I am pointing out that, because of our intelligence, we are able to transcend beyond what our intelligence was originally meant for. — darthbarracuda

Yes indeed but you are not arguing that we can, you are arguing that we must and in certain ways prescribed by your particular understanding of the world which, I have to say is only flimsily supported at best by science or to put it more precisely the very intelligence in question. This is special pleading not rational argument.

Now I'm guessing you are thinking that if something is "simply pragmatic" or "simply a result of nature", then it isn't "moral" because morality ought to involve some kind of transcending human choice. You have the Romantic conviction that humans are above "mere nature" in being "closer to God", or "closer to goodness, truth and beauty", or whatever other traditional morality tale has been part of your up-bringing. — apokrisis

Not really. I just don't equivocate tendencies with normativity.

And science now supports that position rigorously. — apokrisis

Does it really?

All systems persist by striking a fruitful entropic balance. They need global coherence (physical laws, genetic programmes, ethical codes) as their organising constraints, and also local action (material degrees of freedom, evolutionary competition, individual initiative) as the dissipative flow of events that sustains the whole. — apokrisis

Anchoring your morality in what is prevents you from wondering what could be. What could be better, what is not the case, possibilities. It keeps you from exploring other options. Once you remove this veil you're able to go about finding new paths.

Is it moral to kill a person so that society will continue to progress and entropify? No. Here we have a direct contradiction in what the universe "wants" and what we think is moral. You may argue that such action would undermine the societal structure - but we need only look at the past several thousand years to understand how that hasn't done anything to the system. Murdering people hasn't brought humanity to its doom.

Sorry. Remind me which those are again? Are we talking patents for perpetual motion machines? — apokrisis

No, we're talking vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, public maintenance, art, etc. The use of entropy to curb other entropic expansion. Would it be immoral, according to you, to have a nuclear bomb and not drop it somewhere? Such entropy!

If we cannot fail to entropify, then this means there is no prescription for action, and your ethics is empty. Prescribing maximum entropification also disregards sentients for a more abstract entropy.

LOL. This is quite simply atheistic divine command theory. — apokrisis

How so? Keep in mind I'm a moral anti-realist.

OK. But I ask again, where do you stand if the husbandry was perfect and the lamb had the happiest life, a painless death? — apokrisis

You still killed another animal. That's murder.

Applying your own calculus of suffering, how would it be immoral to eat the lamb? — apokrisis

It's not just suffering, it's preferences as well. I don't get to decide who lives and who dies.

Murder is and always has been a forensic legal term with an exact definition which does not apply to any non-human (which for the purpose includes unborn foetuses, incidentally). No amount of propaganda will change that. — Barry Etheridge

LOL, why do you think we don't apply murder to non-humans...? So we can keep eating them, that's why!

Since when did we not have the right? It is assumed in all the major moral and religious codes in history and prohibited by none of the world's legal systems. — Barry Etheridge

Might =/= Right.

I have to say is only flimsily supported at best by science — Barry Etheridge

Absolutely not. Science is on my side on this one. Humans are not the only ones who have sentience.

Calling other people out who eat meat as "speciesists" is perfectly acceptable if I think this is accurate. If you disagree with this label, tell me why. It is perfectly accurate. Killing other animals is disregarding them as sentient, feeling beings - and if you're going to be moral to humans, you had better have a good reason for being moral to human exclusively without begging the question.

Anchoring your morality in what is prevents you from wondering what could be. What could be better, what is not the case, possibilities. — darthbarracuda

I'm sure I could explain it a million more times and you still wouldn't twig what is meant by "constraints".

I will simply repeat that constraints are what make possibilities actually possible. Limits give choice meaningful shape (such that some action could be regarded as actually moral vs immoral).

No, we're talking vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, public maintenance, art, etc. — darthbarracuda

Oh, you mean those things we plug into an electrical socket and get hot and make a noise?

It's not just suffering, it's preferences as well. I don't get to decide who lives and who dies. — darthbarracuda

So you now admit your argument based on suffering has no bearing here. We can remove that from the discussion.

Now we instead have something truly ethereal - preferences. Why should I have to share yours? Where is the argument for that?

Either objective versus subjective is a false dichotomy, or morals are subjective. — jorndoe

It's a false dichotomy... it's like love and marriage,,,


"Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You can't have one without the other

Love and marriage, love and marriage
It's an institute you can't disparage
Ask the local gentry
And they will say it's elementary

Try, try, try to separate them
It's an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will only come
To this conclusion

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one, you can´t have none
You can't have one without the other

Try, try, try to separate them
It's an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will only come
To this conclusion

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one (you can´t have none)
You can't have one without the other"

I'm sure I could explain it a million more times and you still wouldn't twig what is meant by "constraints".

I will simply repeat that constraints are what make possibilities actually possible. Limits give choice meaningful shape (such that some action could be regarded as actually moral vs immoral). — apokrisis

What I see to be the fundamental problem with your view is that you aren't taking into account the phenomenology of ethics.

I won't disagree with you that entropy rules in the end. I won't disagree with you that our normative intuitions came about via entropic constraints.

What I will disagree with you on is the phenomenal motivation we have for acting ethically. Any entropic constraint that made our intuitions what they are, are ancestral. I don't step in to prevent a rape because I'm worried about maximizing entropy, or because if I step in it will help keep society stable and ultimately increase our entropic footprint. I step in because I care about the person getting raped. I have placed the fundamental value on persons. My intentions are, ultimately, towards people regardless of how these intentions have evolved in the past.

So you now admit your argument based on suffering has no bearing here. We can remove that from the discussion. — apokrisis

No we can't. And no, suffering has inherent bearing in here because suffering is partly the violation of preferences (i.e. why masochists can feel some pain but not suffer - they have a preference for pain).

Now we instead have something truly ethereal - preferences. Why should I have to share yours? Where is the argument for that? — apokrisis

Indeed, why should I have to share your preference for entropy maximization, hmm?

Like you would say, our preferences are a result of the environment. And no, preferences are not ethereal - we have preferences after all. You're saying anything that isn't a major force in the holistic global scene is ethereal? Hardly.

What I see to be the fundamental problem with your view is that you aren't taking into account the phenomenology of ethics. — darthbarracuda

But of course I take phenomenology into account by sheeting it back to its naturalistic grounding. So whereas you talk about phenomenology dualistically in terms of "qualia", I talk about the biological and sociological logic of having "feelings".

You know I've explained my view of the role of pleasure and pain as signals which make biological "common-sense". Just as humans are also wired to value their social interactions in terms of empathy and antipathy.

The difference is that while I do ground these feelings in something measurably real, you seem to want to treat them as cosmically-free floating - just feelings that exist in some abstracted fashion with no connection to anything in particular and thus absolute in their solipsistic force.

I step in because I care about the person getting raped. I have placed the fundamental value on persons. My intentions are, ultimately, towards people regardless of how these intentions have evolved in the past. — darthbarracuda

All you are saying is that you have discovered that you are constrained to think in certain ways about events or choices in life. And while you also know that this is due to some ancestral history (both a biological and cultural one), right there your analysis stops. You just accept whatever it is that you have ended up being without further questions.

This is a very odd idea of moral philosophy to me. Indeed, its exact opposite.

No we can't. And no, suffering has inherent bearing in here because suffering is partly the violation of preferences (i.e. why masochists can feel some pain but not suffer - they have a preference for pain). — darthbarracuda

So we are back to my question then - the one you are dodging.

If the lamb that ends up on my plate involves no suffering, where is the issue with me enjoying my dinner? It cannot be any issue to do with suffering, can it?

Like you would say, our preferences are a result of the environment. — darthbarracuda

But they are not preferences any more in the sense of being a moral choice when you are saying you have no choice but to respect your own discovered feelings on these matters.

I am saying we can instead understand the actual moral codes of societies - which are general pretty enthusiastic about hunting and meat-eating - as natural preferences because they encode the kind of balancing acts that make for a flourishing society.

You are speaking up here only for your own very personal minority view of what feels right when it comes to being a member of the tribe, Homo carnivorius. So either you have special privileged knowledge the rest of the world doesn't share, or you are just speaking to some particular quirk of your own psycho-developmental history.

The facts - as documented in Vaclav Smil's Harvesting the Biosphere for example - are that humans have transformed the planet into a giant livestock farm in just a couple of centuries.

The total planetary biomass of domestic animals - cows, goats, sheep, camels, buffalo - outweighs that of true wildlife by 24 to 1.

Smil: In 1900 there were some 1.6 billion large domesticated animals, including about 450 million head of cattle and water buffalo (HYde 2011); a century later the count of large domestic animals had surpassed 4.3 billion, including 1.65 billion head of cattle and water buffalo and 900 million pigs (Fao 2011).

So while you waffle on about all right-thinking dudes knowing instinctively that eating animals is inherently bad form, pretty much the entire human race plainly just does not believe you.

But as you say, your position doesn't rely on such facts. The only thing that matters in all existence is your preferences on some issue. If we want to understand morality, we must come to you - learn about how self-deluding we all are.

You know I've explained my view of the role of pleasure and pain as signals which make biological "common-sense". Just as humans are also wired to value their social interactions in terms of empathy and antipathy.

The difference is that while I do ground these feelings in something measurably real, you seem to want to treat them as cosmically-free floating - just feelings that exist in some abstracted fashion with no connection to anything in particular and thus absolute in their solipsistic force. — apokrisis

No. I am not claiming that these feeling are just floating around somewhere. But neither am I going to deny the appearance, the "projectedness", the transparency of these experiences. Identifying pain as C-fibers firing (an outdated neuroscientific model) doesn't change the fact that pain hurts. Telling someone that their fear is only a chemical reaction doesn't help them. Identifying the cause of our morality (empathy, sympathy, compassion) and identifying the cause of these as well does not change how we experience them.

In other words, the content of our phenomenological experiences does not change with the introduction of a new scientific image of man. You need to take into account this.

All you are saying is that you have discovered that you are constrained to think in certain ways about events or choices in life. And while you also know that this is due to some ancestral history (both a biological and cultural one), right there your analysis stops. You just accept whatever it is that you have ended up being without further questions. — apokrisis

Because that's all that's needed. A further anthropological analysis of what makes me tick won't change how I act, although there is some sketchy data which claims to show that moral realists are, all things considered, more likely to act "morally" than anti-realists.

If you want to go into meta-ethics, by all means go ahead. But keep in mind that you're doing meta-ethics, and not normative ethics.

If the lamb that ends up on my plate involves no suffering, where is the issue with me enjoying my dinner? It cannot be any issue to do with suffering, can it? — apokrisis

If the person that ends up in the cemetery involves no conscious suffering (perhaps you 360 no-scoped them), where is the issue with this murder?

The issue is that someone's preferences were violated. Suffering isn't just the violation of a preference - that's much too empty. But suffering is, all things considered, the most prioritized of experiences.

But they are not preferences any more in the sense of being a moral choice when you are saying you have no choice but to respect your own discovered feelings on these matters. — apokrisis

This is sort of where Levinas comes into play with his idea of the persecution of ethics. We feel compelled to act ethically. Ethics is not egoistic, ethics do not necessarily align with our preferences. Only in the "virtuous" man does this occur.

I am saying we can instead understand the actual moral codes of societies - which are general pretty enthusiastic about hunting and meat-eating - as natural preferences because they encode the kind of balancing acts that make for a flourishing society. — apokrisis

Oh, sure, they're natural, but again personal preferences are not necessarily normative. What you want to do is not necessarily moral. The satisfaction of preferences can be moral in the abstract sense, but just because we have preferences doesn't mean their contents are moral.

You are speaking up here only for your own very personal minority view of what feels right when it comes to being a member of the tribe, Homo carnivorius. So either you have special privileged knowledge the rest of the world doesn't share, or you are just speaking to some particular quirk of your own psycho-developmental history. — apokrisis

Or, to be less dichotomous about all this, it's that I recognize that humans have a surplus of intellectual ability that is able to reflect upon our ingrained preferences and reject them. This goes right back to Zapffe again. We're not comfortable in the world anymore, we're not complacent. We've seen too much.

This is not at all unrealistic. Software programs have bugs that persist simply because the conditions around them allow them too. They don't belong, but the nevertheless are there. Change the programming, the bug disappears. The same applies to the human psyche. For some crazy reason human consciousness exists when a toned down version would have sufficed. Perhaps this is a product of the agricultural revolution in Mesopotamia all those centuries ago.

We evolved in a relatively thermodynamically-stable environment. We had no concept of entropy. And yet entropy, the same thing you're arguing is moral, is going to stab us in the back.

So while you waffle on about all right-thinking dudes knowing instinctively that eating animals is inherently bad form, pretty much the entire human race plainly just does not believe you. — apokrisis

Are you seriously going to argue that population dictates moral righteousness? Really?!

Clearly the majority of civilizations two thousand years ago wouldn't have thought slavery was wrong.

Like I said before, moral conventionalism all the way. It's an ad hoc meta-ethical theory.

But as you say, your position doesn't rely on such facts. The only thing that matters in all existence is your preferences on some issue. If we want to understand morality, we must come to you - learn about how self-deluding we all are. — apokrisis

I wouldn't be so smug about it, but, yes, I think with the proper education and a little bit of honesty, people can see the errors of their ways. This applies universally.

We feel compelled to act ethically. Ethics is not egoistic, ethics do not necessarily align with our preferences. Only in the "virtuous" man does this occur. — darthbarracuda

It's not self-consciously egoistic, but you are talking about individual compulsions. In the end, it's a matter of I want it this way. But usually the rhetorical appeal is made to something the tribe holds sacred, perhaps one established principle against another. The individual sometimes experiences the pain of being torn between two compulsions, perhaps between the "ego ideal" and the lust or the hunger of the body. Our self seems more or less constituted by the "spiritual instinct," so that is given the superior position. That compulsion is the one we want recognized as adults. The self projects itself as a universal and therefore conceals its egoism from itself (which may run counter to an investment the so-called anti-egoistic.)

I wouldn't be so smug about it, but, yes, I think with the proper education and a little bit of honesty, people can see the errors of their ways — darthbarracuda

I don't think this identification with moral leadership and a vision of the world as not worth the trouble are the least bit separated. If one desires recognition in a world that will not give it, then to hell with the world. I'm too good for it. No one can take that away from you, but you might get tired of it. As I see it, there is violence and not saintly love at the heart of it, though I'm sure empathy is involved, too.

Still, I'm glad you're around to make your case. You have the wit and the guts to argue.

We are finite mortal creatures, the meaning we give to events are not in the events, the meanings are in us and as such morals are fictive, stories we tell our self. In spite of this willfully acting with a good conscience means acting in accordance with laws we give to our self which is, I think, the only way we can act freely. — Cavacava

Good points. I'd say the freedom is also about being able to change these self-given laws. Philosophy at its best is just this sort of freedom at work. It's personality editing at its most radical.

In other words, the content of our phenomenological experiences does not change with the introduction of a new scientific image of man. You need to take into account this. — darthbarracuda

Well in fact that scientific image produces pain-killers, and hip operations, and cognitive therapies, and other stuff which can change the content of that phenomenological experience.

If the person that ends up in the cemetery involves no conscious suffering (perhaps you 360 no-scoped them), where is the issue with this murder?

The issue is that someone's preferences were violated. Suffering isn't just the violation of a preference - that's much too empty. But suffering is, all things considered, the most prioritized of experiences. — darthbarracuda

Yep. Still ducking my question.

Did the lamb express a preference? Is it capable of having one? Again you are having to support your position by talking nonsense.

Do you have a preference about lamb-eating? Might I have a different preference? Now we are talking. What general ground decides the issue morally when preferences are in conflict like this?

Yes, we progressives ought not only eliminate ourselves, but eliminate all animals (as they are barbaric consumers too), and even all plants (as they too show no respect for minerals and gases). — apokrisis

Yes, "life is sin." Movement is sin. There's a religion of stasis in our guts somewhere that just reaches out and grabs us now and then. Not life-death but un-life, un-death. And yet this religion itself looks like some modulation of the killer instinct and quest for a position at the apex that it condemns in a sort of sublimated verbal violence. It seeks to bring guilt and humiliation to everything self-assured and at home in our flesh-eating flesh.

Yes, "life is sin." Movement is sin. There's a religion of stasis in our guts somewhere that just reaches out and grabs us now and then. Not life-death but un-life, un-death. And yet this religion itself looks like some modulation of the killer instinct and quest for a position at the apex that it condemns in a sort of sublimated verbal violence. It seeks to bring guilt and humiliation to everything self-assured and at home in our flesh-eating flesh. — Hoo

Seriously? Is it not just as standard a mythology to celebrate the natural circle of life.

We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon, we got to get ourselves back to the garden ... woo, hoo, hoo, hoo, lah, la, la, la, lah....

I can't tell if you got where I was coming from. I was trying to paint a picture of world-denying, world-accusing morality as an expression of what is supposedly hated about this world (violence, self-assertion, motion). Of course there is the other song and dance, too, which is far more popular. Explaining how life could pose as anti-life is the challenge.

I can't tell if you got where I was coming from. — Hoo

Not really. So you are pointing to irony of using violent means to put an end to violence?

I guess my point of view here is that we actually, socially, have really big problems in this world we are so busily creating/entropifying. We haven't got time to piss around with vegetarianism or pessimism or other whiny philosophical trivialities.

People just don't know stuff like how exponentially we are transforming life on the planet - the literal domestication (or enslavement ;) ) of all four-legged protein sources.

And there is this view that when people learn the truth, they will get scared and change their ways. But hey, I believed in the factuality of the Limits of Growth the first time around - and ever since have had to boggle at humankind's ability to ignore its inconvenient truths.

Eventually one has to decide whether humankind just is crazy, or instead this is some legitimate "wisdom of the crowd" effect. One has to be willing to challenge ones own eco prejudices against a testable model of reality which then might allow some actual control over the future.

If you don't understand the drivers of a phenomenon, you can't really expect to be able to express any meaningful preferences about where the phenomenon is headed.

And burn rate - solar flux vs fossil fuel - is at the base of modern civilisation and its existential dilemmas.

I do find those ideas fascinating. I also like metaphysics as thermodynamics. It's not my game in particular, but it's nice to see something new. I don't worry much about the planet, myself. I "should." But I really don't. Largely because I don't see it in my control. I can't waste the effort in what would seem to amount to a fashion choice. Some "game theory stuff" may extinguish us along these lines. Oh well, we made some smoke.

Humans are not the only ones who have sentience. — darthbarracuda

This is only true for a particular definition of sentience which you have carefully kept hidden. There simply is no evidence that any species other than humans is sentient according to that definition and in fact you have acknowledged this is in your comments on the question of why it is acceptable for animals to behave in certain ways towards humans but not for humans to act in the same way towards animals. You really can't have your cake and eat it. Either the sentience of animals is identical or so close to identical as makes no difference to that of humans in which case they should be afforded the identical moral and legal protection or it is not and there can be no rational objection to their being treated as the food that nature made them.

The problem with electing for the former is one of infinite regress. If species Z so resembles humans that it is afforded human 'rights' (I very consciously apply the inverted commas here but that's for another thread I suspect), then if species Y resembles Z it must also be afforded them. And if species X resembles Y ..... and so it goes on. Where and how do you draw the line? Or do you simply declare every living thing (including plants with their rudimentary sentience) off limits and starve to death?

This is the crux of the matter. The moral argument for vegetarianism ends up effectively proposing that it it is better to starve to death than eat meat (doubly so for vegans), sociopathy by any other name. Doesn't exactly scream 'morally superior' to me!

Either the sentience of animals is identical or so close to identical as makes no difference to that of humans in which case they should be afforded the identical moral and legal protection or it is not and there can be no rational objection to their being treated as the food that nature made them. — Barry Etheridge

Or sentience exists on a spectrum, and we can't play dice with other people's lives.

Where and how do you draw the line? — Barry Etheridge

Admittedly there is no precise line. We can say for sure that rocks, bacteria and fungi do not suffer. We can say for sure that mammals do. We can't say for sure whether or not insects, fish, or amphibians suffer - we have to take into account the benefit of the doubt and assume they can until substantial evidence shows they cannot.

The moral argument for vegetarianism ends up effectively proposing that it it is better to starve to death than eat meat (doubly so for vegans), sociopathy by any other name. Doesn't exactly scream 'morally superior' to me! — Barry Etheridge

Straw man. If you are starving to death, you have no choice in the matter, you have to eat something. This is why self-defense is acceptable moral behavior - killing someone for no reason is immoral, defending yourself is not.

Luckily for most of us we don't depend on meat to survive, so there's really no excuse.

Well in fact that scientific image produces pain-killers, and hip operations, and cognitive therapies, and other stuff which can change the content of that phenomenological experience. — apokrisis

And this changes...what, exactly? This only confirms what I had been saying earlier - phenomenological experiences are the subject of ethical priority. Your entropic ethics is missing what makes something moral - it's failing to resolve Moore's open-ended question.

Did the lamb express a preference? Is it capable of having one? Again you are having to support your position by talking nonsense. — apokrisis

Does it have a preference? It sure seems as though it does.

I'm not ducking your question as much as you are apologizing for murder.

Does an autistic child have preferences? Is it okay to murder them? Is it okay to have slaves, just because everyone else has slaves?

No.

Do you have a preference about lamb-eating? Might I have a different preference? Now we are talking. What general ground decides the issue morally when preferences are in conflict like this? — apokrisis

Empathy, compassion, etc. Pointing out the reality of certain preferences and decisions and honestly assessing what our reactions are to these realities. Intuitive responses are prima facie evidence for something being of value, because value depends on people who exist.

In any case, there are more important preferences at stake here than your appetite - namely, the lamb's preference to continue living. Are you really going to make equivalent your appetite with the inherent desire to live another day?

The exact same issue arises when a man rapes a woman. There's a violation of preferences here - which is more important, the man's lust or the woman's liberty?

Your entire position essentially boils down to might=right. I'm intellectually superior, therefore I get to make the rules. And this goes entirely against any modern egalitarian ideal. It's barbaric.

Did the discussion turn religious?

Regarding the subjective versus objective thing, let me just ask what it's like to be you, the reader? [1]
You may describe it so others can relate, even though "being you" will always be out of reach for others to experience (barring genuine telepathy I suppose).
Cutting it short, self-awareness is more-or-less noumena (though not all noumena are necessarily self-awareness). [2]
So what? It's just a consequence of onto/logical self-identity (the 1st law, the law of identity).
In that particular sense, subjective versus objective is a real partition if you will, except still part of a larger environment/context. A focus on subjectivity is self-emphasis.

It seems to me that morals are (at least in part) subjective, with respect to mind-dependence, as argued in the opening post. Yet, surely that's still real?

Have a good weekend everyone.



[1] cf Nagel
[2] cf Kant, Brie Gertler (with whom I personally disagree)

No, really it's not. — Barry Etheridge

I apologize for the simplfication with that comment.

I think the confusion arises because morality is in it's nature both objective and subjective. As you say, mores are not whims of the moment; they persist in the face of an individual's belief or disavowal of them, in the same manner that a teapot does. Mores may be studied and classified, and books are written about them which can be said to be accurate, or not. And yet, moralities are subjective, in that it has no reality outside of the minds of the societies which formulate them.

The situation is analogous to the valuation placed on money, or gold. That money is valuable is a real, objective fact of the world; it makes the difference between someone wielding enormous power vs. a stack of worthless paper. And yet, there is nothing objective in the world which confers on money it's value, outside of the collective agreement of the individuals who use it.

Maybe a new term is called for. Morality is neither objective nor subjective, but rather collective.

Probably simply understanding that (a) subjectivity does not imply whim or disagreement or anything like that, and (b) agreement, cooperation, etc. don't make something objective/don't make something not subjective would be sufficient, rather than needing a new word for misunderstandings.