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>The frontier of ethics is to consider a more generalized ethical framework that can encompass other forms of intelligence. You cannot derive morality from pur

>The frontier of ethics is to consider a more generalized ethical framework that can encompass other forms of intelligence. You cannot derive morality from pure logic. Good and evil has nothing to do with a truth table. In addition there is a huge body of evidence that are specific moral behaviors are the result of natural selection. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Natural_morality https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Natural_morality. Morality are just arbitrary behavioral principles that assisted us in survival,. In the same way that feeling hungry helps us survive so does feeling guilty, the two are one and the same. Moral behavior is no different then behaviors caused by hunger. Why not create a philosophy of hunger? Once you think things through you will realize that an ethical framework does not exist outside of the human experience. You can create your own axiomatic morality framework to encompass aliens and AI but realize that you are just creating an arbitrary set of rules, you are not discovering anything profound about the universe.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> In addition there is a huge body of evidence that are specific moral behaviors are the result of natural selection. There's a huge body of argument, which argues that various "moral" behaviors could have arisen via natural selection. Actual evidence? Not so much.
- nendroid 6y ago
  There is evidence. Physical evidence in fact. You can find people with mental conditions that involve a complete lack of morality. If you scan these people with an MRI you actually find actual correlated differences in their brain. The term for this type of mental condition is antisocial personality disorder. The popular term is psychopathy. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien... It's hard to beat an MRI of the brain and an arrow pointing to a picture of the part of your brain that is moral. Unless you disagree with physical structures in the brain being the result of natural selection, such evidence supports morality being the result of natural selection.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    All right, here's a structurally similar claim: Snoring is the result of natural selection. The physical features of our throats cause snoring (we can actually change this with surgery). And the physical features of our throats are the result of evolution. So... So now we need to define exactly what we mean by "is the result of". Is it accidentally the result of an evolutionary process (and we are explaining it with post-hoc rationalizations)? Or is it the result of a process that evolution actually drove toward that outcome, because it was beneficial? (Or is snoring actually beneficial for the survival and reproduction of the species?)
    - nendroid 6y ago
      All mutations are accidental. Whether a macro feature on a biological lifeform is accidental feature or a feature driven through generations of natural selection can be judged through the complexity of the outcome. Complexity arises from random mutations being selected and building on each other. A complex module in our brain that formulates moral judgements on certain behaviors is by probability more likely to be an outcome of generations of natural selection. Such a module arising by accident is roughly equivalent to the probability of a tornado self assembling a 747 airliner from random junk by accident.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        You're pulling out the "tornado in a junkyard" argument to advocate for evolution? There are those who think that exact same argument applies to something like morals arising as the result of a series of accidental mutations.
        nendroid 6y ago
        I'm not arguing against it. I'm saying morals are a macro feature arising from a series of accidental mutations as opposed to a macro feature arising as a side effect similar to your snoring example. The complexity of the moral module is too complex to be a single accidental mutation... it must be naturally selected out of a multitude of mutations building on each other to produce such a feature. This is very unlike snoring which is caused by mechanisms that are far more simplistic.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

> In addition there is a huge body of evidence that are specific moral behaviors are the result of natural selection. There's a huge body of argument, which argues that various "moral" behaviors could have arisen via natural selection. Actual evidence? Not so much.

nendroid 6y ago
There is evidence. Physical evidence in fact. You can find people with mental conditions that involve a complete lack of morality. If you scan these people with an MRI you actually find actual correlated differences in their brain. The term for this type of mental condition is antisocial personality disorder. The popular term is psychopathy. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien... It's hard to beat an MRI of the brain and an arrow pointing to a picture of the part of your brain that is moral. Unless you disagree with physical structures in the brain being the result of natural selection, such evidence supports morality being the result of natural selection.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  All right, here's a structurally similar claim: Snoring is the result of natural selection. The physical features of our throats cause snoring (we can actually change this with surgery). And the physical features of our throats are the result of evolution. So... So now we need to define exactly what we mean by "is the result of". Is it accidentally the result of an evolutionary process (and we are explaining it with post-hoc rationalizations)? Or is it the result of a process that evolution actually drove toward that outcome, because it was beneficial? (Or is snoring actually beneficial for the survival and reproduction of the species?)
  - nendroid 6y ago
    All mutations are accidental. Whether a macro feature on a biological lifeform is accidental feature or a feature driven through generations of natural selection can be judged through the complexity of the outcome. Complexity arises from random mutations being selected and building on each other. A complex module in our brain that formulates moral judgements on certain behaviors is by probability more likely to be an outcome of generations of natural selection. Such a module arising by accident is roughly equivalent to the probability of a tornado self assembling a 747 airliner from random junk by accident.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      You're pulling out the "tornado in a junkyard" argument to advocate for evolution? There are those who think that exact same argument applies to something like morals arising as the result of a series of accidental mutations.
      - nendroid 6y ago
        I'm not arguing against it. I'm saying morals are a macro feature arising from a series of accidental mutations as opposed to a macro feature arising as a side effect similar to your snoring example. The complexity of the moral module is too complex to be a single accidental mutation... it must be naturally selected out of a multitude of mutations building on each other to produce such a feature. This is very unlike snoring which is caused by mechanisms that are far more simplistic.