What should Morals and Ethics be?

[Cheetah]

Your definition would make a perpetual orgasm be the height of wellness.

I don't know why you say that, it does no such thing. That would make no sense at all. There is a very good reason why orgasms are very good and a very good reason why they are not perpetual.

Are equating well-being with 'feeling good'?
Not the same thing at all.

 

[Cheetah]

There are plenty of things that can happen to people that will absolutely spread their genes but that are deeply detrimental to the individual

Ok, if you give me an example I will try to address it.

It seems that well-being must either be far more carefully defined or that the means used to achieve it must have some caveats in it before its pursuit can be used as a basis for what you call moral.

Why do you think it needs more careful definition?
I agree with the 'voluntarily', it was implied.

 

[Belz...]

A) How do you get from the self-serving quest for well-being, assuming we allow it, to the golden rule?

B) The very fact that morality evolved is a damning piece of evidence against your claim.

Cheetah?

 

[Cheetah]

Selfish genes did it, empathy evolved, cooperation evolved. Same way.

Evolution of Cooperation: Combining Kin Selection and Reciprocal Altruism into Matrix Games with Social Dilemmas


Edit: a nice popular article by Frans de Waal:

The Evolution of Empathy

 

[Belz...]

Selfish genes did it, empathy evolved, same way.

That's not what I asked. I'm asking you how you go from the selfish quest for self-preservation to an objective moral claim that empathy is better.

 

[Cheetah]

"Well-being" is an irrelevant sideline? I'm pretty sure you brought it up.

The sideline had nothing to do with well-being, or anything with my argument. The sideline started in post #489 when I mentioned the 'ecological success' of life increasing, meaning over time life has become better at exploiting available resources by colonizing previously unavailable niches. It ended with you asking me to define the success of a species, which I could not do.

Why not? Below you admit that you don't know how you'd even define success, so how would you know what qualifies or not?
I have to say that I don't appreciate being told I don't understand this topic when you can't even define the fundamental terms of your own arguments.

Remember now?


Well-being is central to my reasoning. I have only been asked for a definition once and I supplied one.

 

[Belz...]

The sideline had nothing to do with well-being, or anything with my argument. The sideline started in post #489 when I mentioned the 'ecological success' of life increasing, meaning over time life has become better at exploiting available resources by colonizing previously unavailable niches. It ended with you asking me to define the success of a species, which I could not do.

It's still not my sideline, but yours.

Well-being is central to my reasoning. I have only been asked for a definition once and I supplied one.

But you failed to lead from that to your conclusion.

 

[Cheetah]

Spreading our genes may be the ultimate aim behind the evolution of morality, but I don't see how that makes spreading our genes the ultimate moral good.

This one still leaves you with a bit of a mess, because now you have posited that a rapist who’s enjoying themselves, in any culture where a victim is likely to raise any offspring, is achieving well-being.

I think you might have two separate lines of discussion going on mixed up.
Everything regarding the evolution of morals and behaviour in humans has been because I had to convince everyone that since morals evolved, science can examine it and explain how it works. Moral behaviour leads to genes spreading better than without it. Science can explain it just as it can explain the evolution of altruism and cooperation. This discussion has nothing to do with universal morals, only with human morals.

 

[Cheetah]

But you failed to lead from that to your conclusion.

Sorry, what conclusion?
That all seek well-being?
It's not a conclusion, it's a fact.


It has it's roots in the homeostasis of the first cells and evolved to become well-being when nervous-systems took over.

 

[Belz...]

Sorry, what conclusion?

...the moral objective value you're trying to establish. You know, the topic of the discussion. You tried to establish a basis for it, but forgot to link the foundation, flimsy as it is, to that.

 

[Lithrael]

There are things that can happen to people that will absolutely spread their genes but that are deeply detrimental to the individual; most people would agree that is not well-being.

If you’re stipulating only voluntary, freely chosen actions this is less of a thing. However I’m still not entirely sure how you can stipulate that and still claim you’re trying to operate from some naturalistic first principles rather than simply defining axioms.

Everything regarding the evolution of morals and behaviour in humans has been because I had to convince everyone that since morals evolved, science can examine it and explain how it works. Moral behaviour leads to genes spreading better than without it. Science can explain it just as it can explain the evolution of altruism and cooperation.

OK but again, I’m not sure how you’re intending this to be used as a starting point when you haven’t addressed any of the things that it seems to lead to that don’t look morally useful. “Moral behaviour leads to genes spreading better than without it” makes it sound like Genghis Khan and some of these other prolific ancient folks from the Far East, are the people we should be looking to for moral guidance. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...enetic-legacies-likes-genghis-khan-180954052/

 

[Belz...]

I don't think there's a way to argue for objective morals that isn't entirelly circular. That's why arguments in favour of the idea are skipping at least one step.

 

[Cheetah]

Will get your posts, a bit busy and my internet connection has been frustratingly horrible most of the day.
I have to keep refreshing the page, only to come back a few minutes later to see only half has loaded.

 

[David Mo]

Selfish genes did it, empathy evolved, cooperation evolved. Same way.

Evolution of Cooperation: Combining Kin Selection and Reciprocal Altruism into Matrix Games with Social Dilemmas


Edit: a nice popular article by Frans de Waal:

The Evolution of Empathy

Frans de Waal is one of the strongest supporters of a definite line of continuity between animals and humans. He defends that some cultural and moral elements are present in animal species, specially in big primates. Empathy and primary altruism in the case of morality. However, he emphasizes that these disperse features doesn’t constitute a true morality because other specific human features —mainly culture and language— are absent. Morality is an specific human feature linked to an abstract language and the possibility to go beyond natural determinism.

Therefore you can say that nature puts the conditions that make possible morality but not that nature “predetermines” morality. Human altruism doesn’t exist in any other species. The UDHR is only possible in the context of history and freedom. It is not science that can explain why I have to accept a particular norm and under what circumstances.

Altruism in chimpanzees has been studied a lot by Goodall, De Waal and others. It is a reciprocal altruism, i.e. it doesn’t works without interchange (some anomalous exceptions). Human altruism is disinterested. Animal altruism only works into the groupal boundaries. Chimpanzees are very aggressive (even cruel) with other chimpanzee groups and marginal individuals. (See Frans de Waal: Good Natured, chapter 4. I don’t provide the page because I use the Spanish edition). The human altruism has to be extended to the whole human species and perhaps to other species. It is not science that tells me when I have to let aggressive arousal overcomes empathic one or vice versa.

Science can tell that I have empathic and aggressive impulses. My reason tells me when the predominance of one of them interests me. Morality when I ought to let one predominate over the other. And this is a personal decision (autonomous). No one and nothing can decide for me.

 

[Belz...]

Will get your posts, a bit busy and my internet connection has been frustratingly horrible most of the day.

First-world problems are the worst!

 

[Cavemonster]

I don't think there's a way to argue for objective morals that isn't entirelly circular. That's why arguments in favour of the idea are skipping at least one step.

As a devil's advocate, if you take almost any really core philosophical issue all the way down to the studs, its pretty much impossible to build up anything on a 100% case. There isn't a proof that our senses are correct and the world we experience is real. To get to anything useful you need to more or less skip a step somewhere.

From a purely logical perspective, I'm a moral anti realist. But in the practical day to day, all of the forces that add up to our moral intuitions are far more easily handled as "real" and only in certain situations is the anti realism stance practically helpful towards any goals. Just like solipsism is mostly useless even though we can't prove the validity of our senses.

I'm not against "close enough" in some senses and cases.

 

[Belz...]

As a devil's advocate, if you take almost any really core philosophical issue all the way down to the studs, its pretty much impossible to build up anything on a 100% case.

Pretty much, except one: something exists.

But I don't see how that relates to the discussion. Cheetah's attempting to show how one would go about demonstrating objective morality. That's a step removed from actually demonstrating it, and he can't really do that either. The bit missing from his logic is something that would make it circular, and I think he realises it.

Morality is based on subjective and shared values. That's it. That's why they vary from one person and group to the next. There's no need to look further than that, except to explain how morality arises, scientifically speaking. We can determine rules in our society based on shared values even if they're not objective. They were never meant to be, but attempts to make them appear so are the cause of much of human suffering over the centuries.

 

[Lithrael]

Cheetah's attempting to show how one would go about demonstrating objective morality.

I think that got walked back to just trying to find a natural basis for morality, with the idea that you could back up arguments in that kind of morality’s favor with science showing how we got there. Presumably in the hopes that a morality you could do that with might be a more universally acceptable one.

ETA: and yeah, what you said.

 

[Belz...]

I think that got walked back to just trying to find a natural basis for morality

Well, every human behaviour has a natural basis, so that would be even less than a weak claim. It would be a tautological one.

 

[Lithrael]

Yep.

I think the ultimate problem of this line of thinking is that all behaviors we display are there because having some amount of them in the mix is beneficial to propagating genes.

ETA: I think Cheetah is trying to get at ‘original useful purpose’ of moral drives, to parallel the talk about the ‘original useful purpose’ of appetites eg, strong preference for sweet flavors going from being adaptive to being maladaptive due to change in the environment; maybe there’s a way to show ‘immoral’ behaviors are similarly ones that were once adaptive and are now maladaptive because of reasons we can actually look at.

But we still need a metric. With appetites we can use health outcomes. With moral behaviors, Cheetah is suggesting gene propagation? I’m not at all convinced this is useful. But it could be; perhaps Gengis Khan’s success in the past is like our once-adaptive drive to eat sweets?