Moral Realism

[Wiploc]

Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths

Can you provide evidence for this claim?

Which part are you challenging?

 

[Wiploc]

... chimps are living breathing proof that you can have moral intuitions without language ...

I haven't read it yet, but I believe that The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond, disposes of the notion that chimps are without language.

It's true, though, that they don't have a future tense: If you ask what a chimp will want for lunch tomorrow, he can answer; but if you ask him to go find out what those other chimps will want for lunch tomorrow, he'll be at a loss. (He won't be at a loss if you ask him to find out what they want for lunch today.)

 

[Unbeatable]

Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths

Can you provide evidence for this claim?

Which part are you challenging?

The second sentence. The first was left in merely as context.

But while I'm at it, how precisely do you operationally define "agreeing with that goal"?

 

[Wiploc]

Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths

Can you provide evidence for this claim?

Which part are you challenging?

The second sentence. The first was left in merely as context.

I'm having trouble taking the question seriously. But I'm willing to look up the definition of sociopath for you.

The first two are from Dictionary.com:

Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others.

In other words, the concern for other people's happiness isn't there.

a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities.

Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause.

do not usually care about other people. They think mainly of themselves

lack of moral sense

Sociopaths are incapable of feeling shame, guilt or remorse. Their brains simply lack the circuitry to process such emotions. This allows them to betray people, threaten people or harm people without giving it a second thought. They pursue any action that serves their own self interest even if it seriously harms others. This is why you will find many very "successful" sociopaths in high levels of government, in any nation.

Lacks empathy - doesn't care about hurting others; and/or

And I'm going to quit there. I had to cherry-pick to get those. It is clear that mere failure to care about the well-being of other people is not the only requirement to be technically diagnosed as a sociopath. But it does seem to be a common denominator, a sine qua non, the essence of the thing. A lot of web pages indicate, for instance, that you must also be smart and charismatic too, which seems to me beside the point.

But I'm not a doctor, and don't even play one on TV, so I'm happy to concede that my usage is a layman's usage. Is that what this is about?

But while I'm at it, how precisely do you operationally define "agreeing with that goal"?

If you don't prefer that people be happy rather than unhappy, then you are a sociopath or a god.

 

[Unbeatable]

But I'm not a doctor, and don't even play one on TV, so I'm happy to concede that my usage is a layman's usage. Is that what this is about?

In part. This is about me getting side-tracked (by my pet peeve about people misusing terms like "sociopath" to pathologize/dismiss my perspective) from the fact that my main objections are on a semantic level, to this whole business of you defining moral discussion as being about X and only X. A more reasonable reaction would've been to just ignore people like you and Harris, as I'm not opposed to you lot trying to figure out how to increase human well-being, but it doesn't seem that we necessarily have anything to offer one another.

 

[PyramidHead]

They are founded upon value-laden statements <snip>

They're intuitions! They're not founded on statements at all. ... People don't say it because they have a problem with unnecessary pain. People say it because they feel hyperprotective of children, and if you hurt one they'll feel a strong urge to dish out some unnecessary pain on you. Moral imperatives are categorical. You're trying to reinterpret them as hypothetical because that's something you know how to analyze; but when you do that they aren't moral imperatives any more.

In this case, contrary to my reply to Wiploc, I think we are truly talking about different things. I don't disagree that the origins of morality are rooted in survival instincts that have evolved to propagate our genes. I just don't think that's a relevant determinant of what we ought to do.

Then we're definitely talking about different things, because I am sure as hell not talking about survival instincts and gene propagation. I'm talking about moral intuitions; what are you talking about? You appear to have an idee fixe that morality has to be goal-oriented; you're keyword searching to find a clue as to what goal I must think morality is the pursuit of; and you picked survival instincts and gene propagation because I used the keyword "chimp". I said "chimp" not as a codeword for Darwinian evolution but because chimps are living breathing proof that you can have moral intuitions without language, which means moral intuitions are not founded on statements and conditionals.

To me, the central defining feature of morality is going beyond our Darwinian predispositions, taking advantage of the ones that serve a shared purpose and subjugating those that are contrary to it.

"Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above." - The African Queen

The trouble with that viewpoint is that Katharine Hepburn was playing a religious wacko. There isn't any god defining what's above nature; and even if there were, his holding the opinion that X is above nature wouldn't make it so; there's a current thread on that topic. What the heck makes you think when you pick a purpose and find someone to share it with you're "going beyond" anything? Where are you going to get this purpose? Pure Reason? As Hume pointed out, reason is the slave of the passions. Your choice of a purpose to which you'll subjugate some of your Darwinian predispositions is driven by how others of your Darwinian predispositions react to your environment, same as the reactions of that angry chimp.

But the important part is that there's a purpose, which requires dialogue, a hashing out of options, etc.

Why is that the important part? Why does it need a purpose at all? That sounds like a recipe for a "The end justifies the means" morality.

Morality at its best is indeed advice, particularly when informed by evidence.

At its best? At its best by what standard? A moral standard? Is "Don't hurt that kid if you want to avoid unnecessary suffering." morally better than "Don't hurt that kid."?

Again, I don't disagree that there is a strong emotional component to it, or that we evolved to be nice to little kids. I just recognize that we can't stop at that point, because it's not enough to meet the demands of our evolved brains, which are capable of reasoning, planning; our genes are not.

I don't disagree; the question isn't whether to stop at that point, but where to go from there. Talking ourselves into believing categorical imperatives are hide-and-seek-playing hypothetical imperatives is a dead end.

I have to confess that I remain completely at a loss to what you are talking about in this thread. You raise objections without fleshing them out and make counterarguments without supporting them. I don't know where to begin in replying to your posts, which are voiced in an elevated pitch and frenzied inflection in my mind's ear when I read them. I suggest we stop this exchange here. If you want me to concede your point, whatever it is, I will give you the final word.

 

[Wiploc]

But I'm not a doctor, and don't even play one on TV, so I'm happy to concede that my usage is a layman's usage. Is that what this is about?

In part. This is about me getting side-tracked (by my pet peeve about people misusing terms like "sociopath" to pathologize/dismiss my perspective)

Well that wouldn't be fair. Would you share more about your perspective?

from the fact that my main objections are on a semantic level, to this whole business of you defining moral discussion as being about X and only X.

But that's the point, the key issue, the essence of this thread. I'm not blocking other opinions; I'm inviting discourse.

If you say that you think honesty is more important than happiness, then I can ask whether you would still believe that if we knew that honesty generally has a strong tendency to cause unhappiness. If you say that obeying a god is more important, then I'll ask if that isn't --- at least in part --- because we'd be happier if more of us obeyed god.

I'm trying to start a discussion, not to dismiss other viewpoints.

A more reasonable reaction would've been to just ignore people like you and Harris, as I'm not opposed to you lot trying to figure out how to increase human well-being, but it doesn't seem that we necessarily have anything to offer one another.

Maybe before you go you could offer another viewpoint. And maybe, if you don't want to discuss it yourself, I'll wind up discussing it with someone else.

 

[PyramidHead]

But I'm not a doctor, and don't even play one on TV, so I'm happy to concede that my usage is a layman's usage. Is that what this is about?

In part. This is about me getting side-tracked (by my pet peeve about people misusing terms like "sociopath" to pathologize/dismiss my perspective)

Well that wouldn't be fair. Would you share more about your perspective?

from the fact that my main objections are on a semantic level, to this whole business of you defining moral discussion as being about X and only X.

But that's the point, the key issue, the essence of this thread. I'm not blocking other opinions; I'm inviting discourse.

If you say that you think honesty is more important than happiness, then I can ask whether you would still believe that if we knew that honesty generally has a strong tendency to cause unhappiness. If you say that obeying a god is more important, then I'll ask if that isn't --- at least in part --- because we'd be happier if more of us obeyed god.

I'm trying to start a discussion, not to dismiss other viewpoints.

A more reasonable reaction would've been to just ignore people like you and Harris, as I'm not opposed to you lot trying to figure out how to increase human well-being, but it doesn't seem that we necessarily have anything to offer one another.

Maybe before you go you could offer another viewpoint. And maybe, if you don't want to discuss it yourself, I'll wind up discussing it with someone else.

I can't speak for Unbeatable, but I personally think that suffering, not happiness, is the currency of morality. It explains why most people feel a stronger sense of obligation to avoid harming somebody than to increase their happiness. As a quick example, most people would agree they have a responsibility not to smash my iPod, but very few people would presumably agree they have the same degree of responsibility to buy me the newest model of iPod. Maybe they would have some responsibility for the latter in the context of a prior agreement, or in special cases, but the duty not to smash what I already have (not to harm) is more universal. This is my personal opinion, of course, and I can't prove it's correct. But it certainly leads to a different conclusion than a happiness-maximizing moral philosophy. And to the extent that I believe myself to be a fairly compassionate person, I am probably not a sociopath. I think that's what Unbeatable may have been getting at; that there are ways of thinking about morality that don't boil down to happiness. At least in my perspective, happiness is instrumental, not an end in itself. It's a great feeling that dispels suffering for a period of time, and to that extent it should be promoted, but I put more emphasis on minimizing/preventing suffering, a goal that is not necessarily always served best by promoting happiness.

 

[Wiploc]

I can't speak for Unbeatable, but I personally think that suffering, not happiness, is the currency of morality. It explains why most people feel a stronger sense of obligation to avoid harming somebody than to increase their happiness. As a quick example, most people would agree they have a responsibility not to smash my iPod, but very few people would presumably agree they have the same degree of responsibility to buy me the newest model of iPod. Maybe they would have some responsibility for the latter in the context of a prior agreement, or in special cases, but the duty not to smash what I already have (not to harm) is more universal. This is my personal opinion, of course, and I can't prove it's correct. But it certainly leads to a different conclusion than a happiness-maximizing moral philosophy. And to the extent that I believe myself to be a fairly compassionate person, I am probably not a sociopath. I think that's what Unbeatable may have been getting at; that there are ways of thinking about morality that don't boil down to happiness. At least in my perspective, happiness is instrumental, not an end in itself. It's a great feeling that dispels suffering for a period of time, and to that extent it should be promoted, but I put more emphasis on minimizing/preventing suffering, a goal that is not necessarily always served best by promoting happiness.

Not much there to disagree with. I talk about happiness, you talk about suffering or unhappiness, Dan Barker talks about flourishing, and Sam Harris talks about well-being. We're all approaching a subject that we'd rather represent with one word than a dissertation.

The only thing you wrote that I'm not comfortable with is this bit:

But it certainly leads to a different conclusion than a happiness-maximizing moral philosophy.

If we eliminated all unhappiness, the job wouldn't be over. We'd still want, wouldn't we, to increase happiness?

Or, if we maximized happiness first, shouldn't we want to then reduce unhappiness, or redistribute any remaining unhappiness so that we each had only a little bit?

And I have no problem at all with wanting to weight unhappiness as counting, say, four times as much as a similar degree of happiness, or with saying that the happiness scale only goes up to 100, while the unhappiness scale goes down past ten thousand.

The movie Dogma may have made the point that it is better to have no people at all than to than to have a single person suffer in Hellfire.

 

[PyramidHead]

Not much there to disagree with. I talk about happiness, you talk about suffering or unhappiness, Dan Barker talks about flourishing, and Sam Harris talks about well-being. We're all approaching a subject that we'd rather represent with one word than a dissertation.

The only thing you wrote that I'm not comfortable with is this bit:

But it certainly leads to a different conclusion than a happiness-maximizing moral philosophy.

If we eliminated all unhappiness, the job wouldn't be over. We'd still want, wouldn't we, to increase happiness?

We may want to, but I don't think we'd be morally duty-bound to, if that makes sense. And if the only way to increase happiness was to introduce more suffering, I maintain that would be impermissible. You may see where I'm going with this based on some of my past threads.

Or, if we maximized happiness first, shouldn't we want to then reduce unhappiness, or redistribute any remaining unhappiness so that we each had only a little bit?

And I have no problem at all with wanting to weight unhappiness as counting, say, four times as much as a similar degree of happiness, or with saying that the happiness scale only goes up to 100, while the unhappiness scale goes down past ten thousand.

The movie Dogma may have made the point that it is better to have no people at all than to than to have a single person suffer in Hellfire.

I agree with Dogma, and I would extend it to any degree of suffering. This is what I mean about wildly different outcomes. Starting from the idea that unnecessary suffering should always be avoided when possible, I can't escape the conclusion that a universe with no sentient beings would be the ideal outcome. If maximizing happiness were the primary focus of my ethics, then that universe may not be as appealing, because it wouldn't have any happiness either. I therefore have to rely on my subjective intuition that suffering is worse than happiness is good. I can't point to anything that would objectively justify that intuition.

 

[Underseer]

Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths

Can you provide evidence for this claim?

Sociopaths lack a capacity for empathy, and thus are unlikely to find the well-being of others desirable.

 

[Wiploc]

I agree with Dogma, and I would extend it to any degree of suffering. This is what I mean about wildly different outcomes. Starting from the idea that unnecessary suffering should always be avoided when possible, I can't escape the conclusion that a universe with no sentient beings would be the ideal outcome. If maximizing happiness were the primary focus of my ethics, then that universe may not be as appealing, because it wouldn't have any happiness either. I therefore have to rely on my subjective intuition that suffering is worse than happiness is good. I can't point to anything that would objectively justify that intuition.

I have to think you are alone or nearly so. Think how many people enjoy fistfights, or voluntarily get tattoos, suffer needle pricks for a heroin rush, or otherwise endure some suffering for a greater (in their opinion) happiness.

But, even so, that doesn't put us at loggerheads. We both care about other people, and favor something in the line of increasing happiness and decreasing suffering. Our major goal is the same, even if we disagree on details.

 

[StarryNight]

my current view is ethics ought to pursue rational attraction to being (culturally, behavouraly, spiritually). makes sense relative to evolution that ethcs would be inwardly and outwardly adaptive or synchronise positives in a feedback stream. inner life is an adaptation because of its dignity, not a mere instrument without worth. genes are not nihilistic but rational adaptive care is a major app. it is as functional as arms or legs. being can be both continuation and existential awareness. inner landscape rightly configured increases game time , in that it maps interprets and navigates life successfully. oops oddly put.

 

[PyramidHead]

I agree with Dogma, and I would extend it to any degree of suffering. This is what I mean about wildly different outcomes. Starting from the idea that unnecessary suffering should always be avoided when possible, I can't escape the conclusion that a universe with no sentient beings would be the ideal outcome. If maximizing happiness were the primary focus of my ethics, then that universe may not be as appealing, because it wouldn't have any happiness either. I therefore have to rely on my subjective intuition that suffering is worse than happiness is good. I can't point to anything that would objectively justify that intuition.

I have to think you are alone or nearly so. Think how many people enjoy fistfights, or voluntarily get tattoos, suffer needle pricks for a heroin rush, or otherwise endure some suffering for a greater (in their opinion) happiness.

But, even so, that doesn't put us at loggerheads. We both care about other people, and favor something in the line of increasing happiness and decreasing suffering. Our major goal is the same, even if we disagree on details.

To those people, it's not suffering though. I'm not talking about physical pain.

 

[Wiploc]

To those people, it's not suffering though. I'm not talking about physical pain.

I watched a woman give birth. I know it was suffering. Or maybe I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

 

[PyramidHead]

To those people, it's not suffering though. I'm not talking about physical pain.

I watched a woman give birth. I know it was suffering. Or maybe I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

It's a minor point. People who enjoy pain are, by definition, not suffering from it (that covers the masochist example). For people who indeed suffer pain to achieve a goal, as does a woman giving birth to a child, I think the argument can be made that all other things being equal, it would be better if they weren't in pain. That is, if they could obtain all the same desirable outcomes without the suffering associated with it, including e.g. the sense of accomplishment from having endured a hardship, it would be preferable to getting all those same outcomes PLUS the actual pain.

 

[Perspicuo]

I object to the idea that there is any way to derive a normative statement from a factual one. Hume covered this, and Sam Harris doesn't really advance the discussion much. Moral intuitions are only debatable when the conditional upon which they are founded is something all parties agree about ahead of time.

Depends on your if statements.

"If {your purpose is to have happy and healthy children} and {research shows x, y and z methods of rearing to produce future adults who will have social difficulties and greater likelihood in succumbing to drug abuse}, then, the empirically validated observations of reality dictate x, y and z are morally objectional courses of action."

 

[arkirk]

I could not help but mentally deconstruct Wiploc's argument but only because I am a contrary person who likes something closer to the truth...whatever that is. He starts off with honesty and loyalty...and I just ask to whom. In the end, we reach out for a big scoop of happiness at the expense of the "sociopaths." Harris was a bigtime advocate of war on the infidels of the east. What do you do when most of the world is populated by sociopaths?

The problem is that "what we think is real" is really a set of neural preferences and inhibitions that are loaded into our brains over our lifetime and this is true for each and every person, excepting perhaps some with organic brain disease. Experiences are reiterated continually and these preferences either strengthen or weaking on the basis of the iteration rate for a given preference. So sometimes, our brains respond to some humans that they are "sociopaths" whose happiness is dependent on the unhappiness of others, but in that response we would be merely duplicating that "other's" sociopathic response.

All anybody can bring to the table is his/her preferences. But in discussing them, is it possible to take something away that we did not come with/ Can it not have value to us? I want to remind Wiploc that if he is an atheist, there is a large body of Christians labeling him and his ideas as sociopathic and they do so happily.

I have a friend that is happy all the time....she has essentially zero empathy. She always seems happy and condemns anything "negative," with a light hearted shrug and then "I will not let anything make me unhappy." She thinks living in this way, denying suffering, sometimes of others and sometimes of her own will keep her happy. It just might. But so what?

Regarding Aircraft Design...nature's jury is still out on whether or not we should be flying...at least in the manner in which we do it.

 

[Bomb#20]

... chimps are living breathing proof that you can have moral intuitions without language ...

I haven't read it yet, but I believe that The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond, disposes of the notion that chimps are without language.

It's true, though, that they don't have a future tense: If you ask what a chimp will want for lunch tomorrow, he can answer; but if you ask him to go find out what those other chimps will want for lunch tomorrow, he'll be at a loss. (He won't be at a loss if you ask him to find out what they want for lunch today.)

Is Diamond talking about those experiments where Washoe and some others were taught a few hundred words from American Sign Language? They don't show chimps in the wild have language. Be that as it may, there's quite a gulf between being able to say you want grapes for lunch and being able to say you want to avoid causing pain unless absolutely necessary or you want others not to have anxiety and depression. PyramidHead proposed that moral intuitions are founded on abstractions. What's a chimp capable of saying that could serve as such a foundation?

That, increasing happiness, is the realm of moral discussion.

Not everybody agrees with that goal. The exceptions are sociopaths, and we are happy to label them that, and continue with our discussion.
...
Most of us want people to be happy. You hypothetically don't. That's not a disagreement about facts. The rest of us are discussing morality, how to achieve a higher level of happiness, and you are talking about something else.
...
It is clear that mere failure to care about the well-being of other people is not the only requirement to be technically diagnosed as a sociopath. But it does seem to be a common denominator, a sine qua non, the essence of the thing.

You appear to be assuming that the only two options a person has are either to not give a rat's ass about people's well-being, or else to regard their well-being as the entire essence of morality. There are other possibilities. For instance, you could consider their well-being to be one among many important considerations in moral judgment; or you could want people to be happy but think that's a non-moral goal you get to pursue when moral considerations don't require you to deprioritize it. Kant said morality isn't about how we can make ourselves happy but about how we can make ourselves worthy of happiness.

 

[Wiploc]

You appear to be assuming that the only two options a person has are either to not give a rat's ass about people's well-being, or else to regard their well-being as the entire essence of morality.

Not at all. I'm the one arguing that human well-being (not my well-being) is the essense of morality. I'm directing the argument at everyone except the sociopaths who don't give a rat's ass. That latter group can't be appealed to. And if they were the only people who disagreed with me, there wouldn't be anyone for me to argue with. Everyone would either already agree or be unreachable.

There are other possibilities. For instance, you could consider their well-being to be one among many important considerations in moral judgment; or you could want people to be happy but think that's a non-moral goal you get to pursue when moral considerations don't require you to deprioritize it. Kant said morality isn't about how we can make ourselves happy but about how we can make ourselves worthy of happiness.

All true.