How do you imagine kicking puppies solves cooperation problems? You are just making up nonsense. — Mark S
The OP proposes that the function of past and present cultural moral norms is solving cooperation problems. — Mark S
any kind of egregious potential human behavior that can be assessed as right or wrong, regardless of any cooperative components — Tom Storm
If you have no desire to resolve such disputes, you would not be a good person to associate with. OK. — Mark S
Sure, ethics has grown far beyond cooperation strategies to include answers to broader questions such as “What is good?”, “How should I live?”, and “What are my obligations?” — Mark S
In contrast, the spontaneous feeling of satisfaction and optimism in the cooperative (moral) company of friends and family is a primary source of durable happiness for most people. — Mark S
Cultural moral norms are arguably heuristics (usually reliable but fallible rules of thumb) for subcomponents of strategies that solve cooperation problems. — Mark S
You're acting like morality exists just to solve problems of cooperation, and this is just entirely lacking in nuance, it's rarely that simple, or innocent. — Judaka
What about its limits? This observation’s usefulness in resolving moral disputes is limited by its silence on important ethical questions. It is silent about what our ultimate moral goals either ‘are’ or ought to be and what we imperatively ought to do. It is silent about who should be in our “circle of moral concern” (as Peter Singer describes it) and who (or what) can be ignored or exploited. And except regarding cooperation with other people, the observation is silent concerning:
1) How should I live?
2) What is good?
3) What are my obligations? — Mark S
But rather than the downfall you see, its lack of normative claims is its power. It provides a culturally useful basis for resolving common moral disputes (as described in the OP) without the necessity for any agreement on moral premises or normativity. — Mark S
But is that what we ought to do? — Banno
This knowledge can help resolve disputes about cultural moral norms because it provides an objective basis for:
1) Not following moral heuristics (such as the Golden Rule or “Do not steal, lie, or kill”) when they will predictably fail in their function of solving cooperation problems such as in war and, relevant to the Golden Rule, when tastes differ.
2) Revealing the exploitative component of domination moral norms and the arbitrary origins of marker strategies.
3) Piercing the mysticism of religion and cultural heritage that protects moral norms from rational discussion by revealing that cultural moral norms have natural, not mystical, origins.
4) Refining cultural moral norms to be more harmonious with our moral sense (because our moral sense also tracks cooperation strategies). — Mark S
Does MACS define what we imperatively ought to do? No, of course not. I have no reasons to believe such imperative oughts ever have or ever will exist.
Does MACS define what all (or virtually all) well-informed, rational people would advocate as moral in their society? I argue it does, and is therefore normative, in my post “Normativity of Morality as Cooperation Strategies”. — Mark S
Does MACS define what we imperatively ought to do? No, of course not. I have no reasons to believe such imperative oughts ever have or ever will exist.
Does MACS define what all (or virtually all) well-informed, rational people would advocate as moral in their society? I argue it does, and is therefore normative, in my post “Normativity of Morality as Cooperation Strategies”. — Mark S
Your theory does not tell us what we ought do — Banno
You are referring back to one of your other threads, which shows that the three ought be merged.By Gert’s definition of normativity... — Mark S
There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be used in two distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense. More particularly, the term “morality” can be used either
* descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
* normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational people. — Gert
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