Generally, or in western culture at least, we would say that intentions matter for determining what is a good action or not. So by that logic it would be impossible to desire evil and do good by accident.

In some other cultures intentions seem to matter less, and there it is perfectly possible to desire evil and do good by accident... because good or bad are evaluated purely based on actions.

You just build in meaning from the get go, by fusing purpose into what the simulation 'is'. There is only a problem of creating meaning because we killed God, and so the universe isn't inherently meaningful as a purposeful creation. Since a simulation is in fact created by purposeful beings, you wouldn't have that problem.

Some people would argue we should be just like nature (survival of the fittest?) and not try to transcend it. Are our attempts to control or thwart nature sustainable or psychologically healthy? I think our current era of prosperity (which is not available to many people) is ahistoric and we have to have faith that it is sustainable. — Andrew4Handel

It certainly is unprecedented and unique, but then again it's not like there's a script history has to follow. Is it psychologically healthy and sustainable? Maybe not, but that is a bit moot point if we don't really have all that much choice in the matter. We are here now with a couple of billion people on earth. The more interesting question to me is where do we go from here?

I'd say at this point there is no way back, and we will have to make it work somehow precisely because there are no guarantees that it will. And hearkening back to stories of old, like nature, nationalism or religions won't do the trick I think, because those were geared to a world that doesn't exist anymore. The world has changed fundamentally and we can take responsibility to make it work or not... a little bit of lucidity, creativity and trust in ourselves and we could be off.

I can agree more or less with the moral sceptic part, when it comes to truth value of moral claims at least. I do think however that evaluating morality on the truth-axis is to some extend missing the point.... as I think we create values and morality. Values meaning here more or less the same thing as preferring state 'A' over 'B', but more abstracted and synthesized already.

But then we have the problem of teleology. The human body and its organs seem to have goals such as the heart pumping blood around the body. You could hypothetical have a healthy human body regardless of the preferences of the individual but social norms do not appear to have any kind of teleology like this to follow. — Andrew4Handel

If you mean that we can't find a teleology for them in nature and biology, then yes, I agree. I think we create them because we value some things over others, and so we want people to behave to attain those values. And personally I think this is only a problem if you expect to find objective morality in the first place.

Another problem I have with morality and utopian or utilitarian attempts to improve society is that I think they are bound to fail. So I think it is impossible to not be morally contradictory/hypocritical and impossible to create a non exploitative society. If humans are just a another part of nature then we see that nature appears inherently flawed and not something we can transcend. — Andrew4Handel

That would depend on how high you set the bar, right? If you expect a society of saints, then yes that won't work. But on smaller scales and for less utopian goals there does seem to be some utility. For instance, I think moms can be successful in teaching Johnny not to hit his little sister.

However I am interested in what society would look like if we looked at claims outside of the natural science as weak, contestable and pragmatic. — Andrew4Handel

Yes by and large, although I'd probably say that they are no claims to truths at all, so neither weak or strong. And if we realise that we create them, it is already implied that they are up for revision if they don't serve our ends (anymore).

Let's take homosexuality as in example. It seems to be a minority occurrence but that doesn't seem to entail it has less validity or value than the majority sexuality. It seems to be hardwired as well.

I don't think you can derive values from possibly hardwired behaviours and preferences and pit them against each other. Desirable and undesirable traits are probably somewhat hardwired. — Andrew4Handel

Yes I didn't mean to imply that you can derive them from biology. There would just be agreement, convention as a basis for some values and consequent morality.

I think the problem is not with identifying aspects of life we can improve but having the the justification of compelling other people to follow our values. — Andrew4Handel

Aren't you having your cake and eating it too here? The idea that you need a justification to compel other people is a fictional ought too if you apply fictionalism consistently. So this seems like a problem to me, because if you believe that 1) no objective morality exists and 2) justification in objective morality is necessary to compel people to behave in a certain way, you are 3) effectively ruling out the possibly of morality from the start.

But still I believe that people including those that claim to be relativists treat values and social ideologies as more compelling than they are and use them to justify their own beliefs and actions.. — Andrew4Handel

Yes I agree, I don't think anybody is really a relativist (or nihilist) when it comes down to it... when you look at their actions. And it is often used as a rhetorical tool yes.

That is a good point. Possibly both. But value statements have law like or "ought" like qualities.

People say things like "You ought to lose some weight". You can get the impression that there is an ideal weight that we ought to be aiming for.
If you believe this is true than you may treat it as lawful.
So I suppose people may have to treat a claim as true before treating it as a law or an "Ought".

But I think the person delivering the claims is acting like they are factual and that they should be obeyed.

I like the term "reifying" or "reification" that treat something conceptual or controversial as concrete. — Andrew4Handel

Yes I agree people view morality that way, the question is if this is necessarily so, like I said in my comment above?

Also since some things rely on implicit values that almost everybody agrees to, these oughts might be very much equivalent to a factual claim. For instance, the claim you ought to lose weight might follow from the value 'health'.... if we agree on the value of health, then you ought to lose some weight. This just as an example to be clear, not that I think that losing weight is always good for your health.

It depends on why you are agreeing on something. Obviously consensus doesn't equal right. Would people agree to agree to rules that they accepted were completely made up and not metaphysically binding but only pragmatic and a tool for some kind of social cohesion? — Andrew4Handel

That is the question indeed. Historically it didn't seem enough, which is one of the reasons they felt the need to invent God I think, to infuse morality with objectivity. Ultimately this is a question of psychology it seems. I hope we can get to a place where we can just agree on things and have that pull enough weight, but I wouldn't know if we can.

For example I don't think an atheist would follow religious rules regardless of their pragmatic or utilitarian value.
I believe people think there is a deeper validity to concepts like human rights and prohibitions against stealing and killing than just being pragmatic tools. — Andrew4Handel

And is this something that is learned, i.e. because we were taught to think about them as objective, and so could possibly be changed? Or is it something that is more or less psychologically hard-wired?

So I think that things like legal laws, human rights claims, moral claims and general value claims, traditions and so on are just things we say and use to alter peoples behaviour under the guise that they are lawful. — Andrew4Handel

Under the guise that they are lawful, or truthful?

Fictionalism is the view in philosophy according to which statements that appear to be descriptions of the world should not be construed as such, but should instead be understood as cases of "make believe", of pretending to treat something as literally true (a "useful fiction"). — Wiki

While I agree that morality is constructed and historically has been sold as something that is objective and true, I wouldn't call myself a fictionalist, but rather a moral constructivist. The difference is that I don't think we should necessarily lie about their origin, or at least that's what I hope. Laws and morals need not be true and objective to be 'lawfull', their force can be derived from that fact that we agree on them.

I think fictionalism seems to lead to nihilism where society seems absurd because peoples behaviour seems to be not being governed by reason or rationality but by an unwarranted faith or unthinking allegiance to unjustified ideologies. — Andrew4Handel

I think it leads to nihilism because people stop believing in the fiction (and it works if they believe in it). And then society becomes absurd because people feel like they have to continue to act like they believe in the fiction because they think other people do, while in reality nobody really does... or at least very few.

Anyway my question to you would be, do you think we should get rid of morality all together then, since it is a fiction? And rely on what then? On people just getting along and acting rationally out of their own volition?

I would say that inner space is an important arena for questioning. It can be a frightening world to explore and perhaps we need to touch base with others, as a way for avoiding the wastelands of subjectivity and difficulties we might find in searching for answers. — Jack Cummins

Following 180proof, I'd want to say that maybe we should question the assumption that looking inside, inner space, introspection etc... is even a way to get answers to questions about meaning, identity and the like.

I am not wishing that we should rely simply on the territory of our own introspection. If anything, I spend a lot of time going into the worlds created by other minds in the books which I read. But probably what I find, is that there is so much theorising, and ,somehow, I feel that we can get lost in the mazes, and lose touch with intuition as a source of wisdom. — Jack Cummins

I agree with this, you and I are located in a specific place with a specific context for which other peoples thoughts won't necessarily be all that relevant or applicable. For navigating your world your own thoughts and intuitions would typically be more suited, and there is indeed a danger in drowning them in other peoples thoughts when you spent a lot of time with those. But I wouldn't conflate relying more on your own intuitions and instincts with introspection or 'looking inside'. They come to you as you interact with the world, and are geared towards you interacting with that 'external' world... you don't need to go looking for them inside. In fact I think deliberately looking for them via introspection will mostly only fracture them in a self-reflective hall of mirrors.

If that's true then how could moral rules follow from values at all, something you are a proponent of? — ToothyMaw

Well they will follow from values, but there will be contradictions and they will overlap to some extend is the perhaps unsatisfactory answer. How you could try to solve this is weighing values against each other and determining what should take precedence, or what concessions could be made to accommodate other values.

If I may take the example of Covid again, and simplify the case as a conflict between two values, quality of life on the one hand and quantity (or duration) of life on the other. You could argue that from the value of quantity of life, rules of total social isolation and total lock-down would follow in times of a pandemic... if people follow those rules (which is not a given either) then this will save lives, thus attaining that value.

But then those extreme rules of social isolation seem to be contrary to attaining the other value of quality of live. What you need to decide in that case (usually after some societal debate) is how much weight you want to give them respectively, and what accommodation can be made to other conflicting values without harming the primary value to much. So in practice, you will for instance make wearing a mask mandatory because it doesn't harm quality of live that much, or you will close down shops but let people sport outside etc...

Maybe some basic, distinct, non contradictory rules that support people's values could be formed and reasoned with/measured and experimented with to create more rules as needed that are distinct, non contradictory, and support people's values? Perhaps a science of morality (I have heard of such a thing but don't know where the idea originated from) would help determine if the outcomes of rules support people's values. However, I don't know how to guarantee that they would be distinct, except insofar as they don't produce the same outcomes. — ToothyMaw

From what I've written above, you can probably figure that I don't think I would be easy to turn this into a science. I do think philosophers, ethicists and other scholars can and do play an important role in this process, by elucidating the process and feeding the public dialogue with expertise of various kind. But I think these interventions will be necessarily more topical, than systematic if that makes sense.

The interesting question to me is how and why states developed, given all of these disadvantages. I think at least part of the answer is to see the agricultural society as a population machine, which aims at producing domesticated humans; humans that cannot survive on their own and depend on the state to survive and so therefore maintain it. — darthbarracuda

I've always presumed, maybe incorrectly, that states were a consequence of increase of population size and density, and the need for specialisation that creates. If you're are relatively small group of people, you don't need and can't really afford someone who occupies himself solely with ruling.

I don't have any major addictions but sometimes I notice that I feel the need to get something I don't even really want. If you've been on a losing streak in a videogame you'd know what I mean. — khaled

I know what you mean, but I not sure if that's a qualitative difference, or just two conflicting desires with differing intensities... i.e. a shortterm desire to really want to win, and a more general desire to just stop playing the game and do something else constructive.

It's also a common trait of mediocre athletes to be OVERconfident, not lacking confidence. — khaled

I think they are two sides of the same coin. When you are overconfident, a little thing can tilt you to loose all your confidence precisely because it was inflated and it's hard to maintain the illusion in the face of evidence to the contrary.

But yes I think I sort of get what you're trying to get at with linking it to attachment. The downward spiral then is presumably the result of an attachment to an overinflated idea of yourself.

Rules are generally thought to be swapped based on circumstance, but what if a rule has the circumstances in which it applies built into it, along with a stipulation that the actor doesn't matter? Would the application of these rules require a meta-rule selecting from a set of such rules? — ToothyMaw

If you're asking necessarily in principle, I'd say no. Why would you think so?

But off course in practice it's actually very hard, if not practically impossible, to make a set of sufficiently specific rules that are distinct and non-contradictory.

You might say this new, integrated rule may need to be swapped out for even more specific rules according to circumstance. I don’t think that this is necessarily the case. I would argue that if we have a set of sufficiently specific rules, and they are distinct and non-contradictory, we can just view them all as applying at once; no one claims that we must select rules from legal texts via a meta-rule to apply them - except insofar as it relates to whether or not a rule has been broken. — ToothyMaw

And so I think, as a matter of practicality at least, it makes perfect sense to have meta-rules. In the legal system of my country for instance we have the following meta-rules to avoid these problems :
- laws passed by higher authorities trump those passed by lower authorities.
- for laws passed at the same level of authority the specific law trumps the more general.

I thought about it; legal texts are often times open to interpretation. A better reference would a set of very specific legislated laws. — ToothyMaw

Yes usually they are not to specific and open to interpretation on purpose, because it's not really feasible to be so specific as to regulate all the minutia of all possible circumstances. That's where judges come in.

Also I find there is a world of difference between getting the thing I'm attached to vs the thing I want. When I get something I want I'm happy, when I get something I am attached to I don't feel anything. And sometimes I'm attached to things I don't even want (bad habits). — khaled

If you are talking about addictions I would agree, but do you think that is what is meant with attachments here? Maybe, I'd need to think about it some more.

If desiring to win and failing to do so is disappointing, then those who desire to win the most should be devastated the most. We can agree that top athletes probably do desire to win the most. However they are not devastated the most (ideally, they are not affected by a bad performance at all). Suggesting that maybe there is something extra that is the actual cause of disappointment, something other than desire to win. — khaled

Yes but my first guess wouldn't be that that something extra is attachments. It's sort of a psychological downward spiral that compounds the mistakes that other non-top players get stuck in. How do you see the relation to attachments here? I'd say this is more a question of a lack of confidence.

I don't think those two things are the same at all. Attachment is different from desire. — khaled

Meh, I don't think they are things at all... just two symbols pointing at different degrees of what is essential one psychological process. It seems a matter of degree rather than discrete things. If I don't get what I want, I'm disappointed. If I don't get what I'm attached to, I'm very disappointed…

This would mean that you would be put down by a bad performance. But athletes are pushed to to not care even about that. Take volleyball for example, it often happens that a player single handedly loses a game or a set for his team because of the nature of the game making it very clear who messed up (fast paced, highly structured and a single mistake by a player puts down the whole team). But top players shrug off mistakes, worse players are put down by bad performances leading to even worse performances. Does that mean that top players have a weaker desire to win? I think they want it just as badly, but they're not attached. — khaled

No I don't think this is correct, almost every top player cares very much about their performance ... Maybe they can shrug it off more easily, I could buy that. Also note that giving a bad pass for instance, isn't necessarily 'a mistake' from the perspective of the process of trying to play as good as you can. It's the intention and training that counts, not necessarily a particular execution.

However, I would argue that it is supremely difficult, for better or worse, to live without attachments and desires. I am not sure that, as living human beings, we are able to achieve it. If we simply stayed in bed most of the time rather than pursue grander desires, it would still involve an attachment to the comfort of being in bed. — Jack Cummins

No I think that is quite right, because what separates living for non-living things, is that living things have purposes. Purpose meaning here to desire or want certain things to happen, which is another way of saying that living things have (emotion) attachments to certain things or outcomes. So in a very literal sense, the only way to entirely overcome attachments is to become a non-living thing... to die.

So I think the interesting question here is not whether we can overcome all attachments, but rather what should we be attached to and what not, and to what degree etc?

In the world of poker, or other sports too for that matter, you will often hear something like, results-oriented thinking should be avoided at all cost, or you shouldn't care about any particular outcome of a game because that makes you preform worse. The reasoning behind this is that, as it is in part a game of chance, you only have limited control over the results... and so you will be disappointed a lot if you care about the results, and that hampers your ability to make good decisions.

Of course this poses a bit of a conundrum in that what motivates you to play in the first place is probably winning games. And if you do away with that motivation, why bother at all right? The way around this particular motivation-conundrum is being invested in the process instead of the results. You focus on playing every game as good as you can, and try to care only insofar you played well or not.

I think Buddhism and a lot of other wisdom or virtue-traditions point in this same general direction of trying to shift your attachment from concrete results or things to caring about certain processes, i.e. right speech, right action... the eightfold path. And yes I think psychologically this kind of mindset would give you a more even, persistent and resilient motivation throughout your life, because you have more agency and control over it and also because these are goals that don't expire.

Regarding (2), this is most likely the result of enslavement. Once you have an agricultural society, it becomes rational (?) for those with power to capture, enslave and coerce those weaker than them to do the work at the 'bottom' of the division of labour (which did not exist much before, except along gender lines). This is because there is simply a lot more work to be done (simple hunter-gatherer societies could get by on around 15 hours a week), and now there is surplus to be collected.

This suggests a further question, however. Why is it rational for those at the top to coerce those at the bottom? I think it is because this aforementioned surplus is something people now wish to acquire in greater and greater amounts. So it seems like the possibility of acquiring surplus triggered something like human greed... as though greed were a latent psychological inclination among humans that was waiting for the right conditions. I would suggest that such greed is closely related to risk aversion and anxiety. The background conditions of scarcity which compound such anxiety are then also the background conditions of greed - the perception of scarcity, whether or not it remains real, might then lie behind persisting greed and the coercion it inspires. — Welkin Rogue

I don't disagree with this, but I also think a lot of it was the consequence of the structural changes in agriculture societies. Agriculture relies on building up larger stocks of food after harvesting seasons to get through the non productive months. This makes it more interesting and viable for groups to live of stealing those stocks, which in turn makes defence more of a necessity for these communities. And when you need to keep a more permanent defence around, you get specialists who gain an edge on others when it comes to violence and coercion. Why was it rational to coerce others? Because they could without much trouble... whereas previously they couldn't because there was less need for division of labour and specialists.

So were agriculturalists generally more anxious and greedy? Or was it technology and consequent structural changes that enabled anxiety and greed in agricultural societies? Maybe a bit of both? It's hard to tell, but my guess would be that it's often more a case of changing circumstances enabling changes in behaviour, than the other way around.

Overall I couldn't agree more. I get the feeling you either read my consensus morality post or just happen to have an interest in almost exactly the same stuff as me. But I don't really care I guess; a good discussion is a good discussion. — ToothyMaw

I didn't read it, I puzzled this view together over the years from a lot different sources I guess. I do have a persistent interest in this, I guess that is fueled by a certain discomfort about the current state of post-theistic confusion about morality in western societies.

And yes, it is surprising that someone actually somewhat agrees with it :-). Usually I get a lot of flak from people with more objective views on morality. It was a good discussion, thanks for that.

Are you saying that since culture provides a system of values that abide by reasoning of some sort, cultural values are not arbitrary? — ToothyMaw

Yes, in part, culture is an ongoing dialogue where language and reason (but also rhetoric) is used to come to certain values... but ultimately there will have to be some non-rational instincts or desires feeding into that. There no way around that I don't think.

↪ChatteringMonkey
I think I can agree to this. There are certainly some objective parts to the process of developing morals, I won't deny that.
— ChatteringMonkey

It's more a principle of non-arbitrariness; the definition of objective you are using is the more common usage of the word, not the way it is used in most of the philosophy I've read, which is "independent of the mind". — ToothyMaw

No I can see how I wasn't exactly clear there.

So I think moral arguments come in the form of

"If 'we' value X, 'then' Y moral/rule follows"

Value X is not subjective, nor objective... but intersubjective. You might say that is arbitrary, but I think it's the only thing we have, absent God. And since the differences in what people value isn't that big either, I don't think this is as big of a problem as people make it out to be (relativism!).

What is objective is the 'then' in the moral argument. This is basically a causal relation, certain moral rules will be better at attaining certain values than others, and this could in principle be measured.

What is also objective about morality is 'enforcing' the rule, once you have established the rule. It's objectively true that one has followed or broken a rule.

Edit: And yes I use it as independent of mind too.

↪ChatteringMonkey
You might say: "but all ethics are arbitrary". This is not true: while they might not be objective, ethics like consequentialism dictate that the actor should not matter; what is correct for me is correct for you in the same situation, personal predispositions and values mean nothing. Btw I just posted without tagging you, don't know if one can edit in tags. — ToothyMaw

I think I can agree to this. There are certainly some objective parts to the process of developing morals, I won't deny that.

I think that moral "rules" refer more to specific sets of regulations determining what is moral, while value is more about usefulness and worth. I think rules are more useful for assessing the morality of actions, while, as you say, values determine many of our moral beliefs. But this makes our moral beliefs entirely arbitrary; if they are derived purely from what each of us values then what is wrong or right depends entirely upon the actor; what is wrong for one person might be right for another person in the same situation. Literally anything could be considered moral, including something like pre-meditated killing. — ToothyMaw

Yeah that is why I described myself in the first place as social contractarian. Values are not arbitrary as mere personal opinions, but we get educated in a certain culture and that socio-cultural context is vital for the devellopment of those values and morals. They are intersubjective if you want.

Yes, infanticide, for example, is pretty fucked up, but just because something is awful instinctively that doesn't mean one should back down from it; that is part of why I like Peter Singer - he follows his own arguments to their conclusions, regardless of how awful they are. Sorry if mentioning infanticide ruffles your feathers; I am just using a well known example of an ethical conclusion most people find positively awful. — ToothyMaw

Well I'm not a big fan of Singer because he seems to want to do away with the emotional or instinctive component of morality. For instance I think one of the points he makes is that we shouldn't have a local bias, favouring the people we know over people across the globe we don't know. And I think that is a mistake, because this is in part what motivates me and other people to be moral in the first place. You might counter this by saying that motivation shouldn't play a role in determining what is moral, but I think we are ultimately human and not emotionless machines... so if you want a morality that works, that people are actually willing to follow, you'll have to take that into account.

It might seem as if I am misunderstanding the social contract, but I'm merely working with this:

a way we tend to evaluate morals
— ChatteringMonkey

Morals are usually measured against rules, so I am saying you need to have rules, which you seem to imply, but these rules have to be normative in ethical terms, not just standards for behavior dictated by a contract if you want to use them to measure the ethics of an action. Or you could go the direction of making a consequentialist argument for the social contract. — ToothyMaw

I think they are measured against values, a plurality of values. We have no absolute grounding in the descriptive for those values, and people do disagree about them, but from those values you can derive, or at least evaluate, morals, i.e. if you value x, then moral y follows...

And I think in a functioning society people have discussions about all kinds of aspects of this process, from what to value, to how those values relate to eachother hierarchically, to figuring out what kind of consequences follow from what kinds of actions etc...

A good example of this process in action is the COVID-crisis I think. You have virologists saying what the consequence are going to be for the spread of the virus if you let people go about their business and how many people could possibly die because of it. You have economists saying what kind of consequences this could have for the economy and what the long term effects could be. And then you have psychologist warning about the psychological and mental health aspects of lock-down and social isolation etc etc... And then all of these different values get debated and weighed against eachother to determine what kind of rules you ultimately want people to follow to deal with the virus.

No actually I'd say I'm most consequentialist if anything, I think ideally morals should serve a purpose, or better purposes.

The problem with consequentialism is that it is really only feasible in theory, because we value a plurality of different things and it's often not possible to fully calculate the consequences of certain actions in practice because the world is complex.

Which brings me to virtue ethics as providing generally more practical ideas about how to live your life and get good results.

Then there are certain extreme things I don't want to even think about, because they are just to awful instinctively, which bring in a deontological aspect. A more deontological approach can also be useful for children who don't yet have the ability to think about consequences... as a stepping stone to more mature ethics.

And yes finally, I do have to acknowledge that I live together with other people and, absent God and objective morality, don't necessarily have the same values and ideas about morality as others. And because at least some coordination has value in itself, I can see the reason behind ceding some of my freedom for personal moral convictions to societal developed rules... which I suppose is again a kind of deontology.

Politics does precede and transcend the law, because it decides what the laws are going to be. Typically a political body like parliament votes and determines the laws, and the legal system can only interpret and apply them. Although, as I write this down, I'm wondering if this is equally the case in common law and continental law. At least continental legal systems seem to accept the primacy of the political over the legal.

The point I wanted to get to, is that given this primacy of the political, in some sense political action puts the laws themselves into question... i.e. political action is precisely aimed at changing how a society and its institutions are organised. So there does seem to be an inherent tension here in principle, in that you are trying to judge political action by the very system and standards they are seeking to change.

And viewed in the context of history, I think you could also make the case that reforming political systems would, in a lot of cases, not have been possible without breaking the law. I think Thrasymachus was to some extend right with his claim that justice is the advantage of the stronger, if only as a descriptive claim that is true at least some of the time. If you live in an authoritarian society where the ruling class determines the laws and dominates the institutions, there may be no other way than breaking the law to achieve political change.

No, you just aren't subscribing to any normative ethics. The is-ought problem is different from claiming that something is wrong or right with no standards; it is about the coherency of moving from descriptive to normative claims. You are not moving from descriptive to normative claims - you are making purely descriptive claims about people's beliefs and their intentions, desires, or plans to act on those beliefs. — ToothyMaw

Well I guess you're right to to some extend that I don't subscribe to any particular normative ethics, they can all have their uses in different instances.... so if i'd be pressed to give an answer to that question, it's say it's a mix of the big three, with deontology coming last. I think none of them gives the full story of how we evaluate morals. That's part of why I want to introduce the social contract, not only as a description of peoples beliefs, but also as a way we tend to evaluate morals... in a dialogue with other people and measured against values that are developed in a culture. I don't think there is one ultimate ground.

But yes, the is-ought problem seems intractable to me too. Divine command theory works, but it still sucks, and there is, of course, no reason to believe god exists — ToothyMaw

And if you don't believe in God, god is merely a way to give more weight to what is essentially a human creation or convention. Which is the other reason why I turn to the social contract, because without some kind of social convention, it risks ending in mere personal opinion because - however good the argument is - it has to at least assume some kind of prior value that cannot be shown to be objective.

Yes I'm saying the standards come from culture, not from normative ethics.
— ChatteringMonkey

But nothing makes those moral actions right or wrong; even if they fall in line with your descriptive ethics; those just describe what is believed to be wrong or right by people, they don't actually provide standards. You could say "this action is believed to be right by so and so, and they are going to act in accordance with that belief", but this doesn't make it right.

Ultimately, real world moral actions get the meaning and force from implicit or explicit agreements in a certain society... a social contract if you want.
— ChatteringMonkey

I don't see how an agreement to give up freedoms for the greater good, or to cooperate, provide standards for right or wrong; some actions are in line with the contract, but that doesn't make them moral unless you already subscribe to an ethic that either explicitly or largely values cooperation and social order. — ToothyMaw

But there is nothing that makes moral actions right or wrong if you don't already subscribe to some value, even outside of social contract theory... you can't get an ought from an is regardless, unless you believe in God. This is typically the argument that is used against it, but I just don't see how this doesn't apply equally to all non-theist conceptions of morality.

Actually it appears chimps have culture too if this is any good: https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/212/chimpculture/chimpculture.html

A call from a chimpanzee warning of danger I would argue has plenty of meaning. If all that separates culture from being the same as evolution is the ability to speak then this demonstrates otherwise; some chimps have evolved culture without language. — ToothyMaw

Yeah ok, maybe language isn't strictly necessary for culture, depends on what you would want to call culture. It's a matter of degree, not an absolute cut-off probably... we can do more with culture than a chimp because we have language. You need some way to convey information at least, and abstract language can do that better than howling or screeching.

I think you are discounting an entire ethic: normative ethics. Normative ethics prescribe moral actions that, according to some theories, transcend circumstance and are, if they are any good, non-arbitrary. What you describe is applied ethics, deciding how to put moral knowledge into practice. Applied ethics often times has to rely on normative theories, which you appear to disregard. What would real world moral actions mean if there were no standards for right or wrong? — ToothyMaw

Yes I'm saying the standards come from culture, not from normative ethics. I'm a social contractarian. That's not to say normative ethics can't have some influence on the debate, they can and do, but they are not more than either, a part of the debate or one argument of many. Ultimately, real world moral actions get the meaning and force from implicit or explicit agreements in a certain society... a social contract if you want.

I agree: a child raised in a caste system would be different, in some ways, from a child raised in a highly socially mobile environment. But isn't all this a confusion of terms? Isn't human nature just what we possess naturally? Unless you want to claim that culture is the result of, or interacts with, evolutionary traits, in which case you are submitting at least partially to the evolutionary, and potentially objectivist, view. And even if culture were partially responsible, with the evolutionary view of culture I think it could be understood as a natural process like any other, and, thus, human nature can be understood fully from a nomological perspective. — ToothyMaw

Okay I'm not sure I totally understand where you're coming from...

But first off, just to be clear, I think everything is a natural process, or maybe better a physical process.
Culture is a very specific one though, which only certain biological lifeforms make use of, lifeforms that are capable of creating and using language and meaning. Culture is transmitted by and is only possible for language-users. And evolution is a specific kind of natural process in its own right, namely one which applies to biological organisms which use DNA. So even though they are both natural processes in the widest sense, there is a difference.

What i'm saying is that the (evolved) ability to develop culture has had, in turn, an effect on our evolution. If culture can take over the role certain genetically hardwired behaviours play in terms of fitness, then those hardwired behaviours wouldn't be selected for anymore, because they became obsolete. This is something evolutionary biologist see time and again, certain new evolved traits making older traits become obsolete and atrophy (or not selected for anymore) as a result.

But this is all a bit besides the point I think. The point is that we happened to evolve the ability to develop culture and that replaced some of what one might call nature (as opposed to nurture or culture here), We are more malleable or plastic creatures than most because we have this ability. And I think it's is a feature (not a bug) of culture, and the reason for it's evolutionary success, that it can be changed more easily to changing circumstances.

What that tells me - if nature tells us anything - is that we should use this ability, and talk to each other to develop moralities that fit our circumstances (locally and in our time), instead of trying to define once and for all what morality should be (universally, a-temporally and objectively). That is what culture is after all, an ongoing dialogue between people about a changing set of agreements on meanings and mores... it's open-ended. Trying to extract the essences out of that is a bit of a flawed idea I think because you abstract away from the historical context that in part defines it.

I'm not sure you make this same mistake, but this is something philosophy often got wrong historically.

This OP is related to another thread I started a while back about normative ethics. What grounds the ethics I created in rationalness is its predication upon behaviors (fitted to specific situations) outlined by reasoning with axioms extracted from human nature. Can axioms that can be reasoned with be extracted from an evolutionary view of human nature? Or does it have to be essentialist? I personally think we are largely inept primates bungling our ways through life with the ultimate goal of passing on our genes. But can such a view be reasoned with? Or does human nature have to be discoverable and distinct from chimps (for example)? — ToothyMaw

I think an evolutionary view of human nature will show that certain things like morality were offloaded from genes to culture precisely because we developed the ability for language, reason etc. Or put in another way, a specified morality isn't hardcoded in our genes, but the ability to develop one is. And from a evolutionary perspective this makes sense because culture is more adaptable than genes, which would make an organism more 'fit' in a host of different and changing environments.

You see this is why I think these kind of approaches of looking to human nature for ethics, or any objectivist/essentialist approach for that matter, is exactly the wrong approach, because it one of those things nature 'delegated' to culture. If anything, nature tells us to talk and debate about it and create and agree upon our own morals, as an ongoing process... and not to definitively code them in genes or stone, because the world changes.

That is what is called 'methodological naturalism' which is perfectly fine. It doesn't make any claims about the world in general - but then, it probably also has no need to post to philosophy forums. — Wayfarer

I'm of the opinion that making claims about the world in general isn't very philosophical, but then I usually tend to side with what one might call anti-philosophers, so maybe that makes sense.

But physicalism is not that - physicalism is the 'thesis that everything is, or supervenes on, the physical'. It is the presumption of many people - maybe the majority! - in that having taken God out of the picture, then what you have left is a universe 'governed by' the laws of physics. If it can't be accounted for in those terms, then it isn't real, or it doesn't exist. It is the philosophy of modern scientific secular culture. — Wayfarer

As I alluded to earlier, I think physicalism is an extreme version of the common sense notion that ideas and dreams aren't real, as opposed to the world we experience via our senses. Rather than deep thoughts about the nature of reality, i'd say most people just start from this basic intuition. And that's not so much a philosophy, as it is something that is hard-wired in us to some extend. Even those who believe in God assume this much when they go about their day.

What I'm pointing out, is that, if not God, at least mind has now been re-introduced to the picture by physics itself. — Wayfarer

I do wonder how you would come to that conclusion? Granting that physics reveals basic stuff to be information-theoretical or mathematical values, that still doesn't necessitate something like mind or God. Minds, or rather thoughts, to me are something brains produce, I don't even know how to make sense of mind being part of the basic stuff of the universe. So yeah it's hard to respond to such claims if it isn't even clear what it is supposed to mean.

So my view is that modern, or should we say post-modern, science, really undermines physicalism altogether. Of course a lot of people are going to disagree with that, but note this: those physicist 'public intellectuals' like David Deutsche and Sean Carroll who are most vocally wed to physicalism, are also advocates for 'many-worlds' and multiverse interpretations of physics. And I say, that's because physicalism can't accomodate the paradoxes of quantum physics without introducing such ideas. — Wayfarer

Classical physics, Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, can't accomodate it, I don't know if that has much to do with the philosophical position of physicalism... maybe to some extend, sure.

And I think Sean Carroll would say that he's not so much introducing an idea to accomodate the paradox, rather that it's the interpretation that is the most simple and straightforward because it doesn't have to introduce new ideas to explain the disappearance or collapse of part of the wave-function. There is no paradox in many-worlds.

I want to stress that i'm not necessarily endorsing a metaphysical version of physicalism that makes definite claims about the basic substance of the universe, and I don't think science is doing that either for the most part. I think a more common version of physicalism just brackets that question altogether, and is only committed to the notion that we need to test our ideas to empirical data about the world.

Actually, Wheeler says not. He said that 'it' - a physical object - comes from 'bit' - binary choices, yes/no questions:

I, like other searchers, attempt formulation after formulation of the central issues and here present a wider overview, taking for working hypothesis the most effective one that has survived this winnowing: It from Bit. Otherwise put, every it — every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself — derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely — even if in some contexts indirectly — from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, bits.

It from Bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.
— J A Wheeler, Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links

Wheeler's 'delayed choice' thought experiment also poses huge challenges for realism. See this article for an account.

Besides, where did 'the physical' originate? Complex matter, such as carbon and the other heavy elements, were the product of stellar explosions. But the formation of stars are in turn dependent on the existence of the fundamental constraints which governed the formation of the Universe, and it's impossible to say what the source of those constraints are, or if they're simply 'brute fact'. — Wayfarer

Yeah ok maybe at the very bottom. But I think what reality ultimately is at bottom is a separate question from how reality at our scale operates.

So for instance it might very well be that we life in a simulated universe, but within that simulated universe what we call the physical still seems to comes first... and information doesn't seem to directly effect it.

Even if ultimately something like ideas, information or mind is at bottom of all the physical stuff in in the universe, it certainly doesn't seem to be 'our' mind or ideas that are that basis... we still need a physical biological organism to sustain our mind, and we still can't create or directly effect physical stuff with our thoughts.

If information is ultimately the source, then it certainly took a very long detour, by first creating all the physical stuff, that is able to give rise to biological life only in some corner case... which then finally is able to generate and process information again.

I think there really is a basic difference between objects and subjects. It’s an ontological distinction, and that not everything has or is a mind. I think your perspective arises from internalising the abstract view of physics - as treating everything as a point within a mathematical matrix. But what that doesn’t allow for, is the reality of suffering, which can’t be represented abstractly or converted into mathematical co-ordinates. Ballpoint pens and lumps of granite don’t have minds, animals and humans do, and the latter are also capable of reason.

The point I take from Wheeler’s observation is that it’s an acknowledgement of the role of the observer. Science has been forced to make that acknowledgement, for reasons I’m sure you know. But you can’t ‘get behind’ that - the role of the observer is acknowledged but there’s nothing in the mathematics that models it. That’s why it’s a turning point in science - it’s because hitherto, it was believed science was seeing the world ‘as it truly is’ as if in the absence of any observer. That is what has been called into question. — Wayfarer

Yeah, brains are objects, minds and ideas are not.

I think the basic difference is between information/ideas and physical stuff. The physical is that what exists in time and space, whereas information does not. You can convey the same information via a number of different physical media. The exact configuration in space or time doesn't really matter, as long as it contains certain signs that can be interpreted by some (physical) being that can grasp the meaning that is conveyed by those signs... otherwise it's just a bunch of random symbols that doesn't effect anything physical.

So the link between the physical and information is some entity that is capable of generating, communicating and interpreting agreed upon meanings of signs. Until relatively recently that was biological life exclusively (as far as we knew), but computers also do this now, albeit auto-matically via code that we programmed into it.

The point I want to get to, it that the notion of physicalism is still important for how we make sense of the world. The physical came first, and life grew out of that. In fact life developed this ability precisely to be able to affect the physical for its goals... to extend its physical life and reproduce physical life. So ideas and information can affect the physical only in this very specific way. The mistake that is being made, I think at least, is turning this specific way in which life uses information into some kind of metaphysical or ontological distinction.

As to the wheeler comment. There's an obvious way in which it's true that science, as something we beings with certain goals and cognitive abilities do, will reflect some of that. But I don't think scientist are wholly unaware of that, it's more that they don't particularly care about the possible metaphysical reality outside of human perspective. If it works and can predicts things we experience then it's fine. In fact, if you look at the history of quantum mechanics, the consensus for a long time was exactly that... we shouldn't look at what the shrödinger-equation really means, as long at it predicts things accurately.

And as another aside, much more has been made of the observer-problem in quantum mechanics than it probably warrants, because it doesn't really apply to the scale we typically operate in. Again, it seems to be a mistake to generalize a very specific problem into something of metaphysical proportions.

I cannot assert this with 100% certainty, but I have a high level of confidence that - at best - metaphysics is a form of poetry in which people attempt to express vague feelings of, umm, well - and here I get stuck - I'm not quite sure what it is they're trying to express. I get that you are dissatisfied with the notion that everything (whatever "everything" means) is explicable in terms of a physical reality (AKA physicalism). But once you get beyond the physical, language falls apart - there are no clear definitions and you end up with a word salad - and no two people can agree on anything. — EricH

This is Nietzsche 101 basically. It's not language that fails, it's that you have nothing 'out there', nothing concrete to test your ideas to. And if that's the case, the source of those ideas can only be human (all to human) psychology. He showed that metaphysics is in fact a subset of psychology... not everybody has gotten the memo though.

What do we lose if we use a term without the metphysical baggage of physical in the name. Call it verificationism. Or justificationism. The category of what can be considered physical has been shifting in not only members by the qualities of members. If something is considered real by science then it is called physical even if it is not like anything else that was considered physical before. We could just eliminate what is at best now a metaphor and a misleading one. And then work with the same epistemology. I don't think the word has helped, but the methodologies have been very productive. — Coben

I'd be fine with that. The whole idea of reducing all of reality to a single substance has been somewhat of a misguided quest in philosophy no doubt. In fact, I totally agree with what you wrote in response to another post:

We are really taking a stand against Rationalism or some other epistemology. Or the idea of knowing purely transcendent stuff. — Coben

The last thing I would want to do is make blanket metaphysical statements about the whole of reality. It's more about a method indeed, about the value of testing your ideas against the world.

The point is reality is much more extraordinary and amazing and awe-inspiring than materialists would have us believe, that's the point. — leo

That's also a matter of perspective, isn't it? If you consider that the sciences are built on materialism, then they have given us a lot of stuff that is awe-inspiring i'd say, from the big bang to the quantum-wave-function... and the whole process of how we came to be, and the astronomical odds against it, is arguably more 'fantastic' than any of the creations myths.

But I could maybe agree on this general point, what is lacking in the scientific story is purpose. It doesn't give us a clear direction that transcends the individual, it doesn't provide us with a set of mores to live by etc etc... Maybe a society needs some inspiring overarching stories that make it more than a collection of individuals. There's certainly that creative aspect to human life that science doesn't capture with it's reliance on description only. But that was never its role to begin with. It's very good at what it does, description, and not so much at the more creative stuff society needs. And I think that's fine, so long you don't expect something it's doesn't and isn't supposed to do.

Ok fine, if you really want, matter combines itself into consciousness. What is your point? It still doesn't make matter itself conscious, like a carbon atom itself isn't hard or soft.

or it has inherently the creative power to give itself consciousness and purpose. — leo

No "matter inherently has the power to give itself" is not accurate, or at least it's a very strange way of putting it. Matter is the building block, it's only a certain configuration of those building blocks that has purpose and consciousness. Matter and itself don't have the same meaning in that sentence.

Edit: You can combine carbon atoms with carbon atoms to form really hard or really soft substances. The property of hard and soft is not something the carbon atom by itself has, it only a property of certain configurations of it.