objective morality

[connick]

I'm not sure what to take away from your statements about inertia, freezing points or mammalian flight. As you imply, the first half of each statement above is false without the second half stating the exceptions. If there are exceptions to a rule then it isn't a hard-and-fast rule and it's application is subjective. The relative morality of an act depends on who is doing what to whom and their reasons for doing so. You can't say, objectively, that killing is immoral any more than you can say that rocks don't float (pumice is the exception there). If moral judgments about an action depend upon more than the action alone then you can't say that the rules about those actions are objective.

The point is that the rules about inertia and freezing points can, with more qualifiers added, become hard-and-fast. That's what makes them objective. With morals, no matter how specific a statement may be, it can never be demonstrated empirically; the "wrongness" of murder is not to be found among the evidence at the crime scene.

I'll buy that.

 

[Bomb#20]

An object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion at a constant direction and speed, except when acted upon by an external force. Every chemical will freeze if it gets cold enough, except helium. No mammal can fly under its own power, except for bats and a few humans. Why on earth would you imagine that the possibility for exceptions in any field precludes objectivity?

In principle you might be able to establish rules with no exceptions but, I can't think of any real-life examples where moral codes lack a certain amount of flexibility.

People ought not to rape one another for fun. What's an exception to that?

I'm not sure what to take away from your statements about inertia, freezing points or mammalian flight. As you imply, the first half of each statement above is false without the second half stating the exceptions. If there are exceptions to a rule then it isn't a hard-and-fast rule and it's application is subjective.

How on earth are you getting that conclusion out of this? As I imply and you agree, the first half of each statement above is false without the second half stating the exceptions. False, not subjective. Objectively false. The possibility for exceptions in a moral code doesn't preclude objectivity; all it means is that the moral code was put together unimaginatively, without its implications being thought through, and without appreciation for the complexity of the subject matter -- just as if somebody claimed mammals can't fly because he was thinking of pigs. You're mixing up subjectivity with overgeneralization. Suppose for the sake of argument that murder is immoral unless your god asks you to sacrifice your son, in which case it is totally cool. That doesn't mean the application of "Thou shalt not kill." is subjective. There's nothing the least subjective about its application -- whether it applies to an act depends not on anyone's opinion or preference but only on whether that act is an act of killing. What it means is that "Thou shalt not kill." is wrong -- that God made a slipshod job of it when He told people the rules. He could have said "Thou shalt not kill, except for nonhumans, humans you kill legally or unintentionally, and your own sons in the event that I tell you to sacrifice them." That wouldn't have subjective application either; it would apply to what it says it applies to; and it wouldn't be an overgeneralization (per supposition above).

The relative morality of an act depends on who is doing what to whom and their reasons for doing so. You can't say, objectively, that killing is immoral any more than you can say that rocks don't float (pumice is the exception there). If moral judgments about an action depend upon more than the action alone then you can't say that the rules about those actions are objective. A photograph of a man plunging a knife into another's chest doesn't tell us that act is immoral. If the headline above reads "bystander ends gunman's killing spree by stabbing him with a knife" then he's a hero.

I'm sorry, but that's no different from a creationist arguing that evolution is wrong because man obviously didn't evolve from the dinosaur. You don't get to make up the other side's contention for them; and you can't rule out a category by giving an example of something that isn't in it. Geologists are not required to contend that rocks don't float; evolutionists are not required to contend that man descended from dinosaurs; and moral realists are not required to contend that killing is immoral. To be an objective moral code, a moral code only has to be objective; it doesn't have to be objective and also match your preconceptions. It may well be that every objectively correct moral rule contains a specification of who is doing what to whom and their reasons for doing so. If so, what's the problem? Who's doing what to whom, and what his reasons are, are matters of fact, not opinion. Courts take objective evidence every day as to who did what to whom and what his reasons were.

As for the exception to the "don't rape someone for fun" rule, that's an easy challenge. Like I said before you can always appeal to the "greater good" argument. Genghis Khan Jr. has a nuclear weapon and will kill everyone in Manhattan if you don't rape someone and have fun doing it. He requires that you smile, laugh and high-five him while raping someone to show just how much fun you are having. If he doubts that you are having fun he will set off the weapon. Would it be right to let hundreds of thousands of people be murdered in order to uphold the no raping rule?

But I didn't propose a "no raping" rule, or a "No having fun raping." rule. I proposed a "People ought not to rape one another for fun." rule. In your scenario, the rapist is raping for the sake of saving Manhattan; he's not doing it for fun. The circumstance that he has fun doing it is a consequence, but it's not his reason for doing it.

Would it be right to punish someone who raped someone in order to save many more?

"In order to save many more" is not a subcategory of "for fun".

Can you think of any rule that it wouldn't be justifiable to break under similar duress?

Sure: it's wrong to murder everyone in Europe to save Manhattan from Genghis Khan Jr. If he makes a credible threat to nuke Manhattan unless we wipe out Europe we should probably let him go ahead and do it if we can't stop him militarily. But the point isn't to find rules we shouldn't break even under duress, but to find rules that already take duress into account, so they aren't being broken in the first place when we're forced to knuckle under to duress.

 

[connick]

How on earth are you getting that conclusion out of this? As I imply and you agree, the first half of each statement above is false without the second half stating the exceptions. False, not subjective. Objectively false. The possibility for exceptions in a moral code doesn't preclude objectivity; all it means is that the moral code was put together unimaginatively, without its implications being thought through, and without appreciation for the complexity of the subject matter -- just as if somebody claimed mammals can't fly because he was thinking of pigs. You're mixing up subjectivity with overgeneralization. Suppose for the sake of argument that murder is immoral unless your god asks you to sacrifice your son, in which case it is totally cool. That doesn't mean the application of "Thou shalt not kill." is subjective. There's nothing the least subjective about its application -- whether it applies to an act depends not on anyone's opinion or preference but only on whether that act is an act of killing. What it means is that "Thou shalt not kill." is wrong -- that God made a slipshod job of it when He told people the rules. He could have said "Thou shalt not kill, except for nonhumans, humans you kill legally or unintentionally, and your own sons in the event that I tell you to sacrifice them." That wouldn't have subjective application either; it would apply to what it says it applies to; and it wouldn't be an overgeneralization (per supposition above).

The first half of the aforementioned statements is objectively wrong, you are right. It is not a matter of anyone's opinion whether mammals can fly, for example. Whoever was first to make a statement saying they couldn't was not justified in doing so for the same reason I'd be unjustified in saying there are no black swans. It was never an objective statement to make in the first place despite the fact that is objectively false. It was stated arbitrarily because there is nothing to preclude the discovery of some new flying mammal in the future. A largely correct, arbitrary statement is not an objective one.

To use one of the other examples, even, "every chemical will freeze if it gest cold enough, except helium" is still not an objective statemtent. It is largely correct but it ignores the fact that helium will freeze under pressure and that there may be as-yet-unknown elements that don't freeze.

A statement may be objectively false but not be objective and false. Objective statements are, tautologically, factually true statements about an object being considered.

If a moral code is "put together" as opposed to being inherent to an act and requires imagination and appreciation then it can't be objective. If you can't draw something from the object of consideration then it is not of the object; it is not objective.

In the case of killing, making comprehensive rules doesn't make those rules objective. Rules may come down a mountain on stone slabs but they certainly didn't come from the object of consideration. Namely, the act of killing. You can't look at an instance of someone killing someone and glean the rule so it can't be coming from the object.

To suggest that part of the problem is over-generalization implies that there is indeed a specific, one-and-only, exhaustive rule for killing. I don't think that such a rule exists and, again, it's certainly not intrinsic to the act. If it were, you could point to it like the three sides on a triangle or the mass of a rock.

As a matter of curiosity, I noticed that you capitalized "god" and "he". Do you subscribe to some form of theism or are you perhaps being polite to lurking Christians?

I'm sorry, but that's no different from a creationist arguing that evolution is wrong because man obviously didn't evolve from the dinosaur. You don't get to make up the other side's contention for them; and you can't rule out a category by giving an example of something that isn't in it. Geologists are not required to contend that rocks don't float; evolutionists are not required to contend that man descended from dinosaurs; and moral realists are not required to contend that killing is immoral. To be an objective moral code, a moral code only has to be objective; it doesn't have to be objective and also match your preconceptions. It may well be that every objectively correct moral rule contains a specification of who is doing what to whom and their reasons for doing so. If so, what's the problem? Who's doing what to whom, and what his reasons are, are matters of fact, not opinion. Courts take objective evidence every day as to who did what to whom and what his reasons were.

I'm not seeing the connection to creationism or anti-evolution arguments. I also don't see where I'm making up fake contentions or straw men.

I never said geologists had to contend that rocks don't float or that proponents of evolution had to contend that humans descended from dinosaurs so I'm not sure where all of this is coming from. I just used pumice as an example of a rock that floats in the same way you used helium as an example of an element that doesn't freeze (except for under special conditions).

You say that in order to be objective a moral code need only to be objective but, it seems like you are conflating official, consistent rules or law of the land with "objective". Just because a rule is spelled out to minute detail so that every exception is handled consistently that doesn't make it objective. In order to be objective it has to come from or be intrinsic to the object we're assessing; the act itself.

I never suggested that any moral code should match my preconceptions either. In fact, I've been advocating on the side of moral relativism and have been explicit in stating that my moral judgements are self-centered. I expect that the same is true for most people.

But I didn't propose a "no raping" rule, or a "No having fun raping." rule. I proposed a "People ought not to rape one another for fun." rule. In your scenario, the rapist is raping for the sake of saving Manhattan; he's not doing it for fun. The circumstance that he has fun doing it is a consequence, but it's not his reason for doing it.

I saw it when you first suggested this rule but I didn't bother to point it out. I figured on you being imaginative enough (or that you've seen at least one of the Saw movies) to think of ways around it despite the fact that you are combining the act along with its motivations. That is to say, you are working the justifiable exceptions or, conversely, seemingly unjustifiable exceptions into the rule. I suspect it is because you have had similar discussions before and it is in an effort to "cut me off at the pass" so to speak.

You say that the person raping isn't doing it for fun so change up the scenario so that they are. Genghis Khan Jr. will nuke Manhattan if you don't provide a victim to an incarcerated rapist. It must be ensured that the rapist has no idea that his actions are going to save anyone or the nuke is triggered. His reason for raping is pure enjoyment. I have no trouble imagining exceptions to any moral rule and including unjustifiable ones in the rule, as you have, only shifts the problem around.

Sure: it's wrong to murder everyone in Europe to save Manhattan from Genghis Khan Jr. If he makes a credible threat to nuke Manhattan unless we wipe out Europe we should probably let him go ahead and do it if we can't stop him militarily. But the point isn't to find rules we shouldn't break even under duress, but to find rules that already take duress into account, so they aren't being broken in the first place when we're forced to knuckle under to duress.

For the sake of having fun I'll give you some reasons to break your new rule. The cure to cancer is being kept in Manhattan, nuking Manhattan will cause seismic activity that will harm the entire world, Genghis Khan Sr. will murder everyone in Asia, Africa and India if everyone in Europe isn't murdered to save Manhattan, etc. I don't think there is much value in trying to take all forms of duress into account when making rules. There are so many convoluted scenarios that are possible that it would be practically impossible to work every situation into the rule.

I think that we should accept moral relativism and understand the inherently selfish nature of it. There's nothing evil about liking yourself and your family and your friends and your country more than someone else and someone else's family and their friends and their country. That's a large reason behind why the rules we've inter-subjectively agreed upon stand to benefit us the most. If we understand the motivations for our rules and don't act like they are divine commands I think we are apt to be more fair and sensible in applying them.

 

[arkirk]

I was reading over at the Secular Web site arguments about morality.

One Christian argued you can't have objective morality if God does not exist.

I think that is wrong. For the sake of argument if anything goes because God does not exist, then the "anything goes" by default is an objective moral system and standard in of itself. So the Christian is technically wrong when he says there is no absolute objective moral standard if God does not exist.

Objective Morality is not possible. The reason this is so has nothing to do with the fact there is not a God or is one. It is the nature of the moral statement. That is: A moral statement is two things.

1. A moral statement is one that asserts that various acts are either Right or Wrong. As the objectives and preferences of various people can be very different, it is little more than a statement of preference for or against action.
2. It is a statement than can be neither PROVEN TRUE nor PROVEN FALSE. While your moral statement can reference all sorts of objectively obtained data, it remains a statement of preference, and not provable as a fact. Despite this difficulty, you can have a general agreement and moral code that takes this into account, but you cannot call it Objective Morality.

It is equally wrong to state that all morality is subjective. Without life experience and actual perceptions and observations (objective) one could not determine one's preferences. These moral statements people make are more an invented conception of the orientation of a person's thinking relative to experiences he/she may have had...a statement of preference framed in our impressions of life.

Theists lean on the word of god and claim that because it is written, reading this word exposes you to absolute truth, hence is objective. They just transplant their experience into God's mind. It still is nothing more than an established preference in somebody's mind and still is not provable.

At the same time a moral notion does not come out of a vacuum of experience and moral notions change in society over time due to the accumulation of knowledge and sometimes the unpleasant outcomes that arise from adhering to certain ill informed values. Mankind is trapped in an inescapable web of relativity. That does not preclude that society can decide to treat itself as well as it can by general agreement.

 

[Bomb#20]

The first half of the aforementioned statements is objectively wrong, you are right. It is not a matter of anyone's opinion whether mammals can fly, for example. Whoever was first to make a statement saying they couldn't was not justified in doing so for the same reason I'd be unjustified in saying there are no black swans. It was never an objective statement to make in the first place despite the fact that is objectively false. It was stated arbitrarily because there is nothing to preclude the discovery of some new flying mammal in the future. A largely correct, arbitrary statement is not an objective one.

It seems we have different terminological practices. I'd call both objectively true statements and objectively false statements "objective"; and I'd treat arbitrariness as an orthogonal property. Consider this: "The last time you flipped a coin it came up tails.". I'd call that statement objective, since it isn't subjective, since whether it's true or false doesn't depend on anybody's opinion. You'd call it non-objective whether it's true or not, since asserting tails was arbitrary, since I have no way to know one way or the other whether it came up heads or tails. If you'd like me to conform to your terminology, what do you call statements that aren't objective but that aren't subjective either?

A statement may be objectively false but not be objective and false. Objective statements are, tautologically, factually true statements about an object being considered.

Okay.

If a moral code is "put together" as opposed to being inherent to an act and requires imagination and appreciation then it can't be objective. If you can't draw something from the object of consideration then it is not of the object; it is not objective.

I think there's a map vs. territory confusion here. Consider the law of the conservation of energy. That's something a lot of physicists put together over the course of a hundred years; doing so took a great deal of imagination and appreciation. But they drew it out of the universe they were considering; and the universe was conserving energy all along whether people realized it or not. So is it objective? It's a factually true statement about the object being considered. The law is a map; the fact that the universe acts the way the law says it does is a property of the territory. So keep in mind when I talk about a moral code being put together, that a code is a map; it's not the territory.

In the case of killing, making comprehensive rules doesn't make those rules objective. Rules may come down a mountain on stone slabs but they certainly didn't come from the object of consideration. Namely, the act of killing. You can't look at an instance of someone killing someone and glean the rule so it can't be coming from the object.

Well, to glean a rule requires looking at a lot of acts. You can't look at an instance of a falling apple and glean the rule that objects accelerate toward each other, either. That doesn't make universal gravitation non-objective.

Moreover, you appear to be shifting your definition. If objective statements are, tautologically, factually true statements about an object being considered, that doesn't say anything about what it takes to glean them. Can you give a definition of "objective" that we can stick with?

To suggest that part of the problem is over-generalization implies that there is indeed a specific, one-and-only, exhaustive rule for killing. I don't think that such a rule exists and, again, it's certainly not intrinsic to the act. If it were, you could point to it like the three sides on a triangle or the mass of a rock.

Well, you offered exceptions as an argument against objectivity; I challenged it because exceptions are actually only evidence against over-generalizations. Whether moral rules are intrinsic to acts is a whole separate discussion. Are we done with the argument from exceptions?

As a matter of curiosity, I noticed that you capitalized "god" and "he". Do you subscribe to some form of theism or are you perhaps being polite to lurking Christians?

No, I'm godless; but I do subscribe to correct English. The practice of many atheists of lower-casing these words even when not referring to polytheism always comes off to me as kind of petty.

I'm sorry, but that's no different from a creationist arguing that evolution is wrong because man obviously didn't evolve from the dinosaur. You don't get to make up the other side's contention for them; and you can't rule out a category by giving an example of something that isn't in it...

I'm not seeing the connection to creationism or anti-evolution arguments. I also don't see where I'm making up fake contentions or straw men.

I never said geologists had to contend that rocks don't float or that proponents of evolution had to contend that humans descended from dinosaurs so I'm not sure where all of this is coming from. I just used pumice as an example of a rock that floats in the same way you used helium as an example of an element that doesn't freeze (except for under special conditions).

But you did say:

If moral judgments about an action depend upon more than the action alone then you can't say that the rules about those actions are objective. A photograph of a man plunging a knife into another's chest doesn't tell us that act is immoral. If the headline above reads "bystander ends gunman's killing spree by stabbing him with a knife" then he's a hero.​

That's a moral relativist declaring what form a moral nonrelativist's theory has to take -- you're saying it has to be a rule that can be applied by looking at a photo. You know geologists don't have to contend that rocks don't float and you know proponents of evolution don't have to contend that humans descended from dinosaurs; why on earth would you imagine that proponents of objective morality have to contend that it doesn't matter what a man's reason is for plunging a knife into another's chest? Why on earth would you assume plunging a knife into another's chest to stop a killing spree is the same act as, say, plunging a knife into another's chest to stop him sleeping with one's girlfriend? This isn't a straw man issue; creationists talking about dinosaurs aren't setting up a straw man either. The problem is that most creationists just don't know what the theory of evolution says.

You say that in order to be objective a moral code need only to be objective but, it seems like you are conflating official, consistent rules or law of the land with "objective". Just because a rule is spelled out to minute detail so that every exception is handled consistently that doesn't make it objective. In order to be objective it has to come from or be intrinsic to the object we're assessing; the act itself.

Hey, I'll conform to your terminology for this conversation, if you'll supply precise definitions. It's okay with me if we call a claim that might turn out to be objectively false "not subjective" instead of calling it "objective".

But as to the objects we're assessing, that's open to debate. You're agreeing with Kant -- the object we're assessing is the act. I agree with Hume -- the object we're assessing is the actor. As I see it, to call knifing somebody to stop your girlfriend from sleeping with him "wrong" is just shorthand for saying only a bad person would knife somebody to stop his girlfriend from sleeping with him. So if the definition of "objective" includes "intrinsic", then in order to be objective, badness has to be intrinsic to bad people. I don't see any particular conceptual problem with that possibility, the way one might have a conceptual problem with an abstraction such as "knifing somebody to stop your girlfriend from sleeping with him" having intrinsic properties. Bad people are perfectly ordinary, and regrettably all-too-common, physical objects.

You say that the person raping isn't doing it for fun so change up the scenario so that they are. Genghis Khan Jr. will nuke Manhattan if you don't provide a victim to an incarcerated rapist. It must be ensured that the rapist has no idea that his actions are going to save anyone or the nuke is triggered. His reason for raping is pure enjoyment. I have no trouble imagining exceptions to any moral rule and including unjustifiable ones in the rule, as you have, only shifts the problem around.

Why would that be an exception? What the rapist is doing is plainly wrong. He'd deserve to be punished for it. That he saves Manhattan is incidental -- he doesn't intend that or even know about it, so why should he get any credit for his crime having turned out for the best? You might as well claim a drunk driver did nothing wrong because the guy he hit wasn't injured but the car was totaled, and as a result the police found the stolen million dollar painting in the accident victim's trunk.

That's not to say that the person who provides the victim to the incarcerated rapist has done wrong. Providing a victim to save Manhattan isn't the same act as raping her for fun. Different act, different motive, different moral standing.

Sure: it's wrong to murder everyone in Europe to save Manhattan from Genghis Khan Jr.

For the sake of having fun I'll give you some reasons to break your new rule. The cure to cancer is being kept in Manhattan, nuking Manhattan will cause seismic activity that will harm the entire world, Genghis Khan Sr. will murder everyone in Asia, Africa and India if everyone in Europe isn't murdered to save Manhattan, etc.

For the sake of having fun, that's murdering everyone in Europe to save everyone in Asia, Africa and India, not murdering everyone in Europe to save Manhattan.

I don't think there is much value in trying to take all forms of duress into account when making rules. There are so many convoluted scenarios that are possible that it would be practically impossible to work every situation into the rule.

Well, that's why specifying the motive instead of the form of duress is the more practical strategy for getting exceptionless rules.

I think that we should accept moral relativism and understand the inherently selfish nature of it. There's nothing evil about liking yourself and your family and your friends and your country more than someone else and someone else's family and their friends and their country.

And when you say we "should" accept moral relativism, do you mean to provide the autobiographical information that you find it inherently in your selfish best interests for us to accept moral relativism? That may well be true, but why would anyone take your autobiography into account in deciding what meta-ethical theories to accept?

 

[rizdek]

BH, Thanks for a very interesting view. Hopefully you won't mind if I use it sometime in my various web discussions?

 

[BH]

Go right ahead and use it.

 

[Underseer]

I was reading over at the Secular Web site arguments about morality.

One Christian argued you can't have objective morality if God does not exist.

I think that is wrong. For the sake of argument if anything goes because God does not exist, then the "anything goes" by default is an objective moral system and standard in of itself. So the Christian is technically wrong when he says there is no absolute objective moral standard if God does not exist.

The concept of objective morality (assuming we mean "objective" in the philosophical sense) is incoherent. Something that is objective is what it is with or without a sentient mind to perceive it, but our definition of morality is inherently tied to decisions made by sentient minds. After all, someone who does an evil deed without understanding the consequences of his decision is not held as accountable as someone who knows the consequences and makes the choice anyway.

The other way of looking at it is the  Euthyphro dilemma. If you define morality as the commands of an external authority, how do you know that the commands are actually good without first developing a definition of morality independent of the external authority? But if you develop a definition of morality that is independent of the external authority, then the external authority is no longer the source of your morality, your definition is.

No matter how you look at it, you can't have objective morality and you even if you could you can't get it from an external authority.

 

[fromderinside]

No matter how you look at it, you can't have objective morality and you even if you could you can't get it from an external authority.

I'm sure glad  Proud Mary didn't have to obey objective philosophical laws. If they had we wouldn't know whether her wheel was spinning or no.

 

[Togo]

No matter how you look at it, you can't have objective morality and you even if you could you can't get it from an external authority.

You can't have an objective external source for morality.

You could have a common feature of all humans that drove a particular moral value. That would be both objective and a source of morality. That's what consensus moral codes supposedly based on universal human traits are driving at.

I'm not saying that such traits exist in practice, merely that there isn't anything incoherent about the idea.

 

[Bronzeage]

No matter how you look at it, you can't have objective morality and you even if you could you can't get it from an external authority.

You can't have an objective external source for morality.

You could have a common feature of all humans that drove a particular moral value. That would be both objective and a source of morality. That's what consensus moral codes supposedly based on universal human traits are driving at.

I'm not saying that such traits exist in practice, merely that there isn't anything incoherent about the idea.

Apparently, a lot of people want to belief morality settles on us like a dew in the night. We wake up damp and know what to do. There is some comfort in that idea, if only because it saves a lot of analysis and weighing options.

Because the basic needs of all human are the same, we deal with obtaining those needs in very similar ways. This means the rules getting what we need will have a universal flavor and make them seem to have been given by some benevolent spirit, who just wants us to get along.

 

[fromderinside]

Because the basic needs of all human are the same, we deal with obtaining those needs in very similar ways. This means the rules getting what we need will have a universal flavor and make them seem to have been given by some benevolent spirit, who just wants us to get along.

Scientists, you should have mentioned this Togo, find some support for this construct in human dream activity (I hope these are not among the ones written up in the NYTimes today). See: The Neuropsychology of Dreaming: Studies and Observations
Robert J Hoss, MS http://m.dreamscience.org/articles/NeuroPsychology of Dreaming - Studies and Observations.pdf

The unique state of the brain in REM sleep, when our more vivid dreams occur, appears to be involved in emotional processing and connecting new material with old material in memory systems, revealing these
connections in the form of often personally “meaningful” picture-metaphors. The complex of active
centers in the frontal regions may also provide the cognitive capability for not only managing emotion but
also psychological restoral, conflict resolution and adaptive learning. Dreams can be observed to
incorporate many of the waking state functions of these active centers, including initiating and mediating
a resolution by creating and testing imagined scenarios, providing compensating cues to influence the
action, and emotionally reinforcing scenarios which meet the anticipated outcome.

Whether things are universal to the point that a fixed set of values can be attached for everyone seems a little peep dreamie to me.

 

[Bronzeage]

Scientists, you should have mentioned this Togo, find some support for this construct in human dream activity (I hope these are not among the ones written up in the NYTimes today). See: The Neuropsychology of Dreaming: Studies and Observations
Robert J Hoss, MS http://m.dreamscience.org/articles/NeuroPsychology of Dreaming - Studies and Observations.pdf

The unique state of the brain in REM sleep, when our more vivid dreams occur, appears to be involved in emotional processing and connecting new material with old material in memory systems, revealing these
connections in the form of often personally “meaningful” picture-metaphors. The complex of active
centers in the frontal regions may also provide the cognitive capability for not only managing emotion but
also psychological restoral, conflict resolution and adaptive learning. Dreams can be observed to
incorporate many of the waking state functions of these active centers, including initiating and mediating
a resolution by creating and testing imagined scenarios, providing compensating cues to influence the
action, and emotionally reinforcing scenarios which meet the anticipated outcome.

Whether things are universal to the point that a fixed set of values can be attached for everyone seems a little peep dreamie to me.

There are many things which appear to be universal, but on close examination are just the funnel effect in action.

For every challenge to human existence, there are an infinite number of poor solutions, a few good solutions and maybe one really good solution. Everything starts at the big end of the funnel, but eventually everything comes out the little end, because that's the only way out.

 

[arkirk]

A little personal observation......

Scientists, you should have mentioned this Togo, find some support for this construct in human dream activity (I hope these are not among the ones written up in the NYTimes today). See: The Neuropsychology of Dreaming: Studies and Observations
Robert J Hoss, MS http://m.dreamscience.org/articles/NeuroPsychology of Dreaming - Studies and Observations.pdf



Whether things are universal to the point that a fixed set of values can be attached for everyone seems a little peep dreamie to me.

There are many things which appear to be universal, but on close examination are just the funnel effect in action.

For every challenge to human existence, there are an infinite number of poor solutions, a few good solutions and maybe one really good solution. Everything starts at the big end of the funnel, but eventually everything comes out the little end, because that's the only way out.

I have just strained my brain a bit this morning trying to remember if I ever had a dream where I desired something I did not desire in my waking state...whether it is food or sex or music. It appears that our preferences do not seem to change in the dreaming state...even in nightmares.

We appear to have the same likes and fears in our dreams as in our waking state. This seems to me to indicate that regardless of the content of the dreams (the narrative of what seems to be happening in the dream), we seem to bring the same set of preferences to this place of dreams.

There is quite a difference between the preferences of different people with different life experiences, but in talking with my friends on this issue, it appears our feelings about things in the dream state may be established in our brains while we are in the waking state. It does seem true however that the stories played out in the dreams need not conform to our normal expectations of events in our lives. You can find yourself flying through the air, or perhaps being chased by cannibals. You still do not want to be caught and eaten and definitely hope to make a safe landing.

 

[fromderinside]

There are many things which appear to be universal, but on close examination are just the funnel effect in action.

For every challenge to human existence, there are an infinite number of poor solutions, a few good solutions and maybe one really good solution. Everything starts at the big end of the funnel, but eventually everything comes out the little end, because that's the only way out.

The near universals are that we are all humans with information processing systems which are pretty similar (universal). The iffy stuff comes with the actual information processed which can be pretty distinct. The 'funnel' works on the same principles, but, the funnel is treating different information. All ears process sounds. Only those ears processing sounds at a party can distinguish sounds from ones known to them from the background. Obviously there are may ways out depending on what one has experienced.

 

[Underseer]

You can't have an objective external source for morality.

You could have a common feature of all humans that drove a particular moral value. That would be both objective and a source of morality. That's what consensus moral codes supposedly based on universal human traits are driving at.

I'm not saying that such traits exist in practice, merely that there isn't anything incoherent about the idea.

Apparently, a lot of people want to belief morality settles on us like a dew in the night. We wake up damp and know what to do. There is some comfort in that idea, if only because it saves a lot of analysis and weighing options.

Because the basic needs of all human are the same, we deal with obtaining those needs in very similar ways. This means the rules getting what we need will have a universal flavor and make them seem to have been given by some benevolent spirit, who just wants us to get along.

Sort of.

There clearly are standards that are not culture-specific. Prior to the Selfish Gene, there wasn't a really good explanation for this. In typical fashion, religion takes anything that is not known and declares that it has the definitive answer to the question, and this is what they did for thousands of years.



It's also part of the basic scam of religion: you are a good person because you follow our religion, therefore our religion is true.

 

[arkirk]

Scientists, you should have mentioned this Togo, find some support for this construct in human dream activity (I hope these are not among the ones written up in the NYTimes today). See: The Neuropsychology of Dreaming: Studies and Observations
Robert J Hoss, MS http://m.dreamscience.org/articles/NeuroPsychology of Dreaming - Studies and Observations.pdf

The unique state of the brain in REM sleep, when our more vivid dreams occur, appears to be involved in emotional processing and connecting new material with old material in memory systems, revealing these
connections in the form of often personally “meaningful” picture-metaphors. The complex of active
centers in the frontal regions may also provide the cognitive capability for not only managing emotion but
also psychological restoral, conflict resolution and adaptive learning. Dreams can be observed to
incorporate many of the waking state functions of these active centers, including initiating and mediating
a resolution by creating and testing imagined scenarios, providing compensating cues to influence the
action, and emotionally reinforcing scenarios which meet the anticipated outcome.

Whether things are universal to the point that a fixed set of values can be attached for everyone seems a little peep dreamie to me.

Ah to just have it all come to you without any labor on everybody's part....like dew or perhaps manna from heaven. Pipe dreamy for sure.

 

[Bronzeage]

There are many things which appear to be universal, but on close examination are just the funnel effect in action.

For every challenge to human existence, there are an infinite number of poor solutions, a few good solutions and maybe one really good solution. Everything starts at the big end of the funnel, but eventually everything comes out the little end, because that's the only way out.

The near universals are that we are all humans with information processing systems which are pretty similar (universal). The iffy stuff comes with the actual information processed which can be pretty distinct. The 'funnel' works on the same principles, but, the funnel is treating different information. All ears process sounds. Only those ears processing sounds at a party can distinguish sounds from ones known to them from the background. Obviously there are may ways out depending on what one has experienced.

No, there are not many ways out. We are fortunate when there is more than one and that is seldom.

 

[Togo]

There clearly are standards that are not culture-specific. Prior to the Selfish Gene, there wasn't a really good explanation for this. In typical fashion, religion takes anything that is not known and declares that it has the definitive answer to the question, and this is what they did for thousands of years.

Kinda like what the Selfish Gene does now?

The thing is, Selfish Gene still isn't a particularly good explanation. It just takes the old idea of kin-selection, and marries it to the even older religious idea of God and Good being the same thing. Thus societies that are good/godly are good/godly to each other and prosper as a result. These ideas do rather neatly explain why we would be altruistic to each other rather than selfish, but doesn't really explain the similarity across cultures. For example, there are plenty of societies in which self-sacrifice is applauded, but far fewer where sacrifice of others is regarded as anything other than sinister. Yet the genetic impact of the two isn't obviously different.

 

[StarryNight]

My first objection would be to know why is a subjective morality a bad thing...

I think that having tastes and preferences is a part of morality, but they have causes and they can be intelligent tastes or otherwise. If man is constantly at war he will suffer badly and its not arbitrary that people tend to disapprove of such a state of affairs. On the other hand a permanent holiday is not a bad idea of heaven.

So because tastes are capable of being rational to some degree, there must be evidence and coherent understanding involved in the taste formation process. To me this implies that there are "preferables" forced upon us, in the sense that we cant do much about them as living creatures. They may be mind dependent, but they are also as real as any tree or star.

I would argue just as there are qualia for sensory objects, so there are qualia of morality too. The difference is that sensory qualia are representative of objects in the outer world, whereas moral qualia are more tokens of an internally based behavior regulation system i.e. they are role players in the actions of living systems (as are desires etc) rather than "representational maps" of outer objects. So I am close to subjecivism, but maybe a functionalist moral psychologist.

This doesnt mean that "murder is wrong" is objectively true, but theres more to explaining morality than a basic subjectivism suggests.