[HN Gopher] Are we cut out for universal morality?
___________________________________________________________________
Are we cut out for universal morality?
Author : dnetesn
Score : 31 points
Date : 2021-05-30 20:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Probably not. Almost everyone holds a core belief that precludes
| a universal morality, even outside of tribalism.
|
| That is that a government is morally justified in performing
| actions that we would find abhorrent of performed by an
| individual or smaller group.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Isn't that the basis for a universal morality itself?
|
| That we have chosen to collectively outsource the things we
| need to keep the sheer number of us alive without having to
| personally do them? Its not like we can return to hunter
| gathering because chaos would ensue.
|
| Police, taxes, welfare and narrowed choices of how you can live
| are our bargain for living in large numbers and close
| proximity.
| pm90 wrote:
| This is not a core belief that precludes universal morality, it
| is simply a belief educated into the masses (Ie the Sovereignty
| of Nation States).
|
| Which means that other views can similarly be "educated" in.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| I am not a darwinian, but most folks are these days.
|
| Universal morality doesn't appear to be particularly successful,
| when faced with tribalism. As far as I can tell, from a darwinian
| perspective, the right thing (so called) would be to encourage
| universalism in your competitors, while practicing tribalism
| yourself.
| bena wrote:
| This is a complete aside:
|
| What do you define a "darwininan" as? What about that
| definition are you opposed to? What would you define yourself
| as? And what is the definition of that thing?
| mehphp wrote:
| > I am not a darwinian, but most folks are these days
|
| Personally, I'd be shocked if that were true.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| I must invoke John Stuart Mill when it comes to morality and
| politics. With 138 capitol & metro police injured, there's no
| doubt some number of protestors should face justice for their
| harm to others. That is where the accountability will hopefully
| end. In almost every other respect the January 6th 2021 was a
| quintessentially American expression of liberty with overwhelming
| historical precedent.
|
| Time and again aggrieved citizens on both sides have try to be
| heard by delaying political fait accompli. From city counsels to
| county seats, state legislatures to native reservations, the US
| capital to foreign embassies... naive believers, the agitated,
| sometimes driven by agent provocateurs have risked prison and
| worse to remind representatives that victory in a vote doesn't
| erase diversity of belief; and that governance is more effective
| when the aggrieved are sincerely heard.
|
| Tribalism (on both sides) is all earmuffs and blindfolds that
| results in shortsighted public policy, and devaluation of
| different thoughts & tastes.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| There can't be a closure to that issue unless the ringleaders
| face punishment.
|
| They won't.
|
| So there won't be.
|
| The same politicians who pilloried Hillary Clinton for 2 years
| over the Benghazi incident want nothing to do with an
| investigation of the events of Jan 6th. They know who their
| political base is.
| slver wrote:
| The premise is quite weird, because we're not "cut out". We've
| evolved, and still evolving.
|
| The best thing evolution did to us is to make a lot of our
| behaviors learned. So how we perceive morality is something we
| can learn, and we can pass onto generations, basically recreating
| the concept of evolution through culture, at a much faster pace.
|
| The article claims we need to give up tribalism to get there. I
| disagree. Tribalism is a powerful instinct that can be used for
| good or bad. We need to stick with tribalism, but make everyone
| part of the same tribe.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > We need to stick with tribalism, but make everyone part of
| the same tribe.
|
| How is that different than giving up tribalism?
| slver wrote:
| Because you still have things you're for and against. But
| they shouldn't be aligned along trivial lines like sports,
| religion and politics. And yeah I know calling these
| "trivial" sounds odd, but they really are.
| simonh wrote:
| On the contrary I think splitting society on trivial lines
| is exactly what we need to encourage. It's healthy and
| beneficial. Not everyone has to care about the same sports,
| the same hobbies, the same tv shows or even the same
| politics.
|
| Two people can support different football teams, but still
| serve in the same army side by side, or work for the same
| company. They can support different politics and even be
| friends. Yes really.
|
| Erasing group identities is user dumb. Why not just promote
| and encourage tolerant civilised behaviour. Since when did
| that become unthinkable?
|
| Well, we need to buckle down and think it. That is the way
| forward.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| There's a balance in there that needs to be struck on
| practical grounds. You don't get groups without in-group
| bias. You don't get in-group bias without prejudice.
| Getting rid of groups/tribes/whatever is obviously
| impossible, but the more you temper how much human
| identity is derived from them, the more you reduce the
| downstream negative (and positive) effects.
|
| They aren't all good, and they aren't all bad, like
| everything else. You can't have all the good without the
| bad unfortunately.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I don't get how that's tribalism but with everyone in the
| same tribe.
| mantas wrote:
| ... and who ensures that everybody has for and against the
| same things? Even twins raised together sometimes end up
| complete opposites.
| moreira wrote:
| Tribalism necessitates an "other". If we discovered intelligent
| life on other planets and were suddenly given that "other", I
| imagine humans would very quickly all come together as the same
| tribe. Minor differences between humans (including nationality)
| would stop mattering in less than a lifetime.
| slver wrote:
| Yes it needs "other". We can however define this "other"
| intelligently to encircle the negative phenomena of society
| and define the rest as the society we are. And hopefully it
| doesn't split even parents and children or husbands and wives
| like it does right now, based in silly things like sports,
| religion and politics. By saying this I've pretty much killed
| my cred for anyone reading this in the US right now. But
| that's kind of the problem.
| kodah wrote:
| Tribalism doesn't necessitate an other, that's just where
| our understanding is at, imo. I'm not a Democrat or
| Republican, but the amount of deceptive and straw man
| arguments I see between the constituents of both is a real
| spectacle. For instance, try mentioning Democrats or
| Progressives by name in criticism anywhere and you'll get a
| flood of negative reactions, even if it's a mild criticism
| or obvious behavioral note. If you mention the two, you
| "must" be the other right? Yet this forum has a lot of
| independents, which I think is fairly well known. One could
| argue people are tired of hearing groups cast broadly, but
| wide criticism of Republicans seems to be fairly in-game
| still.
|
| I think if you commit yourself to listening to critique
| then the "other" fades away. If you commit yourself to the
| party, or inextricable party ideals then the other is
| always a reasonable option to reach for.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > By saying this I've pretty much killed my cred for anyone
| reading this in the US right now.
|
| Because you're saying that we need to unite and expel the
| "negative," but you're either suggesting that we don't use
| any criteria for that, or you're using a special definition
| of "religion and politics" that doesn't encompass all forms
| of human organization and ranges of perceptions of our
| environment.
|
| I suppose this is just another suggestion that we use
| rational, objective criteria, like the ones the person
| making the suggestion uses (when they're at their self-
| assessed best.) Once we're using those criteria, uniting to
| eradicate the "other" is fully rationalized, er, rational.
| slver wrote:
| You know, I think the "rational" approach is completely
| hopeless actually. You need a rational frame, but you
| can't inspire people by telling them how it's rational to
| do what you want them to do.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Unless those aliens were some kind of threat I don't think
| most people would care on jot and would certainly not cease
| looking at people from across the river, round the corner, of
| different colour, height, car type, wealth, etc., as
| inferior.
|
| We are each members of many tribes not just one.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >We need to stick with tribalism, but make everyone part of the
| same tribe.
|
| That sounds completely psychotic to me.
| [deleted]
| slver wrote:
| Well in this case we can make the aliens I'm talking to part
| of the other tribe. Down with the aliens.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| I think what Enginerrrd is calling psychotic is that
| there's no way to, as you say, "make someone part of the
| same tribe" without employing a great deal of force to
| coerce (and crush) people.
| slver wrote:
| I didn't intent to say we need to "crush" people into
| changing, rather the definition of our tribes should
| change.
|
| You know, when a president says "we gotta unite the
| nation" in a speech, that's kinda what they're trying to
| do. Except just saying "oh yeah, let's unite" falls quite
| short of achieving that goal.
|
| But no, it's not about coercing and crushing anyone.
| pessimizer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| IMHO, the best outcomes come from moral, economic, political
| systems competing with each other.
|
| Show me an instance of purity and a lack of competition of
| ideas that ever turned out well. It always turns out
| tyrannical, hypocritical, and oppressive. Always.
|
| Diversity of thought, as taboo as it might be to say today,
| is more important than what people tend to think of when
| thinking of diversity.
|
| But it can't be so diverse than millions of people are all
| going their rabid individualistic path. It needs to be a
| competition and inter-influence of tribes
| slver wrote:
| What you're witnessing in the US is not systems competing
| on their merit, but rather competing by throwing money at
| various social manipulation techniques, misinformation
| campaigns and so on.
|
| That's not diversity of thought. That's lack of thought,
| with a few different colors of paint on each side.
|
| Tribalism isn't merely "competing ideas". It's literally
| the tribal members suppressing their own thought process in
| order to align WITH their tribe and AGAINST the other
| tribe. This alignment makes otherwise intelligent
| individuals collectively quite stupid and easy to mislead
| and manipulate.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Arguably, that is what we've seen happening throughout
| history - keeping the conceptual intuitive tribalism but
| significantly extending what the "tribe" means.
|
| The basics of tribalism comes either from isolated tribes
| (generally under Dunbar's number) for hunter-gatherers or,
| later with agriculture, extended family units/clans - where
| you have both close blood relations and know each other.
|
| Then we see city-states and various unions of many tribes
| (e.g. for nomadic steppe peoples) forming a much larger
| shared identity that is using the same behavior and loyalty
| principles, but you're much more distantly related and can't
| know everyone anymore.
|
| And this starts a trend of the "larger tribe" intervening in
| the "smaller tribes" to prevent conflict with them and have
| individuals of different "subtribes" interact between tribes
| with a shared goal instead of defending the tribal identity;
| they start punishing raids and violence between the
| "subtribes", and form a larger shared identity based on
| culture, religion, etc.
|
| Fast forward a few centuries and we see the great "religious
| tribes" unifying many decentralized rulers; and then we see
| the age of nationalism in 1800s which in many cases unified
| many smaller states with aggressive unification of their
| identities and elimination of dialects so that the "tribe
| that includes everyone" is stronger, but despite the
| suppression of "smaller tribes" IMHO it's quite clear that
| the peak nationalism was also very much a peak of tribalism
| attitudes.
|
| In that regard, humanism is essentially nothing else than
| treating all humans as a single tribe, and it is an extension
| of the same trend and practice; we know that dissolving the
| smaller tribes in order the larger tribe stronger works and
| is possible as we have done that before; though, often the
| unification was facilitated and driven by external threats.
| sportslife wrote:
| As much as I think global unity would be nice, it reminds me of
| hearing that cows once their herd reaches a certain size split
| off into two herds [1]. If I'm remembering correctly, a
| mathematician, biologist and cattle farmer all saw reasons it
| might be good for the cows. I wouldn't be surprised if the same
| forces acting on the cows are acting on us.
|
| [1] https://www.stitcher.com/show/odd-lots/episode/52-what-
| math-...
| warent wrote:
| I see where you're coming from, and I'm not offended by being
| compared to cows... that being said, this connection seems
| _very_ tenuous. This is really comparing apples to oranges
| here
| mantas wrote:
| The best example is West-based colonies in the new world. Why
| did Canada or Australia went their own way? Why is USA
| seemingly splitting apart? UK?
|
| If someone would manage to establish single world order, it's
| only a matter of time when it would fracture into pieces.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| The trend is steadily towards a more inclusive global tribe
| over all of human history. There aren't many objective
| signs that this trend is reversing in any nontrivial way.
| It wasn't long ago that Europe was constantly engaged in
| warfare within itself. Compare today with 50 years ago or
| 150 years ago.
|
| We've arguably backslid in some places over a 20 year
| lookback but those backslides are fairly minor in
| historical context.
| mantas wrote:
| Not so long ago vast majority of Europe was controlled by
| a single extended family. Now it's gone.
|
| Roman empire collapsed. HRE collapsed. Austro-Hungary
| collapsed. Tsarist Russia + Soviet union collapsed.
| Ottoman empire collapsed. UK is still slowly collapsing.
| Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth went separate ways.
| Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia split. Roman catholic
| church was pretty close to superstate at it's height.
| sebastialonso wrote:
| I agree with everything except the last part, because it sounds
| really warm tummy but by definition is impossible.
|
| The tribalism the author uses is the same created by your
| argument that evolution forged our behaviors. The tribalism
| evolution forged is a space-dependent concept, it's almost
| literally those who exist within 5 meters of myself, who eat,
| shit and sleep with me.
|
| I don't necessarily think we need to ditch it, it might be
| useful for something. But we need an equivalent for the whole
| species, independent of time, planet or place, and also as
| someone else said, to include other species.
|
| Ol' tribalism needs to be taken down to the cellar, mercilessly
| beaten and left chained there until we are attacked by aliens
| or something else accordingly.
| HKH2 wrote:
| There will always be leaders branching off with their own
| tribes. No doubt you've experienced that in microcosms.
|
| At first, giving up tribalism is just the formation of another
| tribe. Then there become multiple tribes that exist to define
| what it means to truly give up tribalism and so forth.
| lwhi wrote:
| The central premise of the argument is false.
|
| People involved in the insurrection, weren't going against
| universally agreed moral standards -- i.e. the need for
| democracy.
|
| While I don't agree with their motivation or interpretation,
| these people felt that democracy was being attacked. It was a
| desire to uphold moral principles that fuelled the raids.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Hard to even approach answering this question without some kind
| of workable definition of "objective" and "universal" and
| "morality." What does a person mean when they say all these words
| together? My best guess would be something like, "All people
| would agree that any action recommended by this morality are
| right, and any action prohibited by this morality are wrong, and
| this morality either recommends or prohibits all possible
| actions." To me, the answer to this question is pretty obvious:
| there is no possible moral system that matches this definition.
| stablenode wrote:
| You're quite right. Arguably, an attempt at formulating an
| objective morality has been made:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism . However, it is
| anathema on HN.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Objectivism has little to do with objectivity, despite
| sharing the first nine letters. They are two entirely
| different concepts. Whether objectivism is preferred on HN is
| another unrelated question.
| stablenode wrote:
| Objectivism has a lot to do with objectivity. I'm sorry if
| this is news for you. How reality is perceived and how
| objective knowledge is attained are at the core of this
| doctrine -- without these one cannot even talk about
| rational pursuit of self-interest.
|
| I wasn't even asking a question about HN, just making a
| remark.
| kazinator wrote:
| I.e. objectivism has to do with objectivity, not _vice
| versa_.
|
| The definition of objectivity simply does not reference
| objectivism.
| stablenode wrote:
| Oh :) Yes, that's right. Fixed it now.
| chousuke wrote:
| I have a suspicion that any "universal" moral framework would
| boil down to the halting problem at some level.
|
| Even so, a moral framework doesn't have to be complete to be
| justifiably considered "objective", so attempting to find
| universally acceptable moral axioms may not be altogether
| futile.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Any sufficiently universal morality must include the impact our
| actions/inactions have on animals (or any other entity capable of
| "experiencing" some reality). We are nowhere near such a concept,
| and almost assuredly never will be.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| We're moving closer to it.
|
| Vegetarianism and veganism used to be much more fringe just a
| few decades ago than they are now.
|
| Animal right groups and laws didn't exist until relatively
| recently as well.
|
| Understanding and valuing ecology and every species role in it
| as well is relatively new (at least among non-indigenous
| people) and making a difference in how we treat animals as
| well.
|
| There's also a lot of research in to how animals view and
| understand the world, how they communicate, how much they
| understand and feel, and how they differ (or don't) from
| humans. That's also opening people's eyes.
|
| I'm usually pretty pessimistic, but on this issue I am
| cautiously optimistic that we are moving in the right
| direction.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| After millennia, humans still hate each other on no other
| basis than skin pigmentation despite our brains being hard-
| wired to be socially cooperative with other members of our
| species to boost chances of survival. I have heard arguments
| against animal rights where the key argument was that humans
| are intellectually superior and thus it is _our right_ to
| treat animals however it conveniences us. As smart as some
| people are, most people are not very sophisticated,
| especially when it comes to morality, which people mainly
| wield as a matter of convenience to themselves. My faith in
| humanity has declined the more I 've seen what it's capable
| of.
|
| Tellingly (to me), despite some non-negligible percentage of
| the population becoming more sensitive to the plight of
| animals, the scale of animal cruelty today absolutely dwarfs
| that of any bygone era. I see the modest gains in the
| population of vegetarians as a pyrrhic victory that would not
| have been possible with, perversely, the common knowledge of
| the current scale and scope of modern animal cruelty.
| bumby wrote:
| Why does the distinction stop with the human convention of the
| animal kingdom?
|
| Is it immoral to make a plant species extinct? Is morality
| rooted in subjective experience?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| > or any other entity capable of "experiencing" some reality
|
| I pre-answered your question about the animal kingdom.
|
| When I say "must include" I imply only that it's necessary,
| not sufficient. My premise is simply that I have identified a
| necessary condition which will never be met.
| bumby wrote:
| I'm not trying to refute your position, just trying to
| clarify what it's based upon. Why is the distinction drawn
| with experience? E.g., if the ultimate goal is to reduce
| suffering then it makes sense that experience is what
| matters
| yboris wrote:
| Utilitarianism is almost 300 years old and includes animals in
| its "circle of concern". Many people care about animal rights,
| and once people stop eating meat (because meat alternatives
| will eventually win out with price) there will be a major shift
| in perspective - meat eaters will be looked upon as we
| currently look on slave owners: doing something seriously
| morally wrong.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Utilitarianism is orthogonal to animal rights - it analyzes
| and describes behavior and action with respect to some
| utility function, but the utility function itself is
| essentially arbitrary and while utilitarianism can be used to
| model a balance between "human utility" and "animal utility",
| utilitarianism itself is just as suited for a "circle of
| concern" that explicitly includes only the utility of humans,
| or perhaps even just the utility of a specific subset of
| humans.
|
| The utility function is not up for grabs; it has to be
| axiomatically assumed and utilitarianism does not state whose
| utility matters and how much.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I know that individuals think this way, I'm just not
| convinced any society will ever get there.
| plank_time wrote:
| It depends on who defines morality, which invalidates the
| concept of a "universal" morality. If the definer of the
| morality decides that human lives are the most important and it
| would be immoral to hold animals and plants above humans, it
| would produce a completely different end result.
|
| Or they may determine that all you mention plus natural
| formations like lakes and mountains and rock formations deserve
| protection and equal protection.
|
| That's why this entire article is a waste of time to me.
| kodah wrote:
| My experience with morality is that it's definition varies
| from person to person even in like-groups. The illustration
| you and GP have painted is the same political struggle we've
| always had, just now painted inside morality instead of
| secular laws. It is wild to see secular people debating a new
| wave of American moralism, as if that time period wasn't bad
| enough the first go-around.
| plank_time wrote:
| Agreed. There will always be people splitting hairs and
| vehemently thinking their views are "more correct" and
| "more morally correct". That's why I think this entire
| article is a waste of time. The idea of "universal
| morality" is fiction because everyone thinks differently.
|
| The best course of action is never to try to find a single
| "universal" truth but to accept a plurality of "truths".
| That's the only way we can survive as a species.
| achenatx wrote:
| There is no universal morality. Morals are likely partial genetic
| and partially cultural. Natural selection selects for cultural
| values ("morals") that allow a culture to survive to destroy
| other cultures.
|
| Random morals are constantly being created - mutations. They
| sometimes are negative for cultural survival, sometimes neutral,
| and sometimes positive.
|
| Based on a changing environment morals needed for a culture to
| survive will also change.
|
| Over a long enough time, some moralistic behavior has become
| embedded in our DNA. (e.g. protecting children). Moralistic
| behavior that is embedded in DNA is probably the closest thing we
| have to "universal morality".
|
| Controversial examples might be procreating at 13. When people
| died at a much younger age, it was not immoral to procreate as
| soon as we were able. Now it is morally abhorrent. Some cultures
| still allow it. It is absolutely not universally immoral.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Tribalism is always going to exist. It's always going to be
| important in societies that democratically elect their leaders.
| Even if you rise above tribal thinking, othera are going to see
| you through that lense, so you can't escape it. Any tribe that is
| sufficiently successful will split aa it grows. This is
| emergence. This is nature. And thus article is crap.
| topkai22 wrote:
| This article reminds me that A) Most philosophy writings sounds
| like the ramblings of cranks B) There is still a lot of value in
| thinking about them.
|
| I think that this article is missing a few insights that I value.
| One is that I've come to view something like philosophical truth
| essentially unknowable- There may be universal truths, but
| proving that across all scenarios is not feasible. They may even
| (or likely) be contradictory. Even morality derived from written
| religious texts has been subject to countless interpretations and
| reinterpretations. This it's best to treat morality as
| probabilistic- I might be highly confident that my stance is
| correct, but I must always accept that I may be wrong and update
| on new information.
|
| The other is that authors desire to "give up tribalism" is too
| simplistic. Tribalism is deeply intertwined with identity, and I
| don't think it's possible to get humans to give up on the concept
| of identity. However, identity is a complex multilayered thing. I
| identify as an engineer, as an American, as a man, as a Catholic,
| as an ethnic Jew, as a Seahawks fan, as a skier, as an alumnus,
| and many other things. These groups do not share a common
| morality, but I find ways of coping and moving between them. I
| think we'd have more success getting people to embrace multiple
| identities and seeking tolerance between them then to abandon
| tribe seeking behavior.
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| Tribal relativisme is often a strong attractor and can overcome
| extrinsic universality
| Fern_Blossom wrote:
| >From this perspective, your moral judgments about the
| insurrection, or about some racist or sexist policy, are viewed
| as objects of study rather than as candidates for truth or
| falsity. The scientist is not here engaging with philosophical
| issues about the potential accuracy of moral claims. The
| scientist instead approaches your judgments simply as
| psychological facts about you, causally traceable to various
| influences--just as with the thoughts and feelings that led to
| the social injustices you're responding to.
|
| Am I the only one terrified of this? This type of "study" has
| been abused very well in the past, phrenology being just one
| decent parallel. People have believed bad science in the past as
| "good" science. There's zero reason to imagine we're immune to it
| in this day. Some asshat out there is going to "prove" something
| about a demographic and use this as a means to enforce action.
| Just going to throw it out there, if they already dislike a
| demographic, they're going to prove how they should get arbitrary
| punishments or re-education because, "the science says so". It
| takes one shitty paper to fuck things up for a long time, cough
| cough anti-vaxxers cough cough. An average population is dumb as
| hell. It's even worse if they're convinced if something was
| scientifically proven, even though it wasn't. Take all the bad
| media reports on random papers released. That chocolate diet one
| fucking flooded the media even though it was total trash (yes, I
| know it was a hoax paper to prove the media is a dumpster fire).
| Just imagine the political party that doesn't like you get's
| ahold of this narrative. Fuck it, while we're at it, is it then
| better for your preferred party to wield the weapon first? Does
| that make it morally right for anyone to wield it or just who you
| approve of because you're perfect at deciding someone's
| character?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| The article says we need to abandon tribalism yet the article is
| replete with tribal narrative.
| drummer wrote:
| To get to a universal morality, you should first understand the
| universal right to life: https://blog.kareldonk.com/the-
| universal-right-to-life/
| motohagiography wrote:
| The author starts by expressing a severely limited ontology, sets
| up a convenient dichotomy, and then assembles some straw men from
| some exclusively secular and materialist constraints. For what is
| this the sugar pill? Ah, right. The homogenaity and fungibility
| of humanity, resistance to a single global authority is futile,
| give up what you have, etc.
|
| His is view is the seed of this universal morality, surely?
| gnarbarian wrote:
| This is only a problem for cultural relativists. Morals always
| exist within a cultural framework of expected behaviors. If we
| can agree that some behaviors are wrong (the treatment of women
| in Saudi Arabia for example) We can say unequivocally the west is
| a morally superior culture to Saudi Arabia on that point.
|
| Dominant cultures always impose laws on subordinated cultures. In
| the 19th century the answer to this problem was simple. "Just go
| over there and make them follow our rules." These days we tie
| ourselves into knots doing the same thing while pretending to
| respect other cultures.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If we can agree that some behaviors are wrong (the treatment
| of women in Saudi Arabia for example) We can say unequivocally
| the west is a morally superior culture to Saudi Arabia on that
| point.
|
| I guess "we" is "the west." I imagine a Saudi cleric is
| describing a porn clip he saw on the internet to his flock,
| explaining how cultural relativity = the abuse of women, and
| that imposing the world caliphate is the greatest act of mercy
| imaginable.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I know she is divisive, but Ayn Rand lays out a pretty good model
| for universal morality.
| yboris wrote:
| My understanding of her philosophy is "let the strong win, fuck
| the rest". Could you elaborate on what you think is her
| "universal morality"?
| andrewclunn wrote:
| With a leading question like that, why would he answer. Don't
| agree with Rand myself, but it seems like "the weak die" is
| nature's law, or the law of the jungle if you will. Break
| that rule ams you run the risk of breaking evolution amd
| incentives for self improvement. Most moral codes in the soft
| amd declining West deny this. A case could easily be made
| that this is why they are in decline.
| stablenode wrote:
| @yboris. Your account says that you are an 'Effective
| Altruist'. In a nutshell, Ayn Rand believes that altruism is
| immoral and argues why.
|
| Given your eloquently put understanding of her philosophy, I
| doubt that you are interested in digging deeper. But in case
| I'm wrong, everything is summarised in a short interview with
| Mike Wallace (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHl2PqwRcY0).
| PeterisP wrote:
| The fact that there's substantial disagreement for and
| against these principles is an argument that whatever
| morality Ayn Rand is arguing for, that morality isn't
| universal, it would not be universally accepted.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I am pretty sure that we all agree that humans will never
| have a complete universal morality because we put so many
| things into the bucket of morality that could not be
| addressed by a universal morality. There are people who
| find it immoral marry between races so no logical system
| could ever resolve their specific belief. Logically
| though, we could propose a set of core axioms that
| everyone could agree on and then build up a system from
| the axioms. This is what Rand attempts to do so from her
| logical system you can at least define some moral
| arguments as universal.
| NateEag wrote:
| I don't think universal morality means universally
| _accepted_ - I believe the idea is that it's universally
| _true_.
|
| Truth is not truth due to everyone agreeing on it.
| stablenode wrote:
| That's a novel argument. I believe what Rand was
| ultimately concerned with was a morality that is rational
| and objective; the idea being that one only needs to rely
| on one's own reason in order to judge what is moral and
| what is not. As to universality of moral doctrines, if I
| was feeling malicious, I'd say that the Catholic church
| was there first (that's what 'Catholic' means, after
| all). Some rather remarkable moral notions have
| historically been 'universally accepted', as you say.
| PeterisP wrote:
| "the idea being that one only needs to rely on one's own
| reason in order to judge what is moral and what is not" -
| I would argue that this is fundamentally impossible. A
| commonly used (and IMHO generally accepted)
| counterargument to that is "Hume's guillotine" or is-
| ought dichotomy; you can't derive "ought" statements
| (i.e. morality) solely from logic reasoning and factual
| "is" statements.
|
| Of course, you definitely can derive a full system of
| morality logically if you start from a few "ought" axioms
| - many proposed systems of morality are done this way,
| and likely Ayn Rand's proposal as well. But in such cases
| these axioms are the subjective and potentially
| questionable part, and we don't have an universal
| agreement on them. If your system has 99% of logical
| reasoning based on 1% intuitively assumed axioms, that 1%
| carries pretty much all the weight.
|
| We know where many particular "moral axioms" lead, but
| that only leads to disagreement about them when seemingly
| reasonable moral axioms logically lead to various
| outcomes that intuitively seem unacceptable, so we don't
| have anything approaching consensus; for every proposal
| there is enough substantial critique that it doesn't seem
| suitable to be the One True Perfect morality - perhaps we
| should keep looking, but perhaps it's futile, there's no
| strong arguments yet to say that an universal morality
| must be possible in the first place.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| No one takes Ayn Rand's arguments seriously.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| It is easy enough read the wikipedia entry on Objectivism and
| I could never do justice to the topic in a forum post so I
| will leave that for you to research.
|
| I do find it interesting that most people who agree with Rand
| are less like her than the people who disagree with her. I am
| sure if you spend some time researching her (not reading
| opinions) you will find yourself wondering how Ronald Reagan
| could ever agree with her. Yet here we are.
| keiferski wrote:
| The choice of the word _universal_ is a bit ironic, as the nature
| of the (physical) universe prevents such a thing from being
| possible.
|
| Unified morality, like a unified concept of what is "human", is a
| temporary consequence of centralization in a single location.
| Right now, that's Earth. But good luck maintaining a uniform
| conception of right and wrong when it takes a few decades to get
| to the next civilization.
|
| For that matter, good luck maintaining a unified concept of
| _human being._ Mars, for instance, has a number of qualities that
| will select for certain traits over others. A colony developing
| there, sufficiently isolated, would start to develop into a
| variant quite unlike us earthlings.
|
| https://youtu.be/0q_B5X7PBHA
| acituan wrote:
| > The choice of the word universal is a bit ironic, as the
| nature of the (physical) universe prevents such a thing from
| being possible.
|
| It might look improbable or unlikely, but I don't see how it is
| _impossible_.
|
| Unity in the underlying organizing principles (logos) of the
| universe, the idea of pantheistic view of a "god" as "the one"
| is at least as old as neoplatonism. However far from achieving
| a full grasp, all life forms find approximating to _reality_ to
| be highly adaptive and valuable. As such, there could as well
| be a continuity between our moral values and general structural
| functional organization of the universe. Even though we are
| hopelessly unable to _compute_ our way towards it, we could
| have been incrementally approximating it (while also
| occasionally deceiving ourselves). One could say the evolution
| of consciousness was adaptive towards processing these
| calculations, but by no means a requisite to have _some_
| contact with and understanding of a part of reality.
| keiferski wrote:
| Correct, and I should have used the word _unified_ here as I
| did later in my comment. It is possible that certain
| civilizations, without coming into any contact with each
| other, would arrive at similar moral conclusions based on
| observing nature.
|
| But I still don't think this is sustainable once we factor in
| evolution and adaptations to different environments.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Another mediocre article on morality. If you're interested,
| research universal morality in Buddhist sutras. By far the best
| analysis of morality, even compared to purely logical works.
| Modern-day stuff from what i've seen has been low quality.
|
| For this article, it fails to remember that for every unbiased
| observer there is an equally biased human at the root.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| Universal morality would require the same reality for everybody,
| quite utopian..
|
| Tribes are shaped by a common reality, friends and enemies, and
| the common reality of those who stormed the Capitol was created
| by the conspiracy scene they followed and participated in.
| neonological wrote:
| >That is at least what moral practice is like when viewed "from
| the inside." By that I mean your moral phenomenology as an
| engaged participant. This perspective presents the appearance of
| at least a core of basic objective and universally valid or
| correct moral standards we are trying to understand and to live
| by (even as we recognize that we will at best do so imperfectly).
| This is why we're prepared to argue, often passionately, in
| defense of basic moral claims about social justice, for example,
| in a way we don't with mere matters of taste; and it's why we
| feel compelled to modify our views when someone convinces us that
| we have a blind spot or other error in our moral outlook.
|
| This is a very misguided view on morality. The author doesn't
| know what morality is, why it exists and what actually compels us
| to behave the way we do. Many people who are very intelligent
| fail to comprehend this.
|
| Morality is biological in origin. You think and behave, debate
| and contemplate morality because you are evolutionarily
| predisposed to do so. Morality does not exist outside of this
| framework.
|
| Morality is simply a set of rules that allow us to form stable
| societies and biology evolved you to behave within this rule set
| because if you didn't your society or you would be naturally
| selected out. That's it.
|
| The problem is, most people don't realize this. When people think
| about fairness and morality they think they are deploying their
| logical and conscious mind to decide the meaning of right and
| wrong. Nothing is further from the truth, and this is 100 percent
| an illusion. When you are thinking about morality you are
| deploying the instinctual side of your brain, the same part that
| triggers hunger, sexual arousal or fear.
|
| It sounds so absurd to say this but believe it or not it can
| actually be logically proven that this is what the human brain is
| doing. I can prove to you that your entire logical framework of
| morality is built off a biological predetermined moral instinct
| that is absurdly identical to everyone else's concept of
| morality.
|
| The way this is done is that the moral module in your mind is
| imperfect. By identifying this imperfection I can illustrate to
| you that like how evolutionary programming doesn't always
| converge at the global optimum the same has happened in the moral
| module of your brain. Of all our brains.
|
| Consider a baby drowning in a pool next to you. You are wearing
| fashionable clothes that costs thousands of dollars. By jumping
| in the pool to save the baby you permanently ruin your clothes.
| What would be the moral thing to do?
|
| The moral thing to do is to save the baby. The life of the baby
| is more important the your clothes even if it's thousands of
| dollars. In fact our brains will be disgusted at the person who
| let's the baby drown just to save thousands of dollars.
| Essentially the moral precept here is saving a life is worth more
| than a couple thousand dollars so you should always do the
| former.
|
| Here is where the flaw comes in. Leave the situation the same but
| change some of the superficial aesthetics. The baby is no longer
| drowning but is now a child in Africa who is starving. This child
| can be saved with a donation of thousands of dollars. Is it
| reprehensible that you don't save the baby? Most of us reading
| are aware that poverty exists in Africa and that donations can
| save them yet most of us haven't donated a dime.
|
| Keep in mind the premise is identical. Save a baby in exchange
| for sacrificing thousands of dollars. What has changed? Why does
| the psychopath who refused to save the drowning baby is evil and
| why is the person who refused to donate money less evil when the
| basic moral premise is exactly the same?
|
| The answer is easy to identify. Something has changed and that
| change influences the moral module of our brain in an illogical
| way that is unresolvable.
|
| The change is superficial... basically the location and sensory
| stimulus is removed. By making the baby far away in Africa and
| removing visual stimulus, it is no longer triggering the moral
| instinct in your brain. Why does this fail to trigger it? Because
| there is no evolutionary advantage to societies who have morals
| that are concerned for entities that are far away and unrelated.
| Your morality is associated with visual stimulus and proximity
| but your brain does not incorporate these axioms into your
| reasoning because there was never any evolutionary pressure for
| your brain to evolve this way. That is the inconsistent flaw. Our
| moral modules are not designed to correctly apply moral reasoning
| to subjects outside of a certain physical proximity, so our brain
| triggers behavior that contradicts our own reasoning.
|
| Thus our instincts do not trigger when a baby in Africa is dying
| of starvation, only when a baby next to you is dying from
| drowning. Of course there is a gradient. Starving babies in
| Africa triggers far less concern then drowning babies next to you
| even when the cost of saving those babies is completely
| identical.
|
| If I presented to you these two scenarios separately and asked
| you to analyze the moral logic behind each, most people would
| derive separate and valid logic that would condemn the person who
| let the baby drown and vindicate the person who let the baby in
| Africa die.
|
| By presenting both scenarios to you at the same time, however,
| the contradiction becomes apparent and your brain is now most
| likely trying to contemplate the moral logic and rules that will
| resolve the contradiction.
|
| My point is to tell you that the resolution and everything your
| brain is doing to make sense of this moral contradiction is
| pointless. You are giving in to instinctual behavior. The moral
| contradiction exists regardless of what you do because morality
| is an imperfect biological phenomena. There isn't a universal
| explanation here. These are arbitrary rules applied to arbitrary
| events and you attempt to resolve it is just you giving in to
| your biological predisposition. Same as you giving in to eating
| when you are hungry.
|
| There is no point in making sense of why rocks scattered on the
| ground is the way that it is any more then it makes sense to
| resolve this moral contradiction. Like the rocks, morality is
| simply an arbitrary set of rules... A biological phenemona unique
| to humanity and not a universal phenomena intrinsic to the
| universe.
|
| Once you realize this, you will see that all this language,
| philosophy and structure built around morality is sort of
| pointless. It exists to help us survive there is no deeper
| meaning here and any search for something deeper will likely
| result in you making something up without realizing it (see
| religion).
| throwawaybchr wrote:
| Not possible when so many Gaslight others with narratives like
| January 6th coup. Countries where coups have happened are
| laughing at the soft west. Never seen a coup where the media is
| filming a man in a Viking hat
| kodah wrote:
| What is the advantage of secular people establishing morality?
| This morality would need to compete with religious morality, how
| would one do that, and what would the motivations be?
| logicchop wrote:
| "If objective ethical values exist, we'll have to give up
| tribalism to realize them."
|
| I didn't see a definition of "tribalism" in the article. I see
| references to the "January insurrection" and vague references to
| other "far-right" things.
|
| If you go back to Plato's Euthyphro, you see the character
| Euthyphro on his way to testify against his own father for
| mistreating a criminal. This is a very early "moral" moment in
| our intellectual history; it was practically inconceivable that a
| son would take such a position against his own father. I'd feel
| comfortable calling it "anti-tribalist," and it isn't so obvious
| whether Euthyphro is pursuing the right course.
|
| If you look at the laws of practically every developed country,
| there is no "tribalism." Given the vagueness of the authors
| target, I suspect what he'd rather say is that we have to give up
| things like nations, borders, ethnic identities, sex-based sport
| leagues, and so on. If he bothered to spell out in detail what he
| means by "tribalism," and not simply let the reader's imagination
| carry the burden of supplying the target, I suspect his proposal
| wouldn't have made it out of his own mouth.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > If you look at the laws of practically every developed
| country, there is no "tribalism."
|
| The laws may not be tribalistic, but their enforcement
| certainly is.
|
| Take, for example, drugs. This report from the U.S. Department
| of Justice[1] indicates that arrests for the selling of drugs
| disproportionately targets black people by 33%, and arrests for
| possession of drugs disproportionately targets black people by
| 26%.
|
| The same is true of voter suppression laws. For example, the
| closure of voting places in minority communities, which lead to
| people of color waiting, on average, 29% longer to vote than
| white people[2].
|
| The January insurrection is also a perfectly valid example of
| tribalism. A majority of Republicans falsely believe that this
| crime was perpetrated by Democrats, Antifa, or even the Capitol
| Police themselves[3]. We cannot have a serious discussion about
| the morality of armed insurrection when tribalism causes such a
| large number of people to reject reality wholesale.
|
| [1]: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rdusda.pdf [2]:
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.00024.pdf [3]:
| https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/republicans-blame-d...
| logicchop wrote:
| Just commenting about your first point (disproportionate
| arrests of black people for drugs). I looked at your link. I
| read it. Did you read it? The end summarizes its own
| alternative (non-prejudicial) explanation for the gap.
|
| In a post about an article wanting to secure a "universal
| morality" I would be wary relying on statistical data that
| has an abundance of plausible explanations, especially when
| it's meant to be deployed against something on the scale of
| 'our very moral existence.' If the issue were "tribalism" you
| would expect minority groups to be persecuted to some extent
| greater than the non-minority group. But in the US, there are
| other minority groups besides blacks, and they tend to have a
| lower incarceration rate than whites. I'm not sure how to
| square that with "tribalism."
| Grim-444 wrote:
| If anything your comment is as tribalistic as one could get.
| Black and white viewpoints on topics, presenting your picture
| of reality as the correct one, with no alternative
| explanations allowed, cherry picking data and examples that
| help confirm your ideology while conveniently ignoring those
| that don't. You'll never admit that anything your side does
| could be seen as similarly "bad", just as tribal, etc. If
| anything, you're the one defining sides, pronouncing that
| either people believe the same thing as you or they're just
| evil people that have rejected reality wholesale, which
| completely eliminates all shades of grey in the issues, all
| discussion, all discourse.
| bena wrote:
| You're not going to get anywhere with him. Look at the
| language. It's an obvious tell. He doesn't talk about black
| people or people of color, no he talks about "blacks" and
| "whites".
|
| He'll never admit that the insurrection on 1/6 was a result
| of tribalism because it reflects poorly on the tribe he's
| chosen to be a member of.
|
| People expose themselves through language.
| mantas wrote:
| > If you look at the laws of practically every developed
| country, there is no "tribalism."
|
| There may be no tribalism inside of developed countries. But
| there's lots of tribalism between groups of developed countries
| and the rest of the world. Forcing all sorts of laws and
| customs on what they see as lesser countries. Sort of
| colonialism 2.0.
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