Question about secular morality

[Darth Wong]

Again with the antiquities. This is not a museum or a pawn shop. Antiquity does not automatically confer value, and name-dropping does not do so either.

Please. The last thing I would do is name-drop ancient philosophers to get e-cred, especially on a forum as pro-modern as this is. I'm only doing it because I feel it's an important point.

How is it important? You just keep harping on how long it's been around, how much influence it's had on our history, etc. How does that mean anything in terms of validity? I hear the exact same argument for religious nonsense all the time.

That is a natural imperative, not a moral claim. No one needs moral codes in order to want survival. Morality is necessary in order to compel people to act in a manner contrary to their individualistic desires, not consistent with them. No one needs a morality code to tell them to look out for their self-interest.

Never in all of my reading on politics and philosophy have I come across the term "natural imperative." Is that your coinage (I assume it refers to survivalistic impulse)? That aside, self-interest is infinitely complex, and may or may not include survival. Many people would rather die than live a certain type of life; how do you account for these types?

Appealing to anomalies in order to justify your opinion now? You know perfectly well that primates generally want to survive, and you're just trying to draw attention away from the point I made about how you don't need a morality code to tell you to do what you already want to do. If you had a rebuttal to that, you would have given it.

Try and divorce the names of these figures (that you clearly dislike) from the arguments I'm making. P**** offers up an example of how you can have a moral conversation without free-will. But we can use other philosophers as well. Nietzsche would argue that only those who are driven by the will to truth can really approach "true" philosophy. Again, this is very elitist and highly deterministic, but there's still a potential moral order for certain people.

I don't think you understand what's wrong with name-dropping. You're still doing it; you're referring to stuff they said without even bothering to paraphrase it or try to justify it. Try to tell me how anyone can read through that paragraph and find an actual argument relating to your claim that individualistic morality is a good thing.

Not to sound like a broken record (and only a dozen posts into my usership, dear oh dear), but you should check out Daybreak if you want an influential account of morality. It's Nietzsche, which means it's relevant to all modern thought.

And you're doing it yet again. A real argument is not "check out what this guy said". Do you seriously not understand that?

[Darth Wong]

So you adopt a conclusion because it is convenient for one of your other conclusions? Do you realize how irrational that is?

It is simple logic. I've tied free will and morality together: if free will doesn't exist, neither does morality. Thus, if morality does exist, then free will must also exist.

No, you admitted that you changed your mind on free will because it was necessary for your preferred approach to morality. That is the classic appeal to consequence.

Which, of course, brings us to:

If you accept that morality codes are simply a social governing mechanism, then you would understand you don't need to invent some metaphysical notion of "free will" in order to have morality.

I can see how that system works, but I don't see any reason to call it 'morality'. You'd just be describing a self-correcting system there, not making a guideline for individual choices.

In other words, you admit that it works, and that it does not require the made-up and ill-defined extra term of "free will", but you just don't like it. And then you declare that a social governance system cannot guide individual choices, even though it can. Legalism is an obvious example of such a system. It's not my preferred moral system, but it certainly puts the lie to your statement that a social governing mechanism cannot guide individual choices.

I don't know much about that stupid book learning, but I'm going to read some other philosophers' opinions on this and see what kinds of arguments and definitions they give before carrying on.

A fine idea, but if you extract any ideas from your reading, please describe those ideas here instead of simply name-dropping as Legault insists on doing.

[Legault]

How is it important? You just keep harping on how long it's been around, how much influence it's had on our history, etc. How does that mean anything in terms of validity? I hear the exact same argument for religious nonsense all the time.

It was a recommendation, nothing more. (Well, that's not entirely true. There's a small burden of proof issue, which I'll get to later.)

Appealing to anomalies in order to justify your opinion now? You know perfectly well that primates generally want to survive, and you're just trying to draw attention away from the point I made about how you don't need a morality code to tell you to do what you already want to do. If you had a rebuttal to that, you would have given it.

Hume makes the distinction between an "is" (matter-of-fact) and an "ought" (moral obligation), and it'll be useful to bring up that distinction now. The fact that animals are more likely to survive and reproduce without pursuing moral truth is an "is"; whether or not we, as a species, should follow this crudely survivalistic approach is an "ought." Otherwise, what you're arguing is as follows: most primates want to survive, therefore we should want to survive, which is obviously fallacious.

I don't think you understand what's wrong with name-dropping. You're still doing it; you're referring to stuff they said without even bothering to paraphrase it or try to justify it. Try to tell me how anyone can read through that paragraph and find an actual argument relating to your claim that individualistic morality is a good thing.

And here we get to that burden-of-proof thing I mentioned earlier. The entire Western tradition of value theory has been grounded in the idea that morality is individualistic, and in many places it supports the idea that there can be moral discussion without free will. Plato does this (in his argument that there is an intelligible moral order accessible only to a select few), as does Nietzsche (in his argument that there is a will to truth available only in a select few). Let me suggest that, even excluding these positions, if you're going to be a contrarian to the entire tradition of Western philosophy, then maybe you're the one who should be offering up examples first?

And you're doing it yet again. A real argument is not "check out what this guy said". Do you seriously not understand that?

He said he was going to read up on philosophers' definitions; I gave him a recommendation entirely independent of our discussion. Relax.

[Darth Wong]

Hume makes the distinction between an "is" (matter-of-fact) and an "ought" (moral obligation), and it'll be useful to bring up that distinction now. The fact that animals are more likely to survive and reproduce without pursuing moral truth is an "is"; whether or not we, as a species, should follow this crudely survivalistic approach is an "ought." Otherwise, what you're arguing is as follows: most primates want to survive, therefore we should want to survive, which is obviously fallacious.

Wow. You flunk reading comprehension 101. You actually interpreted my statement exactly backward. I was saying that you don't need a morality code to tell you to do what you already want to do. In other words, a morality code must give you different motivations than the ones you naturally have, otherwise it's pointless. You somehow interpreted this as me saying that "is" and "ought" are the same thing, when it actually means the opposite: that "ought" is pointless unless it differs from "is".

And here we get to that burden-of-proof thing I mentioned earlier. The entire Western tradition of value theory has been grounded in the idea that morality is individualistic, and in many places it supports the idea that there can be moral discussion without free will. Plato does this (in his argument that there is an intelligible moral order accessible only to a select few), as does Nietzsche (in his argument that there is a will to truth available only in a select few). Let me suggest that, even excluding these positions, if you're going to be a contrarian to the entire tradition of Western philosophy, then maybe you're the one who should be offering up examples first?

Do you not understand the distinction between claims and arguments? You are describing claims, not arguments. An argument starts with premises, and then develops conclusions. The statement "there is a will to truth that few understand" is not an argument. It is a claim. History is full of profound-sounding but scientifically unintelligible claims, and "will to truth" is a fine example of that.

[Darth Wong]

In other words, you admit that it works, and that it does not require the made-up and ill-defined extra term of "free will", but you just don't like it. And then you declare that a social governance system cannot guide individual choices, even though it can.

Here's the way I see it: if there's no free will, there are no individual choices to guide. Obviously, the might of society can guide choices if we have free will.... but if we don't, there's no such thing as a choice!

How do you define "choice"? Is there some metaphysical component of your definition? To me (and the Merriam-Webster dictionary), a choice is a selection. A selection can be made by a person, an animal, or a computer, based on the inputs available to each.

A computer processor can guide what branch of execution a program takes, but that doesn't mean the program actually made a choice. It just did what the transistor physics determined it would do.

No, it made a choice according to the dictionary definition. So please, explain what definition you're using.

In a universe without free will, we're all the same as those computer programs. We don't make choices - the system just is the way it is.

And this makes you uncomfortable, hence you reject any argument that might take you down this path? For that matter, how do you define "we" or "me", since you are still making choices according to the dictionary definition? Again, I have to ask if there is some metaphysical component to your definition of the word "choice".

Which brings us back to the original question: why should I follow it? The answer I gave earlier in this thread is "just because I should". I reject morality based on "because the system will force you to do it".

"I reject" is a personal value judgement, not an argument.

[Legault]

Wow. You flunk reading comprehension 101. You actually interpreted my statement exactly backward. I was saying that you don't need a morality code to tell you to do what you already want to do. In other words, a morality code must give you different motivations than the ones you naturally have, otherwise it's pointless. You somehow interpreted this as me saying that "is" and "ought" are the same thing, when it actually means the opposite: that "ought" is pointless unless it differs from "is".

Sorry, but that's not what you've been implying this entire topic. Your points about morality only being social and survivalistically-determined suggest a more humanistic morality. But if you want to clarify that hasn't been your position after all, then I'll gladly step back.

Still, I'm not entirely sure I understand this new definition, either. So morality must be reformative? That goes back to your morality-must-be-social thing, but it also isn't what people usually mean by "morality." If you look at someone like Nehamas (another name drop! but don't worry, I'm going to tell you exactly what he argues), he adopts a pretty common position that life is like literature, and morality is self-imposed to "paint" ourselves (translation: live and thrive) in a certain way. This has nothing at all to do with survival or evolution, but rather existential meaning and comfort.

Like I said, I may just need some more clarification on what you're getting at. As someone who's flunked Reading Comprehension 101, you may need to be patient.

Do you not understand the distinction between claims and arguments? You are describing claims, not arguments. An argument starts with premises, and then develops conclusions.

No. You're referring to formal/logical arguments, which make up a microscopic fraction of the Western philosophy canon. Not employing abstract figures within a syllogistic format doesn't mean it's not an argument.

The statement "there is a will to truth that few understand" is not an argument. It is a claim. History is full of profound-sounding but scientifically unintelligible claims, and "will to truth" is a fine example of that.

Let me unpackage this a little. By "scientifically unintelligible," what you really mean is "non-empirical." And by suggesting that this doesn't count as an argument, what you really mean by "non-empirical" is "not related to truth." In other words, then, you're presenting a metaphysical picture of the world as one where the "true world" is a causal-mechanistic reality, and all the rest is poetic flourish. Care to back this up?

[Darth Wong]

Wow. You flunk reading comprehension 101. You actually interpreted my statement exactly backward. I was saying that you don't need a morality code to tell you to do what you already want to do. In other words, a morality code must give you different motivations than the ones you naturally have, otherwise it's pointless. You somehow interpreted this as me saying that "is" and "ought" are the same thing, when it actually means the opposite: that "ought" is pointless unless it differs from "is".

Sorry, but that's not what you've been implying this entire topic. Your points about morality only being social and survivalistically-determined suggest a more humanistic morality. But if you want to clarify that hasn't been your position after all, then I'll gladly step back.

"implying?" "more humanistic"? You're searching for a label with which to categorize what I'm saying, rather than just looking at what I'm saying?

Still, I'm not entirely sure I understand this new definition, either. So morality must be reformative? That goes back to your morality-must-be-social thing, but it also isn't what people usually mean by "morality." If you look at someone like Nehamas (another name drop! but don't worry, I'm going to tell you exactly what he argues), he adopts a pretty common position that life is like literature, and morality is self-imposed to "paint" ourselves (translation: live and thrive) in a certain way. This has nothing at all to do with survival or evolution, but rather existential meaning and comfort.

Define "existential meaning". We're talking about moral codes, and moral codes are simply behavioural rules. They're not there to give you meaning in your life; they're there to tell you what you can and can't do.

Like I said, I may just need some more clarification on what you're getting at. As someone who's flunked Reading Comprehension 101, you may need to be patient.

Do you not understand the distinction between claims and arguments? You are describing claims, not arguments. An argument starts with premises, and then develops conclusions.

No. You're referring to formal/logical arguments, which make up a microscopic fraction of the Western philosophy canon. Not employing abstract figures within a syllogistic format doesn't mean it's not an argument.

Logical arguments make up 100% of the parts of the western philosophy canon which is concerned with establishing that something is logical. Illogical arguments merely lower the signal to noise ratio.

The statement "there is a will to truth that few understand" is not an argument. It is a claim. History is full of profound-sounding but scientifically unintelligible claims, and "will to truth" is a fine example of that.

Let me unpackage this a little. By "scientifically unintelligible," what you really mean is "non-empirical." And by suggesting that this doesn't count as an argument, what you really mean by "non-empirical" is "not related to truth." In other words, then, you're presenting a metaphysical picture of the world as one where the "true world" is a causal-mechanistic reality, and all the rest is poetic flourish. Care to back this up?

I have to back up the statement that if it doesn't appear to exist in our empirical reality, then we can ignore it? I have to back up the idea that we should not be making decisions in objective reality based on metaphysical nonsense? I can back it up with Occam's Razor, but you've already established that you don't think much of logic.

[Darth Wong]

By the way Legault, I hope you realize that it's rather obvious that you intend to insist on injecting metaphysical and religious thinking into this discussion, even though the whole point of it, as stated at the outset, is to discuss secular morality. You're now at the point where you're demanding that I "back up" my rejection of that which is unscientific: a classic anti-science dog-whistle.

[K. A. Pital]

Instinct does not mean "intra-species uniformity". Individual members of a species can have a range of traits, even genetically. Instinct can also interact with environment and history to produce various results.

I realize this. But the way Stas is using it is as a hand-waiving device to essentially dismiss the entire field of animal cognition and behavioral biology. I was just driving his logic towards its natural conclusion, which is absurd. Honestly, 'instinct' is not very commonly used by biologists anymore, since it has such loaded implications.

I'm not dismissing animal cognition as much as I'm doubting animal cognition has abstract thinking. It is undeniable that as far as concrete thinking goes, animals have a social environment and quite possibly behavioural codes.

The difference, obviously, is that animals are incapable (except maybe for some higher primates, and we're still discussing that as far as I know) of abstract thinking. Human "moral codes" (which are essentially glorified rules for regulating social relations as well as man-nature relations, and nothing more) are not viable without abstract thinking.

Which makes it quite reasonable to say that a concept such as morality, which is usually applied to human social codes exclusively, has no meaning outside a human society.

I didn't bring up feral children for no reason. They are a prime example of what happens when humans go down to the animal level of social codes. One of the hardest issues with feral children (those who had been long enough in the wild) is that they utterly fail at abstract thinking. Sometimes to such an extent as to be unable to learn the language. And we all know that without abstract thinking, learning human languages both written and spoken is an insurmountable task.

This is what my point was about. Am I clear?

[Ziggy Stardust]

The difference, obviously, is that animals are incapable (except maybe for some higher primates, and we're still discussing that as far as I know) of abstract thinking.

Primates, some species of bird, and octopi have all demonstrated a certain degree of abstract thinking. The problem with your premise is it inherently assumes a binary nature of abstract thinking; you have it or you don't. When, in reality, there is more likely a wide continuum of cognitive functions, just as there is for other "components" of intelligence, such as language. Other animals don't demonstrate it to the same level or proficiency we do, but we can still demonstrate creative problem solving, causal reasoning, meta-awareness ... hell, there is some (albeit not entirely reliable) evidence that birds are capable of understanding the concept of "0".

I didn't bring up feral children for no reason. They are a prime example of what happens when humans go down to the animal level of social codes. One of the hardest issues with feral children (those who had been long enough in the wild) is that they utterly fail at abstract thinking. Sometimes to such an extent as to be unable to learn the language.

Do you have any evidence of these assertions? What feral children are you talking about, that they are unable to learn language and kill indiscriminately, as you said earlier? Because this flies in the fact of virtually all the infant cognition research of the past couple of decades. There is plenty of evidence that young children develop rudimentary ethical judgments before extensive social learning, and a quick Google search doesn't find any "feral children" that were never reacclimatized to society.

And we all know that without abstract thinking, learning human languages both written and spoken is an insurmountable task.

What about chimps learning sign language? Or Alex the African gray? Mimicry is one thing, but there are animals that have demonstrated the ability to learn very rudimentary rules and patterns of human language. How does your theory account for this?

----------------------------------------------------

Here's the way I see it: if there's no free will, there are no individual choices to guide. Obviously, the might of society can guide choices if we have free will.... but if we don't, there's no such thing as a choice!

A computer processor can guide what branch of execution a program takes, but that doesn't mean the program actually made a choice. It just did what the transistor physics determined it would do.

In a universe without free will, we're all the same as those computer programs. We don't make choices - the system just is the way it is.

Which brings us back to the original question: why should I follow it? The answer I gave earlier in this thread is "just because I should". I reject morality based on "because the system will force you to do it".

First of all, I assume since you didn't respond at all to my previous post that you concede all of those previous arguments. Concession accepted.

Second of all, how exactly do you define "free will"? Do you realize that just because a system is non-deterministic that it isn't impossible to model? Or has no structure?

[K. A. Pital]

Primates, some species of bird, and octopi have all demonstrated a certain degree of abstract thinking. The problem with your premise is it inherently assumes a binary nature of abstract thinking; you have it or you don't. When, in reality, there is more likely a wide continuum of cognitive functions, just as there is for other "components" of intelligence, such as language. Other animals don't demonstrate it to the same level or proficiency we do, but we can still demonstrate creative problem solving, causal reasoning, meta-awareness ... hell, there is some (albeit not entirely reliable) evidence that birds are capable of understanding the concept of "0".

It does not assume a "binary function", but let me make it clear - there is a wide gap between the human capabilities for abstract thinking and the typical animal ones. It is very wide, like I said, and the only bridging examples are centered around higher primates. The other animals have undeveloped abstract thinking. Their level is too lackluster to support an abstract moral code. And human moral codes are abstract systems. They're systems often made entirely of abstractions. Humanity has advanced far beyond the concrete thinking phase. Animals are still there, and you can't really say their moral systems are based on a collection of abstract concepts, can you?

Do you have any evidence of these assertions? What feral children are you talking about, that they are unable to learn language and kill indiscriminately, as you said earlier? Because this flies in the fact of virtually all the infant cognition research of the past couple of decades. There is plenty of evidence that young children develop rudimentary ethical judgments before extensive social learning, and a quick Google search doesn't find any "feral children" that were never reacclimatized to society.

Reacclimatization is long, it proceeds painfully and sometimes the child fails to learn the language (the degree of isolation and length of isolation from human society also matters a lot; the case of Victor of Avalon seems to indicate that even while gaining concrete sympathies, language remained an insurmountable barrier.Even a cursory google search reveals that this is not a lone case:

Shepherds found a naked boy aged about five in 1971, cowering in a cave in the Abruzzi Mountains of central Italy. Doctors believed he had been abandoned as a baby and brought up by mountain goats or wolves. He was named Rocco. Various families tried without success to ‘domesticate’ him, after which he was placed in a psychiatric hospital near Milan. He had not learned to talk and was still eating with his hands. He walked on all fours and liked to be stroked – but retreated snarling into corners when frightened.

The children do not "kill indiscriminately", but certainly while being brought upon among pack animals they would sometimes attack people indiscriminately, like it happened with the infamous Moscow wolf-boy.

What about chimps learning sign language? Or Alex the African gray? Mimicry is one thing, but there are animals that have demonstrated the ability to learn very rudimentary rules and patterns of human language. How does your theory account for this?

I think the estimates made by psychologists (especially in the case of Alex, who was estimated to be at the level of a child few years old) are correct. The problem is also that children at a young age often fail at abstract thinking, too. So I'm not sure how this contradicts what I said. And chimps (and higher primates in general) obviously can have a more advanced type of abstract thinking than most other animals - hell, I mentioned it in the very post above. After all, apes are our closest species if we consider society.

And I would not be surprised if ape tribes actually have rudimentary moral systems, which are a mixture between the concrete-thinking plain empathy and abstract concepts. I would presume they are sufficiently advanced for that. Likewise the brains of smarter birds. As we now know, the size of brain is not the issue, rather, the complexity and ability to execute certain functions relevant to abstract thinking.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Go to hell, you stupid piece of shit. Some of us have actual things to do or prefer to sleep than repeat the same thing to two different posters.

PS read my responses to Mike and see how they apply to what you said.

Your responses, both to me and Mike, are almost art, they are so bizarre. It's like an avant-garde argument, here ... the things you say to respond are so disjoint from what they are supposedly responding to that they don't really make any sense. But, still, concession accepted, this is just a strange way of avoiding an argument on your part.

A model is like applying the laws of physics to the computer processor. The computer didn't choose to do that, physics made the selection.

Once again, the point goes sailing WAAAY over your head (not to mention the definition of the word 'model'). Let's just start from the top here.

The simplest computer programs are deterministic. That is, there is no randomness involved. It will always produce the same output for any given input. However, simple computer programs are not a good model for human reasoning. Therefore, we use an arbitrarily complex computer program as a model. I am not an expert at computer science, and I don't see Starglider around here, but let's just use a very simple non-deterministic program. It is possible to embed "choice points" at certain locations in the program that control program flow, with the method of choice not specified by the programmer. The programmer can specify the number of possible alternatives, but the program itself chooses between them at run time, via some general method that is consistently applied (more sophisticated programs can change the method, as well). There are all sorts of implications for this type of programming, and ways to make it more complex, but let's keep it simple for now.

The point is, the computer program makes a choice based on its inputs. The output will not always be the same, hence non-deterministic. This is possibly the most basic type of non-determinism, by the way (unless you count random number generation). But the point remains, the program itself makes the choice, the programming language only sets the architecture and the parameters under which the choice can be made.

Now, the human brain is a very complex non-determinstic model. The neuroanatomy of the brain is set (the architecture), and the methods by which it operates (the parameters) are set, by evolution. We can't exceed the capacity of the brain that developed as a result of evolutionary pressures. Furthermore, there are specific areas of the brain that are associated with choosing between alternatives, and weighing the options of each. Although situations differ, our brain uses the same general method for choosing. It all has to do with the weight of certain stimuli as your brain processes them; the type of choice might involve input from different parts of the brain or body, but the actual method of choice is general, not specific. In fact, because the method is general, and predictable, it is possible to trick the brain in all sorts of ways (for example, right-handed people will usually choose their right-hand if asked to randomly use one ... however, through the introduction of certain stimuli that obfuscate the decision making process, it is possible to "make" them choose their left-hand, although they will still feel as if they made the choice freely. More details here). This isn't the only example of this. Since it is possible to predictably "trick" people into choosing a certain output by controlling the inputs, we know that there is a general method of choice, even if the model is still non-deterministic.

It is on you, now, to explain exactly what makes the latter instance, the human choice, "better" than the computer choice. Why should one be classified as free will and the other not? The selection (output) is made as a result of predictable reaction to certain factors (inputs).

[K. A. Pital]

We can't exceed the capacity of the brain that developed as a result of evolutionary pressures.

We can actually, but that requires tinkering with the brain.

[Darth Wong]

The part of the thread where Legault started spewing the usual "New Atheist dogma" anti-science bullshit has been split to Parting Shots. We've all heard the whining about the "New Atheists". I guess he figured that if he claimed to be an atheist himself, nobody would figure out what he really was. Gotta love people who pretend to be something they're obviously not.

[Channel72]

Once you accept that morality is a social construct designed for collective benefit, then you see how nihilism doesn't work at all. Nihilism asks "why should I care about morality": a question that the oxymoronically named "individualistic morality" cannot answer except by inventing Santa Claus or some other magical enforcer. But social morality has a simple answer: "we don't give a shit whether you agree; this is good for society and the majority of us who have the normal tribal sympathetic wiring, and if you don't like it, fuck you".

If you accept that morality codes are simply a social governing mechanism, then you would understand you don't need to invent some metaphysical notion of "free will" in order to have morality. Governor systems are used in all manner of technological devices without any notion of free will. Responsibility is therefore a matter of causality, and morality is a matter of adjusting the incentive system in society to produce healthier outcomes. No need to manufacture extra terms like "free will".

These two quotes seem to sum up your position. You're basically saying that morality is simply an emergent property among social animals that naturally governs behavior towards group fitness. Well... yeah, I agree. Does anyone in this thread actually disagree with this?

But like I said in my post earlier, that's an interesting and important anthropological observation, which explains a great deal of human behavior. But this merely explains why humans tend to care about moral codes. It doesn't explain why any particular individual should continue being moral, except to dismiss the question as irrelevant.

But it's NOT an irrelevant question, because the reality is that most people are often selfish assholes who are more interested in their personal well-being (or that of their immediate family) than with the fitness of their "group", especially when their "group" is a large-scale, impersonal society consisting of millions of people who they don't know.

Now, you're saying that this thinking is backwards, and humans should be more concerned with group fitness. Well, yeah... that would be nice. But that goes way beyond the scope of defining "secular morality" - it basically involves rewiring the entire human species. The problem is that morality emerged as a governing mechanism among social groups where the "group" consisted of a small tribe of hunter-gatherers, meaning that there was more of an overlap between "group fitness" and "individual fitness". In large-scale, modern societies, "group fitness" and "individual fitness" are often at odds with each other, and localized acts of individual immorality have a negiligible impact on the overall functioning of the society. So it's easier for any given individual to come to value "individual fitness" over "group fitness", and thus behave immorally by fucking over other people, or ignoring responsibilities to the group.

[Darth Wong]

These two quotes seem to sum up your position. You're basically saying that morality is simply an emergent property of social animals that naturally governs behavior towards group fitness. Well... yeah, I agree. Does anyone in this thread actually disagree with this?

Well, Legault disagreed quite heatedly with it, but as it turned out, he was just a troll pushing an anti-science pro-religion agenda so that's no surprise. But D13 is also quite stubbornly arguing that you need something called "free will" in order to have morality.

But like I said in my post earlier, that's an interesting and important anthropological observation, which explains a great deal of human behavior. But this merely explains why humans tend to care about moral codes. It doesn't explain why any particular individual should continue being moral, except to dismiss the question as irrelevant.

Doesn't it? We evolved to be the way we are. A lot of our behavoural traits are largely instinctive, despite what D13 claims. Those emergent social codes became programmed into the species over very long periods of time. We have an instinct for sympathy because people who lacked sympathy had a collective group survival disadvantage in the stone age.

But it's NOT an irrelevant question, because the reality is that most people are often selfish assholes who are more interested in their personal well-being (or that of their immediate family) than with the fitness of their "group", especially when their "group" is a large-scale, impersonal society consisting of millions of people who they don't know.

Right, which is why we don't rely entirely on the collective and sympathetic instincts that most people have. We also rely on group coercion.

Now, you're saying that this thinking is backwards, and humans should be more concerned with group fitness. Well, yeah... that would be nice. But that goes way beyond the scope of defining "secular morality" - it basically involves rewiring the entire human species. The problem is that morality emerged as a governing mechanism among social groups where the "group" consisted of a small tribe of hunter-gatherers, meaning that there was more of an overlap between "group fitness" and "individual fitness". In large-scale, modern societies, "group fitness" and "individual fitness" are often at odds with each other, and localized acts of individual immorality have a negiligible impact on the overall functioning of the society. So it's easier for any given individual to come to value "individual fitness" over "group fitness", and thus behave immorally by fucking over other people, or ignoring responsibilities to the group.

Defining the origins of morality allows us to determine what morality actually is. Once we determine what morality actually is, we can figure out how to judge one system of morality against another, in terms of performance. Otherwise, we're left with pointless and unresolvable disputes in which each system of morality is deemed to perfectly live up to its own tenets.

[Scrib]

But like I said in my post earlier, that's an interesting and important anthropological observation, which explains a great deal of human behavior. But this merely explains why humans tend to care about moral codes. It doesn't explain why any particular individual should continue being moral, except to dismiss the question as irrelevant.

Why people continue to be moral? For the same reason a trained animal will do what it's told after it's been whipped a few times. We tend to internalize certain attitudes and beliefs in childhood -or later on- that stay with us for the rest of our life, regardless of how logical it is. And while the majority of the world is selfish in some fashion as social animals we do tend to care what others think of us even if they can't affect us, we worry about their opinion and the social sanctions they can bring down on us. Basically we obey so we won't have to put up with the pressure of the group.And then there's conscience and empathy, who maintain the behavior patterns after they've sunk in. It doesn't matter how logical something sounds, if your conscience is screaming at you, you tend to be discouraged regardless of the facts. Emotions often trump facts.

And this is before we factor in people's need to maintain their worldview regardless of the 'truth' in it.

[Darth Wong]

But like I said in my post earlier, that's an interesting and important anthropological observation, which explains a great deal of human behavior. But this merely explains why humans tend to care about moral codes. It doesn't explain why any particular individual should continue being moral, except to dismiss the question as irrelevant.

Why people continue to be moral? For the same reason a trained animal will do what it's told after it's been whipped a few times. We tend to internalize certain attitudes and beliefs in childhood -or later on- that stay with us for the rest of our life, regardless of how logical it is. And while the majority of the world is selfish in some fashion as social animals we do tend to care what others think of us even if they can't affect us, we worry about their opinion and the social sanctions they can bring down on us. Basically we obey so we won't have to put up with the pressure of the group.And then there's conscience and empathy, who maintain the behavior patterns after they've sunk in. It doesn't matter how logical something sounds, if your conscience is screaming at you, you tend to be discouraged regardless of the facts. Emotions often trump facts.

And this is before we factor in people's need to maintain their worldview regardless of the 'truth' in it.

Indeed. This is why I mentioned queueing to the troll before he made it clear that he was just here to attack the "New Atheists" and not really to discuss secular morality at all.

You get annoyed when someone butts in line because you have internalized queueing. But queueing is a social construct, and not all societies do it. Some people come back from eastern european countries all flustered because nobody lines up, and people instead simply form a large mob at a ticket window or gate. We've so internalized queueing that it becomes part of our moral core, and we feel that someone is a bad person if he disregards it.

[Sarevok]

Group benefit != individuality benefit.

Logically speaking as an individual concerns for collective good does not even enter the equation when seeking maximum self benefit for minimum effort.

[Darth Wong]

You're basically saying that morality is simply an emergent property among social animals that naturally governs behavior towards group fitness. Well... yeah, I agree. Does anyone in this thread actually disagree with this?

Yes, certainly, as we all should. Why should the way nature is be an answer to the question of how things ought to be? No observations can answer that. Observations can only tell us the way things are.

You obviously don't understand the point. No one is saying that natural morality, for lack of a better term, is ideal morality. I'm just pointing out that if we look at the origins of morality, we can determine its purpose. If we can determine its purpose, then we can evaluate the performance of different morality systems against each other. The first and most difficult step in discussing morality is defining it.

Darth Wong has used all kinds of poorly defined words here: "to produce healthier outcomes". What is a healthy outcome? "collective benefit" What is the collective? What is benefit? "good for society"

That discussion is all well and good, but it's irrelevant unless you are willing to admit that morality evolved for collective survival and prosperity. If you're still stuck on this "free will" nonsense, then we have to get that out of the way first.

[Channel72]

Why should the way nature is be an answer to the question of how things ought to be? No observations can answer that. Observations can only tell us the way things are.

I said earlier that Darth Wong's comment about the origins of morality is an important anthropological observation; not a well-defined system of secular morality itself. It tells us why humans came to care about moral codes, but doesn't tell us why any particular individual should choose to continue acting morally.

But like I said in my post earlier, that's an interesting and important anthropological observation, which explains a great deal of human behavior. But this merely explains why humans tend to care about moral codes. It doesn't explain why any particular individual should continue being moral, except to dismiss the question as irrelevant.

Doesn't it? We evolved to be the way we are. A lot of our behavoural traits are largely instinctive, despite what D13 claims. Those emergent social codes became programmed into the species over very long periods of time. We have an instinct for sympathy because people who lacked sympathy had a collective group survival disadvantage in the stone age.

My argument is basically that morality as a natural governing mechanism doesn't necessarily scale when the "social group" is a civilization of millions of people who don't know each other. Morality evolved as a social governing mechanism in the context of small groups of hunter-gatherers. This mechanism probably worked well because individual fitness and group fitness were closely inter-related. But once the size and complexity of the group scales beyond a certain point (like to the city-state level, probably), individual fitness and group fitness are no longer so closely related, and in fact, are often at odds with each other. For example, if I kill a random person in a dark alley and take his money, this benefits me (because now I have more money), but harms society. Whereas, if I did that in a small hunter-gatherer tribe, it would hurt me also because now my tribe has one less person to collect food and defend itself (which adversely affects me.)

Obviously, social governing mechanisms like empathy and guilt still play an important part in enforcing moral behavior, even in a large-scale society. My point is that these mechanisms are probably significantly less effective in a large-scale society than they are in the tribal context where they evolved. This is why humans have sought to "codify" their moral sensibilities, in order to imbue these instincts with some sort of higher authority.

[Lord Zentei]

Here's the way I see it: if there's no free will, there are no individual choices to guide. Obviously, the might of society can guide choices if we have free will.... but if we don't, there's no such thing as a choice!

A computer processor can guide what branch of execution a program takes, but that doesn't mean the program actually made a choice. It just did what the transistor physics determined it would do.

In a universe without free will, we're all the same as those computer programs. We don't make choices - the system just is the way it is.

Which brings us back to the original question: why should I follow it? The answer I gave earlier in this thread is "just because I should". I reject morality based on "because the system will force you to do it".

I don't want to dogpile, so feel free to not answer, but I don't think you get where people are coming from on this. At least, based on what I understand of their arguments.

Lets instead consider a thought experiment. Suppose (hypothetically) that we manage to prove (somehow) that free will definitively does not exist. Would you conclude from this that humans ought not to be moral? I think you would probably not.

I submit that you may be using the concept of "free will" not as a description of how morality works, but as a convenient crutch, or assumption to make the justifications for moral philosophy easier. It doesn't actually deepen our understanding of the true reality. While observation may only tell us about the way things are as opposed the way things ought to be, if we make erroneous assumptions about the nature of morality, we gain a poor foundation for our philosophy.

As an aside, in the case of animals, we don't usually ascribe the quality of "free will" or comprehension of moral philosophy to them. Yet, they can be trained to behave and it is reasonable to punish them for wrongdoings. Of course, it's a far cry from animals being punished and humans taking responsibility, but to what extent is this a difference in degree and not in kind?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Say morality is a side-effect of evolution. How do you determine which effect of evolution is moral and which isn't?

Why should any effects of evolution hold any moral worth? Remember, evolution isn't a force or a power, it is simply a blanket term for a wide variety of biological processes related to the propagation of heritable traits (that is an incredibly water-down explanation, but you get the point). It is very inaccurate to talk about the morality of evolution's effects, because that is intrinsically defining it as a measurable unit. You can potentially make arguments about the morality of certain specific forces that shape genetic drift/speciation (for example, the concept of "natural selection," though Alyrium would probably rip my throat out for even mentioning that in the same sentence as evolution), but, really, this is about as helpful and informative as determining which effects of the weather are moral and which aren't.

In fact, by accepting morality is a concept shaped by evolutionary pressures, why would you even want to talk about the morality of evolution itself? Wouldn't this just lead to some useless tautologies?

[Alyrium Denryle]

In fact, by accepting morality is a concept shaped by evolutionary pressures, why would you even want to talk about the morality of evolution itself? Wouldn't this just lead to some useless tautologies?

That is exactly what it would do. Morality is nothing more than a behavioral phenotype. Nothing more. Nothing less. There is no cosmic "should". No property of the universe that demands we perform action A over Action B (and yes Destructionator, I will get to your post in the other thread. Still too busy to do much more than short blurbs though, and I think that argument is more deserving of my attention than that. Alternatively, we could transfer the discussion in here, merge the threads, or take it to the Flavian theater).

What we have been doing in the philosophical discipline of ethics for a few thousand years is deconstruct the moral values that are hard-wired into our brains, picking one, and then making a few false assumptions

1) That the universe mandates it
2) That the moral value we have chosen is somehow the only moral value that matters
3) That said moral value is universally applicable in full, with no countermanding force and no allotment for context.

We (humans), as our culture grows outside the bounds of our ancestral environment get into arguments in the margins. Abortion, human rights, all that stuff. Problems we need to solve. We look to ethical systems constructed using those false assumptions and of course, they come up wanting. None of them are congruent with what we internally consider to be a Moral Life. That is why you can always reject an ethical system, because you can always find a case--even an easily encounter-able case--where it breaks down.

What we should be doing to solve these problems is excluding the cognitive biases that get in the way (like tribalism in its various forms, attribution errors, that sort of thing. The cool part is, once we are aware of them they are trivially easy to avoid), systematizing it by applying some consistency rules (person A is no different than person B, etc), and basic logic (such as the idea that it is impossible to harm an inanimate object) and then letting out brain do its thing.

There is no Should. Morality is something that simply Is. In the same way your hair color simply Is. As we gain more information or clear up our thinking the normative solution to any given ethical problem might change (Examples. Slavery was not considered a moral problem at all really until the 18th century, racism until later, because no one thought about it, and because of cognitive biases), but that does not invalidate the existence of morality as being completely internal to the human mind.