I'm curious as to the debate on whether morality is evolutionary. Does anyone know any theories or ideas on it?
Is Morality Evolutionary?
(62 posts) (9 voices)-
FO
MemberIt is.
Population whose members collaborate and protect each other thrive.
Those where they kill each other too much, lose the benefit of effective teamwork.Also, consider all the social animals (from piranas to ants to wolves).
Why don't they kill/eat each other?
Do they act moral?
Is their behavior an evolved trait?Posted 2 years ago # -
Do you mean is our perception of morality evolving or are moral truths contingent upon evolution?
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorI would say that moral truths are contingent upon reality; to the extent that evolution helps to describe that reality, it participates in describing those moral truths. I think, personally, it's much better at describing how humans and other higher animals become aware of moral truths and utilize them to their benefit, and less effective at illuminating what the content of those moral truths might be.
Then again, I'm one of the few folks around here who would be caught dead talking about moral facts or moral truths.
Posted 2 years ago # -
WarbVIII
MemberHeh, you know I started to write about other species and morality as a starting point...but while typing and thinking about the concept I realised any percived morality in any species including our own is just a construct. Morals,and morality are always in the eye of the beholder or group think of say a section of people(town,city,state,nation,religon,cult etc)...whats moral to one may not be moral to another...which sort of proves the point morals,morality,or moral truths are all value judgements and are quite often never observed as absolutes( a topic often dealt with in plays,movies,novels,and comic books) or at least never actually applied absolutely. Though there are certain moral facts or truths we as part of a group accept they actually are just in the end thought constructs that don't really exist, much like good/evil.
Posted 2 years ago # -
"Then again, I'm one of the few folks around here who would be caught dead talking about moral facts or moral truths."
Me dos! I think moral facts pertain to facts about reality.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Eudaimonist, your new name intrigues me in this context. Since we're talking about morality, are you by any chance a fan of virtue ethics? I don't think I've met atheists who like them (heck, I don't even think LMNOP really subscribes to them either, although he does seem to invest a lot of energy in thinking about morality.)
Posted 2 years ago # -
I'd be curious to know what you all think about this talk on Science and Morality from Sam Harris:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww
I think he's gone maybe one step too far in his assertions here, but I wanna hear what y'all think.
:D
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorQuick thoughts here. I think Harris' point is an interesting one, but he goes too far in that denying (part of) the fact/value distinction doesn't really take you anywhere in where he wants to go, which is to solve the is/ought problem.
Also, as the link indicates, I have more affection for virtue ethics than you think, JonJon. I like the experiential approach to ethics, the focus on the ethical agent rather than the act, the non-systemic methodology. I also like its fundamental humility in the face of extreme conditions; whereas most ethical theories will choke on such cases and lead to monstrous or absurd conclusions, virtue ethics has the elegant out of pointing out that in such cases, there is likely not to exist an ethical agent sufficiently experienced to determine the appropriate moral choice. Great for stuff like debates on torture. Torture is wrong by default because there is never a time or situation when the person in that position would have a level of certainty consummate with the severity of the proposed act that it would be right.
I think that Nietzsche is a good supplement to that view, since he also focuses on the ethical agent, but analyzes what being moral does to the agent existentially (which tends to be glossed over by the standard account). I think Aristotle and his progeny were too polyannaish about the effects of being good; as often as not, it leads to being tied up in psychological pretzels as often as it leads to eudaimonia. Health and goodness are often not bedfellows.
Posted 2 years ago # -
"Since we're talking about morality, are you by any chance a fan of virtue ethics?"
I'm actually a consequentialist, because I think virtue ethics is fundamentally flawed in arguing that a character can be right/wrong. As a materialistic determinist, I would argue moral actions must be defined in terms of natural causes and effects, and can not be ascribed to human agency. Therefore, a moral action would be comparable to a hurricane, and it's hard to point at any fault of character in regards to a natural event.
I chose the name Eudaimonist because I think the term lends very closely to my concept of morality, in that it seeks "human flourishing", or as Sam Harris called it "well being of conscious creatures", even though Aristotle and I certainly have different moral frameworks.
"I'd be curious to know what you all think about this talk on Science and Morality from Sam Harris:"
I don't think he's gone too far at all, he is just breaking down a wall that has existed in academia for some unknown reason. If we agree that morality is contingent upon reality, science by definition must be able to give us some indication of whether actions are right and wrong.
" which is to solve the is/ought problem."
Harris' dismissal of the fact/value distinction is actually the same thing as "solving" the is/ought problem, by saying that normative statements are just certain kind of positive statements about human well being.
Although, another take on this issue actually came up in a philosophy conference I attended with Harris, and Patricia Churchland had what I thought was a brilliant take on the issue. Her basic argument was that while Hume might have shown we can't deductively gather normative statements from positive statements, it doesn't mean we can not use inductive logic, or even something that closely resembles the scientific method.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorI'm actually a consequentialist, because I think virtue ethics is fundamentally flawed in arguing that a character can be right/wrong. As a materialistic determinist, I would argue moral actions must be defined in terms of natural causes and effects, and can not be ascribed to human agency. Therefore, a moral action would be comparable to a hurricane, and it's hard to point at any fault of character in regards to a natural event.
Ah. I tend to think that agency is at the heart of morality; there is a qualitative difference in moral outcomes borne by the quantitative difference in moral experience. A child will make decisions most adults never would because they fail to understand relevant moral facts (like the permanence of death, the interiority of the other, etc.) Explanations based on simple causality fail to account for regularities of outcome that can be predicted by distinctions in moral experience.
Harris' dismissal of the fact/value distinction is actually the same thing as "solving" the is/ought problem, by saying that normative statements are just certain kind of positive statements about human well being.
I think that Harris' identification of statements oriented to human (or even "thinking creatures'") well-being or flourishing as morality is a grave error; at best it is a small subset of the moral set, and it itself is too multivariate to be considered deductively. I'm unfamiliar with Churchland's argument, but from your report it sounds more promising, since inductive approaches better handle multivariate analyses. I gather, though, that it would need prior agreement of moral axioms to induce any useful conclusions, which strikes me as a very circuitous and exhausting way of simply begging the question.
I tend to think that such an approach would be useful if there already was a great deal of agreement about certain moral parameters; in such cases, an inductive method could be used to test whether particular approaches effectively maximize fulfillment of those local moral precepts. But on the larger questions, such a method is nearly certain to founder for lack of workable, agreeable axioms. This goes back to the insight that science is good at telling us how to achieve something we already know we want more effectively, but cannot tell us what we want.
Posted 2 years ago # -
"Ah. I tend to think that agency is at the heart of morality; there is a qualitative difference in moral outcomes borne by the quantitative difference in moral experience. A child will make decisions most adults never would because they fail to understand relevant moral facts (like the permanence of death, the interiority of the other, etc.) Explanations based on simple causality fail to account for regularities of outcome that can be predicted by distinctions in moral experience."
Just a quick question before I tackle the crux of this paragraph: do you believe that human agency exists on any tangible level?
This is a concept that Harris wrestles with in The Moral Landscape, and I actually find his argument intriguing, so I'll just paraphrase my own understanding of it. If we are to argue that the causes of human goodness and evil are the result of natural events (anyone who is a materialist has a hard time explaining any other alternative), then our notion of moral responsibility must adapt to fit the facts. As the case for any real presence of human agency (or free will) diminishes, we must reconstruct how we assign this responsibility.
Moral responsibility must therefore be in relation to positive statements about how human behavior works, to what Harris calls "the complexion of the mind". He gives an example eerily similar to your own, talking about five different scenarios: a 4 yo boy playing with his fathers gun kills a young woman, a 12 yo boy who was a constant victim of abuse took his fathers gun and killed a young woman who was teasing him, a 25 yo man who was constantly the victim of abuse intentionally shot and killed his gf after she left him, a 25 yo raised by wonderful parents kills someone "for the fun of it", a 25 yo man who killed "for the fun of it" but has a tumor the size of a golf ball in his prefontal cortex.
Harris observes what we condemn in these individuals is the intention to do harm, and any condition or circumstance that would make it unlikely for that person to have such intentions would certainly mitigate guilt in respect to moral responsibility. He continues to argue that if a person has consciously planned an act, this further illuminates the "global properties of their minds" (ie. beliefs, desires, goals) and the act more accurately reflects the type of person you really are. In this way, the person is in a sense more responsible than a person who acts out of instinctual passion.
This concept of morality certainly calls into question our retributive justice system, and that is a separate debate that I feel is certainly worth having.
"I think that Harris' identification of statements oriented to human (or even "thinking creatures'") well-being or flourishing as morality is a grave error; at best it is a small subset of the moral set, and it itself is too multivariate to be considered deductively."
Well, Harris isn't for the examination of morality through deductive reasoning, he is advocating a science of morality, which would certainly resemble a hybrid of inductive/deductive principles, similar to other science disciplines. Also, how do you gather that the well being of conscious creatures (WBCC) is a small subset of morality? What larger principles do you feel are more encompassing of a moral foundation?
"I tend to think that such an approach would be useful if there already was a great deal of agreement about certain moral parameters; in such cases, an inductive method could be used to test whether particular approaches effectively maximize fulfillment of those local moral precepts."
This is certainly what Harris is advocating. Why do you not feel that WBCC is a workable, agreeable axiom?
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorJust a quick question before I tackle the crux of this paragraph: do you believe that human agency exists on any tangible level?
Yes, shortly. More broadly, I tend to agree with James that human agency, if it exists, is highly attenuated by the automation of habit, but there exists at least the potential for true agency in moments of extremity, contemplation, and dilemma. What might help is that I am not a reductive materialist, and do not accept the material determinist account; emergent behavior is inexplicable by a reductive account. My favorite example of this idea is Putnam's peg/hole argument; no matter what the micro-facts are regarding the peg and the hole, they do not account for the emergent macro-fact that the peg will or will not fit in the hole, as only the macro-facts of what shape (round or square) the peg and hole possess will account for the behavior.
He continues to argue that if a person has consciously planned an act, this further illuminates the "global properties of their minds" (ie. beliefs, desires, goals) and the act more accurately reflects the type of person you really are. In this way, the person is in a sense more responsible than a person who acts out of instinctual passion.
Er, how is this not an assignment of moral agency? Repackaging intentionality as "global properties of mind" doesn't seem to me to shift what's going on at the bottom: that we intuit moral responsibility follows from moral agency. An incapacity to properly handle moral facts (due to immaturity, illness, or mental defect) reduces culpability concomitantly, because they are reflections of a reduction in or absence of moral agency.
Well, Harris isn't for the examination of morality through deductive reasoning, he is advocating a science of morality, which would certainly resemble a hybrid of inductive/deductive principles, similar to other science disciplines. Also, how do you gather that the well being of conscious creatures (WBCC) is a small subset of morality? What larger principles do you feel are more encompassing of a moral foundation?
I think this is problematic of the claim that there are moral facts (in the moral realist sense). If there are moral facts, then we ought to be able to construct logical sentences that include these facts as premises. These logical sentences either do or do not correspond to the moral facts of the matter, and thus carry a truth value (true or false). At the very least, the axioms of a science of morality would have to be stated as deductive sentences.
Why do you not feel that WBCC is a workable, agreeable axiom?
I tend to think of morality as the struggle against axiological entropy, much as life is the struggle against physical entropy. As such, I think that it encompasses both baldly ethical concerns (preservation and loss of life, qualitatively and actually), but also aesthetic valuations, especially as they concern the preservation and loss of beauty. Hence my example a few days ago about the Grand Canyon, and the (im)morality of its destruction; it represents in itself a unique aesthetic object, whose value cannot be recaptured after destruction, and adds value to human life through its continued existence in itself and also as an inspiration of reproduction and derivation (through artwork and practical sciences).
Posted 2 years ago # -
"What might help is that I am not a reductive materialist, and do not accept the material determinist account; emergent behavior is inexplicable by a reductive account."
I admittedly did not see that coming at all. I haven't given non-reductive materialism much thought (I'm only guessing this is what view you hold). Wouldn't the micro-facts about the peg and the hole determine the size and shape of the peg and hole? The idea that these are different "facts" is kind of odd to me; wouldn't they simply be different levels of observation?
" An incapacity to properly handle moral facts (due to immaturity, illness, or mental defect) reduces culpability concomitantly, because they are reflections of a reduction in or absence of moral agency. "
The difference is a belief in moral agency. What Harris (and I, although on a much smaller and forum-specific scale ;)) are arguing is that these conditions reduce responsibility because it means their complexity of mind is far less prone to the crime, whereas someone would have more responsibility when there actions more accurately correspond with their complexity of mind. Responsibility has nothing to do with agency in this case, but more akin to predisposition.
In a case where actual agency is present, good and evil are authored by the individual and therefore retributive justice makes more sense.
"At the very least, the axioms of a science of morality would have to be stated as deductive sentences."
I don't think this should be the case. It isn't true of any other sciences, why should it be true of a science of morality?
"I tend to think of morality as the struggle against axiological entropy, much as life is the struggle against physical entropy. As such, I think that it encompasses both baldly ethical concerns (preservation and loss of life, qualitatively and actually), but also aesthetic valuations, especially as they concern the preservation and loss of beauty. Hence my example a few days ago about the Grand Canyon, and the (im)morality of its destruction; it represents in itself a unique aesthetic object, whose value cannot be recaptured after destruction, and adds value to human life through its continued existence in itself and also as an inspiration of reproduction and derivation (through artwork and practical sciences)."
I like the concept, although axiological entropy is vague to me. Those concerns that you are talking about all fit under the umbrella of WBCC, however. Aesthetic valuations especially, since aesthetic values can only be possible through conscious observation.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorI admittedly did not see that coming at all. I haven't given non-reductive materialism much thought (I'm only guessing this is what view you hold). Wouldn't the micro-facts about the peg and the hole determine the size and shape of the peg and hole? The idea that these are different "facts" is kind of odd to me; wouldn't they simply be different levels of observation?
That's what Putnam eventually thought. I think he was incorrect to back track. The problem is that the micro-facts can only describe the structural matter of fact when taken holistically; they together syntactically form the macro-fact, but they are not themselves the macro-fact. Thus, we cannot point to any micro-fact and say "this is the fact that makes the behavior true!" That's a huge problem for the reductionist account; if reductionism is correct and macro-facts are simply additive micro-facts, there should be a but-for that is attachable to one or more micro-facts that explain the presence or absence of the macro-fact.
The difference is a belief in moral agency. What Harris (and I, although on a much smaller and forum-specific scale ;)) are arguing is that these conditions reduce responsibility because it means their complexity of mind is far less prone to the crime, whereas someone would have more responsibility when there actions more accurately correspond with their complexity of mind. Responsibility has nothing to do with agency in this case, but more akin to predisposition.
In a case where actual agency is present, good and evil are authored by the individual and therefore retributive justice makes more sense.
I am having a hard time distinguishing between the conceptions; to me it just sounds like agency warmed over with different descriptive language. If responsibility is correlated with complexity, it is because that complexity yields a wider field of moral activity; but then it is still a bizarre assignment of responsibility (and entirely reducible to the simple case) unless the complex mind has the ability to choose from acts among the spectrum, to access objects among that spectrum that the simple mind does not have access to. Without that magical ingredient, the complex mind can have no more real responsibility than the simple one.
I don't think this should be the case. It isn't true of any other sciences, why should it be true of a science of morality?
I tend to think it is true of other sciences, which at any epoch of development can be reduced to axioms of observation and axioms of entities (that can be stated deductively), and using them to affirm the consequent eleventy bajillion times (which can also be stated deductively, following Popper's example, even though it is a formally invalid structure to be sure).
I like the concept, although axiological entropy is vague to me.
I should hope so, considering that I coined it an hour ago. :) What I mean by it is that hierarchical structures of order are in and of themselves valuable because the universe tends toward disorder. I seek to apply that analysis to more than physical concerns, is all, on the grounds that the universe also tends toward aesthetic disorder.
Those concerns that you are talking about all fit under the umbrella of WBCC, however. Aesthetic valuations especially, since aesthetic values can only be possible through conscious observation.
Given the above, I think there are grounds independent of an observer to assume aesthetic value. I think the word "beauty" misleads, somewhat, but in a Whiteheadtian sense, I think that aesthetic concerns attach objectively to things in themselves to the extent that they maintain a level of self-organization higher than that which surrounds it; islands of hierarchical order in a sea of chaos. Perhaps appreciation of that order requires an observer, but it preexists such an entity and doesn't require its presence to exist.
Posted 2 years ago # -
"they together syntactically form the macro-fact, but they are not themselves the macro-fact. "
But they are the macro-fact. You can't separate the macro-fact from the micro-facts that make it up. You can separate them via observation, but when you are looking at the macro-facts you are looking at a combination of micro-facts. Where does this separation occur?
"Thus, we cannot point to any micro-fact and say "this is the fact that makes the behavior true!"
No singular micro-fact can make a behavior true, but as we observe micro-facts we better see the mechanics of the behavior, or macro-fact, or whatever it may be.
Micro and macro remind me of talking about evolution with Creationists. It's quietly upsetting my ability to reason.
"unless the complex mind has the ability to choose from acts among the spectrum, to access objects among that spectrum that the simple mind does not have access to."
I think this is integral to the argument. Someone who has been abused their entire lives has less access to experiences, behavioral examples, and brain chemistry to act in a moral manner than someone who has led a rather privileged life. Both have equally natural causes to their actions, but one has a wider berth of choices available.
" Perhaps appreciation of that order requires an observer, but it preexists such an entity and doesn't require its presence to exist."
It may preexist an entity, but any appreciation or even acknowledgment of that order requires an observer. In this way, any aesthetic valuations must have an observer. In fact, even this observation "on the grounds that the universe also tends toward aesthetic disorder" requires an observer. It's hard for me to imagine a single value judgment that does not necessarily include an observer.
Posted 2 years ago # -
"It's hard for me to imagine a single value judgment that does not necessarily include an observer."
All you have to do in such a case is posit an omniscient universal observer.
XD
Eud, I must be misunderstanding this moral responsibility argument too. I'm thinking to myself that just because moral responsibility falls on a spectrum doesn't mean that a retributive legal system is unjust. In fact, our legal system already accounts for exactly this kind of variance in intentionality (at least in some cases- at any rate it is capable of such distinction): the difference between manslaughter, second degree murder, and first degree murder seems a good example. It also seems that under your most recent explanation of this, it is only those with "complex" minds who can legitimately be held fully responsible for moral fault? This just seems all kinds of strange, so I suspect I must be misunderstanding.
Back to writing my paper...
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorIt's hard for me to imagine a single value judgment that does not necessarily include an observer.
The value preexists the subjective judgment of the value. A dollar that is never owned is still worth a dollar; it just requires someone to own or use it to *appreciate* its value. If axiological features of the universe are as real as physical features (as moral realism, in part, supposes), then the value-fact doesn't go away just because nobody is observing it. To posit otherwise is to introduce a measure of solipsism to the nature of value.
Micro and macro remind me of talking about evolution with Creationists. It's quietly upsetting my ability to reason.
Mwahaha. I think the crux of the creationist misunderstanding of evolution has to do with assuming the wrong side of a sorities paradox; they assume that because we can't identify the one evolutionary event that pushes differentiation into speciation, that therefore speciation doesn't exist. Of course, that's self-evidently stupid; it occurred even if we can't determine where, and the proof is in the behavioral distinction between the prior entity and the new one.
My point was likewise a behavioristic one. Take two objects that are micro-fact identical, and differ only in their macro arrangement: the first is an amorphous pile of lignin, cellulose, graphite, aluminum, and yellow paint; the second is a pencil. What distinguishes them is the macro-fact of their arrangement, and the relevance of the distinction is that one can be used to make fine marks on paper, and the other cannot. The macro-fact explains the behavioral distinction, which the micro-account would fail to do. Any assumption of syntax or arrangement is a macro-fact, insofar as it must assume two or more simple entities in a particular configuration that exists outside themselves singularly and so is not explainable in terms of the features of the simple entities.
Where does this separation occur?
At the level of arrangement. Think of behavior as the number of unique true sentences that can be said about an entity. For a simple entity, that would simply be an assertion of a fact, A, or B, etc. for whatever number of simple entities exist. However, when you have A, B, and C in some sort of physical arrangement, you can also form sentences with content like "A is adjacent to B, but not C". This would be irrelevant but-for the provable fact that this additional information yields distinctly different behaviors than any other possibly true sentence describing an arrangement of those same entities. Think of the difference between a healthy protein and a prion; the content of simple parts is the same, but the arrangement of those parts is different. That single fact change, a change in the syntactic fact of arrangement alone, that causes a profound behavioral change for the macro-entity (the protein).
I think this is integral to the argument. Someone who has been abused their entire lives has less access to experiences, behavioral examples, and brain chemistry to act in a moral manner than someone who has led a rather privileged life. Both have equally natural causes to their actions, but one has a wider berth of choices available.
If they have choice then they possess agency. That is where I think JonJon and I are both stumbling on the assumption of a distinction; I don't think there is one, and if there is it is unclear from what premises it follows.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Revyloution
MemberInteresting talk you guys have going on. Im particularly intrigued by the micro/macro fact when discussing a specific moral act. To my mind, both arguments make the error that you can define a single moral behavior that is repeatable.
I think that morality is not based in an individual, but is the sum total of the influences upon a society. For example, infidelity is viewed very differently from culture to another, and even across sub-cultures. One of my employees came from Mexico, where he had many girlfriends despite being married. In Mexico, it's quite common for men to have girlfriends outside of their marriage. Once they had moved to the US, he told me that he never had any more girl friends. I asked why, and he just said 'because we live here now'. The society around him caused him to change his behavior.
I think that's why philosophers have always had such a hard time defining morality. They want it to be something that is clearly defined. To my mind, morality is an amorphous cloud of influence that floats over every society. Before an individual commits an action, the consideration of his mother, neighbor, boss, wife and every other human is weighed on his consciousness. What he considers moral today, he might consider immoral next year, depending on how the over all morality morphs around him.
Hive insect morality can be more rigid, with a clear set of rules/consequences for a clear set of actions. That's because the hive lacks individual motives. Every entity is working towards a single common goal. If human morality were rigid, then it would be easy to circumvent. The fluidity allows it to quickly adapt to a group of individuals who all have separate goals and desires. If one individual develops a novel way to abuse people, the groups morality quickly adapts and declares the new behavior as immoral.
And, of course, the more individuals in a group, the more complex the morality becomes. A group of 3 men camping in a forest have a very simple code of morals. Rural farmers tend to see many issues of morality as clear black and white. The higher the population density, the more complex and obscure the morality becomes.
Posted 2 years ago # -
First, forgive my slow responses this week. It's finals time and I have over 25 pages worth of philosophy essays to write. In a completely unrelated note, LMNOP if you want to give me 5-6 pages on Quine's underdetermination, I would be glad to read it.
" It also seems that under your most recent explanation of this, it is only those with "complex" minds who can legitimately be held fully responsible for moral fault?"
"If they have choice then they possess agency. "
This is my fault for not adequately defining terms that are used differently in most contexts. "Choice" is the wrong word, I do not believe in any sort of free will or human agency, it is completely inexplicable given what we know about human biology and the more emerging field of neuroscience. In this instance, moral actions are equatable to natural occurrences, such as hurricanes. Moral responsibility, therefore, arrives not in a context of choice, but of natural caused behavior.
This is why the retributive system of justice fails to make sense in this scheme, JonJon. If evil is a naturally caused ailment, it makes no sense to punish (in a retributive sense) someone who commits an evil act. Instead, we should be looking to change the natural circumstances (whether its brain chemistry or environmental) that lead to the act itself. Just as we shouldn't punish someone with a cold for sneezing.
" tend to think it is true of other sciences, which at any epoch of development can be reduced to axioms of observation and axioms of entities (that can be stated deductively)"
These axioms of observation and axioms of entities are not deductive themselves. We can state them deductively, but there is no way to arrive at them through deduction. Why can't the same be true of moral science?
"For a simple entity, that would simply be an assertion of a fact, A, or B, etc. for whatever number of simple entities exist. However, when you have A, B, and C in some sort of physical arrangement, you can also form sentences with content like "A is adjacent to B, but not C". This would be irrelevant but-for the provable fact that this additional information yields distinctly different behaviors than any other possibly true sentence describing an arrangement of those same entities."
Of course it does, but this is still irrelevant to a discussion of reductionism. Reductionism does not posit that any group of micro-facts can be randomly assorted and still produce similar results. Arrangement is a necessary inclusion in the examination, just as if we took a human body and randomly chopped it up and rearranged it, we would not expect it to work the same way. Reductionism simply states that given any macro-fact, we can reduce it to micro-facts that give us a better understanding of the macro-fact.
"Interesting talk you guys have going on. Im particularly intrigued by the micro/macro fact when discussing a specific moral act. To my mind, both arguments make the error that you can define a single moral behavior that is repeatable."
We are talking about it in terms of material reductionism, but I certainly would agree with you that moral situations are almost completely unique.
"To my mind, morality is an amorphous cloud of influence that floats over every society."
Would you say that there are any moral truths? Or is it simply relative to each individual society?
Posted 2 years ago # -
Revyloution
MemberI always say there are no moral truths, other than 'no morality can survive that threatens the life of the society it serves'. Beyond that there is nothing that one society considers abhorrent that another hasn't considered perfectly moral at some point in history.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorFirst, forgive my slow responses this week. It's finals time and I have over 25 pages worth of philosophy essays to write. In a completely unrelated note, LMNOP if you want to give me 5-6 pages on Quine's underdetermination, I would be glad to read it.
LOL, it's been a long time since I did Philosophy of Science. From what I recall, Quine's argument was about the underdetermination of translation ("the Gavagi Problem"). My problem with the thesis is that natural human language is "designed" (a word the causes some trouble, I admit) to be naturally underdetermined of definition. Indeterminacy of translation is, I think, an artifact of the indeterminacy of words, and not so much a direct consequence of the theory of translation. I think it also mistakes the actual process of using a working hypothesis for translation; given the poverty of data with which to construct a theory of translation, the user of the hypothesis knows that auxiliary heuristics are necessary to accommodate new data. Use of such algorithms slowly crushes out the space that the indeterminacy can occupy till it approximates the natural level of indeterminacy of definition already naturally present in the language. This is, one imagines, similar to how a natural learner of a language learns their first human language (whatever circuits that govern how humans learn language represent a set of heuristic algorithms that are presumably effective for narrowing the indeterminacy of meaning to a manageable level).
The other problem I have with his thesis is that the conclusion (an "appropriate" translation is multiply realizable; more than one translation of a given text will satisfy reasonable rules of translation) likewise doesn't actually say anything interesting about underdetermination, because likewise I feel this is an epiphenomenon of the simple fact that concepts are multiply realizable in (so far as I know, all) human languages. In consequence, multiple realization of concepts should be expected in translation, since it occurs intralingually.
Moral responsibility, therefore, arrives not in a context of choice, but of natural caused behavior.
I'm pretty sure that obviates any reasonable reading of the word "responsibility".
These axioms of observation and axioms of entities are not deductive themselves. We can state them deductively, but there is no way to arrive at them through deduction. Why can't the same be true of moral science?
I think the primary problem with the juxtaposition of science and a hypothetical "moral science" is that we have far greater epistemological warrant to make assumptions about the nature of things we can direct observe than we do about things we observe at best indirectly, mediated through persons' internal experiences. Conclusions drawn from moral axioms lack a degree of intersubjective apodicity that observations of objects tend to possess. Generally speaking, even if we disagree on what we are seeing, we can be reasonably sure to agree that we are both seeing *something*, whereas even that level of surety is out of the moral science's grasp.
Of course it does, but this is still irrelevant to a discussion of reductionism. Reductionism does not posit that any group of micro-facts can be randomly assorted and still produce similar results. Arrangement is a necessary inclusion in the examination, just as if we took a human body and randomly chopped it up and rearranged it, we would not expect it to work the same way. Reductionism simply states that given any macro-fact, we can reduce it to micro-facts that give us a better understanding of the macro-fact.
The problem is that the macro-fact cannot be analyzed in terms of the micro facts at all. That's the problem; the macro-fact "A is adjacent to B, but not C" does not reduce in any way to facts about A, or B, or C. It requires, rather, terms about the arrangement of the whole structure in order construct the fact, i.e. "adjacent, not adjacent". Knowing individual facts about A, or B, or C tells you nothing about that macro fact, because the magic ingredient (arrangement) is entirely external to them.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Finally! Fin de semester de la escuela!
I'm going to skip the Quine discussion because I have been immersed in his stuff this entire semester and I don't wish to discuss him any further for the moment!
"I'm pretty sure that obviates any reasonable reading of the word "responsibility"."
I should have made the distinction prior to using the term. Responsibility in this context refers to the desire to do harm.
"I think the primary problem with the juxtaposition of science and a hypothetical "moral science" is that we have far greater epistemological warrant to make assumptions about the nature of things we can direct observe than we do about things we observe at best indirectly, mediated through persons' internal experiences."
But questions of morality are derived from the same scientific investigation that we can directly observe. The investigation would just have to have a different direction.
"It requires, rather, terms about the arrangement of the whole structure in order construct the fact, i.e. "adjacent, not adjacent"."
Right, like a human body having certain parts in a certain order. That doesn't mean we can't learn more about the respiratory system by studying the lungs. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the argument, but it seems to me that arrangement would be an inherent observation in the process of reductionism.
Posted 2 years ago # -
"Responsibility in this context refers to the desire to do harm."
But those aren't the same at all! If I'm understanding you correctly, I'm not any more responsible for my "good" actions than LMNOP is for his "bad" ones. I have no responsibility at all, really. I don't even properly have desire to do good or harm, what I have is desire. Any good or harm that actually results from my actions is independent of my desire to do good or to cause harm, and the definitions of good and harm that I'm using are almost certainly determined arbitrarily by my brain chemistry and societal pressures.
Frankly, I don't agree with any of your major points, although they certainly aren't transparently stupid ideas or anything. I'm fairly sure there are lots of people who agree with you. (But they're also wrong!!)
a) I think people have free will (and if they don't have it then they sure act exactly as they would if they did.) I don't think this position is denigrated by current scientific inquiry. I'd need to see more evidence before deciding any further.
b) I think free will is necessary to most (if not all) conceptions of moral responsibility. Frankly, I'm tempted to call this *tautologically true*, but I'll hedge my bets by being less absolute than that.
Dictionary.com is telling me that to be responsible is to be "answerable or accountable, as for something within one's power, control, or management;" "chargeable with being the author, cause, or occasion of something;" or "having a capacity for moral decisions and therefore accountable; capable of rational thought or action". This is *not* merely to say "you've mis-defined responsibility," because you're actively redefining it, and that's certainly fine. But notice that current definitions of responsibility basically require the concept of free will. I'm arguing that these concepts are just this intrinsically connected, and that if you want to remove free will, you really are going to have some trouble making responsibility work out.
c) I think free will is also pretty much inseparable from most legal codes. Clearly, there are deterministic aspects (Billy the Serf, because he is a Serf, must pay the taxes that all Serfs pay, etc.) but to call something legal or illegal is to say "thing x is required" or "thing x is prohibited." Doing something prohibited is illegal, and I am culpable under the law whether I have knowledge of that law or not. Accidentally speeding still gets you a ticket. So free will doesn't always enter into legal code directly.
But it always enters into legal code through responsibility. Responsibility for one's illegal actions, for example. Lets picture a legal system where responsibility doesn't exist. This is hard for me, but maybe we have some ideas. People's violent actions, say, are met with clinical treatment; I am not responsible for those actions, so I am not punished as such. Clearly, I could not have chosen differently than I did, I have no agency, etc. Why, then, am I subject to the legal code at all? My actions are inevitable, and I am not responsible for them, nor am I responsible *to anyone else* for them.
The very notion of legality requires that I am responsible in some fashion to the law. I may not be morally responsible, say, but the law that mandates my therapy is only enforced because *I* broke some other legal statute, and that same *I* is therefore held subject to certain kinds of restrictions as a result. (Maybe this is just a continuation of the retributive justice system we're already talking about, in which case I apologize for my limited imagination.) Just having a simple standard, and applying different actions to those who meet or fail to meet that standard is enough for a primitive notion of responsibility. And as soon as you have that, you have the makings of free will.
I don't know enough about the scientific investigation of morality to comment at length on it, but it continues to strike me as an extremely bad idea.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Ty
ModeratorMy friend calls this "virtual free will." His argument is that we perceive ourselves as having free will, and our social systems require that we behave as though free will exists. Neither of those things is actually evidence for the existence of free will.
And, if nothing else, the potential harm to self that comes from acting in an illegal manner is an additional datapoint in our potentially deterministic calculation of whether or not to do something. So even without free will or responsibility, making things illegal should change behaviors in the way we want.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorFinally! Fin de semester de la escuela! ... I'm going to skip the Quine discussion because I have been immersed in his stuff this entire semester and I don't wish to discuss him any further for the moment!
Congrats on your survival. :) I totally understand not wanting to dig into something that you've had bored into your brain for the last twelve weeks.
Responsibility in this context refers to the desire to do harm.
As JonJon pointed out, I don't see how that imputes responsibility. If one's desires are ineffectual at best (if psychological states are multiply realizable epiphenonema of physical material) and pre-determined at worst (if they are not multiply realizable and therefore are determined completely by physical state), then how can they have any moral bearing?
Right, like a human body having certain parts in a certain order. That doesn't mean we can't learn more about the respiratory system by studying the lungs. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the argument, but it seems to me that arrangement would be an inherent observation in the process of reductionism.
Quite so, studying the lungs helps you understand respiration, but it is not sufficient for understanding respiration--in point of fact, respiration (as in breathing) is pretty meaningless unless it is attached to understandings of cellular respiration, atmosphere, and other systems of various scales. It is participation in those various levels of organization that makes the difference between respiration as a fully attested and described process, and air simply moving in and out of a wet organic bag and perfusing across its surface.
Likewise, the non-reductive argument isn't that it isn't necessary to know the individual facts to construct a narrative of behavior--it is necessary--it is simply that they aren't sufficient to construct an account which matches all of the behaviors.
------------------But those aren't the same at all! If I'm understanding you correctly, I'm not any more responsible for my "good" actions than LMNOP is for his "bad" ones. I have no responsibility at all, really. I don't even properly have desire to do good or harm, what I have is desire. Any good or harm that actually results from my actions is independent of my desire to do good or to cause harm, and the definitions of good and harm that I'm using are almost certainly determined arbitrarily by my brain chemistry and societal pressures.
Worse, if we are all physical automata, then we all make up the physical conditions that hypostatize any given action; if one of us is in any sense responsible under such a metaphysical situation, we are all transitively responsible.
b) I think free will is necessary to most (if not all) conceptions of moral responsibility. Frankly, I'm tempted to call this *tautologically true*, but I'll hedge my bets by being less absolute than that.
Heh. I'd say that if mind is a multiply-realizable epiphenonemon of matter, then there is room to impute some (very minimal) level of responsibility, since the physical facts of the matter underdetermine the experienced mental state, that even if the mental state is ineffectual in a physical sense (thinking one way about an action or another, or having desires towards one set of ends or another has no effect on what will transpire), it may be that we can hold people responsible for wanting to be harmful or desiring harm to occur, even if they are as generally powerless to realize those ideas as the corresponding "good" ideas. I don't think, though, that a really functional sense of morality exists if all we can hold people responsible for is their ineffectual desires.
The very notion of legality requires that I am responsible in some fashion to the law. I may not be morally responsible, say, but the law that mandates my therapy is only enforced because *I* broke some other legal statute, and that same *I* is therefore held subject to certain kinds of restrictions as a result. (Maybe this is just a continuation of the retributive justice system we're already talking about, in which case I apologize for my limited imagination.)
I think the only real limitation here is that the locus of experience is personal; even in a deterministic universe we can easily point to an entity and say that it is that entity which is experiencing. The problem, as I pointed out above, is that responsibility for consequences, as such, cannot be limited to the locus of experience since experience itself is irrelevant to the production of the action that produces experiences. Everyone is responsible for what everyone does, not less than the nearest rock or the furthest star. People, under the deterministic conception, are simply dually cursed to experience the universe rather than merely pass through it but have no way of changing its path, and also to be deluded into thinking they can.
I don't know enough about the scientific investigation of morality to comment at length on it, but it continues to strike me as an extremely bad idea.
I tend to think that studying what physical processes in the brain go into forming moral judgments is an important and fruitful area of investigation from which much good could come. Like any other area of knowledge, I can easily understand how it could be abused or used for ill ends, but that wouldn't really distinguish it from any of the other things humans study.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorAnd, if nothing else, the potential harm to self that comes from acting in an illegal manner is an additional datapoint in our potentially deterministic calculation of whether or not to do something. So even without free will or responsibility, making things illegal should change behaviors in the way we want.
But you forget that in such a deterministic world, you couldn't have made those actions anything but illegal if you have. Your (or other social member's) desires on the matter are literally irrelevant. The element of desire for social progress or any other teleology of thought is an illusion.
Posted 2 years ago #
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