Morality as Cooperation. — Mark S

Have you thought about cooperation in nature, apart from between humans? Bees and flowers, the symbiotic relationship that produces lichens, ant colonies, and so on; it seems there is in every aspect of relations between an organism and its environment elements of cooperation and of exploitation.

A tiger creeps through the long grass towards its prey, and the vertical stripes and slow sinuous movement convey its absence - 'just the grass rustling in the breeze'. Or the reverse deceit of the prey, as a stick insect stands immobile at just the right angle and in the right place to appear to be a dry twig. Examples of an evolved form that cooperates with the general environment to deceive, on the one side its prey, and on the other, its predator.

Or the icon of immorality - the cuckoo; that lays its eggs in another bird's nest and whose offspring will kill all the chicks of its host, and be fed by the unhappy parents 'til it is bigger than them and they are exhausted.

Everybody dies, but what's the rush?

Some paleoanthropology for your delectation; focussed for a change on China and the far East. A gentle ramble, but with some interesting science and good discussion.

Ethics includes the morality, or lack of it, of our moral sense’s intuitions and past and present cultural moral norms. — Mark S

I really like this. It makes a great starting place by indicating that we have intuitions and make moral judgements not only with them but also of them.

Our moral intuitions are foundational to moral philosophy. I am interested to hear how you defend the idea that understanding why our specific moral intuitions exist is not relevant to moral philosophy. — Mark S

I don't. Here for random example, we discover that infants have intuitions about fairness that relate closely to the needs of a cooperating social animal for mutual trust. Clearly this can give rise to some internalised conflict with the appetites of the individual, and so sets up the endless psychodrama between the individual and society, and explains why conflict sociologists find that the more internalised conflict in a society, the less external conflict, such that a polarised society tends to descend into violence, whereas one of individuals with conflicting loyalties will be more peaceful.

My main goals here are to clarify why “morality” as moral ‘means’ (cultural moral norms and our moral sense) exists so we can 1) refine cultural moralities to better meet our need and preferences, 2) separate out the search for moral ‘ends’ that are the other part of the larger subject, ethics.

What is your goal here? — Mark S

My goal in this discussion is the same as my goal in every discussion, to arrive at the truth together. But particularly to this topic it is important to me to point out that our communication is necessarily a moral endeavour. And thus I close the circle back to those intuitions by which we judge the very investigative discourse on which we are embarked. Are our goals moral?

It is this circularity that allows ethics to take flight and transcend mere biology to become that which can stand in judgement of nature itself.

I submit this as evidence:

The argument is very simple and it is addressed to you as an individual who has made the quoted statement. But it applies equally to anyone who participates in these discussions. We only share our talk here, so nothing is at stake but the truth. And if there is no truth, then there is no meaning. Therefore our discourse has to presume a moral commitment to truth. even when, as now, it is painful. There is no sarcasm; I am in deadly earnest. We owe each other honesty, or we are not communicating at all.

I think morality is qualitatively overrated. The normative "should" lies in the feelings and not in those man-made books. — Quk

Ah, mere feelings? Are feelings overrated? I think they might be underrated, myself, by philosophy and her bastard child science alike.

We share common senses - hearing, colour vision, etc, and the fact that some people may be deaf and/or blind, does not lead us to dismiss vision and hearing as subjective. Why should we do so with the moral sense? Perhaps you are morally blind, or perhaps you have been persuaded to ignore your sensibilities, or perhaps I am full of shit. But if you don't have a moral commitment to truth, then I find you are not worth talking to because you will say anything that suits you.

Because love and sex feel good. — Quk

So I hear.

But that's why we do reproduce, not why we should. The obligation is "for the survival of the species" whereas the individual reason is "to feel good" Total disconnect. The biology makes sense, but the morality is completely absent.

Exquisite comparison. And the difference between the two trees is the concept of sin in the one plant and the absence of intimidation in the other. — Quk

Also, the religious story appeals to the individual, whereas the evolutionary story does not. The categorical imperative of evolution is "survive". But individuals do not survive. "Why should I reproduce?" has no answer for the individual from evolution, and so cannot justify any morality, and the species or perhaps 'society' is the moral agent, of which the individual is a mere temporary and dispensable cell. All hail the market, or the party!

The still small voice of conscience is what we used to claim as the source of moral judgement, back in the olden days when we were allowed to be Christian. You were supposed to act according to your conscience, and if Pontius Pilate or some other jobsworth condemned you, you'd go to your death with dignity, and that was the good life.
Those were the days, when we believed we all had knowledge of good and evil because of something we ate. But now we have to defer to some Chinese ancient saying the same things, because it turned out not to be fruit tree, but an evolutionary tree.

... why people are effectively poorer... — unenlightened

It occurred to me to make the calculation, how much poorer people are in this case. It's down and dirty, but $1 trillion divided by 340,000,000, (US population) comes out at about $29,000 per person. Can that be right? Have I (ie google) got confused by American trillions?

Ouch! Small wonder folks are feeling unhappy. I live on less than that! It's enough to make a chap vote for Trump!

Edit: I think it's only $2,900. Still quite a sum for a family of 3 or 4 ...

What I call sharp hearing is not hearkening to others, but rather hearkening to oneself, nothing more.”

Many people find that unsatisfactory. — T Clark

I think people find it unsatisfactory when they listen to themselves reciting and performing according to the image they have of themselves. They do not listen to the emptiness, but fill it with theory and listen to that.

The scientific hypothesis Morality as Cooperation, which is about cultural moral norms and our moral sense, makes no claims about what ought to be. — Mark S

Then it is inadequate. Nazis cooperate. Mafias cooperate. That is not what anyone wants to mean by morality — well that's too strong, it's not what anyone ought to mean by morality.

Claims about what ought to be binding come from people based on their goals and how they choose to accomplish them. — Mark S

But of course, claims about anything come from people, and this claim comes from you, but I don't think much of it. I think we ought to have a shared goal in discussion to get as close as we can to the truth, and this shared aim is what grounds the morality of our interaction. Now if someone does not share this aim, there is nothing to be done, but to ignore what they say, and move on, unless we can somehow persuade them that the truth must be their goal in communication in general or communication loses its meaning, value, and function.

Ice. Good with gin, bad with scotch. Fairly short video, and fairly clear warnings.

1. Facts are always about what is the case.
2. What ought to be the case is manifestly not inevitably what is the case.

The prosecution rests.

If philosophy cannot end the diversity of viewpoints, what exactly is the purpose and utility in studying philosophy? — Pieter R van Wyk

"Because it's there." As Mallory replied when asked why he wanted to climb Everest. Your book cannot end the diversity of viewpoints — so why did you write it?

That you post 5 minutes after me suggests that you might be responding to my post, except that you would not have had time to even skim through the video. Particularly as the previous comment to mine was a week ago.

But the content of your post, which does not mention or address the already happening economic effects that is my topic, shows that you have just posted a random summary of predicted future climate changes that do not address the economy at all.

I wonder why you bothered?

Here is a video about the economic effects of climate change in the US. Similar and worse effects are available elsewhere.



One of the effects is that involuntary spending on repairs and rising insurance costs is somewhat dominating the rise in GDP, and this explains why people are effectively poorer even though the economy is growing, because they have to reduce 'discretionary' spending (on the good stuff). (See about 18 mins in.)

Make America Cool Again.

This is arguably what generated the quality submissions (i.e. the time allotted to composition). Quality diminishes when TPF is treated like Twitter and people post without first giving thought to the topic. — Leontiskos

Yes I remember reading your suggestions back then. I doubt the software allows such limits though. But if one finds one's poor posts being deleted, and then one receives a warning pm about them, that also has the effect of giving one pause - or else the effect of one going ballistic and getting banned. But I won't bang on here about it more than I already have...

But I rate @Banno highly as a philosopher, and he does engage; some people find that unpleasant.

I find myself reluctantly on the side of the ungodly, though without the contempt. My instinct has always been to refuse to discuss philosophy in pms for reasons the ungodly have somewhat indicated above. But more so, it is because I want the public scrutiny and moderation of both sides of the discussion, and that whatever I have to say is 'on the record'; Paul used to say that our discussions should be conducted, not primarily for the benefit of the participants, but for the silent reader. No silent readers of pms, alas.

I wonder if your style attracts argumentative nonsense more than the content deserves? I also wonder if the moderation is too lax? I have been very impressed with the latest essays, so if there is too much nonsense and unpleasantness in the threads, then stricter moderation is the answer, because there are quality posters enough.

Thank you. CPTSD and Bipolar Disorder make a difficult combo to treat. — Truth Seeker

I wasn't aware of that diagnosis when I commented, but I did see that you were taking responsibility for a situation you clearly had no responsibility for. What I could see from a few paragraphs of text, your psychiatrist should have been well aware of, and in not consulting and coming to an agreement with your parents (and yourself) about treatment they have set up this further conflict for you, and produced further guilt and shame, that I guess was evoked in you by earlier traumas. Shame on them, therefore! There is no way on earth that you in your distress could have resisted the influence of the socially authorised expert.

It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. — Good Will Hunting

If you haven't, do watch this golden oldie; it is a Hollywood fantasy, but it's a good one. And good luck with what looks to be a much more positive way forwards.

I wish I had listened to my parents instead of listening to my psychiatrist. Sadly, I can't change the past. — Truth Seeker

I wish you had had a better psychiatrist.

I would recommend speaking for yourself — AmadeusD

OK, Jesus. :joke:

Human beings, like sea lions and zebras, are individual, real, particular, unique - not generalities forming a dull backdrop against which the special ones suffer mental anguish and shine like stars.
6 days ago — Vera's last sentence of her last pf post

Not a bad place to stop. A star set in a background of stars. Thank you!

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jun/21/harvard-slavery-decendants-of-the-enslaved

Can these injustices be remedied with greater compassion with humility in humanity? — RadicalJoe

"We cannot afford it."

We are already morally bankrupt, and looking only for a token and image of justice; and a lot of us are resenting even that token. There is no way to make it right, no redemption or restitution. Total annihilation and extinction would not suffice.

But possibly, we might hope to show some love to our children and teach by example, to a new generation, a new way to deal with conflict.

Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts for ever. — Lao Tzu

In a little while we will forget, but not just yet.

This is rather interesting. A significant correlation between Earth magnetic field and atmospheric oxygen levels. I would suspect some crankery to this, but while causal explanations are still up somewhere near cloud cuckoo land, the data themselves are fairly solid.



https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu8826

A crime we used to call 'being a broken record'. A crime we used to call 'being a broken record'. A crime we used to call 'being a broken record'. A crime we used to call 'being a broken record'.

UNENLIGHTENED COMMENTARY AS AN AID

There are many worlds, but only one subjectivity. This subjectivity is cloaked by intellect, by identifications and by habit. This cloaking means that one fails to recognise oneself in one's fellow man, let alone one's myriad other fellow life-forms, all trying, in their wormlike, birdlike, or piglike ways to do what one can best do as a human — to recollect oneself as the universal subject.

The world we inhabit is God's explosion of his own being into myriad fragments, that must yearn and struggle through the ages to re-integrate themselves into the singular being again. like a giant self assembling jigsaw.

Thus the importance of relationships; one needs to find one's appropriate place in relation to others - one's mate, one's career, one's teacher, or whatever other relations are central to one's particular life.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world
The heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings
But the heart has its seasons, its evenings and songs of its own

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCy9k_RWlvA

This too is a kind of looking - to look is to question the world. 'Who are you?', the world asks itself. My only criticism is of that parochial, speciesist locution "human". Does anyone out there still think we are the crown of creation?

I think identity can be an important, even essential element of particularity, as does situatedness in history. It's what makes the individual a meaningful individual. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well of course - I think You are saying that identity is important socially? for sure, but psychologically, it is a contradiction as an individuality. When I go to the doctor I want to see a member of that professional body trained and vetted and supervised by them - not a quack! But identity is always the social form — a hat, a mask, or a costume. When a doctor retires, she does not become someone different, though she takes another role socially. It is very common for people to mistake themselves for their role, but it is always a mistake. The individual is not their identity; "the Doctor" is not one person.

Which is to say that meaning is social as language is social, and not individual and private.

I'm not competent to comment in detail in this; it is too steeped in postmodern considerations that are beyond me, or beneath me, I'm not sure which. But I can make some comment perhaps from a psychological perspective that might be helpful or confusing'

“Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection.”

Foucault [4]. — Moliere

This is a restatement of the biblical story of the Fall. The escape from the determination of physical law necessarily results in the institution of moral law. To be free is to face the conflict between selfish desire and social responsibility

The overall implication of our claims is that technocapitalism is a global cultural machine for producing nominally free subjectivities while eroding ontological freedom. It creates and processes subjectivity as a product to be sold (e.g. to advertisers) and converted into more capital. In fact, we claim capital, in its operation through autopoietic social systems for which freedom is epiphenomenal, essentially expands through monetizing the conversion of ontological to nominal freedom. The ultimate result of this, we have cautioned, may be an irreversible decline of both culture and the subjects that form it. — Moliere

The main point is that capitalism creates a false sense of freedom while actually taking it away, treating individual identities as products that can be sold. This can lead to a serious decline in both culture and the people who make it. — Amity

(Amity's dumbitdown version)

"individual identities" are what we are being sold, what we are told is important, and they are nothing else than the sum of the consumer choices we make. It follows that wealth is freedom. But consumer choices are not moral choices.

But it goes deeper: identities are not individual. Identities are necessarily external to the individual in origin and are interiorised by imposition or incorporation. To say that I am this or that, a philosopher or a buffoon, is to identify with a type, to join a club, and this, whether I say it or you do. Identification denies individuality. Race, gender, nationality, profession, football team, favourite shampoo, favourite philosopher, neurotype, there is nothing individual in any of it. Individuals are inexplicable, incomparable, unlimited, unique.

So one watches helpless as what I like to call "the community" (that which arises from communication) dissolves in the acid of the bullshit of "Sovereign Individuals", the logical apotheosis of the contradictory individual identity, that is entirely arbitrarily made-up, as there is no truth of the matter. The world is destroyed by mere cyphers, masquerading as 'characters', addicted to the fake freedom of money.

As I understand it, in some jurisdictions users have a legal right to have their posts and identity removed from the website if they so wish. Most forum software make it possible for administrators to do a full deletion for this reason. — Leontiskos

The right to change or erase the past is a dangerous nonsense, beloved by dictators and warned against by George Orwell.

I didn't say that.

To err is human, but to umm is divine.

Psychologists talk about a 'fight or flight' response. An automatic response to the perception of threat. Presumably, psychologically, one has no freedom about having this response or not, but also presumably, one does have freedom to fight or fly, unless one is caught in a trap and one's struggles in either case are in vain.

The only possibility for freedom seems to be a freedom created from nothing. — Fire Ologist

This seems correct to me, and accords with the meaning in the game of 'go'. A stone or a configuration of connected stones has degrees of freedom corresponding to the unoccupied spaces around and within it. In order to survive permanently a configuration needs two degrees of internal freedom - two separate internal spaces so that even entirely surrounded, both cannot be filled because the fill of the first would be itself surrounded, and not survive until the second space could be filled.

Humans, it appears, have only one such internal empty space — a singular awareness, and thus our freedom is temporary. Hence the inadequacy of the individual and the necessity for relationship. Hence the desperation of the narcissist and psychopath.

Deleting the posts is an extreme option, indeed. Imagine everything you posted for years vanishing like the smoke in the air. — javi2541997

It is extreme, and inconsiderate to members who have engaged in good faith, as it makes a nonsense of threads when one side of a dialogue is removed. I am surprised it is allowed; I would suggest that in general it should not be allowed, as it somewhat undermines the value of the site as an archive record.

Members need the ability to delete the odd post they might make in haste or anger, but to delete one's entire contribution is to destroy not just one's own work, but the full meaning of the contributions of one's interlocutors. And that is a deliberate destructive and malicious act.

Adrian Piper in his article ... — Moliere

Women philosophers are not so numerous and often cited on this site as to make this an entirely trivial error. Especially when one is banging on about formality and style, and the importance of "... founding those opinions in fact."

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper[1] (born September 20, 1948) is an American conceptual artist and Kantian philosopher. Her work addresses how and why those involved in more than one discipline may experience professional ostracism, otherness, racial passing, and racism by using various traditional and non-traditional media to provoke self-analysis. She uses reflection on her own career as an example.[2]

Piper has been awarded various fellowships and medals and has been described as having "profoundly influenced the language and form of Conceptual art".[3] In 2002, she founded the Adrian Piper Research Archive (APRA) in Berlin, Germany,[4] the focus of a foundation that was established in 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Piper

Here's a discussion of the UK Strategic Defence Review, of recent publication, and a more general discussion of Nato, threats worldwide, and so on. Rather sobering stuff, and interesting, alas, for anyone prepared to stare into the void a while. Thankfully, the nob on the frontispiece is not much featured.

Mainly i just want to celebrate, but suddenly, a whole nuclear deterrent system can be put at risk with a bit of well planned espionage and sabotage. "Wage war with surprise moves." Things are changing, and we live, alas, in interesting times.

I have not had a large life; As I approach the end, I am tempted to try and make something of it - a rounded tale that will have a legacy of meaning. I have done some things and had some relationships, nothing important or exciting, but who knows I might with a kind word or a cruel word have saved or ruined a life that would or will transform things for everyone.

But it doesn't matter. The drama is ephemeral and I am nothing more than the drama as it plays out to the curtain. The applause or the boos I will not hear. I have been on holiday my whole life, and this is just a postcard sent to a random stranger. I had a ball - I hope you did too.

I am reminded not of Moby Dick so much as Eric Newby's [The Last Grain Race