter, or that, these days, it is chiefly involved in the former.

Imagine a world where there was an objective morality as you mean it and moral claims were predictive as you mean it.
...
All evidence is “subjective” in that sense. It is being shared in common between everyone that makes it converge toward the objective. Again, exact same scenario with empiricism and reality as with hedonism and morality. — Pfhorrest

My old responses to why both of these points are invalid still stand.

The fundamentalist would call it relativist, just like religious fundamentalists call physical sciences relativist too. But then the postmodern social constructivist, a kind of truth relativist, claims that the physical sciences are just another totalizing dogma just like the fundamentalist’s religion is.

Both the fundamentalist and the social constructivist fail to see how the physical sciences are not just the opposite between those two, but a completely different third option. You seem to me to be in the analogous place of the social constructivist, with regards to morality: you’re rightly against the fundamentalist, but missing that my kind of position is not over there with him, but also is not over with your relativism (as the fundamentalist would claim I am), but is rather a completely different third option. — Pfhorrest

Fundamentalism is not necessarily antisocial. In fact, homogeneous socialisation is kind of fundamentalist in a way, although not necessarily deliberately so (which would involve a power relation, which in turn would undermine reciprocity and require larger group sizes). So, no, my argument is very much against objectivism, not fundamentalism. I do not labour under the impression that you know what the moral objects you believe in are.

it would appear that humans have two very different sets of imperatives for doing the same thing: one they are born with, another they must discover for themselves.
— Kenosha Kid

That’s not at all like anything I’m proposing.

My moral methodology is an admonition ... to instead pay closer attention to and expand the range of that experience we innately turn to, to find that greater understanding of morality. — Pfhorrest

Seems remarkably similar. I guess it is the word 'imperative" that makes the difference. I'm happy to reduce the strength of this to "truths". Either way, I don't object to the description of learning from experience, deliberately or otherwise. Encountering different people with different cultures, histories, local laws, etc. requires us to rationalise, as per the OP.

However, three things:

A) I do not think this changes our concept of 'good', based on our underlying social drives. We can learn of new ways to harm, of new cultures that require different consideration, of new scenarios where the desired outcomes and practical realisations of them have not previously been met, but this is applying the same moral principle to new situations, not uncovering some refined idea of 'good' or 'goods'. The thing it will uncover is that my moral sense is sometimes incompatible with that of others, from which alone we see no justification for an objective answer to a moral question.

B) Who judges whether a refinement to your moral readiness is good or bad? You do. How? Within your moral frame of reference. There is no guarantee even in a steady state moral universe that you are making progress on all issues. You might be getting worse!

C) There is no obvious termination point for new cultures, new harms, new frames of reference, bar the extinction of our species or a return to our natural environments.That is the way of genes and memes. The biosphere did not start diverse and naturally get thinner, although mankind is doing its best to make sure that happens. The potential for refinement would be effectively infinite and arbitrary, with, rather than a progression from ignorance to enlightenment, a moving staircase from almost-current to outdatedness. That certainly fits with typical testimony of people who started young and wanting to make the world a better place, became the people who benefited from whatever world they both inherited and helped forge, to eventually bemoaning a world gone to the feral dogs they once in fact were. Beyond the overall trends that I do think are manifestations of our extending empathy and altruism to those who are not like us, I would put money on the fact that we're mostly just trying and failing to keep up with a moving and arbitrary goalpost, because, within that ambiguity, there are lots of ways of being wrong, and no one way to be right: a moral problem of expansive multiculturalism (speaking as a multiculturalist).

My perspective on that is: we do react in some way, and reason is involved somehow. Well, more accurately cognition. The qualitative distinction between the functioning styles of system 1 and system 2 in that approach doesn't preclude both functioning at the same time - it's more a question of weighting, no? — fdrake

It's an interesting question, touching on something @Mww asked earlier. If I were to stab at an answer (and you should definitely attack this with big sticks as there's a strong potential for argument ab rectum here), it would be this: reason is invoked to solve particular problems, and provided with evidence that may or may not be relevant to those problems. This seems counterintuitive because we think we're always thinking, but I suspect that's a symptom of the fact that we lack immediate problems to solve that are not reliant on cognition. Survival is not usually an issue for us, so we are left with the general problem of how to occupy our minds.

Take that with a pinch of salt or, better yet, as an example of how one could answer the question. In terms of parallel processing and interaction, the brain is a parallel processor and one of the things among others it can manage simultaneously is algorithmic problem-solving and quality control: system 1 appears to send some of its conclusions to system 2, which then must take credit for the solution since it is unaware of system 1, and it also seems to send problems to system 2 to which system 1 cannot offer trial solutions, and it seems to send a great deal of evidence, more than will be useful.

And since it's a question of weighting, reason's involved to a greater or lesser extent depending on the act. This is why I find it strange that you're focussing on moral behaviour being non-cognitive when both systems are involved. Instances of action based on moral principles or conceptually relating to norms of conduct are in part deliberative. — fdrake

I think it's a coup getting someone to agree that some of it is non-cognitive. But to answer your question, I think the rational mind is a practical tool for decision-making. I am not absenting it from making decisions about moral behaviour: I am simply saying it is not the origin of its own conceptions of good and evil. That origin seems to me to fall into two camps: intrinsic, selected-for biological drives and reactions, and our socialisation from childhood.

My perspective on what you've said is you're throwing the baby (reason-cognition-deliberation-planning) out with the bathwater (reducing following moral principles to a certain homeostasis of non-cognitive sentiment). I just don't see good reasons to split cognition away from sentiment when we're talking about morality, that usually comes up in contexts when we're already trying to find out what best to do. Cognition's involved in that. — fdrake

I'm really not sure whether you're talking about in small social groups or since. If the former, at the end of the day nature cannot select for behaviours that are derived rationally. A given characteristic must actually help the genome survive if it is to be part of that genome; it can't rely on us thinking it through. Fortunately, as we've established, the rational mind is a lazy quality-checker. If you're talking about since, no, I do think reason is probably always necessary for moral decision-making, for the reason that that self-same biology that gives us our sense of good is unfit for our current environment, and reason must pick up the tab.

I don't see not crediting reason for every human decision as throwing the baby out with the bathwater; it's simply giving credit where credit is due, rather than giving credit to reason by default. There is plenty of evidence that much more is going on in our brains than our conscious minds are aware of. If you're comfortable with that, I don't see anything controversial in the idea of social responses having a non-rational basis.

I'd side with you that for the most part moral decisions are made transparently (absorbed coping-system 1 functioning-prethetically), that is they are already made by what we're already doing - but in cases where we're trying to find out what's right, cognition is way more involved and I don't think it's appropriate to call these moral problem solving behaviours non-cognitive. — fdrake

Now, yes, because "what's right" is ambiguous. In small social groups with homogenous socialisations, "what's right" was likely not ambiguous at all, again on the basis that, if it were, reason would have been essential to making social decisions and, if reason were essential to making decisions, nature could not select for social characteristics. Whatever our nature is doing before we consider the question, that is, to my eyes, the basis for our conceptions of good and evil. Nowadays we must rely on reason even for determining "what's right", because generally we're dealing with people that cannot be relied on to respond to social stimuli in the same way we do.

It's like moral conduct is deficient since it's not objective (merely subjective), but it's actually both if you propagate all those distinctions through each other using an assumed structural symmetry. — fdrake

No, I don't think moral conduct is deficient because of the lack of moral objectivity. I think moral objectivity is a deficient description of moral conduct. Moral conduct seems to be taking care of itself.

How would you draw the conclusions you have without your framing of the subject/object distinction? You've given a bird's eye view from the perch of the objective, I'm not sure you can perch there when talking about human conduct - it always varies with human conduct, since it is human conduct. — fdrake

It is precarious, and worthy of a hammering. I proceeded on the basis that, at root, our moral conceptions derive from our social instincts (implemented as described in the OP). Morality is an abstraction, generalisation and approximation to what we do naturally, which is social altruism, empathy, and intolerance of non-reciprocal behaviour, presented to our rational minds as feelings mistaken for a priori knowledge.

Any one who behaves antisocially -- i.e. without empathy or with hypocrisy -- cannot therefore be behaving morally. This does not define a set of objective moral values, but does place limits on what sort of behaviour can and cannot be considered moral, i.e. considered consistent with human sociality. Within those bounds lies any empathetic, self-consistent set of values, which will be myriad, with no basis for saying that any are incorrect within or without that set of values (moral frame of reference).

The test case I suggested in another thread was of indoctrination of children into religions. To me, this is unambiguously immoral: the child is harmed by the process, with a reduced ability to discern (what we are justified in assuming is) reality from fantasy. I would not raise my child in a faith, I am grateful that I was not raised in a faith, and I can't but judge someone who raises their child in a faith. However I am also aware that, from a religious person's point of view, raising a child in a faith is a good thing to do, e.g. for the sake of their soul. A typical religious person would raise their child in their faith, is grateful they were raised in that faith, and deems it good that others raise their children in that faith, and perhaps bad when others don't.

Both frames of reference are self-consistent, that is: neither are hypocritical, and both consider the fates of others with care. From a strictly moral perspective, there is no reason to hold one as more moral than the other: that would be arrogance, or moral totalitarianism. The conflict might in principle be resolvable, but not on moral grounds. Any shift in the rightness of the action in question would require one person to be convinced of or against theological beliefs instead. But within our respective, broader, non-moral contexts, our moral frames of reference are each robust, and each person should feel justified in pursuing aims consistent with those frames of references. In other words, within the bounds of social behaviour, moral truths are relative, not objective.

Would you agree that when you're saying "genetic is statements", you have in mind a broader category concerning body and mind functions? Or do you actually want to do the reduction of non-cultural is-statements - which I take are is statements that do not concern cultural stuff but do still concern humans - to statements about genetics? — fdrake

I had in mind our genetic bias toward certain social behaviours and capacities, but I don't see these as qualitatively different from any other part of our evolutionary history. What did you have in mind?

(If human is in configuration X) then (human should do Y)

IE, despite the losses of information there are still true imperatives of that form.

EG: "If a human wants to avoid losing the functioning of their hands then said human should not hold their hands in a fire for 15 minutes" — fdrake

Yes, as I said to Pfhorrest, I don't mean this to extend to all normatives. In fact, I argue that normative rationalism is, in the case of morality in our current environment, inevitable and necessary. However, sticking with animal facts :) this is a perfectly true but redundant use of language. In practise, I do not wonder whether to keep my hand in the fire for 15 minutes. If I am, say, drunk enough to think that I have become superhuman, my body, with no rational input from me, will disillusion me of this matter within a second or two, and the resultant behaviour -- to remove my hand from the fire -- will likewise require no input from the drunkard in charge.

This is equivalent to the redundancy I spoke of earlier. Yes, one might wish to, as Pfhorrest invited me to, derive a moral philosophy from our instincts that holds social behaviour amenable to reciprocal altruism as objectively 'good' as well as good-for-the-group, good-for-us (indirectly) or good-for-survival-of-our-ancestors, but that would be as redundant as deriving that it is bad to put your hand in a fire for 15 minutes if you wish to avoid losing it. Nature got you covered there.

"do humans want to avoid losing the functioning of their hands"? is a question you could answer with a survey. It might also turn out that there are contextual defeaters, like a would you rather game: "would you rather lose functioning of your hands or kill everybody else on the planet?" - that still facilitates the imperative being true so long as the context isn't a defeating context. So it's not necessarily true, it's contingently true for all plausible scenarios, and if you're gonna base moral principles on human behaviour and wants, it's going to output contingently true statements at best anyway. — fdrake

This is fine, and, while the example is not something I would consider a moral question, there are, in my view, moral claims that are contingently true in all moral frames of reference (just as, say, rest mass is the same in all inertial frames of reference) . Behaviours and beliefs justifying them can be antisocial or social, and, in the schema of the OP, only the social ones underpin our ideas of morality (though the antisocial ones are certainly relevant). Moral frames of reference are based on our social apparatus of empathy and reciprocal altruism and must be self-consistent to be social. A frame in which it is okay for me to kill you for fun but not okay for you to kill me for fun is by definition not a moral frame of reference (and any frame of reference in which the rest mass is different cannot be an inertial frame). In short, we can place limits on what kind of frames of reference can be considered moral at all.

It is to this extent that I believe we can a) understand our conceptions of morality and tendency to generalisation them and b) since we must face moral problems rationally most of the time, derive, if not a complete set of moral truths, boundaries on what is considered universally immoral. [EDIT: and the value of liberalism within those bounds]

In my experience, deliberation and planning often plays a pretty big role in evaluating how best to treat people. You've already got reason in analysed territory, and it already links to emotions and sensations. Seems strange to me to make such a reduction away from reasoning when you've thrown reasoning in there - presumably justified by it being "subjective" when it concerns human norms (more later). — fdrake

I think this is one of those cases (and I see it in my discussions with Pfhorrest here as well) where we probably assume very different kinds of thinking of each other based on our respective histories, me coming from a non-philosophical formal education (albeit one I approached out of philosophical interest). You seem to be characterising my position as somehow wanting to limit the role of reason and looking for evidence to support it. As a person with a background where reason was pretty crucial, that really isn't the case.

I prefer to start from the evidence and see what makes sense. Where the evidence suggests that, in encountering another individual, we have unconscious neurological and physiological reactions to that encounter which bias us toward or away from certain behaviours on the whole, clearly that is not describing a rational process. Further, it is clear that such a process has no non-contingent need of rational outsourcing, hence my supposition that 'good' did not need to be rationalised in small social groups. We still have use of reason even within this limit upon ambiguity since we must sometimes reason a) what the desired outcome is, and b) how to realise that outcome. (Not always the case: I do not believe, as Mww does, that my ancestors had to bother reasoning whether escaping a sabre-tooth tiger was efficacious or how to do so: biology got us covered there too).

Clearly we do exist now with a need to rationalise those drives and biases: people we meet are largely strangers and have important cultural differences about social behaviour, and we exist within power relations (neglecting neither the chicken nor the egg). So I do believe that discerning what is 'good' in a given situation demands reason: I just don't believe that rational concepts about said drives and biases are fundamental, accurate, or have primacy. That we know what we know about those biological drives comes from reason, so this is an assault purely on rationalism, not reason itself, which is pretty great actually, if over-credited.

Despite that any representation knowledge varies in a trivial way with human belief (it's knowledge! It's normative!), and even the content depends upon language for its articulation even if it's true - or a great approximation to the truth. But subjective stuff has that property too, it depends upon articulation and human behaviour for its production... Any facts about human behaviour have to vary with human behaviour, so that would make them subjective - whereas more precisely they're contingent and about humans. — fdrake

Well, we actually hit upon the ultimate contingency (was that you or Pfhorrest? I forget): "X is objectively true... if you agree." That's as good a definition of relativism as any.

I come to this from quite a different angle (again!). We are substantially limited in how we can know the world, trapped by our own subjectivities if you will, and it is therefore important for claims to objectivity to be well justified. Subjective-by-default is my position. I am sufficiently impressed by the regularity, predictability and generality of material phenomena that I am quite convinced of an objective existence for what is around me (including my body, the world, you at the other end of this internet connection), even if I cannot know how well my subjective conceptions of them represent their true nature, and I see nothing like this in morality.

I think this is perhaps unusual: we are naturally inclined to look for the generally true in subjectively received evidences, and so the default seems to be an assumption of objective reality until proven wrong. Naturally I'm no better, but I do think we can learn not to trust claims of objectivity, and that this would save a lot of bother defending daft positions against evidence. (That's not a dig about this thread: I was thinking of the persistence of e.g. beliefs in objective space and time). As I said to Pfhorrest, if anyone can justify the objective existence of moral truths in the same way that nature has justified belief in an objective existence, the OP is wrong, and I am stumped as to what the evidence in hand can possibly mean.

Is there a meaningful distinction that we can draw and maintain between something or other being believed to be, hence sincerely called "good" and being good? I think there is. The historical facts and current facts support that answer quite well. Our moral belief, as humans, has evolved. Morality has evolved. There's no good reason to claim otherwise, and/or deny that that evolution continues. So, sometimes we're wrong, and what we once thought to be good is no longer believed to be.
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I'm not claiming that believing and/or saying that something is good, makes it so. I'm not saying that what's good is relative to the believer in any way that makes moral claims true by virtue of being believed to be. Rather, I'm saying that we come to acquire knowledge of what's good over time with trial and error, and I am only pointing out that we've made and will continue to make our fair share of mistakes along the way. — creativesoul

I actually agree with your interpretation of the trend; it is a point I have made myself. However... you must be aware that local, temporary moral trends can occur in different directions. We have a growing trend currently toward nationalism, for instance. By your reckoning, then, nationalism must be more morally good, since you assume that, whatever morality is, we tend toward it with time.

I think there are actually strong reasons for holding that, in many ways, we are more moral than before; essentially it reduces to the hypocrisy argument of the OP. I also think there are strong reasons for believing that this trend should occur: we are physically biased toward social behaviour, and intolerant of hypocritical behaviour (viz. slave-trading or -ownership, wars for resources, etc.). I find reassurance in that.

However it is only by local, temporary standards that we judge earlier local, temporary standards to be less moral. We might yet find a very different optimum in which good-for-me outweighs good-for-the-world in all respects, and things like environmental action might be considered immoral for causing harm and barring help in the good-for-me moral paradigm. As a child of such a paradigm, you would, applying the same logic, hold that we are more moral in our individualism and competitiveness than we were back in those immoral self-limiting days of the late 20th, early 21st century. And if you want evidence that you could have such a mentality, chat with a Republican or a Tory.

It is from your frame of reference (one I share) that we have, on the whole, gotten better. There are plenty of people (mostly religious people afaik) who completely disagree with you. Some of those, especially in the Middle East, have indeed seen a trend toward what they see as a more moral paradigm of religious unity, gender division of legal rights, violent suppression of diversity, and violent ideological expansionism, while our co-ed schools are viewed as positively Satanic. Like you, they no doubt see history as being on their side.

There are no thoughts about "goodness" or "the good" unless they are formed within a language user skilled enough to either learn how to use the name to refer to other things, or within a language user skilled enough to begin questioning/doubting such adopted use. — creativesoul

Agreed. And in terms of origins, I don't see any area for contradiction here, since language preceded the advent of large social groups.

We all adopt, almost entirely, our first worldview. — creativesoul

I'm wondering if you mean completely. In my experience, moral consideration is incremental. We are limited to the experiences we have had to date. I'd personally not call such a thing a worldview, since there will be many elements of the world about which, as a four-year old, I had no view at all.

Either that or mimicry as a means to get attention or as a means to seek affirmation during language acquisition does not count as rational thought — creativesoul

It can and cannot. Mimicry does not need to be rational. 'Mirroring' for instance is an unconscious mimicry. But rationality is perfectly capability of deriving mimicry as an apt behaviour for certain situations too (one can consciously, deliberately mirror, for instance, knowing that it's more likely to make a date go well).

Same goes for language. Our early years language acquisition is based on mimicry and trial and error, but that doesn't negate the fact that I can look a new word up in the dictionary and understand its usage rationally.

Maintaining a social norm(rule of behaviour) is acting to do so, which is endeavoring in a goal oriented task of maintaining some norm for the sake of it. — creativesoul

Or in fear of the consequences of not doing so, which is a massive slice of the wedge if not the thick end.

It’s not about you “wanting“ them to be so, in that sense. I’m asking what would a “moral prediction” even look like? What is the thing you are looking for as potential evidence for an objective morality, but not finding? — Pfhorrest

I don't think it's really relevant. The point is one can't simply compare similar methodologies and expect one to be justified because the other is. Science is justified by its predictiveness. Metaphysics are not justified by anything beyond the subjective attractiveness to the believer.

And I absolutely do say to take into account evidence for one’s opinions about morality: things feeling bad is evidence of them being bad, just like things looking true is evidence of them being true. — Pfhorrest

All of which is subjective, not objective. I take no issue with this aspect of your moral testimony: it is the same as mine. The above demands neither objectivity nor purely rational development of personal morality, in fact suggests quite the opposite of both.

Moral relativism is neither of those though; it’s the third. You seem stuck thinking that the only options are that or the second: if you’re not a moral relativist then you’re some kind of moral fundamentalist. — Pfhorrest

I was perhaps unclear. Moral relativism is what's left when you dismiss moral objectivity as being inconsistent with or otherwise not held up by evidence. It's not a position that I feel directly needs defending; it simply emerges from what I consider a more realistic description of what morality is at root. I'm not a relativist because I find it attractive or persuasive on its own merits. It is simply a recognition that each of us are individually, from the bottom up, given moral capacity and biases, and each of us is socialised individually, with more localised and temporary biases. There are severe limits to what a personal 'readiness' (as 180 Proof put it) can be and still be considered social, but within that no one person has demonstrably more 'correct' moral beliefs than others and no one person is less justified in defending their beliefs than others, which is exactly the same as saying there are no objective moral truths outside of the social-antisocial divide. If there is any means of showing that this is untrue, I may yet convert to moral objectivism, but I imagine I would have heard it by now in this thread if not elsewhere.

Of course you immediately come back and ask “where is the scientific evidence that things feeling bad actually is bad?”, but that’s confusing meta-ethical conclusions with first-order ethical conclusions. — Pfhorrest

No, I ask for some equivalent for morality to the compelling reason to believe in the objective reality behind scientific law. It needn't be scientific, though if it is inconsistent with evidence, I will disregard it as such.

When you push the question back to the second order and ask how you answer first-order questions, you can’t demand or accept first-order evidence for second-order answers. That is exactly where philosophy begins. — Pfhorrest

So far as I can tell, that's your question, not mine:

In doing so, you are only describing why we are inclined to do certain things, and calling those things good. You haven’t given any argument for why those things we are inclined to do are the good things. — Pfhorrest

The first order is the fundamental drives and capacities that make us ultra-social animals. The conceptions we form around those -- the second-order -- are rationalisations of the first, lacking insight as to the nature of the first or the origins of the second. I am perfectly happy with this: I do not feel the need to justify the latter at all, any more than I need to justify Newtonian mechanics in the face of Einsteinian mechanics, i.e. on purely pragmatic grounds. I do observe that we are in a situation where those second-order questions inevitably must be asked, and look to empirical evidence in trying to establish a minimal boundary line between social and antisocial behaviour, the area that I believe has primacy in moral consideration. I'm not particularly wedded to my tentative attempt, but I am not inclined or obliged to take a two-tone approach and pretend that the second order is somehow more real, is accurate, or otherwise has primacy. The second-order questions, like the above, that you've thought I must answer from a first-order theory (from page 1) have struck me as questions based on false assumptions about what the second order really is.

As I said, if there's a single argument justifying why moral claims generally have objectively true or false values, the OP is wrong, and the relationship between morality and social biology would be extremely mysterious, since it would appear that humans have two very different sets of imperatives for doing the same thing: one they are born with, another they must discover for themselves. What purpose would either have, the other being assumed real?