if you want a morality that works, that people are actually willing to follow, you'll have to take that into account. — ChatteringMonkey

Totally agree.

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.

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... — ChatteringMonkey

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.

This is actually similar to the main argument against divine command theory: anything could be considered moral if commanded by god.

correction: basically everyone finds it awful

I will say that relative to a culture one can make the statement that "this is correct for us", and it can be true, but that's not really a normative statement about right and wrong.

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. — ChatteringMonkey

That's where infusing a level of intuition into the calculations comes into play; we can operate largely on intuition for most issues, but rely on a calculus for cases that can be reasoned through, are outside intuition, are incredibly important, can be disentangled from local factors, or any combination thereof. For instance: the ethics around kicking a dog are pretty intuitive: don't do it; you wouldn't want to be kicked. But something like waging illegal offensive wars that could kill hundreds of thousands of people because of circumstantial evidence of WMD's? Something like that should be reasoned through.

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. — ChatteringMonkey

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.

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 often measured in terms of 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.

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. — ChatteringMonkey

Different normative ethics often times come into conflict; I don't see how one can ascribe to both deontology and, say, consequentialism. One dictates that all that matters is consequences, the other says that the act itself matters and we should follow rules. The two can't both be correct, even if one or the other might seem more expedient depending upon the situation. And I think that you are automatically disregarding deontology if you say circumstances matter, not merely putting it in last place.

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. — ChatteringMonkey

Once again, that entails only descriptive elements. If you subscribe to an ethic that dictates that people should follow rules that tend to create cooperation and maintain social order then you can weigh whether or not people make moral actions in upholding the social contract. It sounds like you actually believe in a deontological morality if you think that an action's morality can bet determined by a set of rules dictated by a contract, especially if it is tacit.

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

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. — ChatteringMonkey

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.

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

But nothing makes those 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.

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 it's own right, namely one which applies to biological organisms which use DNA. So eventhough they are both natural processes in the widest sense, there is a difference. — ChatteringMonkey

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.

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). — ChatteringMonkey

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?

That's partially the point, a simple crap analogy is the place to start. A car and a plane are extremely similar from a systems perspective, cut off the wings and there's a car. When taken apart, the parts will reveal themselves to be very complex. Materials, designed shapes, machining, tolerances, the way the parts must fit to create functioning subsystems are the work of 500 years of culturally acquired cumulative knowledge and technology. Even if it is an exact copy of the car, it will never work as well as an original because you are lacking a lot of the undocumented educated intuition of the original engineers.. — magritte

If anything I would say that the plane, as a system, is far more complex than any of the individual parts - unlike a function mapping the mathematical trajectory it follows (if that's more what you are talking about). It depends upon so many different factors to fly, including all the parts working in unison. What you seem to be saying is that disentangling the system and its subsystems is what is truly difficult. Or am I wrong? The plane is literally composed of thousands of interacting parts and who knows how many subsystems.

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. — ChatteringMonkey

I think that culture can be viewed from an evolutionary perspective; David Sloan Wilson describes this well; altruism, for example, allows for better outcomes for communities, and thus the individual - on a non-local level. Unless I'm mistaken the arcing transition towards altruism is like any other transition. The evolutionary view is not limited just to what our genes dictate.

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. — ChatteringMonkey

:up:

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. — ChatteringMonkey

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.

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. — ChatteringMonkey

I kind of agree; the morality that I outlined a while back left more than enough room for talking and debating; while rules would be made, they would only last until as long as the plurality would want them to.

Its more like scavenging a plane for parts and then modifying those parts to make a heater and then assessing if the modified parts are still part of the original parts. If those parts could be unmodified could they be used for building a plane again? If so, then the makeup of the heater is compatible with that of the plane. Kind of a crap analogy though imo.

Thanks dude.

Not seeing it.

The practical question here is what kind of argument might be used to convince others that your take on human nature is the "objective" one. — Echarmion

I would think that many people could be convinced of the objectivity of a more nomological view; it is empirical - but I suppose that anyone could make any claim about human nature, such as that we are born sinners in need of redemption in the face of eternal torment, or maybe that we have to be "monsters" in order to be self realized and competent. The real issues here are dogma and pseudoscience imo, along with the difficulties that would come with extracting axioms from human nature.

That seems like a low bar to cross though. Humans can reason themselves into all kinds of things, including behaviours usually considered extremely immoral. In fact, it's kind of a feature of the most egregious human conduct that it's the product of reasoning of some kind. Purely emotional reactions can be very violent, but are also usually limited. — Echarmion

I suppose someone like Hitler reasoned in such a way as to come to the conclusion that he was justified in mass murdering people; but if what is considered moral were voted on as a plurality then we wouldn't see despots or even tax increases on the middle class; the people usually know what is in their best interest imo.

First, thanks for responding.

Can axioms that can be reasoned with be extracted from an evolutionary view of human nature?
— ToothyMaw

What does "can be reasoned with" mean here? That they're intelligible, free of contradictions, or some other quality? — Echarmion

That they are Intelligible and sufficiently representative of humanity; the axioms need to be coherent with respect to human nature for any reasoning done with them to produce behaviors rational for humans.

If humans are, for instance, compassionate towards those less fortunate than themselves in a way distinct from other animals, and sufficiently for being human, does that mean that this trait can be synthesized and used to develop behaviors for specific situations that are rational, with respect to human nature, for humanity?
— ToothyMaw

Whether or not human compassion is "sufficiently distinct" to be a genuinely "human" trait seems to rest on a number of value judgements. We'd first need to show that these can be made in some non-arbitrary way. — Echarmion

I see no issue with what is sufficient for being human being arbitrary; human nature can still be objective. Furthermore, I think some aspects of human nature are observable. For instance: humans value the lives of loved ones over those of strangers much of the time. There are exceptions, but not many. It actually seems to me the nomological account is superior in this respect; evolutionary biology can provide some truths about what humans tend to be. Neuroscience too.

Could these loose concepts be extracted and reasoned with to create rational behaviors, with respect to human nature, for specific situations for humanity?
— ToothyMaw

How would you go from a behaviour to a rational behaviour? Where does rationality enter the picture? — Echarmion

I'm saying that since the behaviors are reached via reasoning they are rational - if they are anchored to human nature. According to another metric they might not be rational.

I wrote "inept" not "ept".

Once again I'm having difficulties understanding you. I guess you mean what if people voted for laws based upon optimism/pessimism lines? I don't think that most issues are related to the ethical ramifications of bringing a person into this world. For instance, combating climate change has nothing to do with the human population (not saying humans don't contribute to climate change) as far as I know, other than that the earth will not be able to sustain the current population after a certain point. But the more pressing issue is how to avoid a scenario in which the population cannot be sustained.

But it remains that the right to assisted suicide is predicated upon the conception that a life isn't worth living; perhaps it isn't worth living merely because you want to arbitrarily end it, or maybe it is because you wish to end your own suffering or the suffering of your family and friends. But the right doesn't exist without people believing that some lives aren't worth living and thus voting accordingly. Thus this feeds into the optimism/pessimism divide.

I am not sure we can say it is due to optimism/pessimism really. Rather, this has to do with rights of people to do what they want with their life. They may think life is great and that the people are making a terrible mistake but believe it is okay to end one's life when one wants easily. Also, often religionists are very pessimistic even though they are anti-abortion/assisted suicide. Rather, they want everyone to live so they can see the End of Times. Some also believe suffering is a virtue and all that. — schopenhauer1

Good point; many people probably would recognize the assisted suicide thing as an issue of rights. But the second part of your statement about the religious only supports the point I made about the right and left disagreeing on different issues and feeding back into the pessimism/optimism politics. I don't think that the pessimism/optimism political divide is required to make the right/left politics coherent.

The left/right politics is how we deal with this mess now it's happened. — Down The Rabbit Hole

I disagree; as discussed in my earlier post I believe that the politics of the right/left concern the optimism and pessimism that the OP describes and that they do differ significantly in terms of what they say about bringing people into this world.

Yeah I think the OP is a good one. Do you think that if the optimism/pessimism dichotomy presupposes the left/right that the politics of the left/right can affect the optimism/pessimism? Or do you think it isn't transitive?

Oh forreal? My mate had a few drinks and the last thing he remembered was not being a father. Needless to say, when he came to he was cheerfully informed. — Outlander

Cheerfully informed that he was a father? Or that he wasn't a father? .

I'm claiming that these two positions, are the ultimate political-existential divide. Left and right politics, are intra-wordly and after-the-fact. They are generally already on the same side because they think existence has positive value or that it is good and that the trials and tribulations are worth it for all humans born. — schopenhauer1

Many of the optimists you describe might advocate for abortion or infanticide in the case of a fetus in utero or a baby that is born and will die in agony before becoming a person. These people are on the left mostly. Would you consider them pessimists even if they believe that people with valuable futures should be brought into the world?

I don't believe that the left and right are on the same side generally; it differs significantly based on context. For instance, on a related note, mostly only people on the left and libertarians believe physician-assisted suicide should be legal. Does this make them pessimists? What if a life is truly miserable and it would be better for everyone involved if someone committed suicide legally? This, while not optimistic, doesn't seem to fit neatly into the category of pessimism; it doesn't express a negative valuation, but rather an acceptance of reality; some lives, in many people's opinions, are not worth living. This loops around to the earlier issue of abortion/infanticide. These same people, mostly leftists, believe that it is at least passable to bring someone who will not suffer unduly into existence. Thus, on specific issues, there are fundamental differences between the left and right when it comes to the valuation of life and all its potential suffering and joy.

People who are religious will normally, at least to some extent under-gird their moral structure with their religion. — Restitutor

Many religious people use Divine Command Theory to "under-gird" their normative moral beliefs reflected in revelation. Divine Command Theory dictates that moral actions are obligatory merely because god commands them. This makes morality totally arbitrary (if objective). In a way, god is the easiest solution to the issue of objectivity; many people just want morality to be objective so bad that they will bend over backwards trying to justify unjustifiable beliefs. Apologetics is an industry.

Atheists often times have a more provisional morality, and humanists in particular are often rigorous in their justifications for moral actions; they don't start with a conclusion based upon faith and work backwards. They mostly want to improve the human condition, and, if one make this their goal, there are real, objective steps that can be taken, such as limiting emissions to fight climate change, or reducing factory farming. And so, while there may not be an objective morality, there are more or less reasonable beliefs, and, thus, actions, given certain assumptions.

For me the idea of absolute morality that extends beyond what is self-serving is as unlikely as there being a white bearded god out there. I think that atheists carry on believing in absolute morality because the idea of morality is so emotionally and practically important to us. For these reasons we overlook the fact it doesn’t make intellectual sense. — Restitutor

If someone defines morality in a suitably robust sense one can justify any number of principles or actions. If one defines morality in terms of non-arbitrariness one can select only for moral actions that one's opinions, identity, or inclination have no bearing upon. Whether or not one should value non-arbitrariness is uncertain perhaps, but once one decides upon it, certain moral actions make more or less sense and some become absolute.

To believe that human morality, even the highest and most substantial, is in no way dependent on religion, or necessarily linked to it, is a fallacy. — Rafaella Leon

What about something like preference utilitarianism? It is based on a secular principle: the maximization of fulfilment of preferences. I don't see how it is related to religion at all, even if there is an overlap between the actions prescribed by said principle and a form of religious morality. I think you are being fallacious; a similar conclusion can be reached independently from more than one starting point.

There has never been a “secular civilization”. — Rafaella Leon

The United State's constitution is entirely secular (despite the best efforts of evangelists and such).

The atheists morality is only good because their conduct schematically — and externally — coincides with what the principles of religion demand, that is, that the very possibility of good lay conduct was created and sedimented by a long religious tradition whose moral rules, once absorbed in the body of society, began to function more or less automatically. — Rafaella Leon

So only religious morality, or derivations of it, are good? Religious morality is entirely arbitrary if one subscribes to the view that moral actions are obligatory merely because god commands them; this cannot be avoided unless one admits that moral facts independent of god exist. If this were true an atheist could be good for following a code of conduct entirely separate from god or religion. This would be a truly secular and objective morality. Are religious people willing to concede that their morality is as arbitrary as something more subjective that an atheist might subscribe to? I doubt it. Anything can be good with traditional religious morality; at least humanists draw lines and use reason to reach their conclusions.

And sorry for being a little flippant.

Just curious, what is the point or message of your OP exactly? Pain can bring trauma? That federalism, shared powers, and an open enough society that allows these things (CIA waterboarding) to actually see the light of day as opposed to crimes and persons never being heard of/from again is good? If so, you did a bang up job. — Outlander

More so that the rationalizations one might go through while or after being tortured can contribute to pernicious and long lasting effects.

Pain is all in the mind. — Outlander

I suppose, but, as it appears you admit, psychological torture is a little harder to overcome; it breaks down your very ability to resist, and, much like fdrake said, causes you to develop pathological coping mechanisms, perhaps even perceiving your torturer's motives as good.

Not going to lie, I don't understand most of what you wrote; it's total gibberish to me. Maybe try writing something a little more coherent? And nowhere did I say that only authoritarian regimes are capable of evil.

You don't blame the animal when it acts as it is and shows to all who may observe it truly knows no better. The worst victims are those made or raised to be so malleable by the fears and the worst of life they view themselves as part of it or that it's "right" or "necessary", and need tell themselves nothing. — Outlander

Can you explain what you mean by this?

I appreciate the quality of your post; you obviously know quite a bit about this. Quite frankly what you describe sounds like a form of indoctrination. Have you read at all about the after-effects of these pathological coping mechanisms and whether it is possible to shake them after they have been developed? And can you recommend any reading?

People will often consider society or culture as a cause for human behavior, but isn’t society itself actually caused by human behavior? — Pinprick

Reading some of the common definitions of society, I have come up with the working definition that society is an independent entity that both affects and is a function of the shared beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of the collection of individuals it represents. This presents some feedback; it both represents the people by being a function of their actions and beliefs, and thus is not merely synonymous with "individuals", and also affects actions and beliefs. To demonstrate this: many religious people believe that atheists are immoral and cannot be trusted. This belief causes many atheists to stay closeted. This closeting can be blamed on the segment of society that espouses these backwards views; their views are part of the aggregate that comprises the shared beliefs of our society. So I think the closeting behavior of atheists can be blamed on society to a certain degree; everyone wants to be respected. This is not a matter of cowardice I think. Similarly I think violent behavior can be blamed on one's upraising to a certain degree, especially given the definition of society I provided.

Seriously? I'm misogynistic? I literally said that I believe abortion should be permissible.

Thanks. You too mate. People should use contraception as much as they can; I don't think at this point that it is even ethical to bring a child into the world.

Sarcasm?

And yes, veganism or vegetarianism seem to be the most ethical positions to me too.

You misunderstand - I think abortion is not only permissible, but an ethical obligation sometimes. I just didn't feel like going over every tired argument. And yes, it seems wrong to kill anything that has the potential to have a happy life. But if one buys into the idea that it is always wrong to deprive potential beings of potential good lives, one is obligated to populate the earth with happy cows or some such easily pleased creature. And contraception and celibacy would be immoral.

trying to understand when a human person can be said to be a fully formed human. — Gregory

There are probably too many abortion threads but I'll give it a go.

I think a better question is when human life becomes a person. Unless I'm mistaken human life begins at the moment of conception. However, there are objective criteria for when something qualifies for personhood, such as sentience and consciousness. For much of a pregnancy a fetus possesses none of the criteria for personhood, despite being human life, and, thus, many believe it is okay to kill a fetus. This raises some questions, however: if it is okay to kill a fetus because it is not a person, then shouldn't it be okay to kill a person in a coma? And what about the potential for a valuable future for the fetus? Do they not own that? And what about the fact that if the status of the humanity of the embryo/fetus/child reaches all the way back to conception, and there is at no point a defining moment at which the status of the humanity of the embryo/fetus/child changes, then isn't the embryo/fetus/child as human as it is as a child as when it is an embryo/fetus?

But if we have free will, it seems difficult for it to make sense of holding people account for their actions. People do things for reasons. But if they do them for reasons, then unless they are irrational, they will act on them. — RolandTyme

It seems to me that if people have free will they can choose to act on reasons; reasons as far as I can tell don't directly compel one to act a certain way. Reasons can be both good or bad, but ultimately people can still choose and thus be held accountable for acting a certain way if one assumes free will. There is nothing compelling us to be rational; if rationality was ingrained in human nature such as that we always act rationally then free will would be kind of trivial I think. But humans are often irrational. That being said even irrational people usually act for reasons, even if not for good reasons, so I don't think that the potential to act irrationally automatically makes decisions arbitrary. Once again, there are both good and bad reasons.

You first paragraph is right on I think, but I don't understand the third really.