On Ethics

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

[quote]Facepalm_Death wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
I enjoyed the On Government thread and so I thought we might discuss ethics. I’ll start this with Friedrich Jacobi’s accusation against Kantian philosophy: (Paraphrasing) If you don’t believe in an objective transcendent moral order then you are essentially a nihilist. Which leads to my question, why do you behave as if an objective transcendent moral order exists if you don’t believe one does?[/quote]

My inclination would be to say that most people who try to deny the existence of a “transcendent moral order” actually do believe in one, but they do not wish to call it by this name because they think word associations (“transcendent”) are somehow going to force them into admitting the existence of God. This is a mistake

The logic behind the categorical imperative still works without any notion of God. Someone who denies morals derived from the categorical imperative is probably not truly consistent because if such person feels it is okay for them to murder anyone, I doubt they feel OK with possibly being murdered at any time. The person that denies rules such as this is immoral and illogical

The categorical imperative is based on the same logic that is a necessary condition for society and as such is transcendent, and someone who denies this probably is a nihilist

[/quote]

I agree in the sense that objective moral values are not ‘God’. However, objective moral values are a bit of a slippery slope towards God. Is it necessary? I don’t know. But the atheist or non-theist tends to stay away because an admission of of the existence of objective moral values makes it harder to avoid agency; than it would be to avoid the whole problem all together and say it’s all relative. After all it’s a difficult case to prove since defining what moral values is difficult to begin with.

42

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

Difficult to say anything about that. I can’t even fathom what an excusively rational system would be like.Ã???Ã???Ã???Ã??Ã? [/quote]

By “faith” Jacobi really meant “intuition” - intuition meaning the ability to immediately recognise an essential truth. And that the subjective experience of these truths implies that they have an objective existence.[/quote]

I do grant intuition as much value as reason or intellect or whatever. So in that sense I understand the reasoning. I don’t know, for the time being I just accept that they point in different directions, or at least that appears to be the case. Actually it doesn’t even bother me, since the behavioural result is the same, just the scope of the (transcendent) moral order is different.

E: Actually, intuitive truth just is, I don’t try to connect it with reasoning. I leads to metaphysical constructions that I find unhelpful…[/quote]

What if your intuition is flawed? People are not intuitively like minded.[/quote]

I have not made any claims about it’s general accuracy. I said I can kind of understand the arguments that base on intuition, but I try to keep intuition out of my reasonings. I value it on a personal level.

43

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

How can we not reach understanding that there is an inbred sense of normal as a species of animal that form communities, similar to our cousins the Chimps?

While the Chimps may have no moral right and wrong sense, we have rationality that can allow us to assign what we call good and bad to them based on what it means to be a flourishing chimp.

Dogs, and wolves, these pack animals also have ways to teach their young boundaries, by scolding them with a growl or a show of aggression with a tight face and teeth. Are you saying those are all learned and passed down from generation wolf to generation wolf?

Where say Chimps may learn of specific fruits and methods of hunting, gathering in ways we know are learned, it seems like wolves as a species that is part of a pack or a social species there are certain qualities about the species, specifically if it is a highly social, cooperative species that they/we start off with, that is instinctual or hardwired. It’s a combination of a priori and a posteriori. Some stuff is necessarily learned, while there are certain things quintessential that, imo must be hardwired. There are examples of it all over nature with animals that don’t have language or similar faculties as our own.

Otherwise, how would a social species that exists in communities come to exist? [/quote]

Dogs and wolves are different from primates. The role of instinctual behaviour is much bigger, so we shouldn’t speak of them in this context. Primares must be thaught. The role of instinctual behaviour is much smaller.

A zoo gorilla that hasn’t seen other gorillas nurturing baby gorillas simply can’t do anything. With the exception of sucking and yelling to get the attention we need, we don’t have much instinctual behaviour. And that means we must learn to be human. Obviously we must have what it takes to become human. Opposable thumbs, right kind of larynx and a certain kind of cortex and some other features.

About your last question. That is precisely a question we can not answer without numerous small steps, without testing. We can’t think an answer because there are too many unknown factors.[/quote]

It sounds like we need a ‘definition’ of sorts of what morality is to separate nurture vs. nature and separate survival vs. moral behavior.
To define morality we need to define what a moral behavior is. The problem is, we cannot do that. But we can define the requirements for what moral behavior must be to separate it from nature/ nurture, learned survival behavior, and societal or man-made rules. So, I’ll go but feel free to add on, delete or hone.

So for morality to be, there requires a moral action. For a moral action to be you need:

  • Sentient beings.
  • Freewill. The ability to choose and have the option to have chosen otherwise.
  • A choice of action or behavior. There must be more than one action that can be taken.
  • A situation. A context in which a behavior can be taken.
  • Another sentient being who will be affected by the action.
  • A consequence. The sentient being affected by the action must either benefit or suffer as a result of the action taken.

Other suggestions? I am open to additions, subtractions, coalescing, etc.

44

I don’t know if much else is needed than an act or thought and a code by which the said act or thought is measured. The situation in which the act or thought is performed probably plays a variable role. The code can also be of sch variety that it takes into consideration only acts. Theoretically it could even take into account only thoughts.

45

Why is moral behaviour or a moral code important? It has only a weak or non-existent correlation with a persons success and place in a social hierarchy. Law and especially its enforcement are far more successful factors in regulating peoples behaviour. As far as I know, this has always been the case.

Basically moral behaviour is very much the same as normal behaviour. Normal ways of interaction the majority adheres to anyway. Game theory reciprocity. The same behaviour small children exhibit, in contrast to our closest relatives. Children growing in inconsistent surroundings ditch the reciprocity part very fast and try to maximize gain.

So, actually a moral code could be seen to be important foremost as a principle that unites a group. Common and shared values. From the group level it?s not that important if it is lip-service or if the person means it. Everyone finds his/hers place in the hierarchy. Identification, basically.

46

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

How can we not reach understanding that there is an inbred sense of normal as a species of animal that form communities, similar to our cousins the Chimps?

While the Chimps may have no moral right and wrong sense, we have rationality that can allow us to assign what we call good and bad to them based on what it means to be a flourishing chimp.

Dogs, and wolves, these pack animals also have ways to teach their young boundaries, by scolding them with a growl or a show of aggression with a tight face and teeth. Are you saying those are all learned and passed down from generation wolf to generation wolf?

Where say Chimps may learn of specific fruits and methods of hunting, gathering in ways we know are learned, it seems like wolves as a species that is part of a pack or a social species there are certain qualities about the species, specifically if it is a highly social, cooperative species that they/we start off with, that is instinctual or hardwired. It’s a combination of a priori and a posteriori. Some stuff is necessarily learned, while there are certain things quintessential that, imo must be hardwired. There are examples of it all over nature with animals that don’t have language or similar faculties as our own.

Otherwise, how would a social species that exists in communities come to exist? [/quote]

Dogs and wolves are different from primates. The role of instinctual behaviour is much bigger, so we shouldn’t speak of them in this context. Primares must be thaught. The role of instinctual behaviour is much smaller.

A zoo gorilla that hasn’t seen other gorillas nurturing baby gorillas simply can’t do anything. With the exception of sucking and yelling to get the attention we need, we don’t have much instinctual behaviour. And that means we must learn to be human. Obviously we must have what it takes to become human. Opposable thumbs, right kind of larynx and a certain kind of cortex and some other features.

About your last question. That is precisely a question we can not answer without numerous small steps, without testing. We can’t think an answer because there are too many unknown factors.[/quote]

What you say doesn’t make sense to me. My view is that social animals possess a combination of learned and hard wired knowledge. So, just as a chimp would have issues being social with other chimps if it were raised by humans, so would a wolf. The reality is both species as well as ourselves have evolved to be social and cooperative for the sake of survival. Another way to look at it is that we are born with certain capacities that are evolved which other animals haven’t evolved.

Since primates have no written language, why is it in nature they always form packs and establish pecking orders regardless of location? Well, it can actually be linked to the way they evolved. Even the way they procreate only makes sense in the packs they live in. Why evolve to have tremendous sets of balls if not to take part in sperm wars with other chimps? Just one of many examples. You see how this is consistent only with both wired and learned survival?

From what we know of chimp pack activity, we can discern when chimps act out of the ordinary. In fact, even you pick out the point that chimps not raised in packs don’t act a certain way, which would be normal. While the entirety of being social isn’t hard wired, part of it is. Just as the desire for such animals to be part of social groups is hardwired.

Wolves are the same! They evolved to hunt in packs, and part of their hard wiring is conducive to being social. Part of sociability is learning your place in the social order which changes with the environment. So, when you think about it overall intelligence has to do with genes and environment. Environment for a wolf pup would include their location, but also it’s spot in the pecking order. There are wolves that are loners, but this is a norm that comes about when we understand that wolves have particular pecking orders with male and female alphas. If a male is ostracized and doesn’t find another pack, then naturally he will be a lone wolf and this isn’t odd at all once we understand the whole of a priori and a posteriori with wolves social functions.

Humans are the same. The vast majority of us have a drive to not be alone. We evolved from the same line as chimps and have social behavior in common. While we aren’t born understanding any particular language, we are born the the capacity to learn language as part of our social functions, certain apes seem to be capable of the same such as Coco the Gorilla, but interestingly we have evolved vocals for diverse communication, where Coco had to learn to sign, point to pictures etc in order to communicate. I think I’m pretty familiar with your line of thought, to me it’s just tabula raza. But, everything about our surroundings and evolution tells us that we have evolved to exist, and act in certain ways.

47

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
I enjoyed the On Government thread and so I thought we might discuss ethics. I’ll start this with Friedrich Jacobi’s accusation against Kantian philosophy: (Paraphrasing) If you don’t believe in an objective transcendent moral order then you are essentially a nihilist. Which leads to my question, why do you behave as if an objective transcendent moral order exists if you don’t believe one does?[/quote]

The Categorical Imperative is Nihilistic without a God? Then why am I not a Nihilist?

The Categorical Imperative= Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

This is for the most part another way to put the Golden rule of do unto others, except it’s to be interpreted in two ways. On top of this, the Categorical Imperative has a flaw in that it relies on a persons nature, but the same can be said for the golden rule of do unto others. If you want to die, you should go kill people is a possible way to interpret the golden rule… So…

On one hand you aren’t supposed to entertain maxims that are foul, but if you yourself are foul like say a Murderer and a mad person you could get away with murder being an everyday thing so long as you can will it to be a rule for everyone. But, at the same time you are supposed to consider in your own mind, if you are allowed to do such a thing then you okay it for everyone in the world to act according to the way you act.

So in the case of compulsive liars or murderers if everyone acted the way they acted the world would be in chaos and death, much as it is today.

For Mormons and Christians such as Romney and others who have shit loads of children, they have to be okay with every swinging dick and vagina having 20 kids. Considering the lack of land and resources one could consider this suicidal. The Categorical Imperative requires a person to be a localized Cosmopolitan.

The other interesting aspect of Kant are his ranks of goodness and how they are linked to duty. Some people have duty to God as Kant did… Kant considers happiness a thing of happenstance or chance rather than something necessarily connected to doing good. I’ve given this example before, but if there are two people who donate time or money to a good cause, and one person does so out of duty, while the other person does so because it makes them feel happy, the person who does good deeds out of Duty is the one doing the greater good. The reason is, because if the person feeling happiness as a motivation stops feeling happiness then they will stop doing the good thing, while the person doing things out of duty will do them whether they make them feel happy or not.

A lot of Kants morality depends on the workings of the person. Kant’s works influence my ideas of right in a cosmopolitan way… I have no belief in God, nor do I feel a duty to God. Yet, I’m still considered a good person according to my actions and volition by most people. And by most people it isn’t limited to the typical views in the United States.

I’m not a Nihilist, but I’m an agnostic and I subscribe to Kantian views. Therefore, you are wrong. Why do I follow moral rules without a God? Because most humans have this thing called empathy. Empathy along with ideas of cosmopolitanism leads to superior morality. No need for God. [/quote]

It sounds like you apply the ‘taxi cab fallacy’ to moral law. It takes you where you want to go and you just get off at that stop, but it doesn’t solve the issue as to what the source of morality is.
You say that the person who gives out of duty does the greater ‘good’ than the person who receives the reward of happiness for giving. But aren’t you subscribing Kantian styled morality because it makes you happy? Without a belief in moral agency you are not doing it out of duty. [/quote]

I can’t, and nobody can ever prove they do anything out of their own desire to be happy, or to further themselves in some way. That is part of a bigger problem with ethics rooted in the whole egoism vs. altruism line of argument.

My moral agency is influenced strongly by Aristotle, who first views us as rational animals. The next question I ask myself is the difference between an average rational animal vs. a flourishing one (human).

There are many qualities rational animals have. I’ll cut to the chase and say that high levels empathy is a flourishing quality of rational animals such as humans as well as good and accurate foresight. Though these are obviously not the only things. Aristotle has a list of virtues and qualities but I don’t want to write all night about virtue theory.

More or less duty for me equates to a level of empathy, knowledge and foresight. Also, just because a person does things out of duty doesn’t mean they are incapable of feeling happiness. In fact you can do things out of duty and feel happiness, so long as your motivations don’t come from the end of happiness, but the end of duty. If you are motivated to be happy and you for some reason stop feeling happiness when you donate time or money, likely you will stop doing the good thing… If you do it out of duty, lack of happiness wont stop you from doing the good/ right thing. So, greater goods are still in tact with my internal mechanics of ethics, but they can change! I’ve changed views and ethics several times throughout my life.

An example might be a guy who jumps on a grenade to save his Commanding officer, or even his buddy. He may have a sense of duty to his brothers that isn’t necessarily connected to the joy he would receive from a gory death of shrapnel and powder to his body. But, it can always be argued that he did such a thing because on some level he felt happy to be able to save his buddy. Those things aren’t provable or disprovable.

Agency, or sense of duty doesn’t have to be motivated by God or happiness. As with me it is motivated by what I believe is equal to an excellent, flourishing human being.

I know my particular view is a little odd because I mix biology and anthropology with ethics, it’s really what I sort of developed while going to school, studying philosophy and introspecting about how all the subjects I’ve studied are connected. But I think it suffices to show we don’t need God or happiness. We can simply strive to be as good as we are capable of… I believe most of us are wired to do so.

48

[quote]Severiano wrote
:
I think I’m pretty familiar with your line of thought, to me it’s just tabula raza. But, everything about our surroundings and evolution tells us that we have evolved to exist, and act in certain ways.

[/quote]

No, I don’t think so. You wrote something commenting that I had said. I’m not entirely sure what you wanted to say, but you made many assumptions ranging from monkeys to Hawkings to poor farmers. I pointed that out to you. I didn’t say I was objecting what you said since I didn’t even understand what you were saying. But I couldnt say just yes to those assumptions you were making.

this last one is much more coherent. And the morals of the description? That you too think that our natural behaviour is actually mostly quite decent, almost moral? Or what? I have a hypothesis. You got exited when I wrote that the seeds for moral behaviour may be hardwired in the brain. And started writing your own version of the story. Like I said, this last version of yours is coherent, the first that you tagged on my comment to SM was just gibberish.

49

Pretty good thread. Nice exchanges.

50

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote
:
I think I’m pretty familiar with your line of thought, to me it’s just tabula raza. But, everything about our surroundings and evolution tells us that we have evolved to exist, and act in certain ways.

[/quote]

No, I don’t think so. You wrote something commenting that I had said. I’m not entirely sure what you wanted to say, but you made many assumptions ranging from monkeys to Hawkings to poor farmers. I pointed that out to you. I didn’t say I was objecting what you said since I didn’t even understand what you were saying. But I couldnt say just yes to those assumptions you were making.

this last one is much more coherent. And the morals of the description? That you too think that our natural behaviour is actually mostly quite decent, almost moral? Or what? I have a hypothesis. You got exited when I wrote that the seeds for moral behaviour may be hardwired in the brain. And started writing your own version of the story. Like I said, this last version of yours is coherent, the first that you tagged on my comment to SM was just gibberish.[/quote]

Sorry about the lack of clarity, if I come off gibberish it’s because I tend to type as if I’m talking.

But yes, I believe there are qualities about humans that stand out from the average that I think most of us can agree about.

On a scale of say courage there would be fool hardy on one end, coward on the other, and somewhere between the two there would be a brave. That’s a classic virtue that I think most humans can agree is a good virtue to have compared to being foolhardy or a coward. Again, this implies there is some sort of medium that we are aware of, or we wouldn’t judge people on some scale of courage, really we wouldn’t judge people at all.

To be a great thinker, perceiver, forward thinker is another great quality to have as a human, it helped us with farming along the way in telling us when to plant crops, when harvest will be etc… It allows us to realize when things like food shortages are going to come about, it helps us survive, it helps us enjoy. Having more of it than the average joe seems to be a good thing.

Being physically strong and able is another great thing, vs. say suffering from a deformity or disability that keeps you in a wheelchair like Steven Hawking. It’s great to have an able body vs. one that doesn’t work. Just like it would be better to have Hawkings mind than one that doesn’t work so well.

Empathy is probably what allows us to understand the idea of autonomy, and I may be wrong about this admittedly. But, I think empathy requires self awareness as well so it’s probably an adaptation of higher intelligence along with social dynamics. Gorilla’s seem to feel it as well. I think we are wired to have empathy as a feeling, not only to help us with our survival and flourishing but to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others to help them with their survival. If we are social animals that rely on one another it helps to have this in abundance doesn’t it? This is why I say empathy is a good thing, associated with a flourishing human.

I hope that makes sense.

51

[quote]Severiano wrote:

Sorry about the lack of clarity, if I come off gibberish it’s because I tend to type as if I’m talking.

But yes, I believe there are qualities about humans that stand out from the average that I think most of us can agree about.

On a scale of say courage there would be fool hardy on one end, coward on the other, and somewhere between the two there would be a brave. That’s a classic virtue that …
[/quote]

:slight_smile: there you go again.

The question was about objective transcendental moral order. If it is plausible to assume such a thing. I say it is not, because we can postulate morality without transcendental origins. I can’t refute transcendental origin for morals, but I can show it needs a really big assumption to work. We need a pressing reason to accept it and intuition can’t full that task. I went even further and said that intuition should not be applied as a part of a logical construct, becaus it creates a metaphysical mess. So far I haven’t seen an argument or proof that would force me to seriously consider the messy option.

I guess you want to base morals on evolution. Well, I hinted at it, but I don’t really need it for my argument here. So it’s kinda my own fault. And then you started in this last post by formulating an ad hoc scale of courage, with cowardice in one end foolhardiness in the other and bravery in the middle. Well, yeah, we really aren’t on the same page since you are fountain of assumptions and I want to strip them to a bare minimum.

But I’m not arguing against you, either. Peace.

E: oh, actually it was me who commented on you, mentioned the possibility of hardwiring and here we are. I mentioned in that first post that I’m not arguing against you, though.

52

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

Sorry about the lack of clarity, if I come off gibberish it’s because I tend to type as if I’m talking.

But yes, I believe there are qualities about humans that stand out from the average that I think most of us can agree about.

On a scale of say courage there would be fool hardy on one end, coward on the other, and somewhere between the two there would be a brave. That’s a classic virtue that …
[/quote]

:slight_smile: there you go again.

The question was about objective transcendental moral order. If it is plausible to assume such a thing. I say it is not, because we can postulate morality without transcendental origins. I can’t refute transcendental origin for morals, but I can show it needs a really big assumption to work. We need a pressing reason to accept it and intuition can’t full that task. I went even further and said that intuition should not be applied as a part of a logical construct, becaus it creates a metaphysical mess. So far I haven’t seen an argument or proof that would force me to seriously consider the messy option.

I guess you want to base morals on evolution. Well, I hinted at it, but I don’t really need it for my argument here. So it’s kinda my own fault. And then you started in this last post by formulating an ad hoc scale of courage, with cowardice in one end foolhardiness in the other and bravery in the middle. Well, yeah, we really aren’t on the same page since you are fountain of assumptions and I want to strip them to a bare minimum.

But I’m not arguing against you, either. Peace.

E: oh, actually it was me who commented on you, mentioned the possibility of hardwiring and here we are. I mentioned in that first post that I’m not arguing against you, though. [/quote]

All good. I get why you are calling it ad hoc finally. What was confusing about it is that it’s actually Aristotles, so really to me it seemed like you were critiquing Aristotle, rather than my application of his idea.

The thing is, if we base things off of evolution, anthropology and biology we have to start off somewhere. Why not with existing populations? It seems like you believe existing populations are too polluted to get data from or draw comparisons to… I think they are perfect.

53

[quote]
Severano wrote:
All good. I get why you are calling it ad hoc finally. What was confusing about it is that it’s actually Aristotles, so really to me it seemed like you were critiquing Aristotle, rather than my application of his idea.

The thing is, if we base things off of evolution, anthropology and biology we have to start off somewhere. Why not with existing populations? It seems like you believe existing populations are too polluted to get data from or draw comparisons to… I think they are perfect.[/quote]

That’s a point where we can start. People. I looked again at your scale. Actually it is not a scale at all, it’s a “processed” result. An imaginary bell curve with the most favoured trait in the middle and and the less favoured ones on the sides.

But bravery has nothing to do with morality. Intelligence has nothing to do with morality. Strength has nothing to do with morality. Those are traits that we tend to admire and which have the potential to affect our position in the societal hierarchy. Adherence to a moral code does not affect our position in a hierarchy. On the contrary, true adherency to a moral code comes often with a price.

So the answer to the question why we have moral codes can’t be found in individual gain. The next thing is to look at groups of people. Does a tribe or a society have use of a moral code? (I’ll just go straight to my answer wirhout explanations). Seems that it has, both as a system of law that regulates behavior and as a common ideal. That’s probably why there is a strongly perceived need for an universal moral code, be it transcendental or not. But if it is not transcendental, we are stuck with the notion it it isn’t exactly universal. There are cultural variations. We might try to create a common non-transcendental moral code, but hmm, you can believe in it or not.

The next thing to ask is if it might still be universal enough, so that we can live with the variations. And then we can ask if there is a common ground in us as humans from which it arises.

54

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]
Severano wrote:
All good. I get why you are calling it ad hoc finally. What was confusing about it is that it’s actually Aristotles, so really to me it seemed like you were critiquing Aristotle, rather than my application of his idea.Â

The thing is, if we base things off of evolution, anthropology and biology we have to start off somewhere. Why not with existing populations? It seems like you believe existing populations are too polluted to get data from or draw comparisons to… I think they are perfect.[/quote]

That’s a point where we can start. People. I looked again at your scale. Actually it is not a scale at all, it’s a “processed” result. An imaginary bell curve with the most favoured trait in the middle and and the less favoured ones on the sides.

But bravery has nothing to do with morality. Intelligence has nothing to do with morality. Strength has nothing to do with morality. Those are traits that we tend to admire and which have the potential to affect our position in the societal hierarchy. Adherence to a moral code does not affect our position in a hierarchy. On the contrary, true adherency to a moral code comes often with a price.

So the answer to the question why we have moral codes can’t be found in individual gain. The next thing is to look at groups of people. Does a tribe or a society have use of a moral code? (I’ll just go straight to my answer wirhout explanations). Seems that it has, both as a system of law that regulates behavior and as a common ideal. That’s probably why there is a strongly perceived need for an universal moral code, be it transcendental or not. But if it is not transcendental, we are stuck with the notion it it isn’t exactly universal. There are cultural variations. We might try to create a common non-transcendental moral code, but hmm, you can believe in it or not.

The next thing to ask is if it might still be universal enough, so that we can live with the variations. And then we can ask if there is a common ground in us as humans from which it arises.[/quote]

Haven’t gotten to it yet, but I believe we the cultural similarities that we have in common is a good place to start. Likely we across all tribes of people there are ideas about good that we share in common.

Bravery as a virtue may not be in and of itself directly tied to morality, it’s more about how we handle fear, and the decisions we make based on fear and intelligence.

The traditional way of looking at it, again this isn’t mine it’s Aristotles and more of an example… Is comparing the coward, the fool/brash, and the brave to one another.

Take the situation where you are in a situation where you are being robbed masked and armed men. You know that from the news they also don’t hesitate to kill people. And likely your family will be at risk, possibly be killed unless you gather them and flee your home.

One man becomes frightened and is paralyzed with fear, unable to do a thing.

One man runs away and leaves his family behind.

One man charges head first into the villains, flailing and fighting…

One man wakes his family and escorts them away to safety.

One man wakes his family, escorts his family away but not before setting up his cameraphone to record the villains.

Which of these are ideal?

It’s also in part a scale to show there are different levels of certain attributes, virtues, etc…

Another attribute might be Empathy… One can range from being totally callus to being an out of touch crybaby. Ideally there is a middle, and then there is something a little better than the middle ground… By our own standards of being human, that would be based on how we act as a collective.

55

[quote]
Severiano wrote:
Haven’t gotten to it yet, but I believe we the cultural similarities that we have in common is a good place to start. Likely we across all tribes of people there are ideas about good that we share in common.

Bravery as a virtue may not be in and of itself directly tied to morality, it’s more about how we handle fear, and the decisions we make based on fear and intelligence.

The traditional way of looking at it, again this isn’t mine it’s Aristotles and more of an example… Is comparing the coward, the fool/brash, and the brave to one another.

Take the situation where you are in a situation where you are being robbed masked and armed men. You know that from the news they also don’t hesitate to kill people. And likely your family will be at risk, possibly be killed unless you gather them and flee your home.

One man becomes frightened and is paralyzed with fear, unable to do a thing.

One man runs away and leaves his family behind.

One man charges head first into the villains, flailing and fighting…

One man wakes his family and escorts them away to safety.

One man wakes his family, escorts his family away but not before setting up his cameraphone to record the villains.

Which of these are ideal?

It’s also in part a scale to show there are different levels of certain attributes, virtues, etc…

Another attribute might be Empathy… One can range from being totally callus to being an out of touch crybaby. Ideally there is a middle, and then there is something a little better than the middle ground… By our own standards of being human, that would be based on how we act as a collective.[/quote]

Seen from our judeo-christian moral code it’s only the second option that is immoral. We don’t chastice the man who was paralyzed for immorality. We feel sorry for him. There is also no direct connection with level-headed action and morality. We tend to think this guy who acted rationally is also a moral person, but we really don’t know. The paralyzed guy might as well has been a much more moral person than the hero.

In fact many of our moral commandments work against those traits that we tend naturally to admire. Don’t covet thy neighbours wife. Like strong men would generally adhere to it. I see no connection between these traits we admire and morality. I still don’t know what you are trying to say.

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[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

We agree on most of it. From an anthropological standpoint we might look at the freezes in fright with some sort of lower brain response to fear. Don’t move or the predator will see you sort of reaction? Maybe experienced trauma? It’s interesting but there is nothing immoral about this.

In the situation where you run away from danger and abandon your family. I’m Judeo Christian/Westerner admittedly. However, in nature if you cant, or wont defend your offspring there’s a stronger likelyhood they will be killed vs. if you are the sort that will put some effort into defending them. Maybe you won’t defend offspring at all cost as you won’t have another chance to pass on your genetic information. It’s life’s biggest investment to have offspring. For us it’s 9 months gestation with an incredible investment into the development of the brain compared to other species. Our brains are huge, and women pelvises barely accommodate the entirety of the skull during birth. Our offspring are pretty worthless from a survivability point of view for years. Some of us stay worthless the entirety of our lives. :slight_smile:

I think most cultures reflect the above. Unless you have a herem or are some kind of polygamist or, “illegitimate offspring” I’m having trouble imagining a situation where men could afford to lose investments. It’s even more difficult to explain why a woman wouldn’t defend, protect her children as they have the bigger investment between the man and the woman…

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If you take your family out the back door and high tail it out of dodge. I think this is a given.

If you set up a camera and do something extra, I actually think this is more on the foolish side as setting up a camera doesn’t improve their chance of surviving. It’s a risk that shows extra foolishness than average. I think when most people think this one through they agree.

Really, the situation doesn’t afford a chance to be brave, only a chance to be a little more on the foolish side considering the real end is keeping the family safe.

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Oh okay, I see. Hardcore evolutionism. Flight/fight/freeze -responses do go way over the scope of anthropology and same goes for protecting the young. These things may or may not have something to do with morality. Too many unknowns. I personally am a bit sceptic about the meaningfulness of evolutionary explanations on morality.Morality is a complex and weird behaviour and if I had to guess something I would look at it as an emergent phenomena. Going hand in hand with language and culture.

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[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
Oh okay, I see. Hardcore evolutionism. Flight/fight/freeze -responses do go way over the scope of anthropology and same goes for protecting the young. These things may or may not have something to do with morality. Too many unknowns. I personally am a bit sceptic about the meaningfulness of evolutionary explanations on morality.Morality is a complex and weird behaviour and if I had to guess something I would look at it as an emergent phenomena. Going hand in hand with language and culture. [/quote]

I think we should be skeptic about all moral concept and basically all information/knowledge. We can be skeptical that morality even exists. Why not just settle with solipsism? We can be skeptical about all of our senses, colors sounds, taste, feel is all subjective and a matter of interpretation.

What is sour? Does a lemon have sourness to it’s taste? A lemon is sour relative to what? You seem to have to be skeptical that a lemon is even sour, as you cannot even say that the average person experiences eating pure lemon and the taste of sourness due to the level of skepticism you have, because there is no medium or average in people that is in general common amongst humans. You can’t even say a person has a mental disorder with your level of skepticism, because it would be a mental disorder based on what? You cannot call someone mentally disabled unless you buy into an idea that a basic normality exists.

And it is supposed to be based on conclusions we can make about the knowledge we have acquired since Aristotle’s time. What he based virtue theory off of were his own observations in nature and very rudimentary biologic conclusions a LOOOONG time ago, Western biology was born in Virtue Theory. His form of morality is actually a good example of atheistic morality as it’s not rooted in anything but knowledge.

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@Severiano

Good video about solipsism:

Worth watching.