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>I like to think that there are some universal moral principles that are instinctive or even game-theoretically necessary to cooperative human activities, and t

by 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.
  - RockyMcNuts 11y ago
    once you 'other' someone, you can justify anything including torture, death camps. Kant did a pretty good job with this stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
    - lsc 11y ago
      Kant was quite a writer, and yea, an innovator for his time, but the idea that you should act in a way that, if everyone did it, would turn out okay was radical in his time, and still not generally accepted. If anything, your categorical imperative is another argument that people don't agree on what is right across time and culture. In fact, considering his socioeconomic position at the time, I highly doubt he lived anything like a life that could be lived by everyone. We talk about economic inequality now... but in his day the difference between the rich and the poor wasn't the number of dollars, it was who had access to food and who did not, which I personally think is a much greater inequality than any amount of dollars. > once you 'other' someone, you can justify anything including torture, death camps. The point here is that you can go back and rationalize people's actions like that, but to say those people are acting on the same ethical principles that we are makes a mockery of our modern ethics. If you have rules about what you can and can't do to a person, as we do, and you re-define person to not include a bunch of humanity, you are no longer following the same ethics we are following now.
Retra 11y ago
>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. That's a really poor example that only applies because you chose to use the term "murder" rather than "killing." Killing is not wrong because it's killing, it's wrong for more subtle and practical reasons -- something that is easier to show if you don't go around wantonly calling killing 'murder.' >You can claim that all people share a instinctual belief in a set of core ethics [..] I wouldn't claim that people share an instinctual belief, but I would claim that there is a minimally-consistent rational belief-structure that applies to all decision-making entities, whether people actually believe it or not. There are things that are true for all decision-makers, given that "decision-making" is a coherent concept. For instance, you can't make decisions without valuing the mechanisms that make those decisions. This is essentially a tautology that mean "If you're going to use your brain to do anything, you're going to use it to value your own brain first." Add a couple layers of complexity and you're going to end up valuing life simply because you need it to do just about anything. And killing becomes wrong when it is destroying valuable resources. This doesn't require you to have beliefs tied to some specific culture, it only requires you to be a rational generalist -- someone who's morality actually encompasses real goals.
- lsc 11y ago
  >That's a really poor example that only applies because you chose to use the term "murder" rather than "killing." Killing is not wrong because it's killing, it's wrong for more subtle and practical reasons -- something that is easier to show if you don't go around wantonly calling killing 'murder.' No... I chose to say murder because it is not generally agreed that killing is wrong, even today. Most people think that killing in self-defense, for example, is permissible, and sometimes admirable thing (though again, there is much disagreement on exactly what self-defense is) Hell, a lot of people think that killing in pursuit of a sufficiently emotionally charged goal is okay, see collateral damage in wars of choice. Many people think that killing in defense of property is okay, and many people disagree with that first set. I could go on and on. In the country where I live, most killings are auto crashes. Clearly, most people don't think that this is wrong, considering how loosely we regulate who can drive (compared to, say, who can carry a gun) Hell, I am about to go to work; getting there half an hour earlier (vs. what it would take on my dramatically less dangerous to other people bicycle) is apparently worth risking other people's lives to me. Now, I don't feel particularly okay about this, and I mitigate it somewhat by carrying more than the usual liability insurance, but I'm about to step into my car and drive.

by lsc 11y ago

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.
- RockyMcNuts 11y ago
  once you 'other' someone, you can justify anything including torture, death camps. Kant did a pretty good job with this stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
  - lsc 11y ago
    Kant was quite a writer, and yea, an innovator for his time, but the idea that you should act in a way that, if everyone did it, would turn out okay was radical in his time, and still not generally accepted. If anything, your categorical imperative is another argument that people don't agree on what is right across time and culture. In fact, considering his socioeconomic position at the time, I highly doubt he lived anything like a life that could be lived by everyone. We talk about economic inequality now... but in his day the difference between the rich and the poor wasn't the number of dollars, it was who had access to food and who did not, which I personally think is a much greater inequality than any amount of dollars. > once you 'other' someone, you can justify anything including torture, death camps. The point here is that you can go back and rationalize people's actions like that, but to say those people are acting on the same ethical principles that we are makes a mockery of our modern ethics. If you have rules about what you can and can't do to a person, as we do, and you re-define person to not include a bunch of humanity, you are no longer following the same ethics we are following now.

Retra 11y ago

>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. That's a really poor example that only applies because you chose to use the term "murder" rather than "killing." Killing is not wrong because it's killing, it's wrong for more subtle and practical reasons -- something that is easier to show if you don't go around wantonly calling killing 'murder.' >You can claim that all people share a instinctual belief in a set of core ethics [..] I wouldn't claim that people share an instinctual belief, but I would claim that there is a minimally-consistent rational belief-structure that applies to all decision-making entities, whether people actually believe it or not. There are things that are true for all decision-makers, given that "decision-making" is a coherent concept. For instance, you can't make decisions without valuing the mechanisms that make those decisions. This is essentially a tautology that mean "If you're going to use your brain to do anything, you're going to use it to value your own brain first." Add a couple layers of complexity and you're going to end up valuing life simply because you need it to do just about anything. And killing becomes wrong when it is destroying valuable resources. This doesn't require you to have beliefs tied to some specific culture, it only requires you to be a rational generalist -- someone who's morality actually encompasses real goals.

lsc 11y ago
>That's a really poor example that only applies because you chose to use the term "murder" rather than "killing." Killing is not wrong because it's killing, it's wrong for more subtle and practical reasons -- something that is easier to show if you don't go around wantonly calling killing 'murder.' No... I chose to say murder because it is not generally agreed that killing is wrong, even today. Most people think that killing in self-defense, for example, is permissible, and sometimes admirable thing (though again, there is much disagreement on exactly what self-defense is) Hell, a lot of people think that killing in pursuit of a sufficiently emotionally charged goal is okay, see collateral damage in wars of choice. Many people think that killing in defense of property is okay, and many people disagree with that first set. I could go on and on. In the country where I live, most killings are auto crashes. Clearly, most people don't think that this is wrong, considering how loosely we regulate who can drive (compared to, say, who can carry a gun) Hell, I am about to go to work; getting there half an hour earlier (vs. what it would take on my dramatically less dangerous to other people bicycle) is apparently worth risking other people's lives to me. Now, I don't feel particularly okay about this, and I mitigate it somewhat by carrying more than the usual liability insurance, but I'm about to step into my car and drive.