Humans are animals throughout. — Kenosha Kid
That's a really nicely written piece. I agree with a substantial portion of what you say, but agreement is boring so... — Isaac
I'm not so sure that you can move as smoothly as you do from the biological description of empathetic pain to the non-hypocritical maxim of the new globalised society we find ourselves in. That pain has not gone away, and I don't think it can be as easily cast aside - socialisation can dictate behaviours, but it is less successful in undermining physiological processes. — Isaac
So what's happening is that we're using the very same moral decision-making approaches you list in your first half, unaltered. What's changing is the determination of in-group and out-group which is now highly flexible and circumstantial. — Isaac
we construct flexible and overlapping 'virtual' small-groups, and it is these we use to to determine valuation — Isaac
Social animals tend to operate in their cohabitation groups: hunting, gathering, child-rearing, migrating, fighting, etc. Humans are ultrasocial animals: we pack a lot of biological capacity specifically for operating in social groups compared with other animals. — Kenosha Kid
we are ultrasocial animals with heritable altruistic and empathetic capacities that compete with other, selfish heritable characteristics that, together with a heritable amenability to socialisation, allows us to make moral decisions concerning other individuals.
3.) That on its own isn't much of a foundational morality though. — Kenosha Kid
Understanding the perspective of another individual allows us to assess their threat and their vulnerability. It comes under the general negotiations of subsocial and social animals. — Kenosha Kid
What we have learned scientifically since is that no such understanding is required by us. Instead it needed to be the case in the past that a certain behaviour is a) statistically beneficial for survival and b) within our genetic space. — Kenosha Kid
It follows that there are no unreal or non-sensical scenarios
— Mww
There certainly are: a society of mostly antisocial actors being one. — Kenosha Kid
VLTTP :smirk: (Excellent OP and discussion. Mods keep up the bannings; that seems to be classing-up the joint! :up:) — 180 Proof
Isn't "cannot have top-down rules" a top-down rule? — 180 Proof
This caricature certainly doesn't apply to what's called 'virtue ethics' (i.e. eudaimonism) from the Hellenes through the (neo)Thomists down to moderns like Spinoza ... G.E.M. Anscombe, Alasdair McIntyre, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, Owen Flanagan, et al. — 180 Proof
"existentialism" is just Kierkegaardian 'subjective idealism' (i.e. decisionist fideism), which is just coin-flipping (à la "Two-Face" or "Anton Chighur") — 180 Proof
In the existential sense, and it was existentialism I was comparing our post-social situation to, freedom is a lack of "ought". It is in the sense that any choice we make, giving that freedom, is absurd by virtue of the fact that our freedom cannot justify one action over another (Kierkegaard), and in the sense that the necessity to perform that absurdity it is a symptom of human beings beings incompatible with their environment (Camus). — Kenosha Kid
"relativism", in so far as its a truth-claim (negative or positive) is self-refuting — 180 Proof
Disembodied, non-ecological cognition? Solipsistic fallacy (if it ain't, it should be). More Berkeley, I guess, than Kiergekaard? — 180 Proof
Natural. Selection. Shake-n-bake variation by descent sans teleology. Exhibit 1: the 3+ billion year old fossil record. Exhibit 2: nucleogenesis and planetary systems formations. Exhibit 3: "junk DNA", spandrel traits, etc. Exhibit 4: cosmic expansion (towards) thermodynamic equilibrum or maximum disorder (heat death) --> heat itself. Etcetera ... — 180 Proof
1a.) Ultrasocial can be attributed to over-population and/or economic dictates, which implies adaptability and/or small-scale tactical necessity, rather than an evolutionary progression. That we are social animals is sufficient. — Mww
Decisions grounded in those heritable capacities denote compatibility, rather than morality. — Mww
Granted, insofar as 1.) and 2.) are more related to consequentialist ethics, a psychological domain with respect to some arbitrary conduct in general, rather than moral determinism, a purely metaphysical domain with respect to innate human qualities under which mere capacity is subsumed, which first generates, then judges, what the specific conduct will be. — Mww
Square Two:
Understanding the perspective of another individual allows us to assess their threat and their vulnerability. It comes under the general negotiations of subsocial and social animals.
— Kenosha Kid
What we have learned scientifically since is that no such understanding is required by us. Instead it needed to be the case in the past that a certain behaviour is a) statistically beneficial for survival and b) within our genetic space.
— Kenosha Kid
How in the Holy Dickens can you reconcile these two assertions? — Mww
That is to say, understanding the benefit of staying clear of Sabre-tooth cats and warlords is exactly the same as understanding the benefit of staying clear of dump trucks and panhandlers. — Mww
If this statement referred only to your own instantaneous "hedonic experience" then depending on details your theory might be something like emotivism (or a tautology.) But your theory involves some kind of integration over the experiences of all people in all circumstances. At which point those experiences become data and you are squarely in the is-ought transmutation business. — SophistiCat
The distinction I prefer is social/antisocial. [...]
I did, perhaps regrettably, try and cast these things in terms of how a moral philosopher might see them — Kenosha Kid
In that case you are not so much ignoring the is-ought divide, as just ignoring the ought side of it completely. — Pfhorrest
You are only describing why certain behaviors did in fact contribute to the survival of our ancestors and consequently why we are in fact inclined to behave that way still, but you’re not giving any account at all of why it’s good to survive and so good that we behave in that way today. — Pfhorrest
You’re also overlooking that the same tacit “passing on your genes is good” premise hidden under all of this would justify many antisocial behaviors too. — Pfhorrest
Genghis Khan did a lot of antisocial stuff, a bunch of murders and rapes, and his genes are all over the world population today because of that. So does that make rape and murder good, in the right context where you’ll get away with it and have lots of successful offspring? — Pfhorrest
socialisation clearly has some corrupting effect — Kenosha Kid
"We agree with nature, it does happen to be morally good to survive — Kenosha Kid
Nature doesn’t say it’s morally good to survive. — Pfhorrest
This is why I mean by ignoring the ought side. You say you’re denying it, but rather you’re just declining to answer a certain kind of question, instead giving an answer to a different question. — Pfhorrest
you could only state the causal origins of your moral intuition and the probability that they share those intuitions given your shared heritage. — Pfhorrest
Scientism like yours responds to attempts to treat normative questions as completely separate from factual questions (as they are) by demanding absolute proof from the ground up that anything at all is objectively normative, or moral, and not just a factual claim in disguise or else baseless mere opinion. — Pfhorrest
Why not likewise just accept that some things sure seem moral or immoral (as you do) and then take that at face value, act as though some things actually are moral or immoral and that that’s not just a baseless opinion that it was useful for our ancestors to have, and then try to sort out what seems moral regardless of viewpoints and so is objectively (i.e. without bias) moral? — Pfhorrest
I think you may have a different definition of ulrasocial going on. I meant it in the typical neuroscientific sense of ultracooperative social groups.... — Kenosha Kid
If you are saying that natural capacities for empathy and altruism have nothing to do with morality, I would have to disagree strongly. If you are disputing that these natural capacities are identical with any metaphysical idea of morality, yes, hopefully, because I believe one is real and one is not. — Kenosha Kid
But our moral apparatus is as unaware of its origin as our ancestors were. It is not a consequentialist philosophy of human beings. It is biology as a consequence of natural selection. Is that what you mean? — Kenosha Kid
It is biology as a consequence of natural selection. — Kenosha Kid
someone does something, therefore they must have worked out that that was the best thing to do using their reason alone and, if it was the wrong thing, they made a rational error. In reality, if your ancestor had attempted this in the face of an oncoming sabre-tooth tiger, you almost certainly wouldn't have been born — Kenosha Kid
There is some primordial division of labor, as a shaman may fabricate implements of spiritual significance and provide guidance in exchange for food supplies, a chief may also have his needs met by the rest of the group as a perk of leadership, but most households are engaging in almost the exact same essential behaviors, supporting their families by nearly identical means, and can usually function on their own just as well as in commerce with the collective barring competition with rival tribes and warring. — Enrique
Citizens also often consider cultural traditions sacred in some sense, with human minds in antiquity all the way up to the present day seeing a connection between viability of social structures and the will of deities or their declared representatives, so that fear of divine wrath or belief in spiritual mandate lead to consent for all but the most egregious, sacrilegious, immoral or traitorous oppressions. Thus, though no one likes to be herded around by pugnacious authority, individuals are usually agreeable to suppressing some level of disgruntlement in order to ward off potential for utter catastrophe. — Enrique
Materially, particular citizens matter less to sustenance of the community as a whole — Enrique
As economic advantage amongst the home territories and countries of Europe’s empires came to be seen as reliant on a populace optimally mobilized for technical competence, civic-minded humanism gained more traction with intellectuals. — Enrique
If this is an accurate assessment, the species' prehistoric instinctuality is almost negligible to the fate of civilization, and increasing, declining or lack of capacity to reason in mutualizing ways has become the core factor in moral incentive and agency, a situation that education might be able to deeply influence. — Enrique
With utmost redundancy, we deduce that moral good is identical to that good for the survival of the group found in selected-for human social capacities — Kenosha Kid
Consider sight. I look a tree, I see a tree. I look at the human genome and point a load of genes and say these are responsible for this bit of eye, that optical cable, these bits of the brain, etc. You're basically asking me where the picture of tree is. It's not there. The image of the tree is a consequence of the capacities of sight I have inherited via genes selected for because this way of seeing trees is better than my distant ancestor's for human survival. — Kenosha Kid
I just do it. Or not. Depending on the circumstances. Our bodies have this covered, as they do with so many things, without solely relying on rational input, and irregardless of our post hoc rationalisation. — Kenosha Kid
Your counter-argument here seems to be that to weigh up, say, whether we should be a welfare state or not be a welfare state, first we must question our social biology which in turn necessitates that we must refer to the human genome which in turn suggests we must figure out our evolutionary history — Kenosha Kid
Yeah, looks like. I don’t know anything about neuroscience or ultracooperative social groups, so to me, ultrasocial is just somewhat more social than social. Doesn’t matter; they’re all still just a bunch of individuals. — Mww
I don’t see any reason to include heritable traits in the metaphysical idea of morality. — Mww
But the metaphysical idea of morality is just that, an idea, hence will never be real in the sense of morality in which heritable traits serve as the criteria for personal or social conduct. — Mww
We are concerned with being moral, not with where moral being came from, which grants that our moral apparatus is not a consequentialist philosophy.
...
Again, that it is used is given, because that we are moral beings is given, but we want to know how. — Mww
But none of that is sufficient to prove that he couldn’t possibly have rationalized the danger. It is every bit as likely he did, therefore I’m here. The human thought process is, after all, virtually instantaneous. — Mww
Rationalism trap. As in, trapped by rationalism? Being trapped by that which is impossible to escape, seems like a mischaracterization of terms, doesn’t it? — Mww
You’re doing an outstanding job of trying to defeat metaphysics with scientific principles. Thing is, the only way to defeat a metaphysical position, is with a better one. — Mww
How do you deduce this? — Pfhorrest
But still, someone asks "What ought we do?" and your answer is "We are inclined to do these things." If they ask "Yes, we are inclined that way, but is that right?" and you say "It's what helped our ancestors survive", you're still dodging the question. — Pfhorrest
It's like if I ask what flavor of ice cream I should buy
...
But that aside, telling them a fact about people's ice cream preferences is irrelevant, unless they already are of the opinion that they ought or ought not follow the crowds. You could tell them some evolutionary fact about why people evolved to crave certain flavors, but still that's not going to help them answer their question. — Pfhorrest
That's really frustrating, isn't it? Someone who won't give you a straight answer to your "is" question, and instead will only tell you why people think you ought to believe this or that answer to it. — Pfhorrest
That's a poor analogy, because you're still entirely within the domain of "is". — Pfhorrest
I'm only suggesting that by paying really close methodical attention to the experiences that inform our moral intuitions — Pfhorrest
We also have a genetic amenability toward socialisation, mediated by oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin and seratonin. Socialisation is important because most of the above are capacities rather than drives we are born with. To that extent, an immediate empathetic response to an individual in distress is not fully natural but learned via natural capacities for empathy, altruism, and socialisation together. — Kenosha Kid
No, I don't want to bring up social biology or genes or evolutionary history at all. — Pfhorrest
You're the one bringing that up as though it justified any "ought" claims. — Pfhorrest
Is the metaphysics apologist demanding proof?!? — Kenosha Kid
My argument is not against moral ideas, but moral ideas with claims to a priori knowledge or an objective right-wrong moral world. — Kenosha Kid
In small groups, our morality would give right/wrong answers to moral questions that need not be asked because the answers are not rational answers but physiological and neurological responses. — Kenosha Kid
Morality is based on good-for-the-group altruism and empathy, so anything that jettisons those for reliance on pre-social drives is ipso facto immoral and subhuman. — Kenosha Kid
It is not only true that not all human responses are rational, it also seems to me to be true that the rational mind takes credit for a lot of stuff it doesn't do — Kenosha Kid
unreliable suppositions relative to ancestral behavior. — Mww
Altruism and empathy are no less ideas than morality, for there is no object which belongs to any of them, but only phenomenal manifestations derivable from them for which they can be said to be the causality. That is to say, there is no object in the world to which these can be a property. — Mww
It’s good that you’re not against moral ideas. And as altruism and empathy are every bit as metaphysical, as mere conceptions, as morality, I’m baffled as to the rejection of metaphysical explanations for any of them. — Mww
It must be the case that all responses for anything are predicated on physiological and neurological grounds. We are brain-bound, right? — Mww
So putting that aside, and while it is true small groups won’t have the same ethical questions as large groups, it is nevertheless inconsistent with the idea of moral dispositions to restrict its questions to the size of the group from which the questions arise. — Mww
I don’t accept the major in that proposition, insofar as morality is to be considered a personal human condition, therefore morality is based on the good of the individual. — Mww
Being illegal is not necessarily being immoral, but being unethical is always immoral. — Mww
True, not all human responses are rational, but even irrational responses are derived from reason. — Mww
Modern cognitive science and neuroscience show that studying the role of emotion in mental function (including topics ranging from flashes of scientific insight to making future plans), that no human has ever satisfied this criterion, except perhaps a person with no affective feelings, for example, an individual with a massively damaged amygdala or severe psychopathy. Thus, such an idealized form of rationality is best exemplified by computers, and not people. However, scholars may productively appeal to the idealization as a point of reference. — Wiki
However I will set fire to the straw man: at no point have I suggested that that which is popular becomes the answer to a moral question — Kenosha Kid
you feel you need answers to normative questions anyway — Kenosha Kid
You are not asking "ought" questions but "is" questions about "oughts". — Kenosha Kid
But nature, which provided you with your moral capacities, did not provide you with any. — Kenosha Kid
Sounds familiar. "How does the idea of a 6000 year old Earth explain the geological records?" "Oh, I don't want to bring up geology."
You're posting on a thread about naturally selected social biology. It's gonna come up. If you're just feeling obliged because I mentioned you in the OP, honestly it's fine. It's nice that you came, but I didn't aim to piss you off with a subject you don't want to talk about, and it's fine to pass. — Kenosha Kid
Your counter-argument here seems to be that to weigh up, say, whether we should be a welfare state or not be a welfare state, first we must question our social biology which in turn necessitates that we must refer to the human genome which in turn suggests we must figure out our evolutionary history — Kenosha Kid
"do not harm others to benefit yourself". Nature derived that hundreds of thousands of years ago without a brain, and gifted it to us without a clue. — Kenosha Kid
So my empathy and altruism are strictly mine, albeit copies of ancestors common to us both. — Kenosha Kid
Metaphysics rationalises natural human responses post hoc, then claims a discovery — Kenosha Kid
I'm saying that small groups, for which our social responses were evolved, bypass the need for moral questions altogether. Smaller groups were what our social responses were adapted for. (...) That is distinct from now where our social responses, inclined toward outcomes of reciprocal altruism with relatives and neighbours, no longer determine the moral course of action. — Kenosha Kid
there is no frame of reference in which this could not be hypocritical. — Kenosha Kid
True, not all human responses are rational, but even irrational responses are derived from reason.
— Mww
This is meant merely as a statement of a belief, I assume, not of fact. My understanding of the psychologist's current thinking is that reason comprises about 2% of human decision-making. — Kenosha Kid
Rationalism, as far as I can make out, is claiming the other 98% is also rational, then trying to figure out how. — Kenosha Kid
In the exact same sense which surgeons, ecologists (e.g. sylviculturists, hydrologists, habitat preservationists), fitness coaches, for example, use "oughts" as, what Kant coined, hypothetical imperatives - to wit: if you want/need A, then B rather than C - if fitness, then exercise & diet rather partying & gluttony; if viable ecosystem, then sustainable caretaking, resource-use/extraction with smallest optimal footprint, rigorous pollution restrictions; etc.The eudaimonists are still concerned with "oughts" though. — Kenosha Kid
True. But nothing entails such "divorcement". In fact, eusociality requires convergence - complementarity - of self & group more often than not (as you point out vis-à-vis "antisocial behavior").The divorcement of good-for-self and good-for-the-group cannot justify one over the other.
Ok.It is not necessary for relativism to justify relativism, i.e. it need not be an elementary moral theory.
No. "Relativism" is too arbitrary, or reactive, to be as reliable as a morality needs to be for efficacy over many circumstances and thereby for mimetic success (e.g. cultural transmission). The mismatch between "moral drives and capacities" and a dynamic, or artifical non-adaptive, "environment" is an unsolvable problem that ethics deploys 'practical reason' to manage pragmatically. "Relativism" is, at best, a suboptimal 'whatever is clever' management approach or stance.Relativism is a default of a naturalistic depiction of morality that observes that our moral drives and capacities cannot be exhaustively or accurately fulfilled in the environment they now exist in (existentialism),
There is, to my mind, no such thing as a "natural justification" that is not a naturalistic fallacy (and thereby an ideology).and that, beyond the existence of these drives and capacities, there is no natural justification for one schema of how and when one act above another.
We're an animal species. As such, each of us is constituted by the same functional defects: physical, affective, social, cognitive, etc which, if not maintained and sustained, lead, often rapidly, to deprivation and on to permanent or fatal dysfunction. I'd say our functional defects inform us as to (1) what harms us as well as (2) what harms other animals like us to the degree they are like us; true this, as you say, "cannot tell us which to choose" but that's because our species-functional defects are constraints which constitute homeostasis, affection, eusociality (or sustainability) & adaptivity, respectively (re: list above) AND NOT "OUGHTS" THEMSELVES, providing a 'natural' baseline for, or (basic) facticity of, moral judgments & conduct. Thus, negative utilitarianism, etc (vide Philippa Foot + Karl Popper ... + Spinoza).Our nature cannot tell us which to choose (because our nature is unaware of our circumstances) and I argue that, since our morality derives from natural selection of social drives and capacities ...
I'm afraid, KK, collapsing the is-ought distinction has left "Natural Selection" to fill your "existentialist void" (i.e. scientism-of-the-gaps).French existentialism is ethically solipsistic to an extent, and in some ways terminally so: no sooner do existentialists announce freedom, they try and find an "ought" (God, overcoming, communism, personal experience) to fill the void. I'm hoping to avoid the same mistake here.
Maybe the notion of "group" is too top-down and can be reconceived as bottom-up community (ecosystem). How do you account for, or understand, the salience of Hillel the Elder's "That which is hateful to you, do not do to anyone"?Again, I'm not proposing that what's good for our genes is a foundation of a moral philosophy. I am proposing that we have moral philosophy because what's good-for-the-group is not actionable anymore. — Kenosha Kid
I do question whether, when one's virtual social groups geographically encompass the world, one can actually maintain e.g. racist or nationalistic viewpoints without hypocrisy. — Kenosha Kid
American white-black relations have been like if more representative people, who had not inherited racist or slavery-affirming socialisations, had mediated them from the start? This starts off looking like a simple question that suggests that maybe if power wasn't so concentrated always among psychopathic opportunists, things might have been better. But of course slavery had been accepted as natural since the middle ages, in no small part thanks to religion, and in no small part thanks to its legal status, so its still likely that even normal people might have gone the same route. — Kenosha Kid
My feeling is that, whatever initial difficulties there might have been in encountering new out-groups, in the absence of socialisations that push us toward pre-social behaviours and suspend our social capacities, and in the absence of a credible existential threat from such out-groups, our natural altruism would tend toward inclusivity. — Kenosha Kid
My ideas of what is come from my empirical experiences: my first notion of reality is of the stuff that I can see rather than what I can’t, and every later notion of what is real is a refinement of that nature-given intuition about it. Likewise, my ideas of what ought to be come from my hedonic experiences: my first notion of morality is of stuff that feels pleasant rather than painful, and every later notion of what is moral is a refinement of that nature-given intuition about it. — Pfhorrest
Do you (or some scientific consensus) not agree with Kohlberg's stages of moral development? That seems to confirm my own experiences. — Pfhorrest
Everyone who ever has to make a reasoned decision about what action to take needs an answer to a normative question, because that’s exactly what normative questions are about. The only beings who never need to ask normative questions are those that act entirely in a straightforward stimulus-response way, with no reflexive, contemplative function mediating the relationship between their experiences and their behaviors. Are you suggesting humans are like that? — Pfhorrest
Nope. See above. — Pfhorrest
Likewise, my idea of what ought to be comes from my hedonic experiences: my first notion of morality is of stuff that feels pleasant rather than painful, and every later notion of what is moral is a refinement of that nature-given intuition about it. — Pfhorrest
But another principle of mine is to proceed on the assumption that with enough effort and care we can establish an arbitrarily-much unbiased refinement like that. — Pfhorrest
I didn’t say I don’t want to talk about that, I said that I’m not the one bringing it up
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I’m not pissed off BTW, and I’m not here because you mentioned me in the OP, but because of a comment about the is-ought divide later in the comments. — Pfhorrest
Your counter-argument here seems to be that to weigh up, say, whether we should be a welfare state or not be a welfare state, first we must question our social biology which in turn necessitates that we must refer to the human genome which in turn suggests we must figure out our evolutionary history
— Kenosha Kid
And I’m saying no, I’m not arguing that we have to do that. You brought those things up, not me. — Pfhorrest
you could only state the causal origins of your moral intuition and the probability that they share those intuitions given your shared heritage — Pfhorrest
I read the book — Mww
If the bat costs a dollar more than the ball, then the bat costs a dollar, regardless of the cost of the ball. — Mww
the words one is suppose to place left or right of center, are the words left and right — Mww
Would you be surprised, dismayed, or unreceptive, if I quoted a series of texts from the book, followed by a collaborating series of texts from 1787? — Mww
You seem to have gone one step further and rationalised a new mathematics — Kenosha Kid
But there are some excellent 200 year old ideas that still stand up today. — Kenosha Kid
I read the book; it’s at academia dot com from a bing title search. I dumped my write-up commenting on it, being wrong on one count and superfluous on the next. — Mww
I didn’t encounter anything in the book that relates to your half of this conversation, hence my commentary on it being superfluous with respect to the OP. Which leaves me to think you just wanted me to be exposed to modernization. So, thanks.....I guess. — Mww
We do moral things without the need to ask why, but if we do ask, we can only ask ourselves and only ourselves can answer. I grant the intrinsic circularity, always have. Like I said....blame Mother Nature. And if we do ask, is never our altruism or empathy receiving the query; we can ever only ask our reason. — Mww
If altruism and empathy were naturally selected predicated on small groups, but we no longer inhabit small groups specifically, did altruism and empathy evolve in keeping with the evolution of group size? — Mww
I reject that an individual suddenly becomes moral just because he inhabits something more than a small group. How small is small? Is a hundred people a mall group? There never were 8M people in a large group until relatively recently, so.....seems altogether arbitrary to me. — Mww
What is the frame of reference that is not violated by hypocrisy? — Mww
Conscious decision making is judgement, in which things are related to each other and a conclusion is drawn. Judgement is a facet of reason, and we make judgements every time things relate to each other. — Mww
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