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
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
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
"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
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
There is, to my mind, no such thing as a "natural justification" that is not a naturalistic fallacy (and thereby an ideology). — 180 Proof
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
Maybe the notion of "group" is too top-down and can be reconceived as bottom-up community (ecosystem). — 180 Proof
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
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
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
There are genes specifically for small social groups that would make rationalisation of moral truths redundant. — Kenosha Kid
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
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
I put that in bold because it's a good rewording of my key argument. — Kenosha Kid
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
The data that you collect is not an ought; it is a record of observations or reports - an is. — SophistiCat
one can only ask why we are moral (as I'm trying to explain to Pfhorrest). — Kenosha Kid
eaving open the question (or else presuming an answer) to whether that stuff we evolved to do is moral. — Pfhorrest
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
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
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
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
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
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
Redundant compared to....what? — Mww
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
But it certainly can’t be the case that genes are responsible for that redundancy. — Mww
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
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
If we could only come to terms on how that relates to morality, we’d be off to the rodeo. — Mww
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
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
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
"F*** everyone else. Except dolphins, dolphins are cool." — Kenosha Kid
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
If so, we are still left with what to do about it. — Mww
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
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
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
The person cannot rationally argue for one and the other: they might, for instance, work against another person abusing their child. — Kenosha Kid
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
This still presumes there must be an external validation of it — Kenosha Kid
If so, we are still left with what to do about it.
— Mww
Exactly! Et voila: moral philsophy is born! — Kenosha Kid
Even DK isn't 'truth', just a fairly minimal approximation to it. — 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? — Isaac
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
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
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
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
One is active, the other passive. The active one is about influencial members trying to stand out — Isaac
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
To me, “externally validated” might mean physically exhibited, manifest outside the agent himself. — Mww
External validation for altruism is easy....actually helping somebody immediately validates it. — Mww
Empathy....maybe, maybe not. Being empathetic towards someone is a rational activity, so....not much external validation there. — Mww
What’s the earliest proper exposition of your altruism/empathy social drives? — Mww
DK.....(stabbing haphazardly)....direct knowledge? — Mww
So where do we go from here? — Mww
But "harmful" and "bad" seem to me roughly synonyms. — Pfhorrest
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
This is exactly the conflation of phenomenalism with nihilism that I think underlies half of the views I'm against — Pfhorrest
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
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
I meant Daniel Kahneman — Kenosha Kid
Again, encultured responses to a situation outweigh rational considerations. — Isaac
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
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 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
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
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