Don’t forget these all-time favorites: “Kill or enslave all who stand between you and what you think is rightfully yours.” “Contracts, treaties, and promises are not binding when the other party is a godless heathen.” “If the savages are too ignorant to know we are cheating them, then they deserve to be cheated.”
Seriously, you have a very good point here, AHunter3. Is there a difference between instinctive behavior and moral behavior? What if the instinctive behaviour and the morally correct behavior follow an identical rule, for an identical purpose, with an identical result? Is there still a difference between the two? How would you know whether or not you acted due to instinct or you were Doing What’s Right? Instincts are supposed to be pretty sneaky things, operating without our concious awareness; what if you felt such a strong, overwhelming urge to do something that you did it without thinking, but afterwards assumed that you had responded automatically because it was The Right Thing to Do? How would you know whether you acted on instinct or ethical beliefs? Morality may simply be an unconscious justification of acting according to our instinct; how can anyone be sure which it is?
One of the problems I have with moral judgements is that I think people often decide what is right and wrong without carefully and deeply examining why they feel that way. It’s not that I think they are being willfully and deliberately blind, but that they simply may not realize what subtle and unconscious factors may have influenced their conclusions.
As you’ve pointed out, we all receive ‘training’ from outside sources from the day we are born, when our minds are pretty much a ‘blank slate’ on which anything can be written. We have no knowledge or experience with which we may evaluate and criticize that information - it is simply ‘input’. If instincts consist of very basic survival-related behaviors that we are born with - ‘hard-wired’ into our neural structure - then the very first things we learn in addition to that are likely going to influence us unconsciously at pretty much the instinctive level.
Are babies born with an intact set of morals? Maybe someone can point out some research showing that newborn babies act in any way other than trying to ensure their survival and comfort; to the best of my knowledge no one has ever shown otherwise.
I suppose that one might say that acting in a ‘morally correct’ manner includes making a conscious decision, but, as I pointed out earlier, how can you be sure that your decision was not based on instinct or very early ‘imprinting’ received from your environment?
And I might go ahead and clarify, while it’s on my mind, that I don’t think that ‘survival of the species’ is normally a conscious consideration; humans are probably the only animals with the mental ability to even think of this and take it into consideration, and even then probably only within the last 100 years or so. At the moment I’m having a hard time putting the words together to describe what I mean, but an example of behavior on that I consider to operate on that level is our strong desire to form social groups. A single human being can certainly survive on his/her own as a solitary individual, but raising a family to the point that its members can repeat the process requires some sort of minimal social group, which in turn requires the ability to behave in a manner that contributes to the survival of that group.
A social group, tribe, society, culture - whatever label you like - may be seen as a single organism rather than as a group of individuals. Like a coral reef, many individuals join together to create a stronger structure that is better able to survive the circumstances of its environment.
Some very good points in this thread, but I must say that the discussion seems a bit . . . unfocused. I don’t think it would be helpful right now for me to start responding explicitely to individual posters, so I am going to just make a few specific observations in the hope that they might prove useful.
[ul]
[li]Universal and absolute are not synonyms in this context. Someone else just noted this, but I think it bears repeating. It was also stated quite elegantly on the first page, though the idea seemed to drop quickly out of sight. Accordingly, observing that many human cultures share a partiular moral understanding is not a refutation of moral relativism (though it does weaken some particular derivations thereof). The fact that certain modes of behavior have proven advantageous for human societies has absolutely no bearing upon my moral relativism. ;)[/li]
[li]Moral relativism is not internally inconsistent. It is not inconsistent to agree that one’s own moral basis lacks any objective or necessary superiority to someone else’s. Likewise, accepting that conclusion does not preclude one from acting upon one’s moral understanding. Also, in a small formal point, moral relativism is not itself a morality, though it may be an element within a morality. Moral relativism is an epistemological understanding which is sufficient (though not necessary) to provide a context in which to examine morality.[/li]
[li]Fundamental is as fundamental does. While I applaud the evolutionary perspective on this question, I think it is very easy to slip into hidden tautologies as we formulate the “fundamental rules”. For instance, murder is wrong is often raised as a universal code among human societies. The word “murder” is emphasized particularly because “killing” obviously does not hold. Yet when we look at eh distinctions between the two we will generally find such elements as murder applies only within the cultural group and murder is the unjustified killing of a person meeting X social criteria. Of course, “unjustified” in this context means nothing more than “morally unacceptable”. Thus, we assert that morally unacceptable killings are considered morally unacceptable by all/nearly all human societies. Universally true, I admit, but not particularly interesting. The interesting rule to derive, I submit, is that all societies form rules as to who may be killed.[/li]
[li]Torturing babies for fun, etc. This argument is predicated upon the idea that human moral systems necessarily evolve explicit rules to address all conceivable modes of human behavior. That idea is not correct. I will readily admit that I know of no human society which has ever specifically codified the acceptability of torturing infants solely for the purpose of human amusement. I will also observe that I know of no human society which has ever specifically codified the unacceptability of torturing infants solely for the purpose of human amusement. Neither of those statements has any particular consequence to the relative or absolute nature of morality.[/li]
[li]Is it really a dichotomy? No. Erl is quite correct that moral relativity and moral absolutism are not the only possibilities. Just because we might find amorality undesirable does not eliminate it as a philosophical possibility. For that matter, moral relativism and moral absolutism need not necessarily be seen as mutually exclusive “truths”. It is certainly possible to envision a moral system in which certain elements were considered absolute while others were understood as relative. In general, I would consider such a treatment exclusive of “classical” moral relativism but not necessarily contradictory of moral absolutism.[/li]
[li]Is it moral to survive? Possibly, but I see the argument that what is moral is necessarily that which has survived to be seriously flawed. It establishes a strict equivalence between “moral” and “advantageous” which I feel distorts the former term nearly beyond recognition. Human cultures display a universal selection for securing protection against the elements. Individuals who fail to live in appropriate shelters or wear appropriate garments are ostracized or considered insane. Shall we then deduce the fundamental morality of homes and clothes?[/li]
[li]Moral relativism==moral paralysis. This is a common misperception. The unstated assumption is that one must have absolute confidence in a moral judgment in order to act upon it. It is certainly possible to believe that and thus to be paralized by indecision in a relative moral framework, but moral relativism certainly does not require any such axiom of certainty. I find justification to act in the same place I find confidence to form judgments–the framework of my morality. The fact that I recognize limits to my understanding does not imply that I cannot act upon that understanding. It simply means that I cannot appeal to an external authority for absolute validation of my judgment. (I might appeal to any number of authorities for relative validation of my judgment.)[/li]
[li]Moral relativism does not mean “defined by culture”. It is true that codified structures of cultural mores are a convenient means of discussing morality and pointing to relativistic elements, but it does not follow that moral understanding is culturally determined. I think it can be well argued that a strong element of cultural formatism exists, but the simple fact that some members of a culture always get branded “immoral” implies that the influence of culture is not definitive in establishing a personal moral understanding.[/li][/ul]
There’s lots of interesting work coming out of Game Theory research. Mathematicians have finally discovered computer simulation and applied it to populations of interacting decision-makers, and they’re having all kinds of fun. Search on keywords:
“non zero sum”
“iterated prisoner’s dilemma”
+“tit for tat” +simulation
“evolution of cooperation”
Some of the things they’ve discovered are really incredible, especially about the nature of “good” and of creativity.
One of the simplest “absolute morality” rules: if many people were to constantly perform some action, and if this situation would quickly destroy society, then that action is “bad” or “evil” and your fellows will take quick action to stop you. Murder and theft seem like in-built taboos, but instead consider the really huge fines when anyone sees you throwing your Burger King garbage out of your car window. If everyone did it constantly, there would be a large unwanted consequence, therefore a single infractor draws disproportionally harsh punishment even though a single bag of trash along the highway doesn’t hurt anyone.
Computer simulations show that “morality” appears naturally in societies because of evolutionary forces. Any population groups who flaunt these natural “rules” will die out fast, sometimes because they destroy themselves directly, but often because they lose out to other competing groups who follow those rules.
Example: dishonest shopkeepers in a small town will quickly be reduced to poverty when all business deserts them and they can’t even buy necessities from the people they’ve cheated. In small groups, that kind of dishonesty is lethal, so it’s no suprise that we have an emotional revulsion-taboo against some types of cheaters.
It’s “absolute morality” in the same way that our revulsion regarding smelly poop on the kitchen table is “absolute morality.”
PS, “A Beautiful Mind” and John Nash has direct relevance. As I understand it, Nash got the Nobel for discovering absolute morality theory (although they don’t call it that.)
They don’t call it that because that ain’t what it is.
Game theory models demonstrate advantageous strategies of behavior. Calling “advantageous strategies of behavior” “morality” is, shall we say, a non-standard use of the term.
Oh, and unless you are arguing that no dishonest shopkeepers exist in small towns, your example is best used to illustrate the danger of relying upon computer simulations as absolute descriptors of human behavior.
First of all: jjimm, my apologies, but I, er, screwed up my post where I ‘challenged’ you about existing cultures and taboos. :o What it was supposed to say is:
“Can you point out to me a single current culture in which the taboos I listed are considered acceptable?”
However, since you went to all of the trouble of looking for cites to support yourself, I’ll poke at them anyway.
The reason I disallowed ‘isolated cultures’ is because you cannot determine whether or not they have been truly successful. As furt pointed out, the measure of a culture’s success must include more than sheer existence. However, I think my interpretation of a successful culture differs a little: A successful culture must not only thrive, it must do so in competition with other cultures. Humanity’s major competition for survival is other humans; an isolated culture is protected from this competition. (See the Moriori information below - they were basically destroyed by their very first outside contact.)
Although it wasn’t my question, I can’t see how your ‘baby-torture’ link proves anything. Where does it indicate that this activity is culturally acceptable? If this is supposed to be an example, you might as well say that pedophilia is acceptable to the ‘US culture’ because law enforcement hasn’t managed to catch and convict every pedophile within its borders.
Okay, the Indonesia link: I’m honestly not sure what you meant this link to refer to. Genocide? Cannibalism? I don’t see any indication of genocide, and the cannibalism seems to be of the ritual sort. Indonesia has been in turmoil for years (the linked event happened a couple of years ago) - a few months before that, on another island, the Christians and Muslims were killing each other. Horrible things happening, I agree, but I don’t see what point this supports.
The Incest link: First of all, why didn’t you post the entire sentence instead of the part of it that seemed to support you? The complete relevant text reads:
Hmm, this seems to say that incest is taboo except in certain cases, and I suspect it is referring to a historical practice. If you had looked just a little further you might have found this site:
and
I guess the Tongans decided that incest wasn’t a good thing after all, 'cause it seems to be illegal.
{Sidebar: A link to an advertisement for a book is not a valid cite unless you are arguing that the book exists, that it is available, etc. I even took the time to scan through the sample pages offered, but the information you posted wasn’t there. If you are going to provide cites from an offline source, you should also reference the material in a manner similar to that of a research paper: Title, edition or volume number (especially for periodicals), author(s), date of publication, page(s) where material is located. The idea behind a cite is to provide some sort of verifiable proof to back up your argument - reading a book advertisement doesn’t tell me anything. I can’t see whether or not you’ve taken the information out of context, quoted it accurately, or even made it up out of whole cloth!}
The Jared Diamond/Maori link: I’m not sure why you posted this information, as surely it supports my theory rather than yours? Both the Moriori and the Maori are defeated cultures.
Also, without being able to read the entire section in context I can’t be sure of how Mr. Diamond presented this, but from your quotes it looks like the Maori just suddenly sailed off to the Chatham Islands and slaughtered all of the peaceful Moriori. Does he mention that the English discovered the islands and the Moriori a hundred years before that? (The Maori had already been subjugated on NZ at that time.) That European seal hunters then descended on the islands and slaughtered the Moriori’s main source of food and winter clothing, as well as killing anyone who complained, raping the women, and spreading disease? How about the fact that it was an English ship that delivered the Maori? The Maori didn’t just walk around and kill everyone; they killed some and enslaved the rest. They were still holding Morioris as slaves in 1861, apparently with British approval as the islands were under British control and the NZ Governor was well aware of the situation. Certainly the Maoris contributed to their demise, but the Moriori were already doomed by the previous actions of the British.
And while there doesn’t seem to be any documentable proof, according to the Moriori oral legends they were not always ‘pacifists’. During their early history on the island there was constant intertribal fighting, to the point that the existence of the entire population was threatened. One of their leaders issued an edict forbidding any more warfare, and that all such disputes must be solved in a ritualized one-to-one combat that automatically ended as soon as first blood was drawn. I read several comments that the Moriori could have defeated the Maori if they had fought back, apparently based solely on the fact that they outnumbered the Maori two to one. I find this doubtful because it ignores the fact that, by the time the Maoris arrived, the Morioris were demoralized, starving, and freezing; they had no true weapons, only their hunting gear, while the Maoris had guns; and they had lived without any real violence for hundreds of years so had no experience or skill in deadly combat.
According to one synopsis I read of Diamond’s book, he repeated the claim that the Morioris were the original inhabitants of NZ that the Maoris drove out when they arrived. This was disproved many years ago, although many people still believe this because the NZ goverment found it politically expedient to ‘delay’ changing the information in textbooks, etc. Many NZers are pretty astonished to find out that what they were taught in school just a few years ago wasn’t true!
It’s hard to find any non-biased information on the Maori/Moriori thing, as there were still disputes about property ownership and slavery compensation up until last year and everyone seems inclined to take sides. For example, I got basically the same information from 3 sites, except that, according to their bias:
The Maoris were forcibly relocated to the Chatham Islands by the NZ governor.
The Maoris hired a British ship to take them there.
The Maoris commandeered a British ship to take them there.
sighjjimm, none of those cites seem to say what you think they say, and Dr. Sam Vaknin is a doctor of philosophy who works as a financial consultant and writes and sells books/articles about Narcissicistic Personality Disorder even though he has no degree in psychology.
Coosa, you are supplying some good information, but I remain slightly confused as to th epoint you are trying to make. I can appreciate, though I disagree, the position that moral elements which have existed in all known cultures and societies can be called fundamental to human cultural groups. You, however, seem to be arguing that we can ignore counterexamples and exception simply by declaring them “failed cultures”. In such a scheme, you focus not on something(s) fundamental to humanity but rather something(s) characteristic of modern human cultures.
I can see no possible justification for declaring such traits fundamental to human morality. “Advantageous to cultural survival up to the current era” is not “fundamental to humanity”.
cooza, you have done a good job of spanking down my cites. These were not great, I admit, but the best I could find online at the time. I’ll briefly address some of your points:
Cannibalism. Ritualistic or not, it’s a) happening within a non-isolated society, and b) contemporary.
Aside from the fact that the current Tongan legal structure is one largely imposed on them/encouraged by Christian missionaries and colonists (I don’t have online cites for the pre-Christian laws), I wasn’t talking about Tonga today, I was talking about Tahiti in the 18th century.
Paedophilia tends to be an isolated act, whereas Muti, while certainly against the law in whichever country it occurs, is a cultural and religious phenomenon with a large number of adherents - both participants and consumers of the ‘medicine’. Child-killing is one of the more extreme arms of Muti tradition. Regarding the Egyptians, and the cite I used, I wasn’t aware when I posted it that “Ptolemies were not Egyptians”: substitue ‘Ptolemies’ for ‘Egyptians’, (IIRC Nefertiti was a Ptolemy) and my point resurrects itself.
Now a decent cite: The Universality of Incest cites a large number of incestuous practices, some societal, some performed privately, in historical, contemporary and ancient Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Aboriginal, North African and Middle-Eastern societies.
Again, I admit my original cites were fairly poor, but the main point is that there are a number of things condoned in other parts of the world that are not condoned in ours.
One problem with the arguments here seems to be that people (including me) are mixing up taboos with prohibitions. In my society, for example, we have an enormous number of rules regarding eating and defecation. Table manners - not slurping and making noise while eating; the concealment of defecation and the smells and noises thereof. We are not, however, prohibited from eating and defecating. Thus Balinese (or whichever) society has strict rules regarding who can and cannot practise incest, but the rules pertaining to the subject aren’t necessarily prohibiting it.
Another point I think people are avoiding is that things that were very strictly prohibited in our own societies not too long ago are now acceptable and protected by law. Individual right to sexuality as a single example. Are we therefore progressing towards becoming more ‘enlightened’, or is this just a random trend towards being respectful of individuals’ rights?
I don’t see where this necessarily follows; we’re talking about pre-agricultural societies. How would a tribe in Africa even know that people existed in, say, China? There was no way to know how many people exist, and no one can even be sure what the minimum ‘viable’ population would be. If instinctive (or moralistic) behavior did not arise that discouraged indiscriminate killing, I don’t see how humans could have survived this long. Remember, too, that the ‘minimum number’ people remaining also have to be able to find each other in order to reproduce.
Also, one of the key factors to human survival is the social group/tribe. How long do you think a tribe would hold together if everyone killed whenever they were angry, wanted something that belonged to someone else, or were just bored? Of course there was certain amount of fighting and occasionally deaths because humans get angry and act impulsively sometimes, but a stable social group requires a certain amount of trust; people had to be able to go to sleep at night!
And this isn’t even a unique human trait - the majority of animals rarely kill members of their own species.
Besides which, disease has killed far, far more humans in epidemics than humans could ever match except by using nuclear weapons. In 430 BC the Plague of Athens killed about 1/3 of the population and ended the Golden Age of Athens. (The disease started when surrounding villagers and farmers fled to the city in front of the advancing Spartans.) About 160 AD the bubonic plague caused the fall of the Han Empire in China; in 166 AD the Plague of Antonine devastated the Roman Empire, killing 4-7 million people throughout Europe and contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire.
In the 14th century the ‘Black Death’ pandemic killed 1/3 of the population of Europe in two years; it came to Europe from the Far East along the trade routes and no one is sure how many died in India and China - some estimate that 40 million people worlwide died in only a few short years. Eighty to 90% of the American Indian population may have succumbed to influenza, typhoid, measles and smalllpox - the cases of entire tribes or civilizations destroyed by disease with the coming of the Europeans are too numerous to list here. In the late 19th century another epidemic in China and India killed about 12 million people, and of course the Influenze Pandemic of 1918 killed approximately 25 million people in one year. And I haven’t even started on smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid, malaria, yellow fever, and polio, or the upcoming results of the current HIV epidemic and other nasty new diseases.
It would take a lot of psychopathic serial killers to compete with that!
Here’s a pretty good brief, simple explanation of how diseases became a serious problem once humans developed agriculture.
Here are links to some of the disease/epidemic sites, if anyone wants to check them out:
Yes, but I suspect you’re translating “advantageous” as “selfish.” If so, then you aren’t familiar with the current explosion in zero-sum game theory.
“Advantageous” applies to the society AND to the individual. Many people assume that selfish tribal members get extra material goods, the best wives, etc. Isn’t game theory about WINNERS and LOSERS, where pure and total selfishness should be everyone’s natural choice? This isn’t the case in everyday life, since communities aren’t chess games, and the totally and blatantly “pure selfish” people are ejected from their communities as if the communities themselves were organisms bent on continued survival.
As I see it, evolution theory, conscious thought, “memes”, zero-sum game theory, and “programmed” human instinctual behavior, these all mix together in everyday life and out pops morality. Out pops the concept of “evil,” also feelings of revulsion at selfishness, also the seven deadly sins. No religion needed.
By dishonest I meant “pure” dishonesty: being unremittingly dishonest and not trying to hide it; ripping off every single customer that enters the store. If selfishness is good, then is not “pure” selfishness the best? But it doesn’t work in real life, and it also doesn’t work in simulations of societies. That’s what the ITERATED PRISONER’S DILEMMA finally showed to the game theorists: it showed that the central them society is not competition, it is not winners versus losers. Instead cooperation and “good” play very major roles.
Because “advantage to groups of neighbors” is a significant issue in the game theory of society, the anti-selfishness taboos and moral behavior can arise even in simple computer-simulated creatures. No god or religion needed. Immoral individuals act like some cancer cells which damage the larger “body”, and any long-lasting society has evolved many anti-cancer strategies.
Computer simulations obviously aren’t “real”. However anyone who instantly dismisses them should think twice about their own agenda. Never judge a book without first reading it. The same goes for the literature describing a whole group of new ideas. Always learn your opponents’ viewpoint, if only to make sure that they’re wrong.
Computer simulations reveal interesting aspects of real societies which otherwise might remain masked. Obviously we can’t just gullibly accept everything they show. They’re only tools. But if we want to find a source of morality outside of philosophy and religion, or want to find “morality” which more resembles the absolute laws of physics rather than morally relative reasoning, then the behavior of “artificial societies” give us a whole new way of seeing the problem.
Why do we experience revulsion at rotten food, or at eating feces? (Yes, there is a minority who does not, but it’s not the majority response.) Why is decaying meat revolting? It’s programmed in to us. And why is “evil” behavior revolting? Same reason: natural selection creating instinctual programming.
I put together a little website about some of these ideas:
HERETICAL EVOLUTION THEORISTS DISCOVER GOOD AND EVIL http://amasci.com/weird/hevolv.html
Lots more info can be found by searching www for these keywords:
Forgive me if this has already been discussed, I only made it about halfway through the thread, and nobody had hit on this concept yet.
I think people act on both relative and absolute morals. The two exist on a continuum, with everyone’s system occupying some point in the middle.
Relative morals are defined by emotion - disgust, anger, self consciousness, shame, guilt, etc. For instance, in moral systems where racism was accepted, people felt angry at blacks, and didn’t feel shame in saying so. Notice also that this explains some noticeable similarities in moral systems - for instance, that nobody tortures babies for fun. It’s simply not in our psycological makeup. Also notice that when emotion is involved, even thinking about doing something is bad - as in thinking about torturing babies probably made you cringe, even though no actual babies were being tortured.
Absolute morals, in contrast, are our attempt at finding some kind of moral axiom and applying it to different situations. It is an intellectual approach, rather that emotional. An axiom can be, life is good, or human life is good, or enlightenment is good, or something to that effect. Theoretically, anyone from any moral system could agree on an axiom. If they can’t, the axioms they are choosing aren’t general enough. In contrast to relative (emotional) morals, there is no shame in thinking about immoral acts, just in the doing.
I think that morals based on emotion is an evolutionary adaptation so that people could live together. After all, if people had to be old and wise before they realized that killing people wouldn’t be such a good idea, everyone would kill each other before anyone even got a chance to be old and wise. So these emotions are a default setting, to make sure that even the (intellectually) stupidest ones among us have some kind of behaviour that isn’t detrimental to the group.
This default setting shouldn’t limit us though. To say that relative morals are the end of the story neglects an entire intellectual aspect of it. Interpreting relativistic morals in an intellectual light, it contains a logical fallacy that “culture” is an arbitrary breaking point. If we can’t judge a culture’s moral system, than how about a sub-culture? What if that sub-culture contains only one person? What if that one person is a different person today than they were yesterday (after all, ideas define a person more than the specific molecules that make them up, and ideas can change)? What if they were a different person when they committed the act under question? By this point, we’ve broken down moral relativism to a point indistinguishable from amorality, which is also a possible viewpoint, but if (and so far this thread has been assuming) morals do exist, then they must be reducable to something absolute. Saying that we do things this way and they do things that way is a start, but there’s no reason to stop there - questioning why different cultures do different things is much more interesting and intellectually fruitful.
Saying that morals eventually come down to absolute axioms doesn’t necissarily mean that two different systems can’t both be correct. For example, in many Arab coutries, a woman exposing her face is considered to be indecent, while in many parts of Europe, women can go topless without any trouble. In applying moral axioms to real life, certain things have to be pretty arbitrary - the line has to be drawn somewhere, and often times it’s hard to say that one place is better than another. This still doesn’t negate the fact that the axioms exist.
The Dungeons and Dragons game uses the concept of alignment as a shorthand for describing a character’s moral outlook. Alignment consists of two axes: law/chaos and good/evil. A lawful character generally follows societal laws, customs, and norms. If the character wants to effect change, he will work within the established system. A chaotic character is an individualist, and if he wants to change things, he is likely to use some radical method. A good character is inclined to help strangers, and strives to avoid harming others. An evil character is mostly interested in himself, doesn’t care if he hurts others if it suits his purpose, and may go out of his way to be harmful. A character can be neutral on either axis of alignment, indicating an outlook that falls in the middle.
So the nine alignments are:
lawful good (examples: Thurgood Marshall, Jimmy Carter)
neutral good (civil disobedient protester)
chaotic good (Greenpeace activist, Harriet Tubman)
lawful neutral (strict traditionalist, bureaucrat)
neutral (apathetic citizen)
chaotic neutral (backwoods survivalist, hermit)
lawful evil (Adolph Hitler, Andrew Jackson, slaver)
neutral evil (Joseph Stalin, corrupt politician)
chaotic evil (terrorist, serial killer, Pol Pot)
D&D alignment is a objective moral system… for describing characters in a fictional fantasy setting. Do any of you think it has any usefulness in the real world? If so, what do you think of my examples? What alignment do you think most people are?
Your supposition is incorrect, as is the inferecnce you draw from it.
Perhaps we should start another thread in which to explore such ideas, but your theoretical soup yields “morality” only if one accepts that morality is:[list=1]
[li]synonymous with advantageous at whatever level one chooses to model.[/li][li]meaningful only as a descriptive term for behaviors selected by cultural pressure.[/li][li]rigorously and completely expressible in game-theoretic terms[/li][/list=1]
I disagree strongly with the first.
The second is debatable: this is one, but not the only, meaningful way to discuss morality.
I think the third is likely true, but I know of no model which has done so. I suspect that any sufficiently powerful formulation would be subject to the same criticisms as the moral philosphy from which it springs.
No.
Why on earth would anyone familiar with human social behavior make such an assumption. Do you similarly argue that altruism can only be “good” if pure altruism is “the best”? Lay down your life for a stranger recently?
Three things:
*I never said computer models had no value, so you needn’t tilt at that particular windmill
*The laws of physics, as best we understand them, are relativistic at the macro scale. A fellow named Einstein made a name for himself proposing just that idea nearly a century ago.
*Nothing in the approach you mention is “outside of philosophy”. In fact, it bears at its heart a specific philosophical approach to nature.
This is quite a strong claim. Are you arguing that all human reactions are “programmed into us” or do you have specific evidence to support the idea that moral response, as opposed to other “intellectual” responses, is programmed and instinctual.
Your emotional/intellectual breakdown has nothing whatsoever to do with the relative/absolute (psuedo)dichotomy. In fact, the axiomatic “absolute” moralities you propose are in fact a framework of moral relativism. If contradictory axioms can each be “good” within a different culture, then “good” is relative to culture. Moral absolutism would require that one or both of those cultures be absolutely wrong in their choice of axiom.
This is not a flaw in moral relativism. It is a mistake in your understanding of moral relativism. (Don’t feel bad. This is a fallacy which gets propogated by many, many people in such debates.) To wit: the condition upon which your argument relies does not hold. We can judge a culture’s moral system. And a sub-culture’s. And an individual’s.WE JUST CAN’T HAVE “ABSOLUTE” ASSURANCE THAT OUR JUDGMENTS ARE CORRECT. My moral understanding is a human quality bounded by my human limitations. This does not prevent me from acting upon it, any more than my limited ability to evaluate future probabilities prevents me from choosing wheher to save money for retirement.
I have said this before, but since you didn’t read the whole thread before replying I will repeat it: moral relativism does not prevent one from making moral judgments. It just means those judgments lack an absolute basis for certainty.
And the certainty is the issue, here, because I have yet to hear people deduce, induce, or otherwise posit a method for determining which moral codes are, in fact, absolute or fundamental in nature. I find the question of, “Do fundamental human morals actually exist?” to be an “I just don’t know” answer. I have no way of knowing (at least, not yet), and because of that I feel I must accept the possibility that
There are no fundamental morals or a fundamental moral system (possibly augmented by relative morals); or,
There may be fundamental morals but I cannot discern them with any more certainty than I have in moral behavior that I posit of my own free will or by the society that I live in.
A truly empirical test for moral agreement over time and societies can only tell us what societies that survive have in common, but a society can (and has been) wiped out by things like natural disasters (Pompeii, for instance) which had no bearing on their actual behavior. For all we know, residents of Pompeii were perfectly moral. Thus, though survival (or a lack thereof) may be an indicator of fundmanetal morality at work, there is no reason (that I can think of) to assume that it must be the case. Certainly good men are killed, and I can easily imagine scenarios in which (what I would call) the good men of the world are the minority.
It depends on what perspective these judgements are being made from. If I belong to moral system A and I say moral system B is wrong according to moral system A, and someone from moral system B comes along and says the opposite, they could both be right. The key is “according to that moral system”. If they stop there, they haven’t even made an attempt to look at the problem from a global perspective. Having not even tried to look at it that way, how can you say that that perspective doesn’t exist?
Of course, when you do look at it from a global perspective, it still isn’t easy to resolve many issues. What exactly is the axiom? How do we judge different contenders? To compare what amounts to apples and oranges, we have to appeal to some more general quality, quality X. If both parties don’t agree that quality X is important, then they would resort to quality Y to judge quality X, and quality Z to judge quality Y, ad infinitum. Eventually they would either get to the same thing or something that for all practical purpose is the same, and that would be the axiom.
(I probably created confusion above when I listed three different axioms. Actually I was just throwing things out there without really pondering the whole chain that I just described, more to give examples than to make a point)
So, as you can see, creating a moral system, while incredibly complicated, infinitely complicated in fact if 100% accuracy is desired, it is not theoretically impossible. Of course people, not being infinite, aren’t going to be able to pursue the infinite chain of qualities, and that’s why different moral systems have different answers to the same questions. But that is not a reason to reject the system - different economists give different answers to the same questions, for example, because they don’t have an infinite amount of knowledge and intuition. This doesn’t negate the whole field of economics, though.
No one thinks creating a moral system is impossible, David. Clearly society-spanning morality can be achieved by consensus, debate, and such. On the floor here, though, I think is the idea that such a morality can only be achieved by consensus. There is no fundamental authority to appeal to.
But this is incorrect, although a common misunderstanding about how evolution works. A mutation, behavior, etc. does not have to be beneficial in order to exist. It simply has to be not harmful enough to prevent the organism from successfully reproducing offspring that are capable of reproducing in turn, on down the generations.
1)* A specific trait may be neutral,* apparently having no affect, either harmful or beneficial, on an organism’s survival. An example in humans might be earlobe attachment - ‘dangling’, unattached earlobes are due to a dominant gene, individuals who are homozygous recessives have fully attached earlobes. Is this something that is advantageous for survival? Maybe, but it’s hard to imagine how. The mutation just happened, and survives because it has no real effect on the individual’s survival.
A trait my be harmful, but not harmful enough to prevent successful reproduction. Huntington’s Disease, dominant inheritance. It is a ‘late onset’ disease, and an individual may not only have children, but may have grandchildren, before signs of the disease appear.
A trait may be both harmful and beneficial, but will survive because of balanced polymorphism - sickle cell trait is a good example in humans. The gene for sickle cell is an incomplete dominant - a heterozygous individual will produce both normal cells and sickling cells, which conveys a resistance to malaria. Homozygous individuals will produce only sickling cells, which during a ‘crisis’ will cause severe pain, organ damage, and eventually death. The trait survives in populations native to malaria-endemic areas because there is a balance between the harm it causes and the benefit it provides.
Its important to remember that ‘evolution’ doesn’t have a purpose, it’s not working towards a goal - ‘evolution’ is just a label used for a natural process. Does Planet Earth decide to have earthquakes because her fault lines are itching? Or does it just ‘happen’ because of a build-up of pressure where two continental plates are grinding against each other?
‘Evolution’ is not seeking perfection, and no one living species is ‘superior’ to another - instead, each species is adapted to live in special circumstances - the environment in which it develops. A species might not have survived because it was ‘better’ than another one, but because it was luckier. Humans aren’t the superior species, they are simply the species whose method of survival involves controlling their environment to a certain degree. If any species, or rather kingdom of species, is ‘superior’ to any other it has to be bacteria - even if humans eventually destroy every living thing on the surface of the planet, there will be bacteria living deep beneath the surface of the planet that will survive. (Yeah, we’ve found them, they’re there.)
And because the enviroment changes rapidly and often, while evolutionary processes are slow and mutations are rare, ‘nature’ has a tendency to be conservative in terms of ‘saving’ as many changes as possible, beneficial or not, in case they are useful in the future.
erislover, this is what diversity is all about - the more options an organism, species, kingdom, etc. has at its disposal, the better its chances of survival. ‘Nature’ is not static; the environment changes constantly in both large and small ways. On a more stable planet, ‘life’ may have evolved in only one real ‘pattern’ - if we ever make it to the stars, we may find planets that have evolved only one ‘species’; for example, a fungus that covers most of the land area. On our planet the environment changes so rapidly and severely that life has taken the path of diversity, developing many, many different ways of surviving those changes. Diversity within a species is important because that species is then more capable of adapting to a changing environment, but diversity ofspecies is ultimately more important to the survival of life itself. Why do we not see large areas where only a single species of plant exists? Because ‘life’ or ‘nature’ or whatever you want to call it is taking out insurance - if an earthquake or volcano causes a sudden and rapid change in, say, the amount of sunlight available for the next 3 months, one species might die out while others survive.
Humans are very successful because we are very adaptable, and have the ability to change our environment to enhance survival, rather than simply accepting it. If you evolved near the equator in Africa but competition over resources has driven you into Europe, your lack of body hair could be fatal as there is not sufficient time for evolution to bring it back. So, you invent clothing. El Nino is causing a drought in your area and your crops are dying? Carry water from another source or invent irrigation. Need to travel rapidly between your water supply and your food supply over rough country? Invent roads.
Maybe that means our ‘morals’ are adaptable, too - I think there are fundamental ‘morals’ based on our necessity to maintain social groups, and then other rules have been added by different societies as they saw fit. Some of these are ‘good’ - for example, some of the Jewish laws about food seem to be based on preventing parasite infections, food poisoning, etc. - and some are ‘bad’, like the RCC ban on birth control. From a practical standpoint these are obsolete, and attitudes towards them may gradually change until they aren’t considered ‘morally correct’ any longer.
Gee, I think I’m arguing either that both absolute morals and relative morals exist, or that neither one does.
These were not great, I admit, but the best I could find online at the time. I’ll briefly address some of your points: