MORALITY IS BIOLOGICAL

[ruby sparks]

Now can a chimp, or a poodle, even if is not thinking the words ‘eat, survive, reproduce’, nonetheless be experiencing oughts about these things?

I’d be inclined to say yes.

But not a didinium. I’d say a didinium is very unlikely to be having an experience of anything. Ditto a daffodil. For them the rule is just operating without them having any associated experiences about it.

And you might say that it’s got nothing to do with morals in that case. But I’m not sure about that. It might be that we humans are only mistakenly predisposed to define moral issues as ones that we happen to have the capacity to have certain experiences, thoughts or wonderings (or attitudes) about, like the man in the cartoon.

Or if that’s going too far (and I’m inclined to think it isn’t) then at least the rule is still the root or basis of what we think of as morality.

 

[Wiploc]

Are you a moral realist of some sort?

Yes. I believe some behaviors are better than others.

We all do.

I disagree.

That doesn't make you a moral realist (in the, technical, philosophical sense).

Then I'm a moral realist in a non-technical non-philosophical sense.

Here's a bit of detail:  Moral Realism

That leaves me brain dead.

 

[rousseau]

I'm struggling with the term 'moral fact'. Not in a combative way, but I wonder what the definition would be.

'Morality is biological' sounds like a claim where the truth would depend on your definition of an array of terms. On the one hand I could see if we we take a loose definition of morality then it's clear that behavior with moral implications emanates from biological reality. On the other hand, if we wanted to get annoyingly pedantic we'd have to ask ourselves what the word morality actually means. It seems intuitively obvious, but when you look deeper it really isn't.

There is a colloquial definition of the term which allows the every-day person to converse and easily find common meaning, make contrasts, comparisons, and judgements, but then we come back to the phrase.. moral fact. What is a moral fact and what would be it's source? If there can be moral facts, then there can be a formal definition of what is moral, but this is where I get hung up. I've only ever seen moral behavior as something that is strictly relative and subjective, so from what I can see there can only be moral interpretation, not moral fact.

Sounds annoyingly pedantic, and maybe it is, but this points to the importance of definitions in clarifying our thoughts. If we can agree that there is no such thing as a moral fact, then what is morality, and what is it's connection with biology? I'd argue that you can have a biological fact, and that a biological fact produces behavior with moralistic implications, but in practice there is no tangible connection with something called 'morality'. Morality is an interpretation of biological behavior in retrospect, and a social source of determining our courses of action. Our biology sets the framework, our behavior emanates from our biology and is constrained by institutionalized moral codes, but morality is only ever a useful description which we use in every-day discourse. So at most we can say something like 'there is behavior', or 'there is behavior which we interpret based on social code', or 'moral code springs forth from biology'. But in the strictest sense of the term the phrase 'morality is biological' doesn't seem coherent. The problem is ultimately that we're thinking about morality as something with a concrete existence, rather than a fluid aspect of culture.

That all sounds complicated but instead of writing a 500 page book like most philosophers would do, instead I'd simplify it all and say that 'morality' is just a construct of language which we use to define, judge, and control behavior. Inevitably the codes we use to judge behavior look biological, because what else would they look like, but at best they're a set of ever changing guidelines rooted in culture, with our biology as a framework.

All of that said it's just as easy to go back to the loose definition of morality and say that our moral codes are rooted in biology and leave it at that. This just leaves the term 'morality', and what is moral somewhat ambiguous.

 

[fromderinside]

No we can't. What you describe is not that.

And I doubt a didinium even has a mind to read in any case.

So If this thread is going to play we need accept the high likelihood that morality is evolved, not emergent as a result of some unique human centered attribute.

I don't understand. I am totally accepting that morality is evolved. Nor have I said it is a unique, human-centred attribute, emergent or otherwise.

I am not talking just about human morality. My claim was explicitly about 'living things'. I even ruled out in the OP that it necessarily involves attitudes.

First you need to accept that if morality isn't of the mind, but only of behavior, you need to accept that an Oscar showing chromatophore changes prior to acting shows mind state since mind becomes indiction of behavioral direction.

This claim is in addition to saying that morality is consequentialist (as described in another thread), pragmatic (that the relevant consequences are practical consequences) and relative.

In total, morality, at least for living entities, is consequentialist, pragmatic, relative and biological.

And as I wrote above what the fish does after changing color is controlled by the nervous system so since behavior a consequential element I can read the fish's mind.

The discussion is going to, is, very confusing because flopping from mind to behavior (see above) changes what is meant by pragmatic, consequentialist, biological, and relative.

 

[ruby sparks]

First you need to accept that if morality isn't of the mind, but only of behavior, you need to accept that an Oscar showing chromatophore changes prior to acting shows mind state since mind becomes indiction of behavioral direction.

This claim is in addition to saying that morality is consequentialist (as described in another thread), pragmatic (that the relevant consequences are practical consequences) and relative.

In total, morality, at least for living entities, is consequentialist, pragmatic, relative and biological.

And as I wrote above what the fish does after changing color is controlled by the nervous system so since behavior a consequential element I can read the fish's mind.

Can you know if a fish is or isn't pondering or agonising over the moral rights and wrongs of what it does?

That's what I said you can't mind read.

Obviously we can and do reasonably infer some stuff at some times. If I'm running at you holding a sword raised above my head and yelling 'god is great' you can reasonably infer something about that. And you might call that mind-reading. But you can't read my mind now, or work out what moral or other issues I'm pondering the meaning and implications of and agonising over, other than what I'm typing is a clue to some of them. You couldn't do it even if we were siting across a table. You and a poodle could stare at each other for hours and you wouldn't know it about the poodle either.

The discussion is going to, is, very confusing because flopping from mind to behavior (see above) changes what is meant by pragmatic, consequentialist, biological, and relative.

Can you give an example of how it changes that?

 

[The AntiChris]

That doesn't make you a moral realist (in the, technical, philosophical sense).

Then I'm a moral realist in a non-technical non-philosophical sense.

And a non-communicative sense.

 

[ruby sparks]

I'm struggling with the term 'moral fact'. Not in a combative way, but I wonder what the definition would be.

'Morality is biological' sounds like a claim where the truth would depend on your definition of an array of terms. On the one hand I could see if we we take a loose definition of morality then it's clear that behavior with moral implications emanates from biological reality. On the other hand, if we wanted to get annoyingly pedantic we'd have to ask ourselves what the word morality actually means. It seems intuitively obvious, but when you look deeper it really isn't.

There is a colloquial definition of the term which allows the every-day person to converse and easily find common meaning, make contrasts, comparisons, and judgements, but then we come back to the phrase.. moral fact. What is a moral fact and what would be it's source? If there can be moral facts, then there can be a formal definition of what is moral, but this is where I get hung up. I've only ever seen moral behavior as something that is strictly relative and subjective, so from what I can see there can only be moral interpretation, not moral fact.

Sounds annoyingly pedantic, and maybe it is, but this points to the importance of definitions in clarifying our thoughts. If we can agree that there is no such thing as a moral fact, then what is morality, and what is it's connection with biology? I'd argue that you can have a biological fact, and that a biological fact produces behavior with moralistic implications, but in practice there is no tangible connection with something called 'morality'. Morality is an interpretation of biological behavior in retrospect, and a social source of determining our courses of action. Our biology sets the framework, our behavior emanates from our biology and is constrained by institutionalized moral codes, but morality is only ever a useful description which we use in every-day discourse. So at most we can say something like 'there is behavior', or 'there is behavior which we interpret based on social code', or 'moral code springs forth from biology'. But in the strictest sense of the term the phrase 'morality is biological' doesn't seem coherent. The problem is ultimately that we're thinking about morality as something with a concrete existence, rather than a fluid aspect of culture.

That all sounds complicated but instead of writing a 500 page book like most philosophers would do, instead I'd simplify it all and say that 'morality' is just a construct of language which we use to define, judge, and control behavior. Inevitably the codes we use to judge behavior look biological, because what else would they look like, but at best they're a set of ever changing guidelines rooted in culture, with our biology as a framework.

All of that said it's just as easy to go back to the loose definition of morality and say that our moral codes are rooted in biology and leave it at that. This just leaves the term 'morality', and what is moral somewhat ambiguous.

One way to at least narrow down the focus, I'm suggesting, and potentially cut through some of the crap and confusion, as it were, would be to consider the example rule or fact in the OP, "continued existence is right" (or is good, or is suitable, or desirable, or works for me, or whatever) specifically 'my/our' existence. This at least appears to be unchanging, independent of culture and even species, and applies to or is applied by (sometimes instinctively or automatically, sometimes not) all living things, and possibly even genes, anywhere, and as far as we can tell always has (with some exceptions in certain circumstances) and is therefore at least a biological rule, literally a fact of life, like having two hands is for certain species. We could think of it, perhaps, as a fundamental drive, which is, usefully, a 'mechanical' term, and of course drives (and even desires, assuming they are not effectively the same thing or very similar) don't have to be consciously-experienced, they can exist without that add-on feature.

Granted, we may need a more-extended-than-usual definition of morality to call it a moral rule or fact, but in the end the point might be that it answers the question "what is moral?" with "(my/our) continued existence", so maybe extending the definition is warranted. It may be that everything about 'right' and 'wrong', and/or what is considered to be either of those, follows from it and/or is merely commentary on it, for humans, chimps, poodles, fish, beetles, didiniums, daffodils and lichens. And an organism or species doesn't have to have sophisticated (or indeed any) mental experiences of or about the rule, such as 'feeling good' about it, though some will, and others won't, possibly because the latter merely lack the biological structures that allow the capacity to have experiences associated with their own behaviours, in this case alongside the operation of the rule, the rule that answers the question, 'what is moral' and by short extension 'what is morality?'

 

[fromderinside]

Can you know if a fish is or isn't pondering or agonising over the moral rights and wrongs of what it does?

That's what I said you can't mind read.

Obviously we can and do reasonably infer some stuff at some times. If I'm running at you holding a sword raised above my head and yelling 'god is great' you can reasonably infer something about that. And you might call that mind-reading. But you can't read my mind now, or work out what moral or other issues I'm pondering the meaning and implications of and agonising over, other than what I'm typing is a clue to some of them. You couldn't do it even if we were siting across a table. You and a poodle could stare at each other for hours and you wouldn't know it about the poodle either.

My fish example was one of those that indicated response emotional response to, in this case, an association with presence of a meal worm in response to it having nosed a test tube in the water. It usually happens on the third or fourth instance of those events.

OHMYGOSH then the oscar races to the furthest corner of the environment for a while then returns to the tube nosing and getting mealworms consistently. As with most 'mind' reading experience is the key.

It's something Thorndike observed and called association for which he developed a law of learning. Similarly fighting fish are confused by impulse to attack and mate which results in a to and fro waggle dance ritual in the presence of a male at her bubble nest. We found this resulted due to activity in the hypothalamus resulting in the release of adrenalin for both fighting and mating situations.

The discussion is going to, is, very confusing because flopping from mind to behavior (see above) changes what is meant by pragmatic, consequentialist, biological, and relative.

Can you give an example of how it changes that?

Please note above that I restricted my comments to observations relating behavior to observed underlying neural activity whereas you jumped from behavioral signals. Agonizing over is one of those things we infer from introspection of our own behaviour which, as I've pointed out many times in the past isn't empirical at all because it's self reference.

How can one be pragmatic, for instance, when one 'explains' what is observed through self reference. You are trying to connect empirically explained world using 'emotions' or self-reference. In so doing you are resorting to accepted philosophical tools which have been discredited by the very empirical rule observation based explanations you are attempting with which to relate with the moral. Such died with Erasmus Darwin's fiction of Evolution being replaced with his grandson's Theory of Evolution.

Bottom line: Either you are going to treat the empirical world as a rational world stipping it of it's foundations, or you are going to promote the rational world to the empirical without the the supporting experimental evidence necessary to do so.

 

[ruby sparks]

Agonizing over is one of those things we infer from introspection of our own behaviour which, as I've pointed out many times in the past isn't empirical at all because it's self reference.

Ok so are there no independently distinguishable patterns of neural correlates for different types of human cognition? Consider me very surprised. I might even go so far as to say 'balderdash'.

How can one be pragmatic, for instance, when one 'explains' what is observed through self reference. You are trying to connect empirically explained world using 'emotions' or self-reference.

Well, again, I'm not doing that because I'm not limiting what I'm saying, in the OP or since, to humans or even living things that think. In fact I specifically ruled it out. As I said before a few times already. I've even posted an image of one single-cell organism ingesting another one, ffs.

 

[rousseau]

I'm struggling with the term 'moral fact'. Not in a combative way, but I wonder what the definition would be.

'Morality is biological' sounds like a claim where the truth would depend on your definition of an array of terms. On the one hand I could see if we we take a loose definition of morality then it's clear that behavior with moral implications emanates from biological reality. On the other hand, if we wanted to get annoyingly pedantic we'd have to ask ourselves what the word morality actually means. It seems intuitively obvious, but when you look deeper it really isn't.

There is a colloquial definition of the term which allows the every-day person to converse and easily find common meaning, make contrasts, comparisons, and judgements, but then we come back to the phrase.. moral fact. What is a moral fact and what would be it's source? If there can be moral facts, then there can be a formal definition of what is moral, but this is where I get hung up. I've only ever seen moral behavior as something that is strictly relative and subjective, so from what I can see there can only be moral interpretation, not moral fact.

Sounds annoyingly pedantic, and maybe it is, but this points to the importance of definitions in clarifying our thoughts. If we can agree that there is no such thing as a moral fact, then what is morality, and what is it's connection with biology? I'd argue that you can have a biological fact, and that a biological fact produces behavior with moralistic implications, but in practice there is no tangible connection with something called 'morality'. Morality is an interpretation of biological behavior in retrospect, and a social source of determining our courses of action. Our biology sets the framework, our behavior emanates from our biology and is constrained by institutionalized moral codes, but morality is only ever a useful description which we use in every-day discourse. So at most we can say something like 'there is behavior', or 'there is behavior which we interpret based on social code', or 'moral code springs forth from biology'. But in the strictest sense of the term the phrase 'morality is biological' doesn't seem coherent. The problem is ultimately that we're thinking about morality as something with a concrete existence, rather than a fluid aspect of culture.

That all sounds complicated but instead of writing a 500 page book like most philosophers would do, instead I'd simplify it all and say that 'morality' is just a construct of language which we use to define, judge, and control behavior. Inevitably the codes we use to judge behavior look biological, because what else would they look like, but at best they're a set of ever changing guidelines rooted in culture, with our biology as a framework.

All of that said it's just as easy to go back to the loose definition of morality and say that our moral codes are rooted in biology and leave it at that. This just leaves the term 'morality', and what is moral somewhat ambiguous.

One way to at least narrow down the focus, I'm suggesting, and potentially cut through some of the crap and confusion, as it were, would be to consider the example rule or fact in the OP, "continued existence is right" (or is good, or is suitable, or desirable, or works for me, or whatever) specifically 'my/our' existence. This at least appears to be unchanging, independent of culture and even species, and applies to or is applied by (sometimes instinctively or automatically, sometimes not) all living things, and possibly even genes, anywhere, and as far as we can tell always has (with some exceptions in certain circumstances) and is therefore at least a biological rule, literally a fact of life, like having two hands is for certain species. We could think of it, perhaps, as a fundamental drive, which is, usefully, a 'mechanical' term, and of course drives (and even desires, assuming they are not effectively the same thing or very similar) don't have to be consciously-experienced, they can exist without that add-on feature.

I can accept all of that. Early in my post I mentioned that I believe it comes down to how you're defining various things. For example, what you're calling a moral fact, I'd call a biological fact. IOW, there are biological constants which color the moral realm. Both explanations point to the same process, but use different wording.

Underlying morality there is a constant socio-biological physical process, and a person can really call it anything they like. So basically I agree with the process you're suggesting, but I'd probably confine morality to the cultural, with a tight coupling to the biological, rather than define morality as intrinsic to the biological.

 

[Wiploc]

That doesn't make you a moral realist (in the, technical, philosophical sense).

Then I'm a moral realist in a non-technical non-philosophical sense.

And a non-communicative sense.

I thought I was clear: I believe some behaviors are better than others. I believe that there are things we ought to do and things we ought not to do.

This is my understanding of moral realism. Kindness is better than cruelty. I ought not to rape. To the extent that I am a racist, I ought not be proud of that, and I ought to try not to pass my racism on to the next generation.

These are real rules, moral facts. I'm a moral realist.

If you still think I'm being uncommunicative, perhaps ask me some pertinent questions.

 

[Wiploc]

I'm struggling with the term 'moral fact'. Not in a combative way, but I wonder what the definition would be.

I know you're in dialogue with Ruby. Feel free to ignore these comments if they aren't helpful.

I'm a utilitarian, so I believe that morality is about increasing happiness and decreasing unhappiness. Given that, it follows that it's a moral fact that rape has a strong tendency to reduce happiness.

We could phrase it another way. We could say, "Rape is wrong." That's a moral fact.

If you don't want to grant that "Rape is wrong" is a fact, then it still seems that, "Rape has a strong tendency to reduce happiness," is a fact pertinent to morality. A moral fact.

I've only ever seen moral behavior as something that is strictly relative and subjective, so from what I can see there can only be moral interpretation, not moral fact.

Isn't it a fact that Republicans think unbalanced budgets are immoral when Democrats are in office?

Sounds annoyingly pedantic, and maybe it is, but this points to the importance of definitions in clarifying our thoughts. If we can agree that there is no such thing as a moral fact, then what is morality, and what is it's connection with biology?

If there are no moral facts, then moral philosophy has no subject matter. If there are no moral facts, then Ruby is wrong when she says we all agree that some behaviors are better than others.

I think she's wrong anyway. I imagine that noncognitivists and nihilists think all behaviors are equally good. They probably don't recognize any moral facts. Or maybe they think the only moral facts are that morality doesn't make sense, and that all behaviors are equally good.

 

[The AntiChris]

If you still think I'm being uncommunicative, perhaps ask me some pertinent questions.

No, I'm just suggesting you're going to confuse some people if you self-identify as a moral realist on a philosophy forum.

 

[rousseau]

I know you're in dialogue with Ruby. Feel free to ignore these comments if they aren't helpful.

I'm a utilitarian, so I believe that morality is about increasing happiness and decreasing unhappiness. Given that, it follows that it's a moral fact that rape has a strong tendency to reduce happiness.

We could phrase it another way. We could say, "Rape is wrong." That's a moral fact.

This seems to align with my interpretation above, with room for a little grey area. I believe morality is predominantly cultural with a tight coupling to biological reality. But with this tight coupling you can get something that looks like a moral fact, and in a certain sense acts like one (grey area), but still can't be completely consistent. So for practical purposes utilitarianism is a pretty good heuristic, which I think is the point of moral ideas, but needs an addendum some of the time, making it not a true fact. That's the take home of my analysis - morality is fluid and changeable with tendencies coupled to biology, rather than directly biological and concrete. IOW, morality depends just as much on context as it does biology.

Where the mind works in the moral realm social code acts as a general guideline, but needs to be overridden where appropriate. So our biology is a kind of general-purpose tool, even possibly with in-built, moralistic instincts, whereas our moral ideas primarily exist in the social sphere, and those that we are enculturated with are those that work most of the time - like your utilitarianism.

 

[Wiploc]

If you still think I'm being uncommunicative, perhaps ask me some pertinent questions.

No, I'm just suggesting you're going to confuse some people if you self-identify as a moral realist on a philosophy forum.

Okay, thanks.

 

[fromderinside]

Agonizing over is one of those things we infer from introspection of our own behaviour which, as I've pointed out many times in the past isn't empirical at all because it's self reference.

Ok so are there no independently distinguishable patterns of neural correlates for different types of human cognition? Consider me very surprised. I might even go so far as to say 'balderdash'.

I didn't say that. I said one can't get there by introspective means.