The Future of Moral Science

[Tassman]

But even people within groups were denied rights in the past, and there are some such people who would be difficult not to notice as different, even in a global village. Women, for example. If they're offered more rights in the last few decades, well, that's not due to a global village, because they were living intermingled with men as part of their tribe virtually forever.

Certainly individuals within groups were denied rights in the past, e.g. women, racial minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals etc – but increasingly the civil rights of such individuals have been (or are in the process of being) recognized as opposed to say, a century ago - and beyond.

Criminals, who start out within a group and separat from it due to their actions, have been treated differently by different groups, given more or less opportunity for defense, a fair trial and a non-torturous punishment. The mentally ill have received a variety of treatments, often not very good. Children, too, have been categorized many different ways, often not leaving them in particularly good circumstances.

But we no longer believe that the mentally ill are possessed by demons and we’re coming to the realization that antisocial behaviours have psychological roots in many instances. Obviously there’s a lot to be done but identifying the problem and its causes is a necessary start.

The global village may make everyone part of the same "tribe," and therefore eliminate xenophobia, but even if that happens, it won't be a guarantee that a liberal first-world morality of the early 21st century will be the dominant morality of that tribe, because such a thing might be one of the "efflorescences," rather than the end goal of morality.

There are no guarantees in life but this, nevertheless, seems to have been the overall trend over the millennia. E.g. such concepts as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the establishment of the International Criminal Court to deal with human rights abuses reflect this trend. Such things would have been meaningless in times past.

If morality is based on reproductive success, it's not the first-world liberal countries who have been doing the best at that.

Not just reproductive success, although that’s a part of it. Population numbers aren't so important for a technically superior society. I’m arguing that morals are derived from our need as a social species for procreation AND self-preservation via a code of behaviour which enhances social cohesion within the social unit, i.e. a social unit which is expanding to encompass the whole planet.

Addressed to gurugeorge

Yes, I'd also like to see more explanation or evidence for the first paragraph, particularly in light of the last one. If morality is what's good for the human species, then what's good for the human species has changed when their environment has changed, as is usual for natural selection. How do you reconcile an ideal set of rules that presumably doesn't change over time, with a changing environment?

I too want to know how you can say that such an ideal set of rules exists? How do you obtain knowledge of it?

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

So, in your opinion is rape wrong. Why?

No, rape is neither right or wrong. A behavior; a concrete physical process can itself neither be a positive nor a negative. Positives and negatives are cognitive abstracts and all cases of positives and negatives require a brain or similar physical process, which can do a computational, cognitive and emotional process of positives and negatives.

I don't no label persons nor theirs acts in positives or negatives in value judgment terms. So a person can't be wrong nor right and likewise with an act, it can't be neither wrong nor right.
So no, rape as an act is neither wrong nor right. As to my opinion you could in principle place me in a brain scanner and observe how my brain creates my opinion. It won't help you though, because it is not universal nor objective and it won't tell you what rape is as an objective or scientific fact in moral normative terms. That is your problem, Tassman. You can't use science to establish as a fact, whether rape is right or wrong in the moral sense. You can observe using science how individual brains make value judgments, but you can't use science to do value judgments.

In other words it is neither true nor false in scientific terms that rape is either right or wrong. Tassman, you won't get me to play your game of that we can use science to decide among or do moral value judgments.
So you won't get my opinion as to whether "rape is wrong" as long as you use it to confirm your belief that science can do normative ethics.

Do you understand Tassman, you can't use science if you can't observe neither a verification nor a falsification. In plain words, science doesn't work on morality/ethics, because you can't see neither right nor wrong. And as long as you use we as an in-group without the understanding that you use we as an in-group, this is pointless.
"I, Tassman, decide what a true and correct scientific we is as an objective and scientific fact."
You can huff and puff about how science and history proves you right in the sense that you use objective, true and scientific facts when it comes to ethics and morality. But the fact is that you don't!!! Neither you nor anybody else can observe right or wrong and thus it can't be replicated as science.

So back to basics:

• The moon is made of green cheese.
• 2+2=5.
• It is good to force other people to have sex with me; I like it.

It is not the same methodology you or anybody else use to establish "right or wrong" for these 3 cases and as long as you conflate these cases, I won't even start to debate with you, what normative ethics is.

• There are observational facts.
• There are rational facts.
• There are emotional facts.

You can use science on the first one, but you can't use science as methodology to decide between emotional facts. Emotional facts as experiences are not observational experiences. You have to learn to get your epistemology and empiricism straight.

 

[gurugeorge]

I too want to know how you can say that such an ideal set of rules exists? How do you obtain knowledge of it?

It must exist. There is always some ideal best path from A to B, given the nature of the acting thing and the nature of the medium of action. The "best" relative to those conditions, is fixed, apriori, logical. (And of course if the conditions change, then the ideal is a different pattern, perhaps sharing a good deal with the first, but not necessarily, but again having its own internal logical necessity.)

How to discover it - well that's what I've been saying, it's an ongoing process of discovery. Blind, simple chemical and biological co-operators discover TIT for TAT, then biological entities built of those discover various means of co-ordination at simple levels, apt for the geological level of change they cope with; then cultural evolution rides on top of that, and deals with the level of human generational changes; lastly the mind rides on top of that, and deals with experience at a concrete, present level, with help from self-awareness of all the previous levels, with their time-binding beyond the present moment.

At a certain point, people start to sense the deeper logic of the rules they've already been following willy-nilly (e.g. judges interpret the law and deal with new cases so that the dealing is logically consistent with prior dealings, thereby outlining a principle and a rule). Then there can be philosophical debate about what the best logical extensions are from what we have to what we need (e.g. new rules for changing circumstances, changing nature, etc.), and there can be analysis that keeps checking everything for consistency.

 

[marplots]

It must exist. There is always some ideal best path from A to B, given the nature of the acting thing and the nature of the medium of action. The "best" relative to those conditions, is fixed, apriori, logical. (And of course if the conditions change, then the ideal is a different pattern, perhaps sharing a good deal with the first, but not necessarily, but again having its own internal logical necessity.)

I don't think this is true because it assumes a restriction on dimensionality that isn't necessarily so. For example, while it might work for two dimensions, as soon as a third is considered, there are an infinite number of "best paths." And, it's even more so in the area of human endeavors, where multiples of multiples of "could be's" are available. There may be no best at all or many equally best - relative to those conditions.

But worst of all, the word "best" is up for grabs, since "best" along one dimension might be horrible when another is considered - and there is no reliable way to sum things up. As a real world example, I'd point to the voting paradox^WP.

 

[tsig]

By "not in evidence" I mean there's no proof that there have always been people morally opposed to slavery. For instance, I don't believe there are any writings from ancient Rome expressing moral opposition to slavery as an institution. And if we get into pre-written-history, who knows what peoples' views were? However, I suspect you're probably right that there have been at least some people who morally opposed slavery for most of human existence.

Why do we have to be "morally opposed to slavery" why not just "opposed to slavery"?

"Moral" seems to mean "something I agree with" rather than anything concrete.

 

[tsig]

Given our structure (our "nature" in the old-fashioned parlance that we're so touchy about using nowadays), and given the nature of the world we move about in and do things in, there is necessarily some optimal set of abstract conditions that, if all human action follows it, will result in maximization of (whatever you think is right, put here).
Now, that is a standalone, abstract structure. And the logical necessity that it must be out there somewhere, fixed, is what gives us the sense that morality has something of the quality of the "hard, logical 'must'". But we tend to see that through a glass darkly, and interpret it as command or force laid upon us by some higher power. It's not, it's just grammar (in Wittgenstein's sense).

The conditions vary over time, but quite slowly (e.g. our current gradual cyborgification is going to change our nature, which will shift the ideal network of rules ever so slightly to the side in some dimension - but this type of shift can take many generations). This works the same way as language: it can change over time, but at any given time it's stable relative to the span of most peoples' lives, and even generations of lives.

The other part is then the dynamic part - how we discover that structure. By debate (including philosophical), by everyone mulling it over, essaying to test it in action, and see what pans out, etc. This is an evolutionary process (formerly it was just biological, now it's also cultural).

Natural Law is discovered. That ideal pattern is discovered. Just like the result of 2,689,552 x 9.5 + 3 is discovered.

I think I should rule the whole human race as an absolute dictator so y'all need to get with the program.

You can address me henceforth as Your Mighty Majesty Most Beneficent.

 

[tsig]

The "right" set of rules shifts to a related set of rules (which will have a "family resemblance" to the first, and may have a lot in common), when either the nature of the entity or the nature of its environment changes.

The logic of each set of rules doesn't change and is immutable (all those "if ... thens"); the interpretation (in more or less the mathematical sense) is what has changed, such that they are no longer the ideal (or they become the ideal, looking at it from the other angle of approach).

But note: not "good for the human species", but rather "good for the collection of living human beings". The species can go hang, it's an abstraction; what we're really interested in the well-being of is that real, concrete, living people be happy (flourish, be productive, whatever), and not just now, but into the future - no?

Concrete people always seem a bit stiff.

 

[tsig]

But the question is, were they right to do so? See, that datum can lead to one of two conclusions, either relativism (many definitions of "good"), or just that they were wrong about a single (or tight basket) definition.

And relativism is not the obligatory choice

Actually the question is what gives you the right to judge them?

 

[tsig]

It must exist. There is always some ideal best path from A to B, given the nature of the acting thing and the nature of the medium of action. The "best" relative to those conditions, is fixed, apriori, logical. (And of course if the conditions change, then the ideal is a different pattern, perhaps sharing a good deal with the first, but not necessarily, but again having its own internal logical necessity.)

How to discover it - well that's what I've been saying, it's an ongoing process of discovery. Blind, simple chemical and biological co-operators discover TIT for TAT, then biological entities built of those discover various means of co-ordination at simple levels, apt for the geological level of change they cope with; then cultural evolution rides on top of that, and deals with the level of human generational changes; lastly the mind rides on top of that, and deals with experience at a concrete, present level, with help from self-awareness of all the previous levels, with their time-binding beyond the present moment.

At a certain point, people start to sense the deeper logic of the rules they've already been following willy-nilly (e.g. judges interpret the law and deal with new cases so that the dealing is logically consistent with prior dealings, thereby outlining a principle and a rule). Then there can be philosophical debate about what the best logical extensions are from what we have to what we need (e.g. new rules for changing circumstances, changing nature, etc.), and there can be analysis that keeps checking everything for consistency.

Not if I don't want to go from A to B.

 

[gurugeorge]

I think I should rule the whole human race as an absolute dictator so y'all need to get with the program.

You can address me henceforth as Your Mighty Majesty Most Beneficent.

Yes, that's right, there's also some optimal path for that.

 

[gurugeorge]

I don't think this is true because it assumes a restriction on dimensionality that isn't necessarily so. For example, while it might work for two dimensions, as soon as a third is considered, there are an infinite number of "best paths." And, it's even more so in the area of human endeavors, where multiples of multiples of "could be's" are available. There may be no best at all or many equally best - relative to those conditions.

But worst of all, the word "best" is up for grabs, since "best" along one dimension might be horrible when another is considered - and there is no reliable way to sum things up. As a real world example, I'd point to the voting paradox^WP.

Figure as many dimensions as you like, there's always an optimal path, there is always a "best" to min-max for, though there may also be a bunch of closely-related paths that reach the same goal, and maybe one or two that go round the houses

There used to be a prog on UK tv called "The Great Egg Race". In it, 3 teams of mixed engineers, scientists, designers, etc., were given a junkyard, and had to use items in it to construct a machine that would do a task. Obviously, all three teams constructed something that more or less did the task, but there was always one that was best, optimal, most efficient, etc.

Where there is a problem akin to what your talking about, is in the abstractness of the desideratum (say, human flourishing or whatever). That's what makes it a complex, difficult to define and understand process, with room for disagreement and interpretation. The goal itself has a certain amount of fuzziness to it; but, mutatis mutandis, there's still an optimum path from A to that abstract B.

 

[gurugeorge]

Actually the question is what gives you the right to judge them?

Why does anyone need a "right" to judge things?

"Why should anyone take your judgement seriously?", might be a more appropriate question to ask.

 

[gurugeorge]

Not if I don't want to go from A to B.

Even if you don't want to get from A to B, the optimal path from A to B is still there (potentially unfolding from the rules and starting conditions).

 

[Tassman]

No, rape is neither right or wrong. A behavior; a concrete physical process can itself neither be a positive nor a negative. Positives and negatives are cognitive abstracts and all cases of positives and negatives require a brain or similar physical process, which can do a computational, cognitive and emotional process of positives and negatives.

I don't no label persons nor theirs acts in positives or negatives in value judgment terms. So a person can't be wrong nor right and likewise with an act, it can't be neither wrong nor right.
So no, rape as an act is neither wrong nor right. As to my opinion you could in principle place me in a brain scanner and observe how my brain creates my opinion. It won't help you though, because it is not universal nor objective and it won't tell you what rape is as an objective or scientific fact in moral normative terms. That is your problem, Tassman. You can't use science to establish as a fact, whether rape is right or wrong in the moral sense. You can observe using science how individual brains make value judgments, but you can't use science to do value judgments.

In other words it is neither true nor false in scientific terms that rape is either right or wrong. Tassman, you won't get me to play your game of that we can use science to decide among or do moral value judgments.
So you won't get my opinion as to whether "rape is wrong" as long as you use it to confirm your belief that science can do normative ethics.

Do you understand Tassman, you can't use science if you can't observe neither a verification nor a falsification. In plain words, science doesn't work on morality/ethics, because you can't see neither right nor wrong. And as long as you use we as an in-group without the understanding that you use we as an in-group, this is pointless.
"I, Tassman, decide what a true and correct scientific we is as an objective and scientific fact."
You can huff and puff about how science and history proves you right in the sense that you use objective, true and scientific facts when it comes to ethics and morality. But the fact is that you don't!!! Neither you nor anybody else can observe right or wrong and thus it can't be replicated as science.

So back to basics:

• The moon is made of green cheese.
• 2+2=5.
• It is good to force other people to have sex with me; I like it.

It is not the same methodology you or anybody else use to establish "right or wrong" for these 3 cases and as long as you conflate these cases, I won't even start to debate with you, what normative ethics is.

• There are observational facts.
• There are rational facts.
• There are emotional facts.

You can use science on the first one, but you can't use science as methodology to decide between emotional facts. Emotional facts as experiences are not observational experiences. You have to learn to get your epistemology and empiricism straight.

So you think that rape can be right?

 

[marplots]

Figure as many dimensions as you like, there's always an optimal path, there is always a "best" to min-max for, though there may also be a bunch of closely-related paths that reach the same goal, and maybe one or two that go round the houses

What is the shortest (best) path from one pole on a solid sphere to the opposite pole?

What is the best path through time from today to a year from now?

You need to rethink your premises. Free your mind.

 

[Tassman]

It must exist. There is always some ideal best path from A to B, given the nature of the acting thing and the nature of the medium of action. The "best" relative to those conditions, is fixed, apriori, logical. (And of course if the conditions change, then the ideal is a different pattern, perhaps sharing a good deal with the first, but not necessarily, but again having its own internal logical necessity.)

How to discover it - well that's what I've been saying, it's an ongoing process of discovery. Blind, simple chemical and biological co-operators discover TIT for TAT, then biological entities built of those discover various means of co-ordination at simple levels, apt for the geological level of change they cope with; then cultural evolution rides on top of that, and deals with the level of human generational changes; lastly the mind rides on top of that, and deals with experience at a concrete, present level, with help from self-awareness of all the previous levels, with their time-binding beyond the present moment.

At a certain point, people start to sense the deeper logic of the rules they've already been following willy-nilly (e.g. judges interpret the law and deal with new cases so that the dealing is logically consistent with prior dealings, thereby outlining a principle and a rule). Then there can be philosophical debate about what the best logical extensions are from what we have to what we need (e.g. new rules for changing circumstances, changing nature, etc.), and there can be analysis that keeps checking everything for consistency.

It’s the word “ideal” that worries me. It implies something eternal and unchanging as per a Platonic realm of universal ‘rights and wrongs’. There's no evidence for this.

 

[Pup]

Figure as many dimensions as you like, there's always an optimal path, there is always a "best" to min-max for, though there may also be a bunch of closely-related paths that reach the same goal, and maybe one or two that go round the houses

Granting that there are some cases where there are several equally good paths, I don't see how this gets beyond the issue that several of us have been pointing out, that one needs to define a goal before one can scientifically discover what's moral, and depending on the goal, anything potentially could be moral. Or is that what you're saying also?

Different goals will produce different outcomes, and there are many subtle nuances in even what seems a specific goal, like the welfare of humankind. Like, maximizing offspring who survive to breed? Maximizing the welfare of those alive right now? Maximizing the welfare of future generations too? Is the welfare on average, or leaving no one below a minimum level? Does it include consideration for other species at all, or can their welfare be ignored?

Each of those goals might include different things as moral. Using up natural resources and polluting the earth might not matter if the goal is welfare right now. Mistreating animals might not matter if only humans are under consideration. Wanting a high average welfare requires a different mindset than not allowing anyone to be desperately poor.

So although there might be one best path (or several equal paths) to any given goal, I don't see that there would be one best path to a single best morality, without arbtrarily defining the goal and therefore morality. But maybe that's the point.

 

[gurugeorge]

What is the shortest (best) path from one pole on a solid sphere to the opposite pole?

Through the centre

But seriously - in that case, any arc from pole to pole is as good as any other. I thought I'd anticipated this sort of thing when I said, "there may also be a bunch of closely-related paths that reach the same goal"? It's an oddity that in this case the "bunch" is infinite, but (in the same terms) there's an even greater infinity of meandering paths. At the very least, it's not the case that any path is as good as any other - there's a subset that has the property of being "best".

What is the best path through time from today to a year from now?

n/a, I don't think time is the sort of thing that has a topology. You could say there's a best path (or bunch of closely-related best paths) from one particular specifiable state to some other specifiable state in the future, though.

 

[gurugeorge]

It’s the word “ideal” that worries me. It implies something eternal and unchanging as per a Platonic realm of universal ‘rights and wrongs’. There's no evidence for this.

Don't worry. It's as "eternal and unchanging" as the answer to 3,667,531 x 2.336 + 5.

I'd wager nobody's every thought of that particular sum before, but the answer to it is "there", "eternal and unchanging" (and "ideal") in the requisite sense - the same sense as I'm talking about the ideal set of rules (given our nature and the nature of things, and some over-arching goal).

It's just a structure in possibility space, a possible structure, a possible set of rules that hangs together logically and coherently (again, given the conditions and goals).

 

[gurugeorge]

Granting that there are some cases where there are several equally good paths, I don't see how this gets beyond the issue that several of us have been pointing out, that one needs to define a goal before one can scientifically discover what's moral, and depending on the goal, anything potentially could be moral. Or is that what you're saying also?

Yes, of course! And the goal (as I said in my first post here on the subject) depends on the "circle of regard" or "circle of affections". And the point I'm making is that spiritual experience, mystical experience (more or less as Sam Harris would define it, as the experiential baby in the bathwater of religion) is an important and grossly overlooked cause of that circle widening beyond the remit it would have just from biological evolution and adaptation, and pure instrumental reasoning alone. What you care for the well-being of depends on how expansive you think your "tribe" is, how big the thing is that you think your existence depends on.

IOW, raw biology gives us a root equation, maybe something like "care for your own well being and the well-being of those with whom you are interdependent". From that seed, or building on that foundation, spiritual experience widens the circle, and sees (sees truly) that interdependence goes all the way through the whole, that any hard and fast distinction between self and world is illusory (in the sense of actually arbitrary, a matter of convenience of action or description, and an artefact of language), etc., etc.

Another, related point: suppose you proposed as a social rule "kill everyone you meet". The human race wouldn't survive very long and no other goals could be attained. So that's one extreme, so think of the opposite extreme - "a goal that makes all other compossible goal attaining possible", something like that.

Different goals will produce different outcomes, and there are many subtle nuances in even what seems a specific goal, like the welfare of humankind. Like, maximizing offspring who survive to breed? Maximizing the welfare of those alive right now? Maximizing the welfare of future generations too? Is the welfare on average, or leaving no one below a minimum level? Does it include consideration for other species at all, or can their welfare be ignored?

Each of those goals might include different things as moral. Using up natural resources and polluting the earth might not matter if the goal is welfare right now. Mistreating animals might not matter if only humans are under consideration. Wanting a high average welfare requires a different mindset than not allowing anyone to be desperately poor.

So although there might be one best path (or several equal paths) to any given goal, I don't see that there would be one best path to a single best morality, without arbtrarily defining the goal and therefore morality. But maybe that's the point.

Nobody said it's going to be easy I'm interested in nudging the conversation about morality on to a more fruitful place, not solving all the moral problems.

Yes, you can arbitrarily define any goal. But as I said above, first biology gives us a certain goal that we carry a torch for willy-nilly, and then ethics and morality (guided by spiritual experience) build on that, branch out beyond that initial seed and take it to its ultimate logical conclusion. Morality evolves, freedom (as Dennett felicitously put it) evolves.

To make this clearer, think of doing any art thing, or music: a complete picture may be implicit in a beginning daub, a time-binding melody implicit in the initial doodles of a jazz soloist's solo, which the soloist then makes explicit. A work of art has an internal logic that "wants to be born", the artist's job is to tease it out, follow it humbly, etc. (And yes, you might be able to get several good pictures or good tunes out of an initial daub or honk, but there's going to be a far, far greater number of not-hanging-together-things that could be made.)

It really is much like mathematics, except obviously maths is the most rigorous and most abstract form of this "logical structure hunting" (as one might call it).