ruby sparks
Contributor
Claim: morality is consequentialist.
To elaborate:
What is moral or immoral is what is deemed to be either of those, nothing more. Our brains deem it. Moral and immoral are brain preferences.
Our brains have been shaped by evolution over historical time. History consists of things that actually happened. Outcomes. Actual consequences. The brains of biological machines such as humans are therefore the physical manifestation (via encoded information, possibly genetic) of those historical preferences for actions for which the outcomes (consequences) have been adaptive (that help an organism to maximise its reproductive success) and the traits heritable.
To add to which, we are conscious and sentient, so we experience sensations (about some things) and these accompany some of our actions. One of these is a sense of morality, or intuitive/instinctive moral preferences. Which is why in the end there is literally only a 'sense' (or senses) of morality, and my claim might better be 'our sense(s) of morality is/are consequentialist'. By our I mean human, because we are only doing the human sense(s) of morality.
Further, a (human) sense of morality is a particular type of subjective feeling, it has what psychologists call affect and valence. In some ways, a sense of morality could be labelled an emotion. That might be going too far, I'm not sure. I would say that I think it is at least partly an emotion. We are not, I don't think, emotionally neutral about morality. With possible exceptions, sociopaths and psychopaths perhaps. But we might say that if lacking a sense of morality (that was at least partly emotive) was adaptive, those would be more than outliers.
There may also be environmental factors, a mix of nature and nurture. We can learn, so the timescales involved do not necessarily have to be only very long ones such as are normally described as evolutionary timescales. Effects over shorter timescales might however be expected to be smaller.
To add a further consideration, we are a very social species, so agreement about moral preferences among members of the species (or more often, group or culture) will factor in also. In some important ways, we don't get to individually decide what is deemed moral or immoral. Note that this would allow for 'moral facts' (if we define those as being preferences overwhelmingly existing in all humans) but that issue would be separate from the OP claim here. Nor am I discussing the morality of possible responses to what are deemed moral or immoral actions (reward, punishment, forgiveness, etc) at least not whether the responses are morally right or wrong. That they merely happen would be relevant to the OP, because they are consequences.
I could go on, but if anyone wants to post, I can try to clarify further.
I should say one thing, I am including possible, potential and/or probable consequences (and the 'encoding' of information about them in our brain structures over time) not just whatever consequences actually result in a particular instance. I would claim that as part of their normal function, our brain processes include computations, including predictions (conscious or otherwise) about outcomes, using the evolved brain structures (which themselves are the net result of historical consequences over evolutionary time) in their assessments and decisions, including therefore about moral preferences, which as I say we can experience consciously.
What I mean by consequentialism may differ from what a different type of consequentialism claims.
To elaborate:
What is moral or immoral is what is deemed to be either of those, nothing more. Our brains deem it. Moral and immoral are brain preferences.
Our brains have been shaped by evolution over historical time. History consists of things that actually happened. Outcomes. Actual consequences. The brains of biological machines such as humans are therefore the physical manifestation (via encoded information, possibly genetic) of those historical preferences for actions for which the outcomes (consequences) have been adaptive (that help an organism to maximise its reproductive success) and the traits heritable.
To add to which, we are conscious and sentient, so we experience sensations (about some things) and these accompany some of our actions. One of these is a sense of morality, or intuitive/instinctive moral preferences. Which is why in the end there is literally only a 'sense' (or senses) of morality, and my claim might better be 'our sense(s) of morality is/are consequentialist'. By our I mean human, because we are only doing the human sense(s) of morality.
Further, a (human) sense of morality is a particular type of subjective feeling, it has what psychologists call affect and valence. In some ways, a sense of morality could be labelled an emotion. That might be going too far, I'm not sure. I would say that I think it is at least partly an emotion. We are not, I don't think, emotionally neutral about morality. With possible exceptions, sociopaths and psychopaths perhaps. But we might say that if lacking a sense of morality (that was at least partly emotive) was adaptive, those would be more than outliers.
There may also be environmental factors, a mix of nature and nurture. We can learn, so the timescales involved do not necessarily have to be only very long ones such as are normally described as evolutionary timescales. Effects over shorter timescales might however be expected to be smaller.
To add a further consideration, we are a very social species, so agreement about moral preferences among members of the species (or more often, group or culture) will factor in also. In some important ways, we don't get to individually decide what is deemed moral or immoral. Note that this would allow for 'moral facts' (if we define those as being preferences overwhelmingly existing in all humans) but that issue would be separate from the OP claim here. Nor am I discussing the morality of possible responses to what are deemed moral or immoral actions (reward, punishment, forgiveness, etc) at least not whether the responses are morally right or wrong. That they merely happen would be relevant to the OP, because they are consequences.
I could go on, but if anyone wants to post, I can try to clarify further.
I should say one thing, I am including possible, potential and/or probable consequences (and the 'encoding' of information about them in our brain structures over time) not just whatever consequences actually result in a particular instance. I would claim that as part of their normal function, our brain processes include computations, including predictions (conscious or otherwise) about outcomes, using the evolved brain structures (which themselves are the net result of historical consequences over evolutionary time) in their assessments and decisions, including therefore about moral preferences, which as I say we can experience consciously.
What I mean by consequentialism may differ from what a different type of consequentialism claims.
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