nunnington wrote:It's a guess.
I take it your sig is black humour?
Split from Quaker's welcome thread
Moderators: Calilasseia, ADParker
Quaker wrote:We Quakers reserve the right to float a littleWe're not very dogmatic.
Quaker wrote:I was pressing Cali because he seemed to want to assert an empirical foundation to objective ethics.
Quaker wrote:That seemed to lead to an evolutioary 'low energy of survival' that would seem to go the way of all others who have grounded ethics in evolutionary advantage;
Quaker wrote:that is where Galton snd Stopes went in the founding of the eugenics society.
Quaker wrote:I would say that we instinctively know that is wrong.
Quaker wrote:I think that was worth pressing a little about because I genuinely see it as a dangerous grounding to ethics, snd one that raises its head from time to time. Not that I think Cali was arguing for eugenics, just that such wikk be the end if it is followed to its logical conclusion.
Calilasseia wrote:The point being made here, and one I agree with, is that it doesn't matter how many people hold a particular principle. If that principle is either at variance with observational reality, or the source of avoidable harm inflcited upon others, then that principle needs to be changed. I gather the history of the Quaker movement includes instances of people seeking to do precisely that.
4 Hours wrote:The gap that's not filled in your case is "values" and, ultimately, values are subjective.
4 Hours wrote:To me, the dysgenic effect of the stupid breeding out of control only underscores the need for transhumanism. The answer is not to get into a breeding war with the stupid, because the Earth can't afford that, but to find out how to create better people on demand.
Cito di Pense wrote:What? You mean finding the recipe for special sauce? You might easily recognise that 'better' is a value judgement.
4 Hours wrote:I am going to assume that Calilasseia is a utilitarian of some order. I would say I approach life in a more or less utilitarian fashion but this view is not without complications. Interpersonal utility comparison is probably not much of an issue, because I very much doubt that utility is in fact ordinal, as Austrian economists like to claim. (That's something I might make a thread about in the Economics sub-forum one day.) But there is also the utility monster problem: if an agent benefits much more than anyone else from the allocation of finite resources to its ends, should it then get those resources? I mean, hell, it maximizes utility! An essay out of the amusing book The Terminator and Philosophy brought up the utility monster concept in regards to Skynet: if Skynet benefits more than all of humanity from owning the planet, then let Skynet have the planet! I am personally open to such possibilities (though I have serious doubts about the possibility of a disembodied AGI such as Skynet), but I doubt that most of those who identify themselves as utilitarians would be similarly open.
4 Hours wrote:I foresaw that someone might bring that up. The answer I thought out in advance was that you should read what I'm saying not in the conventional sense of meaning "objectively" better—that's incoherent IMO—but just me opining about how I think things ought to be. I might as well be telling you I prefer Neapolitan ice cream to any of its component flavors alone.
Cito di Pense wrote:I get it that you've studied some economics, but if you leaven your patter with jargon, some skeptics are going to recognise that you don't really know what you're talking about
Cito di Pense wrote:You don't understand human behaviour enough to talk about rational agents.
Cito di Pense wrote:Not quite all is forgiven, though. Put your caveats in with your pretenses, instead of apologizing ex post facto.
4 Hours wrote:And, if you're really my intellectual superior, anticipate what arguments I might make against strictly cardinal utility.
Cito di Pense wrote:I think what we had better worry about is the dysphoric effect of people of moderate intelligence perpetuating destructive memes via psychobabble.
4 Hours wrote:I don't know how much stock you put in IQ tests but I'm about 3 SDs above the mean.
4 Hours wrote:Calilasseia wrote:The point being made here, and one I agree with, is that it doesn't matter how many people hold a particular principle. If that principle is either at variance with observational reality, or the source of avoidable harm inflcited upon others, then that principle needs to be changed. I gather the history of the Quaker movement includes instances of people seeking to do precisely that.
You don't get to derive oughts from ises through "observational reality" in this manner
4 Hours wrote:any more than you do in "observing" the gruesome deaths inflicted upon field animals by combine harvesters and concluding that mechanized farming is immoral therewith.
4 Hours wrote:The gap that's not filled in your case is "values" and, ultimately, values are subjective.
4 Hours wrote:Do you by any chance eat meat, Calilasseia? If so, then I can make an a fortiori case for what I just said.
Calilasseia wrote:values resulting in observable harm have been changed. Anti-slavery movement, women's suffrage & civil rights movement, anyone?
Calilasseia #83 wrote:Once again, we have a large body of evidence, which I've presented here, that both our capacity for ethical thinking, and our indulging therein, arise from our biological heritage. Without that heritage, without the requisite hardware arising in our lineage, we would be completely different beings.
So, to recap, the ideas beiong expounded here are:
[1] Our capacity for ethical thinking, and our indulging therein, have a biological basis;
[2] That biological basis admits of a natural explanation in terms of the requirements of a social species, and the harmonious coexistence of members thereof with each other;
[3] In addition, when we indulge in ethical thinking, that thinking is illuminated by observational data;
4 Hours #84 wrote:Calilasseia wrote:The point being made here, and one I agree with, is that it doesn't matter how many people hold a particular principle. If that principle is either at variance with observational reality, or the source of avoidable harm inflcited upon others, then that principle needs to be changed. I gather the history of the Quaker movement includes instances of people seeking to do precisely that.
You don't get to derive oughts from ises through "observational reality" in this manner, any more than you do in "observing" the gruesome deaths inflicted upon field animals by combine harvesters and concluding that mechanized farming is immoral therewith. The gap that's not filled in your case is "values" and, ultimately, values are subjective.
4 Hours #86 wrote:….. you should read what I'm saying not in the conventional sense of meaning "objectively" better—that's incoherent IMO—but just me opining about how I think things ought to be. I might as well be telling you I prefer Neapolitan ice cream to any of its component flavors alone.
Calilasseia wrote:Mere assertion.
Calilasseia wrote:Not to mention the fact that numerous people have been documented developing their ethical viewpoint in this manner.
Steven Davis says he didn't set out to start a fight, but found one when he began attacking one of the most sacred beliefs of the vegetarian community.
One of the reasons most commonly cited by vegetarians for giving up meat is the conviction that other animals have a right to life as well as humans. But when Davis began setting up a course on animal ethics for the animal science department at Oregon State University four years ago, he reached a rather surprising conclusion.
Nobody's hands are free from the blood of other animals, not even vegetarians, he concluded. Millions of animals are killed every year, Davis says, to prepare land for growing crops, "like corn, soybean, wheat and barley, the staples of a vegan diet."
The animals in this case are mice and moles and rabbits and other creatures that are run over by tractors, or lose their habitat to make way for farming, so they are not as "visible" as cattle, he says.
Cito di Pense wrote:There's nobody we can trust to program those machines.
zoon wrote:I have to admit that I don’t think the arguments for morality from evolution and neuroscience are very strong as yet because human social behaviour is far from fully understood, but I think they are strong enough to refute the charge that evolution leads inexorably to selfishness and/or racism, and I also think they are the only ones that don’t collapse in the same way as arguments for a god’s existence, so they are worth working on.
4 Hours wrote:Appeals to evolution are a non-starter for morality.
4 Hours #86 wrote:Cito di Pense wrote:What? You mean finding the recipe for special sauce? You might easily recognise that 'better' is a value judgement.
I do, and I foresaw that someone might bring that up. The answer I thought out in advance was that you should read what I'm saying not in the conventional sense of meaning "objectively" better—that's incoherent IMO—but just me opining about how I think things ought to be. I might as well be telling you I prefer Neapolitan ice cream to any of its component flavors alone.
4 Hours wrote:It is often considered that rape is an adaptation among other primates. Does that justify rape?
4 Hours wrote:Evolution only thinks ahead one generation. It could be argued that the reason we have so many global environmental problems anymore is because of the low time preference of the evolutionary mechanism. How do intergenerational ethical issues fit into this framework? Sorry, if you want to make that case you'll have to make it harder.
zoon wrote:Humans (including hunter-gatherers) are capable of thinking ahead for more than one generation
zoon wrote:Or are you attempting to persuade us that humans are not evolved animals?
4 Hours wrote:I agree with you about descriptive vs normative morality and that clears some things up. I still think that OP is talking about normative morality though, so I'm a bit confused.
4 Hours wrote:I agree with you about descriptive vs normative morality and that clears some things up. I still think that OP is talking about normative morality though, so I'm a bit confused.
4 Hours wrote:And yes I am basically a moral nihilist but for the purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume that the people involved here are repulsed by rape and other such not very controversial things.
4 Hours wrote:However:zoon wrote:Humans (including hunter-gatherers) are capable of thinking ahead for more than one generation
To a rather limited extent. I mean a lot of people aren't even capable of planning zero generations ahead. …
Also, in ecology, calculations of reproductive value are based not on generational time periods but periods within the organism's lifespan, discounted by how far they are from the present.
4 Hours wrote:Anyway, even if I grant your assertion that evolution has made humans fully willing and able to take the interests of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren into account, that only takes the young adults of today out to 2100. I wonder if I'll live long enough to see the end of the century. By that time, this Earth is going to be a pretty foul place to live anymore, because evolution has not in fact endowed humans with the foresight to take good care of our planet for generations to come. By many accounts, climate change etc. will have created "Hell on Earth" by this time.zoon wrote:Or are you attempting to persuade us that humans are not evolved animals?
I really don't know how you'd draw that inference.
zoon wrote:I’m not sure if I qualify as a moral nihilist. I certainly don’t think there is any objective, normative moral order to the universe. On the other hand, I do think cooperation at all levels is central to human flourishing, and that our unique evolved ability to cooperate is not yet understood and involves moral emotions.
zoon wrote:For example, you said that evolution appears to justify rape, the evolutionary counter is that humans are unique in having evolved to cooperate extraordinarily closely within groups, and rape within groups is divisive; it’s not surprising if humans, unlike other primates, evolved to gang up on individual rapists.
zoon wrote:You appear to be saying that evolution could not have produced animals with the observed capability that humans have, to think and plan in detail beyond their own lifetimes. You say I am “asserting” this – what alternative do you have in mind? I was drawing the inference that perhaps you think some process other than evolution produced that capability.
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