Responses February 1st through 21st (Before My Long Posts)
Just finishing up the last of the pre-long-post responses, before I get to the post-long-post responses:
...Unless, of course, we see survival as some moral good in and of itself regardless of other ways in which we, as humans, may treat each other. But to say that removes any distinction between humans and any other animals, leaving us to assume that animals that exist now are more moral than animals which no longer exist.
Theoretically, if the animals could "learn lessons" to survive better, they could, in a sense, be said to be "more moral" than the dead ones. Though, most animals probably don't have the sentient capability of doing that so much. (Though some might?) And, there's the fact that some death is random, beyond the animal's control.
But, it's not an entirely stupid notion, under that context.
...And of course, such a person would be making the mistake of confusing empirical facts of evolution with the human process of actually doing science, otherwise I could ask the same "Ha ha! Were they doing science then? Ha ha!"
Proto-science, maybe.
Can you explain how we using science can tell if tribal cooperation is better or worse than the idea of universal cooperation for all of humanity?
My own answer would be: Nash Equilibrium probably works out in favor of the more Universal form of cooperation, between all individuals. (Though, it would have to work in layers. Not everyone can meet everyone else in the whole world.)
Shermer is right that evolution by natural selection operates on individuals (or at least, I think it usually does), but that is irrelevant as to whether we should place individuals at the centre of our moral choices. Shermer is {committing} the naturalistic fallacy here.
It might not be necessary to cite evolution. We can also say, as I did above, that the Nash Equilibrium will work out in favor of cooperation between all individuals.
(Individuals being "players" in game-theory terms.)
This is better, because instead of a naturalistic fallacy ("evolution is on individual, therefore morals should be for the individual"), we replace it with a prediction (" 'Nash' works among the individual players, therefore morality will shift towards working among individuals".)
(Shermer does mention Nash in his book. I don't know why he doesn't apply it like that more often.)
Again, as per Harris, it is merely a semantic difference between: “One ought to be cooperative so as to maintain social harmony” (prescriptive) and “Cooperation is a demonstrably effective means of maintaining social harmony” (descriptive). From the latter one can infer that it is best to remain cooperative. The end result is the same.
Exactly! (Highlighted emphasis mine.)
What international scientific standard measuring unit is right and wrong measured in?
Well-being. We, as a species, are devising various ways to index the various aspects of well-being, in a similar way we might index a person's health, or a nation's economy. There might never be one, single, be-all-end-all way to do it. But, that doesn't mean we can't make progress.
What scientific law covers morality and what are its formulas?
They are mostly found within game theory.
How do you conduct a scientific experiment, which measures right and wrong?
I proposed one at the end of Post #674
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10491131&postcount=674
How do you observe right or wrong?
Measure the consequences of actions and policies, against factors of well-being.
There is no scientific standard possible for right or wrong, because they are subjective and depend on how a given individual thinks/feels.
We can demonstrate that this isn't true.
I think we would agree that the following statement DOES
NOT MAKE SENSE:
"I'm going to strategically choose chocolate as my favorite ice cream, because if everyone knows that's my favorite, it can still be my optimal choice! But, if I went with vanilla, and everyone finds out, suddenly I won't end up liking it as much!"
However, I think we can agree that this one DOES MAKE SENSE:
"I'm a salesman. I am going to strategically choose to make sure my customers get the best value for the budget they have in mind. If everyone found out that was my strategy, it would still be my optimal choice! However, if I chose to rip off all of my customers, as much as possible, and everyone finds out, suddenly it won't be my optimal choice, anymore."
The fact that morality impacts other people's lives more directly than flavors of ice-cream, means that we CAN find scientific standards for right and wrong.
But humans are NOT “predisposed for violence” as a species. We are social animals and our evolved instincts predispose us towards social cohesion. Being a part of an altruistic group is far more advantageous than individualism.
I would like to mention, here, that
humans are strategic. We are neither inherently good nor inherently evil. We, as a species, will adopt whatever level of co-operation we perceive as being the best for our own purposes.
Over time, this veers towards co-operation. But, not because we are "predisposed", but because we LEARN more about the possible consequences co-operation.
So if I kill someone outside my group/society it is not covered by moral behaviour?
There is one thing I will say on the subject of murder, that often goes underappreciated:
Death is such a permanent state, that you want the permissible reasons for killing to be as
limited, and non-arbitrary as possible. Otherwise, you could more easily become a victim of those rules, yourself. And, you can't undo your own death. (This ties into the Rawls Original Position Principle, a bit. But, it's a little different.)
For example, if you allow people to kill based on race, then you could end up being killed simply because of your own race. Claiming "racial superiority" will not help, because there is, empirically, no such thing. Someone could just as easily claim their race is superior to yours, for any arbitrary reason they want.
On the other hand, "self defense" is a perfectly allowable reason to kill (assuming the threat was legitimate); because you won't need to worry about anyone killing you, as long as you are not dumb enough to try to kill anyone else, first.
Murder ends up being defined rather broadly, because it needs to cover every single reason anyone could kill anyone, other than those few, small number of permitted reasons. And, we can probably scientifically deduce which reasons are permissible, and which are murder, from that angle.
Let us review, and I'll show you the big difference between the two arguments.
I want the hut to be habitable.
The hut will not be habitable unless I heat it.
Therefore, I ought to heat the hut.
I want the hut to be habitable,
The hut will require heating in order be habitable.
Therefore, I will heat the hut.
Only in a classic, philosophical sense is the second one "invalid". In the future, they will be considered equivalent by the bulk of academia, for all practical intents and purposes, if my predictions are to be true.
Here is a more realistic way to think about it:
I want the hut to be habitable.
The hut will require heating in order be habitable.
If I do not heat the hut,
others in the future will recognize my mistake, and will be more likely to heat their own huts.
I have a choice, today, of being recognized as a person wise enough to heat their own hut, or dumb enough to not do so. But, that choice becomes more likely to take one side (heating the hut), than the other, over time.
Therefore, I ought to heat the hut, and I MOST LIKELY will heat the hut.
If this fellow belonged to a religious cult that believed "Heat is the work of the devil! Our God wants us to acclimate to shivering in the cold all of our lives, to live in a better world after death!" This idea will be (at best) questioned by others in the future, or (at worst) ridiculed.
Morality has this way of shaping itself based on reality and facts and such, over time, which seems to get lost in the current conventional philosophical view of these matters.
"Rules of behaviour". Are these rules imperative ("Don't murder") or more like scientific rules, without exception? I'm sure you'll agree they are imperative.
Natural processes, such as climate, biology, geology, and morality are always a bit messy, and there are always exceptions, footnotes and addendums to be added to everything anyone says about it. That doesn't make them any less scientifically sound.
New York City is having one its coldest winters in a long time. That does NOT mean Global Warming, overall, isn't real. Morality is subject to the same sorts of phenomena.
Lying is immoral, except in cases of emergency, (such as the Anne Frank scenario). It's not always easy to tell where the line between emergency and non-emergency exists. But, then again, it's also not easy to tell where the line between two different species exists, either. Doesn't mean it's not a scientifically important delineation.
Normative axioms are a different kind of beast. Unlike deduction or induction, they're not epistemic. But, like deduction or induction, they can't be shown to be true either. You just agree with them as starting points, or you don't.
And I predict this type of concept will not be considered useful in the future.
You refer to the difference as "merely semantic" but I quite literally do not know what you mean when you say this.
A. One should do Y.
B. I will do Y.
Technically, yes, they are not the same. But, importantly, if A is true, then B will
more likely become true. The difference is not so much semantics, but probability theory. That gives it something for science to grasp onto, for study.
When I think of "Moral Science", two things come to mind
1) A more scientific, in other words non-emotionally biased, criteria for finding moral "rules". Using common sense, logic and evidence to better determine why a certain thing should or shouldn't be done, as opposed to "because God says so in the Bible", or "because I personally find it disgusting"
2) An attempt to measure morality so that it can be encoded in a universal, Fixated Moral Code
Number 1 is very good and I think society should lean toward it.
Number 2 is unrealistic and just, not healthy.
But, Number 1 ultimately leads into something like Number 2! Though, it's NOT fixed. It would be provisional, and subject to change, based on new evidence, like all good sciences.
I don't think it's a matter of "if" it can happen, or "should" happen, but HOW it WILL happen, eventually.
... Well, science has shown that societies tend to adopt rules that are better in this sense, but science has not shown that societies ought to do so. The fact that societies tend to choose social-cohesive-promoting rules does not give the persons in the society any reason to promote such rules. It is merely a fact of the matter that, generally speaking, this has been how they have tended.
For all practical intents and purposes, it has shown us what we ought to do, in the manner you describe.
In exactly the same way, for instance, it is likely that as societies develop, their energy usage increases. Would this give us a reason to start using more energy? Certainly not. A description of the changes that a society tends to undergo is not a reason to aim for those changes.
Energy is not sentient. Increasing energy use would not put energy in a better moral state. It doesn't have moral states.
People ARE sentient. Increasing cohesion among people would probably put them in a better moral state.
...Their primary concern is to convince you that you can’t get the answers from science; a position they promote with evangelical zeal. And their reticence to explain their own position is understandable given that the alternatives are pretty hopeless, namely:
1. Divine revelation of what’s right and wrong. This has obvious drawbacks, notably the non-existence of deities.
2. Philosophical deductive argumentation which, if valid, can arrive at normative ethical conclusions. This has the drawback that one cannot say for sure whether the premise (and therefore the conclusion) of such an argument is true, because it is based on an assumption (a so-called self-evident truth). In short, it’s no more than an empty academic exercise – pure but ultimately useless.
As can be seen, for argument’s sake, in this example: Although science can tell you that a volcano IS about to blow it can’t tell you that those at risk of death OUGHT to flee the danger zone. Of course sensible people will INFER that it’s perhaps advisable to skedaddle.
Good summary.
The problem here is, that even if you could program a computer to moralize in the way that your average human does, there's a bit of a problem:
A computer does exactly what you tell it to do -- any mistakes are the fault of the programmer, not the computer.
Do you see it yet?
If you can't give it the responsibility for its own solutions, and by extension allow it the decision on whether to change its hardware and/or programming it's nothing but fakery, making the whole question an unworkable paradox.
If and when we achieve "Strong AI", it won't be a paradox.
Someone: X is right and Y is wrong
Someone else: No, X is wrong and Y is right.
Both persons can do so. It is so because neither X nor Y are independent of the persons involved and thus not a contradiction, because X and Y do not take place at the same time, place and in the same sense. They take place at 2 different times, places and at 2 different sense, namely in 2 different persons. That is what makes it subjective, personal, biased and so on.
I covered why this is inaccurate with my Ice Cream analogy above. I just figured I would remind you about it here.
And, finally, as I have said a few times now, the heart of morality is normative claims, not predictions about what people will do.
In reality, I think the heart of all normative claims lies in the attempt to predict what people will do, to achieve the best consequences. It's just hard to see it that way, because of those confounding factors I posted a couple of days ago.
Moral disagreements are relatively rare, people tend to agree.
Realist: This is because opinions on moral claims are slowly converging to the truth, and hence agreement.
Anti-realist: This is simply a fact about the tendency of human opinion, of purely psychological note. Perhaps people tend to prefer chocolate over vanilla, but we would not conclude that chocolate is therefore objectively better than vanilla.
Realist views seem to be much more useful, as a framework, for understanding how morality emerges. It seems to imply there are some natural laws we can work off of, whereas the anti-realist one seems to imply it is much more arbitrary, and not much of a framework for getting down to the nitty-gritty of morality.
I
Now, I'm at the roulette table again and I reason using your inductive, predictive argument about what I am likely to do.
Black has not come up in five spins.
Therefore, I will bet lots of money on black.
That's a perfectly good prediction. Given my past behavior, this seems likely.
Nope. The Law of Independent Actions applies, here. Assuming the wheel is fair, each spin has no influence on future spins. Each color is as likely to come up for each spin, as every other spin. Streaks do not change this.
(That is, of course, a bit off topic. But, I figured I would mention it, since I was passing by.)
But this kind of argument does not provide any reasons to do something. It merely provides a prediction that I will do it. This is useless in a situation in which I am deliberating about what to do.
Once such a prediction is made, and the motivation for that prediction is established, you COULD ignore it, but it would be at your own peril. You would be ignoring the warning signs. That is the reason to do that something.
The maximum number as reported by science possible for social group coherence is 1500 individuals. Somehow I should field social coherence beyond those 1500 people, which is the maximum (can be larger but nowhere near that I can hold a large population of say 20.000 people in a social network), so how do I hold social coherence for people for which I am biologically incapable of doing so?
Morality works upon many layers. You don't need to have perfect coherence with everyone, everywhere! You might have a maximum level of coherence with 1,500 people, and a lower amount with 20,000 more. But other layers, such as your government, will fill in the missing coherence with its own policies, keeping everyone "sewn together" in the same sorta, general social fabric, at least as far as moral concerns are relevant.
Applied science is different from science itself in approximately the same way that Chemistry is different from Chemical Engineering. All engineering would be in the applied science category. The knowledge is the same. The difference is whether your primary purpose is discovering the data or applying it as a means to an end.
It's also the difference between a biologist and a veterinarian.
This is a very good, and important distinction to make.
As far as relevance to this thread is concerned: The proper balancing of the components of morality can be determined by science (in the future). But,
social policy would be the application of (the "engineering" of) those moral components.
But our underlying instincts are demonstrably not fundamentally individualistic. We are demonstrably a social species requiring mutual cooperation and the restraint of individual selfishness to survive as a species. Or do you disagree?
Just remember: Instincts are only ONE LAYER in the emergent system of morality. Although it is an important, foundational layer; it's not entirely what drives the system.
