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.