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Maybe 'religious labels as signaling' would be a better title. Religion is a rather complex institution, involving metaphysics, ie a dichotomy between the sacr

Maybe 'religious labels as signaling' would be a better title. Religion is a rather complex institution, involving metaphysics, ie a dichotomy between the sacred/holy/divine and the profane/ungodly; human organizations and activities and social hierarchies; rituals; and yes, codes of behavior. Ethics is the study of moral principles that govern choices and behavior. I like to think that there are some universal moral principles that are instinctive or even game-theoretically necessary to cooperative human activities, and there are other ethical principles that particular societies or religions choose to agree on. To the extent someone views ethics as a signaling mechanism, it no longer fits the definition of ethics.

lsc 11y ago
>I like to think that there are some universal moral principles that are instinctive or even game-theoretically necessary to cooperative human activities, and there are other ethical principles that particular societies or religions choose to agree on. A lot of people think this... but the claim only seems to hold up if you speak in broad truisms rather than details. I mean, it's generally agreed that murder is unethical; but when you look deeply, this is largely a meaningless tautology, because it's only murder if it's wrong; two people can look at the same act of killing and one can call it murder, while the other can call it something just. Even within my own country; hell, within my own family, there's a lot of disagreement as to what murder actually is. Is abortion murder? Is killing in defense of property murder? Is killing as a judicial punishment murder? People I know and consider to be reasonable people disagree rather strongly on those details. Now, everyone I would consider to be reasonable, and nearly all current Americans would agree that killing someone for the crime of speaking out against a religion is murder, but there certainly isn't a global consensus on that; and really, not so long ago, there was something approaching global consensus that killing someone for the crime of blasphemy was a reasonable and just thing to do. You can claim that all people share a instinctual belief in a set of core ethics, and I'm not going to say you are wrong, but you have a lot of convincing to do.
- RockyMcNuts 11y ago
  people feel empathy without being taught, for people and even animals they've never seen before. they will agree harming or killing someone for no reason is wrong, even if they might have a different threshold for what would be a valid reason. they share the notion that there is some kind of reciprocity, or social contract, even if they differ on the details of what the contract allows. see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103849/Research-shows-toddlers-understand-right-wrong-just-19-months.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103849/Research-sho... animal experiments in fairness, etc. https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_mora... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZurINLlVds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZurINLlVds
  - lsc 11y ago
    If you are saying that believing in something like morals or ethics seems to be a universal, then I agree with you; it does seem to be a universal. However, if we talk about any moral or ethical value or set of values, I still don't see any that are universal in any meaningful way. Across time and culture they are so different that what is the greatest good can be the greatest evil and vis-a-vis. >they will agree harming or killing someone for no reason is wrong, even if they might have a different threshold for what would be a valid reason. I'm taking this as "everyone thinks killing a human is a big deal" (implicit in your statement, I think, is that reasons like "because it gave me slight pleasure" or "because they slightly inconvenienced me" count as "no reason" - because otherwise the statement has no meaning. There's always a reason, even if it's a bad one.) My counterargument is slavery. Even Aristotle, the father of western philosophy, thought that slavery was a perfectly natural thing; that humans could, in fact, be property. Yes, I know, not all systems of slavery were absolute to the point where a master could kill a slave with the same ethical and legal consequences as I would face for destroying my old laptop rather than passing it on to someone would could make use of it, but in all systems of slavery, killing a slave was much less of a big deal than killing a noble, and in many systems, it would qualify as "not a big deal" I also point you at "ethnic cleansing" and religious violence, though part of that is that is my own values; I think that killing someone for their race or religious affiliation is killing for a trivial reason. I'm sure the people doing or organizing that killing disagree with me.

lsc 11y ago

>I like to think that there are some universal moral principles that are instinctive or even game-theoretically necessary to cooperative human activities, and there are other ethical principles that particular societies or religions choose to agree on. A lot of people think this... but the claim only seems to hold up if you speak in broad truisms rather than details. I mean, it's generally agreed that murder is unethical; but when you look deeply, this is largely a meaningless tautology, because it's only murder if it's wrong; two people can look at the same act of killing and one can call it murder, while the other can call it something just. Even within my own country; hell, within my own family, there's a lot of disagreement as to what murder actually is. Is abortion murder? Is killing in defense of property murder? Is killing as a judicial punishment murder? People I know and consider to be reasonable people disagree rather strongly on those details. Now, everyone I would consider to be reasonable, and nearly all current Americans would agree that killing someone for the crime of speaking out against a religion is murder, but there certainly isn't a global consensus on that; and really, not so long ago, there was something approaching global consensus that killing someone for the crime of blasphemy was a reasonable and just thing to do. You can claim that all people share a instinctual belief in a set of core ethics, and I'm not going to say you are wrong, but you have a lot of convincing to do.

RockyMcNuts 11y ago
people feel empathy without being taught, for people and even animals they've never seen before. they will agree harming or killing someone for no reason is wrong, even if they might have a different threshold for what would be a valid reason. they share the notion that there is some kind of reciprocity, or social contract, even if they differ on the details of what the contract allows. see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103849/Research-shows-toddlers-understand-right-wrong-just-19-months.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103849/Research-sho... animal experiments in fairness, etc. https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_mora... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZurINLlVds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZurINLlVds
- lsc 11y ago
  If you are saying that believing in something like morals or ethics seems to be a universal, then I agree with you; it does seem to be a universal. However, if we talk about any moral or ethical value or set of values, I still don't see any that are universal in any meaningful way. Across time and culture they are so different that what is the greatest good can be the greatest evil and vis-a-vis. >they will agree harming or killing someone for no reason is wrong, even if they might have a different threshold for what would be a valid reason. I'm taking this as "everyone thinks killing a human is a big deal" (implicit in your statement, I think, is that reasons like "because it gave me slight pleasure" or "because they slightly inconvenienced me" count as "no reason" - because otherwise the statement has no meaning. There's always a reason, even if it's a bad one.) My counterargument is slavery. Even Aristotle, the father of western philosophy, thought that slavery was a perfectly natural thing; that humans could, in fact, be property. Yes, I know, not all systems of slavery were absolute to the point where a master could kill a slave with the same ethical and legal consequences as I would face for destroying my old laptop rather than passing it on to someone would could make use of it, but in all systems of slavery, killing a slave was much less of a big deal than killing a noble, and in many systems, it would qualify as "not a big deal" I also point you at "ethnic cleansing" and religious violence, though part of that is that is my own values; I think that killing someone for their race or religious affiliation is killing for a trivial reason. I'm sure the people doing or organizing that killing disagree with me.