My question here is basically about what you take those presuppositions to be. Are they radically different for the two sides, exactly the same for both (and if so what way are they like), or “separate but equal”. — Pfhorrest

That depends on the situation they are asked from and the historical epoch we are in. These presuppositions lay the ground work of our judgment so it depends on them whether they are close. In the middle ages they solved empirical questions in the same vein as they would solve legal matters, that is look at texts and compare the answers of various learned men on the matter. They identified axioms (such as the non-existence of a vacuum for instance). Today we do that differently, we still apply the same kind of method to legal questions but we do not apply them to scientific questions anymore.
This divergence has a history and if you consider the works of the earliest scientists you find lots of influences from these earlier models. See for instance this article
(It is popular, I could find something academic but that takes more time and time is scarce, but it gives the idea)

I am not a realist like you, I am an idealist, meaning that what is considered true ultimately depends on our criteria for truth. There are no criteria by which to judge those criteria, since that would lead to an infinite regress. There are of course reasons why we prefer one set of criteria over another. The scientific method works wonders in order to provide answers to scientific questions that work and conform to our experience.

Well Pfhorrest, what do you think? You asked if I care to elaborate. Was it just to antagonise Wayfarer? — counterpunch

Sorry, hadn't had time to read fully and respond until now.

Overall it looks like a case of option #2 (description only). You give an accurate enough (as far as I can tell) factual account of reasons that caused humans and other organisms to be inclined to approve and disprove various behaviors, and apparently take that to be sufficient to answer all normative questions; no separate account of normativity looks to be required, on your view, besides that causal account of what made us be who we are such that we do what we do.

Suffice to say I don't agree with that, since I picked option #4.

what is considered true ultimately depends on our criteria for truth — Tobias

I'm asking what are your criteria for truth in these respective two domains (or one domain if your view falls into one of the second or third choices). It sounds like you use / advocate the use of science for descriptive questions. Do you approach prescriptive questions as a subset of that? Or in a similar but separate way? Or in a completely different way altogether?

I'm asking what are your criteria for truth in these respective two domains (or one domain if your view falls into one of the second or third choices). It sounds like you use / advocate the use of science for descriptive questions. Do you approach prescriptive questions as a subset of that? Or in a similar but separate way? Or in a completely different way altogether? — Pfhorrest

On a non-philosophical (non reflective) level I have scientific answers inform but not determine my ethical and legal positions. So in everyday life it would be option one of our depending on how strict you look at it. I do think legal questions are not reducible to scientific ones and that scientific questions are not legal or ethical matters in another guise so that would mean option one if I understand correctly. Banno's straighforward and excellent explanation comes to mind.

if I understand correctly — Tobias

Sounds like you do, thanks.

Just wanted to note that I caught and fixed a brain fart in the OP: in the last sentence of the paragraph about option #4, it had said "just as well as science is applied to morality", when I meant it to say "just as well as science is applied to questions about reality".

That I disagree with your assessment subtracts nothing from my boundless gratitude. Wayfarer's bombardment wasn't particularly helpful in explicating the matter, but I did reconsider the is/ought distinction in the first post. Might that not have provided a clue?

In light of this, consider Hume's famous observation:

"In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not."

Putting aside the usual implication of this argument, it's what human beings do - and cannot help but do when presented with a list of facts. We see the moral implications of those facts. Facts are not a separate magisterium to us, because we are imbued with an innate moral sense, in turn a behaviourally intelligent, evolutionary response to a causal reality. — counterpunch

It follows from my argument that the organism, imbued with a moral sense has to be correct to reality to survive. So assuming only that sustainability is of value, morally correct behaviour occurs as a consequence of what's factually true - and thus, my argument is both descriptive and prescriptive. Or none of the above.

I asked Wayfarer where 'oughts' come from. He refused to answer. Quite prepared to dismiss the evolutionary origin of morality to the immense reputational damage of chimpanzees - but utterly disdainful of the implication that religion, politics, law, economics and so forth, are expressions of that innate moral sense. If you adhere to position number 4 - you have to presume some objective source of morality. So what is it? The Ethics tree? Lake Morals? The Shoulda River? Mount Ought?

If you adhere to position number 4 - you have to presume some objective source of morality. So what is it? The Ethics tree? Lake Morals? The Shoulda River? Mount Ought? — counterpunch

It sounds to me like you’re still asking the descriptive question of what caused us to have the inclinations toward moral judgement that we do. I don’t disagree with you about that question.

On my view, there is just another additional question, which is not one of the cause of our capacity for moral judgement, but rather a “how to” question about the optimal conduct of that capacity. Just like philosophy also has a “how to” question about conducting our faculties for figuring out what is real (epistemology), which is different from a causal account of how we came to have such faculties.

On my view, there is just another additional question, which is not one of the cause of our capacity for moral judgement, but rather a “how to” question about the optimal conduct of that capacity. — Pfhorrest

One looks at the facts, and the moral implications are apparent - in the same way it's apparent that a joke is funny, or a painting is pleasing to the eye. Because, like humour or aesthetics - morality is a sense. This is why recognising a scientific understanding of reality in common is important. If you feed someone falsehoods posing as facts, you get a falsely moral response.

I didn't choose any of your options because I think the world is always already replete with meaning; both ethical and aesthetic. And science is but one aspect of description.

Science does mostly bracket qualitative and normative considerations, since they are irrelevant to most of its inquiries. Ethics, morality and aesthetics are matters of feeling for me, and I do think there is a broad commonality of such feelings. The intellect has to play second fiddle here. It's role is more pragmatic; involved in figuring out how best to achieve what we generally, in accordance with our (mostly shared) moral intuitions want our lives to look like. Misinformation (deliberate and otherwise) is rife, though; which rather distorts the moral picture.

I think the anthropic cosmological principle supports the attitude of natural theology. The fact that Dawkins, et al, need to appeal to the notion that there might be endless other universes in order to defray that argument rather serves to strengthen my view, rather than weaken it. — Wayfarer

I don't understand.

To my mind, the organism evolves in relation to a causal reality, and has to be 'correct' to survive. — counterpunch

What is "correct", if not that the organism indeed survives? Is it that for you an organism ought survive?

So your argument is that there is a universal moral obligation on living things to survive?

What is "correct", if not that the organism indeed survives? Is it that for you an organism ought survive? So your argument is that there is a universal moral obligation on living things to survive? — Banno

Replication begins with DNA unzipping down the middle, and attracting its chemical opposite from the environment. This is the basis of a truth relation between the organism and reality that plays out on every level; the physiological, the behavioural, and for us - the intellectual level.

The organism has to be correct to reality to survive, to breed, to pass on its genetic, behavioural and intellectual intelligence to subsequent generations. If it is not correct to reality it is rendered extinct. 99% of the organisms that have ever existed are extinct.

Only one organism that has ever existed has the intellectual intelligence to act to avoid marching blindly into extinction. We have a choice - and so for us it's a moral question.

After the occurrence of life, intellectual intelligence is only the second qualitative addition to the universe in 15 billion years. We, who look back at the universe from which we spring - and understand, would diminish the universe by our absence. We ought to follow in the course of truth, and survive - and find out where truth leads. Intellectual intelligence should play out to the fullest.

Maybe we'll find out that we are not alone; that there are other intelligent beings out there. Maybe we'll upload our minds into machines and live forever. Maybe we'll travel to other dimensions, or back in time. It could even be God. I don't know. But given the choice, we ought to stick around and find out.

Nice polemic.

If it is not correct to reality it is rendered extinct. — counterpunch

(My bolding)

Again, what is "correct" if not simply surviving? This is were the ought is inserted, is it not?

So again, is you claim that organisms have a moral imperative to survive? Or is it that this is just the sort of thing that organisms do?

It's not clear to me what you're asking in your OP.

Nobody denies that prescriptions exist. "Shut the window!" There. That's one.

And there can be descriptions of prescriptions. "Bartricks just ordered us to shut the window". And some of those descriptions can be true.

So I do not really understand the difficulty. There are prescriptions and there are descriptions. Prescriptions can be complied with or flouted, but can't be true or false. Descriptions can be true or false. But that doesn't prevent there from being descriptions of prescriptions, some of which are true.

Organisms survive until they don't. It's a functional truth relation: the structure of DNA, the physiology of the organism. It's mechanics - if you like; not morality that allows organisms to survive, to breed - and pass on their genetic and physiological correctness to reality.

Animal organisms have behaviours, and these too are functionally correct to reality to allow for survival. I'll provide the example again, of a bird that builds a nest before it lays eggs. Why? Does it know and plan ahead. That seems unlikely. Rather, it is programmed to do so by evolution. Because those that didn't behave this way are extinct - we are left with birds that build nests before they lay eggs. That's behavioural intelligence.

I'm no zoologist, but morality of any recognizable sort, seems to occur in social animals. According to Jane Goodall, chimpanzees have a moral sense insofar as they share food, and defend the troop, and groom each other - but further, they remember who contributes in these ways, and withhold their favours accordingly. Morality then, seems to be promoted as a social survival strategy - in that, a moral sense is an advantage to the moral individual within the troop, and to the troop composed of moral individuals.

It sound like the first option is the one for you.

That sounds like your view is either option one, or else if perhaps you take there to be nothing more to a prescription than a description of what someone wants, then option two.

I think you're missing the option 'one domain viewed from different perspectives'.

Another nice polemic. But you still have not confirmed or rejected my assessment that you think living things have a moral imperative to survive.

Perrhaps if I ask a slightly different, but related question. As you say, Chimps remember who contributes in these ways, and withhold their favours accordingly. Ought they do so? But further, ought they do so if and only if it ensures survival? Is you claim that organisms have a moral imperative to survive?

Replication begins with DNA unzipping down the middle, and attracting its chemical opposite from the environment. This is the basis of a truth relation between the organism and reality that plays out on every level; the physiological, the behavioural, and for us - the intellectual level. — counterpunch

The problem with that, again, is that if the 'biological determines the intellectual', then it undermines the sovereignty of reason. If reason depends for its validity on biological adaption, then what warrant does it have to be true? If you explain that warrant in terms of adaptation, then you're relying on the very faculty for the explanation, but at the same time, reducing it to an adaption instead of something inherently true.

I claim, and I think the Greek philosophical tradition as a whole claims, that man, as the 'rational animal' is able to ground rational statements in the apodictic certainty of rational truths such as the laws of logic. Again, if you say that those laws themselves are 'a product' of evolutionary biology, then you're deprecating them, wishing to explain them in terms of something else.

the reason [Dennett] imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else....Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it. — Leon Wieseltier

My view is that when h. sapiens evolved to becoming a language-using, tool-making, story-telling, meaning-seeking creature, then s/he 'escapes the bonds of biology'. Surely in the organic sense, we're biological organisms, and continuous with the whole spectrum of evolutionary development, but we have crossed a boundary by virtue of the explosive development of the homind forebrain, one consequence of which is the requirement to make moral decisions.

I am not a realist like you, I am an idealist, meaning that what is considered true ultimately depends on our criteria for truth. — Tobias

A 'realist criterion' for truth, if I may say so, discerns what is (proximately) true by matching a truth-claim to a truth-maker (i.e. fact of the matter and/or valid inference) – like turning a key in a lock – and thereby mismatches indicate non-truths. I suggest that adaptivity (for FLOURISHING, not mere 'survival') is a heuristic criterion for deciding on 'criteria of truth'.

There are no criteria by which to judge those criteria, since that would lead to an infinite regress.

If "there are no criteria by which to judge criteria of truth", then we cannot decide whether or not it is true that "there are no criteria [ ... ]", no? This sort of arbitrariness (e.g. relativism, nihilism, anti-realism) isn't adaptive outside of very narrow, parochial, niches (e.g. academia).

Given that @counterpunch claims to be telling us how things are, and not how they ought be, he isn't addressing morality. Hence my questions. In order to be making a moral claim he must move from telling us how things are to telling us how they ought be; he must assume that there is a moral obligation for survival.

Another nice polemic. — Banno

What do you mean?

But you still have not confirmed or rejected my assessment that you think living things have a moral imperative to survive. — Banno

Those that survived, survived - and did so because genetically and physiologically and behaviourally they were correct to reality. Morality is a form of behavioural intelligence.

As you say, Chimps remember who contributes in these ways, and withhold their favours accordingly. Ought they do so? — Banno

Survivors do so.

But further, ought they do so if and only if it ensures survival? — Banno

I cannot answer in the way you require. Prior to the occurrence of intellectual intelligence, we cannot reasonably describe moral behaviour as a choice. It's behavioural intelligence that promotes survival. There is no question of whether they ought. But such behaviours make it more likely they will survive.

Is you claim that organisms have a moral imperative to survive? — Banno

The human organism, yes.

The human organism, yes. — counterpunch

Ah. Good. So "the human organism"(individual, species, genetic code...?) has a moral imperative to survive.

Why?

Edit: Perhaps I should put it this way: you say that those that survive are "correct to reality"; why ought we strive to be "correct to reality"? An anti-natalist, for example, might argue that survival only increases the amount of pain in the world, and hence is morally repugnant. Or a follower of Nietzsche might insist that we have an obligation to overcome the chains of our genetic code; that being glorious is more important than surviving.

So why ought we survive?

The problem with that, again, is that if the 'biological determines the intellectual', then it undermines the sovereignty of reason. If reason depends for its validity on biological adaption, then what warrant does it have to be true? If you explain that warrant in terms of adaptation, then you're relying on the very faculty for the explanation, but at the same time, reducing it to an adaption instead of something inherently true. — Wayfarer

I do not find you an honest or reasonable debater. You are only out to shoot down these ideas; whether from personal enmity, or philosophical conviction - I don't know. I've asked you to explain your convictions, and you've refused, repeatedly - and I refuse to debate at a disadvantage with someone pursuing a concealed agenda - and willing to misrepresent my argument to further that agenda. If you can find where I've written the phrase 'the biological determines the intellectual' - ever, anywhere - I'll eat my hat. Otherwise, I shall decline to address your deliberate misunderstanding.

Ah. Good. So "the human organism"(individual, species, genetic code...?) has a moral imperative to survive. Why? — Banno

Morality, as I've explained, is a sense - and given due consideration to the facts, this is my considered opinion:

After the occurrence of life, intellectual intelligence is only the second qualitative addition to the universe in 15 billion years. We, who look back at the universe from which we spring - and understand, would diminish the universe by our absence. We ought to follow in the course of truth, and survive - and find out where truth leads. Intellectual intelligence should play out to the fullest. — counterpunch

I do not find you an honest or reasonable debater. You are only out to shoot down these ideas; whether from personal enmity, or philosophical conviction - I don't know. I've asked you to explain your convictions, and you've refused, repeatedly - and I refuse to debate at a disadvantage with someone pursuing a concealed agenda - and willing to misrepresent my argument to further that agenda. If you can find where I've written the phrase 'the biological determines the intellectual' - ever, anywhere - I'll eat my hat. Otherwise, I shall decline to address your deliberate misunderstanding. — counterpunch

Obviously you don't understand my criticisms, but I assure you, they are not made in bad faith. In every interchange, I'm making an effort to explain the basis of what I'm saying, and even providing references and sources. You've joined a philosophy forum and I would hope you would be able to handle constructive criticism - given your user name! - but apparently not. :-)

Obviously you don't understand my criticisms, but I assure you, they are not made in bad faith. — Wayfarer

I understand that I have never said 'the biological determines the intellectual' - and am not about to claim the words you want to put in my mouth. I presume you know that if you highlight the text from my post, and hit quote - it will copy my exact words. There's no need to reinterpret anything. If you want to debate my ideas, debate my ideas.

Morality, as I've explained, is a sense... — counterpunch

Sure.

That doesn't answer the question. All you've said is that you have a preference for survival: "this is my considered opinion". The anti-natalist and the Nietzschean in my examples disagree. Have you an argument against them?

If you can find where I've written the phrase 'the biological determines the intellectual' - ever, anywhere - I'll eat my hat. — counterpunch

That is simply a paraphrase of:

"The moral sense is a consequence of the truth relation between the organism and a causal reality — "counterpunch

Isn't it? Did I read it wrong?

I'm generally critical of the way that biological evolution has become a 'theory of everything' in respect of human nature. There is a very widespread assumption in modern culture that evolutionary biology replaced religion in the sense of providing an account of human origins. So in that context it is natural to assume that moral and intellectual capacities can be understood in such terms. And you're doing this throughout this thread. So that's why I'm referring to criticisms of this attitude from other sources, such as philosopher Thomas Nagel, who has devoted his career to this line of thought. Neither he nor I am afiliated with any form of creationism or intelligent design but are mindful of the shortcomings of the current orthodoxy (which he describes as 'neo-Darwinian materialism'). If you're interested in exploring them, I can recommend some sources.