A basis for objective morality

Kaplan

I'm trying to crack the basis for an objective morality and want to test run my thinking here.

I'm still thinking through this so the below notes aren't airtight and will have clear gaps, but approximating what I'm trying to get at, including attempting to tread my way across the is/ought problem.

Its foundation is based on the fact of embryonic development, and the ought element automatically derived from this as it's nested within it by default.

Embryonic development demonstrates that cellular machinery forms life if given the chance to. If cells do this, then the generic circuitry itself shows that to live is the default baseline to begin with, not a conscious choice - not a choice at all, it just is. But if this is simply hardwired genetic code doing its job, then by default the imperative is to live, because living is the first 'thing' an organism does and is what makes it an organism. Living is an obligation for life. Therefore one ought to live, as being a being implies this by default.

If one ought to live, then good is that what which aids this, stemming from the fact that genetics have been wired from the the very beginning of our ancient history to develop a fetus and form a life, and bad is that which hinders this.

So if life exists at all, then to live is an obligation, and good is that which aids life, therefore one ought to do good.

The above rests on the fact that cellular machinery proactively creates life via embryonic development.

flannel jesus

Embryonic development demonstrates that cellular machinery forms life if given the chance to. If cells do this, then the generic circuitry itself shows that to live is the default baseline to begin with, not a conscious choice - not a choice at all, it just is. But if this is simply hardwired genetic code doing its job, then by default the imperative is to live, because living is the first 'thing' an organism does and is what makes it an organism. Living is an obligation for life. Therefore one ought to live, as being a being implies this by default.

If one ought to live, then... — Kaplan

The facts in the above paragraph don't have any normativity to them. "This is a fact about life, this is what happens when life is created." It doesn't feel like you can derive any oughts from those is'es, it feels like you are leaping the ought-is gap in a way that needs more justification there. To me, anyway, respectfully.

Kaplan

↪flannel jesus

Taking what you said with "This is a fact about life, this is what happens when life is created." to point out the issue with that I said, I suppose what I am trying to do is go back one step further. So rather than saying "this is what happens when life is created" I'm trying to go down a level deeper and establish the basis of life itself as the ought by default - does that make it clearer?

Tom Storm

↪Kaplan

You can't get an ought from an is. Oh, I see Jesus got there before me. Just because you have determined that something is nature doing its job does not make it ipso facto right. One could argue that cancer is just nature efficiently doing what it does. Does that make cancer good?

Also nothing you have argued seems to go to morality as such. What does this say about homosexuality; drug use; the role of women; capital punishment, poverty, etc?

flannel jesus

I'm trying to go down a level deeper and establish the basis of life itself as the ought by default - does that make it clearer? — Kaplan

It's clear, I think, but it faces some problems conceptually like Tom Storm is addressing. It's like you're defining "ought" as "is" - like you can say "we know life ought to be, because we know that life is" - if ought and is are synonyms, then everything that is the case ought to be the case.

At least that's where it feels like it's going to me, perhaps I'm misunderstanding.

Tom Storm

because living is the first 'thing' an organism does and is what makes it an organism. Living is an obligation for life. Therefore one ought to live, as being a being implies this by default. — Kaplan

Further to my above response - it doesn't matter how deep you go into the process of life, the point is you are still committing the naturalistic fallacy (which is close to the is/ought fallacy). Just because something is the case in nature does not make that something right. The natural is not the same as the good.

Isaac

Just because something is the case in nature does not make that something right. The natural is not the same as the good. — Tom Storm

Not that I disagree, but when you say "The natural is not the same as the good", what is it that makes the truth of that proposition? I mean, if I made the counter claim "whatever is natural is right", how would you show me I'm wrong about that? Would you point to intuition, language use, the canon of ethics...?

flannel jesus

↪Isaac

perhaps it's unsatisfying, but for me it's pretty straight forward to think of what good and should mean intuitively. How do people use the word? To what are they referring?

They're clearly not just referring to the world as it is. If they were, there would be nothing that isn't good, there would be nothing that someone could do to which you would respond, "they shouldn't do that".

So, whatever "good" and "should" mean, they clearly don't mean "whatever happens to be the case". If they did mean that, their utility as concepts would pretty much entirely evaporate.

Isaac

for me it's pretty straight forward to think of what good and should mean intuitively. How do people use the word? — flannel jesus

Yep, I can sympathise with that approach. So would you be happy to support 'what is good is whatever people say is good'? Since that would be undeniably how the word is used?

flannel jesus

'what is good is whatever people say is good'? Since that would be undeniably how the word is used? — Isaac

I don't know of many people who use the word like that.

flannel jesus

I know that you're getting at, it's a very fun game lol, but the idea isn't "good and should are exactly only the things people say", what I'm suggesting is a way of investigating how to disambiguate what people mean by "should" and "good". People mean many different things, any SOME people most probably do mean "whatever is natural", I suppose.

Let's say you said that though, you said "what is good is what is natural". Are you defining good that way, or are you saying that good has a separate definition, but analytically it works out that everything good is natural and vice versa?

Isaac

I don't know of many people who use the word like that. — flannel jesus

Then how did you learn what the word meant, if not by listening to other people using it?

If you did learn it by listening to other people using it, then it follows, surely, that the way people use the word is to mean that which other people use the word to also describe.

Isaac

Let's say you said that though, you said "what is good is what is natural". Are you defining good that way, or are you saying that good has a separate definition, but analytically it works out that everything good is natural and vice versa? — flannel jesus

It's not a position I'd support. I was trying to get at how we define 'good' by asking how we'd argue against such a claim. You responded exactly how I'd respond "it's not how the word is used". But there's a commitment that goes along with that response; that how the word is used is what defines 'good'.

flannel jesus

Then how did you learn what the word meant, if not by listening to other people using it? — Isaac

Doesn't this logic apply to all words? So all words X are just defined as "X is whatever people say it is"?

No, I think what you do instead is you listen to what people are saying, you're figuring out what they mean by what they're saying, and at least in some cases you start constructing rulesets for categorising things. You're told this is an apple and that's an apple and that's an apple, but that's not an apple, eventually you start getting a good idea of what an apple is, and at some point someone points to a banana and says "that's an apple" but now "apple" is no longer "things people say are apples" to you, it's an abstract category that you can analyse and you can decide that someone can be wrong.

It's hard or impossible to do that as you're first learning the word, but you're confusing the definition of the word with the method for figuring out what people mean by the word. Those two things are separate.

flannel jesus

Same thing for "good". I've never suggested that the DEFINITION of good is "whatever people say", but I have suggested that a way of trying to disambiguate what it might mean will (or can, at least) involve a process of looking at how people are using it. The process of figuring out the meaning is not the meaning itself.

Isaac

↪flannel jesus

Sure. So 'good' is whatever your language community use the word for? Like 'apple'?

The only reason I'd be wrong to point to a banana and say 'apple' is because my language community don't use the word that way, yes?

flannel jesus

The only reason I'd be wrong to point to a banana and say 'apple' is because my language community don't use the word that way, yes? — Isaac

Loosely speaking, yes. I'm sure there are much more rigourous ways of saying what I'm saying, and we're sort of no longer talking about morality, this is now about language itself, but loosely speaking, if you're not using words in a way that other people will understand, you're not using language in the way language is intended to be used (most of the time, with exceptions).

If you personally, individually decide that you're going to use the symbols or sounds of "Apple" to refer to this :flower: , you're very likely to be misunderstood. If you don't want to be misunderstood, then... you're not using the tool of language to achieve the goal of being understood very well.

There's no reason apple objectively can't refer to :flower: , symbols are not objectively linked to their referents.

I think I'm tangenting too far at this point. I don't know if this conversation would even benefit from this type of discussion on how people use words. I'm going to stop here for that reason.

flannel jesus

Ah crap, my previous post lost all the emojis I put in, and now it's nonsense. I put in a bunch of banana emojis. .. edit, I figured out how to use flower emojis

flannel jesus

Perhaps the conclusion to this tangent is, the op would benefit from clarifying what the definition of good, ought and should are.

Joshs

↪Tom Storm

↪Kaplan You can't get an ought from an is. Oh, I see Jesus got there before me. Just because you have determined that something is nature doing its job does not make it ipso facto right. One could argue that cancer is just nature efficiently doing what it does. Does that make cancer good — Tom Storm

Hmm. Perhaps we might tease out a way in which the ‘is’ is always normatively complicit with an ‘ought’ ( you know, the fact-value entanglement folks like Putnam, Sellars , Davidson, Brandon and Rorty go on about). Where to find such a complicit ought in straightforward talk about organic machinery? Well, is there not a paradigmatic value system that makes such vocabulary intelligible? Is not each fact flowing out of this system of thought framed with expectations and anticipations? Is not each assertative empirical statement a form of question put to experience, an expectation that subsequent events will validate rather than invalidate it?

chiknsld

Living is an obligation for life. Therefore one ought to live... — Kaplan

Lol, an objective basis for morality?

flannel jesus

It seems like on the surface "obligation" means almost like a definitional obligation, rather than a normative one. In other words, "in order for a thing to qualify as being under the definition of life, that thing must be living". And if that's the case, there's an equivocation happening between the statement "must be living" into the normative statement "obligation to live".

I don't think it's easy to go from is to ought without similar equivocations happening.

Kaplan

↪Tom Storm

Yes I am aware that just because it exists in nature that does not make that something good - perhaps it's the paradigm itself I'm trying to get at. What I mean is, I don't necessarily subscribe to the 'you cannot get an ought from an is'. In boiling down every facet of existence (as it pertains to life in this context) it seems the most primitive thing that matters by definition is the bare minimum required for a life to exist. Life by definition wants to live. There is no life otherwise and no discussion of anything.

For example, I believe that implicit within facts are values. From this paradigm, there is no gap between fact and value. We do not merely percieve a fact. Even in our most unlearned state, we filter that fact through biological and mental apparatus that we have inherited from millions of years of evolution, and that fact holds a relevance for us beyond it's mere 'is'ness - the two are inseparable.

Now I am still working through refining my thoughts in the above paragraph, but I think the is/ought problem, or the naturalistic fallacy, are unassailable gaps perhaps from one paradigm, but not from another which is just as viable.

flannel jesus

Life by definition wants to live. — Kaplan

I'm fairly confident most life doesn't have mental states one could describe as "wants", or mental states at all.

Kaplan

↪flannel jesus

Agreed. Want here is the wrong word. Something is 'wired to live' may be more appropriate.

flannel jesus

↪Kaplan

want as a metaphor rather than literal might be agreeable. Even the most basic life forms have mechanisms for staying alive, and, mental states or not, they appear to "try" to live and propagate - try itself also being merely a metaphor, a narrative tool for us humans to make sense of these mechanical processes.

flannel jesus

It is actually feasible to me that there's a sort of consciousness even at the scale of single celled organisms. Maybe they do have wants.

Judaka

↪Kaplan

Not all objective morality is the same, and the term "objective" itself varies in meaning, but perhaps you're better off not trying to create an ought. The desire to live weaves its way into our moral thinking, it manifests as our proclivity for ascribing value to life. While that doesn't create an ought, it does do something to ground moral thinking. "Ought" isn't built into us quite so explicitly as you may like, but our biology is designed in a way that naturally leads us to certain conclusions. While we don't "have" to do anything, what we will do is being influenced by our biology, as will what we think we should. You could expand on the idea from there.

However, as for your actual argument, it's a naturalistic fallacy as mentioned. Your role in selecting the facts, interpreting them and arriving at a conclusion can't be ignored. By including new facts, new interpretations, or understanding them differently, the "ought" can change. There's no winning here. Though, even if you somehow did convince others of objective morality in this way, I'm not sure what the point would be. People would just make exceptions or add nuance as it suited them, as is already the case really.

Tom Storm

Now I am still working through refining my thoughts in the above paragraph, but I think the is/ought problem, or the naturalistic fallacy, are unassailable gaps perhaps from one paradigm, but not from another which is just as viable. — Kaplan

The issue here might be that anyone can argue that their paradigm is better than another paradigm - isn't this what creationists do when they poo-poo evolution in favour of the Biblical paradigm? But we still need a demonstration that one paradigm should be privileged over another.

Life by definition wants to live. There is no life otherwise and no discussion of anything. — Kaplan

Even if this is true, can you demonstrate how this assists us with morality as per my earlier question -

Also nothing you have argued seems to go to morality as such. What does this say about homosexuality; drug use; the role of women; capital punishment, poverty, etc? — Tom Storm

Tom Storm

Well, is there not a paradigmatic value system that makes such vocabulary intelligible? Is not each fact flowing out of this system of thought framed with expectations and anticipations? Is not each assertative empirical statement a form of question put to experience, an expectation that subsequent events will validate rather than invalidate it? — Joshs

Can you tie this more robustly to is/ought for me?

Tom Storm

mean, if I made the counter claim "whatever is natural is right", how would you show me I'm wrong about that? Would you point to intuition, language use, the canon of ethics...? — Isaac

I wouldn't show you that you are wrong, I would say simply that the case hasn't been made. Why would I accept this claim? What is it about the natural that entails the good? Can this be demonstrated?

A basis for objective morality

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