Posted: Feb 24, 2020 9:58 pm
zoon wrote:
I hadn’t come across that article about infants preferring those who hindered, when the targets didn’t share the infants’ choice between graham crackers or green beans. Yes, fascinating and chilling.
I definitely agree with you that morality is much more consequentialist, pragmatic and relative than it often feels....
zoon wrote:.... I’m not so sure that I agree with all your reasoning above.
That's quite ok. It's always enjoyable to discuss with you no matter what.
If I leave anything out of what follows that you would like me to specifically reply to, just say. I may not cover everything.
zoon wrote:I would agree with you that the rule “existence = good” is basic to our moral thinking; if we consider that something is to be thought about in moral terms then we are thinking of it as sentient, and we do generally assume that for it (whether “it” is a human or other non-human living thing) existence is a good. I have 2 major caveats:
1) The rule “existence = good” is not in itself a moral rule when it’s being used to describe the behaviour of living things. An ichneumon wasp may be thought of as “wanting” to exist and procreate, but it doesn’t follow that the wasp is behaving morally (or immorally) when it lays its eggs in a living caterpillar.
Well, this is where we get to the point of deciding whether to say the 'rule' "existence = good" is a moral rule or the lesser claim, where we merely say it's a non-moral rule which is at the root of or a basis for morality. Now me personally, I'm toying with the idea of making the former, stronger claim, on the following basis. As humans, I'm suggesting, we have the capacity to ponder, often consciously, about stuff. It's part of the human condition, and aptly illustrated in one of my favourite cartoons, which also, I think, illustrates the 'rule' in question:
I doubt that real creatures like the cartoon ones behind the man are thinking 'eat, survive, reproduce' in words, but I think they, or at least some of them (eg chimps and poodles for instance) will be experiencing something.
So I'm suggesting that human pondering may just be window-dressing, an add-on feature that complicates things (for us).
I don't know if I've explained that very well, or even if no matter how well it were explained, it would still be unconvincing or even awry, but in a way, not everything hinges on it. We could, I think, retreat to the weaker claim and still discuss the topic. I at least find the above fun to consider, that there is in fact no morality, at least not as we think of it. Sometimes I think I just enjoy exploring things which are counterintuitive, in case they are just unwarranted assumptions on our part, or because of our particular way of thinking about things, our paradigm.
zoon wrote: It also doesn’t follow that we ought (or that we ought not) to help it.
Ah, I would call that not an application of the rule, because the rule is about my continued existence (whether 'me' is a gene, or a gene-vehicle that calls itself 'archibald' or 'zoon') not 'yours' or 'its' existence (unless we're related in some way or it is in some other way beneficial for 'me' to care about your or its existence).
Now when it comes to me, if I want to continue existing, even if I don't know that I want that (have that 'drive'), then I ought to eat food.
I'm not sure about wasps, but I've heard it said that if we care about our existence, we should be helping bees.
zoon wrote:2) The rule “existence = good” has no place whatsoever in fundamental science, because it’s teleological, the continued existence of a living thing is being thought of as a goal. Before the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century, virtually everyone assumed that goals and intentions were fundamental to the way the universe worked; this is religious thinking, with gods or spirits or at least spirit-like principles such as karma or the Tao in charge. The working assumption of modern science is that everything, including every detail of the behaviour of living things including ourselves, can be described by mathematical laws with no goal-directedness involved. If we understood ourselves as the mechanisms we almost certainly are, then everything we think and do, including our intentions and our moral behaviour, could be re-described in terms of the mathematical laws of physics and chemistry.
I'd go along with that. The word 'good' is dubious, not least because it has baggage, including teleology, but even just in terms of any sort of value-judgement, such as 'pleasing' or any propositional attitude at all. I'm not sure what other word would be better. Something more neutral, I'd guess. The question would be, given what we agree about the assumptions of science, what word should go in the space after 'existence = [......] for living things' that don't experience stuff (eg a paramecium)? How about 'in my interests'. No, that doesn't work unless I have interests. I think I might have been getting closer when I called it a 'drive'. Possibly 'impulse' is good also. They're both nicely biomechanical, if not indeed just mechanical. Which, I think, is what (we call) our morality is, in the final analysis. Which is partly why I'm not against making the stronger of the two claims I mentioned above.
zoon wrote:I’m afraid I’m disagreeing with you in that I don’t think it’s possible to use first principles to make the jump from “people and animals want to go on living” to “we should help other people and animals to go on living”.
Agreed, but again that's not necessarily in the rule.