Implications for Morality as Cooperation Strategies of Nazis cooperating to do evil

Mark S

Morality as Cooperation Strategies refers to empirical observations showing that cultural moral norms and our intuitive moral judgments are parts of strategies to solve cooperation problems.

Does the fact that people can and do cooperate to do evil, as the Nazis did, affect the cultural usefulness and philosophical relevance of the observations that underly Morality as Cooperation Strategies? Does the existence of cooperation to do evil imply that “Morality is not cooperation”?

I’ve been replying to such questions by pointing out that
• Morality as Cooperation Strategies defines moral ‘means’ (emphasized by my term Morality as Cooperation Strategies rather than the common term in the literature Morality as Cooperation), and
• Morality as Cooperation Strategies is essentially silent about the morality of moral ‘ends’ or goals (I’ll explain “essentially silent” below)

Thereby, we can understand that a Nazi soldier acted morally when jumping on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers, even though his sacrifice served an evil goal of domination and exploitation of outgroups. However, this response was unsatisfying for some.

Considering a higher level of causation may help. Understanding the cooperation/exploitation dilemma that morality’s cooperation strategies solve may provide a more satisfying answer.

What problem is Morality as Cooperation Strategies solving? Morality as Cooperation Strategies exists because its strategies solve a cooperation/exploitation dilemma innate to our physical universe.

In our universe, cooperation can produce many more benefits than individual effort. But cooperation exposes one to exploitation.

For example, I can initiate cooperation by helping someone today with the expectation they will reciprocate. Unfortunately, exploitation by not reciprocating help is almost always a short-term winning strategy and sometimes is in the long term. Also, exploitation by harming others to benefit yourself is almost always a short-term winning strategy and can be in the long-term as when a cooperative ingroup exploits a less powerful outgroup.

This is bad news because exploitation discourages future cooperation, destroys those potential benefits, and eventually, everybody loses. All life forms in the universe, from the beginning to the end of time, face this universal cooperation/exploitation dilemma.

Our ancestors faced this dilemma. They solved it by chancing across the parts of cooperation strategies we refer to as intuitive moral judgments and cultural moral norms. The benefits of cooperation these cooperation strategies produced encoded them in the biology underlying our moral senses and in our cultural norms.

What principles underly our intuitive moral judgments and cultural moral norms?
• Behaviors that solve cooperation problems are moral
• Behaviors that create cooperation problems are immoral

These principles define the morality of behaviors and, therefore, moral ‘means’.

The principles are almost silent about moral ends, but not entirely. Moral ends (goals) achieved by creating cooperation problems (as the Nazi’s did by exploiting outgroups) are innately immoral by Morality as Cooperation Strategies underlying principles. Ends achieved by exploitation are innately immoral because they contradict the function of morality – solving the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.

Therefore, the fact that people can and do cooperate to do evil, as the Nazis did, does not reduce the cultural usefulness and philosophical relevance of the empirical observations that underly Morality as Cooperation Strategies. Instead, Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains why the Nazis' evil goals based on exploitation were innately evil - they created cooperation/exploitation dilemma problems rather than solving them.

Of course, there is a lot more to morality than Morality as Cooperation Strategies can factually tell us. For example, who ‘ought’ to be in our circle of moral concern (as Peter Singer likes to put it) and what should our moral goals be (that do not require exploiting others)? And there is much, much more to answering ethical questions such as “How should I live?”, “What is good?”, and “What are my obligations?” than Morality as Cooperation Strategies can tell us.

But the narrow focus of Morality as Cooperation Strategies on the morality of cultural moral norms and our intuitive moral judgments appears to be at least culturally useful and I would argue is philosophically relevant.

Have I convinced you that people cooperating to do evil, as the Nazis did, is not a sound argument against the cultural usefulness of Morality as Cooperation Strategies?

noAxioms

Does the fact that people can and do cooperate to do evil, as the Nazis did, — Mark S

You seem to be mixing multiple cultural standards in the same statement. If the Nazi culture cooperates to purify the racial mixture of the members of that culture, then acts to attain that goal are not 'evil' by that standard, only by the standard of those not part of the Nazi culture.
So to make statements like this referencing multiple sets values, one needs to include explicit cultural references, such as:
"Does the fact that people can and do cooperate to attain the cultural goal of those people as the Nazis did, seen as evil by a different culture, affect the cultural usefulness ..."

I'm a relationalist, so I always am sensitive to such details.

Andrew4Handel

I think that morality has a tautology problem.

For example a lot of words refer to things like "Cat" and "Kitchen sink" and mental state words like "Pain" and "Colour".

It is not clear what "morality" refers to and it seems that it refers to whatever you want it to quite arbitrarily.

I don't think that moral language can refer to anything concrete unless it refers to some kind of metaphysical moral domain or transcendent god given or quasi religious laws. That is why it seems that what you attach the term to usually is an arbitrary preference but with no inherent metaphysical moral properties.

In some sense and as Hans-Georg Moeller roughly says in one of his "carefree wandering" videos using moral language can be harmful and imbue destructive acts with a moral credibility. The Nazis can invoke moral sentiment in their actions as they did. It is a recipe for sanctioning actions without due warrant or scrutiny I suppose.

Tom Storm

↪Mark S

What principles underly our intuitive moral judgments and cultural moral norms?
• Behaviors that solve cooperation problems are moral
• Behaviors that create cooperation problems are immoral

These principles define the morality of behaviors and, therefore, moral ‘means’.

The principles are almost silent about moral ends, but not entirely. Moral ends (goals) achieved by creating cooperation problems (as the Nazi’s did by exploiting outgroups) are innately immoral by Morality as Cooperation Strategies underlying principles. Ends achieved by exploitation are innately immoral because they contradict the function of morality – solving the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.

Therefore, the fact that people can and do cooperate to do evil, as the Nazis did, does not reduce the cultural usefulness and philosophical relevance of the empirical observations that underly Morality as Cooperation Strategies. Instead, Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains why the Nazis' evil goals based on exploitation were innately evil - they created cooperation/exploitation dilemma problems rather than solving them. — Mark S

To my taste this section would benefit from clearer wording and exposition. Perhaps also some examples.

Are you saying that any behavior which creates cooperation problems is immoral? Can you define cooperation problem?

Would not cooperation problems also stem from groups in society who hold different values? How does this method manage pluralism? For instance - how do we manage the competing groups who hold to religious views and consider things like sex before marriage and homosexuality immoral? Remember these are determined by 'God', not by cooperation.

How does your model address such dilemmas - is it sufficiently flexible to incorporate such religious differences, or does it rely on society to embrace secularism, or call on religions to change their values?

Mark S

↪noAxioms

noAxioms — noAxioms

I am not familiar with moral relationalism (moral relationism?).

But yes, descriptively moral behaviors (behaviors advocated by cultural moralities) are diverse, contradictory, and strange to outsiders. What is (descriptively) evil is culturally dependent.

I can agree with your comment “acts to attain that goal are not 'evil' by that standard” if the subject is what is descriptively moral, but not if the subject is what is universally moral and immoral. Here, universally moral refers to being moral in the sense of fulfilling the function of human morality, solving cooperation/exploitation dilemmas, and immoral if creating those cooperation problems within the group.

So what did the Nazis do that was objectively evil and not simply evil in virtually every other culture’s judgment?

Nazis lies within the group (German society) about the imaginary threat Jews posed to the ingroup and the moral superiority of that “Aryan” ingroup were evil in an objective sense. Those lies were objectively evil because they created cooperation problems (the opposite of the function of human morality) within the group rather than solving them. (“Human morality” refers to past and present cultural moral norms and our moral sense’s judgments and does not include lies and coercion that advocate and enforce those cultural moral norms.)

Your comment pointed out I needed to clarify that it is the creation and enforcement of moral norms within a group that creates an exploited outgroup that is universally evil.

Mark S

It is not clear what "morality" refers to and it seems that it refers to whatever you want it to quite arbitrarily.

I don't think that moral language can refer to anything concrete unless it refers to some kind of metaphysical moral domain or transcendent god given or quasi religious laws. That is why it seems that what you attach the term to usually is an arbitrary preference but with no inherent metaphysical moral properties. — Andrew4Handel

I like the scientific approach to understanding what morality ‘is’ because it avoids the ambiguity problem about moral language you mention.

We can use the normal methods of science to understand the data set of known past and present cultural moral norms and our moral sense's judgments. That the hypothesis Morality as Cooperation Strategies is able to explain virtually all the commonalities and differences of such a huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set robustly supports this hypothesis' scientific truth.

Of course, science is still essentially silent about what we imperatively ought to do (ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences). But simply understanding what human morality 'is' can be culturally and philosophically useful.

Benj96

It is not clear what "morality" refers to and it seems that it refers to whatever you want it to quite arbitrarily. — Andrew4Handel

Morality refers to minimising harm.

noAxioms

I am not familiar with moral relationalism (moral relationism?). — Mark S

In the topic of morals, it is usually referred to as moral relativiism. I use the words interchangeably since I take a relational view of almost anything (relational quantum mechanics, time, relational ontology, etc). Morals is part of that. Morals seem relative to a specific society or culture, and members outside the society/
culture in question cannot be held to that society's moral standards.

I can agree with your comment “acts to attain that goal are not 'evil' by that standard” if the subject is what is descriptively moral, but not if the subject is what is universally moral and immoral.

Exactly. There seems to be no evidence of a universal (objective) morality, so I'm good with the statement.

Here, universally moral refers to being moral in the sense of fulfilling the function of human morality, solving cooperation/exploitation dilemmas, and immoral if creating those cooperation problems within the group.

'Within the group' makes it sound relative to the group. 'Human morality' makes it relative to humans. These are all being expressed in relational terms. I see no universal code being violated by any of this. But that's just me.

Nazis lies within the group (German society) about the imaginary threat Jews posed to the ingroup and the moral superiority of that “Aryan” ingroup were evil in an objective sense.

There you go. Like almost every country, they put out false propaganda against a subset of their society. That's probably evil by most codes. I can't think of a country that doesn't do it. Certainly not my own (USA), especially since open-hate of <those that aren't exactly you> was legitimized by the far right.
Who supports that movement? The 'moral' church crowd of course.

Andrew4Handel

Morality refers to minimising harm. — Benj96

Why? That seems arbitrary and tautologous where the term morality is attached randomly to one set of behaviours or concepts. We can reduce harm without asserting it has an extra moral character.

It is a form of utilitarianism that has led to extreme or absurd conclusions such as killing one healthy person to save a hundred and hence not valuing individual life.

Or antinatalism and related positions where extinction is preferable to life because of the inevitability of harms associated with life (I actually support the antinatalist conclusion that life is too harmful to warrant proliferating.)

Then there are issues like consent that don't fit into this picture. Should something be imposed on a person or people without their consent for the greater good . It then shows that we have an array of non harm related moral concerns. Including self determination, character, obligations etc

Mark S

↪noAxioms

There you go. Like almost every country, they put out false propaganda against a subset of their society. That's probably evil by most codes. I can't think of a country that doesn't do it. Certainly not my own (USA), especially since open-hate of <those that aren't exactly you> was legitimized by the far right.
Who supports that movement? The 'moral' church crowd of course. — noAxioms

I am familiar with moral relativism. It had not occurred to me that the explanatory power of Morality as Cooperation Strategies for why cultural moral norms differ could be of interest to moral relativists.

Do you see any hope that moral relativists might be open to the idea of moral universals?

noAxioms

Do you see any hope that moral relativists might be open to the idea of moral universals? — Mark S

Some (members) are not open to any alternative ideas, be they concerning morals or something else. I try to always be open to anything, as evidenced by the fact that I've certainly changed views from time to time based on weight of a good argument, especially weight of an argument that drives a certain point of view to contradiction.
On that note, suppose there were no moral universals. Can you drive that premise to contradiction without begging said universals?

Andrew4Handel

That the hypothesis Morality as Cooperation Strategies is able to explain virtually all the commonalities and differences of such a huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set robustly supports this hypothesis' scientific truth. — Mark S

It doesn't explain my moral values and also my moral skepticism.

I grew up with a biblical morality enforced on me which included edicts such as don't shop on a Sunday and Women shouldn't cut their hair or wear make up. Radio and Television were viewed as immoral. My own intuition as a child until now is that hitting a child is wrong but that used to be legal and widely supported and I was in a minority.

Cooperation itself is not inherently moral unless you arbitrarily attach that label to it.

I think it is irrelevant what commonalities may be found on a motivated/biased analysis of data on moral beliefs. Something is not true based on majority opinion.

This seems to me like a way to manipulate people towards an enforced collective goal that you are asserting we all share. It seems like social engineering that will find ways to silence dissenters.
Lots of elements of morality are diluted by making it synonymous with what appears to be subconscious cooperation strategies. Such as autonomy and personal conscience.

180 Proof

minimising harm — Benj96

:up:

↪Mark S

"Cooperation" itself (e.g. Nazis' "die Endlösung") is only a means which doesn't entail an ethical end (i.e. flourishing / well-being). To wit:

Means and ends ~~must~~ [can] be adjusted to one another so that the latter is not undermined or invalidated by the former while the former is calibrated to enact the latter. A version of reflective equilibrium. — 180 Proof

Also ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/777275

Hanover

This is bad news because exploitation discourages future cooperation, destroys those potential benefits, and eventually, everybody loses. — Mark S

I'm not entirely following this. In legal parlance, we refer to cooperation within a criminal enterprise as "conspiracy," something no one would suggest is moral simply because teamwork was involved.

In your Nazi example, do you suggest the cooperation among Nazis was immoral because it would not result in return cooperation from the Jews? I think it would, albeit involuntary (coercive) cooperation. Draconian laws typically result in compliance.

It would seem we must identify a moral end worth achieving if we wish to judge the morality of the means. The way I've read your OP, you seem to be judging the pragmatic efficacy of the cooperative effort in yielding future cooperation as your basis for morality.

Are you suggesting that cooperative murder would be moral if it enhanced future cooperative efforts, or do you refuse to entertain that hypothetical because you think it logically impossible that murder could enhance future cooperation? If so, why?

Or have I gotten lost in misunderstanding here?

hypericin

↪Mark S

I don't think the case of Nazis defeats the idea of morality as cooperation strategies. It is a feature of modern life that the scope of morality has expanded far beyond the bounds within which moral behavior evolved. Within this broad scope, there are multiple levels, so that one can be cooperative with a profoundly uncooperative venture, as with the Nazi soldier. The Nazis were profoundly uncooperative on the large scale, they had no problem killing and destroying en masse in order to achieve their selfish aims, which is why they are branded "evil".

The challenge of living a moral life today is aligning one's actions to be cooperative on a local and global scale, or if such cannot be done, to resist cooperating on a local level with a globally uncooperative enterprise.

Mark S

Means and ends must be adjusted to one another so that the latter is not undermined or invalidated by the former while the former is calibrated to enact the latter. A version of reflective equilibrium. — 180 Proof

You are making an ought claim (about means and ends) of the normal kind in moral philosophy. Perhaps it is either a conditional ought based on a worthy shared goal or perhaps based on a coherence argument? I am not ready to argue it is incorrect. Also, I am a fan of John Rawl’s reflective equilibrium as perhaps the best guidance we have for defining just societies.

But my Opening Post here and my other threads are about a different category of thing. I keep thinking that category difference is clear, but our discussions continue to show it is not. That is my fault.

My OP and other threads are essentially about the category of what ‘is’ regarding the origins and function of cultural moral norms and our moral sense (the science of morality), and how that science can be useful.

What are the implications of this science for moral philosophy?

I am still explaining 1) what science can tell us about why cultural moral norms and our moral sense exist and 2) how these scientific truth claims can be culturally useful.

However, explaining how this science can be culturally useful based only on its scientific truth claims has not been successful here. Perhaps it is time to focus on this science’s implications for moral philosophy. Perhaps the implications for moral philosophy and how this science is culturally useful are best explained together.

Mark S

That the hypothesis Morality as Cooperation Strategies is able to explain virtually all the commonalities and differences of such a huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set robustly supports this hypothesis' scientific truth.
— Mark S

It doesn't explain my moral values and also my moral skepticism. — Andrew4Handel

Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains the primary reason why past and present cultural moral norms exist. There is no claim it explains your moral values. Your moral values are not part of the data set it explains.

Mark S

Are you suggesting that cooperative murder would be moral if it enhanced future cooperative efforts, or do you refuse to entertain that hypothetical because you think it logically impossible that murder could enhance future cooperation? If so, why? — Hanover

Your subject sounds like what we somehow ought to do .

My subject is 1) what science can tell us about the primary reason that cultural moral norms and our moral sense exist - they advocate and motivate parts of strategies that solve the cooperation/exploit dilemma and 2) how this science can be culturally useful.

There are no innate moral oughts connected to this science. What we morally ought to do is still up to us. The science of morality only tells us past and present cultural moral norms are about cooperating to solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.

Could murder be a part of a strategy to solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma?

Killing could be, and has been, part of punishment strategies. Perhaps some definitions of murder would make it impossible for it to be part of a strategy to solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.

Mark S

The challenge of living a moral life today is aligning one's actions to be cooperative on a local and global scale, or if such cannot be done, to resist cooperating on a local level with a globally uncooperative enterprise. — hypericin

:up:

Benj96

Why? That seems arbitrary and tautologous where the term morality is attached randomly to one set of behaviours or concepts — Andrew4Handel

Morality arbitrary? No. Try telling that to anyone you wish to do harm to. Try insisting on that to the law/legal system, or society at large. I think one would find such a sentiment as undesired and ill-accepted at large.

If one were the only thing that existed, the only conscious being that mattered, then I could consider morality as being entirely arbitrary, irrelevant and tautologous. Afterall, there would be no one to be immoral toward.

However we don't exist in isolation. And we are not alone nor totally free to do as we like. Whether one likes it or not we live in a reality with more than one sentient/aware being that can suffer/be harmed, and can have differing opinions and views. That is society. So in the context of society, and the things that can harm it, morality certainly is not arbitrary. Not even close.

One can say this is "imposed on them." But I would simply reply with "deal with it". It is how it is. It is imposed equally on all people. Therefore that is nothing special or unique to any individual.

Benj96

antinatalism and related positions where extinction is preferable to life because of the inevitability of harms associated with life (I actually support the antinatalist conclusion that life is too harmful to warrant proliferating.) — Andrew4Handel

Anti-natalism is extremely biased. If life is good and beneficial, antinatalism fails in its arguments. If life is bad or harmful, antinatalism is warranted.

But who has more choice in determining that? The living or the dead? Having choice trumps not having it, so I would say life is more powerful and authoritative than death. And thus more beneficial. The living have control. The dead cannot harm, nor can they impose, nor can they make choices. The dead are just that, irrelevant and totally without any control or authority over the living other than what they stand for - that simply, we will all die some day.

Thus life is better in that you have freedoms that death does not afford. The living can choose to continue to live, or they can choose to die. The dead cannot choose to live nor die. They are totally impotent.

I am living. I enjoy life. I think living is good/better than being dead. How do you reconcile "me" with antinatalism?

So long as I and people like me exist, Anti-natalism is reduced to a hypocritical state of constant cynicism and complaint. A cult of mass suicide idealists.

Trying to impose on everyone that enjoys their lives, and want to make a positive or beneficial contribution, that they ought not to, that they instead should feel ashamed or guilty for not wanting to die, I would say, is immoral to the most extreme level.

To that I say "deal with it" or "cry me a river". The living are here to stay. Pro-extinction groups have always and will always be powerless over the majority. The proof is in that none of them have ever in the history of mankind nor ever will in the future of mankind convince ever single of 8 billion people to commit mass suicide because "life might be harmful sometimes".

Do you really want to subscribe to that state of helplessness and ineffectuality?

Get over it. We get it. Life is harmful. But it's a risk our intellect and optimism can and does repeatedly overcome as we progress in medicine/health, technology and law.

An antinatalist is someone who continues to lives but desires total anhilation (a hypocrite). God forbid any such individual finds themselves in control of nuclear warheads.

Judaka

↪Benj96

Morality refers to minimising harm. — Benj96

By defining morality as solely minimising harm, you're ignoring the role of other vital concepts within morality - the application of which may justify harmful acts. Morality justifies harmful acts and characterises them as necessary and reasonable. If I give examples of justifications for harm that fall within your moral framework, you will likely protest and tell me that these are absurd examples because they are necessary and overall good, and lead to moral outcomes. If I give examples for justifications of harm that fall outside of your moral framework, then you will call them absurd and clearly wrong. Based on your values and interpretation, you will consider a situation harmful while others won't. "Harm" is thus itself a part of a moral framework and not an objective and measurable thing that morality aims to reduce.

Language & morality are intertwined. If an act is morally wrong, it will be described using the appropriate language to convey it. So, we could agree that child abuse is evil, but the agreement is moot. Since it'd be inappropriate to label a reasonable way of treating a child as "child abuse", one would only use that label to describe what is in one's view an unreasonable and immoral way of treating a child.

There is no question that Nazism contained a strong moral element to it. Devout Nazis saw themselves as righteous defenders of the German homeland and German people through the lens of their racist ideology. Defining morality through the lens of one's own moral framework will only lead to unreasonableness and prevent potentially rewarding introspection. If we only view morality through the lens of our own moral framework, the result will be unrealistically rosy and agreeable. Instead, we should learn from the past and act proactively against the potential dangers of our own moral frameworks.

↪Mark S

Morality evolved within the context of tribes, and where morality involves cooperation, it was not designed to be species-wide. Nazis did collaborate as a group against other groups, it's that simple. You're interpreting things in the way that suits you, while totally ignoring the perspective of the people you're talking about. You seem to really struggle with the subjectivity of language. The "problems" they're cooperating to solve are defined by them, the "problems" they created are being defined by you. You're describing two completely different things using the same word and mistakenly comparing them as though "problems" exist and can be defined objectively.

Every one of your threads just completely misses how language is a form of personal expression. It is 100% part of a moral framework to determine what things are "problems" and what things aren't by defining good and evil, justified and wrong, fair and unfair and so on. Every single one of us can agree "Problems are bad, we should solve all problems" - it's just a completely meaningless agreement, why don't you get that? Perspective is critical, you can't just pretend like it doesn't exist to unify everyone.

Andrew4Handel

So long as I and people like me exist, Anti-natalism is reduced to a hypocritical state of constant cynicism and complaint. A cult of mass suicide idealists. — Benj96

At least 700,000 people commit suicide each year and I suppose it is convenient for others that they don't stick around and complain and demand a solution to what ailed them.

Antinatalism is a logical conclusion of a harm based morality and other extreme utilitarian calculations. No one should have the right to inflict suffering on others. So your harm based morality seems to involve ignoring or cancelling out dissenting voices. I think you need another basis for your morality to preserve procreating as acceptable.

I was just pointing out the conclusions of a harm based morality and you have shown the controversy of who does the calculating and what factors they include.

But my own brother died after being diagnosed with primary progressive MS which left him paralysed and he was tube fed and could only communicate by blinking and then died at 47. One plus side is that he never gave up and didn't want to die but he did say he would not have children if they would inherit his condition.
But nobody can say he was not seriously harmed and had his life cut short prematurely. And when I am enjoying things it never makes me feel like taking the risk of exposing someone else to this kind of harm or any harm. My pleasure does no justify anyone else's suffering. So I think the act of creating children is fatal for certain moral positions in my opinion.

I am glad you are enjoying your own existence and hope that may remain a perpetual state.

Andrew4Handel

Morality arbitrary? — Benj96

But morality does not mean harm reduction or "do no harm" that is the arbitrary linking of the word morality to another phenomena in my opinion. Harm and harm reduction don't need extra moral terms attached to them to point to something.

In one sense the word morality doesn't refer to anything it is rather attached to a set of attitudes and values which people disagree on.

As with the antinatalism thing a lot of these disagreements are intractable.

180 Proof

Antinatalism is a logical conclusion of a harm based morality and other ~~extreme~~ [absurd] utilitarian calculations ... — Andrew4Handel

Maybe ad absurdum (e.g. "destroying the village in order to save the village" :roll:) but it's not an ethical conclusion because moral utility only applies to either 'how to minimize the suffering' or 'how to maximize the happiness' of actual persons and not how to avoid – eliminate – 'the problem' of moral utility itself.

↪Andrew4Handel

Assuming that ethics is the study of reasons for moral judgments and conduct of 'how persons can adaptively (ergo ought to) treat each other', what do you think of flourishing (i.e. well-being) as an ethical goal? And 'reducing harm' as an optimally moral (i.e. normative) means to that end? Do you believe, Andrew, that there are not any sound reasons for morality and that it's only a matter of personal 'sentiments' or arbitrary (relative) customs? :chin:

NB: To clarify my questions above, substitute sharing the commons for ethics and non-zerosum for moral (or public health for ethics and hygenic-sanitary for moral).

Andrew4Handel

Do you believe, Andrew, that there are not any sound reasons for morality and that it's only a matter of personal 'sentiments' or arbitrary (relative) customs? — 180 Proof

What you seem to be referring to is problem solving. I believe there are optimal ways to solve problems but I don't think that this requires the label moral.

What does the term moral add to a description of normal altruistic and cooperative behaviour? Does it make it an obligation or is it a label of praise?

We do not tend to refer to all cooperative and altruistic acts as moral such as any job that benefits the public and their welfare. Morality usually entails something beyond a description of an action to praising behaviour as having a special quasi supernatural character or in the case of religions as warranting afterlife reward or karma.

I have a problem with justifying ought claims and with whether any of our behaviour on earth is fundamentally meaningful.
I have a nihilistic attitude in the face of death which seems to eradicate the meaning of temporary activities here and now. In religion and the way I was brought up there was something transcendent to aspire to. I feel like life which always culminates in death is an insoluble problem. We can only alleviate suffering and slow down the dying process.

I do think an actual afterlife would make a big difference to morality especially for karmic reincarnation views. It seems possible that humans created society on partially supernatural premises not on atheistic ideas or the notion we have just one life an not transcendent meaning or values.

Andrew4Handel

I believe that the outcome of a thorough moral calculation would be to condemn wide spread swathes of behaviours and why not?

Are we assuming a moral calculation would applaud the current state of affairs?

180 Proof

What does the term moral add to a description of normal altruistic and cooperative behaviour? — Andrew4Handel

Semantics without substance. Non sequitur, Andrew. Don't be evasive.

We do not tend to refer to all cooperative and altruistic acts as moral ...

Well, since I haven't referred "to all cooperative and altruistic acts as moral", this statement is another non sequitur. Apparently you cannot directly answer my questions.

I believe that the outcome of a thorough moral calculation ... Are we assuming a moral calculation ... — Andrew4Handel

Okay, we're talking past each other. I understand ethics as a form of reflective thinking of which moral behaviors are normative / habitual enactments and not "calculations" (i.e. instrumental problem solving) as you apparently believe.

Andrew4Handel

↪180 Proof

I mentioned elsewhere that I was brought up to believe that radio and television were immoral and shopping on Sunday and women cutting their hair etc.

That seems to prove to me morality is just a label affixed to certain behaviours and things you want to control or prohibit and it is very effective.

My understanding of moral terminology is how it has been used upon me so I am not sure what other moral sense there is. If I was reared differently maybe I would have developed different moral intuitions but I can't know.

I don't have the authority to dictate what other people ought to do but I do voice my personal preferences. By normative do you mean oughts and preferences we ought impose on society. Objectively desirable standards extricable from the natural state of affairs? The most common evaluations of behaviour?

Can you think of an area of my life from which I should have developed the correct moral intuitions? Certainly not parents, school, church or Margaret Thatcher's society that I grew up in.

180 Proof

↪Andrew4Handel

I think you should read some actual works of moral philosophy (there's 2,500 years worth), even some contemporary moral psychology, and then compare what you learn with your so-called "moral intuitions" in order to better inform your views on these topics. Just my two bits.

Andrew4Handel

↪180 Proof

I did a degree in Philosophy and Psychology so I am aware of the major positions in moral Philosophy .

Such as deontology, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, utilitarianism, consequentialism and objections to each position etc. The trolley problem. The is-ought problem and so on.

I find moral error theory the most compelling.

The fact that there are competing moral standpoints raises the question of how you choose between them.

Implications for Morality as Cooperation Strategies of Nazis cooperating to do evil

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