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Good and bad are judgments based on our evolutionary goal of survival eventually culminating in some idea of society. Lots of these ideas often become contradic

by mimd 3y ago

Good and bad are judgments based on our evolutionary goal of survival eventually culminating in some idea of society. Lots of these ideas often become contradictory in the end as morality is to organize society and their are more effective and ineffective strategies to that end. To prevent bad things, make things predictable, that others can be relied on, and so on. But there is no omnipresent law, akin to say math platonism, or the physical laws of our universe. So it doesn't make much sense for an actor in a society to say it might be moral to end the society/species as it's ignoring the purpose of that "morality" in the first place. It is "detached" needing to be based on other "axioms", say "that every rock is sacred". But these are no more universally valid despite people's hope for a ethical platonism, and are potentially an inferior choice for the only objective that matters, continuation of the system (spieces/individual/etc). In your example, optimizing at all cost to remove suffering ignores that suffering and pain are part of the process of warning in survival and are an inferior objective in the overall goal of survival. Sure you can choose it at all cost, but it's a poor strategy. A greedy algorithm as it were. To be forthright and to illustrate this line of thought, I responded to you in the hopes that you will understand part of this, and continue to live and keep this system going, as it appears to be a better overall strategy to continue society. Not morality but "strategy". And frankly, from personal preference, it's more interesting than some inky blackness with nothing to do. You do hit on a point that's often overlooked that a lot of designs of morality start to break down at large timescales of a couple generations. For example, arguing that a bad action in the past seems a bit poor for oneself if it results in the person not existing. How about the countless others that would exists on just minor variations of that history? Anyway, try to challenge your initial thoughts and see if you come to this or something else. And keep thinking about moral systems at timescales as it's interesting to think about.

agalunar 3y ago
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response! We may disagree from the very start (with the premise you wrote) depending on what you meant, > Good and bad are judgments based on our evolutionary goal of survival eventually culminating in some idea of society. but we may also be in heated agreement. [If we disagree, this will continue a nice conversation, and if not, well, it's useful for me to periodically put my thoughts into words so I can see whether they make sense or whether I really believe them ^_^] So I agree that this is almost certainly why I (or anyone else) has a sense of morality. We've evolved to be social creatures (as a strategy) and our sense of good and bad lines up pretty well with prosocial and antisocial behavior (e.g. a sense of justice or fairness as a means to enable cooperation). But I don't think this endows use with any obligation to obey the biological imperative. We may agree that we have some social obligations – at the very least to avoid causing harm to each other, perhaps also to actively help each other. (And if not out of altruism, out of self-interest and good sense.) But I don't think building a good society requires that we aim to reproduce (let alone perpetually borrow against future generations, as we've been doing lately). Consider supernormal stimuli: there are birds that seem to sit on their eggs not because they care for their young, but because they feel a compulsion to sit on large, round, colorful objects. If you present them with a larger, rounder, or more colorful object than their own eggs, they will preferentially sit on the faux egg (abandoning their own). The only thing necessary for the trait to be selected (passed on) is that it ultimately results in viable offspring, even if the mechanism is absurd, and even if having viable offspring is a side effect rather than the goal. What I'm hoping to establish is that what it feels like to be a certain way – and the underlying values or priorities you actually hold – can be rather divorced from the reason you have those feelings. So we may have a sense of morality because we're social creatures because that's the strategy that let our species survive, but it does not automatically follow that you can reverse the arrows of implication – without more argument, you can only claim that if we want our species to survive, we should be moral (not that we ought to have our species survive). To argue that we ought to have our species survive, you'd need to appeal to some common goal or feeling – either a desire for the survival of species itself or some other goal that the survival of our species enables. But we may not necessarily have this feeling, as the example with the birds and their eggs shows. [Stepping away from theory for a moment: people obviously are trying to ensure the perpetuation of humanity, but I wonder whether people don't actually desire it directly. Maybe what they actually desire is some preservation of their legacy (as a way to feel remembered or connected), or a sense of victory, or vicariously experiencing in some small part a happier future that they are imagining. And of course, this is only when people do stop to consider the long-term; people may usually reproduce simply because sex can be awesome.] In any case, I think it's alright to value something even if it doesn't serve the ultimate purpose of reproduction. Because of other values that I hold, I've tried to extrapolate or generalize useful social feelings to a sense of good and bad that considers and gives significant weight to the lives of other species, or that cares more about the eudamonia/suffering of people than about life/death. This thwarts the reproduction of humanity (indeed, I'm evolutionarily a dead end, because as a result of my thoughts and feelings I've taken lengths to ensure I can't create new life with my genes), but it makes me personally feel better to live this way and I think it's also works out to be better for others, too. In the absence of any (strong evidence for) objective, universal morality – as you pointed out! – we're left to determine it for ourselves, and in a sense there are no right or wrong answers, because we're also left to do our own meaning-making and to determine our own goals (which I suppose would be true even if there were objective, universal morality). Perhaps you could say life on earth has an inherent goal, namely reproduction, but I'd say that's not a goal so much as an observation about what living things on earth do, definitionally. To wrap up (good lord I wrote more than I meant to), morality is a useful tool, something we have for practical purposes, and I think it can be for social purposes and personal satisfaction. I do agree having a diversity of life on earth is more interesting, and I'm glad to be alive to witness it. It's also my preference. I just wouldn't want to keep someone or something alive that was suffering, or didn't choose to be alive, just to satisfy my curiosity. Or perhaps I would, but the idea at least makes me uncomfortable.

by mimd 3y ago

agalunar 3y ago

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response! We may disagree from the very start (with the premise you wrote) depending on what you meant, > Good and bad are judgments based on our evolutionary goal of survival eventually culminating in some idea of society. but we may also be in heated agreement. [If we disagree, this will continue a nice conversation, and if not, well, it's useful for me to periodically put my thoughts into words so I can see whether they make sense or whether I really believe them ^_^] So I agree that this is almost certainly why I (or anyone else) has a sense of morality. We've evolved to be social creatures (as a strategy) and our sense of good and bad lines up pretty well with prosocial and antisocial behavior (e.g. a sense of justice or fairness as a means to enable cooperation). But I don't think this endows use with any obligation to obey the biological imperative. We may agree that we have some social obligations – at the very least to avoid causing harm to each other, perhaps also to actively help each other. (And if not out of altruism, out of self-interest and good sense.) But I don't think building a good society requires that we aim to reproduce (let alone perpetually borrow against future generations, as we've been doing lately). Consider supernormal stimuli: there are birds that seem to sit on their eggs not because they care for their young, but because they feel a compulsion to sit on large, round, colorful objects. If you present them with a larger, rounder, or more colorful object than their own eggs, they will preferentially sit on the faux egg (abandoning their own). The only thing necessary for the trait to be selected (passed on) is that it ultimately results in viable offspring, even if the mechanism is absurd, and even if having viable offspring is a side effect rather than the goal. What I'm hoping to establish is that what it feels like to be a certain way – and the underlying values or priorities you actually hold – can be rather divorced from the reason you have those feelings. So we may have a sense of morality because we're social creatures because that's the strategy that let our species survive, but it does not automatically follow that you can reverse the arrows of implication – without more argument, you can only claim that if we want our species to survive, we should be moral (not that we ought to have our species survive). To argue that we ought to have our species survive, you'd need to appeal to some common goal or feeling – either a desire for the survival of species itself or some other goal that the survival of our species enables. But we may not necessarily have this feeling, as the example with the birds and their eggs shows. [Stepping away from theory for a moment: people obviously are trying to ensure the perpetuation of humanity, but I wonder whether people don't actually desire it directly. Maybe what they actually desire is some preservation of their legacy (as a way to feel remembered or connected), or a sense of victory, or vicariously experiencing in some small part a happier future that they are imagining. And of course, this is only when people do stop to consider the long-term; people may usually reproduce simply because sex can be awesome.] In any case, I think it's alright to value something even if it doesn't serve the ultimate purpose of reproduction. Because of other values that I hold, I've tried to extrapolate or generalize useful social feelings to a sense of good and bad that considers and gives significant weight to the lives of other species, or that cares more about the eudamonia/suffering of people than about life/death. This thwarts the reproduction of humanity (indeed, I'm evolutionarily a dead end, because as a result of my thoughts and feelings I've taken lengths to ensure I can't create new life with my genes), but it makes me personally feel better to live this way and I think it's also works out to be better for others, too. In the absence of any (strong evidence for) objective, universal morality – as you pointed out! – we're left to determine it for ourselves, and in a sense there are no right or wrong answers, because we're also left to do our own meaning-making and to determine our own goals (which I suppose would be true even if there were objective, universal morality). Perhaps you could say life on earth has an inherent goal, namely reproduction, but I'd say that's not a goal so much as an observation about what living things on earth do, definitionally. To wrap up (good lord I wrote more than I meant to), morality is a useful tool, something we have for practical purposes, and I think it can be for social purposes and personal satisfaction. I do agree having a diversity of life on earth is more interesting, and I'm glad to be alive to witness it. It's also my preference. I just wouldn't want to keep someone or something alive that was suffering, or didn't choose to be alive, just to satisfy my curiosity. Or perhaps I would, but the idea at least makes me uncomfortable.