Morality is relative

[Surlethe]

I've been thinking about absolute morality recently. We all know that, ideally, moral codes are simply a set of deductions from noncontradictory axioms. The best (and only, in fact) argument I've seen for choosing one moral code over another is this: we ought to choose the moral code that is best suited to fulfilling the evolutionary function of morality in society. But why is that an objective criterion? After all, in other areas we don't choose the best behavior to fulfill an evolutionary function: for instance, we use birth control even though the evolutionary function of sex is reproduction. More to the point, though, why should we use the criterion of evolutionary function? That seems to imply some underlying preference scheme among criteria, which in turn implies either a preexisting moral code we're trying to justify (i.e., circular reasoning), or some sort of design scheme - in which case, there are design goals, which beg the question all over again.

I guess at the end of the day, I'm arguing that you can reduce to absurdity by always pushing the question of absolute morality back one more step, sort of like how in deistic arguments you can always ask who created God or what the purpose of God's life is. Man, religious people have it so easy. What are your thoughts?

[Dooey Jo]

That something has a single evolutionary function is probably a huge over-simplification in most cases, anyway. But what is the purpose of an absolute morality supposed to be? To decide which moral codes are better, without having to measure their results?

[Surlethe]

No, the absolute morality is (I'm assuming) the one that is "best". My point is that there has to be a meta-morality in play in order to determine which moral code is "best".

[Covenant]

I think the basic core principles of this stance are overly complex. Rarely have I heard people here or elsewhere say you pick a moral code that fulfills the role of morality as evolved--most people talk about moral codes as evolutionary remnants and choose instead to take up a form of ethics instead, or put the ethics of a situation over the morals of one. Morals are still, essentially, gut reactions. This is simply because morals seem tied to those simian responses to stimuli that work well when you're fighting for dominance in a savanna but don't perform as well in a nuclear armed society, and ethics are based on the most objective information you're able to process.

The meta-morality is the evolutionary behavioralism that has favored chest-beating males over non chest-beating males, or dominance-compliance over anarchy in social structures. Morals today in many ways descend from these sorts of things--codes of honor are essentially more formalized rules for chest-beating amongst individuals, as are a variety of other things that make sense emotionally (such as even rather large things like monogamy) but have a much decreased objective rationale... except that it works better in groups governed by emotions. We aren't robots, afterall. You gotta reason out a solution that will work for such unwieldy participants.

So the idea of an absolute morality is somewhat dim only insofar as you define morals as a viable set of rules to live by. Anyone really concerned with the best way for a society to behave should just shelve any real applicability of morality to large scale behaviors and let it get wrapped up with cultural traditions as the bullshit reasons people do terrible things to other people. There can, however, be an absolute set of ethics as we approach a greater understanding of how things work and what is best for people. It will be complex, but it is attainable, and it doesn't require hand-wringing or soul-searching, just intellectual honesty and a lot of admitting our premises were wrong.

[Surlethe]

What's your distinction between "morals" and "ethics", Covenant? As far as I knew, they are two names for systems of guidelines describing how one ought to behave in a given situation. Anyway, replace "morals" with "ethics" in my first post and my objection ought to hold - to wit,

There can, however, be an absolute set of ethics as we approach a greater understanding of how things work and what is best for people.

How do you choose what is "best" for people (or a system, or a society, or whatever) without having an ethical system that describes which outcomes are preferred to others?

[Feil]

Good and evil are human constructs, yes. They do not reflect any universal truths. There is no rational basis for them. They are just words. Trying to do logical gymnastics to turn them into universal truths is a waste of time and inevitably leads to circular arguments or fallacious appeals - "human life and happiness matters because it just does, and you're a horrible person for suggesting otherwise!" for example.

That doesn't mean that morality is (necessarily) relative. You can define it either way. Whichever way it's defined, you need a useful word or phrase to describe both facets. "In conformance to societal mores" is a convoluted, but accurate way of saying "moral in the relative sense", and leaves "moral" to describe an absolutely defined set of all possible behaviors.

All definitions are made up without any rational basis beyond some sort of common consensus.


As with any definition, it may vary from person to person, so if you want to make a definite statement, you should probably develop a concise definition of morality and use that, in stead.

For instance, if we define morality as "pursuing those actions which stand to do the most good for the greatest number or the least harm to the least number" (where "good" and "harm" are defined in terms of the aggregate of short- and long-term suffering, which in turn can be clearly defined in objective scientific terms as certain electrical and chemical processes in the brain) - then we have a useful, absolute morality. We can then say such things as:

"Families who burn young women alive for 'bringing shame on the family' are evil, though they conform to the mores of their society."

...Rather than sitting around pontificating about whether or not there is any such thing as morality while evil runs unchecked in the world.

[Covenant]

What's your distinction between "morals" and "ethics", Covenant? As far as I knew, they are two names for systems of guidelines describing how one ought to behave in a given situation. Anyway, replace "morals" with "ethics" in my first post and my objection ought to hold - to wit,

There can, however, be an absolute set of ethics as we approach a greater understanding of how things work and what is best for people.

How do you choose what is "best" for people (or a system, or a society, or whatever) without having an ethical system that describes which outcomes are preferred to others?

Off the cuff, that morality is about "good and evil actions" and ethics is about "right and wrong results."

It's always an issue of semantics I suppose, but I've always trended towards the distinction that morals are the way people feel and percieve good and bad actions, while ethics is the more scientific approach of looking for ways of achieving the right kind of result--especially since it is helpful to have a distinction between morality as percieved by culture and as evolved by biology and a more objective study of how people and societies best work out complex problems. Ethics delves into areas that morality has no historical basis (or baggage) of contact with, and while many people will quickly say "Thus and so is immoral," these things may not be unethical--and the reverse may be true. It's cleaner and simpler to have two seperate terms, but there's no agreed-upon framework for it. The need for two terms is a relic of people's obsession with morality as defined by their gut feelings.

In that way, you work out what's best the same way you work out anything else. You do studies, you collect research, and you sit and think hard about it while in discussion with other people who do the same, and then you monitor your results.

You need a set of principles to work towards, but that's not surprising. A system of absolute ethics presumes that you can agree on an ideal end goal. You may say that means there's no absolute, in the sense that it's not written in the stars, and in that sense you are correct. But that does not mean it is relative, since you could run the data through the wringer and find out that doing thus-and-so is indeed a system that encourages lower crime, greater freedom, and a higher reported standard of living from amongst the participants. If those are goals to work towards, and the attendant costs (taxes, alterations to laws, changes in the way criminal justice systems are handled) are acceptable, then that's the kind of ethic you're better off having.

If you want to assert that the Sarah Palins would disagree, that's true, but they're still subject to research. We can look at the kinds fo things they want to do and evaluate it in an ethical context. We can evaluate what happens when you take away government aid, increase war spending, reign in freedom of choice, devalue scientific research... and then come away with it and say "No, this is less good for everyone." That's the kind of ethical absolutism you can work towards achieving. No one system may be the supreme best system unless you have a very large number of goals to work towards, but you can develop a set of principles that would more adequately achieve it than other ways.

And in an effort to achieve that, I think it's handy to have a seperate term for it. Morality is just too emotional, subjective, and vague.

[Darth Wong]

I've been thinking about absolute morality recently. We all know that, ideally, moral codes are simply a set of deductions from noncontradictory axioms.

By that definition, the term "moral code" is completely synonymous with "logical conclusion". Methinks this definition is far too broad. Moral codes refer to a very specific sort of rule: namely, a human social conduct rule which is supposedly for the benefit of the larger group.

The best (and only, in fact) argument I've seen for choosing one moral code over another is this: we ought to choose the moral code that is best suited to fulfilling the evolutionary function of morality in society. But why is that an objective criterion?

There are other justifications for choosing one moral code over another: for example, it is entirely possible for many people to agree on certain desired outcomes for society while radically disagreeing about the preferred moral rules intended to achieve that outcome (a good example is sex education and teen pregnancy; both sides agree that high teen pregnancy is bad, but one side's preferred solution can be objectively demonstrated to be inferior, given the mutually agreed-upon goal).

I've said this before and I'll say it again: in order to evaluate a moral code, you must first determine what the goal of morality is. You cannot evaluate performance without first deciding what constitutes success. The evolutionary impulse for morality is important in recognizing where morality historically came from, but it does not necessarily dictate where it must go.

After all, in other areas we don't choose the best behavior to fulfill an evolutionary function: for instance, we use birth control even though the evolutionary function of sex is reproduction. More to the point, though, why should we use the criterion of evolutionary function? That seems to imply some underlying preference scheme among criteria, which in turn implies either a preexisting moral code we're trying to justify (i.e., circular reasoning), or some sort of design scheme - in which case, there are design goals, which beg the question all over again.

There's nothing wrong with having design goals for human morality schemes. All human activity is based on goals, after all. The question is: what do we do when we have competing goals? One approach is to strip away all goals except those that are almost universally shared among human beings, such as "I want to live" and "I would prefer to avoid pain" and "I would like to have as much leisure and luxury as possible", and then see which system can best achieve those goals for the largest possible number of people in society.

Even if you can't necessarily produce an ironclad justification for the goals of a particular moral code, I would argue that any moral code which has an up-front stated goal is still philosophically superior to a moral code whose only known goal is to be true to itself. That is obviously circular.

I guess at the end of the day, I'm arguing that you can reduce to absurdity by always pushing the question of absolute morality back one more step, sort of like how in deistic arguments you can always ask who created God or what the purpose of God's life is. Man, religious people have it so easy. What are your thoughts?

You can push back any morality scheme to the question of which goal it serves, and how well it serves that goal. As I said above, at least some morality schemes have some goal other than "to follow its own rules", which would make it a glorified tautology.

The big problem with religious morality schemes is that they fall into this category exactly: they generally do not state any kind of goal. Instead, they tend to simply state their rules by divine fiat, or imply them through the telling of stories in which people suffered for doing things wrongly (although this, interestingly enough, implies that they do quietly concede that moral rules should be tied to objective benefit or harm).

[Alyrium Denryle]

I have taken the view that ethical systems and morality are ways by which we attempt to systematize the results of cultural and biological evolution as they apply to governing human behavior. The behaviors themselves are the manifestation of inter-sexual conflict, parent-offspring conflict, and inter-group conflict, the results of which are determined by various environmental factors such as resource distribution (and characteristics) the presence or absence of competing groups, and operational sex ratio (among other factors)

When we try to reduce ethics down to first principles, they break down because there is zero metaphysical basis upon which they rest. The first principles we reach cannot themselves be justified because they are the cognitive framework upon which the actual systems are built (the various competing impulses that get traded off against eachother in an attempt by a group and individuals to maximize group survival and individual fitness respectively). That is why not only are they mutually contradictory, but why we have no basis upon which to justify them. They are just hardwired into our brains.

Morality is neither absolute, or relative. It is purely functional, in an evolutionary sense.

One way to evaluate a given moral code (or ethical system however you want to semantically split these up) is to determine, given a common environment, which one is a superior adaptation to coping with said environment. You basically have to subject them to a selection experiment thought exercise (because running a selection experiment on actual people is impractical).

Alternatively you can think of it in terms of design goals (but that begs the question of why those design goals were chosen and whether they are valid). Another way is to merely accept all self-consistent systems, given the assumption that the first principles are correct.

Those last two however leave an ashen taste in my mouth, as they rest on premises that cannot easily be evaluated.

[Darth Wong]

What is so terrible about having a moral system with up-front stated design goals? The fact that they are subject to debate? This seems suspiciously like the remnants of a religious meme: that something which is subject to discussion and debate is necessarily inferior to something which is stated in absolute terms and which is completely immune to debate.

[Alyrium Denryle]

What is so terrible about having a moral system with up-front stated design goals? The fact that they are subject to debate? This seems suspiciously like the remnants of a religious meme: that something which is subject to discussion and debate is necessarily inferior to something which is stated in absolute terms and which is completely immune to debate.

You enter the same regress that you try to solve in the first place. The reason why the design goals exist in the first place needs to be justified.

By grounding your understanding of ethics in something that is a physical truth of the universe (natural selection) you can derive your design goals, and the way in which you achieve those goals from that. This solves the regress problem.

[Darth Wong]

The naturalistic fallacy does not solve the regress problem; it only begs the exact same question unless you are dealing with someone who accepts naturalistic fallacies without question. To say "this is the correct goal for an ethics system because it is derived from natural evolution" is completely preposterous on its face, and it only sounds reasonable if you don't realize that naturalistic goals are no more intrinsically valid than any other.

PS. In case I didn't make it clear, evolution-based morality systems implicitly assume that the goal of a morality system is evolutionary success. It's not as if they don't have a design goal; they simply don't state it in the form of a goal.

[Starglider]

What is so terrible about having a moral system with up-front stated design goals?

Absolutely that is the right way to approach the problem; in practice you are unlikely to get the chance to do this on any scale larger than setting the rules of a company, forum or private club, but it's the theoretically correct approach. The stated design goals are the inherently arbitrary part; even the long-term stability of a society based on that moral system, which evolution heavily selects for, is still an arbitrary goal. The code of behavior designed to promote those goals is the non-arbitrary part, in the sense that it can be objectively evaluated for performance against the original objectives.

The axioms of ethics inevitably boil down to one of two things; 'how can we get along', maximising individual benefit in non-zero-sum environments, or 'I (or we) have decided to impose my (or our) goal system on other people'. The later is still true even if it is something as hands-off as 'I want other people to have the freedom to pursue whatever goals they choose'. In fact I had exactly that argument with a transhumanist recently; his axiom was that people experiencing pleasure was good, and that the ideal situation would be a world covered in Matrix-style pods filled with people on a permenant cocaine high. My axioms were focused on respecting and supporting individual desire, tempered with some concern for personal wellbeing. There was simply no way for us to reconcile that difference in axioms, both of which are arbitrary; more people would agree with me than with him, but that's a practical difference, not a fundamental one.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The naturalistic fallacy does not solve the regress problem; it only begs the exact same question unless you are dealing with someone who accepts naturalistic fallacies without question.

Except that I am not committing a naturalistic fallacy. A naturalistic fallacy is when in normative ethics, you attempt to draw ethical conclusions from nature. It rejects the argument Is=Ought (eg. that it is necessarily true that what is the case, is also what should be)

It is not a naturalistic fallacy to do two things:

1)Connect the premise and the conclusion with a second premise,

Tust because it is not necessarily the case that Is=Ought, it is not also true that what Is=/Ought. To think that it does is to commit a non-sequitur.

2) Engage in a metaethical discussion regarding the justification for ethical systems themselves, which is what I am doing here (and is the topic of the OP).

My position is such (this is exposition, so there is no mistaking what I am saying. we can argue once everything is clear)

A)Cognitive processes put in place by evolution are what drive all our moral decision making
B) Barring thought exercises (which I will get into in a moment), we make all our decisions before our conscious awareness of the choice (and thus before our ability to actually be rational in the classical sense) and these decisions are made purely on the basis of an evolutionary risk-benefit trade off.
C) This decision is manifested in our consciousness as an emotional/logical decision, but it is really a post-hoc rationalization.

The only difference between us and a duck is that we have the intelligence to wonder "why the fuck did (am) I do(ing) this?", thus necessitating the rationalization.

In thought experiments, we accept or reject premises on the basis of statement A above (IE. the premises which resonate with our minds, are the ones that are beneficial to us, given our propensity to make certain trade offs. for example, men are more likely to accept "rape myths" than women are because it is more beneficial for them to do so in an evolutionary sense, and this is the result of inter-sexual reproductive conflict) and try to make them fit together coherently Then we engage our ability to think in the abstract (which our brain does in statement B as well), but are only simulating the decision making process, so trade offs get weighted differently, and because the process is being done entirely with our conscious minds the results will often differ.

Group morality (social mores) and ethical systems (like utilitarianism) are the result of this process operating at different levels of organization.

Social mores are the result of inter-personal conflict in a group, and group-individual conflict. In a given environment and group, each person is competing with other individuals to maximize their fitness. However this also creates conflict not just between individuals, but between individuals and the group as a whole. Social mores are the result of the system optimizing itself under the relative selective pressures on individuals, and from the selective pressures operating between groups as units of selection. This selection takes place both via genes and memes.

Ethical systems are attempts by individuals (or small groups) to systematize the moral beliefs (which are memes) that they have accepted as a result of their genetic makeup and other (not necessarily moral in nature) memes they have acquired. This is also why counter-example is the best way to argue in normative ethics. You offer a counter example the result of which is unpalatable to your opponent under their own ethical system. They had to make trade offs when they created (or accepted) their system, and by doing this you exploit those trade offs.

Under this metaethical system though, you solve the regress problem (by rejecting the problem as unnecessary, as it rejects absolute ethics, and answer the questions like "Why do i accept the ethical premises I do?", "why am I a utilitarian?", and "Why do I accept the ethical goals I do, or the process by which I evaluate competing goals?"), and are capable of evaluating ethical systems and moral codes for what they are. Adaptive phenotypes.

Goal-oriented ethics are just one more manifestation of the above efforts as systematizing pre-existing moral beliefs.

[Darth Wong]

It is not a naturalistic fallacy to do two things:

1)Connect the premise and the conclusion with a second premise,

It is a naturalistic fallacy to assume that the premise is any less arbitrary than any other premise just because it is based on natural laws, or in the case of your argument, the way you believe the human mind works (which is really just another case of "because it is based on natural laws").

My position is such (this is exposition, so there is no mistaking what I am saying. we can argue once everything is clear)

A)Cognitive processes put in place by evolution are what drive all our moral decision making
B) Barring thought exercises (which I will get into in a moment), we make all our decisions before our conscious awareness of the choice (and thus before our ability to actually be rational in the classical sense) and these decisions are made purely on the basis of an evolutionary risk-benefit trade off.
C) This decision is manifested in our consciousness as an emotional/logical decision, but it is really a post-hoc rationalization.

A) What's the point of even saying this? Cognitive processes put in place by evolution are what drive all our decision-making period. Regardless of whether it is ethical or unethical.
B) There is ample evidence that we are heavily influenced by unconscious instincts. However, you are assuming without evidence that we are entirely controlled by such instincts, with zero rational input. If that is the case, how is it possible for someone to rationally arrive at an ethical conclusion which is contradicted by his subjective feelings? How is it possible for someone to declare that something which disgusts him and strikes him as wrong is nevertheless morally acceptable?
C) See above.

Ethical systems are attempts by individuals (or small groups) to systematize the moral beliefs (which are memes) that they have accepted as a result of their genetic makeup and other (not necessarily moral in nature) memes they have acquired. This is also why counter-example is the best way to argue in normative ethics. You offer a counter example the result of which is unpalatable to your opponent under their own ethical system. They had to make trade offs when they created (or accepted) their system, and by doing this you exploit those trade offs.

You identify the is/ought fallacy earlier, but you seem to be employing it in spades. Your post is completely filled with descriptions of how you believe the human mind to work when it is constructing ethical systems, which has nothing to do with the question of whether one ethical system is better than another.

Under this metaethical system though, you solve the regress problem (by rejecting the problem as unnecessary, as it rejects absolute ethics, and answer the questions like "Why do i accept the ethical premises I do?", "why am I a utilitarian?", and "Why do I accept the ethical goals I do, or the process by which I evaluate competing goals?"), and are capable of evaluating ethical systems and moral codes for what they are. Adaptive phenotypes.

Explaining why you think the way you do is completely irrelevant to the question of whether you should be arriving at that conclusion, which is the question of ethics. To connect the two is a naturalistic fallacy.

Goal-oriented ethics are just one more manifestation of the above efforts as systematizing pre-existing moral beliefs.

Because you say so?

[Junghalli]

Personally I justify an ethical system that holds human happiness as the highest good by the fact that wanting to be happy is probably the closest thing to a human universal you'll find. Everybody wants the things that make them happy, and nobody wants the things that make them unhappy (well, more or less). So giving everybody what makes them happy while protecting them from that which makes them unhappy is likely to please the greatest number of people.

Of course you might be able to poke some holes in that, but fundamentally I prefer to ignore the fact that moral relativism is true because moral relativism is also useless. A human society needs some sort of agreed upon rule code to function, and it comes down to picking what you figure to be the best basis for making that rule code. I prefer a humanist rule code because out of the ones I can think of it's the least likely to result in you getting screwed over. The obvious response is that by that definition the best possible system is a sociopathic one (my own happiness >>> everyone else's), but a certain degree of enlightened self-interest can possibly be used there. That's a philosophy that if widely adopted would either result in society collapsing or society existing only to serve the rulers at the expense of everyone else, neither of which are likely to be terribly fun for you.

[Count Chocula]

Hmm..this may be a sidetrack from the main topic, but I'm going to quote a passage from Robert A. Heinlein with which I wholeheartedly agree (thank God The Maker myself I finally brought my books in from the garage and organized them). I believe it has bearing on the discussion.

From Expanded Universe, by Robert Heinlein:

Patriotism is the most practical of all human characteristics.
...
But patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of a man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.
A man who is not patriotic is an evolutionary dead end. This is not sentiment but the hardest sort of logic.
....

From Expanded Universe, by Robert Heinlein:

We have two situations, mutually exclusive: Mankind surviving, and mankind extinct. With respect to morality, the second situation is a null class. An extinct breed has no behavior, moral or otherwise.
Since survival is the sine qua non, I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." ....
We are now ready to observe the hierarchy of moral behavior from its lowest level to its highest.
The simplest form of moral behavior occurs when a man or other animal fights for his own survival. Do not belittle such behavior as being merely selfish. Of course it is selfish...but selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative....
The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she'll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college - and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child...and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.
The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for a group larger than the unit family - an extended family, a herd, a tribe - and take another look at that baboon on watch; he's at that moral level....
The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called "patriotism."
....(on to page 467)
Patriotism - An abstract word used to describe a type of behavior as harshly practical as good brakes and good tires. It means that you place the welfare of your nation ahead of your own even if it costs you your life.
Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behaviour tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "Women and children first!" [emphasis added]
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on...as long as the women and children are saved. But if you fail to save the women and children, you've had it, you're done, you're through! You join tyrannosaurus rex, one more breed that bilged its final test.

Mr. Heinlein was addressing a graduating class of the US Naval Academy in this speech, hence his emphasis on patriotism. Tying it into Surlethe's original proposition, I believe that morality is relative, but that at its fundamentals all enduring moral systems are based upon the survival of the local group as a bedrock proposition. In other words, it's a Darwinian trait that manifests itself in different ways in different places and times. For Neolithic tribesmen, morality consisted of anything that allowed the clan/tribe to survive against other tribes and the environment. For "nuclear" families, morality consists of behaviors and actions that allow for the survival and development of the husband, wife and children, with survival i.e. food on the table taking priority. Patriotism, by extension, comprises that set of behaviors and actions that ensures the survival and development of states.

In my opinion, ALL of the above descriptions leave tremendous leeway for individual peccadillos, quirks, and nonsensical behavior...as long as the primary imperative of survival is obeyed.

EDIT fixed a couple spelling goofs.

[Alyrium Denryle]

It is a naturalistic fallacy to assume that the premise is any less arbitrary than any other premise just because it is based on natural laws, or in the case of your argument, the way you believe the human mind works (which is really just another case of "because it is based on natural laws").

Except I am not using it to justify an ethical argument. I have not once in this discussion declared any particular system to be correct (because it is based on natural laws). Rather, I am attempting to show how ethics are the result of natural laws, and how given this, we can understand and describe ethics (rather than justify or prescribe, as to do that WOULD be a naturalistic fallacy. I do not think ethical systems can be justified externally, save to determine whether they are adaptive or maladaptive given an environment)

A) What's the point of even saying this? Cognitive processes put in place by evolution are what drive all our decision-making period. Regardless of whether it is ethical or unethical.

making sure we are on the same page

B) There is ample evidence that we are heavily influenced by unconscious instincts. However, you are assuming without evidence that we are entirely controlled by such instincts, with zero rational input. If that is the case, how is it possible for someone to rationally arrive at an ethical conclusion which is contradicted by his subjective feelings? How is it possible for someone to declare that something which disgusts him and strikes him as wrong is nevertheless morally acceptable?

Actually no, I am not assuming it without evidence. I will need to dig up the relevant papers that go into it (for that I will need to talk to a neuro-cognitive psychologist friend of mine, as I dont have the references handy), but suffice to say (until I get the papers, writing a note reminding me to do so BTW) that it is well accepted in cognitive science that on the spot decisions are made (outside of thought experiment anyway) prior to the conscious awareness of them. This precludes rational thought as being a deciding factor.

It is different in thought experiment because you are doing much more of the processing using abstraction, where rational thought comes into play much more. However that is not actually an ethical decision. It is a simulated one. It is the difference between believing that cheating on your spouse is wrong when someone asks you the question, and having a hot chick come up to you in a bar when you are away on business.

You might use the counter-example of homosexuality, where someone might be asked to vote on the matter. However even when you are voting all you are really doing is a thought experiment you are asked to commit to. The abstract thought and the systematization of an ethical system that more often than not produces results in agreement with the decision you would make without it come into play more strongly.

These decisions are also an exercise in trade offs between competing impulses. You might be disgusted by homosexuality (to continue the prior example), and would feel revolted if a gay guy came up to you and wanted to put you in a leather harness for a night. You might feel the urge to assault the individual (not saying you do, but it is a good example). However your brain evaluates the risk (you might be ostracized, or thrown in prison, or he could fight back), vs the benefit (no real concrete benefit, unless you stand to gain social status), and gives you the answer. No. You then rationalize the decision using abstraction.

You identify the is/ought fallacy earlier, but you seem to be employing it in spades. Your post is completely filled with descriptions of how you believe the human mind to work when it is constructing ethical systems, which has nothing to do with the question of whether one ethical system is better than another.

That is because I am rejecting the question as being impossible to objectively evaluate, unless you accept that ethics are adaptive and evaluate them in terms of fitness.

Explaining why you think the way you do is completely irrelevant to the question of whether you should be arriving at that conclusion, which is the question of ethics. To connect the two is a naturalistic fallacy.

To say "Z should be Y" is to accept a metaphysical premise that I do not. As the OP stated, you must be able to justify that externally, by appealing to some other principle, or entity, otherwise you are just being circular. In other words, to have an absolutist ethical system you MUST have some sort of teleos in the universe, or a metaphysical ideal which we can treat as self-evidently good. I reject this notion. I also however reject the notion that ethics are relative and arbitrary. If they were this, they would effectively be random... Instead they display the characteristics of adaptations, many features of which are convergent due to common selective pressures. They need not be justified or evaluated as anything other than that. To try would be a fools errand for reasons you, others, and myself have pointed out.

Because you say so?

It follows from my premises.

[Darth Wong]

From Expanded Universe, by Robert Heinlein:

Patriotism is the most practical of all human characteristics.
...
But patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of a man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.
A man who is not patriotic is an evolutionary dead end. This is not sentiment but the hardest sort of logic.
....

Heinlein is full of shit here. Nation-states are not necessarily species. There is no species line between one nation-state and another on the Earth today. Intermarriage and immigration occur routinely. The analogy to evolution is only applicable if one envisions nations as Nazi-style race-states.

From Expanded Universe, by Robert Heinlein:

We have two situations, mutually exclusive: Mankind surviving, and mankind extinct. With respect to morality, the second situation is a null class. An extinct breed has no behavior, moral or otherwise.
Since survival is the sine qua non, I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." ....

Thoroughly irrelevant to a situation where the survival of humankind is not at stake.

We are now ready to observe the hierarchy of moral behavior from its lowest level to its highest.
The simplest form of moral behavior occurs when a man or other animal fights for his own survival. Do not belittle such behavior as being merely selfish. Of course it is selfish...but selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative....
The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she'll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college - and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child...and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.
The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for a group larger than the unit family - an extended family, a herd, a tribe - and take another look at that baboon on watch; he's at that moral level....
The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called "patriotism."
....(on to page 467)
Patriotism - An abstract word used to describe a type of behavior as harshly practical as good brakes and good tires. It means that you place the welfare of your nation ahead of your own even if it costs you your life.

Except that this is not patriotism, at least in the modern sense of the word. Modern patriotism is about placing the welfare of your nation ahead of not only your own, but also the welfare of all the rest of humanity. In other words, it's nothing more than glorified tribalism.

Mr. Heinlein was addressing a graduating class of the US Naval Academy in this speech, hence his emphasis on patriotism. Tying it into Surlethe's original proposition, I believe that morality is relative, but that at its fundamentals all enduring moral systems are based upon the survival of the local group as a bedrock proposition.

And just how "local" should that group be? A geographical region? A nation-state? A race? A tribe? A religion?

In other words, it's a Darwinian trait that manifests itself in different ways in different places and times. For Neolithic tribesmen, morality consisted of anything that allowed the clan/tribe to survive against other tribes and the environment. For "nuclear" families, morality consists of behaviors and actions that allow for the survival and development of the husband, wife and children, with survival i.e. food on the table taking priority. Patriotism, by extension, comprises that set of behaviors and actions that ensures the survival and development of states.

Ethics as practiced historically do fall into this mould. The question is whether they should continue being moulded along "in-group" vs "out-group" competition lines in future. The supremacy of the local group may be the driving force behind many of our ethics codes, but it is also the driving force behind many of mankind's historical atrocities.

[Darth Wong]

I have not once in this discussion declared any particular system to be correct (because it is based on natural laws). Rather, I am attempting to show how ethics are the result of natural laws, and how given this, we can understand and describe ethics (rather than justify or prescribe, as to do that WOULD be a naturalistic fallacy.

So you're saying that your entire contribution to this thread has been intentionally irrelevant to the conundrum we are asked to address in the OP? Forgive me for assuming that you were actually trying to say something relevant, instead of basically tossing long-winded red-herrings into the discussion.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I have not once in this discussion declared any particular system to be correct (because it is based on natural laws). Rather, I am attempting to show how ethics are the result of natural laws, and how given this, we can understand and describe ethics (rather than justify or prescribe, as to do that WOULD be a naturalistic fallacy.

So you're saying that your entire contribution to this thread has been intentionally irrelevant to the conundrum we are asked to address in the OP? Forgive me for assuming that you were actually trying to say something relevant, instead of basically tossing long-winded red-herrings into the discussion.

The question essentially was, how we deal with the infinite regress of justifying ethical positions. I have given you how I deal with it, by rejecting absolutist ethics in favor of something I think is more tenable. The OP does not ask us to take a position on an ethical system as such, or to evaluate an ethical argument based upon one. Therefore, my contribution is not irrelevant.

[Count Chocula]

Thoroughly irrelevant to a situation where the survival of humankind is not at stake.

I snipped RAH's prior paragraphs. What he had posited prior to my quote was that individuals die, but the human species as a whole does not have to die, unlike the dinosaurs (which, as far as we know, operated instinctually and had little ability to adapt to catastrophes). From there, Heinlein took the personal urge for survival into the levels of abstraction, i.e. towns, cities, states, societies we have today.

Except that this is not patriotism, at least in the modern sense of the word. Modern patriotism is about placing the welfare of your nation ahead of not only your own, but also the welfare of all the rest of humanity. In other words, it's nothing more than glorified tribalism.

I disagree with you here. Also, this speech was given in 1973, when the Vietnam war was still a festering psychic wound and the Cold War was still in full swing. I see where you're coming from, but patriotism in most places I've read entails placing the welfare of your state ahead of whoever your current enemy was. For John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson et al it was their fellow colonials vs. England. For the Tories, many of whom moved to Canada, the enemy of their tribe was the colonials. For the Vietnamese, the welfare of fellow Vietnamese against the French took precedence. IMO, all patriotism has its roots in tribalism, just of an expanded nature; however, except for extreme examples (like Nazi Germany) it's rarely been an "us against the world" mindset.

And just how "local" should that group be? A geographical region? A nation-state? A race? A tribe? A religion?

You raise a good question, and one for which I don't have a ready answer. Speculating, I'd say that the overall "group" is defined by the extent of communication and ease of travel an extended group has, along with geographic barriers and military capability to keep other tribes at bay. You can see it in the US' southern borders, where there's really been no real estate worth arguing over since the 1800s (the Rio Grande river is an arbitrary, not practical, barrier to transit), its northern borders where the Great Lakes limited the influence of competing governments and where differing cultures to the north and south of the arbitrary Great Lakes lines were drawn limited common interests, and in Europe where geography dominated the formation of states (Switzerland being a good example). The only place my speculation falls apart is the Middle East, but most of those states' borders were a result of WW I and little good has come of the Western partition of the ME.

Ethics as practiced historically do fall into this mould. The question is whether they should continue being moulded along "in-group" vs "out-group" competition lines in future. The supremacy of the local group may be the driving force behind many of our ethics codes, but it is also the driving force behind many of mankind's historical atrocities.

I can't really disagree with you there. The big question is, how to eliminate the "out-group"? All of recorded history chronicles the struggle of group against group. Even positing that the Western standard of living and wealth is the ne plus ultra of Earthly life, there will still be significantly large populations that disagree with that proposition and will fight the notion. We in the West won't give up our standard of living willingly, and I suspect that millions of people in Japan, India, China, Russia and elsewhere wouldn't want that outcome either. I am obviously making a reference to Muslim Luddites in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudia Arabia, and Indonesia who are being rather...intransigent in their beliefs. While it may be a nice idea to consider, I don't see competition between groups/tribes/nations dying out in my lifetime.

[Samuel]

but the human species as a whole does not have to die, unlike the dinosaurs (which, as far as we know, operated instinctually and had little ability to adapt to catastrophes).

You do know humanity almost went extinct in the past? We went through a bootleneck with only about a thousand people surviving to pass on their genes- it is the reason humans have such a low genetic diversity.

If we had to face what dinosaurs had to face at that time, there wouldn't be a human race.

From there, Heinlein took the personal urge for survival into the levels of abstraction, i.e. towns, cities, states, societies we have today.

Except they are just that- abstract ideas. Why should they have any survival value.

I see where you're coming from, but patriotism in most places I've read entails placing the welfare of your state ahead of whoever your current enemy was.

What if the state is wrong?

I say that the overall "group" is defined by the extent of communication and ease of travel an extended group has, along with geographic barriers and military capability to keep other tribes at bay.

there will still be significantly large populations that disagree with that proposition and will fight the notion.

The Taliban were so influential on the world stage only one other country on Earth granted them diplomatic recognition. Don't overstate the amount of luddites in the world.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

It might not be a Scientific De-Construction of Moral precepts, but Surlethe, I'd personally recommend the works of Albert Camus, in particular The Myth of Sisyphus. He does the best job I've seen of exploring the meaning of life in a Universe which lacks meaning, and comes to a positive result (well, that's not entirely true. Nietzche is the most inspiring and rousing thinker on finding morality in a Universe without one, and he was a great and witty writer, but his philosophy itself is still rather rough). I mean, hell, I could recommend a slew of Absurdist and Positivist philosophical works to you that I think may contain what you're needing, but if you can find a good translation, Camus is the most useful and least verbose of the 20th Century's great revolution in Atheist philosophy, in my opinion. If you do want strictly Philosophy of Science, Popper, of course, is your main man.

[darthdavid]

I don't see competition between groups/tribes/nations dying out in my lifetime.

Is=Ought Fallacy.