rationalskepticism.org

Mr. Skeptic wrote:….
The whole distinction between "objective morality" and "subjective morality" is one huge red herring; all we technically we need to do in order to have "objective morality", is simply appel to what is and what guides actions (beliefs, desires), and look to change that as shoulds or oughtness. I'm a determinist myself and I'm more humanistic because of it.

I think the snag there is that we don’t yet know in any detail what’s going on in our brains, the deterministic mechanisms that actually drive our actions. So far, the best way we have of predicting each other is our evolved, prescientific, Theory of Mind (or “mindreading”, there are a couple of example brief introductions here and here). Theory of Mind is a collection of evolved brain processes which use the fact that one human brain is very similar to another, to guess what other people are thinking and so what they may do. Often, this means guessing what the other person’s goal might be, and then working backwards to how they might try to achieve it. This is teleological and unscientific, but so far it’s the best we have and is the basis of many of our social interactions, including the concept of punishing someone to get them to change their ways, which is the standing threat behind moral rules. It does seem to me that morality is essentially teleological and unscientific for that reason, but until neuroscience progresses to the point where predicting people through brain mechanisms is better than prediction via Theory of Mind, we’re stuck with morality (and the formal version, legal systems) as the best method of managing the close cooperation which is central to human success. ?

While we are using the evolved guesswork of Theory of Mind, we think of each person as essentially an entirely separate mind, and it’s the subjective experience of each individual which is being targeted when we use the threat of informal or formal punishment by the rest of the group to keep people within the moral (informal) or legal (formal) rules. The rules themselves would only be objective if they were set up and enforced by some supernatural humanlike power, a god; without any god, the rules are the result of some sort of group consensus, and since we are at least partly competitive within the group, there is never likely to be total agreement, there’s at least an element of subjectivity?

I think that if/when neuroscience does make understanding of brain mechanisms a better method of prediction than evolved Theory of Mind, social life is likely to change radically, morality as such may dissolve as well as the sense of individuality??