If the subjugation of a minority resulted in a preferred form of order, would you declare it moral? — Hanover

This old thing? :wink: No I wouldn't, but I am the product of values and presuppositions associated with Christianity, liberalism and assorted Western enculturations. My moral views would be not much different to the average Anglican here in Australia, despite my not being a Christian. I doubt most of us ever travel far from our cultural, familial roots.

But, and this is the real point, I can well imagine a culture that does regularly kill children for sport and people think it enjoyable or good. Ditto for almost any unspeakable act - slavery being a good example. And I can well imagine a culture that has set itself up around values and concomitant practices you and I find abhorrent. There are small examples all over the world, in history and now, from child soldiers to child labor. We can argue against such things and hope to end them, but what we are doing is advocating for our values as superior, based on a set of principles or rules. And sure, I believe I can defend my values against others, but I would, wouldn't I? Wouldn't you?

As I see it, morals mostly express human values, not facts. Morals are not true or false, they work or they don't. Where do those values come from? I think some are inborn and some are learned. — T Clark

Agreed - I think that just because something is illegal doesn't mean it cannot be moral in certain circumstances, and that some things that are legal can be immoral in certain circumstances.

But it is different when considering the existence of moral facts. Moral facts could be vague, or very specific, and could be applied by a virtuous person in novel ways. There would be room for creativity, even, when considering the application of moral facts in a way that we don't have when considering the application of some of the very specific laws we have. — ToothyMaw

I like Clark's statement that a moral statement expresses a value, not a fact, but our moral judgment is better with science. Time and again civilizations have fallen because they could not provide enough for their unnaturally large populations, usually, the final blow being a climate change that led to famine. I think somewhere in that statement of fact there is a moral but the moral is something we can learn from history, not an inborn morality. I think our destruction of rivers, lakes, and now the oceans, and other environments, is very immoral. The harm we have done to our planet is causing conditions that are deadly and should we be held accountable for that, given we were ignorant of the damage we were causing?

I think much of our behavior is controlled the same as other animals' behaviors are controlled by hormones and survival needs. Native Americans are known to learn what we might call morals from animals. The book "The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, explains why people cheat, gossip, care, share, and follow the golden rule by explaining animal behaviors. That is in agreement with Clark and the notion of inborn morality. But I have read taking care of children for 20 years is not normal and in one tribe 3-year-old children were left to fend for themselves when there was a serious food scarcity. We know today that in places like Afghanistan daughters can be sold, and in England, at the beginning of industrialization, starving people sold their children to factories. What we think of as only decent human behavior is the luxury of having full stomachs. I don't know how to word that moral but we would be very foolish to ignore the importance of feeling physically and emotionally safe. Hunger can revert us back to a less kind, less civilized struggle for survival.

I hear you. I'd privilege the first one over the second, but rewrite it as - a set of rules used to help keep us safe, implemented with minimal judgement and dogmatism. — Tom Storm

I don't disagree with this, although I have a somewhat different perspective. For me, the purpose of social control; including enforcement of rules, laws, customs, and etiquette; is to prevent people from causing avoidable and undeserved harm and seeing to it they face the consequences of their actions. If you want to call social control "morality," that's fine, but making moral judgements about people isn't an effective way to protect others. That's the important point for me - moral judgement leads to ineffective social control. Is righteousness and retribution more important to you than a peaceful, safe society? Not for me.

I'm not interested in people's personal codes — Tom Storm

This is the part of morality that interests me. The rest is just engineering, or at least it should be.

There are small examples all over the world, in history and now, from child soldiers to child labor. We can argue against such things and hope to end them, but what we are doing is advocating for our values as superior, based on a set of principles or rules. I believe I can defend my values against others, but I would, wouldn't I? Wouldn't you? — Tom Storm

God no! This is atrocious, Tom. Sorry, but putting it the way you wrote it sets us back 200 years. There is nothing in moral discourse that draws the boundary on where we can and cannot judge moral actions. Just because a society in this or that peninsula practices and legalizes human sacrifice does not mean we can't judge such behavior in our own turf. Yes, we might not be able to stop that society from committing human sacrifice except through invasion/war, but it doesn't mean our own discourse must preclude it from our judgment.

I don't think we all realize the fundamental assumptions guiding our moral beliefs:

1. we are humans.
2. as such, we have emotions, beliefs, desires, fears, etc.
3. from this, we know we have a common ground upon which a moral discourse can succeed.

That a society is stupid, ignorant, low IQ, backward mentally, uneducated, brainwashed, and just plain sociopath is not an excuse to promote relativism as an acceptable moral principle. Relativism is a dangerous moral view.

That a society is stupid, ignorant, low IQ, backward mentally, uneducated, brainwashed, and just plain sociopath is not an excuse to promote relativism as an acceptable moral principle. Relativism is a dangerous moral view. — L'éléphant

Not wanting to promote relativism. :wink: As I said - I think my morality is better than theirs and would argue this based on the notion of the wellbeing or flourishing of conscious creatures. The point I am making is that we can imagine a culture that disagrees and chooses differently.

What metaphysical process do you have access to that can demonstrate why my values are better than theirs, other than already agreeing to my suppositions about wellbeing? As @Hanover says you need to believe in some transcendent guarantor of morality to do this definitively and then you also need to demonstrate that your version of transcendent is in agreement with your version of morality. How is that done?

The point I am making is that I can imagine a culture that disagrees and chooses differently. — Tom Storm

That they chose differently is not an indication that their moral choice is reasonable or ethical . Remember, we win by rationality, not necessarily by changing the actual behavior of a society. In other words, we can't force them to be wise in mind and in action.

ALL truth claims are workable within set parameters.

If murder is bad - as the very meaning of murder is that of a certain kind of killing that is bad - then murder is bad.

Examples where ‘murder’ can be misconstrued as ‘good’/‘better’ does not disassociate the term from its use as something ‘bad’ in general. Given that circumstances may vary in innumerable ways when we are talking about someone’s death there is quite obviously going to be areas of contention about what is or is not considered ‘murder’. Euthanasia to some people is ‘murder’ and to others it is merely ‘assisting someone to die’.

Nuance in language and interpretations of events and circumstances does not take away from the general meaning of the term ‘murder’ being bad.

Not everyone likes the taste of strawberries but that does not mean that strawberries are considered to taste bad, yet no doubt there is someone out there who thinks something most consider to taste awful to taste bad. The experience of tasting something nice and something bad exists. The variance of experiences does not detract from the existence of such experiences.

Morality is as meaningless as ethics. There is meta ethics and we are never within its reach yet constantly craving its presumed judgement our lives even if that means said ‘craving’ is non-existent. What we do is what we do. How we interpret what we do is merely that … an interpretation of NOT a complete understanding of.

Of ‘something’. It is not a resolution just a statement that there is a ‘directedness’ … ‘towards’ something (the existent or non-existent is a mirage of a dichotomy).

While it is apparent that Haidt's views might be compelling, they don't seem to address justifications for morals, — ToothyMaw

I think the easiest justification is that rational compassion harms no one, but lack of any rational compassion harms all by direct and indirect negligence.

I think the point is not that morals need or don't need justifications, but instead that humans animals and agents, whomever can't thrive properly or healthily under extreme negligence and continuance of this negligence whether intentional or not eventually leads to inevitable demise.

I have come across the claim in another thread that no moral claims are true [ ... ] — ToothyMaw

Does this have anything to do with Hume's objection to ethics?

What does it even mean for a moral claim to be correct? "You ought not steal candy from a baby." certainly doesn't mean you don't steal candy from a baby.

It seems to me that morality develops out of conflicts between social and personal advantage, and represents the social advantage in the first instance. But this becomes complicated immediately by the fact that social and individual advantage are closely intertwined. Other things being equal, the group is advantaged by the individual being advantaged - just not at the expense of the baby. But the group functions as a group by means of convention. Language is a convention that allows coordination between members, and established habitual behaviour also allows coordination.

Anything that undermines the cohesion and coordination of the group for individual advantage we can call treachery, and the punishment of treachery is advantageous to the group.

Et voila, we have a naturalistic account of both crime and punishment, that sets out the difference between individual preference and social mores, such that torture can be possibly defended as beneficial to social cohesion under certain circumstances, but never normalised as everyday social interaction. In the first video, the beginning of lying as the undermining of communication for individual benefit; in the second, ritual ordeal as initiation into the group and demonstration of the ability to sacrifice personal advantage for the group.

This is where one might be mistaking an axiom with reasonableness. An injunction against murder is reasonable and ethical, though we might find that there is not an axiom that specifically calls out that murder is false. — L'éléphant

This is not an axiom. This is an example of harm principle. Oh yeah, Mill's harm principle is not an axiom -- it is a moral assumption with strong, reasonable backing such as the golden rule. — L'éléphant

I'm using it as an example of something that could be logically true based on some axiom, not claiming that it is axiomatic that murder is wrong. Reasonableness doesn't enter.

And yes, the moral claim "murder is wrong" has a strong backing in reason, but you acknowledge that that which justifies the claim is an assumption. Honestly, I think you and I agree more than we disagree on this: morals are possible and can be reached via reason and minimal assumptions.

The "is" of morality doesn't address justifications for morality, which is the point of this thread. I know evolutionary psychology is great and all, but it is kind of irrelevant to this discussion.

The monkey video is great, though.

If murder is bad - as the very meaning of murder is that of a certain kind of killing that is bad - then murder is bad. — I like sushi

Murder is bad because it is defined as bad? Really? I guess on a local level it is bad, but something doesn't become objectively true just because it is defined as bad, and I'm concerned with objectively true claims.

I could define the sky as being turquoise, but that doesn't mean the sky isn't still blue.

Nuance in language and interpretations of events and circumstances does not take away from the general meaning of the term ‘murder’ being bad. — I like sushi

I would not argue against that.

Not everyone likes the taste of strawberries but that does not mean that strawberries are considered to taste bad, yet no doubt there is someone out there who thinks something most consider to taste awful to taste bad. The experience of tasting something nice and something bad exists. The variance of experiences does not detract from the existence of such experiences. — I like sushi

The important point is not that variance of experience does or does not exist and does or does not detract from the existence of experience, but rather that emotional responses to experience are subjective.

Morality is as meaningless as ethics. There is meta ethics and we are never within its reach yet constantly craving its presumed judgement our lives even if that means said ‘craving’ is non-existent. What we do is what we do. How we interpret what we do is merely that … an interpretation of NOT a complete understanding of. — I like sushi

I agree, we don't entirely understand what we do, but that doesn't mean we can't be doing something right.

I haven't read any Hume. I know of his fork, however.

The only ‘right’ thing we can do is acting as we see fit rather than bending to the will of others mindlessly. In that sense we can hardly ever judge what we do as being right or wrong but we are always unable to escape from the idea that what we have done, or do, is a defining part of how we navigate through life.

Morality and ethics are social apparatus. We are not bound by pure subjectivity yet we are enchanted by the idea that we choose as an individual for ourselves and independent of others’ views.

It is a sea of hidden nuances and dead ends. I this respect it has more in common with the general outline of science being a constant riling against convention for the sake of seeking ‘better’ pathways to fuller understanding.

The only ‘right’ thing we can do is acting as we see fit rather than bending to the will of others mindlessly. — I like sushi

Would antisemites be doing a good thing if they refused to bow to the will of people who aren't assholes?

we can hardly ever judge what we do as being right or wrong but we are always unable to escape from the idea that what we have done, or do, is a defining part of how we navigate through life. — I like sushi

Okay, you seem to be assuming (2), which would need some sort of justification.

Morality and ethics are social apparatus. We are not bound by pure subjectivity yet we are enchanted by the idea that we choose as an individual for ourselves and independent of others’ views. — I like sushi

That morality can be viewed as a social apparatus relates not a bit to whether or not we can justify our morals. And yes, people largely operate under the illusion that they are coming up with original, carefully considered positions, that might not actually be so original and carefully considered.

It is a sea of hidden nuances and dead ends. I this respect it has more in common with the general outline of science being a constant riling against convention for the sake of seeking ‘better’ pathways to fuller understanding. — I like sushi

Finding better ways of applying our morals does not concern whether or not those morals are justified, and I don't think anyone has really physically verified that any morals are true, even if it is possible to do so. So, you seem to claim (2) is true, yet that we verify and falsify our morals in a scientific manner.

I haven't read any Hume. I know of his fork, however. — ToothyMaw

What's his fork? Can you edify me ... please?

What metaphysical process do you have access to that can demonstrate why my values are better than theirs, other than already agreeing to my suppositions about wellbeing? As Hanover says you need to believe in some transcendent guarantor of morality to do this definitively and then you also need to demonstrate that your version of transcendent is in agreement with your version of morality. How is that done? — Tom Storm

Would you rather throw your lot in with an ethic reached with reason and some basic assumptions that reduces suffering, or one that could allow all of the worst things imaginable? It seems likely that logic and reason will get us closer to said transcendental good than a denial of moral facts gets us to truth. Not to mention, many relativistic arguments are confused because they make multiple claims including (1), (2), and (3), which are not always compatible.

look up "Hume's Fork"

look up "Hume's Fork" — ToothyMaw

Ok!

The "is" of morality doesn't address justifications for morality, which is the point of this thread. I know evolutionary psychology is great and all, but it is kind of irrelevant to this discussion. — ToothyMaw

I don't think it's irrelevant. It explains that, and why, murder is wrong but war is right, why there are the moral strictures there are and how they are not arbitrary in the main but sometimes they are, and why different environments produce different moralities in the same species. The justification of any morality is 'group interest' - nature demands it, the ancestors say it, God says it, everyone says it except the individual, who insists on asking "why should I?" as though they are not part of a larger whole. What other question are you considering?

Would antisemites be doing a good thing if they refused to bow to the will of people who aren't assholes? — ToothyMaw

Dilemma questions such as this (if I understood you) arise out of consideration of group conflict - ie conflict of scale. Family, tribe, nation, species, ecosystem, all have a claim on the individual's loyalty and self-sacrifice. We are seeing the result of the failure of traditional moralities to consider the interests of the environment. We have not been taught to make that identification in particular by Capitalist economics, which is founded on the merciless exploitation of environmental resources as slaves, as ancestor fossils, and as the living environment. 'Why should I not burn fossil fuels?' has a very clear, very cogent answer, that we need to learn to internalise as a species. Antisemitism, racism, the persecution of any sub-group, corrodes the cooperative functioning of society and prevents us from acting together to address global issues.

Incidentally, my good friend Hume did not deny morality, He merely denied the authority of reason. Thus you cannot get an ought from an is, nor a will be from a has been, nor an object from a sensation by any reasoned argument. But he was no more against morality than he was against science.

I don't think it's irrelevant. It explains that, and why, murder is wrong but war is right, why there are the moral strictures there are and how they are not arbitrary in the main but sometimes they are, and why different environments produce different moralities in the same species. — unenlightened

It addresses why people believe those things are wrong and right but doesn't address at all whether or not moral claims can be objectively true. I have made this argument about ten times in this thread.

The justification of any morality is 'group interest' - nature demands it, the ancestors say it, God says it, everyone says it except the individual, who insists on asking "why should I?" as though they are not part of a larger whole. — unenlightened

That is a practical justification, not a moral justification. You are committing a fallacy - that something is right because it is natural. Again, group interest might give rise to morality but that doesn't tell us if something is objectively right or wrong.

Dilemma questions such as this (if I understood you) arise out of consideration of group conflict - ie conflict of scale. Family, tribe, nation, species, ecosystem, all have a claim on the individual's loyalty and self-sacrifice. We are seeing the result of the failure of traditional moralities to consider the interests of the environment. We have not been taught to make that identification in particular by Capitalist economics, which is founded on the merciless exploitation of environmental resources as slaves, as ancestor fossils, and as the living environment. 'Why should I not burn fossil fuels?' has a very clear, very cogent answer, that we need to learn to internalise as a species. Antisemitism, racism, the persecution of any sub-group, corrodes the cooperative functioning of society and prevents us from acting together to address global issues. — unenlightened

I agree with this, but my point was more so that not bowing to the will of others doesn't make right.

my good friend Hume — unenlightened

You have either read a lot of Hume or are really old.

my good friend Hume did not deny morality, He merely denied the authority of reason. Thus you cannot get an ought from an is, nor a will be from a has been, nor an object from a sensation by any reasoned argument. But he was no more against morality than he was against science. — unenlightened

I didn't say Hume was against morality, but rather that the is/ought issue is unresolved as far as I can tell.

Justification is irrelevant because claim of higher morality is immoral.

It is nothing more than pretending actions and reasons for actions are not preluded by opinions of, and impositions of, social convention.

Someone acting as they wish to act, does so genuinely, irrespective of social conventions. Non of are genuine and therefore none of have an inkling of some higher morality other than by-way-of playing for or against ideas of what is or is not ‘justified’.

I can justify killing someone but justification is just as likely an ‘excuse’ as a ‘reason’. Given that we are bound by societal mechanisms we cannot escape them and cannot ever really lay claim to some pure reason because of this.

Meta ethics has supplanted Ethics it is just that people are slow to realise this. In a few hundred years it will likely be viewed as laughable ad phrenology is.

Note: Obviously I’m not saying this from a ‘moral high ground’ :D

@ToothyMaw The points in the OP are pointless.

Meta ethics has supplanted Ethics it is just that people are slow to realise this. — I like sushi

I think the vast majority of people have no idea what meta-ethics is, and I have honestly never heard any regular people talk about anything even related to meta-ethics.

In a few hundred years it will likely be viewed as laughable ad phrenology is. — I like sushi

I have no emotional attachment to meta-ethics and wouldn't really care if that were to happen.

I can justify killing someone but justification is just as likely an ‘excuse’ as a ‘reason’. — I like sushi

I'm not sure why you think this is relevant. Yes, people sometimes retroactively justify their shitty actions, but that's not really salient.

Honestly, I'm not sure if you are being serious here.

I meant Ethics will be viewed as Phrenology is today not meta ethics.

I am deadly serious but understand that I am somewhat on the fringes. Ethics is too wrapped up in a death spiral of convoluted lies, misconceptions and band-wagoning.

No one cares what they mean by ‘ethics’ only what use they can make to impose their will on others or deflect the will of others. Pointless masturbation and ironically it is more than likely detrimental to their own being and everyone else’s.

Jonathan Haidt argues that our moral values are the product of inborn evolutionary adaptations. He lists the following 5 innate moral foundations:

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation — Joshs

I'd have to go back and re-read it, but I didn't consider the significance of Haidt's book to be so much as providing evidence of the source of our moral value systems, but more in trying to understand why there was such a divide between the political right and the political left. He identified drivers for each side in what they considered important in determining right from wrong, and hypothesized the foundational basis of those disagreements. That is, the right holds certain things to be more important than the left (and vice versa), and therefore the disagreement.

It would seem to be a truism to argue that any human trait arose from evolution, given the theory of evolution posits all traits arose from evolution.

For me, the purpose of social control; including enforcement of rules, laws, customs, and etiquette; is to prevent people from causing avoidable and undeserved harm and seeing to it they face the consequences of their actions. If you want to call social control "morality," that's fine, but making moral judgements about people isn't an effective way to protect others. That's the important point for me - moral judgement leads to ineffective social control. Is righteousness and retribution more important to you than a peaceful, safe society? Not for me. — T Clark

Moral condemnation versus punishments aimed a deterring future antisocial behavior are not mutually exclusive. That is, it is possible that the condemnation will result in deterrence and it is also possible that we can both morally condemn and additionally offer pragmatic solutions to deter the behavior.

If we do believe certain acts are immoral (and you indicate you do, in particular those that do not lead to a safe peaceful society), I don't see why it would be inappropriate to call it immoral, condemn it, and declare it bad if it in fact is. From there, I would agree, we now need to decide how to resolve the issue, but I don't see why identifying it and calling it what it is is a incorrect first step.

Moral condemnation versus punishments aimed a deterring future antisocial behavior are not mutually exclusive. That is, it is possible that the condemnation will result in deterrence and it is also possible that we can both morally condemn and additionally offer pragmatic solutions to deter the behavior.

If we do believe certain acts are immoral (and you indicate you do, in particular those that do not lead to a safe peaceful society), I don't see why it would be inappropriate to call it immoral, condemn it, and declare it bad if it in fact is. From there, I would agree, we now need to decide how to resolve the issue, but I don't see why identifying it and calling it what it is is a incorrect first step. — Hanover

Moral condemnation is easy and cheap, but I don't think it has any significant role in achieving the practical goals I identified. I would go further - I think it distracts from effective action. In order to effectively deter and prevent the harmful actions we want to address, it's necessary to come to an imaginative understanding of our enemies. In practice, that can come dangerously close to empathy. We have to be able to see our adversaries as people in order to combat them.

I don't have any criticism of people who judge and condemn those who have harmed them. I just don't think it does anything productive beyond helping them deal with the situation emotionally. There's nothing wrong with that, although I don't personally find any satisfaction in it.

I don't think we all realize the fundamental assumptions guiding our moral beliefs:

1. we are humans.
2. as such, we have emotions, beliefs, desires, fears, etc.
3. from this, we know we have a common ground upon which a moral discourse can succeed.

That a society is stupid, ignorant, low IQ, backward mentally, uneducated, brainwashed, and just plain sociopath is not an excuse to promote relativism as an acceptable moral principle. Relativism is a dangerous [self-refuting] moral view. — L'éléphant

:100:

I think the point is not that morals need or don't need justifications, but instead that humans animals and agents, whomever can't thrive properly or healthily under extreme negligence and continuance of this negligence whether intentional or not eventually leads to inevitable demise. — Cobra

:up: :up: