Hi Philosophience - your position is a very common one. I call it the "Thatcher/Reagan" position or the Libertarian thesis. Thatcher famously said, "There is no such thing as society." There are only individuals pursuing their individual selfish interests.

My argument is that out of these individual pursuits there emerges a common understanding, and phenomena that are not reducible to the intentions of individuals alone. The best example in human society is "the market". What is this magical thing that sets prices? It is what emerges when you have countless people each trying to sell high and buy low. None of these people is doing anything other than pursue their own self-interest, but something emerges, by an invisible hand, that regulates them as if it were a supernatural power.

Law and morality are emergent properties of countless people trying to work out better ways to interact with each other. Moral precepts are not the product of your personal imagination - the common moral precepts of your culture were worked out collectively in hard practice and presented to you ready-made as you grew up. Morality is an emergent property of a culture, not the private domain of an individual that somehow accidentally is shared by some other number of private individuals.

Your notion of what exactly constitutes 'flourishing' is just your personal opinion. — Isaac

Actually there is quite a lot of work done on what constitutes human flourishing, and we should never rely on personal opinion on these matters, but rather consult the available science.

Social science is quite a well-developed field and capable of producing valid testable and reliable indicators of human flourishing, such as average life expectancy, average years of good health, years of education, poverty levels, income inequality, gender equality, crime and violence statistics, and so on. https://bit.ly/3gxmX91

We can see that societies that are faring well track and measure these indicators and try to improve their numbers. Northern Europe, with its strong social safety nets, typically dominates these lists. Societies that can't or won't track these indicators tend to do poorly.

There are about 20 global indices of human flourishing, based on good science, all measuring things in a different way, but trying to get at the same things I am getting at. One of the most respected is the U.N.'s Human Development Index: https://bit.ly/32sYBZe

If you look down the page you can find a list of similar indices. Another one talked about a lot is the Gross National Happiness Index: https://bit.ly/2YExr0e

The way to get people to buy into a moral system is to demonstrate how it personally benefits them. For example, science tells us how to respond to a pandemic. Non-scientists, such as Trump, the GOP, various evangelical organizations, etc. have told us the pandemic is a hoax. We can explain to the population, and we can explain to lawmakers, that we need to rely on science, and not opinion, because science can tell us not only what can help humanity to flourish, but what is in our personal best interests:

https://nbcnews.to/32Ae09U

I don't think that the desire to lift the condition of humanity as a whole even requires a justification. It is self-explanatory. — Pro Hominem

Well I said in earlier posts at the start of this thread that all moral systems appear to aim for this end, whether they express that explicitly and literally or not.

I feel the need to ground the claim that what is moral is what serves human flourishing in science, because my next move is to say that science can help us determine what is moral, because science can tell us a lot, maybe not everything but a lot, about what serves human flourishing, and what hinders it.

We need to bring science into the equation as an objective referee between competing claims about what actually does serve human flourishing.

For example, climate change - is it addressing climate change that will "lift the condition of humanity", or accelerating economic growth?

Are LGBTQ rights harmful to society? Is immigration?

At what point does freedom of speech cause more harm than good?

Does the death penalty deter crime? Does mass incarceration make society safer?

Is it better to wear a mask during a pandemic, or is it better to refuse a mask to champion individual liberty? Is quarantine an unjustified violation of the freedom of the individual?

You mention the veneration of the U.S. constitution. Right now the justices decide cases mostly on a close reading of the constitution, literally as if it were a holy text, or on case precedent. Imagine if instead the justices said, "OK, let's decide this case on the following criteria: what judgement would best serve human flourishing? And let's get some scientists in here to present some hard evidence before we decide..."

And so on.

I'm all in favour of competing ideas, that's how progress and evolution happen. But unless you have an objective standard of moral behaviour and an objective arbiter, there's no response to those who say, well what makes your idea any better than mine? You won't be able to get past the moral relativists and the magical thinkers - and today they seem to be both in power and in the majority...

Because the complexity demands it. — Pro Hominem

I'm trying to go a little deeper. I see what you're saying, complexity requires rules.

But I'm pretty sure you're not saying, the purpose of morality is to reduce complexity. I'm pretty sure you're not saying, one should behave morally because that would serve to reduce complexity.

I'm pretty sure you don't believe that reducing complexity is the target that Aristotle's moral archers should aim for. I can't imagine that one should advise citizens not to kill each other randomly or release a deadly virus from the lab because complexity demands it.

So I want to ask the next level of Why? Why would human beings want to reduce complexity?

Or perhaps you are saying there is nothing more to it than this, morals and laws arise only to solve ephemeral and fleeting problems and there is no larger reason why. In which case how does one reply to G.E. Moore, who said that without a definition of the Good, it is difficult to justify any system of morality?

Or perhaps you are saying that really morality does not have any greater purpose, you are rejecting moral teleology?

So could you clarify, do you think that morality has any greater purpose other than to reduce complexity or solve other practical problems?

Morality arises out of human consciousness as means to try to organize our increasingly complex systems of interaction. It is agreement reality, but part of the agreement can be to give it a sort of transcendent power, as in the veneration of the US Constitution, or the notion of human rights. — Pro Hominem

Well, that's "how", but my question is "Why?" Why is it that we try to organize our increasingly complex systems of interaction?

If you want to talk about the interesting part of your idea, which I see as "what is the proper scope for systems of human morality?", then I am happy to do so. — Pro Hominem

Well we disagree about morality being grounded in natural biological imperatives, but perhaps we can move on from there.

Do you think there is a capital G "Good" that all moral precepts serve? If so, what might it be? If not, why not? Is morality grounded in anything? Does it come from God? Or do we just make it up as we go?

Ok, so I repeat my question. Why do you insist on including animals? — Pro Hominem

Well I want to show that morality is grounded in the logic of the natural universe. In a nutshell, that logic says, "Persist or perish". That is the logic that drives evolution.

We are not different than any other species in that we have a biological, instinctual imperative to persist in this wildly gyrating universe. Like all other living species we seek to flourish.

I include animals in this just as a simple observation.

If you believe this weakens my position I would be interested in hearing why you think so.

We tend to view behaviours that harm human flourishing as immoral and behaviours that serve human flourishing as moral. This should tell us something about the grounding of morality.

I want to completely get away from the idea that morality is just an accidental happenstance. Of course we make up norms and moral systems to suit the circumstances, but the root is always the same.

When I read the news or venture into the world I see that everyone I meet or read about is trying to do what Aristotle said they were trying to do: to live well and fare well. Of course people will disagree about how best to flourish, and we have ways to resolve disagreements, including science. But very few people will disagree that the human project is to live well and fare well; to flourish. I have read Darwin and extend that to the human species and to all living species.

You say that all species "seek" "flourishing". Seek implies intent, and flourishing implies some knowledge that one IS flourishing, because one must have some sense of the abstract condition of one's species to know whether it is happening or not, or even to formulate the very idea of it. — Pro Hominem

I stated way back that just as "the market" is an emergent property of countless people engaging in transactions with one another, so morality is an emergent property of countless people trying to find a way to get along harmoniously.

What the heck is the market? Can you touch it, feel it, pick it up? Is it something supernatural? How can we say that the market sets prices, goes up or down, doesn't like instability, etc.? How can an abstract thing like a market have intentions? Because the market is a real thing, an emergent property of the interaction of countless people that is much larger than the individual can grasp.

First understand that DNA learns from the experience of a species, and that we may therefore speak of "species-learning", and that there exists such as thing as "species-intent" as an emergent property of individual animals unconsciously pursuing individual goals that collectively serve the species.

For example, herd animals or school fish will rush to be close to one another when threatened, instinctively and without self-reflection or consideration of the available science. This behaviour results in a herd or a school that serves to protect the individual from harm and helps the species to flourish. Herds or schools are emergent properties of herding and schooling behaviours, they are an emergent property of a behaviour that is specific to their species. I have no trouble saying that species have intentions of which the individual member of the species is unconscious. One of these emergent properties is the existence of herds of animals and schools of fish.

But the ultimate intention of the species is to flourish, and evolution produces behaviours and emergent properties of a species that serve that intent.

We should get away from the idea that intention requires a conscious mind. I think of it more as a trajectory. I think of intention in the same way Aristotle did when he said the intention of a rock is to succumb to gravity and fall towards the center of the earth. The novel coronavirus intends to infect as many people as possible, it has the intent to flourish, it has that intention without ever having a conscious thought.

We have an advantage over animals in that we can quickly disseminate information and learn as a species - our response to the pandemic is a case in point. Whether you wore a mask or maintained social distancing in public didn't used to be a moral question. Now it is, because spreading the virus hinders human flourishing. Human morality evolves very quickly.

The information stored in DNA about how a species should flourish is not fundamentally different from human information about how humanity should flourish. The difference is that we communicate this information at warp speed, so that we should be able to control this virus within a few years.

Animal morality evolves extremely slowly, because all the information it has is limited to its own body. An animal species will also learn to control a virus, but because information is transmitted through DNA, it can take a thousand generations to develop immunity, if the species has not gone extinct before then.

So I say animals know instinctively what is right and what is wrong for their species, that what is right for their species is what serves the flourishing of the species, and what is wrong for it is what hinders that flourishing. The experience of countless generations has taught them. This is the sense in which I think we can speak of animal morality, and my argument is that in this respect animal morality and human morality are not that different. Human are animals too, we just have better technology.

So how would we know the success of any given strategy other than by measuring the extent to which it has successfully lead to propagation of genetic material? — Isaac

I have literally no idea what you're talking about at this stage. — Isaac

I was talking turkey.

You suggested that the success of a species should be measured only by the extent of propagation of genetic material. This is a quantitative measure.

I think a better measure of success is whether a species is flourishing or not. This is a qualitative measure. Note that I earlier included reproductive success as only one element of what it means to flourish - I disagree that it should be the only measure of the success of a species. To say that evolution develops creatures that seek to flourish, and that this is how it ensures that genetic material is propagated, is not to concede your point that the purpose of evolution is nothing more than propagation of genetic material. It's to say that unless a species finds a way to flourish it will not have reproductive success.

Yes, you are right, flourishing implies quality, and quality of life differs from species to species, but it’s pretty easy to identify qualities associated with the flourishing of a species, personal security, access to food and water, health, hospitable environment, stability, reproductive success, specifically for humans we might agree on a few more, etc. — Thomas Quine

So I gave the example of the turkey, a sorry creature that has succeeded in propagating its genetic material, but whose quality of life cannot be described as favorable. Did I mention that a favorite hobby of the domestic turkey is pulling out its own feathers? Or that it is so prone to cannibalism that farmers must cut off the tip of their beaks with a special tool?

Because the turkey does not have to find food or evade predators, it has become so dumb that it will die of heat exhaustion before seeking shade. You can't have a pond on your property because the turkey will just walk into it and drown. It is so prone to disease that it must be pumped full of medication before it will survive long enough to be sent to market. I can't consider a species that would go extinct if turned loose into the wild to be in any way successful.

I judge the quality of life of the domestic turkey not by human standards, but by comparing it with that of the wild turkey, and I am ashamed at what people have done to the breed.

Isaac, let's cut to the chase. Do you think evolution has a purpose, and if you do, what do you think it is?

All of these are developed in infancy, none require so much as a grain of scientific knowledge. — Isaac

Well science is all about evidence, and I think before you go to help a friend in trouble you should be sure you have reliable evidence that they are actually in trouble.

But I take your point, we do have moral intuitions, some of which we absorb from the culture by osmosis, some of which are instinctual and put in there by evolution. Don't forget, instincts are species-learning validated through real deep-historical experience and natural experimentation.

Of course we don't run to check scientific journals before making daily decisions, but we should respect scientific advice based on good evidence - mask-wearing during a pandemic being a case in point.

the only common objective is to have as many offspring as possible which are fit enough to themselves have as many offspring as possible. Some niches will result in a complex, co-operative or even altruistic solution to this problem, others will not.
— Isaac

Tell me how you interpret "Some niches will result in a complex, co-operative or even altruistic solution to this problem" as mindless propagation. — Isaac

I interpret your repetition of "as many offspring as possible" as implying mindless propagation, because you say that the only common objective of all living species is reproduction for the sake of more reproduction. I call this mindless reproduction because there is apparently no logic to this reproduction.

Remember that the Greek word "logos" can be translated as "the reason" or "the point". We need to go Meta. We need to ask, what is the point of all this reproduction? Why do living things reproduce and die? Why don't they live forever?

Evolutionary theory gives us the answer. Reproduction of offspring results in occasional genetic mutation. Genetic mutations can sometimes help offspring to better adapt and survive. If an individual is better able to adapt and survive, it will pass on its genetic material to its offspring, helping them to better adapt and survive. If the genetic variation is robust enough, it will become incorporated over X number of generations into the genome of the species. Which will help the species to flourish.

The entire purpose of having offspring is therefore not to have more offspring, but to serve the flourishing of the species.

Let's look at an example, working backwards. The Norwegian Rat, otherwise known as the common rat, is a highly intelligent, highly adaptable, highly successful species. It is said that for every human being on earth there are 10 rats within 100 meters.

One of the adaptations that helps the rat to succeed is that it has evolved the ability to eat any foul offal without getting sick, and is in fact physically incapable of vomiting. How did this ability evolve? Through generation after generation of genetic variation, introduced into the species through reproduction. A species that does not reproduce does not evolve and is therefore less adaptable, and therefore less able to flourish.

Now this discussion again highlights my main critique of most of contemporary ethical theory, and indeed most of contemporary evolutionary theory. Most want to deny that there is a point, that there is a logic behind the evolution of species, or behind the evolution of morality, but prefer to argue that it's all just happenstance with no Telos in sight.

If you're going to include people's beliefs in a mythical afterlife as demonstrating that all moral theories are about human flourishing, then it cannot also be the case that science can tell us how to achieve it. — Isaac

Many people believe that life is hell but there’ll be pie in the sky when you die. This is a human aspiration for a better life, that seems impossible to obtain here on earth. Just because people believe something doesn’t make it true. What science can tell us is there is no evidence of an afterlife. There is lots of evidence that belief in the afterlife can lead to harmful consequences - think 9/11 World Trade Centre towers. Think suicide bombers. There’s lots of evidence that magical thinking has harmful consequences: think Trump. I think there was an atheist theorist in the 1800’s, Clifford I think, who said the greatest harm of religion is that it increases credulity in the population. Lots of evidence for that.

Science can always inform our moral decision-making, and sometimes it can provide definitive answers. But again, as I said in an earlier post, the role of science is to provide authoritative answers to practical questions, not to dictate to us what is moral and what is not. “Does XYZ behaviour help or hinder human flourishing?” is a practical question. Does mask-wearing and social distancing help reduce the spread of infection during a pandemic? Does childhood sexual abuse have a negative impact on both the child and society in general? Is widespread distribution of opioids a benefit to humanity? Does high social and income inequality lead to prosperity? Does prayer heal the sick? Does the death penalty lead to reduced crime?

Name any moral challenge and tell me that access to truth and evidence won’t help us resolve it...

Studies in the neuroscience of moral decision-making show conclusively that we do not always (or even commonly) consult any moral system dealing with consequences before acting morally. Babies can act morally - are you suggesting they calculate the effect of their actions on human flourishing? — Isaac

Obviously we are fitted with instincts right from birth like any other animal. Our instincts can provide subconscious guidance when confronting moral challenges. We are coded to behave in ways that are conducive to human flourishing.

My three-year old grandson is the most selfish little critter, he is struggling to learn to share and he has crazy tantrums when he does not get his way. He’ll grow out of it.

But from a species level, toddlers are extremely needy and they are programmed by evolution to be extremely demanding in order to have their needs met. Toddlers are selfish because they have to be. Toddlers are takers and parents are givers because that’s how it has to be to raise a healthy child. He’s learning that others have needs too, he’ll grow out of it.

We need to judge the morality of his behavior not by the U.S. constitution, not by Divine Command Theory, not by whether his tantrums contribute to utilitarian happiness, but by how evolution has shaped three-year olds to do what they have to do in order to flourish.

Is also false. Divine Command Theorists do not determine their principles of the basis of human flourishing either here or in a mythical afterlife. They believe that God's commands
should be obeyed because they are God's commands -regardless of their consequence on humanity in any way shape or form. — Isaac

It is possible that in classes on the philosophy of religion Divine Command Theory has nothing to do with human flourishing in this world or the next, but out here in the real world, ask any religious person, and they will tell you that they follow God’s Law because God knows what is best for us, because God wants us to live well and fare well, because God is all-powerful and can send us to the lake of fire for all eternity if we disobey his commands, and can send us to an eternal life in paradise if we submit to Him.

By the way I always thought it was charming how in the Quran, paradise is always a shady glade with a cool stream running through it... How idyllic for a desert people...

Why do you need to cover all species? You invite a lot of complications. Why not sentient species or something similar? After all, you are discussing an ethical system and trying to lift animal behavior from instinctual or biological to ethical is a heavy task. Likewise, your notion of flourishing seems to imply a level of quality. not mere quantity as Isaac is asserting. Limiting your scope to humanity is more in keeping with that qualitative assertion. — Pro Hominem

Hi Pro Hominem, nice to see a Pro for a change instead of an Ad...

I go to the species level not to make things complicated but to make them simpler. I mentioned in an earlier post that the only important difference between humans and other animals is that we store our memories outside of our own bodies. We have language, we have text, we have images, we have the Internet, we have a recorded culture, we have a recorded morality and ethical standards and we have philosophy forums to discuss them.

Animals have standards of what is right and wrong for their species, but it is stored in their short-term memory, it is recorded in their brains, and most importantly it is coded into their DNA. But it is stored in their actual bodies. Animal morality is a species-learning, learning of genetic material, about what it takes to flourish as that kind of animal.

So I would argue there is Lion morality, which says you can kill hyenas and it’s OK to eat a newborn calf alive, you have mosquito morality, which says it’s OK to suck the blood of an unsuspecting mammal, and so on. It is the genetic material plus some limited memory capacity that tells the animal what is right and what is wrong. All of which is stored inside the actual body of the animal. But the grounding of that animal morality is the same as that of human morality, we just have means to circulate our common understanding of what is moral in the form of laws and norms.

But for both humans and other animals alike, what is right is what serves the flourishing of the species, and what is wrong is what hinders it.

Yes, you are right, flourishing implies quality, and quality of life differs from species to species, but it’s pretty easy to identify qualities associated with the flourishing of a species, personal security, access to food and water, health, hospitable environment, stability, reproductive success, specifically for humans we might agree on a few more, etc.

You might say, well these are all just more norms, to which I reply, people do of course invent and agree or disagree on norms and moral precepts. My project is not to invent or propose new norms. I am interested in meta-ethics. Why agree on norms at all? My answer: all norms and moral precepts are an attempt to answer the question before humanity: what best serves human flourishing?

Or coming at the question from the other side, Gilbert Harman asks in "Human Flourishing, Ethics, and Liberty" (1983 — SophistiCat

)

OK, I read the Harman piece very quickly, great article, great critique of utilitarianism, but again two problems pop up which all these philosophers seem to assume, firstly morality is all about the individual, flourishing is taken to be something either done by or happens to the individual, and the society is scarcely considered, and secondly, flourishing is taken to be a norm. If it is just a norm that someone thinks would be a good idea, why is your idea better than my idea?

So Harman retreats to the default ethical position, that morality is just something we make up along the way, it has no grounding other than that right-thinking people have agreed about it.

My argument is that to flourish is more than a norm, it is a biological imperative for the species. The individual can decide to flourish or they can decide to commit suicide, but what the community thinks is moral is what the community thinks will best serve human flourishing, and what they think is immoral is what they think will hinder it.

Of course what will help one community at one point in time to flourish will differ from what will help another community in a different era. This is why we have different moral systems - but the grounding never changes.

I want to read the Harman article a few more times but I am not at home today.

So how would we know the success of any given strategy other than by measuring the extent to which it has successfully lead to propagation of genetic material? — Isaac

Such a lot to cover in these recent posts but let me start with this.

Aristotle defines the ultimate Good and goal of life, Eudaimonia, as “living well and faring well”. I like Aristotle not least because as a student of biology and zoology he understood that species seek to live well and fare well. I prefer to use the modern word “flourishing”, lots of meaning in that word, but keep it simple and take the dictionary definition, “to flourish” means “to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way.”

Now keep in mind that I have said all living species seek to flourish. But just because they seek does not mean they succeed, otherwise we would not need the word “extinction”.

Let me bring up the case of the domestic turkey, one of the most numerous species on earth. (I was reading that they are very popular in Afghanistan, where they are called “Elephant Birds”.) If we take “successful propagation of genetic material” as a measure of success, the domestic turkey (not talking about the wild turkey, a noble bird) is one of the most successful species, and as long as we have Thanksgiving and Christmas its reproductive success is guaranteed.

Now the domestic turkey is an animal I am familiar with, having run an organic farm in the past. I can assure you the domestic turkey is one of the sorriest animals on the planet. It has been overbred for heavy breast meat to the point where it can barely walk. As a result it suffers from chronic joint failure and if you try to keep them free range as I did they will eventually become crippled. Their breast meat is so heavy that the male can no longer mount the female to mate, so all turkey offspring are the result of artificial insemination performed by the turkey farmer.

The list of diseases turkeys suffer from is longer than your arm, therefore in commercial farms they must be kept pumped full of antibiotics and other medications.

Turkeys are so stupid that a big problem in large farms is that a sudden noise or flash of light will cause a stampede in which 10% of the flock might be crushed to death. My turkeys were so incompetent that during a rainstorm, when all the other animals including the chickens would head for shelter, the turkeys would just sit out in the rain all day. Similarly they would sit in the hot sun panting while all the other animals found shade. I eventually took to picking the poor animals up and carrying them to their pens at night, I am sure they could never find their way back the way chickens do. One was crushed when stepped on by a horse. I gave up on turkeys.

Now if not for the constant care of farmers, if the species of domestic turkey were suddenly turned into the wild, the species would be extinct within a year or two.

So the domestic turkey is an example of a species that propagates its genetic material very successfully. But can anyone say this species is growing and developing in a healthy and vigorous way?

Harman critically assesses various approaches to ethics that fit this criterion, utilitarianism being one of them: — SophistiCat

OK, this is very useful, thank you for the references, dammit, now I have to go back and check what they say.

Lots of philosophers talk about flourishing, but I've only ever seen it refer to the individual, I'm unaware of anyone bringing the species and evolutionary theory into the equation. But I will check out these sources.

Is false. Living species do not all seek to flourish, they seek to propagate genetic material. — Isaac

The strategy every living species uses to propagate genetic material is to flourish.

Every species has a different approach. Some fish and primitive forms of sea life gather in large numbers and on a biological signal of some sort they squirt billions of eggs and sperm into the water and boom, that's the end of their parenting.

The semi-living creature, the novel coronavirus, displays the kind of strategy you are attributing to the whole of life. It has one simple program, reproduce, reproduce, reproduce. But higher forms of life don't work that way.

Most species do not just drop their offspring randomly, but engage in greater or lesser amounts of parenting. Why? To help their offspring to flourish, and in so doing to help the species to flourish.

Why is it that in human society we regard parental care as a moral obligation? Because without it the children and by extension the whole of society would struggle to flourish.

Why is it that the wealthier the parents, the fewer children they tend to have? If the biological imperative is simply to propagate more genetic material, why don't they just have more and more children, surely they have the resources? Why are they fighting against what you have described as their biological imperative, to reproduce, reproduce, reproduce? If they have children at all, why do they make an effort to give them the best care and nutrition, lavish them with gifts, make sure they get the best education, pull strings to give their children a head start, etc. Can it be perhaps they wish to use their resources to ensure that they and their children flourish? Can it be perhaps that evolution has shaped them to behave in the most effective way to ensure that their genetic material will propagate, i.e. by seeking to flourish?

Millions of young women seek abortions because they recognize that they are not in a position to give birth and live a life in which both they and the child will flourish. Perhaps they are poor, maybe they don't have a reliable father for the child, maybe they are incapable of caring even for themselves at that point in life. If propagation of genetic material were the biological imperative rather than flourishing, how could there even be such a thing as an unwanted pregnancy?

Many historians of the Rwandan genocide have pointed to over-population on scarce farmland as a contributing factor. How did propagation of genetic material in Rwanda without consideration for the flourishing of Rwandan society help the species?

I could go on, there are endless examples from the natural world where evolution privileges the flourishing of the species over the mindless propagation of genetic material.

Can someone provide an example of a living species that does not seek to flourish?

It seems from the latest post though, that Thomas Quine is equating 'flourishing' with nothing more than long-term population numbers. — Isaac

I think you are mistaking me for Isaac...

Super busy today but will reply as soon as I can...

Social Darwinism followed the same justificatory logic. — SophistiCat

People consider something to be moral if they believe that in the final analysis it serves human flourishing. Their beliefs are not always justified.

People consider something to be immoral if they believe in the final analysis it hinders or sets back human flourishing. Again, what people believe is not always justified.

There will always be disagreements between people about what serves human flourishing and what does not. Science and evidence can help us tell who is right and who is wrong.

Framing utilitarianism as an imperative to promote human flourishing is actually quite common. — SophistiCat

I've been looking around to find anyone making the same arguments I am making here. If you can direct me to a source you are familiar with I'd be grateful.

G.E. Moore, who coined the term "Naturalistic Fallacy", has a quote I like a lot:

“…[H]ow “good” is to be defined, is the most fundamental question in all Ethics. …[T]he gravest errors have been largely due to beliefs in a false answer. And, in any case, it is impossible that, till the answer to this question be known, what is the evidence for any ethical judgement whatever.”

Like many philosophers, Moore gives up trying to define the Good. This is my main criticism of contemporary ethical theory: how can you make any ethical judgement whatever, if you cannot define the Good? We can describe lots of things with the adjective "good", as in "happiness is good", but Aristotle asks, what is the higher Good that is served by all lesser goods?

Moore attacks classical utilitarianism directly. To say that a natural phenomenon such as happiness can be described using the adjective “good”, does not mean that the noun Good equals the noun happiness, in the same way that to say a banana is yellow does not mean that the colour Yellow is a banana. One cannot argue that because happiness is good, it constitutes THE Good; that would be to commit the Naturalistic Fallacy.

This is precisely what classic utilitarianism does. It takes a natural phenomenon like happiness, finds it good, then moves without justification to claim it as the supreme Good.

Many philosophers follow Moore's logic to an extreme, and insist on a distinction between facts and values, and between science, which is descriptive, and ethics, which is normative. Some think science cannot possibly have anything to say about morality. I disagree - I think all norms and all morals are grounded in the natural world. They are an attempt to come up with rules of human interaction that will best allow us all to fulfill our natural, instinctual desire to flourish as individuals and as a community.

My argument in this thread can be summarized as follows:

1. All living species, including Homo Sapiens, seek to flourish. (I did not say all individuals, I said all living species.) The verb "to flourish" is defined in the Oxford Dictionary online as "To grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way." For any and all living species, to flourish constitutes the Good.

2. All moral precepts and moral systems are an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" In this life or in a mythical afterlife. All are attempts; not all are successful.

3. If we wish to flourish, as individuals or collectively, or as a species, science can offer useful advice. If it IS the case that we seek to flourish, we OUGHT to consult the evidence available from science as to how best to achieve this.

One can undermine this argument by raising valid objections to either 1, 2, or 3. It would be very helpful to me if someone could do so.

Hi Tim - as I mentioned in an earlier post, people will consider something to be moral if they believe it serves human flourishing. They are not always correct.

The Nazi's believed that genocide, military expansionism, racial purification, and totalitarianism were moral because they believed these were in the best interests of human flourishing. Were they right about this? How did that work out for Germany, Japan, and Italy, and for the world? I think the verdict is in...

The moral arc bends towards justice for the simple reason that justice serves human flourishing and injustice does not.

Hi András - this is an original approach of mine inspired by Aristotle and Darwin. It has no resemblance to utilitarianism apart from being consequentialist.

The theory that happiness is the proper aim of morality has been rightly criticized by an army of philosophers since Bentham and Mill.

Mill and Bentham wrote in a time where there was little hard science on happiness, on the motivations of human beings, and on the motivations of other sentient beings. We know today that happiness is only ever fleeting, and is normally achieved in the pursuit of goals other than happiness. On the achievement of these goals, happiness tends to dissipate, until new goals are set. Individuals therefore tend to have a happiness average set point, influenced by genetics far more than Mill understood, and although the happiness of an individual may go up and down, it tends to return to about the same average level over time. This makes general happiness difficult to measure accurately or usefully. Happiness thus appears to be far less tractable through social policy that Mill understood at the time. Sam Harris's "well-being" is just a modern variation on the theme. And in any case, as the Buddhists remind us, life is suffering, man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upwards, and the mortality rate is running at a steady 100%.

I think Aristotle's eudaimonia, or flourishing, is much more promising as a starting point for a couple of reasons. Firstly it is the product of active human agency. Feelings of happiness or well-being often arise from circumstances completely out of one's own control; to flourish generally requires active goal-setting and determined effort on the part of both individuals and the communities of which they are members.

Secondly, in Aristotle's eudaimonia, the good life is objectively rather than subjectively determined. An immoral individual can live a life of happiness and well-being having made a fortune in drug-smuggling and sex-trafficking, but in Aristotle's approach this could not be considered a good life.

Aristotle does make the point that the whole purpose of politics is eudaimonia, but I don't buy into Aristotle completely because he was of course unfamiliar with Darwinism. I think to have a working concept of the Good, and an objective measure of what it means to flourish, one has to move up a level from the individual to the species, to humanity as a whole. If this is understood, the individual cannot be said to serve morality, to serve human flourishing, no matter what their personal subjective feelings of happiness or well-being might be, if their activities, like those of the rich drug-smuggler, cannot be said to serve that goal.

Aristotle's eudaimonia also specifically excludes other species and is concerned only with human flourishing. My approach says that all species seek to flourish, each in their own way.

By the way I am writing this up in a paper I hope to get published, and if anyone want to read it and provide honest feedback let me know.

I suppose there can be logic in the universe. But I have no idea what the "logic of the universe" is. If by such you mean physics, I at least do not find morality therein. So. I have to ask you to make it clearer to me than it is as I find it. — tim wood

The universe proceeds along a recognizable trajectory, the laws of physics are called "laws", not because they are written in some universal statute book but because they appear to be obeyed pretty reliably throughout the universe, stars are formed, planets are formed around them, some planets form an atmosphere, some are stable enough to maintain water, some undoubtedly contain the essential ingredients of life. Cosmologists say that galaxies evolve, solar systems evolve, and planets evolve.

One of the physical laws appears to be that those things that have whatever it takes to survive tend to persist, and those that do not tend to go extinct. Persist or perish.

Life arose from things that had the necessary qualities to be able to persist in the face of a madly swirling and ever-changing environment. Once life got a foothold, those qualities that allowed lifeforms to better adapt to their environments tended to persist through generations, in other words, those qualities that enabled the lifeforms to flourish tended to persist. Darwin was able to identify this logic. It's called evolution, and it is an expression of the logic of entities governed by physical laws interacting with each other over time.

It's called a logic because it proceeds in a systematic, logical fashion, following observable and reliable laws - he universe does not jump about in an absurd or illogical fashion. This logic is what allows most scientist to infer that if life evolved on earth, it probably evolved on other similar planets as well.

Now why I would argue that the evolution of morality is an expression of the logic of the universe is that moral precepts arise like any other entity or lifeform, and if they are adaptive and serve their purpose they tend to survive, and if they are maladaptive or harmful to human flourishing, such as human sacrifice to the Gods, they tend to die out.

We should not view moral information as very different from genetic information. A universal moral code is not fundamentally different from DNA. Both are forms of information that will survive across generations if they help the organism to flourish, and will be discarded if they don't. This was Dawkins' insight when he came up with the concept of the "meme".

I am assuming here that "logic of the universe" is not the same thing as that messily evolving work-in-progress called morality. — tim wood

Tim, if I understand you correctly you believe that the evolving work-in-progress called morality is somehow not a product of the logic of the universe.

Of course morality evolves, as far as I can tell pretty much everything evolves, evolution is part of the logic of the universe, visibly at work wherever we care to look.

So can you explain why you think the evolution of morality is following a different logic?

I would say if someone does something that hinders or sets human flourishing back, something that is detrimental to human flourishing, that would be immoral, yes.

If someone intentionally released this coronavirus into the population, yes, that would be immoral.

If someone launches a suicide attack on innocent civilians, or someone is a serial child molester, or steals from charity, etc., these sorts of things harm humanity and are immoral.

If someone's actions are completely neutral, if they are not harming anyone else without just cause, then obviously they are not doing anything immoral. It is I think just to do a certain amount of harm to those who are committing immoral acts, there is self-defense, there is jail, there is such a thing as a just war in the service of human flourishing, but if someone does not want to contribute to human flourishing, or to their own flourishing, then they can be left to their own devices. If they intend to do harm to themselves I think we are justified in trying to intervene.

Only the "pattern" of conceivable (by human mind) possibility and consequence reified. Not in itself worth a whole lot. — tim wood

Well, most scientist agree that life exists somewhere else in the universe, because given an apparently unlimited number of planets, the conditions that brought forth life here might well have brought life elsewhere.

Again, given the vast number of possibilities provided by an infinite universe, it is not unreasonable to speculate that a species of intelligent social creatures may have arisen on some distant planet.Such a species might be similar to our own, or it might be very different, but let's imagine a species that is intelligent and social.

Now if this species were both intelligent and social, it's not unreasonable to think that they might have worked out a matrix of social rules to enable them to get along together and to flourish. I can't imagine creatures with a level of sociability and intelligence comparable to ours without such rules to smooth social discourse. Let's call this set of social rules and norms "a moral system".

Well if there are moral systems out there in species unlike our own, this means that morality is species-specific, this means that morality has a natural grounding, this means that humanity did not invent morality out of the air, and this means morality arises out of the logic of the universe.

In which case Philosophim has a point.

If humanity vanished, the universe would still exist. Would we say that morality disappears with them? — Philosophim

I think you are right to see a pattern, to see human morality as just one expression of a deeper logic at work in the universe. This is a departure from our current topic, and I might start a new thread at some point.

I'm still trying to figure out how the second law of thermodynamics sustains the motion of the universe, and how the laws of physics create an algorithm that requires all things to either persist or perish. But I think this is the motor driving the imperative for all living things to flourish, which I see as the motivation of all morality.

dogs cannot speak or reason or weigh up courses of action, except in the most rudimentary way. They can fret about being neglected or hungry or in pain, but they can’t fret about whether they really are ‘a good boy’ or what that actually means. — Wayfarer

Sorry about your dog!

I have said, and this as far as I know has not been remarked upon by anyone else, that the main difference between humans and animals is that humans store their memories outside of their bodies.

Animals run mainly on instinct. Of course they have memories of a greater or lesser capacity depending on the species. But mainly they rely on instinct. Therefore all their memories and all their learning is inside their bodies.

We know about short-term memory, long-term memory, but I see instinct as reeeaaallly long-term memory, species memory, memory of countless previous generations. Instinct is the species-learning of the organism.

What does instinct do for an animal? Provide a ready-made set of heuristics for how to solve the problem, "How best can I flourish?"

Instinct is a set of Swiss Army knife modules designed by evolution to equip the animal with the tools it will need to flourish in life, based on the experience of countless generations before it.

The instincts tell the animal what is the right way to behave if it wants to flourish, and what is the wrong way. Therefore I argue that every species has its own innate morality. The lion knows instinctively what is right for the lion, the wolf, average lifespan a mere four years, knows instinctively what is right for the wolf and for the wolf pack, and what is wrong for it.

The dog, after millennia of breeding, knows instinctively to please its human master, because to do so is vital to its flourishing. Therefore the dog knows very well what an "attaboy" from its master means, and it quickly picks up how to behave in the "pack" in which it lives.

https://youtu.be/uuumHb8yUvk

Human beings of course store memories not even in our brains, but on the Internet, in photos and videos and books, in text and image, and therefore human beings can do much more on the basis of the experience of all of humanity than they could hold in their own limited capacity brains. Language itself is human knowledge and memory that is stored outside the brain and can be accessed by any speaker of that language.

We therefore have a much greater capacity and resources to draw upon when trying to answer the question, "What best serves our own flourishing and the flourishing of our species?"

But the grounding is the same.

I think you’re conflating evolutionary biology with ethical philosophy. — Wayfarer

You are right, I am trying to marry ethical theory to biology. My critique of traditional ethical theory is that it has little or no objective grounding. For the most part it is "I think we should do things THIS way," accompanied by some made-up story like God wants us to do it this way. Or more commonly people will say there is no objective foundation to morality, we need to make it up as we go along.

Well yes, we create rules and norms, but we do so on a solid biological footing. I think pragmatically human beings are active agents and create rules and norms in the service of objectives. The objective of moral rules and norms are, it seems to me, to create conditions that are conducive to the instinctual biological imperative to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, in short to flourish.

I'm not trying to propose a set of new norms, as I stated in the original post. I am talking meta-ethics. I am proposing that the universal root of all moral systems adopted by any community larger than the fingers on one hand is an attempt, not always a successful attempt, but an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?"

Now let me call down the wrath of the trolls upon me and say that it seems to me, as an empirical observation and not as an ideal, that the purpose of life, all life top to bottom, is to flourish.

Hasnt science already settled the matter for human flourishing, in terms of eugenics and population control? — Pussycat

No, Eugenics assumes we know which human qualities best serve human flourishing, and it turns out, who could have guessed, the people who want to make these sorts of decisions tend to conclude their own qualities, even their own race, are the best. But for sure there is a lot of promise in gene therapies.

There's a lot of disagreement about population control, I tend to think we need to leave these decisions to the individual, and as it turns out countries with an adequate social safety net, so people don't have to rely on the support of children in their old age, show a falling birth rate.

Strange that you equate GDP growth with flourishing. Climate change, the mass extinction of species, and other environmental degradations aren't usually considered conducive to human flourishing. — praxis

Praxis, you are quite right to question the value of GDP, lots of work has been done on this to prove that economic growth can sometimes produce results that are harmful to human flourishing. I mention GDP as just one indicator among many, and I would defend that by pointing out that an annualized decline in GDP of over 30% is an indicator of immense human suffering in the U.S., millions out of work, millions losing health insurance, millions in danger of eviction, I am staggered when I read about it.

I like the word "flourishing" because it does suggest the human need for a healthy environment.

The economic downturn as a result of the pandemic has smashed the global economy, but I would point out that in Germany, where I lived for eight years, "...the unemployment rate has increased from 5% to 5.8% from March to April. In the U.S., it surged from 4.4% to 14.7%." (https://bit.ly/3k1WOC3)

Let me share with you a little story about German cradle-to-grave health care. A co-worker of mine there went through a difficult divorce with two young children, was under tremendous stress, got pneumonia and was laid out for six weeks, all of course on full sick pay covered by the health care system. As she recovered, her doctor decided she needed some stress relief, so sent her on a three-week holiday at a German seaside resort, with her children, all meals and daycare provided, fitness classes, pool, hobby classes, walks on the beach, all paid for in full by the health care system. She told me she had not taken a sick day since. Can you imagine that in the U.S.?

I am a big fan of Stephen Pinker, actually I went to McGill at the same time he did, though we never met. You say:

Pinker argues that Enlightenment values lead to flourishing. I imagine that you would agree with that. This centers on values, however, and how can anyone be the judge of cultural values, much less force our own onto others? — praxis

You provide the answer yourself. Just like Stephen Pinker, one can be the judge of cultural values based on how well they serve human flourishing. I would argue that the American value of so-called "rugged individualism", a value that leads some to think it is virtuous for the poor to struggle and their own damn fault if they fail, is one of the values that has led to opposition to universal health care.

I remember the libertarian Rand Paul being asked by Wolf Blitzer what should happen to someone who can't afford medical insurance, should we just let them die? Rand's supporters in the audience shouted out "Yeah!" https://lat.ms/34WapDX

Will anyone argue that values like that serve human flourishing?

How do you define human flourishing? — praxis

I said in an earlier post that the simplest definition of "to flourish" I could find in online dictionaries is "to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way."

It is hard to argue that what America is currently experiencing can in any way be described as "flourishing". Growth has taken a historic step backwards and as to health...

Certainly Amazon is flourishing, but even if we take standard measures of business success, such as GDP or average corporate profits, the U.S. has taken a massive hit, like all countries but on many measures by far the worst of any developed country. This is in part because of a pervasive fetishization of individual liberty which makes containing the pandemic that much harder.

To uphold that claim we would need a falsifiable scientific theory about the correct relative values and a controlled trial to test that hypothesis. — Isaac

To the question, "Does mask-wearing during a pandemic serve human flourishing?", science can indeed tell us the answer. I provided evidence from scientific experts to support this claim, and saw no evidence to the contrary.

To the question, "Does defending individual liberty through mask refusal serve human flourishing?" likewise. One need only compare the current states of success fighting the pandemic between states whose leadership fought mask-wearing on the grounds of individual liberty - i.e. the U.S. and Brazil - and states whose leadership and citizens largely adopted it.

Popper's approach can be very useful in such matters. Popper recognized that the absolute truth of a scientific claim was almost always impossible to prove. His great insight was that falsifiability should be the grounds for evaluating whether a claim was scientific or not.

My claim that "Mask-wearing during a pandemic serves human flourishing" is falsifiable, and is therefore a scientific claim. There is lots of evidence supporting this claim from experts (otherwise I would not have made the claim), and I have yet to see valid evidence to contradict it.

This is in fact my argument; that all moral claims can be held to the standards of science, judged to be falsifiable or not, and if they are genuine scientific statements, they can be tested against reliable evidence.

The implication of Popper's argument is that since one cannot prove absolute truth, one must make decisions on the basis of probability. This is why Bayesian probability theory has come to play a central role in modern science. And as a Pragmatist I love it, because it is eminently pragmatic.

If one had to conduct a controlled trial to resolve every fleeting moral question, such as "does mask-wearing during a pandemic spread by respiratory emission serve human flourishing?", such questions would be irresolvable. However, if we take the Bayesian approach, and gather the best available evidence, we can make a valid scientific claim - this is how science does its work every day.

Practical science usually starts from intuition, but only as a starting point for work that needs to be done. A scientist has an intuition, formulates a hypothesis, and sets about to uncover evidence and test the hypothesis against the evidence. But I think we should reject approaches to resolving moral questions that stop on intuition alone.

Any scientific claim, by Popper's definition any claim which is falsifiable, can be tested against the evidence, and found to be true, which by the definition of Pragmatism means can reliably achieve its objective, or false, meaning it fails to do so.

My argument is that moral claims are claims about the best way to achieve human flourishing, and can be put to the same standards as any scientific claim: do they achieve their objective or not?

It’s important to defend individual liberties, especially freedom of speech. I see diversity of opinion as a great strength of any group, a work team, a corporate board, any council, even of society, there’s good science behind this, a couple of books written on the subject, one of which was called “The Wisdom of Crowds” if I recall. Many have observed that it was a great weakness of the Bush administration, and is currently a great weakness of the Trump administration, that differences of opinion are suppressed. Freedom of speech is vital to democracy and a vital support to human flourishing.

But there are limits, and we all know them. We draw the line where we recognize that certain types of speech are harmful to human flourishing. Think hate speech, threats, slander, false alarm, etc.

Similarly we should recognize limits on defense of individual liberty, for instance where they threaten the health and safety of others. We don’t defend the right of the individual to run a red light, but we see hard libertarians arguing against health measures that science tells us will protect oneself, others, and human flourishing in general, such as mask-wearing, and even quarantine of COVID patients.

If our goal is human flourishing, we must defend individual liberty, but not past the point where it threatens human flourishing.

I asked for the science that tells us that mask-wearing is better than personal liberty in the long term. — Isaac

Let's see if we can pick up the thread here.

My assertion was only that mask-wearing was more conducive to human flourishing than to assert personal liberty as a justification for not wearing a mask. I provided some articles quoting scientists and experts that supported that point. I thought my point was clear from the context, but let me correct any wrong impressions here.

Let me then go forward and make the case that this refusal to wear masks is one piece of a jigsaw puzzle that if assembled can show us a picture of what I think is the main cause of American decline: the over-glorification of individual liberty.

There is always a tension in society between the individual and the collective and the balance is difficult to achieve. Totalitarian societies seek to squash the individual in the name of social harmony, libertarian societies privilege the freedom of the individual. China is not a totalitarian society, it is a society in which the government seeks total control over political life but gives much more freedom over capitalist enterprise than the U.S. or Europe. You can start a business in one minute in China with a minimum of paperwork, you don't have to pay your employees for three months or longer, you can ignore regulations if there even are any, you can advance your interests through rampant corruption, and so on. It's the kind of enterprise freedom Republicans dream of.

Total state political control means that the government can implement the kind of lockdown that really stops an epidemic in its tracks. Cowboy capitalism starting virtually from scratch unleashed economic growth of 7-10% per year that the rest of the world could only dream of, and raised the standard of living of the average Chinese citizen like a rocket, lifting 800 million people out of poverty. So we should be careful about sneering at China, in many ways it is a human success story.

I don't think the Chinese are looking at America under Trump and saying, wow, I wish we had that kind of liberal democracy here, their system is really a shining city on a hill, how can I get a green card?

None of which is to say I am a fan of the Chinese system, because I think the lack of independent civil society organizations, suppression of freedom of speech and assembly we are seeing in Hong Kong, etc. will eventually catch up to them. You need freedom of speech, even if it is a challenge to the government, and the best example of this is how the government tried to suppress warnings about the coronavirus until it was impossible to hide. This led to an massive economic decline not only in China but globally and hurt China immensely.

On the other side of the coin, American Libertarians are fond of contrasting their freedoms with those in China, but are less alert to the damage an obsession with the rights of the individual is causing to their own society. Let me briefly just list a few:

An over-emphasis on liberty is used as justification for deregulation. Since most regulations are created to serve the common good, human flourishing is set back. Best example is deregulation of environmental standards.

An over-emphasis on personal liberty is used as a justification for union-breaking through "right-to-work" laws. The virtual destruction of much of the labor movement in the U.S. has exacerbated income inequality and is a huge contributor to job insecurity and economic stress.

An over-emphasis on personal choice is used as an argument against universal health care. I don't need to list the damage this causes to human flourishing, especially in the context of a pandemic. Just let me point out that as a Canadian I have never thought twice in my life about medical costs. My 88-year old mother has been battling cancer for three years, in and out of hospital, immuno-therapy, CAT scans once every six weeks, radiation therapy, hip surgery, various other medical treatments, a daily nurse visit to assist with showering, you name it. Cost: NOT ONE CENT.

What about the individualistic (and narcissistic) American heroes who are lionized for "disrupting" various industries so they can get super-rich? Look at Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber, who disrupted the taxi industry so successfully that he drove hundreds of thousands of desperate people to drive for him at below-poverty wages, and drove a wave of suicides of taxi drivers who were left holding worthless licenses they had paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for?

And what about Donald Trump, the Travis Kalanick of politics, who disrupted the political system and became a leader of all the mask-refusers and "no gummit gonna tell me what to do" militias in the country? It's not some freak accident that Trump is the darling of the Republicans, he is a perfect expression of narcissistic individualism, admired for his willingness to break any law to serve his personal interests and step on the face of anyone who stands in his way.

The flip side of the Libertarian ideology that anyone can succeed in America if you just put your back into it, is that if you do not succeed, it's your own damn fault. This is the ideology behind, for example, Ivanka Trump's campaign for the unemployed using the slogan, "Try Something New!" Maggie Thatcher's famous quote that "There is no such thing as society" is a belief that runs through Repubicanism. It says that there are no social problems, only individual problems. American refusal to deal adequately with social problems, from health care, to the pandemic, to the social safety net, to climate change, to mass incarceration, I could go on, are a product of this libertarianism, and have all contributed to American decline.

Therefore my claim is that libertarian ideology and all its manifestations represent a failed moral system, failed because it does not serve human flourishing, and the proof of that is American decline. And Donald Trump is exhibit A.

Now with respect to the long-term effects Isaac is concerned with, we will see what the future holds, but I can use probability theory and the great scientific tool called induction to conclude that unless this ideology is corrected, America will continue along its downward trajectory.

<end of rant>

Do you understand what 'science' is? — Isaac

You got me Isaac, I'm not a scientist. That's why I look to people who are.

https://wapo.st/3fdqWXy

Of course the intention of Divine Command Theory is not to serve human flourishing. — SophistiCat

Like pretty much all moral systems, Divine Command Theory is an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?"

For DCT, the answer offered is, "Submit to God's will and follow God's commands."