darth, do you know how long slavery has been going on?
Exactly when is it supposed to stop working enough for people to give it up?
A few weeks before the sun envelops the earth?
I don't know much about the chocolate industry. But I think, economically, slavery has the deck stacked against it in the long term. I think that slavery would have died out in America without the civil war because, quite simply, an industrial economy could easily out-compete it.
Why does slavery only exist in backwards fucked up countries like Ghana and Saudi Arabia? If these countries hope to become relevant, their economies will have to evolve, and that means getting rid of slavery.
You forgot Columbia and, functionally, India and China.
Why does slavery only exist in backwards fucked up countries like Ghana and Saudi Arabia? If these countries hope to become relevant, their economies will have to evolve, and that means getting rid of slavery.
I don't necessarily believe this myself, however, it's been argued that poverty (and slavery) in the third world is in no small part a product of global markets which actively extort the poor and disenfranchised for the benefit of the few and the rich in the West. If that were the case, then it would throw a major hitch into your theory that the poorer countries of the world are simply less evolved and hence (rightly) falling down in the societal process of natural selection.
darth, do you know how long slavery has been going on?
Exactly when is it supposed to stop working enough for people to give it up?
A few weeks before the sun envelops the earth?
I don't know much about the chocolate industry. But I think, economically, slavery has the deck stacked against it in the long term. I think that slavery would have died out in America without the civil war because, quite simply, an industrial economy could easily out-compete it.
Why does slavery only exist in backwards fucked up countries like Ghana and Saudi Arabia? If these countries hope to become relevant, their economies will have to evolve, and that means getting rid of slavery.
You forgot Columbia and, functionally, India and China.
And, remember who profits from the slavery. Really, isn't it immoral to buy non-free-trade coffee? To buy Nikes? To buy cheap clothes or toys made in Indonesian sweatshops? Here we have products sold in the US potentially harvested by slaves or by laborers who work in such horrible conditions and for such little pay as to be considered slaves.
Slavery is still economically viable, it's just that companies obviously can't keep a sweatshop or force children to pick coca beans anywhere in the West.
Everyone, taken generally. You and me and society.
"Not me," you'll say. Okay, want to take the darthmix challenge? Here it is: see if you can identify a moral rule that you think is true and has value, but which does not present the society with any social benefit. Think of a behavior that you feel is immoral, but that if widely practiced would not lead to broad social harm. If morality is really disconnected from the well-being of the larger culture it shouldn't be too hard.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I'm only saying that we recognize certain behaviors as inherantly destructive
Destructive to what? Social order? Civil disobedience is destructive to social order. Does that make civil disobedience bad?
I find it remarkably implausible to identify what is moral with what tends to promote the success of a social unit over time. Not only are there serious worries with how to translate the analogy of natural selection into the world of societies, but it's easy to see how all sorts of shitty activities could be socially helpful, and on the converse side, how awesome behavior could be socially harmful.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
Yes, our morals are subjective. However, depending on circumstance, the universe works in a theoretically predictable way. Thus certain things done in certain circumstances always have the same outcome, and it is reasonable for us to fit our moral ideas inside of that structure.
No, we can't. The two concepts are not analogous. A system designed to explain physical phenomena is a fundamentally different critter from a system designed to dictate the behavior of rational agents.
So why do moral codes evolve if not because of a reaction to the environment? Just randomly?
I'm not saying the universe cares, only that it operates in such a way that will tend to force us to evolve our moral codes into something that works best inside the universe, much in the same way that our bodies evolved within the confines of what could be called the physiological laws of the universe.
In what way does the universe require us to have any morals at all, let alone evolving ones? You're conflating ambition with the universe, which is wierd.
The universe doesn't require us to have morals. We have morals as a way of dealing with the universe because our social structure is complex enough to make it useful. Plenty of stuff gets by fine without morals, but anything that does have them is likely to be using them as a way of dealing with the environment.
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
It would probably be better for them if they didn't.
I imagine the pockets of survivors that don't rape each other and are able to form functioning, cooperative mini-societies will stand a significantly better chance of surviving the zombies and/or radiation.
I'm only saying that we recognize certain behaviors as inherantly destructive
Destructive to what? Social order? Civil disobedience is destructive to social order. Does that make civil disobedience bad?
To the extent that the people practicing civil disobedience are attempting to identify and correct a perceived immoral (destructive) practice already in progress, it is definitely not bad. If society cracks down on civil disobedience as a way of stopping dialogue and silencing dissent, that is definitely bad, since in doing so it signs away its own ability to rectify injustice, change, and adapt.
I find it remarkably implausible to identify what is moral with what tends to promote the success of a social unit over time. Not only are there serious worries with how to translate the analogy of natural selection into the world of societies, but it's easy to see how all sorts of shitty activities could be socially helpful, and on the converse side, how awesome behavior could be socially harmful.
Remember of course that morality is only concerned with rules of behavior, rather than specific instances of it. We cannot anticipate whether any particular instance of theft will be beneficial in the long term, and we cannot trust individuals to decide for themselves whether it'll be beneficial in the long term. All we can do is come up with a general rule which, if generally practiced, will be beneficial in the long term (though not necessarily every specific instance.) So that's what we do. We say: "don't steal." It might not always help society, but society is much better off with the rule than without.
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
It would probably be better for them if they didn't.
I imagine the pockets of survivors that don't rape each other and are able to form functioning, cooperative mini-societies will stand a significantly better chance of surviving the zombies and/or radiation.
But, what about rival pockets of survivors competing for resources? Say, there is only enough food to sustain one group. Would it then be koscher for one group of survivors to eyeballsocketrape members of the competing group of survivors?
Everyone, taken generally. You and me and society.
"Not me," you'll say. Okay, want to take the darthmix challenge? Here it is: see if you can identify a moral rule that you think is true and has value, but which does not present the society with any social benefit. Think of a behavior that you feel is immoral, but that if widely practiced would not lead to broad social harm. If morality is really disconnected from the well-being of the larger culture it shouldn't be too hard.
Every policy can conceivably cause societal damage, the only question is how much the person weighs the relative risks. I mean, maybe teh gayz in Caleeforna really WILL start raping children in the streets if allowed to marry.
But, what about rival pockets of survivors competing for resources? Say, there is only enough food to sustain one group. Would it then be koscher for one group of survivors to eyeballsocketrape members of the competing group of survivors?
No. There are more beneficial ways to compete over limited resources than violently terrorizing competitors: trade systems, states to distribute resources, etc.
I have trouble thinking of circumstances where a modern society would be outcompeted by a primitive society. In nature, there are also (roughly speaking) "modern" and "primitive" species that exist in similar niches. Many invasive species are "modern" species that have simply evolved better mechanisms to deal with their niche—poisonous defenses, intelligent behavior—than the primitive species they invade and replace. I think morality works the same way, and that human society has evolved a "better" morality for our niche than our ancestors. But obviously this is not true for every set of circumstances—though again I'm having trouble trouble thinking of circumstances where a lawless rapist society would do better than ours.
Everyone, taken generally. You and me and society.
"Not me," you'll say. Okay, want to take the darthmix challenge? Here it is: see if you can identify a moral rule that you think is true and has value, but which does not present the society with any social benefit. Think of a behavior that you feel is immoral, but that if widely practiced would not lead to broad social harm. If morality is really disconnected from the well-being of the larger culture it shouldn't be too hard.
Every policy can conceivably cause societal damage, the only question is how much the person weighs the relative risks. I mean, maybe teh gayz in Caleeforna really WILL start raping children in the streets if allowed to marry.
Oh yeah, it could be postulated that my opinion that one does not have the right to decide which of two people are allowed to live might, on balance, let more bad people come out on top than otherwise.
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
See, these kind of hypotheticals necessarily distort the discussion, because they have hidden consequences outside the scope of the hypothetical itself. Two men on a desert island have no hope of forging a continuing society, and so our moral systems - which are oriented toward social continuation - are largely irrelevant to them.
And yet when you or I say "sure, it's okay if they rape each other," we must wince. We cannot accept that conclusion. This is because we, the oustide observers, are still coming from the standpoint of rational actors living in a society who's morality is oriented toward its own continuation - and as such we are not at liberty to accept or condone murder, or rape, ever. The well-being of our own society, the investment of the people in the social contract, depends on our not doing that. You don't, in our culture, get to decide when it's okay to rape someone. In this sense we're not qualified to assess the moral ramifications of the choices made by these two men, since we've imagined a situation that divorces them from all of the things that make morality relevant to us. They might be free to justify raping each other, since they are free from the confines of society. We are not, and so we can't do that.
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
See, these kind of hypotheticals necessarily distort the discussion, because they have hidden consequences outside the scope of the hypothetical itself. Two men on a desert island have no hope of forging a continuing society, and so our moral systems - which are oriented toward social continuation - are largely irrelevant to them.
And yet when you or I say "sure, it's okay if they rape each other," we must wince. We cannot accept that conclusion. This is because we, the observers, are stil coming from the standpoint of rational actors living in a society who's morality is oriented toward its own continuation - and as such we are not at liberty to accept or condone murder, or rape, ever. The well-being of our own society, the investment of the people in the social contract, depends on our not doing that. You don't, in our culture, get to decide when it's okay to rape someone. In this sense we're not qualified to assess the moral ramifications of the choices made by these two men, since we've imagined a situation that divorces them from all of the things that make morality relevant to us. They might be free to justify raping each other, since they are free from the confines of society. We are not, and so we can't do that.
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
See, these kind of hypotheticals necessarily distort the discussion, because they have hidden consequences outside the scope of the hypothetical itself. Two men on a desert island have no hope of forging a continuing society, and so our moral systems - which are oriented toward social continuation - are largely irrelevant to them.
And yet when you or I say "sure, it's okay if they rape each other," we must wince. We cannot accept that conclusion.
As far as I can tell, you answer is: "Yes, it's fine if they rape each other. We are simply unable to accept that rape can be value-neutral because our social conditioning confuses us into thinking rape is wrong."
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
See, these kind of hypotheticals necessarily distort the discussion, because they have hidden consequences outside the scope of the hypothetical itself. Two men on a desert island have no hope of forging a continuing society, and so our moral systems - which are oriented toward social continuation - are largely irrelevant to them.
And yet when you or I say "sure, it's okay if they rape each other," we must wince. We cannot accept that conclusion. This is because we, the observers, are still coming from the standpoint of rational actors living in a society who's morality is oriented toward its own continuation - and as such we are not at liberty to accept or condone murder, or rape, ever. The well-being of our own society, the investment of the people in the social contract, depends on our not doing that. You don't, in our culture, get to decide when it's okay to rape someone. In this sense we're not qualified to assess the moral ramifications of the choices made by these two men, since we've imagined a situation that divorces them from all of the things that make morality relevant to us. They might be free to justify raping each other, since they are free from the confines of society. We are not, and so we can't do that.
Or because we're taught that rape is bad.
Of course that's why. But the question is why we're taught that it's bad, and how our ancestors who decided it was bad came to that conclusion.
Not that it's exactly central to the point of the thread but: we don't fear things like spiders and snakes because we're taught to fear them. We stop being afraid of them because we learn that most of them can't possibly harm us.
Apes and monkeys share that fear, regardless of whether or not they've ever seen a snake or a spider. I'm reasonably certain it's been similarly proved in humans, but I'm not sure since I imagine it's tough to get funding for your research project when the abstract is "we want to scare babies with snakes".
A learned fear is guns. No one is born afraid of a gun, but you learn pretty quickly to associate guns with high-velocity things hitting you.
Moral relativists shall pay their sins in the afterlife, after they're Judged by God, who does not make exceptions and sets very clear rules in the Holy Book.
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
See, these kind of hypotheticals necessarily distort the discussion, because they have hidden consequences outside the scope of the hypothetical itself. Two men on a desert island have no hope of forging a continuing society, and so our moral systems - which are oriented toward social continuation - are largely irrelevant to them.
And yet when you or I say "sure, it's okay if they rape each other," we must wince. We cannot accept that conclusion.
As far as I can tell, you answer is: "Yes, it's fine if they rape each other. We are simply unable to accept that rape can be value-neutral because our social confuses us into thinking rape is wrong."
Suffice it to say, that is not my answer.
That's not my answer, nor is it yours. I'm explaining why it's not our answer: because the act of analyzing that situation and making a moral judgment about it is itself a moral act, and it's one which has social consequences for us and our society. That's why you're unable to accept any answer which appears to condone rape or murder. It's not because of the consequences for them - it's because of the consequences for us. We're still here, in society, posting on the internet, and we've learned that we cannot be allowed to decide that murder is okay. So, we don't decide that. But that decision says more about us than it actually does about the two men on the island or their circumstance.
But, what about rival pockets of survivors competing for resources? Say, there is only enough food to sustain one group. Would it then be koscher for one group of survivors to eyeballsocketrape members of the competing group of survivors?
No. There are more beneficial ways to compete over limited resources than violently terrorizing competitors: trade systems, states to distribute resources, etc.
I have trouble thinking of circumstances where a modern society would be outcompeted by a primitive society. In nature, there are also (roughly speaking) "modern" and "primitive" species that exist in similar niches. Many invasive species are "modern" species that have simply evolved better mechanisms to deal with their niche—poisonous defenses, intelligent behavior—than the primitive species they invade and replace. I think morality works the same way, and that human society has evolved a "better" morality for our niche than our ancestors. But obviously this is not true for every set of circumstances—though again I'm having trouble trouble thinking of circumstances where a lawless rapist society would do better than ours.
I'm not implying that a lawless society is in any way preferable to ours. But, it's easy to say that humans can transcend resource conflicts since resources are fairly abundant and easy to obtain now.
Say, for example, you and another person are trapped in a cellar in the middle of the desert. There is a single jar of preserves in that cellar. You know the preserves will be enough to sustain one person until rescue arrives. But, if you share the preserves you both die. If you take the fruit for yourself, you survive and the other person dies. Would self-sacrifice be the only moral option here? Or, would an immoral act be forgiven when faced with no other option? Morality is ++ when not faced with the epic struggle to survive.
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
See, these kind of hypotheticals necessarily distort the discussion, because they have hidden consequences outside the scope of the hypothetical itself. Two men on a desert island have no hope of forging a continuing society, and so our moral systems - which are oriented toward social continuation - are largely irrelevant to them.
And yet when you or I say "sure, it's okay if they rape each other," we must wince. We cannot accept that conclusion.
As far as I can tell, you answer is: "Yes, it's fine if they rape each other. We are simply unable to accept that rape can be value-neutral because our social conditioning confuses us into thinking rape is wrong."
Suffice it to say, that is not my answer.
Well, let's consider the social contract as it might apply to a single pair of desert islanders.
Would you like to be killed in your sleep and have your eyeballs roundly fucked? No? Well, then the social contract forged between you and your desert buddy probably preclude that. The social contract doesn't cease to exist just because it's down to two people. It just becomes a highly-specialized one that may be a different beast from that in our own society.
The social contract only ceases to exist when you're down to one person. And even then, I can imagine variations on it based on hypothetical situations. Perhaps one would consider it immoral for the last man on Earth to nuke all flora and fauna because, in the event there is another person alive somewhere, it would adversely affect him.
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What ElJeffe says is true, too. I was just trying to point out something else, which is that these desert island scenarios are kind of cheating. They rely for their effect on our socially derived moral inhibitions, which have quite properly educated us of the dangers of ever condoning rape or murder. Then they very consciously remove their subjects from the context, and then ask us (still embedded that context) to evaluate the morality of their actions - the idea being that morality is therefore independant of society. It's a conceptual trick.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
Moral relativists shall pay their sins in the afterlife, after they're Judged by God, who does not make exceptions and sets very clear rules in the Holy Book.
What ElJeffe says is true, too. I was just trying to point out something else, which is that these desert island scenarios are kind of cheating. They rely for their effect on our socially derived moral inhibitions, which have quite properly educated us of the dangers of ever condoning rape or murder. Then they very consciously remove their subjects from the context, and then ask us (still embedded that context) to evaluate the morality of their actions - the idea being that morality is therefore independant of society. It's a conceptual trick.
A couple weeks back, Maddie and I were playing a game. She needed to land on a certain spot, so she counted how many spaces she needed, and then moved the spinner to that location, thinking she was being sneaky. Except she counted wrong. I pretended I didn't notice, but made her move her marker the number of spaces indicated by the spinner. It was funny.
Point being, your comment reminded me of that scenario. Not only is the desert island example cheating, it's cheating poorly.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Well, let's consider the social contract as it might apply to a single pair of desert islanders.
Would you like to be killed in your sleep and have your eyeballs roundly fucked? No? Well, then the social contract forged between you and your desert buddy probably preclude that.
I don't think that this is a standard application of social contract theory at all. There idea motivating social contract theory is usually that it benefits everyone who engages in society--that's why they are considered to have given implied consent to the arrangement. However, there can be no such situation between two men on a desert island. There is no benefit for the stronger in refraining from bullying the weaker (as much as he can get away with it). He can not be seen as pursuing his rational self-interest if he helps his wheelchair-bound island buddy gather coconuts. Instead, he is behaving altruistically.
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
See, these kind of hypotheticals necessarily distort the discussion, because they have hidden consequences outside the scope of the hypothetical itself. Two men on a desert island have no hope of forging a continuing society, and so our moral systems - which are oriented toward social continuation - are largely irrelevant to them.
And yet when you or I say "sure, it's okay if they rape each other," we must wince. We cannot accept that conclusion. This is because we, the observers, are still coming from the standpoint of rational actors living in a society who's morality is oriented toward its own continuation - and as such we are not at liberty to accept or condone murder, or rape, ever. The well-being of our own society, the investment of the people in the social contract, depends on our not doing that. You don't, in our culture, get to decide when it's okay to rape someone. In this sense we're not qualified to assess the moral ramifications of the choices made by these two men, since we've imagined a situation that divorces them from all of the things that make morality relevant to us. They might be free to justify raping each other, since they are free from the confines of society. We are not, and so we can't do that.
Or because we're taught that rape is bad.
Of course that's why. But the question is why we're taught that it's bad, and how our ancestors who decided it was bad came to that conclusion.
We place consent over personal multiplication. Other societies and species (many of which have quite a bit more biomass than humanity) don't.
What ElJeffe says is true, too. I was just trying to point out something else, which is that these desert island scenarios are kind of cheating. They rely for their effect on our socially derived moral inhibitions, which have quite properly educated us of the dangers of ever condoning rape or murder.
Why have we been educated against condoning rape and murder in and of themselves, rather than merely educated against condoning rape and murder in our own societies? It's of no consequence to us and our society whether the men on the desert island are cruel to each other, so why do we have a strong response against it?
What ElJeffe says is true, too. I was just trying to point out something else, which is that these desert island scenarios are kind of cheating. They rely for their effect on our socially derived moral inhibitions, which have quite properly educated us of the dangers of ever condoning rape or murder.
Why have we been educated against condoning rape and murder in and of themselves, rather than merely educated against condoning rape and murder in our own societies? It's of no consequence to us and our society whether the men on the desert island are cruel to each other, so why do we have a strong response against it?
Generalization. Something similar is a person's reticence to drink water that they themselves have spit into.
Well, let's consider the social contract as it might apply to a single pair of desert islanders.
Would you like to be killed in your sleep and have your eyeballs roundly fucked? No? Well, then the social contract forged between you and your desert buddy probably preclude that.
I don't think that this is a standard application of social contract theory at all. There idea motivating social contract theory is usually that it benefits everyone who engages in society--that's why they are considered to have given implied consent to the arrangement. However, there can be no such situation between two men on a desert island. There is no benefit for the stronger in refraining from bullying the weaker (as much as he can get away with it). He can not be seen as pursuing his rational self-interest if he helps his wheelchair-bound island buddy gather coconuts. Instead, he is behaving altruistically.
Positions of relative strength and weakness are transient. What if the strong guy falls out of a coconut tree and breaks his leg? What if the smart guy gets sick and becomes unconscious?
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
Edit: Re Scalfin
Rape and murder have often been considered acceptable when done to people who didn't count. So I don't think that generalization is a given.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Positions of relative strength and weakness are transient. What if the strong guy falls out of a coconut tree and breaks his leg? What if the smart guy gets sick and becomes unconscious?
What if a meteor falls out of the sky? It's dramatically unlikely that someone able-bodied is going to wind up being substantially dependent on his cripple buddy.
Honestly, do you think that the only reason a strong person on a desert island has to be kind to his weaker colleague is because of some quid pro quo? Do you think that altruism for the sake of the other person, not yourself is irrational? Because that conclusion seems obviously wrong to me.
To all of those who think there's some underlying moral fabric in the Universe:
You're anthropomorphizing existence. With a Western tint.
"God," in any literal sense, has no place in discussions of the real world. In fact, many of us could argue the point that believing in God above science is, today, detrimental to the progress of our society, and therefore an immoral act.
Arguing the existence of God is, to me, thousands upon thousands of times more arrogant than saying that "He/She/It" probably doesn't exist. There's absolutely no reason for any of us to believe in some divine intelligence given what we know about the Universe right now. We're on earth, we have shit in front of us to deal with, and we should be talking about it realistically. Maybe later on we'll see Jesus come back, or the Four Horsemen, or even (insert favorite religious possibility here), but even if that were remotely possible, it's not happening right now. You know what is happening right now? Real stuff.
I'm more inclined to believe that Earth is some kind of perverted ET petri dish experiment than I am to live my life like some Old Angry Jewish Man's watching my every move.
if you want to talk about religion, i suggest you go start a(nother) religion thread. the mere fact that you are argueing that people who believe in god are immoral tells me how little you actually know and have spent a little too much time cursing those "ignorant redneck christians".
morality has nothing to do with your belief in god, there are 'evil' atheists just like there are 'evil' christians.
Yeah, so. Way to miss the mark entirely. It's cool though, we can have two different discussions going on here if you want. Just don't expect to understand what I'm saying, or for me to care what you're saying.
And sorry, but yeah, your belief/disbelief in "God" or any analogous concept does have a bearing on your morality. The very concept of morality is inextricably bound to these supposed universal maxims of human behavior, which, back in the day, were supposedly handed down to us from on high. For many people, even today, there is no discussion of morals without a discussion of God.
I'm not saying belief in God is any indication of a "good" or "bad" person. I'm saying that basing all of your actions in "faith" is irresponsible.
You want examples? Islamic fundamentalism, pogroms, and Joel Osteen.
Don't argue my point by telling me I don't know shit. It makes you look like an ass.
Edit: Furthermore, I wasn't even talking about religion for the sake of it. I was saying that it's silly to talk of absolute morals because they're a foregone idea, like a geocentric universe or a luminiferous ether. And yeah, "redneck christians" suck and there really isn't a way around it. Bigotry and exclusivity aren't "immoral" (since that's what this is all about), they're just unnecessary and retarded.
Gravity and Punishment on
"I assure you, your distaste only reveals your ignorance."
Yes, our morals are subjective. However, depending on circumstance, the universe works in a theoretically predictable way. Thus certain things done in certain circumstances always have the same outcome, and it is reasonable for us to fit our moral ideas inside of that structure.
No, we can't. The two concepts are not analogous. A system designed to explain physical phenomena is a fundamentally different critter from a system designed to dictate the behavior of rational agents.
So why do moral codes evolve if not because of a reaction to the environment? Just randomly?
Sometimes. More often as a move to grant one group or another more power in a society, or to make decisions easier (cheat-sheet), or to further the expansion of human civilization.
I'm not saying the universe cares, only that it operates in such a way that will tend to force us to evolve our moral codes into something that works best inside the universe, much in the same way that our bodies evolved within the confines of what could be called the physiological laws of the universe.
In what way does the universe require us to have any morals at all, let alone evolving ones? You're conflating ambition with the universe, which is wierd.
The universe doesn't require us to have morals. We have morals as a way of dealing with the universe because our social structure is complex enough to make it useful. Plenty of stuff gets by fine without morals, but anything that does have them is likely to be using them as a way of dealing with the environment.
I don't understand where ambition enters into it.
We have morals as a way of dealing with each other, not the universe. We have tools and technology as ways of dealing with the universe. Ambition is what inspires someone to advance to a higher level of achievement, in this case advancement towards expanding human civilization. We can make better tools and technology if we can expand human civilization, but a moral code isn't enforceable once you're dealing with a large enough populace that morals on things irrelevant to societal function (cheat-sheet morals) are going to cause conflict that pushes us backwards (dark ages) so we build laws and a justice system that should touch only on the things that are necessary to a functional society, which is why lots of "immoral" things (lying, adultery, sodomy, consumption of coffee) are not illegal.
Ooh ooh bonus question: if rational actors are in a situation where no sort of society can reasonably be said to exist, do they no longer have any moral obligations? Think desert island, think survivors of the nuclear exchange. Those guys. Is it totally copacetic if they rape each others eye sockets?
They never had any moral obligations unless they assigned themselves some. If they did, why would those morals go away since the people are still there?
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
I was talking to the "morality is a social adaptation" crowd. They seemed to be endorsing the proposition that "the good is what is socially useful."
That implies that if there's no "socially useful" there's no "good."
These scenarios are a lot easier to answer (and morality actually makes sense) if you accept that morality has certain axioms, axioms which are best expressed as: suffering = bad; joy = good.
Society has nothing to do with that. Society is merely a system in which the above axioms get compounded into further complexities.
Positions of relative strength and weakness are transient. What if the strong guy falls out of a coconut tree and breaks his leg? What if the smart guy gets sick and becomes unconscious?
What if a meteor falls out of the sky? It's dramatically unlikely that someone able-bodied is going to wind up being substantially dependent on his cripple buddy.
Honestly, do you think that the only reason a strong person on a desert island has to be kind to his weaker colleague is because of some quid pro quo? Do you think that altruism for the sake of the other person, not yourself is irrational? Because that conclusion seems obviously wrong to me.
Altruism can be considered irrational by definition, if one so chooses. Though generally, no, I don't think that an inherently empathetic species acting altruistically is irrational. Acting to sate one's conscious is perfectly rational.
And I don't think social contract theory is what would keep a pair of islanders in line. But neither do I think social contract theory is what keeps most people in line in any society. Social contract theory explains why it's in our best interest to act morally, not why we actually act morally.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Acting to sate one's conscious is perfectly rational.
Are you veering into psychological egoism? Because that would make me a sad panda. The reason I act to help others is because I value helping others, and as a side effect because I value it doing it makes me happy. I do not act to help others because I value being happy and helping others is the requisite means to that end.
And I don't think social contract theory is what would keep a pair of islanders in line. But neither do I think social contract theory is what keeps most people in line in any society. Social contract theory explains why it's in our best interest to act morally, not why we actually act morally.
I agree that this is an important distinction, and hold that it is one which has been entirely ignored by Qingu et all.
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You forgot Columbia and, functionally, India and China.
I don't necessarily believe this myself, however, it's been argued that poverty (and slavery) in the third world is in no small part a product of global markets which actively extort the poor and disenfranchised for the benefit of the few and the rich in the West. If that were the case, then it would throw a major hitch into your theory that the poorer countries of the world are simply less evolved and hence (rightly) falling down in the societal process of natural selection.
Plenty of slavery in Fresno.
And, remember who profits from the slavery. Really, isn't it immoral to buy non-free-trade coffee? To buy Nikes? To buy cheap clothes or toys made in Indonesian sweatshops? Here we have products sold in the US potentially harvested by slaves or by laborers who work in such horrible conditions and for such little pay as to be considered slaves.
Slavery is still economically viable, it's just that companies obviously can't keep a sweatshop or force children to pick coca beans anywhere in the West.
Everyone, taken generally. You and me and society.
"Not me," you'll say. Okay, want to take the darthmix challenge? Here it is: see if you can identify a moral rule that you think is true and has value, but which does not present the society with any social benefit. Think of a behavior that you feel is immoral, but that if widely practiced would not lead to broad social harm. If morality is really disconnected from the well-being of the larger culture it shouldn't be too hard.
Destructive to what? Social order? Civil disobedience is destructive to social order. Does that make civil disobedience bad?
I find it remarkably implausible to identify what is moral with what tends to promote the success of a social unit over time. Not only are there serious worries with how to translate the analogy of natural selection into the world of societies, but it's easy to see how all sorts of shitty activities could be socially helpful, and on the converse side, how awesome behavior could be socially harmful.
So why do moral codes evolve if not because of a reaction to the environment? Just randomly?
The universe doesn't require us to have morals. We have morals as a way of dealing with the universe because our social structure is complex enough to make it useful. Plenty of stuff gets by fine without morals, but anything that does have them is likely to be using them as a way of dealing with the environment.
I don't understand where ambition enters into it.
I imagine the pockets of survivors that don't rape each other and are able to form functioning, cooperative mini-societies will stand a significantly better chance of surviving the zombies and/or radiation.
To the extent that the people practicing civil disobedience are attempting to identify and correct a perceived immoral (destructive) practice already in progress, it is definitely not bad. If society cracks down on civil disobedience as a way of stopping dialogue and silencing dissent, that is definitely bad, since in doing so it signs away its own ability to rectify injustice, change, and adapt.
Remember of course that morality is only concerned with rules of behavior, rather than specific instances of it. We cannot anticipate whether any particular instance of theft will be beneficial in the long term, and we cannot trust individuals to decide for themselves whether it'll be beneficial in the long term. All we can do is come up with a general rule which, if generally practiced, will be beneficial in the long term (though not necessarily every specific instance.) So that's what we do. We say: "don't steal." It might not always help society, but society is much better off with the rule than without.
But, what about rival pockets of survivors competing for resources? Say, there is only enough food to sustain one group. Would it then be koscher for one group of survivors to eyeballsocketrape members of the competing group of survivors?
Every policy can conceivably cause societal damage, the only question is how much the person weighs the relative risks. I mean, maybe teh gayz in Caleeforna really WILL start raping children in the streets if allowed to marry.
I have trouble thinking of circumstances where a modern society would be outcompeted by a primitive society. In nature, there are also (roughly speaking) "modern" and "primitive" species that exist in similar niches. Many invasive species are "modern" species that have simply evolved better mechanisms to deal with their niche—poisonous defenses, intelligent behavior—than the primitive species they invade and replace. I think morality works the same way, and that human society has evolved a "better" morality for our niche than our ancestors. But obviously this is not true for every set of circumstances—though again I'm having trouble trouble thinking of circumstances where a lawless rapist society would do better than ours.
Oh yeah, it could be postulated that my opinion that one does not have the right to decide which of two people are allowed to live might, on balance, let more bad people come out on top than otherwise.
See, these kind of hypotheticals necessarily distort the discussion, because they have hidden consequences outside the scope of the hypothetical itself. Two men on a desert island have no hope of forging a continuing society, and so our moral systems - which are oriented toward social continuation - are largely irrelevant to them.
And yet when you or I say "sure, it's okay if they rape each other," we must wince. We cannot accept that conclusion. This is because we, the oustide observers, are still coming from the standpoint of rational actors living in a society who's morality is oriented toward its own continuation - and as such we are not at liberty to accept or condone murder, or rape, ever. The well-being of our own society, the investment of the people in the social contract, depends on our not doing that. You don't, in our culture, get to decide when it's okay to rape someone. In this sense we're not qualified to assess the moral ramifications of the choices made by these two men, since we've imagined a situation that divorces them from all of the things that make morality relevant to us. They might be free to justify raping each other, since they are free from the confines of society. We are not, and so we can't do that.
Or because we're taught that rape is bad.
As far as I can tell, you answer is: "Yes, it's fine if they rape each other. We are simply unable to accept that rape can be value-neutral because our social conditioning confuses us into thinking rape is wrong."
Suffice it to say, that is not my answer.
Of course that's why. But the question is why we're taught that it's bad, and how our ancestors who decided it was bad came to that conclusion.
Apes and monkeys share that fear, regardless of whether or not they've ever seen a snake or a spider. I'm reasonably certain it's been similarly proved in humans, but I'm not sure since I imagine it's tough to get funding for your research project when the abstract is "we want to scare babies with snakes".
A learned fear is guns. No one is born afraid of a gun, but you learn pretty quickly to associate guns with high-velocity things hitting you.
That's not my answer, nor is it yours. I'm explaining why it's not our answer: because the act of analyzing that situation and making a moral judgment about it is itself a moral act, and it's one which has social consequences for us and our society. That's why you're unable to accept any answer which appears to condone rape or murder. It's not because of the consequences for them - it's because of the consequences for us. We're still here, in society, posting on the internet, and we've learned that we cannot be allowed to decide that murder is okay. So, we don't decide that. But that decision says more about us than it actually does about the two men on the island or their circumstance.
I'm not implying that a lawless society is in any way preferable to ours. But, it's easy to say that humans can transcend resource conflicts since resources are fairly abundant and easy to obtain now.
Say, for example, you and another person are trapped in a cellar in the middle of the desert. There is a single jar of preserves in that cellar. You know the preserves will be enough to sustain one person until rescue arrives. But, if you share the preserves you both die. If you take the fruit for yourself, you survive and the other person dies. Would self-sacrifice be the only moral option here? Or, would an immoral act be forgiven when faced with no other option? Morality is ++ when not faced with the epic struggle to survive.
Well, let's consider the social contract as it might apply to a single pair of desert islanders.
Would you like to be killed in your sleep and have your eyeballs roundly fucked? No? Well, then the social contract forged between you and your desert buddy probably preclude that. The social contract doesn't cease to exist just because it's down to two people. It just becomes a highly-specialized one that may be a different beast from that in our own society.
The social contract only ceases to exist when you're down to one person. And even then, I can imagine variations on it based on hypothetical situations. Perhaps one would consider it immoral for the last man on Earth to nuke all flora and fauna because, in the event there is another person alive somewhere, it would adversely affect him.
Whatever this is, useful it is not.
A couple weeks back, Maddie and I were playing a game. She needed to land on a certain spot, so she counted how many spaces she needed, and then moved the spinner to that location, thinking she was being sneaky. Except she counted wrong. I pretended I didn't notice, but made her move her marker the number of spaces indicated by the spinner. It was funny.
Point being, your comment reminded me of that scenario. Not only is the desert island example cheating, it's cheating poorly.
I don't think that this is a standard application of social contract theory at all. There idea motivating social contract theory is usually that it benefits everyone who engages in society--that's why they are considered to have given implied consent to the arrangement. However, there can be no such situation between two men on a desert island. There is no benefit for the stronger in refraining from bullying the weaker (as much as he can get away with it). He can not be seen as pursuing his rational self-interest if he helps his wheelchair-bound island buddy gather coconuts. Instead, he is behaving altruistically.
We place consent over personal multiplication. Other societies and species (many of which have quite a bit more biomass than humanity) don't.
Why have we been educated against condoning rape and murder in and of themselves, rather than merely educated against condoning rape and murder in our own societies? It's of no consequence to us and our society whether the men on the desert island are cruel to each other, so why do we have a strong response against it?
Generalization. Something similar is a person's reticence to drink water that they themselves have spit into.
Positions of relative strength and weakness are transient. What if the strong guy falls out of a coconut tree and breaks his leg? What if the smart guy gets sick and becomes unconscious?
Rape and murder have often been considered acceptable when done to people who didn't count. So I don't think that generalization is a given.
What if a meteor falls out of the sky? It's dramatically unlikely that someone able-bodied is going to wind up being substantially dependent on his cripple buddy.
Honestly, do you think that the only reason a strong person on a desert island has to be kind to his weaker colleague is because of some quid pro quo? Do you think that altruism for the sake of the other person, not yourself is irrational? Because that conclusion seems obviously wrong to me.
Yeah, so. Way to miss the mark entirely. It's cool though, we can have two different discussions going on here if you want. Just don't expect to understand what I'm saying, or for me to care what you're saying.
And sorry, but yeah, your belief/disbelief in "God" or any analogous concept does have a bearing on your morality. The very concept of morality is inextricably bound to these supposed universal maxims of human behavior, which, back in the day, were supposedly handed down to us from on high. For many people, even today, there is no discussion of morals without a discussion of God.
I'm not saying belief in God is any indication of a "good" or "bad" person. I'm saying that basing all of your actions in "faith" is irresponsible.
You want examples? Islamic fundamentalism, pogroms, and Joel Osteen.
Don't argue my point by telling me I don't know shit. It makes you look like an ass.
Edit: Furthermore, I wasn't even talking about religion for the sake of it. I was saying that it's silly to talk of absolute morals because they're a foregone idea, like a geocentric universe or a luminiferous ether. And yeah, "redneck christians" suck and there really isn't a way around it. Bigotry and exclusivity aren't "immoral" (since that's what this is all about), they're just unnecessary and retarded.
Sometimes. More often as a move to grant one group or another more power in a society, or to make decisions easier (cheat-sheet), or to further the expansion of human civilization.
We have morals as a way of dealing with each other, not the universe. We have tools and technology as ways of dealing with the universe. Ambition is what inspires someone to advance to a higher level of achievement, in this case advancement towards expanding human civilization. We can make better tools and technology if we can expand human civilization, but a moral code isn't enforceable once you're dealing with a large enough populace that morals on things irrelevant to societal function (cheat-sheet morals) are going to cause conflict that pushes us backwards (dark ages) so we build laws and a justice system that should touch only on the things that are necessary to a functional society, which is why lots of "immoral" things (lying, adultery, sodomy, consumption of coffee) are not illegal.
They never had any moral obligations unless they assigned themselves some. If they did, why would those morals go away since the people are still there?
That implies that if there's no "socially useful" there's no "good."
Society has nothing to do with that. Society is merely a system in which the above axioms get compounded into further complexities.
Altruism can be considered irrational by definition, if one so chooses. Though generally, no, I don't think that an inherently empathetic species acting altruistically is irrational. Acting to sate one's conscious is perfectly rational.
And I don't think social contract theory is what would keep a pair of islanders in line. But neither do I think social contract theory is what keeps most people in line in any society. Social contract theory explains why it's in our best interest to act morally, not why we actually act morally.
Are you veering into psychological egoism? Because that would make me a sad panda. The reason I act to help others is because I value helping others, and as a side effect because I value it doing it makes me happy. I do not act to help others because I value being happy and helping others is the requisite means to that end.
I agree that this is an important distinction, and hold that it is one which has been entirely ignored by Qingu et all.