I don’t say the DNA knows about species. Of course, I was speaking figuratively when stating the DNA “supports” it in a way.
But a totally selfish behaviour apparently wasn’t the best way to ensure a healthy offspring.
A genotypes who helped others was rewarded in the long run, hence our intelligence (that is foremost based on processing complex emotional content and language)
Yes our genes are selfish.
But somehow, along the way, a good deal of morality was inscribed in it, too. A-selfishness if you want.
Or why do people care if others cry? The ability to feel so much empathy was one of the most important evolutionary traits we aquired.
Crying for a dead child is objectively meaningless. Yet some animals mourn and we mastered it.
And your example is so so.
I’m specifically talking about homo sapiens and besides, Lions and other “child killers” aren’t at the top of the food chain for a reason. Even worse, they are nearly extinct.
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Crying for a dead child is objectively meaningless. Yet some animals mourn and we mastered it.
[/quote]
Morality is a separate concept than emotion. Emotion is part of the lens that helps perceive reality – it is the filter and every person’s filter works differently. Emotions, although part of our DNA must also be learned and conditioned into each person individually. Morality, being completely learned can never be part of the DNA.
Mother’s may mourn for the loss of a child but that has little to do with morality and everything to do with emotional bonding. Emotional bonding is the glue that holds communities together and makes individuals want to cooperate with their respective groups.
Morality, on the other hand, is a cooperative effort. It makes little sense to speak of individual morality because morality is about how we act in regard to other people. I look at morality as a protocol for behavior. Cooperation requires protocol.
Manners, for example, are one set of protocols. Language is another. One of the implications of looking at a morality as protocol is that we can then understand it as reciprocated behavior. One can only get as good as he gives.
Animals have instinctive DNA-coded responses to protect their young, etc. which would be a form of morality.
Also, morality isn’t restricted to interpersonal interactions. For example, one of my values might be self-improvement or courage under harsh conditions or enlightenment. A monk living in isolation still has a set of moral values.
I don’t say the DNA knows about species. Of course, I was speaking figuratively when stating the DNA “supports” it in a way.
But a totally selfish behaviour apparently wasn’t the best way to ensure a healthy offspring.
A genotypes who helped others was rewarded in the long run, hence our intelligence (that is foremost based on processing complex emotional content and language)
Yes our genes are selfish.
But somehow, along the way, a good deal of morality was inscribed in it, too. A-selfishness if you want.
Or why do people care if others cry? The ability to feel so much empathy was one of the most important evolutionary traits we aquired.
Crying for a dead child is objectively meaningless. Yet some animals mourn and we mastered it.
And your example is so so.
I’m specifically talking about homo sapiens and besides, Lions and other “child killers” aren’t at the top of the food chain for a reason. Even worse, they are nearly extinct.
I don’t say the DNA knows about species. Of course, I was speaking figuratively when stating the DNA “supports” it in a way.
But a totally selfish behaviour apparently wasn’t the best way to ensure a healthy offspring.
A genotypes who helped others was rewarded in the long run, hence our intelligence (that is foremost based on processing complex emotional content and language)
Yes our genes are selfish.
But somehow, along the way, a good deal of morality was inscribed in it, too. A-selfishness if you want.
Or why do people care if others cry? The ability to feel so much empathy was one of the most important evolutionary traits we aquired.
Crying for a dead child is objectively meaningless. Yet some animals mourn and we mastered it.
And your example is so so.
I’m specifically talking about homo sapiens and besides, Lions and other “child killers” aren’t at the top of the food chain for a reason. Even worse, they are nearly extinct.
[/quote]
First of all, “child killing” perfectly normal for a lot of species, human children that have just one stepparent have the 70 fold risk of dying than children that grow up with their biological parents.
Then, you´d have to explain how a mechanism that develops genes that care for group survival comes into existence. How does the feed back loop that enables the genes to learn from a “group experience” look like?
“Helping” or reciprocal altruism is in no way unique to humans and therefore morality can hardly be the reason for it, unless you call vampire bats moral.
Then, the ability to work together and instincts to enable that are still not about species survival but can easily be explained by helping the individual to procreate.
But a totally selfish behaviour apparently wasn’t the best way to ensure a healthy offspring.
[/quote]
Nobody claimed that.
I claim that genes either continue to exist or they don´t.
Those that help with survival and procreation get past on and the rest does not.
There is a difference between the gene, that cannot be anything but “selfish” or else it would not exist, and the individuals emotions or actions which may be astoundingly generous for the individual.
It´s really economics, when it pays off to cooperate, genes do. If not they don´t.
[quote]orion wrote:
First of all, “child killing” perfectly normal for a lot of species, human children that have just one stepparent have the 70 fold risk of dying than children that grow up with their biological parents.
[/quote]
Yes, the risks increase (although 70 fold is a bit high). But openly killing (and that is what we are talking about) the children is out of the question in most cultures.
[quote]orion wrote:
Then, you´d have to explain how a mechanism that develops genes that care for group survival comes into existence. How does the feed back loop that enables the genes to learn from a “group experience” look like?
[/quote]
first of all, explaining that mechanism is easy as it’s not a very sophisticated one. Generally, people all over the world hesitate to bash others their head in. That means violence output is somehow inhibited, probably mainly through visual feedback. Chemical restraints or enhancers like these exist for a large portion of the human behaviour spectrum.
There doesn’t has to be a loop. As long as a decreased violence trait was very advantageous (which we know it was), you bet it was passed on.
[Interestingly, scientists recently discovered there might be a chemical feedback after all that can switch off single genes in the DNA after strong emotional experiences.]
[quote]the strudel devourer wrote:
“Helping” or reciprocal altruism is in no way unique to humans and therefore morality can hardly be the reason for it, unless you call vampire bats moral.
[/quote]
It doesn’t have to be unique. We just excel at it.
And yes, usually, the more intelligent the animal, the more personality we see in it. Most humans generally perceive animals that eat their own kind as evil. (for instance, evil crocodile you will find in practically any cultures that had contace to it). Animals which care for one another and are herbivores are most often perceived as kind.
interestingly, we perceive antisocial animals to be mostly dumb.
So yes, certainly animals have morals. At least from our perspective (is there another?). They’re not as refined as ours but still.
[quote]cake-hater wrote:
Then, the ability to work together and instincts to enable that are still not about species survival but can easily be explained by helping the individual to procreate.
[/quote]
Not everything can be explained by that.
Humans do things that definitely don’t help them to procreate.
But the question is more about why we hesitate to kill our own kind easily.
[quote]forlife wrote:
I’m (pleasantly) surprised that nobody has argued for objective morality yet.
[/quote]
I am unpleasantly surprised that you seem to be repulsed by the idea of objective morality.
We must behave in certain ways in order to live together as human beings. Much is negotiable. If you can believe that human beings have natures, you can at least entertain the possibility that there is a best way to live.
[quote]forlife wrote:
I’m not repulsed by the idea of objective morality, I just don’t believe it exists.
If you believe it exists, what is your proof?[/quote]
As I said, certain general principles are necessary if we are to live together. Murder, adultery, and theft are the three actions Aristotle identifies as never being virtuous in any circumstance, although it is safe to assume that they may be more or less vicious. These are objectively vicious because they undermine polity; they make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to participate in a city.
Another mode of inquiry is to consider what behaviors seem to be best - most conducive to happiness. That is, are there certain ways of being in the world that we would always prefer if we were able to see the consequences of all possible ways of being? And we’d have to establish what happiness is, whether it is preferable to the sorts of things that seem to be happiness but are not, etc. And this is a long inquiry, and a topic about which real Philosophers have written volumes.
But I will say more particularly that I am not interested in proving that moral absolutes exist; rather, I am interested in advancing the view that the pursuit of objective morality is desirable in itself, irrespective of the actual existence of the morality it seeks.
But a totally selfish behaviour apparently wasn’t the best way to ensure a healthy offspring.
Nobody claimed that.
I claim that genes either continue to exist or they don´t.
Those that help with survival and procreation get past on and the rest does not.
There is a difference between the gene, that cannot be anything but “selfish” or else it would not exist, and the individuals emotions or actions which may be astoundingly generous for the individual.
It´s really economics, when it pays off to cooperate, genes do. If not they don´t.
[/quote]
That is, in essence, my viewpoint as well. Humans can choose to act against their own survival genes (altruism) and be self-destructive, but such individuals would and should evolve out. Societies, like the Soviet Union, that are based upon self-destructive altruism, evolve out. They have to or everyone dies.
If there be no natural or objective morality, then there are no Natural Rights. At base, “rights” are simply moral claims on other men that transcend individual preferences.
The obvious example is always murder: if you have a right to your life, then other men cannot morally act on their preference to kill you. If there is no natural morality, then you have no rights, only a preference - a preference that is equal to someone else’s preference of the opposite.
If you believe it exists, what is your proof?[/quote]
You have engaged in the fallacy of denying the antecedent:
[i]If A, then B.
No A, then therefore no B.[/i]
In your terms:
[i]If you have measurable proof of Objective Morality, it therefore exists.
If you don’t have measurable proof of Objective Morality, it therefore does not exist.[/i]
Incorrect.
The absence of proof is not dispositive of the question: it may exist, and we have yet to prove its existence. All the absence of measurable proof tells us is that more analysis is needed, or different forms of knowledge should be applied.
Not only is “denying the antecedent” a logical fallacy, it is also a frequent mistake rooted in the hubris of the error that “if we don’t know it or haven’t figured it out, it doesn’t exist”.
[quote]Zeppelin795 wrote:
Spry wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Spry wrote:
There is no objective right or wrong.
…unless it is done to me.
If I do ‘something’ to you you might think it is wrong.
I might think it were right.
We would both be holding SUBJECTIVE views.
So if you thought murdering a new born baby was right but the parents thought it was wrong, who would be right? Both?[/quote]
Mate. I said one thing and you just attacked a completely different statement.
But to refocus on what I mean by OBJECTIVE and SUBJECTIVE viewpoints I will say this:
If I thought that killing a new born baby who was terminally ill anyway, was in pain all the time and would only live til they were 2 years old then I might consider that right. (I might. This is a poor example).
The parents might consider any killing of their child wrong no matter the reason.
The point is, no one is ABSOLUTELY right or wrong in this scenario.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
But I will say more particularly that I am not interested in proving that moral absolutes exist; rather, I am interested in advancing the view that the pursuit of objective morality is desirable in itself, irrespective of the actual existence of the morality it seeks.[/quote]
But it’s always a good idea to investigate the question of existence (of a solution) before applying approximation methods in search of a solution.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
forlife wrote:
I’m not repulsed by the idea of objective morality, I just don’t believe it exists.
If you believe it exists, what is your proof?
As I said, certain general principles are necessary if we are to live together. Murder, adultery, and theft are the three actions Aristotle identifies as never being virtuous in any circumstance, although it is safe to assume that they may be more or less vicious. These are objectively vicious because they undermine polity; they make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to participate in a city.
Another mode of inquiry is to consider what behaviors seem to be best - most conducive to happiness. That is, are there certain ways of being in the world that we would always prefer if we were able to see the consequences of all possible ways of being? And we’d have to establish what happiness is, whether it is preferable to the sorts of things that seem to be happiness but are not, etc. And this is a long inquiry, and a topic about which real Philosophers have written volumes.
But I will say more particularly that I am not interested in proving that moral absolutes exist; rather, I am interested in advancing the view that the pursuit of objective morality is desirable in itself, irrespective of the actual existence of the morality it seeks.[/quote]
Could you elaborate?
I am having problems with the concept of the existence of an objective morality as you define it.
Is the question whether such a moral system can exist?
Because we obviously could bring it into existence by just living it if there is such a system.