Comments

  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪Tzeentch
    You can be sure of whatever you want, still Bennett did not say what Sachs attributed to him.
    Jabberwock

    And assuming that Bennett's account is reliable: https://theintercept.com/2022/03/23/ukraine-russia-peace-negotiations-israel/ (BTW one key issue in the negotiation was REGIME CHANGE IN KYIV)
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Juicy fruits of the no-limits alliance between the peaceful China and Russia against the greedy Nazi pro-LGBT Neocapitalist imperial vampires which holy Putin is so powerfully leading (with Mearsheimer's blessing): https://www.eurasiantimes.com/fact-check-has-china-really-claimed-russian-port-city-of-vladivostok/
  • Ukraine Crisis
    https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1680499284611932160

    "Gerasimov and Shoigu should be held responsible for the genocide of the Russian people, the murder of tens of thousands of Russian citizens and surrender of Russian territories to the enemy. And this was intentional, just like the murder of Russian citizens and genocide."
    (from the neo-nazi Utkin with exquisite ironic feinting love)
  • The science of morality from the bottom-up and the top-down
    • However, being innate to our universe does not necessarily imply any innate, imperative bindingness - what we ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences.Mark S

    Saying that moral norms are innate "to our universe" (what do you mean by "our universe"? "universe" in the sense of "all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos." or "universe" in the sense of our species?) in some sense, but not innate in some other sense is not clear unless you clarify the senses in which something is innate as opposed to not innate. Is mathematics innately binding? Do we ought to abide by mathematics rules regardless of our needs and preferences?

    People can use this knowledge to resolve disputes about refining their morality to meet their needs and preferences better.Mark S

    How? Show me how being aware that moral norms are just heuristics to solve cooperation problems and that those norms that are cross-cultural and cross-species are the ones which do not exploit others can help understand if the capitalist appropriation of the surplus value of wage labour is moral or immoral, or a solution to the cooperation/exploitation problem or not? Or how can this awareness help us understand if the policies of all main involved parties in the war in Ukraine is moral or immoral, a solution or not to cooperation/exploitation dilemmas?
    If you can't bring anything NEW on the table and you just keep repeating things that liberal Westerners already accept (e.g. that slavery is bad and sexism is bad from cross-cultural non-exploitative moral rules), where is the help?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    And you are better than Naftali Bennett because? — neomac


    I'm not claiming either he or you are factually wrong though, am I?

    I'm taking issue with ssu's response which frames his opinion as being what "really" happened, and what "in fact..." is the case.

    Jeffrey Sachs is neither an idiot, nor a liar, so clearly there is room for more than one legitimate interpretation of the facts.
    Isaac

    No no, I'm claiming that I am RIGHT and you are WRONG AND DISHONEST. I don't need to believe that Jeffrey Sucks is an idiot or a liar, I'm claiming that what Naftali Bennett ACTUALLY said in the interview IS NOT TALKING ABOUT "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]." as SSU was objecting to but about his mediation being stopped.

    I'm quite happy to accept more than one legitimate interpretationIsaac

    And I'm happy to call your interpretation WRONG AND DISHONEST whenever I believe it's the case.


    Interviewer: "So they blocked it?"

    Naftali Bennett: "Basically, yes. They blocked it and I thought they're wrong. In retrospect it's too soon to know.

    [Naftali Bennett lists a number of disadvantages of continuing the war, and then continues...]

    On the other hand, and I'm not being cynical, there's a statement here, after very many years. President Biden created an alliance vis-à-vis an aggressor in the general perception and this reflects on other arenas, such as China and Taiwan and there are consequences."

    Are you playing dumb? You reported the claim "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]." which then cited Naftali Bennett in support of it which is what SSU was questioning with his comment. I gave you the link to the youtube video (here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK9tLDeWBzs&t=10774s). Listen to the interview, Naftali Bennett IS NOT TALKING ABOUT "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]." but about his mediation being stopped (quite interesting what he also says later). Focus on what I'm actually objecting to you not on what you wish I objected to you.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    And you know better than Jeffrey Sachs because...?Isaac

    And you know better than Naftali Bennett because...?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    And you know better than Jeffrey Sachs because...?Isaac

    To say the least, because anybody can listen to what Naftali Bennett ACTUALLY said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK9tLDeWBzs&t=10774s

    Nafatali Bennett's claim is not about why "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]."
    but about why his mediation at the beginning of the war was stopped.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    You know what a caricature is, right? It doesn't just mean 'got wrong'.Isaac

    I have no idea why you call it a caricature then. In what way what I wrote distorts your claims? When I'm accusing you and others to make a caricature of my views I'm referring to what you got wrong about my views and yet you need to make a point against my views. I don't need to distort your views to question them. You do.

    Besides I'm still waiting for your math:
    Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation. — neomac


    I just did. — Isaac


    Quote where you did it.
    neomac
  • Ukraine Crisis
    You are campaigning against your own intellectual decency. — neomac


    Coming from you, that's rich. :rofl:
    Tzeentch

    It's laughing the guy who is so desperately in need to score a point that he wishes his opponents to answer a ridiculously framed challenge like "If there are people here who are predicting imminent major successes in line with this paper reality, speak up please." and even insisting on it.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    your helpless craving for pinning roughly everything bad is happening primarily on the US. — neomac


    ... would be an example of caricaturing your opponent's views, yes. I
    Isaac

    No dude, that's not a caricature at all. Quote a claim of yours that contradicts it.
    It should be pretty easy for you to do it, since mine is a very general claim.
    Who is primarily to blame for starting the war ?
    Who is primarily to blame for continuing the war ?
    Who is primarily to blame for food crisis related to the war?
    Who is primarily to blame for NATO policies toward the war?
    Who is primarily to blame for the misinformation we get on the war?
    You didn't lose a single occasion to blame American media, American political elites, American military-industrial-finacial complex. Where is the caricature? Maybe you are a caricature.

    You even had your sidekick claiming
    We are literally in a 6th mass extinction event heading towards civilisational collapse that is entirely due to US policy and acquiescence of their fellow Western acolytes, not to mention pollution of various other forms as well as neo-colonialism and US imperialism (however "soft" you want to call it -- being smothered by a pillow can have the exact same end result as being stabbed in the chest).

    Now, if you want to argue that the Soviet Union, China and India weren't and aren't any better and would have done equally bad or worse things (and did and do their best to help destroy the planet as second and third fiddles) had they been the dominant super power and setting the terms of world trade, I'd have no problem agreeing to that.

    But the reality is that the dominant power since WWII setting most economic policies on the planet (what and how things are produced) has been the US, and the consequence has been destruction on a hitherto unimaginable scale.

    Unsustainability literally equates to destruction, that's what it means: destroying the ecosystems we require for survival, not to mention a host of other species.

    And global unsustainability has been a Western choice, championed by the US and supported by their vassals. The policies for sustainability are pretty easy and known since the 60s (public transport, renewable energy, less meat eating, sustainable fishing, strict care what chemicals are allowed in the environment and how much, and farming in ways compatible with biodiversity and soil protection) and since the 60s the policies critical to sustainability could have been easily implemented to create a smooth transition.
    (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/801709)



    Funny how this has only just occurred to you after nearly 500 pages of having every single opposing view caricatured as Putin-loving, Putinistas, Russiophiles etc... but it's good that you're on top of it now.Isaac

    If you think I caricatured your views, quote exactly where. This time you failed.




    Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation. — neomac


    I just did.
    Isaac

    Quote where you did it.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    It's not to the penny accounting, but it's just dishonest to present it as if we just don't know.Isaac

    The problem is not what we know but what we can infer from it.

    Not that many. This isn't some unknown quantity we might as well toss a coin over.Isaac

    Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Convincing people that Ukraine has a chance of 'winning'Isaac

    it takes quite the major advertising effort to keep this illusion upIsaac

    Hence the massive social media campaign, of which your posts (wittingly or not) form partIsaac

    It appears those who would post lengthy and strongly-worded posts on how the Ukrainians must continue to fight and dieTzeentch

    You dudes think to make a point just by caricaturing opponents' views.
    That's intellectually abhorrent. You are campaigning against your own intellectual decency.
    And you are quite good at that. Hands up.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    > How many thousands of lives and billions in damages is Washington's ego worth?

    How many thousands of lives and billions in damages is defeating Washington's ego worth?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Given the overwhelming quantity of posts here doing the latter and very few posts doing the former, it's hard to see how that could be without aim.Isaac

    Assuming you are good at keeping stats.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    There have been reports of the Russians pushing for territory in the north. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians haven't reported any territorial gains for about a week or so. That to me is a pretty good indicator that the Ukrainian offensive has likely concluded, and the Russians might be looking to retake the initiative.

    The Russians probably wouldn't go on the attack if they believed the Ukrainians may still have capacity left.
    Tzeentch

    You conjectures are as good as the following:
    1. "the long-awaited Ukrainian offensive"will start late in summer to prevent Russia from doing the counteroffensive in rainy season, for now the Ukrainian tactic is just attrition along the line to prepare the right spot to drill.
    2. The Russians probably would push in the north to weaken Ukrainians' capacity for their offensive in the south.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Indeed, Prigozhin's exquisite ironic feint is not over yet:

    After long days of silence following the 'march on Moscow' on June 24, the founder of the Wagner militia Yevgeny Prigozhin reappears on social media with a vitriolic post against Russian state media, quoted by Novaya Gazeta.

    "Reading the newspapers, hearing the stories on TV, makes me feel very bad, the TV bastards, who yesterday admired the Wagner boys, are now pouring all kinds of poison...

    Remember TV bastards that it wasn't your children who fought in our ranks, it wasn't your children who died, but you bastards are making audiences with stories like this."

    https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/mondo/2023/07/08/prigozhin-ricompare-sui-social-e-attacca-i-media-russi_f4295770-f72b-490d-ad8e-eadabc5ee6b8.html?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=
  • Ukraine Crisis
    There's no evidence that the Russians intended to absorb or subjugate Ukraine.Tzeentch

    Here is how people focused on security concerns reason over "intentions":
    During his annual review of Russia's foreign policy January 22-23 (ref B), Foreign Minister Lavrov stressed that Russia had to view continued eastward expansion of NATO, particularly to Ukraine and Georgia, as a potential military threat. While Russia might believe statements from the West that NATO was not directed against Russia, when one looked at recent military activities in NATO countries (establishment of U.S. forward operating locations, etc. they had to be evaluated not by stated intentions but by potential.


    Security concerns can be triggered by potential not just by "intentions" (BTW among Mearsheimer's offensive realism tenets there are "States can never be certain of the intentions of other states" and "States are rational actors, capable of coming up with sound strategies that maximize their prospects for survival" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_realism). History, ambitions, military capability, economic leverage and aggressive attitude of Russia especially under Putin inside and outside Russia were enough to trigger security concerns.
    Talking about intentions (the initial march toward Kiev's intentions, Putin's intentions, Prigozhin's mutiny intentions) is not all that matters. Also the US intentions were to spread democracy in the rest of the World.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    "ordered" doesn't sound unexpected from Lavrov, the rest does. Especially if one takes the Amerikans to be warmongerers and this attempted coup as something staged by the Russians.
  • The science of morality from the bottom-up and the top-down
    Right. The problem my terminology addresses is that the science of morality (like all science) cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be or what we imperatively (prescriptively) ought to do.Mark S

    If morality is about what goals “we imperatively (prescriptively) ought to do” (e.g. when there is a conflict between individual and collective goals), and morality cannot tell us “what our goals somehow ought to be” then there is no science of morality.
    If your assumptions leave moral goals to be set and chosen by individuals and not by scientific principles, in what sense we are not ending up in a form of moral relativism?


    I can’t say “Prescriptively moral” in the second claim because there is no innate source of normativity in science and, here, I am only describing scientific results with no prescriptive claims based on rational thought or anything else.

    Yes, universally moral here refers to what is cross-culturally moral (and even cross-species moral) but has no innate prescriptive power. This is a simple concept in the science of morality but one that does not exist in moral philosophy.
    Mark S

    You keep repeating that “there is no innate source of normativity in science” and yet you also maintain that “the strategies in fast moral thinking (such as reciprocity strategies and kin altruism) are encoded in the biology underlying our moral sense and in cultural moral norms which shape our moral sense” (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/816533).
    So how can something be encoded in our biology and yet not be innate? What’s the difference between “innate” and “biologically encoded”?



    Their normativity first comes from groups choosing to advocate these principles as moral references for refining their moral norms based on being most likely to enable achieving shared goals due to increased cooperation. Their normativity comes in the form of hypothetical imperatives in Philippa Foot’s terminology and conditional oughts in mine.Mark S

    OK my point is that there are costs in increasing cooperation that outweighs the supposed benefits of cooperation. So what I may argue against your core claims is that maybe morality is not only about boosting cooperation but also about shaping and constraining it.
    Besides the same social interaction can be seen as a form of cooperation or exploitation: is the capitalist appropriation of the surplus value of wage labour a cooperative or exploitative exchange? If you hold capitalist standard views then you would more likely see it as cooperative, if you hold marxist standard views then you would more likely see it as exploitative.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Prigozhin's mutiny smells so much as a Russian feint and exquisite irony that the "US ordered Ukraine not to use mutiny in Russia to stage provocations, says Lavrov" https://tass.com/politics/1640025
  • Ukraine Crisis
    It really doesn't matter if it wasn't a coup (which also some Russian nationalist commentators believe it was). Prigozhin came close to Moscow (after seizing Rostov) armed, ready to kill and with hostile demands against the establishment status quo in a already tense environment for Putin from external and internal pressure. Besides Prigozhin bitterly questioned the Patriotic War narrative promoted by Putin. The slow, weak, contradictory reactions of the Russian establishment against the "mutiny", with rumors of Putin fled from Moscow and ordinary people either indifferent or cheering with Prigozhin (again against Putin's narrative) is striking. This is a major reputational blow against Russia and Putin that Russia and Putin inflicted upon themselves before Russian and Putin's eyes on world stage.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Putin exquisite black belt in feinting speaking to the nation:
    "The organizers of the rebellion, despite the loss of adequacy, could not fail to understand this. They understood everything, including that they committed crimes, that they divided and weakened the country, which is now facing a huge external threat, unprecedented pressure from outside". (1m21)
  • Ukraine Crisis
    More pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine propaganda by Prigozhin the exquisite feinter.
    https://twitter.com/i/status/1672195411598008324
  • Ukraine Crisis


    Yes and you predicted all that, obviously. But kept silent to better enjoy the exquisite irony right? Now the explanation pls. Everything must be connected to land bridges, right?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Cool down dudes, that's obviously a feint. Wagner troops are not enough to conquer the entire Russia, even less Moscow, or 17/4567th of Kamtchatka. These are hard numbers, sorry. Even Mearshaimer said it somehow somewhere somewhen. The rest is trite Crypto-Pluto-Nazi-Sionist-LGBT-Neocapitalist-Imperialist-Amerikan propaganda. The US has lost the war between Ukraine and Russia. But feel free to believe your lies.
  • The science of morality from the bottom-up and the top-down
    Thanks for the links to the literature.

    Since this is a philosophy forum and I take scrutinizing conceptual frameworks as a primary philosophical task, I'm mainly interested in the concepts you use: morality (descriptive vs normative), cooperation, exploitation, "imperative ought" (?), dilemma, and solving "cooperation/exploitation dilemma". You seem to give them mostly for granted.

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

    Human morality is composed of strategies that solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.

    Behaviors that exploit others contradict the function of human morality and create cooperation problems.

    Concluding that "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are immoral because they exploit others and create cooperation problems and thus contradict the function of morality has nothing to do with my background, the social environment these 'moral' norms were enforced in, or any other extraneous circumstances.
    Mark S

    To me the meaning of "descriptively" must be contrasted to "prescriptively" (or "normatively") not to "universally". If you use "universality" as a condition for identifying rational moral norms then you are no longer descriptive but prescriptive. Alternatively, you can use "universality" to refer to cross-cultural descriptive moral norms and NOT to a condition of rationality. Conflating these two usages would be fallacious.
    Then you should give a definition or clarification of "cooperation" and its opposite "exploitation" (independently from any moral descriptive/normative assumption, otherwise you are running in circle). You never did that as far as I can remember.
    Besides this claim "Concluding that "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are immoral because they exploit others and create cooperation problems and thus contradict the function of morality " is logically questionable: 1. if morality of moral norms is established wrt their universality then you are taking universality as a rational criterion, so you are talking in prescriptive/normative terms, not descriptive. 2. if certain moral norms exist and contradict a function you claim they must fulfill , then one can question the idea that such moral norms have the function you attribute to them.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    More pro-Western pro-Nato pro-Ukraine pro-US pro-Neoliberal capitalism and imperialism propaganda by Prigozhin:
    https://hungary.postsen.com/world/194486/Prigozhin-envisions-executions-and-revolution-and-according-to-him-victory-is-not-on-the-side-of-the-Russians.html
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Besides talking about a military diversion in this case is itself a form of diversion. Indeed, the military perspective can't trump the political perspective, if war is ultimately politics by other means. The declared reason of this "special operation" was "to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine" [1], not taking land bridges. Did Russia succeed in doing this so far? Is Russia any closer to achieve this now more than ever? Hell no, as Prigozhin must acknowledge:
    https://www.businessinsider.com/wagner-group-prigozhin-russia-putin-failed-demilitarize-ukraine-strongest-army-2023-5?r=US&IR=T
    https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1661130760978325505


    [1]
    "The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation".
    https://www.businessinsider.com/wagner-group-prigozhin-russia-putin-failed-demilitarize-ukraine-strongest-army-2023-5?r=US&IR=T
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Clearly he thought it was a possibility that the Russians only meant to threaten Kiev.

    And no amount of copium is going to make those words go away. Sorry.
    Tzeentch

    The same goes with "he’s interested in taking Kyiv for the purpose of regime change. O.K.?"
    The point is that "threaten" doesn't mean "feint" or "diversion". You are putting into Mearsheimer's mouth something he didn't say to obfuscate what he explicitly said. If you want hard numbers for the Russian troops, I want hard quotes of Mearsheimer's explicitly claiming that Kyiv battle was likely or possibly a diversion or a feint.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    also "threatening to capture Kiev" can still be compatible with the idea of forcing a regime change. It doesn't obviously mean that Russia was making a diversion.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    The plan was to take Kiev, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Odessa, possibly DniproJabberwock

    Notice that "the entire Western narrative" that Tzeentch seems to argue against is "Russians intended to take over all of Ukraine with their initial invasion" with 190K troops.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Unless someone wants to argue the 190,000 figure is false, we can essentially dismiss the entire western narrative of the Ukraine war. I hope people realise that.Tzeentch

    There is no "entire western narrative". There are different narratives. One is yours. There are others though that still differ from the narrative you support or reject.
  • The value of conditional oughts in defining moral systems
    I am keenly interested in why you say:

    The first claim doesn't make sense to me: it sounds as if you are claiming that evidences are based on an empirical theory.... — neomac


    Your interpretation is, strangely, the opposite of what I am arguing.

    My first claim was: “Science does provide that evidence, based mostly on the remarkable explanatory power of Morality as Cooperation Strategies for cultural moral norms and our moral sense.”

    Perhaps we need a review of how science, including the science of morality, proceeds to conclusions:

    1. Assemble an interesting category of phenomena such as “past and present cultural moral norms and the spontaneous judgments and motivations of our moral sense” - This is the data set to be explained.
    2. Look for hypotheses that explain why this entire data set of phenomena exist – perhaps cooperation strategies, or acting for the good of everyone (utilitarianism), or a means of social control imposed by the powerful, or ?
    3. If one hypothesis is far better than any competing one at explaining this huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set, we have a potential theory.
    4. If the potential theory meets other relevant criteria for scientific truth such as simplicity and integration with the rest of science, then we have a theory explaining that data set. That theory may become generally accepted as provisionally true (the normal kind of truth in science) or rejected, with rejection usually in favor a new theory that better explains the data set.

    Hence:
    “Science does provide that evidence, based mostly on the remarkable explanatory power of Morality as Cooperation Strategies for cultural moral norms and our moral sense.”
    Mark S

    I might agree on the 4 points about empirical science. But your way of talking still sounds misleading based on those 4 points: “evidences” are the empirical base for the explanatory/predictive task of empirical theories (see point 1) and related comparisons (see point 3). So empirical theories are based on empirical evidences, not the other way around. If charitably understood, what you may have meant is that your empirical theory of morality is better supported by available data than other competing theories.
    If that’s your claim, then let’s move on to more substantive points.


    Then you say:

    "confirms my suspects: taking "solving cooperation problems" as a rational condition (à la Gert) to establish what "morality" is, it's a NORMATIVE criterion,

    "it's external to actual historical cultural moral norms, not descriptive of them (against what you seemed to be claiming in past posts). And it remains generic until you specify what constitutes a cooperation problem and its solutions independently from actual specific cultural moral norms. — neomac


    Do you see why they don’t make any sense?

    The theory is empirical, not “external” because it is based on its explanatory power for the huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set of “past and present cultural moral norms and the spontaneous judgments and motivations of our moral sense” (plus meeting other relevant criteria for scientific truth).

    Are you arguing that “past and present cultural moral norms and the spontaneous judgments and motivations of our moral sense” is external to what morality ‘is’?
    Mark S

    Such comment keeps evading my actual points:
    - You didn’t offer any such proof that your empirical theory of morality has greater explanatory/predictive power than other competing empirical theories. You just keep claiming that’s the case, that’s all. At least you could point at the literature where this comparison is provided.
    - According to your four points, point 1 must refer to a data set that doesn’t presuppose your theory of morality otherwise there would be a selection bias. How do you build this dataset? The least prejudicial approach would be to build such dataset based on what cultural norms are pre-theoretically considered moral within the local culture that adopted them. THIS AND ONLY THIS looks to me an internal and descriptive representation of cultural moral norms. The problem is that these cultural norms may include also EXPLOITATIVE cultural norms (which are the opposite of cooperation according to you), therefore on one side claiming that morality is about solving cooperation problems is actually false if there are cultural norms deemed as moral which are exploitative, on the other side claiming that only cultural social norms that solve cooperation problems should be considered moral because more universal is no longer a descriptive claim but an external normative claim (i.e. Gert’s principle for a normative definition of morality)

    What I think one can at best try to empirically prove is that cultural norms that solve cooperation problems and are deemed as “moral”, are the most cross-culturally shared. Or that cultural norms that solve cooperation problems and that are the most cross-culturally shared are deemed as “moral”. Or that cultural norms that are deemed “moral” and that are the most cross-culturally shared solve cooperation problems.
    I can even try to guess their plausibility (e.g. the first hypothesis sounds to me more intuitively plausible than the other 2 hypotheses).
    While claiming that cultural norms are moral because they solve cooperation problems, doesn’t sound intuitive at all (e.g. there are cultural norms that exploitative and cooperation problem solving norms which are not moral).




    Finally, you say:

    “And it remains generic until you specify what constitutes a cooperation problem and its solutions independently from actual specific cultural moral norms.”

    I have already done this in this thread and will repeat it here for convenience and emphasis.

    “In our universe, cooperation can produce many more benefits than individual effort. But cooperation exposes one to exploitation. Unfortunately, exploitation is almost always a winning short-term strategy, and sometimes is in the long term. 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 dilemma. This includes people and our ancestors.”

    The above describes why the cooperation problems morality solves are innate to our universe. The solutions relevant to morality are primarily cooperation strategies such as indirect reciprocity.
    Mark S

    This comment doesn’t even address my concern. If you want to use game theory in specifying cooperation problems you have to specify strategies (payoffs, iterations, etc.) of specific games in some quantifiable way. If you want to support your claims generically, I can support my objections generically: exploitation is part of moral code maybe because the conditions to achieve long-term goals are simply more uncertain.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Or for this round of globalization that started in the 1990's...ssu

    Indeed as far as I know the expression was introduced by the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire to express more the fear for the consequences of financial extreme measures like "cutting Russia from SWIFT" to the Western economy itself than to the Russian one.