zoon wrote:
I’m afraid this post is rambling badly, I haven’t worked out how to make a clear case for morality as a natural phenomenon, or what references to give. And I have to admit that Wikipedia has a point in that scientists in the field don’t by any means agree with each other yet.

Don't worry about the rambling. I didn't read it except for the last paragraph. I think the question is still whether human beings have the "special sauce" called "morality". If it's something that not all other critters have, that would be "signing". But "signing" is more general than "morality", which is just one kind of "sign". Even ants signal each other with pheromones.

Perhaps an example would suffice. If I partly close my fist and oscillate it vigourously up and down just above my lap, I am making a sort of "sign". It is the sign of "rambling badly". But then, so are the words "rambling badly". I admire pithiness in communication.

The practice of identifying "agreement" with the notion of maturity in a scientific field has been critiqued soundly. Unanimity is not necessarily a sign of vigour in a scientific endeavour. Harris has run off at the mouth, and is now paying the price for trying to bring politics explicitly into science.

Cito di Pense wrote:I think the question is still whether human beings have the "special sauce" called "morality". If it's something that not all other critters have, that would be "signing". But "signing" is more general than "morality", which is just one kind of "sign". Even ants signal each other with pheromones.

From a post by susu.exp on the rdf
(http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 6#p2643996)

susu.exp wrote:science requires us to trust that other people exist, they make observations and they can communicate observations to us - if you accept these 3 propositions science works.

The scientific enterprise assumes humans are centres of experience at the same time as being physical systems, so there’s a certain amount of woo in the foundations. I suspect the woo of having something to do with the way humans cooperate by tracking debts for reciprocal altruism – each individual is tracked by the others as an accounting entity, held responsible for the information he/she provides as well as for other actions. To the extent that people are held responsible, their observations can be trusted. This collectively monitored and policed trustworthiness of other people’s observations is the special sauce science (??and language) needs, and the collective monitoring and policing is morality (descriptive variety of). Is my wild guess.

The woo is trusting other people exist (exist in the sense of being centres of experience), but that isn’t needed for language or science. The practical, non-woo problem for both language and science is trusting other people not to tell lies, and that’s where morality (descriptive, non-woo, collective punishment for misbehaviour) comes in. This is more guesswork on my part.

(Ants in a colony are closer kin than ordinary siblings, which is supposed to be why they cooperate more closely than most other animals. This includes their extensive signalling. Humans are the only animals which cooperate extensively with non-kin, and at least some evolutionary biologists think that the value systems, e.g. don’t tell lies, backed up by collective punishment, which characterise morality, are what enable humans to do it. It takes a lot of tracking information about individuals, which takes big brains, which is why other animals don’t. Is the story.)

zoon wrote:

susu.exp wrote:science requires us to trust that other people exist, they make observations and they can communicate observations to us - if you accept these 3 propositions science works.

The scientific enterprise assumes humans are centres of experience at the same time as being physical systems, so there’s a certain amount of woo in the foundations.

It does?
"The scientific enterprise" doesn't assume anything, you're reifying, susu.exp happens to be incorrect.
Science doesn't require metaphysical assumptions. Some people who are engaged in the scientific enterprise certainly do make them, but they don't have to. We make observations, and proceed in light of those observations. We don't say "these observations are true".
Try not assuming that humans are centers of experience at the same time as being physical systems. Get a stop watch and let us know when science breaks down.
(edit: The practical, non-woo problem for both language and science is trusting other people not to tell lies, and that’s where morality (descriptive, non-woo, collective punishment for misbehaviour) comes in. This is more guesswork on my part. We don't trust people not to tell lies.

zoon wrote:To the extent that people are held responsible, their observations can be trusted. This collectively monitored and policed trustworthiness of other people’s observations is the special sauce science (??and language) needs, and the collective monitoring and policing is morality (descriptive variety of). Is my wild guess.

The woo is trusting other people exist (exist in the sense of being centres of experience), but that isn’t needed for language or science. The practical, non-woo problem for both language and science is trusting other people not to tell lies, and that’s where morality (descriptive, non-woo, collective punishment for misbehaviour) comes in. This is more guesswork on my part.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but it sounds as if you're saying that science depends on the findings of scientists in as much as the scientist can be trusted? If that's what you're saying, then I strongly disagree. The scientific community is skeptical by nature. There's as close to zero trust involved as is humanly possible. It isn't enough to hypothesize (as you and I have been doing) and expect people to accept what you say as science. The scientist's observations are objective in that they are repeatable and falsifiable subject to peer scrutiny. Hypothesis is an inherent aspect of science and discovery, but it is in no way intended to be fact.

As for the material you provided earlier, it seems to me the implication is that "morality" exists as evidence of intelligent design. It's a specious argument, and violates Occam's razor. It's far more complex a proposition than the model I suggested, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are many existing models less complex than the ID model.

zoon wrote:I suspect the woo of having something to do with the way humans cooperate by tracking debts for reciprocal altruism – each individual is tracked by the others as an accounting entity, held responsible for the information he/she provides as well as for other actions.

You think because people construct balance sheets of this nature that there actually exists a balance? Let me deconstruct that for you. What you are on about is the "social construction of reality". It works up to a point, and then it fails spectacularly, as when an extinction event occurs. The clever thing that evolution has to say about this is that seeing extinction events as exogenous misses the point.

Naaah. I just can't be arsed to deal with certain wibbles. I'll let you work out whether or not your wibble is to postulate that the balance actually exists. This is roughly equivalent to deciding whether or not the FSM exists, and whether or not the FSM can save the human race from certain doom.

It takes a lot of tracking information about individuals, which takes big brains, which is why other animals don’t.

Ah. So it's "big brains" that are going to save humanity from "certain doom". It doesn't actually mean that "nothing is certain". It means that you've poured some "special sauce" on it and decide to name it "reciprocal altruism", a construction. Reciprocal altruism is not chopped liver and actually has an empirical effect. Overpopulation and attempts to control genetic drift.

shh wrote: Science doesn't require metaphysical assumptions. Some people who are engaged in the scientific enterprise certainly do make them, but they don't have to. We make observations, and proceed in light of those observations. We don't say "these observations are true".
Try not assuming that humans are centers of experience at the same time as being physical systems.
.....
We don't trust people not to tell lies.

“We make observations, and proceed in light of those observations.” How do you identify somebody else’s observation as an observation without assuming that person is a centre of experience?

If a scientists notes during an experiment “I saw a red dot”, that person is taken for the purposes of the experiment to have reported, freely and truthfully, an experience they had. If they are not assumed to have had an experience, how does the series of marks on paper “I saw a red dot” count as an observation? OK they might have been lying, but most of the time most people don’t lie, or science wouldn’t work. And the main reason most people don’t lie most of the time is that they are highly likely to be caught and collectively punished. In the case of science this process is formalized – any experiment with important results is repeated by other groups before being accepted. Scientists who are found to have misreported results rapidly lose their jobs.

I think an amoral person is someone who thinks that morality is a concept.

zoon wrote:OK they might have been lying, but most of the time most people don’t lie, or science wouldn’t work.

Science "works" because fact-checking is possible. We label as "stupid" people who ignore the inevitability of fact-checking. Since science doesn't reach everywhere, cheating is still possible. Hence, the rise and fall of national and regional economies. The facts tend to say, "Well, that fiscal policy didn't really work, because some people cheated, and other people fooled only themselves."

zoon wrote:And the main reason most people don’t lie most of the time is that they are highly likely to be caught and collectively punished.

Oh, zoon! Wishing that this was true is not the same as demonstrating that it's true. As the rise and decline of national and regional economies should have by this time informed you. Peripherally, I don't give a flying fuck about what happens "most of the time" unless you have statistics to show what happens the rest of the time without relying on dichotomies.

Aurlito wrote:I think an amoral person is someone who thinks that morality is a concept.

Morality is a concept.

chippy wrote:Maybe I'm missing something here, but it sounds as if you're saying that science depends on the findings of scientists in as much as the scientist can be trusted? If that's what you're saying, then I strongly disagree. The scientific community is skeptical by nature. There's as close to zero trust involved as is humanly possible. It isn't enough to hypothesize (as you and I have been doing) and expect people to accept what you say as science. The scientist's observations are objective in that they are repeatable and falsifiable subject to peer scrutiny. Hypothesis is an inherent aspect of science and discovery, but it is in no way intended to be fact.

I agree with all you say there. What I’m claiming is that scientific peer review is a formalised, systematised version of what goes on all the time in any functioning human society. What people say is monitored by the people they are talking to and by anyone else listening to the conversation, and lies are noted, gossiped about, and if worthwhile challenged and punished. It’s in this sense that I’m speaking of holding people responsible. The result of this collective vigilance is that heavily edited versions of the truth are commoner than outright lies.

chippy wrote:As for the material you provided earlier, it seems to me the implication is that "morality" exists as evidence of intelligent design.

Help! I seem to have given both you and Cito di Pense the impression I’m into Intelligent Design or worse. I certainly did not intend to imply anything of the sort. The Wikipedia looks reasonably woo-free to me; did it seem to you to imply Intelligent Design? Was it particularly the Marc Hauser quotation? - he does press for widely shared details of moral codes. Perhaps that quotation did not make clear that his hypothesis is entirely in the evolutionary tradition. A book of his, “Moral Minds” begins:

Marc Hauser wrote:The central idea of this book is simple: we evolved a moral instinct, a capacity that naturally grows within each child, designed to generate rapid judgments about what is morally right or wrong based on an unconscious grammar of action. Part of this machinery was designed by the blind hand of Darwinian selection millions of years before our species evolved; other parts were added or upgraded over the evolutionary history of our species, and are unique both to humans and to our moral psychology.

Marc Hauser is not saying that these moral instincts should be followed; he regards them as descriptive, not prescriptive:

Marc Hauser wrote:The descriptive principles we uncover about human nature do not necessarily have a causal relationship to the prescriptive principles. Drawing a causal connection is fallacious.

Studying these moral instincts is useful because it may indicate how to avoid certain mistakes when drawing up codes of values:

Marc Hauser wrote:The only way to develop stable prescriptive principles, through either formal law or religion, is to understand how they will break down in the face of biases that Mother Nature equipped us with.

zoon wrote:The result of this collective vigilance is that heavily edited versions of the truth are commoner than outright lies.

Yeah, uh-huh! You're really into this "social construction of reality" thing, zoon. Why not just out with it?

I've seen this shit before, and you're not disguising it very well. It isn't your idea.

Cito di Pense wrote:

zoon wrote:The result of this collective vigilance is that heavily edited versions of the truth are commoner than outright lies.

Yeah, uh-huh! You're really into this "social construction of reality" thing, zoon. Why not just out with it?

I've seen this shit before, and you're not disguising it very well. It isn't your idea.

It certainly isn’t an original idea of mine that social pressures may lead people into thinking there’s a reality out there (e.g. a moral structure to the universe) which in fact isn’t there. I haven’t understood your objection to this idea.?

zoon wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

zoon wrote:The result of this collective vigilance is that heavily edited versions of the truth are commoner than outright lies.

Yeah, uh-huh! You're really into this "social construction of reality" thing, zoon. Why not just out with it?

I've seen this shit before, and you're not disguising it very well. It isn't your idea.

It certainly isn’t my idea that social pressures may lead people into thinking there’s a reality out there (e.g. a moral structure to the universe) which in fact isn’t there. I haven’t understood your objection to this idea.?

Well, what the fuck is your point about "collective vigilance"? Aren't you just talking about mob rule? Cultures vary locally. You still have to supply the woo that is behind "collective vigilance"? WTF is it? It's fucking pants-shitting fear.

zoon wrote:
“We make observations, and proceed in light of those observations.” How do you identify somebody else’s observation as an observation without assuming that person is a centre of experience?

The exact same way you do while assuming they are. You just don't make that assumption.

zoon wrote:If a scientists notes during an experiment “I saw a red dot”, that person is taken for the purposes of the experiment to have reported, freely and truthfully, an experience they had.

No they're not. Lots of other people will replicate that experiment.

zoon wrote: If they are not assumed to have had an experience, how does the series of marks on paper “I saw a red dot” count as an observation?

Because the standard for what does or does not count as an observation has nothing to do with the existence of souls.

zoon wrote:OK they might have been lying, but most of the time most people don’t lie, or science wouldn’t work. And the main reason most people don’t lie most of the time is that they are highly likely to be caught and collectively punished.

In my experience that's not the case. It's funny how quickly we get down to brass tacks though. I'll raise you a "most people don't lie because it's sinful".

zoon wrote: In the case of science this process is formalized – any experiment with important results is repeated by other groups before being accepted. Scientists who are found to have misreported results rapidly lose their jobs.

Lol Quantify "important".

zoon wrote:Help! I seem to have given both you and Cito di Pense the impression I’m into Intelligent Design or worse.

Metaphysical claims don't hold up in the absence of divinity.

Marc Hauser wrote:The central idea of this book is simple: we evolved a moral instinct, a capacity that naturally grows within each child, designed to generate rapid judgments about what is morally right or wrong based on an unconscious grammar of action.

An instinct? An instinct? A "capacity"? An "unconscious grammar of action"? And I though Kant's "faculty" was bad.

zoon wrote:
Studying these moral instincts is useful because it may indicate how to avoid certain mistakes when drawing up codes of values:

Mistakes? There's that teleology again.

shh wrote:

zoon wrote:
“We make observations, and proceed in light of those observations.” How do you identify somebody else’s observation as an observation without assuming that person is a centre of experience?

The exact same way you do while assuming they are. You just don't make that assumption.

Fair enough. I’m really talking about levels of trust, which don’t involve metaphysics. I may be making a claim which is uncontroversial to the point of banality.

shh wrote:

zoon wrote:If a scientists notes during an experiment “I saw a red dot”, that person is taken for the purposes of the experiment to have reported, freely and truthfully, an experience they had.

No they're not. Lots of other people will replicate that experiment.

When scientists make observations, these observations, for other people, are indirect and not direct. This is still the case after replication and peer review.

I am claiming that when a high level of trust in other people’s observations is generated through replication and peer review, this is not a transparent scientific process, but an example of prescientific cooperation. I don’t think this claim involves metaphysics, and I doubt if it’s especially controversial.

zoon wrote:
I am claiming that when a high level of trust in other people’s observations is generated through replication and peer review, this is not a transparent scientific process, but an example of prescientific cooperation. I don’t think this claim involves metaphysics, and I doubt if it’s especially controversial.

All social organisms cooperate. When you talk about trust, you're talking about it in a metaphysical way, and tacitly bringing in "consciousnessness" to the argument, as much as if to say that human beings have "special sauce". It's a circular argument.

We don't have to "trust" anyone where fact-checking is possible. With morality, you're talking about situations where fact-checking is impossible, and about the difference between definitions of "trust", "belief", and "knowledge". It's semantics.

If a person experiences high anxiety about the social responses of other members of his or her species without the soothing faith in "morality", well, whatever floats that boat. It's a huge equivocation to mark something metaphysical by references to what the majority of the population are expected to do. That's statistics, not philosophy. In fact, its the same sort of statistics that permits me to board a trans-Atlantic airline flight without experiencing high anxiety. Yes, there's a small but finite probability that one of my fellow passengers is going to run amuck with a fork from the airline's catering service, just as there's a finite probability that the airliner is going to experience engineering, pilot, or air traffic control failures.

zoon wrote:Fair enough. I’m really talking about levels of trust, which don’t involve metaphysics. I may be making a claim which is uncontroversial to the point of banality.

I think it's pretty controversial, to my mind, a major part of the scientific method is precisely eliminating trust.

When scientists make observations, these observations, for other people, are indirect and not direct. This is still the case after replication and peer review.

Doesn't matter, you go with the evidence, when millions of people say "I observed x" you accept it unless there's evidence they're telling porkies.

I am claiming that when a high level of trust in other people’s observations is generated through replication and peer review, this is not a transparent scientific process, but an example of prescientific cooperation. I don’t think this claim involves metaphysics, and I doubt if it’s especially controversial.

You could probably interpret this in such a way that it doesn't entail metaphysics, but lots of the conversation you've had in this thread does, in fact all of it, barring this statement, and this statement only if deliberately interpreted in such a way as to be void of metaphysics. The only people who've not made metaphysical statements in this thread are those who came right out and said "I'm amoral".

shh wrote: You could probably interpret this in such a way that it doesn't entail metaphysics, but lots of the conversation you've had in this thread does, in fact all of it, barring this statement, and this statement only if deliberately interpreted in such a way as to be void of metaphysics. The only people who've not made metaphysical statements in this thread are those who came right out and said "I'm amoral".

I’m amoral. I deny the existence of objective morality.

I’m afraid the confusion has arisen because the word “morality” has two very different meanings, both of which were used in the opening post of this thread. These two meanings of “morality” are the first two in the free online dictionary. They are also discussed at length in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the definition of morality. (The first meaning in the online dictionary is the second in the SEP, and the second meaning in the online dictionary is the first in the SEP.)


1) Morality (1). As used in the sentence “I deny the existence of objective morality”, and as used in the first part of the opening post of this thread. The Oxford English Dictionary gives for this meaning: (mass noun) principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour; examples in the OED: “the matter boiled down to simple morality”, “innocent prisoners ought to be freed”. The SEP article calls this “normative morality” because it implies that people should behave in certain ways. It’s a mass noun, like “happiness” or “china”: it doesn’t exist in the plural.

1) Morality (2) As used in the last paragraph of the opening post in this thread: “Furthermore, I understand that I can apply and follow my own ethical interests without submitting myself to any moral system but wouldn't this imply that I cannot advertise my own values to others?” Given this meaning, “morality” doesn’t say what people should do, it isn’t normative. The Oxford English Dictionary gives for this meaning: (count noun)a particular system of values and principles of conduct”; example in the OED: “a bourgeois morality”. The SEP article calls this “descriptive morality”; it’s merely talking about codes of conduct, not saying anyone should or shouldn’t do anything. It’s a count noun, which can exist in the plural, because there can be a number of moralities in this descriptive sense, while morality in the normative sense isn’t the kind of thing that can be counted.

I deny the existence of morality in sense (1), but I think there are many existing moralities in sense (2). In this thread, I have been using the word “morality” almost entirely in sense (2), and may have given you the impression that I thought it exists in sense (1).

zoon wrote:

shh wrote: You could probably interpret this in such a way that it doesn't entail metaphysics, but lots of the conversation you've had in this thread does, in fact all of it, barring this statement, and this statement only if deliberately interpreted in such a way as to be void of metaphysics. The only people who've not made metaphysical statements in this thread are those who came right out and said "I'm amoral".

I’m amoral. I deny the existence of objective morality.

I’m afraid the confusion has arisen because the word “morality” has two very different meanings, both of which were used in the opening post of this thread. These two meanings of “morality” are the first two in the free online dictionary. They are also discussed at length in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the definition of morality. (The first meaning in the online dictionary is the second in the SEP, and the second meaning in the online dictionary is the first in the SEP.)

The confusion is that both uses in the OP entail the first- the question “Furthermore, I understand that I can apply and follow my own ethical interests without submitting myself to any moral system but wouldn't this imply that I cannot advertise my own values to others?” is only answerable in terms of a normative morality. If you're using morality descriptively, then whether or not one can advertise their morality is entirely dependent on their "morality", in other words, it's completely subjective. There's no answer beyond that.
I'm well aware of the definitions, it was me that posted them originally.

1) Morality (1). As used in the sentence “I deny the existence of objective morality”, and as used in the first part of the opening post of this thread. The Oxford English Dictionary gives for this meaning: (mass noun) principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour; examples in the OED: “the matter boiled down to simple morality”, “innocent prisoners ought to be freed”. The SEP article calls this “normative morality” because it implies that people should behave in certain ways. It’s a mass noun, like “happiness” or “china”: it doesn’t exist in the plural.

1) Morality (2) As used in the last paragraph of the opening post in this thread: “Furthermore, I understand that I can apply and follow my own ethical interests without submitting myself to any moral system but wouldn't this imply that I cannot advertise my own values to others?” Given this meaning, “morality” doesn’t say what people should do, it isn’t normative. The Oxford English Dictionary gives for this meaning: (count noun)a particular system of values and principles of conduct”; example in the OED: “a bourgeois morality”. The SEP article calls this “descriptive morality”; it’s merely talking about codes of conduct, not saying anyone should or shouldn’t do anything. It’s a count noun, which can exist in the plural, because there can be a number of moralities in this descriptive sense, while morality in the normative sense isn’t the kind of thing that can be counted.

If it doesn't say what people should do, it can't answer the question. Added to this, a code of conduct is an ethic, not a morality, even normative morality tells people (who accept it) what they should do, that's the distinction between ethics and morals.

I deny the existence of morality in sense (1), but I think there are many existing moralities in sense (2). In this thread, I have been using the word “morality” almost entirely in sense (2), and may have given you the impression that I thought it exists in sense (1).

No, I'm telling you that the descriptive moralities described in this thread all entail the existence of a normative morality, even if those proposing or discussing them don't realize it. I know you think that morality as you're discussing it is separate from normative morality, I'm saying it's not.
When you start talking about how morality is properly or best derived from empathy, you're doing teleology, you have to ignore everything we know about group mechanics and the actual histories of the various "moralities" which exist and have existed. And you're going to do it based on the morality you happen to be a member of.
That's why those talking about allegedly descriptive morality have chosen empathy, and not mentioned game theory, that's how firm atheists, mostly ex-Christian, and possibly anti-Christian can come to the conclusion that the "proper" way to derive morality is the way that Christianity says.
And that's why the talk about allegedly descriptive morality is so vague as to not make any hard claims about morality whatsoever.

shh wrote:a code of conduct is an ethic, not a morality, even normative morality tells people (who accept it) what they should do, that's the distinction between ethics and morals.

Since I was attempting (and in your view failing) to avoid the implication of normativity, I would be happy to substitute “ethic” for “morality” in my posts in this thread where I’m talking about codes of conduct. It would probably be better still to substitute “accepted code of conduct” or some similar phrase; I have to admit that using an ambiguous word is liable to lead to trouble.

shh wrote:When you start talking about how morality is properly or best derived from empathy

Could you point me to a post where I said that? That was Chippy’s view; I was arguing against it, for example, here:

zoon wrote:2) My second disagreement with you is more substantive: I’m extremely dubious about trusting to empathy to keep humans behaving in ways that anybody would call moral. I would see the huge advantages of cooperation as the principal driver of moral behaviour. It is indeed the case that empathy enables humans to cooperate and to behave altruistically to each other in many inventive ways that other animals cannot match – empathy is extremely important in human social life. But it is unfortunately also the case that humans use empathy to be inventively uncooperative, nasty, and on occasion appalling to each other.

I would see fairness, rather than altruism or empathy, as the key issue in human cooperation and in morality [edit: please read “accepted codes of conduct” for “morality” here]. The anthropologist Silberbauer writes in the same essay: “reciprocity appears to be a universal value from which a variety of principles are derived.” At a more mechanical (basic) level, it is a key issue for evolutionary theorists discussing human cooperation – how is it that humans manage to cooperate extensively, while other large animals don’t? A recent paper here suggests that coordinated punishment is the answer. Punishment prevents free-riding (unfairness)