In a vacuum yes, there is some inconsistency to assigning value to myself vs. other things. But value to myself is the only thing I can be assured of--my own desires and self interests.
Because you don't want to be an *******?
This is an interesting statement. Whether I shoot an old man or whether i shoot a young child for money, why should I care at all about who or what they embody? As long as I'm getting paid, what makes me care?
Do we only care because of morality? Because it feels wrong?
at this point i have to conclude the answer is yes. The only reason holding me back if I was an atheist would be my own sense of morality.
In a vacuum yes, there is some inconsistency to assigning value to myself vs. other things. But value to myself is the only thing I can be assured of--my own desires and self interests.
Well, we've moved from Nihilism to Solipsism, I guess that's a start.
Anyway, if you assume reality is an objective thing that exists, then it follows that if you have desires and self-interests other's do as well. If you assign value to them, then you can assume other's do as well.
This is an interesting statement. Whether I shoot an old man or whether i shoot a young child for money, why should I care at all about who or what they embody? As long as I'm getting paid, what makes me care?
Because--unless you're one of the ~1% of the population who are psychopaths--you're predisposed to have empathy.
That 5 page thread I linked originally wasn't clear? What parts of it did you find confusing?
(Also, you're a very fast reader.)
Fine.
Evolution gives man his purpose.
And that entire paragraph
What?
Yes, evolution "changes" things so that they are more fit. But the following is a lot more important - it changes things so that they are more fit for the given environment. The certain way you talk about is the environment that we are forced to survive in.
Given this, there is no certain nature. If there is a certain nature, then it is absolutely malleable and as such rather pointless to talk about as if it's something that lasts. At best, you can make the argument that "current man is blah blah blah", but then you run into the question of when this changes.
Basically I'm saying that your entire premise here is, to me at least, flawed.
There is no nature of man besides to exist and to ensure the continuation of our species. That is the entire point of every species to ever exist on Earth ever, and the "point" of evolution, which is the wrong way to put it since evolution is more a description of a variety of forces rather than something that is unified in some way, is to aid in this.
If I understand what you're saying, then you would agree with the Spartan and Roman practice of killing obviously deformed children. Except just about every moral beliefs in the Western world today believe that to be abhorrent, cause eugenics is bad right?
Please let me know if I completely misunderstood your statement at the end of your paragraph.
Yes, evolution "changes" things so that they are more fit. But the following is a lot more important - it changes things so that they are more fit for the given environment. The certain way you talk about is the environment that we are forced to survive in.
Given this, there is no certain nature. If there is a certain nature, then it is absolutely malleable and as such rather pointless to talk about as if it's something that lasts. At best, you can make the argument that "current man is blah blah blah", but then you run into the question of when this changes.
This seems like the same issue Cervid brings up on page 2 of that thread, what part of my response to him did you not like?
But--to recap--the context of which trait increases fitness is important; the context here would be environmental. Context is pretty important in most moral issues, so I'm not sure why you find it a weakness for my argument. The same action could be good or bad depending on context in almost all moral systems; likewise, the context of a given trait or behavior must also be taken into consideration. Yet, the overall value of fitness and survivability doesn't change.
There is no nature of man besides to exist and to ensure the continuation of our species. That is the entire point of every species to ever exist on Earth ever, and the "point" of evolution, which is the wrong way to put it since evolution is more a description of a variety of forces rather than something that is unified in some way, is to aid in this.
But, within that context, actions can be evaluated as "right" or "wrong." Doing something detrimental to the species is "bad" doing something beneficial for the species is "good." (Maybe I don't understand what you're asking here...)
If I understand what you're saying, then you would agree with the Spartan and Roman practice of killing obviously deformed children.
I'm not an evolutionary scientists, but I'm not sure how you would make the call that removing genetic variance is "good" for overall fitness. Can you explain?
Except just about every moral beliefs in the Western world today believe that to be abhorrent, cause eugenics is bad right?
Eugenics would be changing our nature, which would be changing the goal. We are evaluating how behaviors affect fitness within the framework of our current genetics. As I said on that thread, changing our current genetics would be a goalpost shift in the frame of that argument.
I would honestly say that I can't sympathize with people I don't know and have no dealings/connections with. I don't know if that qualifies me as a sociopath, but I'm not totally without empathy, as I can feel bad for my friends when they've hit a rough spot and other such things.
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This thread is possibly the most disturbing thing I have read i a long long time.
Even those who are arguing they have morals are arguing from a fallacious position.
It's also really disturbing how many people want to murder innocents in the name of improving life for everyone else, it may come from a good intention but it's a very slippery slope to tyranny.
Yeah, I can't believe people are answering "yes" to the first question and trying to justify it by saying they could use the money to solve "all other problems." As if it worked that way
We tend to have a deeper concentration of empathy for people close to us, than far from us. Even then, it varies from one person to the next how much empathy they have for strangers.
Kinda like
XXXXX..X..X...X......X.........X................x...............................x
We would literally lose our minds if we tried to care about everyone all over the world all the time. More empathy for kin and less for strangers is almost a mental defense mechanism.
Now, the way I look at it is like this.
I have a small piece of pie. It takes close to 90% of my piece of pie just to care for and support my wife and kid, with maybe 10% left over for acts of selfish fun and sometimes acts of altruism.
Now, if I had an enormously massive pie - where I could care for and support my family on say 4% of that pie (or maybe even less), leaving 96% of that pie available for selfish fun and acts of altruism. I honestly believe that based on my moral compass, my acts of selfish fun would increase very slightly, and my acts of altruism would increase astronomically.
I believe I have the integrity to do the right thing, and the most good for the most people, and not just buy myself golden toilets and Bugatti Veyrons.
The thing is, people all over get killed everyday, and no one is getting to make wishes, or get 100 billion dollars, or anything. People are just getting killed, and it's reward-less. It's unfortunate.
I'd prefer that instead of "You got killed, unfortunately it was for no good reason" the line read "You got killed, fortunately a lot of good will come from your death"
Now, as I said before, I would much rather BE the killed, than the killer in this situation, but that is not what the OP presented. Obviously, so that it was a tougher moral dilemma.
My conclusion was that, I really could not care one single iota about whether a person is a mere arrangement of atoms, or whether that person is endowed with life, or any other qualities beyond the mere arrangement of matter. Young or old, I don't care.
When you say that not caring was your conclusion, you are implying that you have some sort of logical argument whose bottom line is "don't care about people." But we've already established that the one you gave doesn't work. So now you need a new one; it does not suffice to re-assert the old one.
But what is morality but a logical construction of humankind, and some inner feelings?
Of course morality is a logical construction of humankind (or, rather, of conscious beings, just in case there are some out there that are non-human) -- what else could it be? If there were no conscious life in the universe, no-one capable of benefiting from good or suffering from evil, then morality as a concept would become vacuous -- the embodiment of a category mistake.
There is no more evidence of morality than the religious adherent who says I feel God therefore I believe.
Doesn't the fact that a great many people do behave morally a great percentage of the time constitute "evidence of morality?" That's not a feeling or a faith-based claim; it's an observation about the world.
There is no more force to morality than the force an Atheist would accord to God.
Morality isn't a force or a compulsion, God or no God. It's an inference to a better state of affairs. So, yes, you are correct -- there is no force to morality. Any force behind morality is brought about by humans (or other conscious creatures) applying that force.
The problem, of course, is that once you do decide to apply a force in service of morality, you had better be damned sure you're right. In fact, it may turn out that morality includes a rule along the lines of "don't apply any force, even in service of morality." Jains believe this. Jesus himself intimates along these lines in some of his better moods. Well, then what? An attempt to tie morality to force is probably misguided to begin with.
My nihilistic deductions were one of the factors that brought me to religion in the first place.
This is a contradiction on its face. When attempting to escape from the swamp of nihilism, we must all do as Baron von Munchhausen is said to have done -- that is, pull ourselves out by our own hair. You can't go from nihilism to religion or religious morality by pure deduction without assuming some things. Neither, mind you, can you go from nihilism to secular morality without assuming some things -- it's just that those assumptions get you to morality without ever needing to rely on God's existence or nonexistence.
Neither of these positions is a priori epistemically privileged in such a way that it gets a free pass or is self-justifying.
In the end I said, it is better that I believe blindly in things which cannot be support and maintain my morality than slide ever deeper towards rationalizing my own self interest at every end.
If you feel your personal choice is one between believing in God and going on a shooting spree, and that your mental state is such that your religiosity is the only thing between you and the darkest evil, then by all means, keep believing in God. I would much rather have you be wrong about epistemics, logic, and metaphysics but right about day-to-day ethical behavior. Just recognize two things: one, this is not a Sophie's choice, you can be right about both if you put your mind to it, and two, your failure to do so is a unique pathology of your own mind, rather than an inference or conclusion that follows from the worldview.
If you as an atheist are able to find what I could not, then I invite you to bring it forward. I only ask your solicitude as a I try to counter your reasons with the same counters and contentions I held all as an atheist down that slippery slope all those years ago.
Morality isn't a force or a compulsion, God or no God. It's an inference to a better state of affairs. So, yes, you are correct -- there is no force to morality. Any force behind morality is brought about by humans (or other conscious creatures) applying that force.
I don't find this necessarily true, since evolutionary morality (both descriptive and normative) argues the point without the need of a conscious "enforcer."
Altruism helping a species survive--for example--happens with or without a creature to enforce that fact. It's just evolutionarily more beneficial sometimes to have a genetic tendency towards altruism in certain environmental contexts (and social contexts, like packs).
But--if I'm misunderstanding you--and you're just saying morality is meaningless without creatures to be moral, then "yes" and "nvm."
I don't find this necessarily true, since evolutionary morality (both descriptive and normative) argues the point without the need of a conscious "enforcer."
Clearly evolution can (and did) produce a selection pressure toward moral behaviors. However, I think this (actually, your whole argument about evolutionary ethics, I'm sorry to say) is putting the cart before the horse. It does not follow from the true empirical fact that evolution selects for ethical behavior the corresponding epistemic concept that evolution explains or underwrites ethical behavior.
Let me put it this way: even if God did snap us into existence as we are and we had never evolved at all, it would still be wrong for us to sacrifice people to the sun, pluck the eyes out of children, murder, steal, rape, and so forth -- and for the exact same reasons. (note to the theists who would interject here: God's existence doesn't entail that morality depends on him; secular ethics is consistent with God's existence as well.) Or, avoiding the mention of God, if we created a "child race" in the lab, or built some kind of conscious AI that doesn't exist in a way that meets the Darwinian axioms for evolution, it would still be a conscious creature and I would still expect it to (eventually) reach an understanding of the scientific and logical arguments concerning morality which would allow it to both give and receive moral treatment even without the benefit of evolution pushing it in that direction.
Arguments about the well-being of conscious creatures cannot be contingent on whether those conscious creatures evolved or got there in some other way. If morality has a "force," it can't come from evolution. You could argue that in our specific case, since we did evolve, we did get a bit of a helpful "push" in the right direction from evolution -- but that is incidental, not fundamental, as concerns the nature of morality.
But--if I'm misunderstanding you--and you're just saying morality is meaningless without creatures to be moral, then "yes" and "nvm."
I think you are misunderstanding me, but you also might be misunderstanding the misunderstanding!
Clearly evolution can (and did) produce a selection pressure toward moral behaviors. However, I think this (actually, your whole argument about evolutionary ethics, I'm sorry to say) is putting the cart before the horse. It does not follow from the true empirical fact that evolution selects for ethical behavior the corresponding epistemic concept that evolution explains or underwrites ethical behavior.
I think you might be misunderstanding the argument. The point is that "morality" is simply the label given to behavior that is beneficial to the species. Evolution selects for behavior that is beneficial to the species. Then WE call that behavior "ethical behavior."
Now, of you go on to call whatever behavior is "most beneficial" to the species "ultimate good," then you can say we should be trying to find out that behavior and emulate as close as we can. Regardless, evolutionary forces will be "pushing" us towards that behavior. The cart isn't becoming before the horse because the cart is just the label given to the behavior that is most beneficial, aka "good."
Or, avoiding the mention of God, if we created a "child race" in the lab, or built some kind of conscious AI that doesn't exist in a way that meets the Darwinian axioms for evolution, it would still be a conscious creature and I would still expect it to (eventually) reach an understanding of the scientific and logical arguments concerning morality which would allow it to both give and receive moral treatment even without the benefit of evolution pushing it in that direction.
I would argue that this would not happen unless there was some reason the bad behavior was to be avoided. For example, if throwing a virgin into a volcano really did result in the volcano not exploding, then that would be a moral action to do once a year.
It's only because throwing a virgin into a volcano just makes the village out a virgin (which is not beneficial) that practices like that fall out of favor and are now considered "bad."
Arguments about the well-being of conscious creatures cannot be contingent on whether or not those conscious creatures evolved or got there in some other way. If morality has a "force," it can't come from evolution. You could argue that in our specific case, since we did evolve, we did get a bit of a helpful "push" in the right direction from evolution -- but that is incidental, not fundamental, as concerns the nature of morality.
Except if we evolved such that our "well being" was depended on how often we got stabbed in the eye, then morality would dictate we all go blind. Certain things cause us pain or pleaser because we evolved that way. Evolution is what defined "well-being;" additionally, WE do not define what helps or hurts that well-being, it's true or not true regardless of what we believe or think.
But--regardless--I'm more talking about social evolution than anything else for this. If societies that allow people to murdered one another did better than societies that did not, then those societies would've thrived and those that thought murder undesirable would die out. But, the reverse happened. Murder ISN'T beneficial to a society; it's "bad."
I think you are misunderstanding me, but you also might be misunderstanding the misunderstanding!
Misunderstanding does seem to be one of the bigger issues when we debate. I blame my spelling and grammar.
I think I might be explaining this wrong because I might be misusing the term "evolution." I might be making it seem like evolution "wants" something out of us, when that's not what I mean. I mean that evolution is what we call the presser that keeps something on the path that leads to maximized well-being/fitness/survivability/whatever.
I think you might be misunderstanding the argument. The point is that "morality" is simply the label given to behavior that is beneficial to the species. Evolution selects for behavior that is beneficial to the species. Then WE call that behavior "ethical behavior."
If I'm misunderstanding the argument, then I'm also misunderstanding your restatement thereof, because it still appears that your horse and your cart are backwards. In the sequel, you are apt to treat evolution as though it were defining the nature of the environment itself rather than merely picking out for reproduction those creatures that are best able to conform to it.
I would argue that this would not happen unless there was some reason the bad behavior was to be avoided. For example, if throwing a virgin into a volcano really did result in the volcano not exploding, then that would be a moral action to do once a year. It's only because throwing a virgin into a volcano just makes the village out a virgin (which is not beneficial) that practices like that fall out of favor and are now considered "bad."
This is just the "fat man on a bridge above the tracks" case of the trolley problem. But the sociological data reveal that people answer that case overwhelmingly in the negative. Evolution, it seems, has endowed us with a sense that it's not okay to force someone into this kind of sacrifice even if it would result in some sort of net benefit. Why, then, do you say that it does not -- or rather, how can you square what you are asserting here with the comparable well-known trolley problem case under your account?
Except if we evolved such that our "well being" was depended on how often we got stabbed in the eye, then morality would dictate we all go blind. Certain things cause us pain or pleaser because we evolved that way. Evolution is what defined "well-being;" additionally, WE do not define what helps or hurts that well-being, it's true or not true regardless of what we believe or think.
You seem to be using "evolution" as a proxy for "whatever contingent facts made us the way we are." Evolution did make us the way we are, but it didn't have to be that way. If we were snapped into existence by God just as we are now, it would still be wrong to pluck out our eyes, because our eyes would remain enormously important to our well-being. Evolution is the process that happened to result in our having eyes -- it is not the reason that eyes are useful to us. In fact, it's the other way around -- a visual system is useful because the nature of our little corner of the universe makes it so, and the genetic algorithm that is evolution felt out all the various paths of the search space and rightly settled on the one with a visual system as being the best fit for the space.
So, cart before horse.
(As to the aside, you are right about the objective nature of well-being.)
But--regardless--I'm more talking about social evolution than anything else for this. If societies that allow people to murdered one another did better than societies that did not, then those societies would've thrived and those that thought murder undesirable would die out. But, the reverse happened. Murder ISN'T beneficial to a society; it's "bad."
Evolution didn't "make" murder bad; the badness of murder "made" the evolutionary process favor creatures who are apt to avoid it. Cart. Horse. Backwards.
I think I might be explaining this wrong because I might be misusing the term "evolution." I might be making it seem like evolution "wants" something out of us, when that's not what I mean.
I would say that you are misusing it. Perhaps not in the way you think you are.
I mean that evolution is what we call the presser that keeps something on the path that leads to maximized well-being/fitness/survivability/whatever.
This, I agree with. Evolution is like the bumpers in bumper bowling; get too far off the path and the bumpers provide a restitution that tends to push you back on it. But in every section of your post but this one, you treat evolution as though it were the lane rather than the bumpers. The environment (specifically the moral landscape, in the cases we are talking about) is the lane.
EDIT: Since people are (not surprisingly) still using this thread to talk about the actual topic, I'm going to post my thoughts on the actual evolutionary morality thread instead.
i will do all three if the person i am killing wants to die. if he doesn't, i will not do it. because I can't just do it for myself, it has to be for others too.
How "to the letter" is the wishing rules. Can I, for instance, wish that I had the ability to bend reality by verbal command? Then that's no contest then.
No. Money holds no inherent value - this money would either inflate the global economy or would simply be taken away from other people. In essence 'magically made money' is not a increase in social wealth, it is a relocation of it. Since not even russian 140 IQ statisticians could relocate social wealth to the betterment of all, I'm pretty sure I'm not up to that task. And anyone who thin they are is delusional or dumb.
Yes. Utilitarian / Consequentialist reasoning is the explanation. I could wish something ridiculously good, such magically solve porverty, environmental issues and wars. Any cheesy global concern is valid.
No. The family trauma could be too high. I can't use utilitarian / consequentialist reasoning without a good evaluation of other's sufferings and betterment. When intense suffering of people exist i will just pick the inaction bias and keep the suffering/happiness levels as they are now.
I could live with myself after the killing, but I would not kill for personal gain.
I call out the "greater good" scenario as personal gain in disguise: whose good is greater than your own good, after all...
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In a vacuum yes, there is some inconsistency to assigning value to myself vs. other things. But value to myself is the only thing I can be assured of--my own desires and self interests.
Because you don't want to be an *******?
This is an interesting statement. Whether I shoot an old man or whether i shoot a young child for money, why should I care at all about who or what they embody? As long as I'm getting paid, what makes me care?
Do we only care because of morality? Because it feels wrong?
at this point i have to conclude the answer is yes. The only reason holding me back if I was an atheist would be my own sense of morality.
Anyway, if you assume reality is an objective thing that exists, then it follows that if you have desires and self-interests other's do as well. If you assign value to them, then you can assume other's do as well.
Because--unless you're one of the ~1% of the population who are psychopaths--you're predisposed to have empathy. That's one way to look at it, sure. I guess I should just keep linking this thread for my personal answer:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=469101
Fine.
What?
Yes, evolution "changes" things so that they are more fit. But the following is a lot more important - it changes things so that they are more fit for the given environment. The certain way you talk about is the environment that we are forced to survive in.
Given this, there is no certain nature. If there is a certain nature, then it is absolutely malleable and as such rather pointless to talk about as if it's something that lasts. At best, you can make the argument that "current man is blah blah blah", but then you run into the question of when this changes.
Basically I'm saying that your entire premise here is, to me at least, flawed.
There is no nature of man besides to exist and to ensure the continuation of our species. That is the entire point of every species to ever exist on Earth ever, and the "point" of evolution, which is the wrong way to put it since evolution is more a description of a variety of forces rather than something that is unified in some way, is to aid in this.
If I understand what you're saying, then you would agree with the Spartan and Roman practice of killing obviously deformed children. Except just about every moral beliefs in the Western world today believe that to be abhorrent, cause eugenics is bad right?
Please let me know if I completely misunderstood your statement at the end of your paragraph.
But--to recap--the context of which trait increases fitness is important; the context here would be environmental. Context is pretty important in most moral issues, so I'm not sure why you find it a weakness for my argument. The same action could be good or bad depending on context in almost all moral systems; likewise, the context of a given trait or behavior must also be taken into consideration. Yet, the overall value of fitness and survivability doesn't change.
The path might change, but the goal does not. But, within that context, actions can be evaluated as "right" or "wrong." Doing something detrimental to the species is "bad" doing something beneficial for the species is "good." (Maybe I don't understand what you're asking here...) I'm not an evolutionary scientists, but I'm not sure how you would make the call that removing genetic variance is "good" for overall fitness. Can you explain?
Eugenics would be changing our nature, which would be changing the goal. We are evaluating how behaviors affect fitness within the framework of our current genetics. As I said on that thread, changing our current genetics would be a goalpost shift in the frame of that argument.
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Yeah, I can't believe people are answering "yes" to the first question and trying to justify it by saying they could use the money to solve "all other problems." As if it worked that way
Kinda like
XXXXX..X..X...X......X.........X................x...............................x
We would literally lose our minds if we tried to care about everyone all over the world all the time. More empathy for kin and less for strangers is almost a mental defense mechanism.
Now, the way I look at it is like this.
I have a small piece of pie. It takes close to 90% of my piece of pie just to care for and support my wife and kid, with maybe 10% left over for acts of selfish fun and sometimes acts of altruism.
Now, if I had an enormously massive pie - where I could care for and support my family on say 4% of that pie (or maybe even less), leaving 96% of that pie available for selfish fun and acts of altruism. I honestly believe that based on my moral compass, my acts of selfish fun would increase very slightly, and my acts of altruism would increase astronomically.
I believe I have the integrity to do the right thing, and the most good for the most people, and not just buy myself golden toilets and Bugatti Veyrons.
The thing is, people all over get killed everyday, and no one is getting to make wishes, or get 100 billion dollars, or anything. People are just getting killed, and it's reward-less. It's unfortunate.
I'd prefer that instead of "You got killed, unfortunately it was for no good reason" the line read "You got killed, fortunately a lot of good will come from your death"
Now, as I said before, I would much rather BE the killed, than the killer in this situation, but that is not what the OP presented. Obviously, so that it was a tougher moral dilemma.
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When you say that not caring was your conclusion, you are implying that you have some sort of logical argument whose bottom line is "don't care about people." But we've already established that the one you gave doesn't work. So now you need a new one; it does not suffice to re-assert the old one.
Of course morality is a logical construction of humankind (or, rather, of conscious beings, just in case there are some out there that are non-human) -- what else could it be? If there were no conscious life in the universe, no-one capable of benefiting from good or suffering from evil, then morality as a concept would become vacuous -- the embodiment of a category mistake.
Doesn't the fact that a great many people do behave morally a great percentage of the time constitute "evidence of morality?" That's not a feeling or a faith-based claim; it's an observation about the world.
Morality isn't a force or a compulsion, God or no God. It's an inference to a better state of affairs. So, yes, you are correct -- there is no force to morality. Any force behind morality is brought about by humans (or other conscious creatures) applying that force.
The problem, of course, is that once you do decide to apply a force in service of morality, you had better be damned sure you're right. In fact, it may turn out that morality includes a rule along the lines of "don't apply any force, even in service of morality." Jains believe this. Jesus himself intimates along these lines in some of his better moods. Well, then what? An attempt to tie morality to force is probably misguided to begin with.
This is a contradiction on its face. When attempting to escape from the swamp of nihilism, we must all do as Baron von Munchhausen is said to have done -- that is, pull ourselves out by our own hair. You can't go from nihilism to religion or religious morality by pure deduction without assuming some things. Neither, mind you, can you go from nihilism to secular morality without assuming some things -- it's just that those assumptions get you to morality without ever needing to rely on God's existence or nonexistence.
Neither of these positions is a priori epistemically privileged in such a way that it gets a free pass or is self-justifying.
If you feel your personal choice is one between believing in God and going on a shooting spree, and that your mental state is such that your religiosity is the only thing between you and the darkest evil, then by all means, keep believing in God. I would much rather have you be wrong about epistemics, logic, and metaphysics but right about day-to-day ethical behavior. Just recognize two things: one, this is not a Sophie's choice, you can be right about both if you put your mind to it, and two, your failure to do so is a unique pathology of your own mind, rather than an inference or conclusion that follows from the worldview.
Try starting here.
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It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I don't find this necessarily true, since evolutionary morality (both descriptive and normative) argues the point without the need of a conscious "enforcer."
Altruism helping a species survive--for example--happens with or without a creature to enforce that fact. It's just evolutionarily more beneficial sometimes to have a genetic tendency towards altruism in certain environmental contexts (and social contexts, like packs).
But--if I'm misunderstanding you--and you're just saying morality is meaningless without creatures to be moral, then "yes" and "nvm."
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Quotes:
Clearly evolution can (and did) produce a selection pressure toward moral behaviors. However, I think this (actually, your whole argument about evolutionary ethics, I'm sorry to say) is putting the cart before the horse. It does not follow from the true empirical fact that evolution selects for ethical behavior the corresponding epistemic concept that evolution explains or underwrites ethical behavior.
Let me put it this way: even if God did snap us into existence as we are and we had never evolved at all, it would still be wrong for us to sacrifice people to the sun, pluck the eyes out of children, murder, steal, rape, and so forth -- and for the exact same reasons. (note to the theists who would interject here: God's existence doesn't entail that morality depends on him; secular ethics is consistent with God's existence as well.) Or, avoiding the mention of God, if we created a "child race" in the lab, or built some kind of conscious AI that doesn't exist in a way that meets the Darwinian axioms for evolution, it would still be a conscious creature and I would still expect it to (eventually) reach an understanding of the scientific and logical arguments concerning morality which would allow it to both give and receive moral treatment even without the benefit of evolution pushing it in that direction.
Arguments about the well-being of conscious creatures cannot be contingent on whether those conscious creatures evolved or got there in some other way. If morality has a "force," it can't come from evolution. You could argue that in our specific case, since we did evolve, we did get a bit of a helpful "push" in the right direction from evolution -- but that is incidental, not fundamental, as concerns the nature of morality.
I think you are misunderstanding me, but you also might be misunderstanding the misunderstanding!
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Now, of you go on to call whatever behavior is "most beneficial" to the species "ultimate good," then you can say we should be trying to find out that behavior and emulate as close as we can. Regardless, evolutionary forces will be "pushing" us towards that behavior. The cart isn't becoming before the horse because the cart is just the label given to the behavior that is most beneficial, aka "good." I would argue that this would not happen unless there was some reason the bad behavior was to be avoided. For example, if throwing a virgin into a volcano really did result in the volcano not exploding, then that would be a moral action to do once a year.
It's only because throwing a virgin into a volcano just makes the village out a virgin (which is not beneficial) that practices like that fall out of favor and are now considered "bad."
Except if we evolved such that our "well being" was depended on how often we got stabbed in the eye, then morality would dictate we all go blind. Certain things cause us pain or pleaser because we evolved that way. Evolution is what defined "well-being;" additionally, WE do not define what helps or hurts that well-being, it's true or not true regardless of what we believe or think.
But--regardless--I'm more talking about social evolution than anything else for this. If societies that allow people to murdered one another did better than societies that did not, then those societies would've thrived and those that thought murder undesirable would die out. But, the reverse happened. Murder ISN'T beneficial to a society; it's "bad." Misunderstanding does seem to be one of the bigger issues when we debate. I blame my spelling and grammar.
I think I might be explaining this wrong because I might be misusing the term "evolution." I might be making it seem like evolution "wants" something out of us, when that's not what I mean. I mean that evolution is what we call the presser that keeps something on the path that leads to maximized well-being/fitness/survivability/whatever.
If I'm misunderstanding the argument, then I'm also misunderstanding your restatement thereof, because it still appears that your horse and your cart are backwards. In the sequel, you are apt to treat evolution as though it were defining the nature of the environment itself rather than merely picking out for reproduction those creatures that are best able to conform to it.
This is just the "fat man on a bridge above the tracks" case of the trolley problem. But the sociological data reveal that people answer that case overwhelmingly in the negative. Evolution, it seems, has endowed us with a sense that it's not okay to force someone into this kind of sacrifice even if it would result in some sort of net benefit. Why, then, do you say that it does not -- or rather, how can you square what you are asserting here with the comparable well-known trolley problem case under your account?
You seem to be using "evolution" as a proxy for "whatever contingent facts made us the way we are." Evolution did make us the way we are, but it didn't have to be that way. If we were snapped into existence by God just as we are now, it would still be wrong to pluck out our eyes, because our eyes would remain enormously important to our well-being. Evolution is the process that happened to result in our having eyes -- it is not the reason that eyes are useful to us. In fact, it's the other way around -- a visual system is useful because the nature of our little corner of the universe makes it so, and the genetic algorithm that is evolution felt out all the various paths of the search space and rightly settled on the one with a visual system as being the best fit for the space.
So, cart before horse.
(As to the aside, you are right about the objective nature of well-being.)
Evolution didn't "make" murder bad; the badness of murder "made" the evolutionary process favor creatures who are apt to avoid it. Cart. Horse. Backwards.
I would say that you are misusing it. Perhaps not in the way you think you are.
This, I agree with. Evolution is like the bumpers in bumper bowling; get too far off the path and the bumpers provide a restitution that tends to push you back on it. But in every section of your post but this one, you treat evolution as though it were the lane rather than the bumpers. The environment (specifically the moral landscape, in the cases we are talking about) is the lane.
EDIT: Since people are (not surprisingly) still using this thread to talk about the actual topic, I'm going to post my thoughts on the actual evolutionary morality thread instead.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Thanks Argentleman;)
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Yes. Utilitarian / Consequentialist reasoning is the explanation. I could wish something ridiculously good, such magically solve porverty, environmental issues and wars. Any cheesy global concern is valid.
No. The family trauma could be too high. I can't use utilitarian / consequentialist reasoning without a good evaluation of other's sufferings and betterment. When intense suffering of people exist i will just pick the inaction bias and keep the suffering/happiness levels as they are now.
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I call out the "greater good" scenario as personal gain in disguise: whose good is greater than your own good, after all...