Prescriptive, descriptive, and motivated morality

[Ichneumonwasp]

I think duty devolves to empathy.

How does that work?

Empathy causes actions via emotions as it were. Most people don't have much in the way of Buddhist non-attachment, so for them empathy is effectively sufficient to change behavior because that tie is very strong and will go right into the complex pleasure/pain thing we all know and love. For some folk (like me) that gets more ... complicated, but I think it's still basically accurate.

Well, yes, empathy causes actions via emotions. But so does every other complex human action derive from emotions. Most of what we call rationality depends critically on emotion and "feeling". Remove the emotional impact on thinking and we cannot perform executive functions (we can't order what is most important in a series of tasks, for instance) because the mechanism of valuation has disappeared.

Some people do often have more empathy for the guy with the gun than the bleeding dude. Cops for example, assuming the guy with the gun is a cop. Guy on the ground is going to get cuffed (none too gently), searched, and left there while the amblance comes. Ain't too empathic hm?

Then how can empathy serve as the basis for any moral system? There is no right and/or wrong if empathy can be placed willy-nilly. That's why I keep arguing that there is much, much more to ethics.

Dunno what you mean by consequentialism; explain/integrate?

Sorry. Deciding on the moral worth of an action based on consequences. It is primarily important to the utilitarians out there and of no consequence to deontologists. We would typically use consequentialist thinking to determine culpability in the trucker example.

Your point re neural plurality is only partially accurate. It is self-integrating; that is in fact one of the most important features about it as a system. Cases where it isn't - like split-brain patients (with a severed corpus collosum), blindsight (ability to know where things are but not that they are there), etc are fascinating for just that reason, they violate the rule. It is extremely difficult to address the question of how much of it we "consciously" regulate; in my informed opinion the field isn't anywhere near having the data to answer that. Perhaps in another hundred years.

Cases where the integration breaks down prove the point I was trying to make -- namely that the integration occurs at higher levels in multimodal systems. I would not use the words "self-integrating" since the that seems to imply some sort of intentional plan (I'm just as guilty of using this dualistic language that we have inherited), though I think I know what you mean. There are even much weirder breakdowns in some of the rarer neurological syndromes like simultagnosia and other parietal-occipital-temporal junction abnormalities -- at least they strike most of us as weirder.

 

[saizai]

How does that work?

Not wanting to disappoint people you empathize with.

Then how can empathy serve as the basis for any moral system? There is no right and/or wrong if empathy can be placed willy-nilly. That's why I keep arguing that there is much, much more to ethics.

That seems to show that we're fundamentally not communicating something. To me it's nonsensical to see the quasi-arbitrary individual "placement" of empathy as relevant to the accuracy overall; in that place I am only saying that that's how people function. "Should" or "should not" doesn't enter into it. Remember, I don't believe in any objective moral right/wrong.

Cases where the integration breaks down prove the point I was trying to make -- namely that the integration occurs at higher levels in multimodal systems. I would not use the words "self-integrating" since the that seems to imply some sort of intentional plan (I'm just as guilty of using this dualistic language that we have inherited), though I think I know what you mean. There are even much weirder breakdowns in some of the rarer neurological syndromes like simultagnosia and other parietal-occipital-temporal junction abnormalities -- at least they strike most of us as weirder.

Why does it imply any plan? Doesn't at all to me. Systems can self-organize quite often without the least bit of planning or design or consciousness or whatever else simply by virtue of their structure.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Not wanting to disappoint people you empathize with.

OK, but you have introduced another term in the equation, then. Not just empathy, not just empathy linked to emotions. When we get into the nitty gritty details what seems to wash out is a very complex system.

That seems to show that we're fundamentally not communicating something. To me it's nonsensical to see the quasi-arbitrary individual "placement" of empathy as relevant to the accuracy overall; in that place I am only saying that that's how people function. "Should" or "should not" doesn't enter into it. Remember, I don't believe in any objective moral right/wrong.

Ethics and morality *is* should and/or should not. It has no other definition. If you leave should and should not out then you are not discussing morality. You discuss only internal human tendencies that give rise to morality. It matters not if you believe in an objective right/wrong. You can have subjective right and wrong in your system and then you have simply created one more subjective morality -- which is ultimately doomed to failure if it is based in the individual -- but again only if you re-introduce should/should not.

Why does it imply any plan? Doesn't at all to me. Systems can self-organize quite often without the least bit of planning or design or consciousness or whatever else simply by virtue of their structure.

The way that we typically use the word "self" when discussing humans (sometimes even human nervous systems as "self-organizing") implies a degree of planning and purpose (the word "self", meaning an individual, always carries this connotation) . I see this in the same way that I discussed the multiple meanings of the word "objective" up above. There are some words that are a little dangerous in discussions such as this because of their other connotations. I was simply trying to avoid the almost inevitable confusion that can arise when certain terms are used in particular situations.

 

[Freddy]

Chris,

For the atheist, I see only two real possibilities: either state that there is no standard for 'ethics' or 'morality' at all, as we cannot get everyone to agree on basic principles, and just believe that "whatever you think is right is moral"; or agree on certain basic principles, and use rational argumentation and education to promote those principles.

Basic principles...but what if principles are not what is basic? I'm going to inject some Aristotle here. What if virtues are basic, and the failure to agree on principles is really a failure to agree on the definitions of virtues (e.g. justice) or failure to agree on what counts as a virtue? What if there simply is no set of principles such that by following them at all times one can be assured of acting ethically? What if principles are guidelines that follow from the assumption that x is a virtue and therefore I ought to act so as to habituate myself to acting in accordance with that trait? In that case principles would be derivative while virtues are basic.

With any morality based on a set of rules (principles), the following problem arises: what do I do when faced with a situation in which different rules demand different and mutually exclusive courses of action? In a virtue-based ethic, the focus is on becoming a certain sort of person rather than following a certain set of principles. By successfully developing certain character traits, one can become the sort of person who is as well prepared as is possible to properly weigh what to do in a messed up situation of the sort that situational ethicists like to conjure up.

When it comes to moral issues, I think people tend to agree on much more than one might think. The contentious issues are just the ones that receive all the attention. These contentious issues are precisely those issues in which different principles/virtues make different and incompatible demands of us. While a virtue-based ethics cannot escape such situations any more than a rule-based ethics can, I think that such a way of looking at morality better equips one to deal with such situations when they arise, because people are creatures of habit, and acquiring the habit of weighing even small moral choices based on such considerations will help one weigh the important and difficult decisions.

That's my two cents.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

A man's character is his fate.


--Heraclitus

 

[saizai]

OK, but you have introduced another term in the equation, then. Not just empathy, not just empathy linked to emotions. When we get into the nitty gritty details what seems to wash out is a very complex system.

What new term? I don't see one.

Ethics and morality *is* should and/or should not. It has no other definition. If you leave should and should not out then you are not discussing morality. You discuss only internal human tendencies that give rise to morality. It matters not if you believe in an objective right/wrong. You can have subjective right and wrong in your system and then you have simply created one more subjective morality -- which is ultimately doomed to failure if it is based in the individual -- but again only if you re-introduce should/should not.

It's only "should" inasmuch as one can call a problem-solving algorithm (i.e. ones that find the global maximum of some function) "should"s. I certainly would not say that, but I suppose you might.

I don't see why a subjective morality is "ultimately doomed" in any sense that I would accept.


As for 'self', I have never seen it be a problem in the contexts in which I've used it (e.g. self-organizing Bayes nets). So, *shrug*.

 

[Freddy]

Subjective morality isn't "doomed." There just isn't any reason why anyone should listen to anyone else's moral claims, whether they be about personal sexual behavior or about murder or war. Agreement is secured only by manipulation of attitudes and emotions. Nothing can be "wrong," because there is no such thing as "wrong." The meaning of the word "wrong" changes in such a way that it conveys nothing more than personal disapproval. In a subjective morality, "This is wrong," means nothing more than, "I disapprove of this, do so as well." In other words, subjective morality cannot escape emotivism (whether it purports to be emotivism or not -- Nietzsche's and Sartre's moral theories are at their core emotivist no less than those of the 20th century emotivists whose theory arose in response to G.E. Moore's intuitionism).

In emotivist morality, there are no impersonal rational criteria to which I can appeal to get you to share my moral attitudes, so I must resort to manipulative means of interaction if I am to secure your agreement with me. Of course even this is a slight misstatement, since there really can be no distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative modes of interaction if emotivism is true. What appear to be appeals to impersonal criteria for judgment are really just disguised attempts at manipulation.

Of course, there is a reason analytic moral philosophers have rejected emotivism, and it is because it does not make sense as a theory of what moral claims mean (for several very different reasons). Emotivism can be, however, and I think it is, a true theory of how moral claims are used in modern western society: namely, as masks for arational will.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

There just isn't any reason why anyone should listen to anyone else's moral claims, whether they be about personal sexual behavior or about murder or war. Agreement is secured only by manipulation of attitudes and emotions. Nothing can be "wrong," because there is no such thing as "wrong." The meaning of the word "wrong" changes in such a way that it conveys nothing more than personal disapproval. In a subjective morality, "This is wrong," means nothing more than, "I disapprove of this, do so as well." In other words, subjective morality cannot escape emotivism (whether it purports to be emotivism or not -- Nietzsche's and Sartre's moral theories are at their core emotivist no less than those of the 20th century emotivists whose theory arose in response to G.E. Moore's intuitionism).

Yeah, doomed. Morality, by its very nature, is inter-subjective or objective. I'm not sure that a purely subjective morality makes any real sense except as a way of rationalizing choice when one doesn't get one's way. If there were only one person and no God could we even speak of morality?

To be fair to the emotivists, I don't think many of them meant for emotion to *be* morality, only that feeling is the starting place. That, at least is the way I read Hume, but then I may have a weird way of looking at him because I really like the guy. Nietzsche, for instance, seemed more interested in exploring the origin of morality than providing a system of morality for others to follow. I won't defend Russell.