I read the book — Mww

That was bloody quick!

If the bat costs a dollar more than the ball, then the bat costs a dollar, regardless of the cost of the ball. — Mww

Ummm. So I know the experiment you're referring to. It typically shows that unconscious pattern recognition is responsible for our answers to such questions. People see $1.10. They see $1. They're asked to calculate a difference. They say $.10. This is not a rational solution to the problem, which is an insanely easy maths problem. And yet people believe they've answered the question rationally. When the rational answer is given, they usually see their error. You seem to have gone one step further and rationalised a new mathematics, which is atypical.

the words one is suppose to place left or right of center, are the words left and right — Mww

What do you mean supposed? With reference to what order do you require the word 'left' to always appear on the left of a page and the word 'right' to appear on the right? Do you demand this of novels? The subject is 'supposed' to follow instructions. If they agree to that, and cannot, what does that say about the action or efficacy of their rational minds?

Would you be surprised, dismayed, or unreceptive, if I quoted a series of texts from the book, followed by a collaborating series of texts from 1787? — Mww

Yes, do. I'd like to defend at least the spirit of the OP, if not the specifics. Of course, part of that spirit is to base our thinking on the best knowledge we have. But there are some excellent 200 year old ideas that still stand up today. The Origin of Species is pushing 200.

Everyone who ever has to make a reasoned decision about what action to take needs an answer to a normative question, because that’s exactly what normative questions are about. The only beings who never need to ask normative questions are those that act entirely in a straightforward stimulus-response way, with no reflexive, contemplative function mediating the relationship between their experiences and their behaviors. Are you suggesting humans are like that? — Pfhorrest

Sure, if I want to know how to make a pie I should consult a recipe. Even in questions of executing moral decisions, I still need to decide how I should go about them. And, as I've said, there are pre-social and social drives in competition and, while the question of what I should do need not be reasoned, it could be reasoned about. I might reason, for instance, as to whether I will get away with an antisocial act.

But these are a far cry from the sorts of normative questions you want answers to which are, if I understand you, blanket, objective answers to all moral questions justified with respect to something other than "well, that's just the way we're built". Our current environment and our unfitness for it does appear to incline us to produce new normative moral questions. It doesn't mean that answers to those questions come fully justified. (By the way, this is not particular to the OP. Kantianism, utilitarianism, liberalism, hedonism, etc. have no firmer justifications. Adopting a position is not the same as justifying it.)

As for the false dichotmy, we are mostly stimulus-response, however our conscious mind is largely concerned with rational, algorithmic thinking so we tend to overemphasise this role in our decision-making. Part of the thesis of the OP is that, when our ancestors existed in small social groups, questions of what the morally good thing to do is would not have existed, as the role that moral oughts are supposed to play now would have been played by largely biological factors (and, to the extent that it was not biologically determined, the remainder dictated by homogeneous socialisation, which also needs no rationalisation). This is justified by the fact that nature could not have selected for altruistic characteristics if our actual outcomes were dictated instead by rational thought unless that rational thought itself had a bias that could be selected for. Considering moral choices to be essentially rational, as rationalists do, is imo nonsensical.

Now it is different. Our social impulses do not come close to determining a response equivalent of a moral ought, since they did not evolve to yield optimal survival outcomes for strangers with different socialisations. The onus is then put on what remains -- rationalism -- to determine not only how we should act to realise a moral good, or whether we wish to, but what those moral goods are.

Nope. See above. — Pfhorrest

This seems to be a diversion that we might both be regretting. Asking where the 'oughts' are is not an 'ought' question. An ought question presupposes that there is there is an ought. I do not. It is your presupposition I believe to be invalid.

Likewise, my idea of what ought to be comes from my hedonic experiences: my first notion of morality is of stuff that feels pleasant rather than painful, and every later notion of what is moral is a refinement of that nature-given intuition about it. — Pfhorrest

Very young children do demonstrate no or limited capacity for empathy, i.e. it is not switched on at birth. Environmental factors play an important role in children developing empathy, as of course do genetic factors. This is why the lack of possible variance in small social groups is an important prerequisite to reason-free social behaviour, as is necessary for nature to select for.

But another principle of mine is to proceed on the assumption that with enough effort and care we can establish an arbitrarily-much unbiased refinement like that. — Pfhorrest

If you reject the possibility (quite rightly) that mere biology -- the circumstance of our birth -- can justify a moral position such as altruism, you must reject that the natural hedonism of your birth can justify a hedonistic moral position. I believe you're just rationalising an 'is', not deriving an 'ought'. I see no reason here to accept your definition of 'unbiased' as, itself, unbiased.

But I do not believe the notion that our personality is refined rationally by effort and care to be in any way realistic. If I meet an alien with an extendable neck, I will probably be nice to it, not because I have derived a be-nice-to-aliens morality through attention and care to the world, but because ET made me cry when I was a child, and I'm stuck with that. That is how susceptible our socialisations are. Epiphanies, fundamentalism, and brainwashing are not gradual refinements to our moral positions but forceful paradigm shifts -- re-programmings, figuratively and literally -- in response to experience, for instancel.

I didn’t say I don’t want to talk about that, I said that I’m not the one bringing it up
...
I’m not pissed off BTW, and I’m not here because you mentioned me in the OP, but because of a comment about the is-ought divide later in the comments. — Pfhorrest

I'm glad. I thought you sounded disinclined but obliged.

Your counter-argument here seems to be that to weigh up, say, whether we should be a welfare state or not be a welfare state, first we must question our social biology which in turn necessitates that we must refer to the human genome which in turn suggests we must figure out our evolutionary history
— Kenosha Kid

And I’m saying no, I’m not arguing that we have to do that. You brought those things up, not me. — Pfhorrest

I think there's been a misunderstanding, because I used impersonal but you read personal 'you'. I didn't mean that you think the above, rather that you think the above characterises my argument. It does not. If you were not making this point, then I don't know what to make of this:

you could only state the causal origins of your moral intuition and the probability that they share those intuitions given your shared heritage — Pfhorrest

which seems to be suggesting that, given the viewpoint of the OP, an answer to a moral normative question would be something like the OP. That would be a straw man.

Feels like we are on the raft with Aguirre — Maw

Great film. Terrible political philsophy.
Might watch that tonight, you've put me in the mood.

unreliable suppositions relative to ancestral behavior. — Mww

Flight/fight behaviours aren't exactly a grey area; they're well studied. Humans and chimpanzees are particularly wired for it. The comparative slowness of rational thinking is also pretty well established, and that it accounts for a small percentage of human decision-making. So when you suggest that your ancestor had no such response and instead thought her way out of the sabre-tooth tiger situation rationally, I'm inclined to believe that that's where the unreliable supposition is happening.

Altruism and empathy are no less ideas than morality, for there is no object which belongs to any of them, but only phenomenal manifestations derivable from them for which they can be said to be the causality. That is to say, there is no object in the world to which these can be a property. — Mww

Abstracted away from the individual, sure. But that's not what the OP is talking about. The physio/neurological systems that underpin the empathetic and altruistic responses of an individual are built for that individual alone from genes it inherited. Those things aren't in the wild and abstract: they belong to that individual. The statistical conformity between social biological systems is in part due to their heritability, in part due to natural selection, which tends to whittle variance down. So my empathy and altruism are strictly mine, albeit copies of ancestors common to us both.

It’s good that you’re not against moral ideas. And as altruism and empathy are every bit as metaphysical, as mere conceptions, as morality, I’m baffled as to the rejection of metaphysical explanations for any of them. — Mww

Because it puts the cart before the horse. Metaphysics rationalises natural human responses post hoc, then claims a discovery, because it is inclined to ascribe to rationalism everything it cannot understand. It is at best a redundancy. I understand more about morality from cognitive psychology, neurology, physiology, and evolutionary biology and psychology than I can get from any strokey-beard blighter trying to find a way to derive "do not harm others to benefit yourself". Nature derived that hundreds of thousands of years ago without a brain, and gifted it to us without a clue.

The other issue I have is that, since no metaphysical theory of morality is actually rationally justified (which, at least, it has in common with natural morality) but relies instead on claims to magical knowledge and disingenuous linguistic contortions, none is rationally justified more than any other. The worry is that antisocial propaganda is not obviously worse than truly moral philosophy on metaphysical grounds. If you can convince someone that metaphysics is worth a damn, you might convince someone that bad metaphysics is worth a damn, that gays are evil, for instance, or that you will have to spend an eternity without your unbaptised child, or that black lives don't matter as much as white ones.

While history has put social altruism on bad enough footing, it has at least kept us as altruists. Metaphysics puts altruism on an even weaker footing by making it contingent on non-existent truths ("because God said so") or comprised of metaphysically unjustifiable ones ("altruism is good in itself") to which some other, more antisocial strokey-beard blighter can say "actually it's not, prove me wrong". At least knowing that altruism is part of what makes us human, that it is an unavoidable part of us selected to help us, alleviates justification, for you need not justify what you are, only the beliefs you hold.

It must be the case that all responses for anything are predicated on physiological and neurological grounds. We are brain-bound, right? — Mww

We have a central nervous system, yes. We are not rationalism-bound though. Reason is hugely overcredited. But I don't mean it to be taken that rational thought is not part of the decision-making process. We have a rational mental system precisely for figuring out things like "How can I help this hungry person when all I have is this bre- oh!" But all of the build-up to that need not be conscious at all, and indeed most of it won't be. We do not rationally learn to invoke cognitive empathetic responses; we do learn by experience, but the mental process for associating empathetic responses to certain patterns is not conscious. At least, I have no memory of how I did it, and haven't met anyone who has. ;)

So putting that aside, and while it is true small groups won’t have the same ethical questions as large groups, it is nevertheless inconsistent with the idea of moral dispositions to restrict its questions to the size of the group from which the questions arise. — Mww

Ahh no, sorry, I was obviously unclear. I'm not saying that smaller groups pose different challenges and therefore different moral questions. I'm saying that small groups, for which our social responses were evolved, bypass the need for moral questions altogether. Smaller groups were what our social responses were adapted for. The responses must therefore be sufficient, otherwise nature could not have selected for them. That is distinct from now where our social responses, inclined toward outcomes of reciprocal altruism with relatives and neighbours, no longer determine the moral course of action. Yet we still respond to empathetic stimuli in the same way. Our social biology is for small groups, and did not alter for large ones.

I don’t accept the major in that proposition, insofar as morality is to be considered a personal human condition, therefore morality is based on the good of the individual. — Mww

Good-for-the-group was good-for-the-individual at the time we evolved altruism and empathy. Individuals in cooperative groups had greater chances of survival (covered a bit in the OP). The difference is that it didn't depend on a human ever figuring out that good-for-the-group was good-for-me (which is fortunate given the state of politics after hundreds of thousands of years of progress); those disinclined to good-for-the-group -- antisocial elements -- could not compete for resources with cooperative animals that shared them.

Being illegal is not necessarily being immoral, but being unethical is always immoral. — Mww

Agreed. In the same way that not observing the sabbath is not necessarily immoral, or not claiming that your country/race/class is better than others is not necessarily immoral. These are moral frames of references. It would be immoral for a police officer who fines people for speeding to himself speed on his day off (hypocrisy). It would be immoral for a Rabbi who preaches the shabbat to put in a few extra hours one Saturday (hypocrisy). But it is always immoral to stab a child in the back, that is, there is no frame of reference in which this could not be hypocritical.

True, not all human responses are rational, but even irrational responses are derived from reason. — Mww

This is meant merely as a statement of a belief, I assume, not of fact. My understanding of the psychologist's current thinking is that reason comprises about 2% of human decision-making. Rationalism, as far as I can make out, is claiming the other 98% is also rational, then trying to figure out how. Just found this:

Modern cognitive science and neuroscience show that studying the role of emotion in mental function (including topics ranging from flashes of scientific insight to making future plans), that no human has ever satisfied this criterion, except perhaps a person with no affective feelings, for example, an individual with a massively damaged amygdala or severe psychopathy. Thus, such an idealized form of rationality is best exemplified by computers, and not people. However, scholars may productively appeal to the idealization as a point of reference. — Wiki

No citation given :( but sounds about right.

The reason why science can't tackle it, is because it's not an objective matter. — Wayfarer

And yet science is tackling it, obliging you, not I, to separate consciousness into physical and non-physical based on how much science discovers.

I provided a scientific account of why this is a problem, but as you have apparently ignored it — Wayfarer

As you note, he is not himself a neuroscientist or cognitive psychologist. The Templeton Foundation handsomely pays usually religious or agnostic and greedy scientists -- thankfully a minority -- to write articles sympathetic to Christian dogma. One man being paid by a religious institution to call time on cognitive science's endeavours and accept that there must be something irreducible and non-physical going on is not "a scientific account". It is a corrupt practise -- anyone who ever accepted a cent from the Templeton Foundation does so explicitly not as a scientist and to the chagrin of the scientific community -- and in this case is nothing more than the -of-the-gaps argument. It is a client of the Templeton foundation starting from the assumption that there are such things as intractable scientific problems, that subjective personal experience is such a problem for neuroscience, and concludes its assumption with typical circularity at the end.

Since joining this forum, you've displayed no comprehension of the philosophical issues, merely the complacent assumption that whatever philosophy science has not yet swept aside, it's only a matter of time until it does. — Wayfarer

There are lots of worthwhile philosophical endeavours, not least philosophy of science. Science has limits insofar as its models can never be known to accurately represent reality. The only sure thing science has is empirical evidence. If science cannot distinguish multiple models making the same verified predictions on scientific grounds, then any discernment made is philosophy. Also, there are scales of applicability. Science might be able to explain my aesthetic sense in principle, given my biology and history, but this is hardly an area where science can practically operate. I defer to science for placing insightful limitations on what explanations are worth considering, but there's still lots of considering to be done.

Again, characterising anyone who disagrees with you as failing to comprehend the issues is fallacious. I have sound reasons for rejecting that which, I am guessing from your beliefs, you are obliged to embrace and defend, but I don't expect you to do the same. The conflict is not about misunderstanding. It arises when limits are placed on what we can and cannot know. I will always be on Galileo's side.

↪Banno A pseudorandom function is algorithmic. The decay of a radioactive isotope is not. Kenosha Kid back me up here. — Pfhorrest

Yes; but then you are going back to quantum phenomena to produce randomness.

What we in the article though is indeterminism in a classical system without reliance on quantum phenomena.

The salient point is that determinism is not found in classical physics but assumed. The article goes some way to showing that the assumption might be removed without cost. — Banno

I’m not arguing against any of that, merely distinguishing randomness from chaos as concepts. Determinism is the absence of randomness, not the absence of chaos. You could conceivably have a deterministic but chaotic system. Or a non-chaotic but indeterministic system. Or chaotic randomness, or non-chaotic determinism. They’re two separable things. — Pfhorrest

Typically chaotic systems are defined to be deterministic but nonlinear, nonlinear meaning that a small change in the input can yield a huge change in the output. The system described in the article is I think normally known as a chaos machine, because small changes in the initial conditions of the ball give rise to large changes in its final position. The article is also putting forward a epistemological means of accounting for those practical differences, so while the system is chaotic, the ball is epistemologically indeterministic as well, and using this to propose what I think is an ontological agnosticism about determinism.

That indeterminism does not depend on the chaotic nature of the system that exemplifies it, but obviously since linear systems would not be demonstrably different from Laplace's demon (i.e. differences in output would be as immeasurably small as the immeasurably small differences in input), it's apt to use a chaotic system to illustrate the point. Quantum mechanics is deemed ontologically indeterministic, although there are deterministic interpretations (Bohm theory) which are chaotic.

I see no reason not to consider chaotic, indeterministic systems as well as chaotic deterministic ones. In that case, you would have to account for errors in the positions of each of the pegs too. I imagine the reason why chaotic systems are deemed to be deterministic is that no one has had cause to explore chaotic indeterminism; it's typically been one or the other.

How do you deduce this? — Pfhorrest

With utmost redundancy, that's the point. As for how you can deduce it from first principles without reference to urgh-sticky-irrational biology, you don't, that's the other point. In reality, moral philosophies have principles based on biological phenomena, while pretending to be based on something else. Metaphysicians are extremely sympathetic to themselves. They want a God? They can prove He exists. It won't be a great proof, but it suffices for them.

The OP is the nearest I can get: since our morality derives from social biology, any truly moral philosophy has to be based on altruism and empathy. Any philosophy not based on empathy and altruism is not social, and therefore not moral. But that cannot define an exhaustive set of oughts, rather a smaller set of ought-nots if one wishes to be social at all, nor can they be seen as imperatives (due to feasibility).

But still, someone asks "What ought we do?" and your answer is "We are inclined to do these things." If they ask "Yes, we are inclined that way, but is that right?" and you say "It's what helped our ancestors survive", you're still dodging the question. — Pfhorrest

It is a matter of the questioner's belief that there must be an ought. If the believer cannot get their heads around the fact that there isn't one, that's their intellectual limitation. If the questioner maintains that a false positive answer to their answer-less question based on false belief or lies is better than an honest non-answer, then they are merely insisting on an echo chamber around their dodgy belief system.

The OP is not a schema for deriving moral imperatives. It's a description of why such questions arise but have no well-defined answers, with a recommendation to proceed accordingly. Complaining that it doesn't give you instructions on how to behave is to completely miss the point. Nature is not obliged to implement anyone's metaphysics.

It's like if I ask what flavor of ice cream I should buy
...
But that aside, telling them a fact about people's ice cream preferences is irrelevant, unless they already are of the opinion that they ought or ought not follow the crowds. You could tell them some evolutionary fact about why people evolved to crave certain flavors, but still that's not going to help them answer their question. — Pfhorrest

As you pointed out, it's a inapplicable analogy. If your argument depends on it, it can be dismissed on those grounds. If there is something to salvage, then perhaps make the effort to provide a better analogy.

However I will set fire to the straw man: at no point have I suggested that that which is popular becomes the answer to a moral question. I have described how outcomes can arise from statistical moral inclinations, such as trends over time toward altruism and empathy, but that is purely descriptive precisely because it does not depend on outright moral truths to exist in order to occur. And that's another salient point. In our natural environment, we did not need to ask or answer these ought questions. Our moral biology took care of that for us, and is still in effect now, giving us the moral conundrums -- the quest for oughts -- that we now have. Where that moral inclination comes from is not popular opinion, although that can act to reprioritise a perspective. Where it comes from is genetics. Everything else is rationalisation and propaganda.

That's really frustrating, isn't it? Someone who won't give you a straight answer to your "is" question, and instead will only tell you why people think you ought to believe this or that answer to it. — Pfhorrest

I can't stop you re-characterising my position, in which normative questions do not generally have well-defined answers and are themselves products of erroneous thinking, as mere question-dodging or being a frustrating jerk for the sake of defending a position, simply on the basis that you feel you need answers to normative questions anyway. If that seems a valid approach to you, then fill your boots of course. It will severely constrain the bandwidth of intelligent debate, though.

That's a poor analogy, because you're still entirely within the domain of "is". — Pfhorrest

As are you. You are not asking "ought" questions but "is" questions about "oughts". At this stage in your argument, any ought is better than no ought. But nature, which provided you with your moral capacities, did not provide you with any.

I'm only suggesting that by paying really close methodical attention to the experiences that inform our moral intuitions — Pfhorrest

I agree that experience is important, precisely because of the large degree of freedom that we have in prioritising selfish and selfless drives, because that experience is obviously so crucial to developing our moral capacities, and because our experience tells us that moral positions are abundant. While our biology is a given, a) it doesn't follow that we stand by our actions, and b) it doesn't follow that the net behavioural response on an individual in a given circumstance is determined by genetics alone, even if the difference is itself a genetic trait. I said as much in the OP:

We also have a genetic amenability toward socialisation, mediated by oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin and seratonin. Socialisation is important because most of the above are capacities rather than drives we are born with. To that extent, an immediate empathetic response to an individual in distress is not fully natural but learned via natural capacities for empathy, altruism, and socialisation together. — Kenosha Kid

If your point is that any fundamental element of our individual morality must be informed by experience, then that's just another unjustifiable metaphysical belief which I will reject on the grounds of it being inconsistent with scientific evidence. If you're merely asserting that our morality as a whole is impacted by experience, then you're not contradicting my view, but nor are you showing how my experience that leads to my moral frame of reference is less justified than yours.

[EDIT: Missed a bit]

No, I don't want to bring up social biology or genes or evolutionary history at all. — Pfhorrest

Sounds familiar. "How does the idea of a 6000 year old Earth explain the geological records?" "Oh, I don't want to bring up geology."

You're posting on a thread about naturally selected social biology. It's gonna come up. If you're just feeling obliged because I mentioned you in the OP, honestly it's fine. It's nice that you came, but I didn't aim to piss you off with a subject you don't want to talk about, and it's fine to pass.

You're the one bringing that up as though it justified any "ought" claims. — Pfhorrest

Quite the opposite of what I said. And you've given me reason to believe that you understand this.

Yeah, looks like. I don’t know anything about neuroscience or ultracooperative social groups, so to me, ultrasocial is just somewhat more social than social. Doesn’t matter; they’re all still just a bunch of individuals. — Mww

Oh okay, well maybe not. To the extent that I can't really differentiate, in my ignorance, between human physiology and sheep physiology, and to the extent that antisocial behaviour is just antisocial, not anti-ultrasocial, behaviour, you're quite right. But with the caveat that statements I make about human biology don't necessarily extend to non-humans.

I don’t see any reason to include heritable traits in the metaphysical idea of morality. — Mww

Oh, of course! If metaphysics factored that sort of thing in, it would cease to be metaphysics.

But the metaphysical idea of morality is just that, an idea, hence will never be real in the sense of morality in which heritable traits serve as the criteria for personal or social conduct. — Mww

No need to tell me. My argument is not against moral ideas, but moral ideas with claims to a priori knowledge or an objective right-wrong moral world. If moral philosophy is an artefact of having moral biology evolved in one environment give ambiguous or unfeasible drives in our current environment, there is good reason for moral questions. However those don't have to be based on fantasies, thanks to our scientific understanding.

We are concerned with being moral, not with where moral being came from, which grants that our moral apparatus is not a consequentialist philosophy.
...
Again, that it is used is given, because that we are moral beings is given, but we want to know how. — Mww

And that's the Catch-22. In small groups, our morality would give right/wrong answers to moral questions that need not be asked because the answers are not rational answers but physiological and neurological responses. In the world-of-strangers, those answers are not well-defined, so we rely on instead on rationality to try and figure out the answers. And we fail, because morality is not rational, and because the only moral answers we have pertain to a world we do not live in.

And this is why, in my view, the correct approach is the existential, relativist, pluralist approach. We can derive moral limits on the basis that that there are still things inconsistent with our moral instincts. We cannot dispense with the notion of morality because we are driven toward it. Morality is based on good-for-the-group altruism and empathy, so anything that jettisons those for reliance on pre-social drives is ipso facto immoral and subhuman. Otherwise we cannot define a moral answer to a question about strangers or a world with effectively limitless harm and limitless need. Any philosophical question about what we should actively do to limit harm and satisfy need in a given situation is faulty in its foundation.

But none of that is sufficient to prove that he couldn’t possibly have rationalized the danger. It is every bit as likely he did, therefore I’m here. The human thought process is, after all, virtually instantaneous. — Mww

Is the metaphysics apologist demanding proof?!? ;) It is well understood that rational thinking is slower than pattern-recognition and instinct. It is far from instantaneous.* Since we have a flight instinct, it follows that a lot of our ancestors' cousins died for lack of one.

Rationalism trap. As in, trapped by rationalism? Being trapped by that which is impossible to escape, seems like a mischaracterization of terms, doesn’t it? — Mww

It is not only true that not all human responses are rational, it also seems to me to be true that the rational mind takes credit for a lot of stuff it doesn't do.*

You’re doing an outstanding job of trying to defeat metaphysics with scientific principles. Thing is, the only way to defeat a metaphysical position, is with a better one. — Mww

Many thanks! *bows* But I think another way to defeat a metaphysical position is to make it redundant. Historically, that seems to be the case.

* Again, I thoroughly recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow. It goes into all this stuff in a lot more detail and with compelling tests for you to do yourself. Psychology has made a lot of ground in understanding how the mind works.

There is some primordial division of labor, as a shaman may fabricate implements of spiritual significance and provide guidance in exchange for food supplies, a chief may also have his needs met by the rest of the group as a perk of leadership, but most households are engaging in almost the exact same essential behaviors, supporting their families by nearly identical means, and can usually function on their own just as well as in commerce with the collective barring competition with rival tribes and warring. — Enrique

Yes, and there is evidence for similar biological inheritance of social strata for the sizes of groups you seem to mean which were presumably also selected for on the basis of group benefit which might go a long way to explain the long-term persistence of desires for caste systems and make it even more difficult to derive a set of moral truths from our nature.

Citizens also often consider cultural traditions sacred in some sense, with human minds in antiquity all the way up to the present day seeing a connection between viability of social structures and the will of deities or their declared representatives, so that fear of divine wrath or belief in spiritual mandate lead to consent for all but the most egregious, sacrilegious, immoral or traitorous oppressions. Thus, though no one likes to be herded around by pugnacious authority, individuals are usually agreeable to suppressing some level of disgruntlement in order to ward off potential for utter catastrophe. — Enrique

Not necessarily in the generation that spawned those superstitions. I find memetics has tremendous explanatory power in this area. One of the interesting characteristics of superstitious practise is that it tends either to the pleading or the hysterical. One can rationalise this as apt for what the practice's aims are, but one can also see this as an origin: you've got one person among many who are desperate for rain go mental and it rains. That guy is going places. "Geoff, do the crazy stick-shaking thing again, that'll work!"

At the other end you've got dogma: claims to truth with no basis in fact that parents convince their children they must observe if they want the rains to come. In between, it's likely much as you say, with those too disgruntled making obvious scapegoats when the rains don't come (just like every natural calamity is the fault if the gays in the US), pushing further toward a reigning meme.

Materially, particular citizens matter less to sustenance of the community as a whole — Enrique

Sounds familiar.

As economic advantage amongst the home territories and countries of Europe’s empires came to be seen as reliant on a populace optimally mobilized for technical competence, civic-minded humanism gained more traction with intellectuals. — Enrique

I think this is kind of where @Pfhorrest is coming from. Given that we aren't in an environment in which our natural altruism has dictated some moral order, would it not be efficacious to base a competing, better set of morals from our more social inclinations? And to the extent that it is, we obviously have done this without knowing anything of why we think altruism and empathy are good, but with plenty of rationalisation about it.

I remain to be convinced that moral philosophy is as useful as it seems. The political among a disillusioned group will rally people around ideas, perhaps to overcome their existing social mores. But I suspect that, say, in the build-up to the French revolution, a country of starving people ruled by a nobility enjoying excess had more to do the implementation of democracy than the philosophy itself.

If this is an accurate assessment, the species' prehistoric instinctuality is almost negligible to the fate of civilization, and increasing, declining or lack of capacity to reason in mutualizing ways has become the core factor in moral incentive and agency, a situation that education might be able to deeply influence. — Enrique

Yes, this is gloomy. I'm more optimistic. I mean, I know you lost most of Obamacare, but you *had* Obamacare in a country in which corrupt politicians and media had your people brainwashing kids on their behalf that helping people was communist and communism is evil. That's a hell of an achievement! And things like this keep happening which suggests to me that our natural instincts for altruism and empathy, in part via whatever philosophies they inspire that counter regressive philosophies I grant you, might actually make all the difference to the trend. We've abolished all but civil war in Europe, given up overt colonialism, abolished slavery, mostly abolished the death penalty, promoted rights for people who, in your more enlightened times, had none or few, and damn it man we got McDonald's selling salads. They might seem trivial now we have them, but altruism and empathy (and salads) persist against all the regressive, antisocial memes that those with power can muster.

So I think what is more likely is that the competition between regressive ideas that make virtues of our presocial instincts and the progressive ones that favour our social instincts will continue, with battles fought and won on both sides, but with a long-term tendency for the former to cede ground to the latter. Today's racists are not slapping men in the street and calling them 'boy'. It's a better place for the inclusive altruist to be working from.

Nature doesn’t say it’s morally good to survive. — Pfhorrest

Allow me to clear up two ambiguities at once, then, "With utmost redundancy, we deduce that moral good is identical to that good for the survival of the group found in selected-for human social capacities."

How you could possibly have concluded from all I've said that I believe natural selection itself has moral goods, I will never know.

This is why I mean by ignoring the ought side. You say you’re denying it, but rather you’re just declining to answer a certain kind of question, instead giving an answer to a different question. — Pfhorrest

I can't give you the answer you want because your question, as with all such questions, is in my view based on false premises.

Consider sight. I look a tree, I see a tree. I look at the human genome and point a load of genes and say these are responsible for this bit of eye, that optical cable, these bits of the brain, etc. You're basically asking me where the picture of tree is. It's not there. The image of the tree is a consequence of the capacities of sight I have inherited via genes selected for because this way of seeing trees is better than my distant ancestor's for human survival.

In fact, it's worse because there's always been trees as long as there have been human eyes to see them. Our moral biology is for an extinct way of life. Not only are those moral "oughts" I derived not there in the genes or the selection history where you want me to point to them, they're not even here in the world anymore except as baffled relics in our own behavioural constitution.

you could only state the causal origins of your moral intuition and the probability that they share those intuitions given your shared heritage. — Pfhorrest

This misses the point that you clearly don't need to know any of this stuff to be a social person. Biology bypasses understanding and knowledge. A baby turtle does not have knowledge that it needs to head to the sea, it just does it. In the same way I don't need to cite the reasons why my ancestors had good cause to fear arachnids in order to assess the potential danger of a house spider, I don't need to work through the evolutionary history of my species to deduce that I ought to help a person in need. I just do it. Or not. Depending on the circumstances. Our bodies have this covered, as they do with so many things, without solely relying on rational input, and irregardless of our post hoc rationalisation. Much to the chagrin of rationalists, natch.

Scientism like yours responds to attempts to treat normative questions as completely separate from factual questions (as they are) by demanding absolute proof from the ground up that anything at all is objectively normative, or moral, and not just a factual claim in disguise or else baseless mere opinion. — Pfhorrest

I don't think anyone is expecting ground-up proof of normative questions any more than they're expecting proof that God wears a yellow hat. Your counter-argument here seems to be that to weigh up, say, whether we should be a welfare state or not be a welfare state, first we must question our social biology which in turn necessitates that we must refer to the human genome which in turn suggests we must figure out our evolutionary history. Is it your impression of science that when people want to determine the mating habits of African elephants they first solve the many-body Schrodinger equation for two elephants?

If people statistically want a welfare state, they'll probably get one eventually. That seems to be the trend. You don't need an ought for a welfare state. What you need is a population with empathy and altruism to, generation and after generation, press for a welfare state because enough of them want it individually and because conservativism against it cannot withstand indefinitely. Why do enough of them want it? Because they're altruistic and empathetic. Why are they altruistic and empathetic? Because nature made them that way for different reasons. There are powers to overcome that are not for shifting. They're the ones who need the "oughts". The altruists have numbers and genetics and time. They don't need "oughts". "Oughts" are for memes and, while memes of moral "oughts" can be appeals to our social biology, they're mostly attempts to turn us away from it. Sometimes both, leading to cognitive dissonance: "Thou shalt not kill! Now kill, kill, kill!"

Why not likewise just accept that some things sure seem moral or immoral (as you do) and then take that at face value, act as though some things actually are moral or immoral and that that’s not just a baseless opinion that it was useful for our ancestors to have, and then try to sort out what seems moral regardless of viewpoints and so is objectively (i.e. without bias) moral? — Pfhorrest

Sounds beautiful! In principle, anyway. If there was an effective means of establishing what seems moral to the time-averaged altruistic majority as moral ab initio, then the world that had these lets-pretend morals would probably be a nicer place to live in. But I think that a world in which the time-averaged altruistic majority had this sort of influence wouldn't need those moral truths any more that baby turtles need to know to head to the sea.

Unfortunately, the danger of accepting objective moral truths is precisely that they're not honed by statistical trends of natural behaviour. There's quite a lot of killing that goes into making laws, and religions, and other ideologies because the ideas themselves don't really present any merit to the majority. However when you've frightened enough people, killed enough, tortured enough, bribed enough, incarcerated enough, you can convince people to brainwash their own children into believing in objective moral truths and, no surprise, they're not very human ones, because anyone who frightens enough people, kills enough, tortures enough, bribes enough, incarcerates enough, is an absolute psychopath.

It is a principle, not lazy. — Clay Stablein

It's lazy, and also arrogant. "Oh look, there's a me! Well, that's all there is to learn about that..."

After the principle is digested and understood as nourishing all concepts that follow, all concepts DO follow. — Clay Stablein

Are you talking about First Philosophy? All of that "I can conceive of an infinite God" stuff? Descartes should have been treated with the same tolerance as a weirdo in a bar would be treated. A pat on the arm and a "Well, you enjoy your night, mate." [With apologies to Kevin Bridges]

The only things Descartes proved here were: 1) I can write the sentence "I can conceive of an infinite God" whether or not I can conceive of an infinite God; 2) people who already believe in God and need no proof are very accommodating. "Yes, Rene, I too can conceive..."

But, to construct this post, you assumed an ontology and its epistemology. So, you are more primary and before those concepts. And, because death, to verify this fact, you must be. You are. QED. — Clay Stablein

I take no issue with the cogito. I do take issue with the conclusion that, since it is the first thing I can be sure of, consciousness is the most essential thing of me. Nor does it follow that that is all I can understand of this thing of me. That is lazy thinking.

Welcome to forum, Clay!

In that case you are not so much ignoring the is-ought divide, as just ignoring the ought side of it completely. — Pfhorrest

As I said, I am not ignoring it: I am rejecting it completely.

You are only describing why certain behaviors did in fact contribute to the survival of our ancestors and consequently why we are in fact inclined to behave that way still, but you’re not giving any account at all of why it’s good to survive and so good that we behave in that way today. — Pfhorrest

No, nor should I. You're looking for another, more fundamentally moral "good" so that we can say: "We agree with nature, it does happen to be morally good to survive." I can't think of anything more redundant. It's the other way around: we think altruism is good because it historically improved our chances of survival. We think it's good because we want it (a drive) and it makes us feel nice (a hit of oxytocin) and it benefited us (reciprocal altruism). Selection first, then rationalisation: that is the order I believe is correct.

You can, as we have discussed before, attempt to step outside of our biology and take the cosmic insignificance stance. There is nothing invalid about this. In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter if I kill a man for a loaf of bread and spend 20 years in prison for it and let down my family who end up on the street. However, I do exist within a society far more immediately than I exist within a cosmos. The cosmos does not cause me pain, for instance. So I shan't. Also, thanks to that biology again, I do not wish to.

Looking for a moral reason to follow one's biological impulses is like looking for consciousness in a neuron. At the scale where you find an underlying cause, there is no "ought" beyond a the outdated selection criterion of an unconscious natural process.

You’re also overlooking that the same tacit “passing on your genes is good” premise hidden under all of this would justify many antisocial behaviors too. — Pfhorrest

Competing selfish (pre-social) drives are covered in the OP, albeit briefly. Happy to delve into it more, as has been done in a number of responses in this thread already. I assure you I am not overlooking them.

Genghis Khan did a lot of antisocial stuff, a bunch of murders and rapes, and his genes are all over the world population today because of that. So does that make rape and murder good, in the right context where you’ll get away with it and have lots of successful offspring? — Pfhorrest

As in good-for-me, yeah sure. But I'm not suggesting that our morality derived from good-for-me, rather from good-for-the-group, namely the biological capacities for altruism and empathy. Again, I'm not proposing that what's good for our genes is a foundation of a moral philosophy. I am proposing that we have moral philosophy because what's good-for-the-group is not actionable anymore.

But what consciousness is, is a different question (and a hard question.) — Wayfarer

Prompted by the lack of conceptual progress over more than two decades, I am tempted to speculate that a computer program will not gain the title of International Master before the turn of the century and that the idea of an electronic world champion belongs only in the pages of a science fiction book. — David Levy

As science learns more and more about what consciousness is by learning more and more about how it functions, how it is comprised, and where it comes from, there will of course be people insisting that science really hasn't gotten to the essence of what consciousness is, which means nothing more than that science has not reproduced their personal idea of what consciousness is. The test then would be whether you can articulate something true about consciousness to a third party and that person a) agree with you, and b) find no better explanation for it in scientific literature.

Descartes introduced the proposed distinction between mind and matter. So you can where this goes. The 'bearers of primary attributes', which were conveniently describable purely in terms of physics, became also the primary focus, and res cogitans was relegated to being the ghost in the machine.

That's the philosophical sub-text, and I see no signs that you understand it. — Wayfarer

Ah. I do not agree with you on the idea's merit, therefore I do not understand it. :up:

What you've done here is describe the -of-the-gaps argument extremely well: "Science looks like it's got X and Y covered, however Z surely must be outside its reach!" Except then science starts work on Z too, and the machine gets a long-overdue exorcism.

I do have to wonder, though, at the sincerity of someone with an alleged interest in a phenomenon who puts their fingers in their ears when new facts start coming in. I feel this is a good litmus test for whether they're genuinely interested in understanding it or are really just protecting some subscribed-to or private belief in magic.

I agree that if revisiting a past event as a spectator, we would expect the exact same outcome for that event every time; but note that this expectation is also compatible with free will as I define it: In the original event, the person freely chooses to act in a particular way, and upon revisiting that event, we see a replay of that same act being freely chosen. — Samuel Lacrampe

Right, but if the same scenario were played out a second time, what might change the outcome such that we can point to it and call it free will? Why would a rational person who made the rational decision in that scenario the first time not make it the second?

Some suggested examples:

• it did not work out well last time (learning from experience)
• the person has changed their mind about these things
• the person just doesn't feel inclined the same way this time (mood, exhaustion, etc.)
• the person has higher priorities second time around
• the person was in a rush last time but has longer to consider this time
• the person had longer to consider last time but is in a rush this time

All of these speak to free will, insofar as I have no higher authority than myself to regard (so long as I don't act illegally). But they also describe different initial conditions the second time around, and determinism does not give you the same outputs if you feed in different inputs.

It is precisely because it is me that decided on bases such as the above one way or another that it is free will, and it is precisely because the decision depends on these factors (via me) that it is deterministic, or at least cannot be dismissed as incompatible with determinism.

1a.) Ultrasocial can be attributed to over-population and/or economic dictates, which implies adaptability and/or small-scale tactical necessity, rather than an evolutionary progression. That we are social animals is sufficient. — Mww

I think you may have a different definition of ulrasocial going on. I meant it in the typical neuroscientific sense of ultracooperative social groups, such as in Neurosciences in the Human Person by Battro et al, rather than later e.g. agricultural or technological solutions to living. These are understood in terms of evolutionary biology and psychology.

Decisions grounded in those heritable capacities denote compatibility, rather than morality. — Mww

If you are saying that natural capacities for empathy and altruism have nothing to do with morality, I would have to disagree strongly. If you are disputing that these natural capacities are identical with any metaphysical idea of morality, yes, hopefully, because I believe one is real and one is not.

Granted, insofar as 1.) and 2.) are more related to consequentialist ethics, a psychological domain with respect to some arbitrary conduct in general, rather than moral determinism, a purely metaphysical domain with respect to innate human qualities under which mere capacity is subsumed, which first generates, then judges, what the specific conduct will be. — Mww

Not sure what you mean. From the imagined perspective of natural selection as a designer, yes, our natural more apparatus developed because it gave us greater odds at survival. But our moral apparatus is as unaware of its origin as our ancestors were. It is not a consequentialist philosophy of human beings. It is biology as a consequence of natural selection. Is that what you mean?

Square Two:

Understanding the perspective of another individual allows us to assess their threat and their vulnerability. It comes under the general negotiations of subsocial and social animals.
— Kenosha Kid

What we have learned scientifically since is that no such understanding is required by us. Instead it needed to be the case in the past that a certain behaviour is a) statistically beneficial for survival and b) within our genetic space.
— Kenosha Kid

How in the Holy Dickens can you reconcile these two assertions? — Mww

I'm struggling to see where the apparent contradiction could lie. The first refers to the understanding of another's likely perspective or feelings given to us by our empathetic apparatus. The second refers to an understanding of how that apparatus did it and why. Again, I can use a TV without knowing how it works. Likewise I can "use" empathy and gain insight, without knowing how or why it works.

That is to say, understanding the benefit of staying clear of Sabre-tooth cats and warlords is exactly the same as understanding the benefit of staying clear of dump trucks and panhandlers. — Mww

The "understanding" of the danger of sabre-tooth tigers, as well as of spiders, rodents, and other pests, the dark, the unusual, the sheer, etc. was also selected for. We don't really understand why a spider is to be feared, especially when it is evidently unscary ("It's more scared of us than you are of it!"). Unfortunately our ancestors had better reason to be scared of spiders and apparently weren't scared enough.

It's the rationalism trap again, big-R Rationalism as @Pfhorrest corrected me: someone does something, therefore they must have worked out that that was the best thing to do using their reason alone and, if it was the wrong thing, they made a rational error. In reality, if your ancestor had attempted this in the face of an oncoming sabre-tooth tiger, you almost certainly wouldn't have been born because rational thought is slow while pattern recognition and rules of thumb are fast. Meanwhile, thanks to my ancestor having the wisdom to mate with a flight creature, I wouldn't have anyone to talk to about this :( There was an excellent survival reason why your ancestor legged it, but that wasn't your ancestor doing the deciding, that was natural selection.

VLTTP :smirk: (Excellent OP and discussion. Mods keep up the bannings; that seems to be classing-up the joint! :up:) — 180 Proof

Thanks a lot! You were the first member I followed on here, so it means a lot.

Isn't "cannot have top-down rules" a top-down rule? — 180 Proof

Cannot "support" might be better phrasing. It is outside the capability of natural selection to implement such top-down rules, so even the top-down rule "No top-rules!" cannot be a natural rule. It's just a description of natural limitations.

This caricature certainly doesn't apply to what's called 'virtue ethics' (i.e. eudaimonism) from the Hellenes through the (neo)Thomists down to moderns like Spinoza ... G.E.M. Anscombe, Alasdair McIntyre, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, Owen Flanagan, et al. — 180 Proof

In terms of social altruism, sure, and of course the existentialists who defied such oughts long before my parents were born. The eudaimonists are still concerned with "oughts" though. They are in the same situation of having moral capacity unsuited to their environments, they just come up with different answers. Within the scope of what is salvaged from our sociality, I'd vouch for them. It seems at least as justifiable to me to act to increase personal well-being, so long as it is not at the expense of others, than it is to concern oneself principally with others. The divorcement of good-for-self and good-for-the-group cannot justify one over the other. Extending that to antisocial behaviour that is good for personal well-being at the expense of others, well, it's no longer your personal well-being when you have not only have the others to contend with but the empathetic masses who you have hurt via them. Provided you have sufficient power, e.g. sufficient legal protection or maybe a small army to protect you from the consequences of the harm you do in the name of personal fulfilment, you'll be okay. For a while anyway.

"existentialism" is just Kierkegaardian 'subjective idealism' (i.e. decisionist fideism), which is just coin-flipping (à la "Two-Face" or "Anton Chighur") — 180 Proof

See:

In the existential sense, and it was existentialism I was comparing our post-social situation to, freedom is a lack of "ought". It is in the sense that any choice we make, giving that freedom, is absurd by virtue of the fact that our freedom cannot justify one action over another (Kierkegaard), and in the sense that the necessity to perform that absurdity it is a symptom of human beings beings incompatible with their environment (Camus). — Kenosha Kid

"relativism", in so far as its a truth-claim (negative or positive) is self-refuting — 180 Proof

I think this is where the OP differs from quite a few of the more metaphysically-minded, and by design. It is not necessary for relativism to justify relativism, i.e. it need not be an elementary moral theory. In fact that's the point: no moral theory will be both elementary and true. Relativism is a default of a naturalistic depiction of morality that observes that our moral drives and capacities cannot be exhaustively or accurately fulfilled in the environment they now exist in (existentialism), and that, beyond the existence of these drives and capacities, there is no natural justification for one schema of how and when one act above another.

Small social groups cannot maintain diverse social mores, and so the origins of relativism lie in the non-overlapping memetic histories (to whatever extent they might have been less uniform) of disparate social groups. Large social groups, or large networks of virtual social groups, comprised of modern equivalents of social groups, clearly do maintain diverse social standards. Some can be dismissed on antisocial grounds, i.e. the politics of subhuman animals. Some can be dismissed on practical grounds (e.g. most deontolies, such as Kant's notion of duty, and probably all consequentialisms). Between those, a lot of moral philosophies can exist that are practical, socially consistent, and different. Our nature cannot tell us which to choose (because our nature is unaware of our circumstances) and I argue that, since our morality derives from natural selection of social drives and capacities, no fucker else can either. Relativism then is a description of nature, including in unnatural environments, not an ab initio theory.

Disembodied, non-ecological cognition? Solipsistic fallacy (if it ain't, it should be). More Berkeley, I guess, than Kiergekaard? — 180 Proof

I was thinking more of the French existentialists. Kierkegaard had higher, and in my view imaginary, authorities. French existentialism is ethically solipsistic to an extent, and in some ways terminally so: no sooner do existentialists announce freedom, they try and find an "ought" (God, overcoming, communism, personal experience) to fill the void. I'm hoping to avoid the same mistake here. I can vouchsafe someone's freedom to behave antisocially, to be inhuman. It is possible and that can't be pre-moderated by others. I just can't vouchsafe their personal safety from the empathetic masses afterwards. Unfortunately, others can.

Natural. Selection. Shake-n-bake variation by descent sans teleology. Exhibit 1: the 3+ billion year old fossil record. Exhibit 2: nucleogenesis and planetary systems formations. Exhibit 3: "junk DNA", spandrel traits, etc. Exhibit 4: cosmic expansion (towards) thermodynamic equilibrum or maximum disorder (heat death) --> heat itself. Etcetera ... — 180 Proof

I disagree with the shake-n-bake analogy; I think it very inaccurate. Natural selection is not simply a random searching of genetic space. That is just mutation and combination, and even that is heavily constrained. Natural selection is much more: it is an optimisation algorithm that minimises a cost within that space of function without it. One needs noise (mutation) for it to find non-local optima and one needs a means of exploring combinations of parameters to move along the space, but the power, both explanatory and in terms of building complexity, is really in eliminating the unfit via competition for resources, which is definitively not random.

Damn. You drew me into the natural selection debate and I said I was not going there. :scream:

That's a really nicely written piece. I agree with a substantial portion of what you say, but agreement is boring so... — Isaac

Cheers Isaac! Yeah, kick it in its vulnerable parts, that's the right way.

I'm not so sure that you can move as smoothly as you do from the biological description of empathetic pain to the non-hypocritical maxim of the new globalised society we find ourselves in. That pain has not gone away, and I don't think it can be as easily cast aside - socialisation can dictate behaviours, but it is less successful in undermining physiological processes. — Isaac

Overall, yes, I agree, and did not mean to suggest otherwise. It seems quite clear that you can raise animosity toward certain people, and it is experimentally evident that this subdues our natural empathetic behavioural responses, even if it does not seem to subdue our initial empathetic neurological response. So to that extent, socialisation can be perverted to make us do antisocial things. But you're right that we still have those capacities and drives, so we cannot statistically be antisocial. We are biased toward altruism, and that bias has to be compensated for to make us selfish.

And I think this wins out in the history of our cultures. Conservativism relies on violence to stop itself from losing ground, as we see now in Hong Kong and in the protectionism of the US police forces, without which the trend always seems to be to extend our altruism to an ever widening diversity of strangers.

I think that introducing new out-groups has a catastrophic quality. Because we clearly can't have traditionally had overriding empathetic responses to strangers (the suggested counter-empathetic responses to out-group members), and because we cannot have reigning socialisations that bias us one way or another to specific new out-groups (although we can have blanket positions on general ones), powerful nations have historically not treated new peoples humanely... at first. Those few who seem always inclined to exploit new out-groups tend to get in there while we have no substantial moral position on the matter. But exposure to these injustices always seems to incline us toward ending them rather than adopting them as good-for-us, which, and in this I agree 100% with you, is a testament to the robustness of our humanity (our ultrasociality) on a statistical level.

Being a statistical phenomenon, it is prone to its peaks and troughs, it's Martin Luther King Jr.s and its Hitlers. But we don't seem to be winning the war on the ideological perversion of our social capacities by powerful minorities very quickly, which itself is a testimony to the power of socialisation. Hopefully this too is just a weird fluke, but given the lifespan of archaic memes, I fear not.

So what's happening is that we're using the very same moral decision-making approaches you list in your first half, unaltered. What's changing is the determination of in-group and out-group which is now highly flexible and circumstantial. — Isaac

Yes, absolutely, but the important point is:

we construct flexible and overlapping 'virtual' small-groups, and it is these we use to to determine valuation — Isaac

I have a friend, we'll call him Alex, who has a friend, we'll call him Bob, who is very Nigel Farage (I'm British) and constantly posts nationalistic ass-hattery on social media, a lot of it about Polish people. He has a good Polish friend, call him Cris. How does Bob rationalise this? "I don't mean you, mate, it's everyone else." This is an excellent working example, because there are many virtual social groups in play. There are Bob's actual friends (including Cris), then there is his social media group, then there are his political affiliations and associates, and they conflict with one another. He is losing actual friends (including Alex who has distanced himself) via social media because of his political affiliations. The inconsistency is a clear sign of hypocrisy: Bob would not agree to the persecution of Cris, but agrees with the persecution of Polish people. This, I would say, is typically antisocial.

But yes other people might be more consistent across their virtual groups. However, I do question whether, when one's virtual social groups geographically encompass the world, one can actually maintain e.g. racist or nationalistic viewpoints without hypocrisy. It seems to me that out-groupism was on its surest footing back when social groups were small and other groups were largely existential threats. In-groups do not typically suffer existential threat from out-groups, whatever lies they may tell. It also seems to me that those who exploit our unpreparedness for dealing with new out-groups (as in slavery), or raise our animosity against existing ones (e.g. Hitler), in any other way tend to comprise a minority of powerful psychopaths.

Part of the obvious wooliness in this part of my OP comes from lack of space, because this is such an expansive and complex topic, part from my own ignorance, and part probably from the ignorance even of our most knowledgeable experts. What would, say, American white-black relations have been like if more representative people, who had not inherited racist or slavery-affirming socialisations, had mediated them from the start? This starts off looking like a simple question that suggests that maybe if power wasn't so concentrated always among psychopathic opportunists, things might have been better. But of course slavery had been accepted as natural since the middle ages, in no small part thanks to religion, and in no small part thanks to its legal status, so its still likely that even normal people might have gone the same route.

My feeling is that, whatever initial difficulties there might have been in encountering new out-groups, in the absence of socialisations that push us toward pre-social behaviours and suspend our social capacities, and in the absence of a credible existential threat from such out-groups, our natural altruism would tend toward inclusivity. The main evidence I see for this is that, despite everything that powerful psychopaths have tried to pass off as fair game, and despite the methods of socialisation obviously employed to pass them off as good, we have always tended toward inclusivity as the geographical boundaries of our social groups have expanded.

Society of monks, hermits, or peoples who otherwise avoid eachother for whatever reason. Or perhaps, the go to example, a society of open slavery are examples of a society engaging in antisocial or otherwise subhuman/dehumanizing behaviors are they not?

Fantasy becomes reality all the time. An early society of homogeneous peoples discussing the idea of "other people just like us but different" somewhere in the universe. Traveling the ocean. Space travel. Instant communication between peoples halfway around the world. Too many to list. You're using a floor as a ceiling by reducing the idea of society or reality-inducing change as "fantasy" in order to preserve belief. — Outlander

Re-reading my response to you I noticed two things. First, shit that sounded terse! Sorry, I was distracted and should have responded when I could give you the attention your reply deserved. Second, for likely the same reasons, I'm not sure I took from your point what you intended. Do correct me if there was a disjoint.

Hermits are properly solitary animals, yes, so by definition you cannot have a society of hermits: any social aspect is the extent to which they are not solitary. There are btw social-but-solitary animals within the subsocial animals.

You can have a society of monks. I am pretty sure they live together, work together, feed together and would help one another if needed. They might not be chatty, but neither were our ancestors.

Can you have a society of mostly slave owners and slave traders? I would say not. I think your rationale is that slave owners behave antisocially toward their slaves but, while it pains me to use the phrase "in defence of slave owners", in defence of slave owners they would not have thought of slaves as being inside their social group. Emancipation was part of the on-going process of extending empathy and altruism via legal rights to more and more people, an ultrasocial (i.e. human) response to the replacement of small social groups with a world-of-strangers.

So, yes, I agree that slavery was an antisocial behaviour, to the extent that it appealed only to the pre-social instincts of slave owners and traders and jettisoned that which makes us human. Slavers and slaver owners were, I believe, behaved as subhuman animals. But society was not largely comprised of slave owners, but of people who either did or did not tolerate them.

Cultural conditioning is a broad and difficult topic, not like I'm an expert, but I would basically argue that the human mind radically acclimates to what it is familiar with, recalibrating in novel situations until behavior is appropriately effective. — Enrique

:100:

Bad examples provided by media, combative communities, badly run organizations and elsewhere leading to antisocial behavioral inclinations. — Enrique

Or antisocial organisations themselves. A cigarette manufacturer, for instance, robs you blind, slowly kills you, and lies to you about it the whole time. Somehow this goes unpunished. A natural response might be to hang the manufacturers from lampposts and set fire to their factories, but even a heavily moderated action on this instinct would go severely punished. This tells us a lot about our law and about power. We of course did not hang cigarette manufacturers from lampposts or set fire to their factories, and obviously a lot of that has to do with self-preservation, knowing as we do that our actions would have unwanted consequences for us.

But I believe that a lot more of it has to do with our socialisation particularly with respect to law. The judicial consequences of retaliation are the stick, but you can teach a person, a group, a whole country on a statistical level, to have their own (even if unconscious) moral position on breaking the law, and that's much better than merely punishing people. (Compare to every protester in Hong Kong that knows they are likely to be arrested but does so anyway because they know what they are doing is right, or every black protester in the US now that knows that even black journalists will be arrested and/or assaulted, or every protester in the UK student protests who knew they would be physically assaulted and tortured but went anyway.)

Media and politicians in recent history (Fox News, Dubbya, Blair, et al) that tell us up is down, left is right, bad is good, good is bad, are clearly exploiting the fact that socialisation can move us along the selfish-selfless spectrum on the whole. But they are also doing so after an extremely long history of that socialisation process being seen as up for grabs. It is obvious to those more along the selfless end of the spectrum that this is happening; it is less clear how that framework came about. My instinct is to say power through violence. This seems to be the old school way of convincing people to socialise their children in a certain way. If you can get someone to travel hundreds of miles and risk their lives to kill a foreigner in the name of good 1000 years ago, it is perhaps a testament to our biological morality that a) the occasional Hitler is the worst we can do and b) we correct ourselves 1000 years later.

It's worth bearing in mind that, while people can be compelled to champion antisocial ideas and vote for politicians who will implement them, this is quite an abstract way of being antisocial. It's not like, on a statistical level, these people are going out and murdering each other, stealing from each other, etc. They are mostly pretty sociable people, and society coheres well enough. Those that do trample over everyone to benefit themselves, like cigarette manufacturers, are a small but powerful and protected minority.

An candidate popular antisocial position is to not act on climate change. This is tricky, because "the good of the group in 100 years" is not something that nature can select for in a gradual way. It might end up selecting for it in a catastrophic way if we carry on. I think this sort of morality does require rational thought, but the "good" is a rationalisation of our innate altruistic capacity.

Situations where biochemistry changes such that individuals are put into drastic disalignment with their social environments, such as a failing marriage, not infrequently with drug abuse, etc. — Enrique

This is weaker territory, since the sorts of environments we have are not those that could have been selected for. It's not obviously a socialisation issue either, though one presumes its something that could be socialised for. It's not like the monthly cycle didn't exist when we lived in small social groups. We must've dealt with it somehow. *ducks*

Societies, classes and subcultures that have intrinsically (but perhaps not irremediably) incompatible or antagonistic standards and principles. — Enrique

On the incompatible standards point, again I think this is unlikely to have happened when we lived in small groups, since small groups are unlikely to support diverse standards. But, yes, we now meet people with different socialisations on a daily basis, and our social instincts selected on the basis of the good of reciprocal altruism no longer meet their original (unknown to us) purpose.

As for antagonistic cultures, like far-right racist organisations and terrorist groups, they are at least under the impression they are acting for the good of the group they belong to. One of the most interesting experiments I've read on this is that such people are not generally less prone to neurological empathy responses toward out-groups. There is instead a competing counter-empathetic response. One can put this down to socialisation (raising a child to be a racist or a terrorist) so far, but tribalism is so common across animal species in their natural environments that some of these counter-empathetic responses surely have to be genetic in origin.

Institutional frameworks susceptible to blowing themselves up or becoming so corrupt that ethical standards and real community solidarity are impossible. — Enrique

You mean things like the protectionism of violent racist cops and Catholic paedophile priests? I'm not sure I completely agree. It is a credit to the majority that they are appalled, protest, and demand reforms. The Catholic church is a bit different insofar as Catholics themselves aren't meant to be critical of it, so you get a lot of apologism. Within that community, yes, that socialisation clearly has some corrupting effect, but again it's not like Catholics went "Okay, anything goes then" and all started buggering alter boys. Whether they wish to acknowledge it or not, they exceed the antisocial standards of their leaders.

And I think that is probably most often the case because psychopaths to positions of power are like moths to a candle. The majority of us are much more social, even if we don't know how to positively use that sociality, at least in a rigid way. The instinct of a cardinal to protect a paedophile priest is obviously strong, but he's just one jerk in a stupid hat. The instinct of the majority is to not tolerate it, so something of our social nature must be withstanding the onslaught of bad memes.

If you've got the solutions, I've got a million bucks! — Enrique

Okay, let me just see if I can find someone to provide solutions for up to $900,000 and I'll get back to you :rofl:

In doing so, you are only describing why we are inclined to do certain things, and calling those things good. — Pfhorrest

I'm not sure I'd even go that far. Nature, in a way, has declared them "good" in the good-for-the-society-therefore-good-for-you sense. Natural selection is a wonderful optimisation algorithm and we should probably take it seriously except, as I said, we are no longer fit for our environment, so we also need to see its limitations.

The distinction I prefer is social/antisocial. The hypocrisy of the presocial behaviour of an ultrasocial animal in a social group is antisocial behaviour proper. We are not meant to tolerate it. It is a rule insofar as our social apparatus as a whole -- that which makes us social -- biases us toward it. It was presumably a good rule, insofar as it was selected for in an environment for which is was suited.

I did, perhaps regrettably, try and cast these things in terms of how a moral philosopher might see them, but that shouldn't put the cart before the horse. We should not take the rule as the foundation; it is a character of the true foundation of our morality.

So you really are ignoring the is/ought divide. — Pfhorrest

I am rejecting it outright. I am saying it's a rationalisation based on ignorance that bears no resemblance to reality. If we still lived in small social groups, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. This conversation is a symptom of the fact that we have social apparatus honed for one environment but exist in another. If we still existed in small social groups, we would act out the good-for-the-group morality that we are built and conditioned for (assuming, rightly, that no small social group could develop an antisocal socialisation) without the necessity of an is/ought divide, and, had small social groups given rise to moral philosophers (which I maintain they could not), such moral philosophers would be as advised by our natural history that what is "good" is "good for the group".

I'll go further and say that, of those moral philosophers outside of our selected-for environment who nonetheless maintain a position consistent with living without hypocrisy, who stand by the golden rule, who would seek justice for victims and against the antisocial, are almost certain to have their definition of good overwhelmingly influenced by their biology and, should they seek to define the character of objective truths and a priori knowledge, will oblige themselves to do so according their biology. I am not attempting to show that everyone's idea of good is wrong, but rather that it is, at best, a redundant post hoc rationalisation.

@SophistiCat

In terms of discerning my and Pfhorrest's views, which seem to have comparable outputs, I'll contrast and compare Pfhorrest's breakdown of his philosophy with my biological treatment.

Something or another is the correct thing to believe (there is an objective reality) ~ Something or another is the correct thing to intend (there is an objective morality) — Pfhorrest

Humans are ultrasocial animals built for empathy, altruism, and intolerance toward antisocial behaviour. Such drives are social -- beneficial for the social groups existing at the time of our making -- but we do naturally not know their purpose. These drives compete with selfish drives (sometimes the same mechanical processes), giving us a degree of freedom to behave on the selfish-selfless spectrum according to which drives win out. Socialisation is a means of creating uniformity out of that freedom. For a given individual with a given socialisation, there are some things that are the correct thing to believe, others that are incorrect, and most things will not have been considered.

All beliefs are initially to be considered possible until shown false (epistemic liberty) ~ All intentions are initially to be considered permissible until shown bad (deontic liberty) — Pfhorrest

We are statistically biased toward doing what is right for the social group without necessarily making or having any kind of belief system about it. Hypocrisy is not shown through rationalism, and need not be shown through actually causing harm, though that will do it. Stimuli for empathetic responses can be hypothetical (e.g. reading a novel) for instance. Naturally, to commit an antisocial act is to place ourselves outside of the social group with all that that encompasses. Socialisations may spontaneously or by devising favour certain behaviours to certain groups over certain other behaviours to certain other groups. Devised socialisations are effective at making something "bad" (antisocial or hypocritical) appear "good" or, at least, efficacious. Our natural social biology without any guiding or corrupting belief system would tend us toward what is good for our social group (genetic "good").

Liberty comes afterwards, after constraint. Natural social drives are not strictly constraining, merely biasing toward survival (genetic "good"). However, those drives are numerous and acting against them has severe consequences, which is a lesser constraint, if we cannot subdue them. To what extent our social drives compete with our presocial ones is part nature, part nurture, the nurture part being our socialisation, for which we are biologically equipped for. Socialisations are more constraining and more arbitrary, although one must assume on grounds of natural selection that, at some point, they were a good fit for our social apparatus. Socialisations can have the form of belief systems without the necessity of an elementary belief.

Any belief might potentially be shown false (epistemic criticism) ~ Any intention might potentially be shown bad (deontic criticism) — Pfhorrest

All beliefs (socialisations) are arbitrary but some conflict with our social biology, i.e. are antisocial and most will conflict with other people's socialisations. Since both are arbitrary, so long as neither are hypocritical, both may be equally valid for an ultrasocial animal.

But the chances of that, sufficient to make meaningfully reciprocity, is slim and non-existent. We’re just too individually different in our mutual congruencies. — Mww

On the contrary, we are built for it. Obviously we cannot have reciprocity -- an outcome -- in our DNA, but we evolved to each be altruistic in an environment where, each being similarly altruistic, altruism would very likely be reciprocated.

how we handle our own moral problems hasn’t changed. — Mww

I think it's changed completely and irrevocably. We are built for reciprocity, but not for strangers or people apt to see things very differently to us. Nor are we built for the sheer scale of opportunities for altruism we are confronted with. We weren't built to handle this many people, let alone this many strangers.

And theoretically, as soon as one adopts a moral philosophy, he should be well-enough armed by it, to accommodate moral dilemmas of any era. — Mww

It's worth reiterating that such drives do not constitute a moral philosophy. In their natural environment, there's no philosophy to be done. Even our socialisations would, while evolving themselves, likely have been uniform and with unknown justifications. Moral philosophy starts when our social biology no longer fits our environment.

This reflects back to my assertion that understanding is the first conscious activity. With that, if I know myself, I already understand how I acquired that knowledge. — Mww

Good. Then if it can be shown that you don't, the assertion is shown to be false, surely. I think that this sort of thinking derives from a time when we knew that some things we do automatically benefit us, i.e. appear to be intended to help us, but whose triggers we could not explain. They are pre-Darwin ideas and, as such, it is completely understandable that some kind of forgotten understanding must have made us, say, feel fear when we are in a strange place in the dark. What we have learned scientifically since is that no such understanding is required by us. Instead it needed to be the case in the past that a certain behaviour is a) statistically beneficial for survival and b) within our genetic space.

We are then in a possible position of rationalising why we behave the way we do and, being not consistently or not only rational creatures, rather than say "It is unknown, let's postpone judgement," we invent, and, on a bad day, invent gods.

First of all, one don’t choose what to do with freedom, in the proper deontological moral philosophy. Freedom is its own thing, it’s there, but you don’t technically do anything with it. — Mww

In the existential sense, and it was existentialism I was comparing our post-social situation to, freedom is a lack of "ought". It is in the sense that any choice we make, giving that freedom, is absurd by virtue of the fact that our freedom cannot justify one action over another (Kierkegaard), and in the sense that the necessity to perform that absurdity it is a symptom of human beings beings incompatible with their environment (Camus).

With that out of the way, such an abstraction can never be more than a logical necessity, never susceptible to empirical proofs. Anything that abstract can only be something to believe in, or, grant the validity for. If one grants it validity, it doesn’t beg the question, but because the concept has no real ground other than a logic one may have no solid reason to accept, it does beg the question. — Mww

This feels like metaphysics justifying metaphysics once again. I believe the OP is consistent with the polar opposite interpretation: that this need never enter our reason at any point to show its truth, and that any logic derived from it is likely to be based on inaccurate assumptions about it. Square peg, round hole.

I'm pleased that you even entertain the notion that a priori moral knowledge isn't so necessary.
— Kenosha Kid

My turn: not sure what you mean. — Mww

I just meant this:

natural morality may tend to eliminate the need for a priori knowledge — Mww

But they can and do illuminate vagaries and ambiguities in both moral theory, and the humans that indulge in them. — Mww

Sometimes, sure. My feeling is that people who hang around train tracks in groups get what's coming to them :naughty: Moral conundrums like this are useful, I agree. They allow the individual to better understand where they stand and discuss their position with others and maybe be convinced otherwise or convince others otherwise (part of socialisation). But they tend to be cast in terms of moral imperatives, at which point they become make-believe again imo.

But theory aside, as long as it be given humans are naturally moral agents, re: there are no non-moral human beings, then no matter the social inventory, he must determine an object, taken to mean some willful volition, corresponding to a moral dilemma, and if this object, or volition, which translates to a moral judgement hence to a moral action, is in tune with his nature, he remains true to his moral constitution. If it is opposed to his nature, he is untrue, hence immoral. — Mww

For sure. Any such person is either attempting to get more out of society than they put in (e.g. freeloaders, presumably not traditionally welcomed) or else is ripe for exploitation. (Hypocrisy can go to the other end of the selfish-selfless spectrum too, and we would not say such people were immoral, quite the opposite. We would think there was something wrong with them though, and, in prehistoric times, nature would have weeded them out. Their rarity makes sense.)

As for he must, I beg not. Unless you mean "inaction is an action", in which case that's true enough, but not due to moral considerations.

Problem is, people get stuck on which choice to make, when they should be considering what the agent’s constitution demands. — Mww

The other problem is that they tend to focus on individual scenarios, whereas, since we cannot act on all situations, it is always reasonable to walk away from a particular one. If there were true moral compulsion, we would be exhausted to death. We can obviously ponder how we'd act if so inclined (in the mood, not in a rush, without a personal care, etc.), but any judgement based on perceived obligation is very wrong to me. Again, the artifice of the question creates the wrong impression.

It follows that there are no unreal or non-sensical scenarios — Mww

There certainly are: a society of mostly antisocial actors being one. But it is usually not the scenario that is at fault so much as the question around it. Whether I flip the switch or walk away is up to me: it is a freedom, not an ought. I can rationalise which is best if I have time, but there isn't a wrong answer.

So.....will your counter-point be that humans do not have a moral constitution? — Mww

Yes, I think that's going to be my motto, isn't it: it's like morality, but not. I'd say our social apparatus if anything is on surer footing. That, together with socialisation... it's enough like a moral constitution for me.

Thanks :cool:

That is, after giving us a quick tour of the natural history, anthropology and sociology of morality - what is - you skip to the conclusion - not about any matters of fact - but about matters of ought.
...
At first there appears to be a clear exception to the pattern: the injunction against a hypocrisy that is stated as a purely moral rule. — SophistiCat

I'm not sure if you're taking from this that nature has somehow given us some knowledge of the rule. But what I hope is evident is that this is absolutely unnecessary. You and I as people with ideas of moral imperatives and (incomplete) knowledge of evolutionary biology can look upon the drives toward empathy, altruism, and intolerance of antisocial behaviour and say they conform to a general rule: do not suffer hypocrites. It shouldn't be implied that this is elementary or that we need be in any way cognisant of it. That's the grand trick with evolution: it makes us do the "right" thing without needing us to know why (blink to clear eyes, shiver to warm up, vomit to expel toxins, etc.) And it can make us do so in many, more fundamental ways. Empathy seems a strong example of that. At root it is not one thing, and at origin it has nothing to do with kindness.

The project of my OP was not to find natural reasons to innate or mysterious knowledge, but to attempt to show that any such thing is unnecessary. I perhaps, in the edit, switched between the biological foundations of morality and how we think of their effects too suddenly.

Got to account for the effects of legal systems, education, conditioning, which you started to touch upon when mentioning memetics I think. — Enrique

I totally agree. I think if the OP proves anything, it's that bypassing it leads to a weaker, less coherent description of the moral problem. But power alone is such a huge topic, I'd have never finished. I get the sense education is a place you'd start?

even caring to begin with depends on the indoctrinating of our capacity for reason by example etc. — Enrique

Well that's one of the interesting things. I'd say yes and no. Yes, insofar as it seems that empathy requires experience -- we are not born with functioning empathy -- and can be suppressed (empathy fatigue). No, insofar as evidence suggests that even if you are raised a racist, you will still have some empathetic response to a person of different skin colour in distress. That is, it is not that you lack an empathetic response, but that other -- so-called counter-empathetic responses -- suppress or reduce oxytocin production. It's complex.

I think what we can safely say is that if human ancestors evolved empathetic responses, those responses must have at least been amenable to the kinds of socialisation our ancestors underwent at the time. Nature isn't wasteful.

exemplified in The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1788, specifically with respect to the idealistic notion of “the kingdom of ends”. — Mww

As I said myself, there are aspects from which one can derive something kinda like some well-known moral laws (I give the example of the golden rule). I'd say the kingdom of ends is perhaps less a good fit. I'd break it down in two separable ways.

First, the categorical imperative is not strictly reciprocal. It is reciprocal insofar as any moral decision I make would be fit for a universal law, such that I might benefit from such a law. This is much more idealistic than our natural bent toward reciprocal altruism, based on the survival benefit of helping an individual such that that individual would reciprocate specifically to me.

Second, it is unsurprising that moral biological capacity evolved in those groups survives within us for consideration by an intelligent and experienced human in 18th century Prussia, but that is a one-way street: the moral problems Kant had to address are not obliged to be within our natural moral capacity. Moral philosophy, it seems to be, is not a means of addressing moral problems; it is a symptom of incompatibility of moral beings evolved on one environment trying to make sense of a different one. One should expect difference, and one should not account for either the similarities or differences by recourse to intrinsic knowledge (unless one is being extremely broad in the definition of 'knowledge', e.g. storage of information) if one is to take seriously what knowledge we do have and know we have.

“do what you will that harms no other (...), to never step in to help others or resist others who harm, (...) and never expect others (....)”

....are very far from contingent rules, for they abide no possible exception. — Mww

Not clear what you mean. Do you mean that you interpreted e.g. "never step in to ... resist others who harm" as a rule, or that the rule "resist those who would harm others" is a rule with no possible exception? Either way, "resist those who would harm others" (or its contrary) may be the rule of an individual, consistent with having a drive to protect those in one circumstance who do not generally exist in the individual's circumstance, but "resist those who would harm others" cannot be a rule because of its practical impossibility. In a large world full of strangers, it is simply unfeasible to obey such a rule. That is the style of the problem in a nutshell.

And I don’t give a solitary hoot for the science, the chemicals in my brain that make me both charming and obnoxious, cheerful and gloomy, lend a hand to those I like and leave a dipshit in the ditch right where I found him. I am quite known to myself without knowing a clue about my oxytocin level, thank you very much. — Mww

But can you truly understand yourself and not know why it happens? I can understand a TV in a functional way: you plug it in, switch it on, press a button for a channel, hey presto: commercials! But I'm not really understanding the TV, I'm understanding how to use the TV. If you haven't already, and fancy being shown yourself in a way you did not understand, I thoroughly recommend (as I do to everybody) Daniel Kahnemann's Thinking Fast and Slow. I can't think of a more successful item to disillusion people of the notion that they understand themselves, and I say this without hypocrisy: I do not understand me as well as he does.

the existential morality, which asks.....

“how do I choose when to do good/oppose harm”

.....would certainly seem to require it — Mww

No more than freedom begs the question of how I choose what to do with it, I think. There is a crucial difference between the morality problem and existentialism. In existentialism, I have freedom, personal sovereignty, and I have no compulsion to employ it in a particular way. It's like having all the tools and no particular thing to use them on. Our problem is that we have outdated tools. Any use of them is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. There really isn't much justification for kindness to a stranger beyond those of natural moral aspect (1): the hit of oxytocin feels good, and I may torment myself if I don't. But there's no justification for the beef and vegetable pie I'm about to make either, on which... gotta run!

Kudos, nonetheless. Well done indeed.

Peace. — Mww

Thanks! Coulda been worse. It's messy (it was an editing nightmare) and there's expressions I'm already cringing at, but there's a sort of thing there I think. I'm pleased that you even entertain the notion that a priori moral knowledge isn't so necessary. Peace back to the Mww most high!

If that were the case, then it would be impossible for the ideas to later be found to have value outside of metaphysics. — Luke

I'm not sure that follows, or that it matters much. If on my 18th birthday I am an adult, and that adult grew out of a child, does it follow a child is an adult?

When Democritus formulated the atom theory, he was starting the ball rolling on science. I'm happy to agree that his was a metaphysical theory that had potential value, and that value underlies parts of physics and chemistry where it was put to good use. However the field of questions that Democritus was answering as broadly met by metaphysics do not inherit the value that scientists later found in atom theory, nor is it obvious that, had Democritus not formulated atom theory back then, science would be unaware of it, i.e. that Democritus' idea was even relevant. My point was simply that, because atom theory has value, its natural home is in the sciences: that's where it is valuable. As a purely metaphysical idea, it is not obviously more valuable than cosmic mind theory.

The problem is that sensations tend to be understood as private and therefore 'epistemologically invisible.' — Yellow Horse

This rather treats indirect evidence the same as no evidence, which is just a pathway to solipsism. If we're going down that route, I deny that you and your argument exist! :rofl:

My sensation awareness and memory are not invisible to me. Evidence of yours is indirect. You can tell me God speaks to you, and I can ask others if God speaks to them and note that God never speaks to me, and from this I can deduce that you're probably mistaken. That this reassuring consensus requires words, it does not follow that I needed the words to 'not be spoken to by God'. I do not contest that I need language about sensation to understand your sensations. I contest that I do not need it to have my own.

emergentism has no observer — schopenhauer1

What does this mean? If you mean emergence is not observed, and observation is the keystone, the fact that nothing consistent with consciousness has ever been observed in rocks suffices to reject pan-psychism. But I disagree with the assumption: emergentism does have witnesses, i.e. it has evidence. Panpsychism does not.

If you mean that emergence does not yield observers, that is just the irreducible complexity argument again which really needs to be laid to rest. Nature has proven it otherwise.

If something that was once part of metaphysics is later found to have value, then you cannot say that metaphysics is "all of the ideas that will never be found to have any value". — Luke

... later found to have value outside of metaphysics, though. I'm open to counter-examples. It is not a principle, just an overwhelming impression.

There can be no society of majority antisocial behaviour. It is an oxymoron. — Kenosha Kid

In fact, I'll go a step further as there is a simplifying and unifying point here. Antisocial behaviour places you outside of the social group. That covers several points in one.

The practice of devising unreal and even nonsensical scenarios for pretend moral agents to play out pretend morality is precisely the thing I'm arguing against. It is not useful because it tells us nothing applicable outside that particular fantasy. In a natural philosophy of morality, it is particularly acute. Nature could not have selected for social characteristics that benefited us in an antisocial environment. We can ask what happens when that social environment changes in a way inconsistent with your nature, and the answer must surely reduce to: that particular social drive is no longer relevant, it has no determinable object.

Therefore, metaphysics cannot be "all of the ideas that will never be found to have any value". — Luke

Of course it can, if the moment it had value it ceases to be metaphysics. You can certainly trace origins of valuable ideas back to valueless metaphysical treatments. I'll grant it that much.

. If the majority of society as a whole engages in either antisocial or subhuman behavior and as a rational man you seek to avoid it, this presents a paradox. — Outlander

Incorrect. It is merely an error. Rationality has nothing to do with it: that is metaphysics again. There can be no society of majority antisocial behaviour. It is an oxymoron.

Ain’t this fun???? Almost as much fun as watching you argue with noaxioms, but I know better than to participate in that existential free-for-all. — Mww

Lots, natch! After a couple of false starts, we have found an area for disagreement finally! I haven't forgotten you, but as per my previous post, I'd like to split this off into it's own thread. Was noaxioms the Rindler horizon guy? That wasn't fun, that was like smacking my head against a wall. :o

A few quick rebuttals to tide us over.

Understanding is the first and primary conscious activity in humans, so understanding is always evident in any judgement. — Mww

This is assuredly not true. Pavlovian learning tides us over for quite a while. That does not require comprehension.

Consciousness and morality are both objects of reason, for they absolutely cannot, in and of themselves, be objects of sense, therefore the understanding of them must always be a priori. — Mww

I dispute it wholeheartedly. Metaphysics casts them as objects of reason, because metaphysics casts everything this way. That's the metaphysical land-grab again. Both arise from millenia of biological process and manifest as biological processes stimulated by other phenomena. As such, they are causes, effects, and objects of study.

From there, the mistake is thinking we must be able to explain consciousness scientifically because the contents of it are derivable from experience, and we must be able to explain morality scientifically because our actions are quite evidently objective. — Mww

But science goes way beyond describing contents. Natural selection is not 'the characteristics content of studied animals': it explains the mechanisms of the origins of those characteristics. It is a foundational theory of biodiversity, not mere zoology.

You must realize no moral agent ever knows more than what he ought to do. — Mww

I reject the assumption the question is based on. In the pretend-moralities of metaphysics, sure, humans know how they ought to behave in most circumstances, and those that don't fail rationally or are immoral. In the real world, morality is complex and you don't always get a grade at the end or know if the path you chose was right.

Reason provides insight, and it is quite absurd to suggest we require knowledge of our reason, — Mww

It is more absurd to attempt to reason without it. "A train is speeding toward... Hang on, what's a train? I am speeding toward a group of people tied... Hang on, what's speed? What are people? What does it mean to be tied? Let me just derive these rationally from things I believe in irrationally, then I can finish my question." :P

But we’re in a metaphysical domain of the individual subject, and even if conditioning is present, he still needs to think for himself to be a rational or moral agent. — Mww

I dispute that it's a metaphysical domain too. I dispute a lot, don't I, sorry. This is metaphysical land-grab yet again. It insists upon itself, then justifies itself by once again insisting upon itself, ad infinitum. My individual subject is 100% physical, I assure you, and my biology precedes my moral agency not just since my birth, but by many tens of thousands of years.

That'll have to do for now. I will offer more than denials in due course. I owe a solid affirmation of something so you PAH! me away in kind.

I suggest that it's our precritical linguistic habits that make it 'obvious' that ideas and sensations exist. I don't dispute that in some sense they do. 'Ideas' and 'sensations' are words that we know how to use, and they help us get along in the world. — Yellow Horse

I'm pretty sure I recall having sensations before 'sensations' entered my vocabulary. Don't you?

Does dna cause feeling/awareness? How complex does dna have to be to have feeling/awareness? — turkeyMan

This equates "causing awareness" with "having awareness", which is not valid.

If you and i don't 100% understand the math and lab results behind the scientific theory, right/wrong/or indifferent you and i are putting our faith in scientists. — turkeyMan

That is a choice, not a condition. Everyone is free to understand the maths and results.

Once again you and are making assumption about viruses and bacteria that react in a similar way to stimuli which is similar to robots. — turkeyMan

The major differences are a) bacteria are biological, and b) robots have function. Bacteria can have uses, but they have no function. A better comparison would be between bacteria and non-living organic chemicals, since both are at least organic and neither have function, even if they have uses.

Pan-psychism is the assumption that all things have or are part of a consciousness. A valid argument to support that assumption cannot be: well, that's just an assumption.

Are there any flaws in the logic of this quote?
Are you open to Pan-psychism? — turkeyMan

I answered the first question. Which question is the poll for?

The quote extends the irreducible complexity argument. One could take it as meaning that any sensitivity to environment (such as in bacteria and elementary particles) is consciousness, but from the name pan-psychism (is this a religion? A lot of people bang on about it here) that is clearly not the kind of consciousness meant. Therefore one has to conclude that the argument is that a conscious multi-celled organism cannot be the distance descendent of a non-conscious single-celled organism, which is patently false.

Sorry, I’m gonna need some help with that. It’s possible to reconcile a fallacy with a validity, so I’m not sure what I’m being asked. — Mww

The question is how can insisting on a priori understanding of one thing be considered invalid and another thing valid. What is the distinction between consciousness and morality that makes the fallacy so evident for the former and so invisible for the latter?

attention to proper moral issues require an unconditioned cause within us — Mww

I disagree. The metaphysical land-grab requires an unconditioned cause within us. Morality can fare perfectly well without it.

This is why I mentioned that knowledge had nothing to do with it. We already know what we did, in response to some moral issue; what we want to know is why we did what we did. For empirical situations, objects are given to us and we have to figure out what they are; for moral situations, we give the objects in the form of our actions, and we have to figure out where those actions come from. — Mww

Yes, but the insistence that knowledge has nothing to do with it is precisely the fallacy. Knowledge is providing insight into where those actions come from. Conditioning, either biological or social, is very much on the table. The distaste toward this idea seems to me qualitatively no different to the distaste toward immaterial consciousness.

I was harking back to your comment about the concept of 'reference frames' (I'm not a physicist, but have a rough idea) as being 'not real'. Because, you see, I am trying to show that proper concepts are real, and not simply because there's someone around to entertain them. — Wayfarer

Then how are they mediators of the subjective-objective divide if they depend only on the objective, i.e. are independent of the existence of subjectivities.

And if you EVER disrespect Tigger like that again, I swear...!!!