The important difference between what you’re picturing and what I’m actually saying is that on my account we are not merely to base moral reasoning on people’s self-descriptions of their hedonism experiences. Just like we don’t base science on people’s self-descriptions of their empirical experiences, but rather we replicate those circumstances first-hand for ourselves and see if we ourselves experience the same thing. Likewise on my account of morality, we are to replicate others’ hedonic “observations” to confirm for ourselves that it actually does seem bad. So we’re never starting with a description and getting to a prescriptive conclusion. We’re always starting with a prescriptivists experience (an experience of something seeming good or bad), and getting to a prescriptive conclusion.

Of course even in science we don’t all always replicate every observation everyone reports (apparently there’s a bit of a crisis of nobody doing nearby enough replication), and I’m not suggesting we have to do that with mora reasoning either. But in the case of science, when we don’t replicate, we take the (descriptive) conclusion at its word, rather than taking a description of the empirical experiences someone had at someone‘s word and then coming to the same conclusion ourselves on the ground that someone has some experience. Likewise, if we don’t replicate a hedonic experience, we’re just taking the prescriptive conclusion of the person who had it at their word — trusting them that such-and-such does actually seem good or bad — and using that in our further moral reasoning. We’re never taking a description of an experience that someone had and reaching a prescriptive conclusion from it, and so not violating the is-ought gap. We’re just trusting someone’s prescriptive claim, and drawing further prescriptive conclusions from it; or else verifying that claim with our own prescriptive (hedonic) experiences and drawing prescriptive conclusions from them. — Pfhorrest

I don't see how this gets you away from the is/ought gap. If the criterion of moral evaluation of something is whether it seems right or wrong, then you haven't said or proposed anything at all, you've just stated a tautology. However, as soon as you substitute some pseudo-scientific procedure of data collection and calculation for a moral judgement, Hume shows up with his guillotine and demands to know what this procedure has to do with the rightness or wrongness of the thing. The data that you collect is not an ought; it is a record of observations or reports - an is.

Eudaimonism (very primatively) says: if well-being (optimal capabilities/readiness for moral conduct), then habitualize virtues by (a) exercising them and (b) avoiding/abstaining from exercising vices; the "ought" prescribes a moral agent's readiness and not which preferences / rules / actions are or are not applicable to any given (or hypothetical) situation. In other words, what's 'hypothetical' for eudaimonists is derived from the conditional goal and not how to resolve the situational dilemma/tradeoff. — 180 Proof

I like this wording of it a lot. "Readiness" is a good way of thinking about a moral position because it might be "I have a pre-prepared rational answer" or just an instinct.

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"). — 180 Proof

And yet it is nonetheless divorced. Helping a stranger today would generally lower my chances of my genome's survival, not increase it, were it not for the fact that a) I'm not likely to die from losing the competition for resources anymore (thanks welfare!), and b) we already think altruism is good from back before the divorce, so not being a selfish a-hole is a good in itself now (e.g. may be more attractive to members of the opposite sex).

"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). — 180 Proof

This is, I'm guessing, based on relativism's arrival in philosophy, thus judging it on its memetic fitness within the context of other memes. But I'm not suggesting relativism needs to be argued for at all. We're more than aware that moral absolutism, such as that which is supposed to derive from an intelligent creator, is the King of Memes. It's still BS, though, and you can intelligently, using evidence-based methodology and, yes, rationalism, dismiss the meme as simply unjustified, however attractive it is. What I'm saying by "relativity is the default" is that we can just keep going until all we're left with is what nature gave us and the environment we find ourselves in: a drive to be altruistic, and no basis to choose who, when and how, i.e. freedom. It's less a derivation than a process of elimination.

The "naturalistic default" - my metaethical naturalism is kicking-in - implied by this mismatch of drives & environment is pluralism, or logical space to game-out heuristically many different approaches to managing this drives-environments mismatch and ranking them by their utility ranging over variably many circumstances over time; there are [some number] X ways in [some number] Y situations with [some range] Z reliabilities, and ethics - moral philosophy - reflects / speculates on the plurality of these paths rationally [inventories the universe tools] and selects the most optimal path pragmatically [assembles a toolbox for eusocially sharing a commons of scarce goods, services, opportunities]. — 180 Proof

Selects on what basis? A purely pragmatic optimal will be the easiest thing to do. We must have a desire to satisfy in order for an outcome to be the best. Also, you are characterising moral philosophy here, not individuals generally, right? I don't think people spend their time generating hypothetical scenarios in order to prepare themselves for the real world; rather, they are informed as to the pragmatic option (or multiple options) for the future chiefly by experience of successes and failures in the past. It is mostly reactive rather than proactive, beyond whatever values are instilled in us by authority. We can and do sometimes rationalise about moral correctness in hypothetical situations, but we cannot derive the morally good outcome, only the morally best outcome(s) by a pre-existing notion of good (feel free to hit me with a counter-example).

There is, to my mind, no such thing as a "natural justification" that is not a naturalistic fallacy (and thereby an ideology). — 180 Proof

Except, as I've said often, I am not proposing justifying a moral ideology on natural grounds. It is not that I am justifying relativism by appealing to nature. The effort is purely descriptive, and starts from nature, not relativism. I do justify social behaviour, not as an objective good, but as a classification issue: we humans are social animals; to be antisocial is to be subhuman. One can still be so if one wishes.

I'm afraid, KK, collapsing the is-ought distinction has left "Natural Selection" to fill your "existentialist void" (i.e. scientism-of-the-gaps). — 180 Proof

Quite the opposite. The lack of an objective ought, not a justification of it, is precisely my point. Also, I start from natural selection, and proceed from there.

Maybe the notion of "group" is too top-down and can be reconceived as bottom-up community (ecosystem). — 180 Proof

Good-for-the-group in this context is any genetic feature selected for on the basis that good-for-group behaviour is good-for-me. It can only be re-rationalised as top-down; it cannot naturally be so, just from the mechanics of it.

How do you account for, or understand, the salience of Hillel the Elder's "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow"? — 180 Proof

I covered this in the OP. First, one cannot oblige nature to verify moral philosophy; one can only ask why we are moral (as I'm trying to explain to Pfhorrest). Second, in this case, the golden rule is a rationalisation of something we already did without the need for moral philosophy or rational moral decision-making. In the absence of a competing and contrary philosophy, one may as well say, "Use thine eyes, not thine ears, for sight." The difference is that the reason we already did this did not apply to the general global population; while empathetic responses were not apparently subdued in the presence of out-group members, oxytocin production was and is subdued by other, counter-empathetic responses.

So one can contrast Hillel with, say, Hitler (sticking with names of the form Hi*le* for s'n'g), who believed it was absolutely brilliant to do that which was hateful to him to his fellow, if one allowed 'fellow' to include Jews, which he did not. It seems that Hitler prioritised his counter-empathetic (largely pre-social) responses, while Hillel emphasised his social ones.

The interesting part is how the rational mind rationalises the irrational answer. People swear blind they thought it through rationally, i.e, worked out the answer mathematically, and yet they clearly didn't. — Kenosha Kid

Ok, I get it. I look at it somewhat differently, although the end result was the same.....I was wrong. I did insist I worked it out rationally, re: no matter what the ball costs, the bat costs a dollar more, therefore the bat costs a dollar. Says it right there...the bat costs a dollar. The irrational insistence comes from neglecting the difference between costs a dollar and costs a dollar more. Such error follows from a cognitive neglect, the causality for which is merely a language game.

I hesitate to say thinking it out rationally involves the math, because it was the math that proved to me my judgement was irrational. It is a simple equation, after all, but the equation wouldn’t have even been necessary as an empirical proof, had I not overlooked the categorical signifier “more”.

I did get a kick out of the word/placement test though. Daniel asked me to tell myself whether the words he chose for me, were to the left or right of center of the columns in which they were listed. Of course, the words under test were “left” and “right”. Now, my thought process is such that I never do anything without cognizing something about that which I am supposed to do, in this case place words, which I must first cognize as particulars representations of conception. OK, so I see the word “left”, my reason tells me “left” and that is the very first thing I am aware of so I think “left”. But the word “left” I see is to the right of center. In effect, the “left” I think is not the placement “left” I’m being tested on. I’ve been tricked into exchanging my thought, for a test score. And the reason it is a language game, is because it is highly doubtful I’d have been wrong in my word placement if the words had been anything other than “left” and “right”.

Anyway.....it was fun. And does highlight some of reason’s deficiencies.
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it is not the individual that changes from group size to group size, nor has the quality of the moral hardware altered one iota. — Kenosha Kid

Good that we have established the validity of that condition.

There are genes specifically for small social groups that would make rationalisation of moral truths redundant. — Kenosha Kid

Redundant compared to....what? And what is a moral truth? Morality is a rational enterprise, sure, but mere rationalization doesn’t necessarily give truth. If morality is qualified by its good, truth could only apply if and when a moral disposition is truly good, which is a blatant redundancy, for there is no such thing as a good that isn’t good truly. But it certainly can’t be the case that genes are responsible for that redundancy.
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What is the frame of reference that is not violated by hypocrisy?
— Mww

The cosmological frame of reference, in which nothing we do matters, would be one in which it is as reasonable to be a hypocrite as to be social. — Kenosha Kid

True enough, if it should become established we are in a cosmological frame of reference, at the exclusion of any other frame of reference. I suppose to claim all humans are in a moral frame of reference suffers the same dilemma, but it is still much more parsimonious to suggest, and indeed much more evident, that we are moral beings, than it is to suggest nothing we do matters. Hell....I’m taking great care to make myself understood with these words, for no other reason whatsoever than I think it matters. I mean...it’s a moral obligation of mine not to subject you to confusion or to force you into an unaligned response, by which you would possibly feel unflavored.

I would need much more than mere cosmological predicates to ascertain the value of hypocrisy.
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The way S1 and S2 work together is that S2 consciously verifies the decisions of S1 while believing them to be S2's decisions. — Kenosha Kid

Understood; empirical psychology in juxtaposition to cognitive philosophy. I trust your exposition herein, because I don’t know any better, and suffice it to say, from my point of view.....close enough. I might point out that your justification is not quite the same as my judgement. It’s like....judgement is a conclusion, justification is the demonstration of a conclusion. They are both rational activities, and therefore both susceptible to irrationality.

As regards this inconsistent amnesiac, here we see why psychology branched from philosophy. The latter makes no room for dysfunctional impairment, while the former requires it. My philosophy tells me how I think, your psychology wants to tell me how wrong I am. Yours tries to warn me of pending mistakes, mine doesn’t warn me at all, but forces me change my thinking because of them. Difference being, of course, while. neither warnings nor experiences are always heeded, experience always carries the much more severe penalties and, even more importantly, carries the higher likelihood for change.
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I put that in bold because it's a good rewording of my key argument. — Kenosha Kid

Now that (bold) I understand and accept without equivocation. But we evolved from small groups, thus there is empathy and altruism and they are purposeful affectations. If we could only come to terms on how that relates to morality, we’d be off to the rodeo.

If the criterion of moral evaluation of something is whether it seems right or wrong, then you haven't said or proposed anything at all, you've just stated a tautology. — SophistiCat

No more than a claim of empiricism is a tautology. Which it very well could be taken to be: the claim that any supposed thing the existence or non-existence of which would make absolutely no noticeable difference to what appears to be real, is not real. That sounds pretty tautological. But note how it’s distinguishing between what people might nominally think is real, and what the experience of reality is like. It’s saying that if you think X is real but the existence of X makes no difference in any experience of reality, then you’re wrong.

My claim of hedonism is like that. It’s just saying that if you think something is or isn’t good, but that thing makes no difference in what does or doesn’t feel good to anyone, then you’re wrong. Besides that negative proposition, yeah, it’s pretty tautological, the good is what feels good, just like empiricism, reality is what looks real.

The data that you collect is not an ought; it is a record of observations or reports - an is. — SophistiCat

This just seems like you didn’t read the post you’re response to. Either you verify the hedonic experiences yourself, and get “oughts” directly from them (as a hedonic experience just is one that motivates an “ought” opinion, in the same way that an empirical experience motivates an “is” opinion: they are precisely the experiences of things seeming respectively good/bad or true/false). Or else you just take someone else’s “oughts” they claim to have derived from experience, without checking them. One way or another, what you end up with is a list of “oughts” to start from, and then you build more “oughts” out of them. You never start with any “is”.

one can only ask why we are moral (as I'm trying to explain to Pfhorrest). — Kenosha Kid

Asking that question presumes you known what is or isn’t moral, which is exactly the question at hand. Can we know that? If so, how? What does that even mean? It it just means some certain kinds of behavior we evolved to do, then you’re just giving an account of how we evolved to do what we do, leaving open the question (or else presuming an answer) to whether that stuff we evolved to do is moral.

eaving open the question (or else presuming an answer) to whether that stuff we evolved to do is moral. — Pfhorrest

'Moral' is a word, we use to do some job. We didn't pluck the concept out of some platonic realm and then wonder what things fit it. We already know what things fit it. If we didn't have some broad collection of similar things to define we'd never have invented the word in the first place.

Hi Isaac.

The relatively wealthy walk straight past the homeless (when Sitting Bull toured with the rodeo for a time he apparently gave away his wages to the destitute in the cities - it's not that he was more saintly than the rest, just that he'd not been inculcated into ignoring them). — Isaac

Even saintly people must walk past the homeless. It is unfeasible to try to help everyone -- that's precisely the problem with having an outdated social biology -- and so one must choose who to walk by. And then you have empathy fatigue, wherein a person knows they can help, but just struggles to care any more. And then, yes, you have the normalisation of homelessness as a condition, and people who, normalised or not, just couldn't give a flying one.

Lots of people do dedicate their time, effort and money to helping the homeless too. While we cannot rely on the altruism of everyone, we can currently rely on sufficient altruism, and that's a factor too: not so much not my problem as someone else has got this. I think your concern is that an idea can grab enough people to make this proportion insufficient?

Whether someone is one of those that cannot help everyone, or that get empathy fatigue, or that never help, I think they mostly feel guilt arising from their empathy. (People explicitly point to this in the case of the homeless, and in the case of TV commercials for charities: "Without your five dollars, this cute but patently diseased and malnourished orphan will die!"... "They make us feel so guilty!!!") Individualism, to me, is best summed up as an ideology designed to console and, eventually, subdue guilt (by stimulating counter-empathetic responses, for instance) arising from systematic antisocial attitudes toward people outside of our virtual social groups. I think it serves much the same purpose as racist ideology serves to console and subdue guilt arising from one's instincts for dealing with out-groups. It is an antisocial philosophy endorsed by a powerful antisocial minority and subscribed to by otherwise perfectly social people grateful for an appeal to their pre-social instincts.

So I think it's perfectly reasonable, if one is fit to be part of society unbegrudgingly, to fight against this, to not tolerate the antisocial elements that sell individualism, to raise the consciousness of those who normalise or don't question the need for the vulnerable classes, and to do that one obviously can't just rely on the better angels of our nature, durable though they are, and must construct counter-individualistic, pro-altruistic memes to combat antisocial ones. In other words, with an already existing idea of 'good' based on naturally-selected for social drives, moral philosophy is a somewhat important pragmatic tool (e.g. as an idea to rally people around and a tool for debating). Metaphysics, on the other hand, weakens that fight by making 'good' as easy to undermine as anything we might consider 'bad', such as the doctrine of individualism.

Hunter-gatherer communities are notoriously lax with their children, letting them do almost anything. The one exception in most cases is that sharing is enforced. One of the ways egalitarianism is maintained is that non-egalitarian behaviours are simply never seen, and so can't be normalised, and so resist rationalising belief formation, and so are forcibly admonished, and so are never seen... — Isaac

Yes, exactly this. You do see it in social animals in natural history documentaries: one individual breaks the rules and gets a beating/exiled/killed. Some monkeys are particularly scary at this, for instance. So that's one reason it will be rare. The other, as you say, is the homogeneity of egalitarian behaviour in social groups: that's what children learn from, and we don't have that anymore. We're in a memetic competition, and not all of our better angels are winning. It's quite telling that things like individualism and animal rights can be simultaneously successful ideas, often in the same individuals. "F*** everyone else. Except dolphins, dolphins are cool."

Interestingly, slavery used to be non-racist. Slaves were taken from defeated territories, from those in debt, or just random enemies. It wasn't until Christianity made the subjugation of one's enemies less noble that a new justification was needed and so sub-human races were invented. The behaviour persisted because it was seen and copied, all that was need was a new post hoc justification to match other beliefs (formed from other behaviours elsewhere). — Isaac

Good point. I guess I made an unconscious distinction between the enslavement of individuals (opportunistic slavery) and that of e.g. races (systematic slavery). My thinking could only really apply to the latter.

We'd rather include as many people as don't present a threat. The trouble is twofold 1) we are surrounded by non-compassionate behaviours which create belief systems to justify it, and 2) there are people whose objectives are advanced by leveraging those belief systems toward some particular group. — Isaac

Exactly my thinking. I don't think it's 100% clean-cut us-v-them. 'They' are appealing to instincts, some of which will also have been developed in social groups (out-grouping, even social stratification), that exist within us. And I think even left to our own devices, we would still probably be negligent about a dominating culture such that consciousness-raising would still be required. After all, these are not natural circumstances to find ourselves in, i.e. nature could not have selected for skills to deal with it. But yes, in terms of behaviour toward individuals, I think our altruism would dominate.

We’re never taking a description of an experience that someone had and reaching a prescriptive conclusion from it, and so not violating the is-ought gap. — Pfhorrest

I think this is quite untrue. We don't even need someone else's conclusions to have our own moral reactions. We are prone to empathise even with fictional characters in fictional circumstances. It is precisely the descriptions we react to in both real and hypothetical situations, allowing us to draw our own conclusions by rationalising our own reactions. One of the recurring features of the Abu Ghraib investigations was that soldiers were taking part in abuses against their own moral judgement. They knew it was wrong, i.e. they did not accept the conclusions of the persons with previous experience and reached their own, but perpetuated the problem out of fear of leaving themselves vulnerable.

Putting experience aside, prescriptive conclusions are inculcated from others' conclusions in abstract ways, by pedagogy, rhetoric, etc. But it is not generally possible to describe Othello dispassionately and just tack on 'Wasn't Iago a hero?' to seed an anti--mixed-marriage moral. People are naturally equipped to see what is good (social) and bad (antisocial), and learn from their own reactions, even if the describer drew the opposite conclusion.

The irrational insistence comes from neglecting the difference between costs a dollar and costs a dollar more. Such error follows from a cognitive neglect, the causality for which is merely a language game. — Mww

Yes, this was a mere accident. An unusable data point. For the record, I also said 10 cents. Most do.

Redundant compared to....what? — Mww

It would be redundant in the same way that a verbal rule: "You should see with your eyes" would be redundant. We're all already doing that. Likewise defining a 'good' to be e.g. 'help those in need according to your means' would be likewise pointless since people already had a physiological, i.e. non-rational altruistic reaction to people in need.

And what is a moral truth? Morality is a rational enterprise, sure, but mere rationalization doesn’t necessarily give truth. If morality is qualified by its good, truth could only apply if and when a moral disposition is truly good, which is a blatant redundancy, for there is no such thing as a good that isn’t good truly. — Mww

:up:

But it certainly can’t be the case that genes are responsible for that redundancy. — Mww

Now? Sure, now it's a different redundancy, because we do have moral drives and we don't have a fit environment to use them in. We use our rationality to make up the difference (not necessary or meaningful in small, isolated, homogeneous groups). Rationally, we are ignorant and find nothing rational to justify a moral axiom, or rather find lots of things that fail to. I believe that, if, with a snap of a finger, we returned to hunter-gatherer environments tomorrow, in a few generations we would once again have no need to define 'good'. We would return to simply reasoning which of our desires -- selfish or selfless -- we were going to prioritise in a given situation, and how.

it is still much more parsimonious to suggest, and indeed much more evident, that we are moral beings, than it is to suggest nothing we do matters. — Mww

It is also much more pragmatic. We immediately exist in a society. The cosmos is the stuff of documentaries and books, and lacks that immediacy. It's a valid frame of reference, but a poor choice nonetheless.

As regards this inconsistent amnesiac, here we see why psychology branched from philosophy. The latter makes no room for dysfunctional impairment, while the former requires it. My philosophy tells me how I think, your psychology wants to tell me how wrong I am. Yours tries to warn me of pending mistakes, mine doesn’t warn me at all, but forces me change my thinking because of them. Difference being, of course, while. neither warnings nor experiences are always heeded, experience always carries the much more severe penalties and, even more importantly, carries the higher likelihood for change. — Mww

And knowing about it doesn't change much anyway, except in edge cases. I am as in error now when my rational mind verifies an inappropriate pattern-recognition result to an algorithmic problem as I was when I was ten, maybe a bit more mindful of it from time to time. I would bear it in mind, for instance, when writing exam questions. But I think philosophy is the kind of place where this sort of thing genuinely is useful. Philosophy is vested in rationalism. It would be good to have as many facts as possible, if only to identify which ideas are not useful to consider.

If we could only come to terms on how that relates to morality, we’d be off to the rodeo. — Mww

That's the biggie. I don't think I've argued sufficiently well for this. My feeling is that OP has created confusion as to what I'm saying. I will sleep on it. N'night!

Oh btw did you have some references in mind? You mentioned some in the message you deleted.

What you're talking about there is how we've all got our own moral intuitions. There are a lot of "oughts" that we're naturally inclined to grant without question. Those are the "oughts" that we reason from when we read a mere description of something and conclude that something good or bad happened: we already have opinions of the form "X ought not happen" before we read that "X happened".

Similarly, if my girlfriend tells me she saw an adorable squirrel eating seed in the middle of a bunch of pigeons down the street from my house, I'll believe her account without needing to confirm it, because I already know from experience that that's a kind of thing that can happen.

But, for example, when an ex-girlfriend long ago complained to me that someone she saw at work told her to smile, from that description alone I didn't understand why that was bad. I imagined myself being at work and someone telling me to smile, and I imagined that I would take it as a friendly gesture, someone trying to help cheer me up. She had to talk me through all the other experiential context in order for me to understand why, in her circumstances given her history and the world as she generally experiences it, a strange man telling her to smile is demeaning and unpleasant. She had to explain what is different between her and me that would explain why she would experience displeasure in that context when I wouldn't.

If someone tells me that someone they know got injured or something, I can extrapolate from my own experiences with pain to know that that's a bad thing, without having to get injured myself and see that yes in fact having cuts and bruises and broken bones does indeed feel bad.

But my girlfriend couldn't understand why I not only wanted but needed to pop my neck and back sometimes; to her imagination, that sounds like something that would be unpleasant, and she couldn't understand why it would be pleasant, because she hasn't had the kind of spinal problems I've had and doesn't know what a relief it is from a kind of pain she's never felt. Not that it's a level of pain beyond anything she's felt, but she has no experience of pain just from joints inside her body being misaligned, with no cuts or bruises or breaks or anything. To her imagination, the neck-popping seemed like it should feel like a break, and so be bad; while to my actual experience, the neck-popping alleviated a different kind of pain, and so was good.


Your discussion here gives a good solid account of why we have a lot of "ought" intuitions, why we evolved to be eager to accept that certain things are good or certain things are bad, and so to easily agree with at least some other people when they claim that something is good or bad. But that evolutionary account doesn't establish that or why those things are good or bad, just the cause of us often thinking so. And despite that frequent agreement in the contexts where such agreement was evolutionarily advantageous, we also have frequent disagreements, especially now (the evolutionary "now", past 6-12Ka) that we live lives so different from the ancestral environment.

Moral objectivism is only the claim that those disagreements can be rationally (small-r, not big) resolved: we can talk about why (as in reasons, not causes) one person or group thinks something is good or bad and another thinks otherwise, and work out some kind of unbiased conclusion. My kind of moral phenomenalism is only the claim that the reasons we should appealing to in those disagreements are the things we have common (as in shared) experiences of seeming good or bad. Thus objective phenomenalism about morality, which is to say, altruistic hedonism, is just the two of those things together, saying that we should listen to and be concerned about each other's claims that something feels good or bad, and try to work out together some course of action that feels good and not bad to everyone.

(And the other principles of liberalism and criticism together just mean that by default everything is permissible until it can be shown wrong, and it is always up for debate whether something or another genuinely can be shown wrong or not. These seem to be the counter to what you think "objectivism" means, as in absolutism, necessitarian, a priori, unquestionable moral dictums. But that's not what it means).

Lots of people do dedicate their time, effort and money to helping the homeless too. While we cannot rely on the altruism of everyone, we can currently rely on sufficient altruism, and that's a factor too: not so much not my problem as someone else has got this. I think your concern is that an idea can grab enough people to make this proportion insufficient? — Kenosha Kid

Yes, I think the mere existence of more than a handful of homeless is testament to the fact that it already is insufficient. Plus, I think in many cases (though I wouldn't say all), even the people helping the homeless are still subject to the same influences by social norm. Many social workers, for example, are cruel to their own children on their return from work - stressed out by a hard day 'altruistically' helping others, they lash out at their own families when they get home. What would explain this phenomena if these people just happened to be more in touch with their empathy than others? I think a better explanation is that they've joined a social group whose norms are the helping of others, but when at home they follow the very family-management norms they've just spent the whole day observing.

Individualism, to me, is best summed up as an ideology designed to console and, eventually, subdue guilt (by stimulating counter-empathetic responses, for instance) arising from systematic antisocial attitudes toward people outside of our virtual social groups. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, absolutely. The tendency is used to manipulate people into acting in the favour of those doing the manipulation. I think though, that the tendency would arise naturally just as a result of our social arrangements, maybe just in a lesser form. With a few notable exceptions, inequality (not meeting the needs of your fellow) is unheard of in nomadic hunter-gather tribes, but as soon as there is settlement (the ability to store surplus) we start to see the emergence of it. This suggests some purely circumstantial element to the emergence of selfishness as a tactic. Interestingly though, not all settled groups abandoned egalitarianism. Selfishness only become a possible tactic, it's not mechanical environmental-determinism, there's still a social group of complex humans involved, it's just that something which was previously off-the-table as an option is now a consideration.

In other words, with an already existing idea of 'good' based on naturally-selected for social drives, moral philosophy is a somewhat important pragmatic tool (e.g. as an idea to rally people around and a tool for debating). Metaphysics, on the other hand, weakens that fight by making 'good' as easy to undermine as anything we might consider 'bad', such as the doctrine of individualism. — Kenosha Kid

Interesting. I don't exactly disagree, but this runs somewhat counter to my personal understanding which is more about actions than words. I genuinely don't think it is even possible to debate someone into being more altruistic. As I believe you've mentioned, most rationalisation is post hoc, we try to understand the behaviours we're inclined to do (and the objectives and affects we're inclined to feel) in terms of a narrative which attempts to unify what are, in reality, a completely disparate set of urges/feelings. I think persuasion has to be more subtle than philosophical debate ever is. It has to present an attractive alternative narrative, one which makes the undesirable behaviour stand out as incoherent. Then there's a concomitant need to present an alternative set of social norms (as behaviours, not theories) for people to feel comfortable with, and a social group whose identity is dictated by those behaviours. Only all three aspects will work, I think. Narrative, social norms, available social group identified by those norms.

"F*** everyone else. Except dolphins, dolphins are cool." — Kenosha Kid

Ha! Exactly. The 'rules of membership' for social groups are not in any way designed, or intended, to be consistent. That's the point I was making about the social worker, and it seems you and I might be on the same page here. We wear different masks for different social roles.. there's nothing wrong with that, until one of the masks seems to so wildly contradicts another that we feel there's no possible unifying narrative. That seems to make us uncomfortable. Part of the reason why I believe that available social norms and groups are so important is that people seem quite genuinely distraught about conflicting social roles and yet feel powerless to do anything about it. If the solution were available to them easily by thought alone, I think they would have found it. There seems to be a need for some practical element too.

But that evolutionary account doesn't establish that or why those things are good or bad, just the cause of us often thinking so. — Pfhorrest

Again, same mistake as you seem to be making in the other morality thread. 'Good' and 'Bad' are not platonic ideals which we discover and then afterward try to find out things that fit them. They are words we use to describe, or associate things already thus grouped. We learnt how to use the word 'good' by being told the sorts of things it could be applied to. To suggest now that there's some question over what is 'good' is merely to claim that one does not know how to speak English.

The social group can no longer be regarded as family and neighbours. Families are generally distributed, and neighbours often unknown to us. Social groups are virtual and malleable: we work with one set of people, live with another set, socialise with another set, etc. These days, people are likely to have friends and relatives who live or come from a different country. There is no even vaguely-defined boundary you can draw around yourself and say: this is my social group. Your virtual social group encompasses the globe and is overwhelmingly diluted by strangers. — Kenosha Kid

Are you implying that there are no longer any social groups, or that individuals belong to too many social groups such that those groups no longer matter?

I think you've got a really good area for examination here.

But, for example, when an ex-girlfriend long ago complained to me that someone she saw at work told her to smile, from that description alone I didn't understand why that was bad. I imagined myself being at work and someone telling me to smile, and I imagined that I would take it as a friendly gesture, someone trying to help cheer me up. — Pfhorrest

I'm not going to treat your experiences head-on as they are yours, rather I'll look for something similar in my own experience and see if there's common ground. I recall how sceptical I was of the cat-calling/car-slowing/horn-tooting problem that women face here on an hourly basis because I just didn't see it, and it that case magnitude is a factor. Of course, I did see it, I just didn't consciously see it, i.e. I didn't notice it. The brain is very good at hiding from itself what it sees as normal. Once my consciousness had been raised, I started to see it everywhere. And I was angry as hell, partly at myself of course, but mostly at the white-van--driving douchebags who hassle women. That anger arises without reasonable consideration: it is an automatic reaction that I did not have until I had had an empathetic response to victims of douchebaggery.

I think this is likely typical, and gives a rough sketch of what actually happens when we acquire new empathetic responses. While the trigger for 're-programming' myself came from consciousness, the mechanism of wiring in that automated response to stimuli is unconscious. The action of the reason is to see harm which was not previously detected; it does not redefine my notion of 'good', rather it refines the way my brain detects external harm. Does that sound similar to you?

Your discussion here gives a good solid account of why we have a lot of "ought" intuitions, why we evolved to be eager to accept that certain things are good or certain things are bad, and so to easily agree with at least some other people when they claim that something is good or bad. But that evolutionary account doesn't establish that or why those things are good or bad, just the cause of us often thinking so. — Pfhorrest

Agreed. Like with any other theory of morality, you cannot justify a particular notion of 'good' or 'bad' with regards to good-for-survival, especially an outdated good-for-survival. Often, the resolution to this is just to subscribe to a position. Here, we need not necessarily do that. By understanding the real processes taking place (and that have taken place in the past), the relationship between those processes and the benefit to social groups, and the relationships between sociality and our conceptions of morality, I believe we can see what those conceptions are analogues of. You give the conceptions primacy, I feel. I give the biology primacy, and see no reason why rational minds that have woefully incomplete knowledge of their own operations and origins ought to have their conceptions of morality taken more seriously.

And despite that frequent agreement in the contexts where such agreement was evolutionarily advantageous, we also have frequent disagreements, especially now (the evolutionary "now", past 6-12Ka) that we live lives so different from the ancestral environment. — Pfhorrest

Yes, understandably, since we are surrounded by people who are unlikely to (have the opportunity to) reciprocate and have very different moral frames of reference to us. Part of my thesis is that such disagreements would not have been frequent or rationally debated (even with oneself) within socially homogeneous hunter-gatherer groups.

Moral objectivism is only the claim that those disagreements can be rationally (small-r, not big) resolved: we can talk about why (as in reasons, not causes) one person or group thinks something is good or bad and another thinks otherwise, and work out some kind of unbiased conclusion. — Pfhorrest

Moral objectivism to my understanding is the claim that what is right or wrong doesn't depend on what people think is right or wrong. It is the assumption that there is a (potentially inaccessible) correct answer to a particular problem that is independent of the moral frames of reference of the people affected by that particular problem. Getting the views of the people affected would be redundant to the objective moral value, but it is the only pragmatic way of resolving the issue when an objective moral, should it exist, is unknown to all involved.

As we've discussed before, the assumption of an objective reality in science is predicated on it being the best explanation for the seeming objective reality that allows for predictive modelling. Beyond that, it would be an arbitrary belief. Moral objectivity has no such feature since we cannot test the values of objective morals, only of individuals. There does not seem to be an objective morality in practise, that is: no process is consistent with only its existence. Any approach -- which is any pragmatic approach -- that factors in the moral values of the individuals involved in a particular conflict is, as far as I can see, relativistic. Ultimately whoever has the power to resolve the conflict is taking on board the evidence of others but making a judgement from their (hopefully now evolved) frame of reference. There is no non-subjective mechanics involved. Since objectivity does not enter into the mechanics, it does not strike me as useful or realistic.

That is the moral objectivity I argue against, and the reason why I think the realistic description is (heavily biased) moral relativism. There is an extent at least to which your conception of moral objectivity coincides with the above, insofar as you have previously stated that, if a conflict arises, at least one party must be in error. To the extent that your conception of moral objectivity allows for negotiation, mediation, understanding the other's point of view, and relies on some subjective mind making a decision or failing to, and with no reason to believe by the end of it that they have an objectively correct answer, it appears consistent with my conception of natural moral relativism. Perhaps it would be easiest to consider cases where moral relativism is clearly not in play.

Asking that question presumes you known what is or isn’t moral, which is exactly the question at hand. Can we know that? If so, how? What does that even mean? — Pfhorrest

This is still predicated on the assumption of a top-down moral objectivity. The question is meaningless in a bottom-up naturalistic description. What is moral is what my social drives make me feel is moral. If I hurt someone, I feel emotional empathy: I feel pain. That is 'bad'. If I do good for someone, I do so with a hit of oxytocin which feels nice. That is 'good'. If I do something that I know is perceived antisocial, for instance refuse to torture a prisoner in Abu Ghraib, I feel anxiety. That is 'bad', but is it as 'bad' as harming others? If I do something that I know is perceived social, such as share 'My thoughts and prayers with the victims of whatever' on social media, I feel included. That is 'good', but is it as good as not posting BS and doing something?

So far as I understand, what you're asking is: by what external measure do we affirm that these are good or bad, better or worse? And this completely misses the point. Our rational conceptions are a) overwhelmingly advised by our feelings, i.e. not that rational, and b) beyond that based almost entirely on ignorance and invention. You and I seem to have almost identical moral values but cannot, so far as I can see, agree on a single aspect of how those values are obtained. It is simpler to assume that our differences boil down to idiosyncratic rationalisations and what we have in common -- our values -- have an underlying bias.

Many social workers, for example, are cruel to their own children on their return from work - stressed out by a hard day 'altruistically' helping others, they lash out at their own families when they get home. What would explain this phenomena if these people just happened to be more in touch with their empathy than others? I think a better explanation is that they've joined a social group whose norms are the helping of others, but when at home they follow the very family-management norms they've just spent the whole day observing.
...
We wear different masks for different social roles.. there's nothing wrong with that, until one of the masks seems to so wildly contradicts another that we feel there's no possible unifying narrative. — Isaac

I think this is an interesting example because, as noted in e.g. Paul Bloom's Against Empathy, which argues for rational compassion, we are supposed to be biased to extend empathy more to those who are biologically close to us. (I also disagree with Paul Bloom's conclusion, and find that he makes the error of mistaking outcomes with capacities.)

I had this sort of thing in mind when I mentioned my nationalistic, anti-immigration friend-of-a-friend to, I think, Pfhorrest. A social worker who is abusing their child is a hypocrite. They have, as you say, one virtual social group (the nuclear family) in which one set of moral values is championed, and another (the industry they work in) in which a different and contrary set of values is championed. The person cannot rationally argue for one and the other: they might, for instance, work against another person abusing their child.

With a few notable exceptions, inequality (not meeting the needs of your fellow) is unheard of in nomadic hunter-gather tribes, but as soon as there is settlement (the ability to store surplus) we start to see the emergence of it. — Isaac

Yes, to my knowledge, surplus is really only an issue after the neolithic revolution, in which roles must be assigned (social stratification: we can't all be farmers in an agricultural society) and which can't be supported by small social groups, so we're already moving from an environment in which our social genes are fit to one in which they are not.

Given how common social stratification is in other primate species, even just considering the usual alpha-omega structures, it seems reasonable that a bias toward social stratification could be selected for, which would require some rewording of the OP wherein morality and sociality are pretty much synonymous. But maybe not. As far as I can tell, there's no consensus that we are genetically driven toward social stratification in the literature, unlike, say, bees. Which begs the questions: why does social stratification arise?, and why does it not arise in human hunter-gatherer groups?

A stratifying bias (which may be nothing more than in-group bias + emergent specialisation) might be subdued in small groups by socialisation, e.g. in reverse dominance (https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways) but then one would expect the majority of hunter-gatherer tribes to still be bent toward stratification. Perhaps humans are just different to many other primates in that respect.

As I believe you've mentioned, most rationalisation is post hoc, we try to understand the behaviours we're inclined to do (and the objectives and affects we're inclined to feel) in terms of a narrative which attempts to unify what are, in reality, a completely disparate set of urges/feelings. I think persuasion has to be more subtle than philosophical debate ever is. It has to present an attractive alternative narrative, one which makes the undesirable behaviour stand out as incoherent. Then there's a concomitant need to present an alternative set of social norms (as behaviours, not theories) for people to feel comfortable with, and a social group whose identity is dictated by those behaviours. Only all three aspects will work, I think. Narrative, social norms, available social group identified by those norms. — Isaac

Yes. The sort of thing I had in mind were the philosophies of the French revolution, which appear to have focused social unrest arising from systemic corruption and inequality, exacerbated by the failing agricultural system and bad financial management by a minority of wealthy, powerful people who did not share in the suffering of consequences. My feeling is that individual reactions to the situation under traditional monarchistic-nationalistic socialisations that could no longer subdue both selfish and selfless responses cannot have been uniformly rational of the form: This is bad because it is against liberty, or This is bad because it is inequality. Those moral philosophies, themselves influenced by human social drives, appealed to the outraged masses who were both victims (selfish) and witnesses (selfless) of a society collapsing under a condition of antisociality. Any vestiges of the prior reigning socialistion -- you cannot kill a King -- fell to this more appealing one.

Contrast that with the recent global economic crisis, again caused by a failing industry and the mismanagement of the economy by a powerful, wealthy minority who did not generally share in the consequences of their failures (the odd suicide notwithstanding). Our response was similar, and yet much more muted because it was, on the whole, abstract. I personally suffered very little from the economic crisis. I continued to be paid, have good job security, I never went hungry, and the misfortune I saw was largely limited to the closing down of a few nice shops and bars. I did have a sense of injustice, but it was more a) in line with existing social mores and b) quite abstract and less empathetically stimulating. One can perhaps imagine how much injustice and inequality people under a very different socialisation will suffer, and did suffer in France, before they go nuts.

Are you implying that there are no longer any social groups, or that individuals belong to too many social groups such that those groups no longer matter? — Luke

There are no longer single, small, homogeneous social groups for which our social drives were developed. We have a different kind of environment now. The idea of a social group persists in a more malleable way: the nuclear family, work colleagues, friends, social network, my church (I don't have one) or other community. Less so these days, we have communities centred around neighbourhoods. This is no longer one social group but many 'virtual' groups. We no longer inhabit them immediately and unavoidably, but dependently.

There are genes specifically for small social groups that would make rationalisation of moral truths redundant.
— Kenosha Kid

Redundant compared to....what? — Mww

It would be redundant in the same way that a verbal rule: "You should see with your eyes" would be redundant. We're all already doing that. Likewise defining a 'good' to be e.g. 'help those in need according to your means' would be likewise pointless since people already had a physiological, i.e. non-rational altruistic reaction to people in need. — Kenosha Kid

Ok. But having a non-rational altruistic reaction, says nothing about the possibility, or indeed even the validity, of determining a moral action because of it. Is it correct to say an altruistic reaction is merely a recognition of an empirical condition external to the witness of it? If so, we are still left with what to do about it. Help others may be a general rule of altruism, understand others may be the general rule of empathy, but both of those do not instantiate the rational prerogatives of the subject who merely understands the rule., but knows not, because of it, how he should act concerning it.

I grant altruistic and empathetic reaction, and accede to their respective non-rationality, but take issue with them being sufficient for moral claims. Sufficiency is authoritative enough to grant that a moral response ought to be forthcoming, but not necessarily authoritative enough to determine the act which objectifies the morality of it. This is because non-rational enterprises elicit feelings directed towards something outside oneself, that is, facilitated by an external causality, but moral dispositions elicit feelings directed towards the agent himself, facilitated by an internal causality, re: his will.

That is how I would reconcile your iteration of redundancy, in that ever-present, naturally evolved, non-rational altruism and empathy, being posited as the current ground for moral responses, are insufficient for that purpose, when, as plausible theory, moral responses themselves, are always and necessarily determined a priori.
————-

Context is usually important, but must be omitted here.

Daniel:
“.... You probably knew you could solve this problem with paper and pencil if not without...
1787:
“...of which we may become more clearly convinced by trying large numbers....”

Daniel
“...automatic activities of System 1...”
1787
“....in which it immediately relates...”

Daniel:
“....System 1 continually generates suggestions...”
1787
“.... the matter of all phenomena that is given to us....”

Daniel:
“...System 1 and System 2 are both active...”
1787
“...Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is thought....”

Daniel:
“....System 2 adopts the suggests of System 1....”
1787:
“....a conception never relates immediately to an object, but only to (mediately to) an intuition....”

Daniel:
“....the highly diverse operation of System 2....”
1787:
“...assemble themselves into a more or less extensive collection...”

....the list is quite extensive, but, as I deleted, from altogether distinct domains. Still, if harsh and perhaps even unwarranted, it permits the philosopher to say to the psychologist....you’ve taken what I’ve given and made a gawd-awful mess out of it. (Kidding. Nobody really says that. Do they?)

But having a non-rational altruistic reaction, says nothing about the possibility, or indeed even the validity, of determining a moral action because of it. — Mww

This still presumes there must be an external validation of it, which is erroneous (albeit understandable) in my view because the morality itself derives from biology, history and statistics. The possibility of validation is an illusion arising from being thus biased and not knowing why, in an environment in which that bias cannot logically be satisfied. (By logically, I mean the logic of natural selection, not the logic of the rationalist.)

If so, we are still left with what to do about it. — Mww

Exactly! Et voila: moral philsophy is born!

Help others may be a general rule of altruism, understand others may be the general rule of empathy, but both of those do not instantiate the rational prerogatives of the subject who merely understands the rule., but knows not, because of it, how he should act concerning it. — Mww

And this would have been the case too in groups of 20-50 people. Your social drives cannot tell you how to help, they only give you the desire to help, which is rationalised now as 'good'. The 'how' is not a moral problem. It is not qualitatively any different from 'how do I get my kite out of the tree,' itself following from a desire to reunite with one's kite. This is also true in most philosophical rationalisations: "maximise the benefit" does not tell you how to maximise the benefit.

So this 'how' is not the redundancy. The imperatives were the redundancy. It's worth reiterating that our social drives are no longer fit for our environments for the most part. Figuring out the how has always been an issue, but now the what (different socialisations) and the when and the who (non-feasibility of obeying imperatives) also require rationalisation. Moral philosophy (of the what/who/when kind) is not necessarily redundant now, is rather a symptom of the lack of its own redundancy.

Still, if harsh and perhaps even unwarranted, it permits the philosopher to say to the psychologist....you’ve taken what I’ve given and made a gawd-awful mess out of it. (Kidding. Nobody really says that. Do they?) — Mww

Yes, I'm saying it. I'm saying the metaphysician has taken what nature has given them and made a gawd-awful mess out of it. The psychologist discovers only what nature has given, incrementally, with limited accuracy and no hope of completeness.

Given that moral philosophers are biased by their own nature (as we all are) and given that their job (unbeknownst to them) is to rationally reconcile that bias plus their idiosyncrasies with what is actually needed in our contemporaneous environment (no longer the same thing), one might expect the cleverest of them to hit the nail close the head sometimes. Even DK isn't 'truth', just a fairly minimal approximation to it. However given that each of them is now more unique in their thinking and experience than any possible interlocuters 20,000 years ago, one must also expect that they disagree. They can't mostly be consistent science, and none are apt to be consistent with science all of the time.

I think this is an interesting example because, as noted in e.g. Paul Bloom's Against Empathy, which argues for rational compassion, we are supposed to be biased to extend empathy more to those who are biologically close to us. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, the notion that is the theme of this thread applies here too. We're set up to be biased to extend empathy more to those who are biologically close to us, but yet again we find ourselves in an environment where children spend most of their life at school, are in near constant conflict with parental objectives and are often disciplined harshly. All of which undermines the natural empathy we are set up to feel.

The person cannot rationally argue for one and the other: they might, for instance, work against another person abusing their child. — Kenosha Kid

Do you think this has much influence on them? I mean, if this hypocrisy was pointed out, do you imagine it would make them uncomfortable enough to want to change, or is our capacity to invent new narratives too slippery to catch that way?

Given how common social stratification is in other primate species, even just considering the usual alpha-omega structures, it seems reasonable that a bias toward social stratification could be selected for, which would require some rewording of the OP wherein morality and sociality are pretty much synonymous. But maybe not. As far as I can tell, there's no consensus that we are genetically driven toward social stratification in the literature, unlike, say, bees. Which begs the questions: why does social stratification arise? — Kenosha Kid

I only have the paper citation, but have you read Sapolsky's research on baboons (Sapolsky RM, Share LJ (2004) A pacific culture among wild baboons: Its emergence and transmission)? It's quite revealing about the role of culture even in animals like baboons in maintaining social systems. My feeling is that only a very basic framework is actually genetic, more like the boundaries of playing field, the resultant system is largely brought about by culture. It raises interesting questions about how social groups create and maintain behavioural norms (well, interesting to me anyway).

It seems to me that social groups have two systems for creation and maintenance of behavioural norms. One is active, the other passive. The active one is about influencial members trying to stand out, the passive one is like a game of Chinese whispers, each member simply trying to copy the other (to reinforce group identity) but making small errors in doing so. Over time, these small errors become magnified and end up as behavioural norms which no one conciously planned and which may even be detrimental to the group. I think this is how some of the more unusual moral rules come about. Of course, how they are then rationalised is another matter.

This still presumes there must be an external validation of it — Kenosha Kid

For what...morality and/or moral responses? In what regard? An act is technically validated immediately upon becoming one. Even if it is an immoral act, it is still validated as being external to the agent that willed it. To me, “externally validated” might mean physically exhibited, manifest outside the agent himself. If it means “shown to be correct (or appropriate, or consistent) externally”, that is a sort of a redundancy, because the primary purpose of willful volitions is to conform to innate disposition, hence the act has already been validated as being a moral act.

External validation for altruism is easy....actually helping somebody immediately validates it. Empathy....maybe, maybe not. Being empathetic towards someone is a rational activity, so....not much external validation there. Unless altruism is amended to it, but then, that’s not necessarily externally validating one’s empathy, for he couldn’t tell whether or not his altruism wasn’t just working solo.

I’m confused.
—————-

If so, we are still left with what to do about it.
— Mww

Exactly! Et voila: moral philsophy is born! — Kenosha Kid

Yeah....born first, I might add. Right? What’s the earliest proper exposition of your altruism/empathy social drives?
—————-

Even DK isn't 'truth', just a fairly minimal approximation to it. — Kenosha Kid

DK.....(stabbing haphazardly)....direct knowledge? If so, then agreed. Try this on for size:

“...(truth) is the accordance of a cognition with its object.....” Given a set of predicates, should I cognize ‘57 De Soto from them, then the truth is it’s exactly a ‘57 De Soto. Couldn’t be anything else.

So where do we go from here?

Do you think this has much influence on them? I mean, if this hypocrisy was pointed out, do you imagine it would make them uncomfortable enough to want to change, or is our capacity to invent new narratives too slippery to catch that way? — Isaac

Yes, discomfort is the problem, and I recognise that in myself too. I think hypocritical values and a history of guilt are a heady mix. But people calm down eventually.

I only have the paper citation, but have you read Sapolsky's research on baboons (Sapolsky RM, Share LJ (2004) A pacific culture among wild baboons: Its emergence and transmission)? It's quite revealing about the role of culture even in animals like baboons in maintaining social systems. — Isaac

I thought I had when I saw the title, but reading it now, I don't think I have. It's an interesting mixture of factors: large catastrophic event, leading to a shortage of males; changes in sexual selection (focus on competition with similar-ranking members); changes in environment that lead to physiological changes in the group members (e.g. the stress reduction in unattacked low-ranking members)... and then of course the resultant effects on social behaviour that the young learn from. I liked this in particular:

For example, juvenile rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) housed with stumptail macaques (M. artoides) assume the latter's more conciliatory style (de Waal and Johanowicz 1993). — Sapolski

They say people become like their dogs! :rofl: One of the interesting points:

A number of investigators have emphasized how a tolerant and gregarious social setting facilitates social transmission (e.g., van Schaik et al. 1999), exactly the conditions in F93–96. — Sapolski

which suggests, looking back the other way, a conservativism of socialisation in intolerant, unequal, or stressful environments, which I think describes humans pretty well too. (Stress, depression, and anxiety lead to anti- or asocial behaviour, self-centredness.)

While it is obvious why low-ranking baboons had an easier time of it, one thing I haven't really gotten my head around yet is why the loss of all of the most aggressive males led to increased aggression between similar-ranking males. One would have thought that, if anything, the high female-to-male ratio would make competition between males rather slight.

One thing to bear in mind is that we carry with us much of the genetics of our ancestors, and when we see a social group at a given time, we are seeing how individuals behave in that specific environment, including that group's reigning socialisation. What the above shows is how quickly group members change when the environment and the socialisation suffer catastrophe. Behavioural characteristics that were not very important in one generation might become dominant in the next, or the next but one.

It seems to me that social groups have two systems for creation and maintenance of behavioural norms. One is active, the other passive. The active one is about influencial members trying to stand out, the passive one is like a game of Chinese whispers, each member simply trying to copy the other (to reinforce group identity) but making small errors in doing so. — Isaac

In hunter-gatherer groups, reverse domination acted specifically to stop an individual standing out and becoming dominant. This was one of the means by which social groups ensured egalitarianism. It seems more likely that individuals were able to become influential once homogeneous socialisation was weakened by having larger, more intermingling groups. That said, plenty of other primate species have alpha males, and we have relatively recent common ancestors with them. I wonder if we evolved a distrust of alphas, perhaps the origin of lampooning :)

The Chinese whispers thing is very true though, and the indoctrination of children into religions for their supposed benefit is always the example I think of, since it is essentially the banana-ladder experiment but real. More positively, I'm not sure if I brought it up here or elsewhere but Dennett's summary of various anthropologists looking at the origins and developments of culture are along these lines, which is why I think that memetics is the best descriptive tool for that sort of thing. (Dennett's memetic description of culture focuses on a fictitious illustration based on real anthropological findings, in which, when an artefact of culture, such as a fishing boat, is shown to be more successful, all of its features are imitated, including ones that had nothing to do with its success. I'll dig out my copy of From Bacteria to Bach and Back for the citations.)

One is active, the other passive. The active one is about influencial members trying to stand out — Isaac

Gray, who I linked an article by earlier, seems to think that reverse domination and the like are socialisations rather than particularly selected for. My scepticism about this is based on the uniformity of "fierce egalitarianism" in hunter-gathered groups.

Another anthropologist even believes that dominance hierarchies might themselves be socialisations:

This means that both some kind of social dominance hierarchy and some degree of group leadership, present in all humans and in all three African great apes, can be plausibly hypothesized to have existed in the African common ancestor.
The above argument has been made at the level of behavior, but implicit in it is the notion that the African common ancestor and its four descendant species are genetically disposed to develop dominance behavior and group leadership. I have cited several theorists who suggest that dominance tendencies may be innate, and I agree with them. However, in considering genetic dispositions to hierarchical behavior, it is important to be as precise as possible about the types of behavior that are readily learned: both competitive dominance and submission are useful to individuals organized by dominance hierarchies, be they orthodox or reverse.
When a behavior is universal or even very widespread, the question arises whether it is not part of "human nature." In beginning to think in more specific terms about human nature as a potential influence on cultural behavior, we may be better off thinking about coevolved genetic predispositions that go in contradictory directions or, more specifically, about the empirically identifiable universal or widespread ambivalences these are likely to generate than about monolithic stereotypes such as "warlike" versus "peaceful" (see Boehm 1989). Given that so many locally autonomous small-scale societies exhibit egalitarian behavior, it might be useful to try an "ambivalence approach" here as well.
... In small-scale societies that exhibit very limited hierarchy, potential victims deal with their ambivalence by setting aside their individual tendencies to submit and forming a coalition to control their more assertive peers. As a result, prudent (and sometimes equally ambivalent) leaders set aside their own tendencies to dominate and submit to their groups even as they lead them. I have said that the social result of this interaction is a consensus-oriented community, a group that cooperates well and that remains small because in the absence of strong leadership it so readily subdivides. Its small size in tum tends to keep major factions from forming and stabilizing. The resulting unity of purpose makes it possible for all or most members of local communities to unite against leaders and, by threat of disapproval or active sanctioning, circumscribe their role. These would seem to be the personal and social dynamics that keep a typical egalitarian society in place. One aspect of these dynamics is an egalitarian ethos, both a cause and an effect of the ambivalences just discussed.
... In stronger chiefdoms or kingdoms a not too dissimilar underlying ambivalence may exist, but it is accompanied by a very different ethos that legitimizes ranking or class distinctions among the main political actors, substantial exercise of legitimate authority by leaders, and sometimes even physical coercion. These changes are accompanied by a decidedly submissive behavioral standard for the rank and file, which no longer assertively defines itself as "equal," and the emergence of strong leaders who properly look to their own special interests as well as to group interests.
... What is distinctive about egalitarian humans is that the rank and file manages to retain the upper hand. The overall approach to solving common problems in these groups is consensual (see Service 1975), and this approach is applied very effectively to the internal political sphere by use of moralistically based sanctioning. Perhaps a key feature in explaining egalitarian behavior is that one person's attempt to dominate another is perceived as a common problem.
... I have suggested that "egalitarian society" needs to be reconceptualized in terms of some universal causal factor and have proposed a specific behavioral explanation in terms of reverse dominance hierarchies: the main political actors idealistically define themselves as peers, and on a practical basis they make certain that their basic parity is not too seriously damaged by individual domination. This viewpoint takes human intention to be a powerful independent variable, one that interacts, obviously, with important constraints of social scale, social organization, and natural and political ecology.
Granting the serious limitations of reliable data, simple foragers, complex hunter-gatherers, people living in tribal segmentary systems, and people living in what I have called incipient chiefdoms would appear to exhibit a strong set of egalitarian values that express an active distaste for too much hierarchy and actively take steps to avoid being seriously dominated. In a sense, these societies may be considered to be intentional communities, groups of people that make up their minds about the amount of hierarchy they wish to live with and then see to it that the program is followed. So long as all of the main political actors continue to define themselves as peers and are able to make this definition stick, a reverse dominance hierarchy is maintained even though certain features of hierarchy may be present. When authority becomes strong and intergenerationally transmitted and when classification of people into hierarchical categories takes on serious meaning for their lives, the transition from reverse dominance hierarchy to orthodox dominance hierarchy is complete, even though limits to domination are still recognized and enforced.
... I have suggested that smallness of scale may be a predictable side effect of egalitarian behavior because such behavior keeps groups subdividing, while small, intensively cooperative groups remain able to unite effectively and control their leaders. In short, there could be an important functional symbiosis here that might be useful in helping to explain why human groups seem to have remained minuscule for so many millennia.

The idea seems to be that dominance is genetic, and whether that dominance is hierarchical or reverse is modal.

The action of the reason is to see harm which was not previously detected; it does not redefine my notion of 'good', rather it refines the way my brain detects external harm. Does that sound similar to you? — Kenosha Kid

Roughly. But "harmful" and "bad" seem to me roughly synonyms. That is the "notion of good" that we share, and exactly why I say to appeal to hedonic experiences as the common ground for determining what in particular is good. It's those contingent particulars that we to sort out in order to make moral progress. To realize the harm that people are experiencing and the relationship of that harm to our behaviors.

Moral objectivism to my understanding is the claim that what is right or wrong doesn't depend on what people think is right or wrong. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, but that doesn't make it independent of anyone's experiences of it, just of their interpretation of those experiences, their thoughts on the matter. Just like reality isn't independent of empirical experience, but it is independent of what anyone thinks is or isn't real.

This is exactly the conflation of phenomenalism with nihilism that I think underlies half of the views I'm against, and I'm actually kind of grateful to you for showing me such a clear and self-professed example of it in the wild.

Let's consider objectivism about reality for comparison, where you inversely conflate objectivism with what I call "transcendentalism" (which conflation is exactly logically equivalent to that conflation of phenomenalism with nihilism, because transcendentalism is just anti-phenomenalism and objectivism is just anti-nihilism). When you say there is an objective reality, you (seemingly) don't just mean that there is some possible unbiased account of all of our empirical experiences taken together; you (seem to) mean there is something else besides just the persistent potential for those experiences, some transcendent thing out there behind those experiences, which makes possible the unbiased account of all of them. I on the other hand don't mean that; I distinguish the objectivity, the unbiased-ness, from the transcendentalism, the something-beyond-what-we-can-experience-ness. There is an objective reality, but there is nothing to it besides the things that we can observe about it.

Likewise, when I talk about an objective morality, I'm not saying there is some transcendent thing beyond all our experiences that makes possible some unbiased account of the total of our (hedonic in this case) experiences. I'm just saying that such a complete unbiased account is possible. Which you seem to agree with: we can in principle empathize with everyone's suffering and make progress toward eliminating it all, and that total elimination of all suffering would be the complete triumph of good, no? Our only point of disagreement really seems to be that in calling that "objectively good", I just mean that it's good without bias -- it's not only good because someone thinks so -- while you seem to think that means that there is some kind of ontological thing out there somewhere that's making that possible.

There are no longer single, small, homogeneous social groups for which our social drives were developed. We have a different kind of environment now. The idea of a social group persists in a more malleable way: the nuclear family, work colleagues, friends, social network, my church (I don't have one) or other community. Less so these days, we have communities centred around neighbourhoods. This is no longer one social group but many 'virtual' groups. We no longer inhabit them immediately and unavoidably, but dependently. — Kenosha Kid

I find it unclear what 'virtual' or 'malleable' are supposed to mean here. It seems like an effort to negate the multiplicity of social groups in favour of one global social group. The reason for my question was that it appears you are simply re-labelling good and bad behaviour as social and anti-social behaviour, which leaves open the question of what counts as social and anti-social behaviour. This question is probably somewhat easier to answer in the case of one global social group, but is more complex with multiple social groups. Evidence of multiple social groups with real effects for one group vs another is easily found in the actual groups that you mention above, or in relation to current issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement or recent events in Hong Kong. What is social or anti-social for one group may not be the same for another, especially when those groups are in conflict.

While it is obvious why low-ranking baboons had an easier time of it, one thing I haven't really gotten my head around yet is why the loss of all of the most aggressive males led to increased aggression between similar-ranking males. One would have thought that, if anything, the high female-to-male ratio would make competition between males rather slight. — Kenosha Kid

The idea is that the loss of the alpha males leads to an opportunity which was not present before and so the stress and aggression is ramped up to try and capitalise on that opportunity. Again, encultured responses to a situation outweigh rational considerations. One of the things I like about Sapolsky is that he never seems to be trying to prove some theory, he'll regularly throw in the anomalous evidence, just to remind us that we don't have it all worked out yet. The main take-away is that much of social structure is the result of learnt behaviours and so is culturally mediated. It's parameters are set by the tools we use (the hard-wiring), but within those parameters, there's considerable scope and modifications to the environment or social structures reveal those other options. In essence, human could be pro-social simply because we're pro-social - no other reason. Our children grow up in pro-social environments observing pro-social behaviours and so they become the next generation of pro-social actors to act as an example for their children. If this is true, it's really worrying because it means that changes to the social interactions children are exposed to could genuinely alter pro-social behaviour and potentially become 'sticky' in cultural terms.

One of the consequences of the 'Chinese whispers' theory of social norm development is that the larger the group becomes the more scope there is for error. Usually with innovators (the active development of social norms), a smaller group size leads to greater diversity as there's less of a tendency to revert to the mean (we see this in some of the seemingly bizarre cultural practices in isolated tribes). What the Chinese whispers idea of social norm development is show how the same can happen in large groups via a different mechanism.

In hunter-gatherer groups, reverse domination acted specifically to stop an individual standing out and becoming dominant. This was one of the means by which social groups ensured egalitarianism. It seems more likely that individuals were able to become influential once homogeneous socialisation was weakened by having larger, more intermingling groups. — Kenosha Kid

I think I've perhaps been unclear. The process I was talking about was innovation rather than dominance. The two are actually quite different in terms of social status. A dominant person can instruct others by virtue of some form of positive or negative reward system (what we call operant conditioning), an innovator, however, is typically an outcast without means of instructing others, they only become relevant at a time of environmental or social upheaval where conservatism fails.

Outside of that misunderstanding, I tend to agree with your analysis fo fierce egalitarianism, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say social dominance was therefore selected for. I think it's sufficient that it remain a threat. If you see social behaviours as the result of culturally propagated norms, then it only need be the case that anti-social behaviours be possible for there to be an advantage to fierce egalitarianism. It need not be the default position. Like a handrail on scaffolding, it's sufficient that someone could fall to justify it's presence, it's not necessary to say that they will fall by default without it.

we can in principle empathize with everyone's suffering and make progress toward eliminating it all, and that total elimination of all suffering would be the complete triumph of good, no? — Pfhorrest

No.

I think this is what a lot of the disagreement comes down to with your meta-ethical position. Only some people believe that the complete elimination of suffering would be the complete triumph of good. Others believe otherwise. As I believe @SophistiCat has been trying to show - the complete elimination of all suffering is an 'is' we measure suffering - we might do so by questionnaire (taking people's word for it), we might do so by fMRI scan, empathy...whatever. These are only the means by which we do the measuring, what we end up with, after that measurement is taken, is a fact, an 'is'.

You have then taken a step to say that this is the the state of affairs we 'ought' to aim for. Again, you further seem to qualify that with something about taking into account everyone's meta-ethical positions and coming to some 'more right' meta-ethical position, but a) I've yet to establish how this actually happens, and b) even then, the sum total of everyone's meta-ethical positions is still an 'is', there's nothing to say we 'ought' to take that to be our meta-ethical position.

To me, “externally validated” might mean physically exhibited, manifest outside the agent himself. — Mww

Ah I think I misunderstood you and covered this elsewhere in my response to you. Yes, I agree, having a biological social drive cannot tell you how to satisfy that drive. We do need reason to figure out how to do e.g. the good thing, in the same way we need reason to figure out which roads to take on a drive. The reasoning is not moral, it's just generic problem-solving.

External validation for altruism is easy....actually helping somebody immediately validates it. — Mww

That tells us that someone was compelled (be it external, biological or willed) to behave altruistically. It does not validate that altruistic drives are "good". Which is what I thought you were saying.

Empathy....maybe, maybe not. Being empathetic towards someone is a rational activity, so....not much external validation there. — Mww

Empathy is a neurological response we are unaware of taking place in our brains. It cannot be rational. We can rationalise with it, but it appears to be a dumb, conditional, stimuli-response phenomenon.

What’s the earliest proper exposition of your altruism/empathy social drives? — Mww

Individually, they're largely pre-homo. Cognitive empathy likely did not develop as a social mechanism, but as a means of gauging the threat or vulnerability of an individual in sub- or even pre-social mammals. Altruism itself certainly developed as a parenting skill, not a social one. These traits are present in other mammalian species. This article concludes that humans had a unique evolutionary pathway for social altruism, in addition to socialisations and their psychological adaptations, whereas the one I quoted above to Isaac seems to suggest common genetic heritage with modal behaviours to explain the universality of egalitarianism in hunter-gatherer tribes. Obviously they're not the same behaviours: egalitarianism does not necessitate altruism.

Since ultra-cooperative behaviour is seen only in humans among mammalian species, it's not possible to study earlier potentially ultra-cooperative groups, since all the contenders are extinct. A more complete understanding of the genetic basis of why we are so social might allow us to posit that earlier homo species of similar group sizes were also socially altruistic, but unfortunately we can never verify it. by studying e.g. homo erectus in situ.

DK.....(stabbing haphazardly)....direct knowledge? — Mww

Haha I meant Daniel Kahneman :rofl: My bad.

So where do we go from here? — Mww

Do you mean in this discussion or as a species?

But "harmful" and "bad" seem to me roughly synonyms. — Pfhorrest

Because you are a socially-inclined human being. If your pre-social drives were dominant, it might seem that "harm" and "opportunity" were synonyms, or "harmed" and "non-threatening". Harmful and bad only seem synonymous for a pre-existing, altruistic definition of "bad".

That is the "notion of good" that we share, and exactly why I say to appeal to hedonic experiences as the common ground for determining what in particular is good. — Pfhorrest

Right, and what in particular is good is a question arising from the lack of a pre-existing answer given by innate biases and homogeneous socialisation. It depends on those innate biases having no fitness in your environment and your socialisation being incomplete or incompatible with another's. In a small group, these questions would not arise, only the questions of whether to do good/bad (priorities) and how to do good/bad.

This is exactly the conflation of phenomenalism with nihilism that I think underlies half of the views I'm against — Pfhorrest

Someone or something keeps banging at the door. Everyone says, "Holy crap, a monster." (an unjustified interpretation of a real phenomenon). Parents teach their kids, "Don't open the door!" A few people toy with the idea that there's no monster at the door. "Are you mad? You can hear the monster banging! How can you be nihilistic?!"

One day a little girl sneaks upstairs and peeks through a window. She can't be sure, but it looks like there's tree branch banging against the door in the wind. She goes downstairs and says it looks like there's no monster. "Nihilist! She says nothing is banging against the door." (error: NOT (A+B) implies NOT B). She tries to explain, no there is something banging, it's just a tree branch. "Then how do you explain the monster with your tree branch?" She can't.

This is essentially the conversation we're having. I believe in the banging, I just believe it isn't a monster doing it. (I believe in the objective reality of the phenomenon underlying our rational conceptions of morality, I just don't believe in the objective reality of a given rational conception.) You therefore identify an error correctly: the conflation of phenomonalism (I see a tree branch banging against the door) with nihilism (there's nothing banging against the door), but you misidentified the person doing the conflating.

We do need reason to figure out how to do e.g. the good thing, in the same way we need reason to figure out which roads to take on a drive. The reasoning is not moral, it's just generic problem-solving. — Kenosha Kid

Yep, which draws us ever closer to the crux of the matter: the use of reason, which everybody knows, is nothing if not rationality writ large. So.....yes, we do need reason to figure out the how of doing everything, moreso initially, then tapering downward with repetitive experience. The how-to-do is not moral reasoning, of course, and while we’ve progressed to acknowledging reason as the means for doing, we have left the reasoning for what-is-to-be-done behind. And that will always be moral reasoning, when the thing to be done is primarily qualified by the goodness of it.

Before heading off on that dialectical tangent, does the psychologist admit to different kinds of reason, as the philosopher absolutely requires? In other words, does your “generic problem solving” type of reasoning distinguish itself from the type of reasoning that grounds your “compelled to behave”?
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On another note......

Empathy is a neurological response we are unaware of taking place in our brains. It cannot be rational. We can rationalise with it, but it appears to be a dumb, conditional, stimuli-response phenomenon. — Kenosha Kid

.......is a surprise to me. It is so counterintuitive I don’t know what to do with it. If empathy boils down even the slightest, to understanding, it must be a rational activity, because understanding itself, is exactly just that. If empathy boils down to mere recognition, which requires something to be observed, apparently negating being unaware. A philosopher will naturally balk at any phenomenon that does not present itself to our rationality, especially a stimuli-response example of it.

Not to mention, if we can rationalize with it, how can we not be aware of it? Or must we now separate being aware of, from being conscious of?

Plus, we have cognitive empathy and affective empathy. As if one or the other wasn’t enough. Still, we got more than one quality of reason, so...ehhhhh....why not.
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I meant Daniel Kahneman — Kenosha Kid

Jeeez, it sucks getting old. After spending all that time with a book written by him, it never even crossed my mind. Predispositions. (Sigh) If I’d been proper and used his last name with all those equivalences, I might have got it right.
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This discussion. We control the discussion; Nature controls the species.

Again, encultured responses to a situation outweigh rational considerations. — Isaac

Yes, I agree it must be cultural in part. It might also be modal. Large groups subdivide, hence rankings. Relations within ranks might have been more egalitarian for the same reason that smaller groups are more egalitarian. Rather than naturally extending egalitarianism to the whole group after the catastrophe, less aggressive males mimicked the now deceased aggressive males as a cultural replication, not toward lower-ranking males but toward the peers who were previously dominated by high-ranking males perhaps.

It's parameters are set by the tools we use (the hard-wiring), but within those parameters, there's considerable scope and modifications to the environment or social structures reveal those other options. — Isaac

I'd go slightly further. The mode of the culture might be quite arbitrary, and I think how arbitrary is highlighted in the baboon case where there is absolutely no benefit to what they did, but uniformity of social structures typically speaks to an underlying cause. This could in principle be a common culture, which would suggest similarity of cultures, or another predisposition, which would allow for diversity of cultures.

It's worth pointing out that the emerging inter-rank aggressive culture that Sapolsky described is likely a transitory effect of a catastrophic event. Generally, animals who expend large resources and take mortal risks to zero benefit or their own detriment do not prosper. The more stable culture is likely the lower-rank egalitarianism arising from reduced stress. As per the Boehm article, it is a predictable response to a smaller group size and greater resources, and it won't hurt that the self-harming dominance of higher ranking members will be evidentally bad in an egalitarian culture.

Things change when you bring power back into the equation. If high-ranking individuals attacked, exiled or killed egalitarian members, there would then be benefit in conforming to this nonsensical culture and it would persist longer. This covers quite a few human cultures, I feel, and speaks to the power of culture over sense.

Usually with innovators (the active development of social norms), a smaller group size leads to greater diversity as there's less of a tendency to revert to the mean (we see this in some of the seemingly bizarre cultural practices in isolated tribes). — Isaac

I'm aware of this happening due to outside influence (trying to build runways made of logs to summon planes full of food, or building harbours to attract boats). I'm not aware of any cases of this occurring, spontaneously or gradually, within a small isolated group. Did you have anything in mind?

To my knowledge, innovation in tribes (without outside influence) is generally mimetic, not pedagogical, i.e. the innovator has no authority and, to boot, is not necessarily aware of why their innovation is successful (Dennett's boat builders again). I'll firm up on this in a subsequent post, but if you have counter-examples ready that'll save me the effort (laziness is my moral virtue).

I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say social dominance was therefore selected for. I think it's sufficient that it remain a threat. If you see social behaviours as the result of culturally propagated norms, then it only need be the case that anti-social behaviours be possible for there to be an advantage to fierce egalitarianism. — Isaac

Boehm's modal dominance seems reasonable to me, and he seems to think that a biological basis is the consensus. But, even though human groups have mostly been small, we may have evolved from large precursor species groups, so it's not a given that, if there is a biological basis for dominance, it is particularly for dominance of the group over the individual.

Again, you further seem to qualify that with something about taking into account everyone's meta-ethical positions and coming to some 'more right' meta-ethical position, but a) I've yet to establish how this actually happens, and b) even then, the sum total of everyone's meta-ethical positions is still an 'is', there's nothing to say we 'ought' to take that to be our meta-ethical position. — Isaac

Yes, well put, and I think this is the problem with the 'ought' complaint. There are no more justified schemes for deriving oughts, only less justified ones. As far as I've ever been able to tell, such objections are not only predicated on unjustifiable assumptions, they fail their own burden-of-proof criteria.