• Mark S
    264
    This post describes the status of science of morality investigations, plus my views on how those studies relate to each other, can be expanded on, and can and cannot tell us about right and wrong.

    The science of morality approaches morality both from the “bottom-up” by looking for cross-cultural universals within descriptively moral norms and judgments, and from the “top-down” by applying game theory to understand the cooperation strategies that have enabled us to become such an incredibly successful social species. I’ll argue that both perspectives merge to a unified, robust understanding of cultural moral norms and our moral sense’s judgments as parts of cooperation strategies.

    The “bottom-up” approach begins with gathering data about what people in different cultures say is moral and immoral. These surveys produce a superficially chaotic data set with diverse, contradictory, and strange elements. In philosophical terms, these surveys gather information about descriptively moral norms(ref6) and judgments (norms and judgments considered moral in at least one culture).

    Oliver Curry and Jonathan Haidt are the two best-known bottom-up science of morality investigators. They have proposed separate theories about moral cross-cultural universals – the subset of moral norms and judgments that are empirically universal to all studied societies.

    Oliver Curry’s “Morality as Cooperation” theory3 describes moral universals as solutions to seven cooperation problems regarding family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness, and property rights. Curry proposes that behaviors that are part of solving these problems are normative – what people ought to do.

    Jonathan Haidt’s “Moral Foundation Theory”4 summarizes moral universals as five circumstances (others have been proposed since) that universally trigger moral judgments: (1) harm (reducing)/care, (2) fairness/reciprocity, (3) ingroup/loyalty, (4) authority/respect, and (5) purity/sanctity. Haidt proposes that behaviors that maintain these circumstances are normative5.

    There is some overlap. Both agree with the consensus among science of morality investigators, that morality is about maintaining and increasing cooperation2,3,8,11,12.

    Are Curry and Haidt proposing competing theories or just different perspectives on the same phenomena? And what is the origin and function of norms and judgments that are not cross-culturally moral? These questions will be easier to answer viewed from the “top-down” perspective.

    Martin Nowak’s top-down approach uses game theory to identify five mechanisms7,8 for the evolution of cooperation: kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection. These mechanisms are as innate to our universe as the mathematics of game theory they are based on. They were available to our ancestors and were selected for and encoded in our biology and cultures by the benefits of cooperation they produced. Species that have not encoded these mechanisms into their biology and cultural norms would find it difficult or impossible to form highly cooperative societies.

    The top-down approach predicts that some of Nowak’s mechanisms will necessarily be part of ‘morality’ for all highly cooperative species. The top-down approach thus enables us to make claims about what is universally moral for all intelligent species, not just what is cross-culturally moral for people (the limit of universality the bottom-up approach can claim).

    What about descriptively moral norms that are not cross-culturally moral? Why do they exist? Are “universal” cultural moral norms and judgments best understood as moral absolutes or what? And why do people experience the strong intuition that what they believe is moral is what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences and violators deserve punishment?

    Again, the top-down, game theory perspective on morality is informative and can explain that:

    1) Exploitation of outgroups by ingroups (slaves must obey their masters, women must be submissive to men, and homosexuality is evil) have been considered descriptively moral10,11 because these norms can increase the benefits for an ingroup cooperatively exploiting outgroups. This ingroup cooperation (even if it is to exploit an outgroup) matches one of the templets encoded in our moral sense for recognizing descriptively moral behavior.

    2) Marker norms (including sex and food taboos plus dress and grooming ‘moral’ norms) exist because they can improve the success of reciprocity strategies by enabling people to identify more reliably cooperative people who are committed members of their ingroups.

    3) Versions of the Golden Rule are virtually universal in cultural moralities and are sometimes thought of as moral absolutes. Science can explain that versions of the Golden Rule are part of essentially all cultural moralities not because they are moral absolutes but because they are heuristics (usually reliable but fallible rules of thumb like virtually all moral norms) for initiating indirect reciprocity, perhaps the most powerful cooperation strategy known.

    4) Our illusion of morality’s strange bindingness regardless of needs and preferences exists1,2,9 because our illusion of imperative bindingness is part of our motivation for punishing moral norm violators. Punishment is a necessary component of the cooperation strategies that make up human morality2. This illusion was encoded into the biology underlying our moral sense by the reproductive fitness benefits it produced.

    As described above, the science of morality has made wonderful progress in the last several decades in understanding cultural moral norms and our moral sense.

    However, I argue that both the existing top-down and the bottom-up approaches can be further expanded to reveal even more useful information.

    The following claims may be implied in the literature, but I have not seen them explicitly stated.

    What problem do Nowak’s five mechanisms solve?

    I argue they all solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma, a higher-level problem that is innate to our universe. This dilemma is how to sustainably obtain the benefits of cooperation without exploitation destroying future benefits of cooperation. This is a dilemma because exploitation is almost always the winning strategy in the short term and can be in the long term.

    Identifying the cooperation/exploitation dilemma as the ultimate source of human morality suggests that the absence of exploitation is what separates what is universally moral from what is merely descriptively moral. Hence:

    • Descriptive moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies.
    • Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.

    Due to their origins in the mathematics of game theory, these principles are as species, environment, and time independent as the mathematics they are based on.

    As a check, are these principles consistent with what we know about human morality?

    Yes. Descriptively moral norms gathered as part of the bottom-up approach appear to be parts of cooperation strategies. And none of the cross-cultural universals – the seven moral problems identified by Curry and five circumstances identified by Haidt - include exploitation as a component. That the above two simple moral principles can explain such a huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set supports them as the basis of a highly robust theory of morality. (The data set they explain includes past and present cultural moral norms, Curry’s and Haidt’s moral universals, and Nowak’s five mechanisms.)

    Competing explanations for cultural moralities such as “reducing harm”, “conflict resolution”, “maximizing happiness”, “increasing reproductive fitness”, and “cultural relativism” are not even remotely competitive in explaining this superficially chaotic data set.

    Proposed counterexamples to the two principles are always welcome.

    What can the science of morality tell us?

    The science of morality can tell us the origin and function of descriptively moral behaviors and their universally moral subset. The science of morality can also inform us about instrumental oughts of the form “If you desire X and wish to obtain it using a universally moral means, you ought to do Y”. This knowledge can be useful for resolving moral disputes within groups that desire a similar X and wish to use this universally moral means (cooperation that does not exploit others). Like the rest of science, the science of morality cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be or what we ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences.

    I’ll leave further discussion of cultural and philosophical implications for another time.

    1. Blackford, Russell (2016). The Mystery of Moral Authority. Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Bowles, S., Gintis, H. (2011). A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution. Princeton University Press.
    3. Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A problem-centred approach. In T. K. Shackelford & R. D. Hansen (Eds.), The Evolution of Morality. Springer.
    4. Graham, J.; Haidt, J.; Koleva, S.; Motyl, M.; Iyer, R.; Wojcik, S.; Ditto, P.H. (2013). "Moral Foundations Theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism". Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 47: 55–130
    5. Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon.
    6. Harms, W., Skyrms, B. (2010) Evolution of Moral Norms. In Oxford Handbook on the Philosophy of Biology ed. Michael Ruse. Oxford University Press.
    7. Nowak, MA. (2006). Five rules for the evolution of cooperation. Science. 2006 Dec 8.
    8. Nowak, M., Highfield, R. (2011). SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. Free Press.
    9. Ruse, M. and Wilson, E. O. (1991) The Evolution of Ethics, in Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement.
    10. Singer, Peter (1981) The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress. Princeton University Press.
    11. Tooby, J., and Cosmides, L. (2010). Groups in Mind: The Coalitional Roots of War and Morality, from Human Morality & Sociality: Evolutionary & Comparative Perspectives, Henrik Høgh-Olesen (Ed.), Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp. 91-234.
    12. Tomasello, M., & Vaish, A. (2013). Origins of Human Cooperation and Morality. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), 231-255.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    You are on the right track. From my systems science point of view, societies are organised by the dynamic of competition-cooperation. Which is pretty close in meaning to exploitation-cooperation, without the negative moral judgement on the competitive element of being a “selfish” member of a cooperative group.

    So systems theory describes all natural systems - even the universe itself - as being hierarchically organised through the holism of top-down global constraints acting to shape a system’s bottom-up and locally constructing degrees of freedom.

    This makes a system a self-causing or self-organising dynamical balance. Global laws or habits act downwards to limit local action. And this then gives form and purpose to that local action as it now has the right shape, the right material and efficient degrees of freedom, to be the kind of stuff that is going to construct, or rather reconstruct, the global whole and sustain its long run existence.

    So it is a causal loop based on a win/win balancing act. And in societies, that is what a morality attempts to encode. The constraints of a society are the rules around cooperation. They tilt the social collective to stability in the long run. But a society, like any living structure, must have its local individualism, its local freedom, its local creativity, its local random variety, to be able to adapt and evolve.

    Competition keeps the hierarchy dynamic, while cooperation is keeping it stable. And morality has to be finely tuned to producing the balance of the two complementary forces that are best in terms of the degree of adaptability and change that match a society to its larger environment.

    So morality is not universal in its prescriptions, as every human group may need some different balance. But it is universal in its form in the sense that morality is a win/win balancing act where freedom is maximised for the individual within the constraints of a collective code that says what is historically “the right stuff” for reconstructing the society as it largely exists, with enough variety to also evolve in the face of changing challenge.

    Exploitation is speaking to the competitive element of the dynamic, but painting it as something more negative - an issue that needs to be addressed by adding constraints against cheaters.

    The systems view recognises that the individualistic element is the part of an evolving system that provides its lucky accidents. It is the “requisite variety” to use the cybernetic term. So morality is about limits, but also includes ideas around a suitable degree of give and take.

    The big problem in all this is what are then the global goals of a society.

    A science of morality - as in the systems science view - speaks to the general mechanism by which a society can even exist. And so in a minimal sense, existence becomes the natural purpose of a society. Finding the balance that allows for long-run survival is the embodied reason for being - as with any evolutionary story.

    Can a society really have a grander purpose than simply to exist?

    But on the other hand, what does this moral minimalism say about the modern “developed world” which is starting to cook itself in its own fossil fuel fumes?

    Maybe having the general purpose of just continuing to exist as some kind of successful competition-cooperation balance seems plenty grand enough as a life mission. :grin:
  • Mark S
    264
    Exploitation is speaking to the competitive element of the dynamic, but painting it as something more negative - an issue that needs to be addressed by adding constraints against cheaters.apokrisis

    Thanks for your comments.

    The science of morality focuses on cultural moral norms and our moral judgments, which, I have argued above, are parts of cooperation strategies that solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.

    Moral norms about competition arguably fit well into this perspective. Consider people competing in a marathon foot race. If they do not violate the moral norms about fairness (exploitation is essentially unfairness), they can morally compete without exploiting others. Exploitation might be tripping another runner, taking a taxi for part of the run, or poisoning a competitor. So competition is not necessarily exploitative. We can agree as a reciprocity strategy on moral rules for fair competition.

    Competition becomes immoral when it is exploitative. More work is needed to clarify when that is.

    Global warming poses a classic cooperation/exploitation dilemma. It is in everyone’s short-term interest to use the cheapest energy source they have – usually fossil fuels – and advocate for whatever energy source they own, such as fossil fuels. But following that short-term interest will create a disaster for all.

    I am unsure how much good pointing out the fossil fuel company’s moral failings will do. But it is one tool in the toolbox.
  • Banno
    24.7k
    Ninth thread on the same topic; same problem as the first thread:
    At the core, that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate.Banno
  • Janus
    16.2k
    At the core, that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate.Banno

    We ought to cooperate to socially and personally acceptable degrees if we want to live harmoniously in a community.
  • Banno
    24.7k
    Sure. If...

    Ought we want to live harmoniously in a community?
  • Janus
    16.2k
    Probably most do want to. If one doesn't want to there is always the option of living alone in the bush.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Competition becomes immoral when it is exploitative. More work is needed to clarify when that is.Mark S

    One difference is that the norms of cooperation have to be voiced clearly as these must exist in the public space of the social organism. We must hear the collective view being articulated for there to be a global norm.

    But the norms of competition are then the opposite. They are instead defined as the point where differences of view start not to matter. They are the defacto freedoms. They are the give and take which needs no strong public statement because they tend to get policed on a local, more ad hoc, basis.

    So a well-organise moral system is of course sensitive to exploitation – competition of the kind that crosses the line in some way that harms the global regulative order and so can't just be celebrated as a positive contribution to that social order, or even just laughed off as the kind of local difference that doesn't make a difference.

    Thus we have three options to consider under the banner of the local degrees of freedom. There is the positive behaviour we want to amplify, the negative behaviour we want to suppress, but then beyond that, the neutral behaviour where moral norming simply ceases to care.

    The social system has to be organised in a fashion where it can actually arrive at what is neutral as this is then the foundation for starting to make the more complex distinctions in terms of what kinds of competitive actions are positive vs negative. We can start to define exploitation or cheating in opposition to being enterprising and creative because there is the Peircean firstness – the state of action that is just "a difference" and so not yet a "difference that makes a difference" ... because of some further hierarchical level of contextual framing.

    So while norms of cooperation must be publicly stated, the "norms" of competition rest on this assumption of a fundamental neutrality – the spontaneity of chance events that don't in themselves matter one way or another. It is only when they start to encounter a context of top-down judgement that they can even morally matter.

    Do you run your marathon in green shorts or blue? Who could even find a reason to care?

    If a vast amount of such facts can be simply ignored as morally irrelevant, then we start to boil things down to the kind of local or personal facts which could start to matter in a fair marathon race. Like is your cardio superiority due to the lottery of blessed genetics or EPO?
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Ought we want to live harmoniously in a community?Banno

    Here we see the reductionist blundering about, missing the point, as per usual.

    Anthropologist Richard Wrangham makes a good case for how Homo sapiens "self-domesticated" over 300,000 years of hunter~gatherer evolution because the unharmonious males in a small band got knocked off with summary justice. Their genes were eliminated from the tribal pool.

    So is/ought covers the fact that hierarchical order develops over nested spatiotemporal scale. To even exist, a system has to become divided into what it is at any instant and what it ought to be in terms of its own hierarchy of constraints.

    A directionality - a telos - is what has to get built into the fabric of its being. At base, any material state of affairs is falling apart faster than it can pull together. But a living system adds the intelligence to tilt the balance in a generally desired direction. As a metabolic network, all the chemistry is being ratcheted so the body rebuilds fast enough to cease falling apart. It becomes an intentionally self-stabilising entity, or an organism.

    Human morality is just our clunky way of talking about this general system principle. Is and ought are opposed only in the sense of being these complementary limits of a global intent that serves to ratchet the local material variety in a cohesive long-run direction.

    A community has to have a generalised harmony to even exist. As Wrangham argues, this necessity is wired into our genes because we down-regulated our reactive aggression neuro-circuitry to the point we can tolerate the close and constant presence of our fellow humans in ways that chimps can't even imagine.

    The other side of the coin – as there is always the other complementary side to the coin once you depart reductionism – is that humans are still capable of proactive aggression. We can make the big flip from seeing our tribe mates as part of our collective in-group selves and instead now framing our fellow humans as dangerous, alien and "other".

    This explains the paradoxical nature of hunter~gatherer communities who seem both incredibly peaceful, yet can then flip to total war on encountering another tribe. Or as Wrangham says, who will simply combine to agree to kill the tribemate who just happens to offend enough people often enough to need removal from the collective gene pool.

    Wrangham tells how grievances are quietly aired in late night tribe discussions with a gradual "othering" of the annoying character as a sorcerer or bad luck bringer. A decision coalesces. Then a few weeks later there is a hunting party trip. The victim is teased about being brave enough to climb a tall tree and collect the honey. He puts down his weapons and climbs to the top, then looks down to see his weapons have been collected up, the other men stand patiently, a look in their eyes....

    Human morality is built on this neurobiological and sociocultural dynamic of self and other, in-group and out-group, low reactivity and high proactivity.

    It is not about the reductionism which means we can't have both sides of the holistic equation. It is about the fact that this dichotomisation of behavioural state is so sharply poised to go in either direction that it can be a decision taken over any spatiotemporal scale of human organisation.

    To exist, a system has to embody a purpose. There must be an ought, as that is the information, the constraint, that can stabilise what reductively "just is". There can be an actual state of affairs rather than merely a vague uncertainty which is neither here nor there in any factual way.

    Once you have a global ought that is in balance with a local is, then the system is equipped to self-sustain its existence. It knows how to persist.

    Which is why morality seems so important.
  • Mark S
    264
    ↪Mark S Ninth thread on the same topic; same problem as the first thread:
    At the core, that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate.
    — Banno
    Banno

    Why do you imagine that is a problem or, even more bizarrely, that I and others here don't already understand and fully take into account this obvious and elementary fact?

    Are you lost in the illusion that morality can only be understood as what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences? As Michael Ruse seems to delight in pointing out, and as I reference in the post, that illusion is one foisted on us by our genes and encoded in our moral sense because it increased the reproductive fitness benefits of cooperation for our ancestors.

    It is far more culturally useful to understand what morality (referring to cultural moral norms and our moral sense) objectively 'is' as cooperation strategies than to entertain unending speculations about what morality imperatively ought to be.
  • Mark S
    264
    At the core, that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate.
    — Banno

    We ought to cooperate to socially and personally acceptable degrees if we want to live harmoniously in a community.
    Janus
    Right, People commonly desire the benefits of cooperation, are willing to follow moral norms that preserve that cooperation, and can agree on benefits of cooperation to pursue. Understanding morality as cooperation strategies opens a new perspective for refining cultural moral norms to meet human needs better. The illusion of the reality of imperative oughts is an aspect of our evolutionary past. It is not necessary, and is arguably a hindrance, to refining cultural moral norms to increase human flourishing.
  • Banno
    24.7k
    Why do you imagine that is a problem...Mark S

    Just checking the pretence that science tells us what we ought to do, highlighting a point you yourself made, that "...the science of morality cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be".

    There is extensive literature on this other, much more difficult puzzle, unaddressed by your approach.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k
    At the core, that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate.Banno

    This is the base of the top-down/ bottom-up division. The description "that we do cooperate" produces a top-down perspective on morality. However, that "I ought to cooperate" is something that I must feel, and will myself, and this is the basis for a bottom-up perspective on morality.
  • Janus
    16.2k
    Right, and the further question is that, if we don't want to live harmoniously with others, does morality then become altogether redundant for us, or would it only do so if we lived a completely solitary life (a condition which is extremely rare)? This is basically the question as to whether planning to live disharmoniously within society, as a criminal, pedophile or serial killer, for example could ever be a good life strategy.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    ↪Mark S Ninth thread on the same topic; same problem as the first thread:

    At the core, that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate.
    — Banno
    Banno
    :up:
  • Mark S
    264
    Why do you imagine that is a problem...
    — Mark S

    Just checking the pretence that science tells us what we ought to do, highlighting a point you yourself made, that "...the science of morality cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be".

    There is extensive literature on this other, much more difficult puzzle, unaddressed by your approach.
    3 hours ago
    Banno

    There is extensive literature on the subject of imperative oughts? Perhaps you are trying to make a joke again.

    That seemingly bottomless ocean of literature underlies traditional moral philosophy with no resolution to date, no resolution in sight, and no reason to believe there ever will be any resolution. This is not surprising since our strong intuition that imperative oughts exist is an illusion created by our evolutionary history.

    What reason do you have, beyond your intuition, for believing that these 'magic' imperative oughts exist?
  • Mark S
    264
    Do you run your marathon in green shorts or blue? Who could even find a reason to care?apokrisis
    In individual sports, the color of your shorts is irrelevant. In team sports, the color matters - a lot. The color of people's shorts (or uniform) is a quick way to recognize your teammates and an example of a marker strategy.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    You substantiate my point. :up:
  • Mark S
    264
    ↪Mark S You substantiate my point. :up:apokrisis
    Good to hear. Thanks for commenting.
  • Mark S
    264
    All,

    Some of the comments received prompt me to repeat previously made points.

    As described in the OP, Morality as Cooperation Strategies describes objective claims supported by the modern science of morality that:

    • Descriptively moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies.
    • Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.

    Do these moral principles define imperative oughts – what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences? Of course not. You will not find a source of magic oughts in science.

    Is this lack of imperative bindingness a fatal flaw? Again, no.

    For example, the science supporting these principles provides an objective understanding of:

    • A part of “natural goodness” (see Philippa Foot’s work on moral goodness as an aspect of what makes us good as human beings and how this knowledge can supply us with useful “hypothetical imperatives” - no imperative oughts required, 180 Proof).
    • Why we share a strong intuition that imperative oughts exist and why that intuition is an illusion encoded in our genes.
    • Moral ‘means’ for accomplishing what we understand to be moral ‘ends’.

    Readers should also understand that Morality as Cooperation Strategies is only about a subcategory of answers to the big ethical questions: “What is good?”, “How should I live?”, and “What are my obligations?”.

    Morality as Cooperation Strategies illuminates (but does not define) my understanding of my preferred answers to these questions: Utilitarianism tempered by Negative Utilitarianism, Modern Stoicism, and obligations based on Rawlsian Justice.

    How I see Morality as Cooperation Strategies integrating with and even illuminating traditional moral philosophy sounds like a good topic for another post.

    All in all, though, your comments to date are much appreciated and have been helpful. I post here to understand better how to present conclusions from the science of morality to people familiar with moral philosophy but perhaps not with this science.
  • Banno
    24.7k
    ,

    Interesting that you mention Philippa Foot, a philosopher who perhaps above all others showed us the intractable nature of moral questions.

    You say you "post here to understand better how to present conclusions from the science of morality to people familiar with moral philosophy but perhaps not with this science". You seem to think you are providing "answers from science", and are puzzled by their reception. Perhaps what you propose is not as novel to those old fuddy duddies as you supposed, and perhaps the questions they are asking are not the questions you are answering.

    It's not so much that what you have provided is wrong, as that it is so very incomplete.

    Indeed, in so far as what you offer encourages the development of the virtues, we are in agreement. But it should be of concern to you that what you espouse might be used to explain away acts of collective, perfunctory evil, as easily as it does acts of virtue.

    Perhaps you might begin to see that there is more going on here than you might previously have supposed.
  • Mark S
    264
    Interesting that you mention Philippa Foot, a philosopher who perhaps above all others showed us the intractable nature of moral questions.Banno

    I assume Foot’s discussions of “the intractable nature of moral questions” you refer to were about imperative ought’s (what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences). If so, Foot and I are in strong agreement. I have proposed no imperative oughts. I have argued that imperatives oughts are illusions “foisted on us by our genes” (as Michael Ruse delights in saying).

    It would be a category error to think that scientific facts could alone imply imperative oughts. This is an error I have not made, though I strangely keep being accused of it.

    I expect Foot would find it interesting to understand, for instance, 1) the source of our illusion that imperative oughts are real and 2) the principles underlying cultural moral norms and our moral judgments and intuitions. Such knowledge about cultural moral norms could be directly useful for resolving disputes about which moral norms to advocate and enforce. Such knowledge about our intuitions could be useful for understanding aspects of moral philosophy that rely on our “well considered intuitions” – which I see as most schools of thought in moral philosophy.


    You say you "post here to understand better how to present conclusions from the science of morality to people familiar with moral philosophy but perhaps not with this science". You seem to think you are providing "answers from science", and are puzzled by their reception. Perhaps what you propose is not as novel to those old fuddy duddies as you supposed, and perhaps the questions they are asking are not the questions you are answering.Banno

    Not new? If identifying the ultimate source of cultural moral norms and our moral sense in a cooperation/exploitation dilemma is not novel, could you give a reference that describes that?

    Or how about just a reference describing the philosophical implications of cultural moral norms and our moral sense advocating and motivating cooperation strategies?

    I do not expect you to be able to do either, but I would be happy to learn I was wrong.

    But yes, I’ve always fully appreciated that “the questions they are asking are not the questions you are answering” (good observation!). That is obvious. That difference also has had unfortunate effects on the relevance of moral philosophy to public life.

    It's not so much that what you have provided is wrong, as that it is so very incomplete.Banno

    Incomplete? What more is needed for this knowledge from science to be culturally useful for resolving disputes about which moral norms to advocate and enforce? I am sincerely interested in what else is needed. I really want to know.

    But please don’t respond with more nonsense about (as I understand your vague hints) the importance of searching for imaginary imperative oughts.

    My goal is to find objective, mind-independent knowledge that is useful for resolving disputes about which moral norms to advocate and enforce in a culture.

    What is your goal regarding moral philosophy?


    Indeed, in so far as what you offer encourages the development of the virtues, we are in agreement. But it should be of concern to you that what you espouse might be used to explain away acts of collective, perfunctory evil, as easily as it does acts of virtue.Banno

    There is no justification of “acts of collective, perfunctory evil” in anything I have said. There is only explanation of 1) why people can do such evil and think it moral and 2) the underlying source of immorality in the exploitation of others. I see this as culturally useful knowledge.

    Do you realize that your accusation only makes sense if you are thinking that what morality ‘is’ implies what we imperatively ought to do? That is the error you bizarrely accuse me of.


    Perhaps you might begin to see that there is more going on here than you might previously have supposed.Banno

    I would be delighted to learn there is more going on relevant to the implications of understanding the underlying principles of cultural moral norms and our moral sense.

    Perhaps you could describe what "is going on here" that you think I am not aware of?
  • Banno
    24.7k
    I dunno if there is much point. Whatever I say will sound condescending. I presume you are at least aware of the discussion of is-ought in Ethics... what you call the "bottom-up" is an example of the naturalistic fallacy in which it is presumed that what we ought do is just what we have previously done. Gather whatever data you like and normalise it how you will, it does not tell us what we should do. You've acknowledged this, but still apparently think that your "bottom-up" shows us what to do. It just doesn't. I don't see a way to make this logical gap more apparent to you. I gather that you don't see as it is of any import. Well, taking what you have always done as what you ought to do is a nice vaccine against self-improvement; a self-satisfying recipe for conservatism. That might be what you are looking for. What else would one want in the comfort of retirement.
  • wonderer1
    2.2k
    I dunno if there is much point. Whatever I say will sound condescending. I presume you are at least aware of the discussion of is-ought in Ethics... what you call the "bottom-up" is an example of the naturalistic fallacy in which it is presumed that what we ought do is just what we have previously done. Gather whatever data you like and normalise it how you will, it does not tell us what we should do...Banno

    What it does do is tell us somewhat, about how to better understand our own natures, and the natures of others. I guess for someone like me, who sees no positive value in living in disharmony with my nature, it seems like valuable stuff to understand.

    I find the hostility rather baffling.
  • Banno
    24.7k
    What hostility?

    As for living in harmony with one's nature, that leaves much hanging. Should one live in harmony with one's nature, as a Stoic might say, or stand against it, as Nietzsche, Sartre, Kierkegaard &c. would have it... And if we were to discuss these chaps, then we would be doing philosophy.

    Which is part of what is missing from the OP.
  • Pantagruel
    3.4k
    As for living in harmony with one's nature, that leaves much hanging. Should one live in harmony with one's nature, as a Stoic might say, or stand against it, as Nietzsche, Sartre, Kierkegaard &c. would have it... And if we were to discuss these chaps, then we would be doing philosophy.Banno

    But can you ever ignore the empirical evidence and fact that we are fundamentally, essentially, components of a collective, which to that extent defines our nature?
  • Mark S
    264


    I would greatly appreciate it if you could justify or give any explanation of your astonishing claim:

    what you call the "bottom-up" is an example of the naturalistic fallacy in which it is presumed that what we ought do is just what we have previously done.Banno

    The bottom-up claims of Curry, Haidt and my extension are objective science. Objective science, on its own, cannot commit the naturalistic fallacy. It takes a person to do that.

    The only person presuming that science tells us what we imperatively ought to do (the only person committing the naturalistic fallacy) is you. You alone are making this error.

    I do not now and never have presumed something so naive. No conclusion I have described relies on the naturalistic fallacy in any way. The cultural usefulness of my claims is only as the basis of instrumental, not imperative oughts.

    I have repeatedly emphasized that this science, like the rest of science, can only supply instrumental oughts and is silent on ultimate goals.

    Yet, over and over, you can't get it. You somehow interpret my examples of principles underlying cultural moral norms and our moral sense as imperative oughts. Why?

    Any suggestions for clearer language I could use? Here is my present language for my conclusions from the integrated bottom-up and top-down perspectives:

    • Descriptively moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies
    • Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.

    Where in these two claims do you see any presumption of the naturalistic fallacy? Is it the use of the phrase “universally moral behaviors”?

    The second claim is a factual claim about what is universal in solutions to the cooperation/exploitation dilemma (and in human morality, the behaviors advocated by cultural moral norms and motivated by our moral sense).

    Is there another phrase to describe what is universal about “the behaviors advocated by cultural moral norms and motivated by our moral sense” that would be less confusing for you? I really want suggestions.
  • Banno
    24.7k
    Well, Sartre suggests that existence proceeds essence - that one determines one's own "nature". I offer this only in order to point out that it is not obvious to all that the notion of human "nature" is unproblematic, let alone what that nature might be.

    To which again we add the further point, even if one grant that there is some coherent sense in which humans have a "nature", it remains an open question as to whether that nature is to be followed, or to be overcome.

    And again, these are part of the discussion that is absent from the account in the OP.
  • Banno
    24.7k
    So, oddly, you are now saying that it is not the case that we ought cooperate?

    I'm not too keen on the term, but that looks rather mote-and-bailly. Somehow this tells us
    about right and wrongMark S
    without telling us what to do? You commence your argument in the bailey of right and wrong, but when challenged retreat to the motte of supposed "objective science".
  • Joshs
    5.6k


    The only person presuming that science tells us what we imperatively ought to do (the only person committing the naturalistic fallacy) is you. You alone are making this error.

    I have repeatedly emphasized that this science, like the rest of science, can only supply instrumental oughts and is silent on ultimate goals.
    Mark S

    Apparently Hilary Putnam also makes this ‘error’. Putnam makes the argument that if the basis of our valuative, ethical judgements is an evolutionary adaptation shared by other animals then it is as though we are computers programmed by a fool ( selection pressure) operating subject to the constraints imposed by a moron (nature). Putnam says “One cannot discover laws of nature unless one brings to nature a set of a priori prejudices which is not hopelessly wrong.” And those prejudices cannot themselves be a product of blind evolution.

    He concludes “Without the cognitive values of coherence, simplicity, and instrumental efficacy we have no world and no facts, not even facts about what relative to what. And these cognitive values, I claim, are simply a part of our holistic conception of human flourishing. Bereft of the old realist idea of truth as "correspondence" and of the positivist idea of justification as fixed by public "criteria," we are left with the necessity of seeing our search for better conceptions of rationality as an intentional activity which, like every activity that rises above the mere following of inclination or obsession, is guided by our idea of the good.
    If coherence and simplicity are values, and if we cannot deny with out falling into total self-refuting subjectivism that they are objective (notwithstanding their "softness," the lack of well-defined "criteria," and so forth), then the classic argument against the objectivity of ethical values is totally undercut.”
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.