What should Morals and Ethics be?

[JoeMorgue]

There's no disconnect. I'm just saying if "There is no answer, and not just no practical answer but no possible answer by design" to questions of morality/ethics and we've been asking them basically as long as we've been human and the intellectual needle hasn't moved one inch... what are we doing? Where are we going with this?

If the answer is "There is no answer" we're done. We've solved the puzzle.

And I don't mean that snarkily. "The conclusion we came to is the question was never really valid" is a perfectly fine thing to do. It's true sometimes. Not every question has an answer because some questions are just wrong.

But you can't go "We've determined the question has no answer... let's keep asking it."

 

[Belz...]

But there is an answer. It's just not an objective one. It's different for everyone.

 

[mumblethrax]

I used “neighbour" meaning the other men. No tribalism.

That is tribalistic. For example, there's no reason to exclude non-human animals from consideration that doesn't amount to tribalism.

But empathy is quite bad at the job of turning our concern to other men. Instead, we feel a great deal of empathy for people who are socially proximate, and very little for some poor beggar on the other side of the world. It's almost like it's something we developed when we were living in small kinship groups.

You can say that moral "principles" (sic) "emerge" from empathy or you can say that without empathy there is not morality.

Well, yes, but you will then be saying very different things.

There are a million and one necessary conditions for engaging in moral reasoning. For example, the universe has to exist. And you have to be alive. But it would be foolish to say "The universe is the basis of morality" or "Being alive is the basis of morality." You are intentionally conflating different ideas in order to try to rescue a failed argument.

In any case empathy is a necessary condition because you take empathy away and not sense of responsibility arises in the subject. This is not the case of science. The subject can understand everything about nerves, pain, death and injuries from a scientific point of view. He can see his victim crying and understand what tears mean. He can enjoy this. But without empathy he cannot feel that is doing bad. Science is not the basis of morality.

Neither is empathy. Earlier you intimated that we might be too empathic or not empathic enough. In what terms would you make that argument? What is the good you seek in hoping we will be ideally empathic? The answer can't be "Empathy!" which means there is some more fundamental value at work here, and empathy is therefore not the basis of your morality. Or you can keep insisting that it is, and flail around in the dark forever.

This is supported by common experience (intelligent killers) and science (Damasio). What other support do you need?

What you need is a normative basis that will make sense out of any of this. You can say "Empathy! Science! Serial killers!" but none of that does or can amount to morality.

If you put a moral feeling in the basis of your chain of reasoning you avoid Hume's guillotine.

No, you don't. You're still failing to appreciate what Hume means. You need an ought before you can get anywhere. Feelings are not normative. If I feel someone else's pain, that's just a declarative fact about the world. It does not imply that I ought to feel their pain.

Your first statement is not in the form of "x is y" but "I want x" that is to say "x is good". Now you can argue in terms of "to be" without contradiction. I have not misunderstand Hume. This is Hume's solution to the problem.

This is gobbledygook. Hume does not present a solution to the is-ought problem.

I only said that that without empathy no morality.

This is you disingenuously retreating from what you initially claimed to a triviality (without even doing any work to establish that it's true).

 

[JoeMorgue]

But there is an answer. It's just not an objective one. It's different for everyone.

Not for me. "Ethics and morality" are only about how we interact with each other. Put someone on a desert island by himself and there's no such thing as morality or ethics. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, everyone on the trolley track lives so to speak.

"Ethics and morality that's different for everyone" is paradoxical, again within my mental framework.

 

[acbytesla]

Not for me. "Ethics and morality" are only about how we interact with each other. Put someone on a desert island by himself and there's no such thing as morality or ethics. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, everyone on the trolley track lives so to speak.

"Ethics and morality that's different for everyone" is paradoxical, again within my mental framework.

I think you're half right. No question morality and ethics is a social construct. But I'm unconvinced that a person wouldn't have a sense of morality if he was on a deserted island. I've done a lot of solitary hiking and yet I wouldn't litter or needlessly kill some animal. That said, it would be questionable I would feel that way not having been influenced by others at some point in my life.

And while each of us have our own sense of what is moral and ethical there is something call shared morality.

 

[Belz...]

Not for me. "Ethics and morality" are only about how we interact with each other. Put someone on a desert island by himself and there's no such thing as morality or ethics. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, everyone on the trolley track lives so to speak.

"Ethics and morality that's different for everyone" is paradoxical, again within my mental framework.

But it's factually true. Everyone values different things differently, and their morality is shaped accordingly. The larger society is an amalgam of that. You can't say that people don't have their own conception of ethics, just like you can't stay that there exists objective moral values.

 

[Hellbound]

Maybe this is all comes down to some sort of distinction between "Science can tell me why I like Tom Waits" and "Why I like Tom Waits can be understood within scientific concepts like psychology" is a distinction I really need to make for my own view of the world.

Because that's not the difference. Both of those questions can be answered by science, and are the same question more or less.

But the question of should you like Tom Waits or not can't be answered by science. That's a value judgement.

"Science can answer" and "Science can explain the answer" are... well the same thing to me more or less.

Yes, they are. So give any example of "science can explain why I should like this music" or of "science can explain why I shouldn't like that music" that doesn't start with an assumption of what has value. hat's the difference. Science can explain why, but not whether that's morally right or not.

At the end of the day I'm just not going be okay with someone, even on a purely argumentative level, going "Okay now prove to me using only a slide rule and the periodic table of elements why I should care about other people."

And you don't have to prove that, because that's one of the axioms of your value system. Science can't prove that. The only thing you can do is make an argument from consequences to attempt to appeal to the values of others; "If we care about each other, we'll all be happier", "if we don't care about each other, you're likely to be killed or enslaved by someone else", etc.

And I don't see away to let "axioms" into the discussion that isn't going to let faith and Woo in as well.

You seem to misunderstand what axioms are, if that's your take. Science itself is based on some axioms, and uses the same argument from consequences to justify those. The axioms chosen for scientific investigation have proven useful and practical, even if they can't be proven.

For example, there's no way to prove we aren't just brains in a jar (I know you hate that, but it illustrates the point) living a simulation. But science argues form practicality and consequences: if we are, there's no evidence to suggest it, and we suffer the consequences of our actions as if it were real, so unless something contradicts that we accept that there actually is a shared reality out there. It's not a logical proof, it's a practical argument. It's based on the axiom of science that gives us "that which is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence".

I think you're half right. No question morality and ethics is a social construct. But I'm unconvinced that a person wouldn't have a sense of morality if he was on a deserted island. I've done a lot of solitary hiking and yet I wouldn't litter or needlessly kill some animal. That said, it would be questionable I would feel that way not having been influenced by others at some point in my life.

And while each of us have our own sense of what is moral and ethical there is something call shared morality.

This is pretty much what I've been trying to get to. Just because it isn't objective, doesn't mean it's meaningless or isn't important. No more than a law being passed forcing all music to be variations of Achy Breaky Heart would be meaningless (I'll lead the revolution on that one).

What people are always trying to find in these discussions are a set of values, a moral and/or ethical system, that appeals to the most individuals values. And for most of us we want to be happy, successful, make our own choices, and not suffer. So trying to develop a system that provides that for as many as we can, and in a fashion so that (for example) even those who don't care about others will buy into it (by seeing the personal benefits for group cooperation) is what these discussions are about.

 

[acbytesla]

This is pretty much what I've been trying to get to. Just because it isn't objective, doesn't mean it's meaningless or isn't important. No more than a law being passed forcing all music to be variations of Achy Breaky Heart would be meaningless (I'll lead the revolution on that one).

What people are always trying to find in these discussions are a set of values, a moral and/or ethical system, that appeals to the most individuals values. And for most of us we want to be happy, successful, make our own choices, and not suffer. So trying to develop a system that provides that for as many as we can, and in a fashion so that (for example) even those who don't care about others will buy into it (by seeing the personal benefits for group cooperation) is what these discussions are about.

I agree with you mostly, although I do think morals can be objective. But we have to agree on a starting point which is subjective. Sam Harris and others have suggested that what most people mean by morals is well being. That one acts towards personal well being. Ourselves and others. I think John Rawls provides a great start with his original position and the veil of ignorance.

People are going to act in their own self interest. That's a given. But there is a reason that the Golden Rule actually predates the Bible by a thousand years and is found in most human cultures. That's because considering others and even sometimes putting others needs before your own is also in your interest.

Prestige (I think his tongue was in his cheek) that a guiding principle for society should be sociopathy.

Frankly, I believe such a society could not last.

 

[Cheetah]

I'm trying to be objective, I'm looking for a "universal value" shared by all concerned.

Since the whole concept of ethics and morality is only applicable to animals that can experience well being or suffering and well-being is a universal goal of such organisms, "minimizing suffering and maximizing happiness" seems like such a value.

And this boils down to "life is good".
The instinct of "wanting to live" and self preservation is also a universal property of thinking life, for obvious reasons.

??

 

[Hellbound]

I agree with you mostly, although I do think morals can be objective. But we have to agree on a starting point which is subjective.

Then you agree with me completely. I'm working through logic in my head as I type responses, so I tend to ramble, but that's my belief as well. The starting point is necessarily subjective, but form there you can objectively create a code that promotes those values, adjust it in response to evidence, and objectively evaluate actions to that code.

Sam Harris and others have suggested that what most people mean by morals is well being. That one acts towards personal well being. Ourselves and others. I think John Rawls provides a great start with his original position and the veil of ignorance.

People are going to act in their own self interest. That's a given. But there is a reason that the Golden Rule actually predates the Bible by a thousand years and is found in most human cultures. That's because considering others and even sometimes putting others needs before your own is also in your interest.

Prestige (I think his tongue was in his cheek) that a guiding principle for society should be sociopathy.

Frankly, I believe such a society could not last.

Yeah, I think we're pretty much on the same page. And I don't think theprestige meant is should be sociopathy, but was musing about how it might work better. But later posts showed research that they try for the "undercut the competition" line a bit too often to work if everyone followed that path .

 

[Belz...]

Then you agree with me completely. I'm working through logic in my head as I type responses, so I tend to ramble, but that's my belief as well. The starting point is necessarily subjective, but form there you can objectively create a code that promotes those values, adjust it in response to evidence, and objectively evaluate actions to that code.

That's my take on it as well.

 

[Cavemonster]

Then you agree with me completely. I'm working through logic in my head as I type responses, so I tend to ramble, but that's my belief as well. The starting point is necessarily subjective, but form there you can objectively create a code that promotes those values, adjust it in response to evidence, and objectively evaluate actions to that code.
.

Technically, you probably could evaluate moral facts logically once you settle on a subjective moral starting point.

But the large majority of moral systems still have a lot of fuzziness in their evaluations, even if you take their core values as a given.

Example: Utilitarianism.
What exactly are the units of happiness and pain? How do we compare different kinds of happiness and suffering in different people? There's still a lot of subjectivity there. One of my go-to examples is the moral question of when to recommend prostate cancer screenings. If you recommend them at too early an age, you get too many false positives. A false positive may mean unneccessary surgery or medication. It means a whole pile of stress for people who think they have cancer when they don't This presents a risk of all sorts of complications. Surgery can easily result in impotence. How many people unnecessarily impotent are worth catching a few more cases of prostate cancer early and improving their survival odds? Doctors have recently started recommending waiting for screening because they don't think the low odds of catching more early asymptomatic tumors is worth the side effects from false positives. But how can utilitarianism compare these very different kinds of negative outcome?

You could try to fix it by adding more core premises, being more specific in your baseline assumptions. But that inevitably makes your system more arbitrary and leads to more and more absurd implications or places where the theory doesn't match moral intuition.

The more we frontload to allow moral systems to be objectively workable in practice, the wackier it gets.

I used utilitarianism, but the same applies to pretty much any system. Divine command, virtue ethics. etc etc. Either you have absurd super specific rules or you have a lot of room for subjectivity.

 

[theprestige]

I think "moral intuition" sums up the problem quite nicely.

 

[Thor 2]

You seem to be drifting off topic with your observations.

Are you saying that inspiring admiration in others should be the basis of morality?

Certainly not the basis for morality but can be an indicator pointing the way.

I think "moral intuition" sums up the problem quite nicely.

Surprisingly I find myself agreeing with you here.

I think we all have an intuition of what is the best moral course of action*. We make judgments on this all the time. I could give you many examples drawn from my own life experience as illustration.

* A moral course of action guided by religion corrupts this intuition.

 

[theprestige]

Certainly not the basis for morality but can be an indicator pointing the way.

On the other hand, it can also be a horrible mistake.

History seems to be full of horrible people who successfully achieve horrible things on the strength of all the admiration they've inspired in others.

There's a reason we're wary of the appeal to popularity.

Surprisingly I find myself agreeing with you here.

I think we all have an intuition of what is the best moral course of action*. We make judgments on this all the time. I could give you many examples drawn from my own life experience as illustration.

* A moral course of action guided by religion corrupts this intuition.

Or does it?

What if religion is one of the ways that some people express their moral intuition?

It's not like everyone's moral intuitions are always in agreement with each other's. It's not like everyone's moral intuitions are properly calibrated.*

* Properly calibrated to what, though? That's the heart of the debate.

 

[Thor 2]

On the other hand, it can also be a horrible mistake.

History seems to be full of horrible people who successfully achieve horrible things on the strength of all the admiration they've inspired in others.

There's a reason we're wary of the appeal to popularity.


Or does it?

What if religion is one of the ways that some people express their moral intuition?

It's not like everyone's moral intuitions are always in agreement with each other's. It's not like everyone's moral intuitions are properly calibrated.*

* Properly calibrated to what, though? That's the heart of the debate.

Oh dear! Just when I thought we might have consensus on something you start sprouting contrary nonsense again.

 

[theprestige]

Oh dear! Just when I thought we might have consensus on something you start sprouting contrary nonsense again.

Weird flex, but okay.

 

[acbytesla]

Or does it?

What if religion is one of the ways that some people express their moral intuition?

It's not like everyone's moral intuitions are always in agreement with each other's. It's not like everyone's moral intuitions are properly calibrated.*

* Properly calibrated to what, though? That's the heart of the debate.

Do you really think you would be awful to others if you didn't believe in a God? That the only thing stopping you from raping, stealing, lying and killing is a belief in a god?
You don't think you would have learned the golden rule without being taught it in Catechism class?

Do you seriously believe I am without morals because I'm an atheist?

 

[Roboramma]

Do you really think you would be awful to others if you didn't believe in a God? That the only thing stopping you from raping, stealing, lying and killing is a belief in a god?
You don't think you would have learned the golden rule without being taught it in Catechism class?

Do you seriously believe I am without morals because I'm an atheist?

Did you quote the wrong post? I don't think your response is related to anything in the post you quoted.

 

[Cheetah]

I guess I'm on ignore or something.

Now I seem to be on ignore. In my own thread.

... I do think morals can be objective. But we have to agree on a starting point which is subjective.

I think we all agree.

And I propose that:
Morals and ethics are only applicable to that utterly minute portion of the universe that is able to experience it. IOW minds.

Now I ask:
How subjective is it picking a starting point that is a 'law of nature'?
How subjective is it if that law is not picked arbitrarily, but is the primary objective of all natural life (with or without minds)?