God, Burritos, and Perfection

[Dre89]

Evolution isn't morally wrong, because it would change the ontology of the being. Besides, it could never be morally wrong because it's not a rational agent.

Doggs- Ontological right and wrong is determined by what the being is structured to move towards. Food, sex etc. Specific animals have more exclusive goods eg. fish living in water etc. So it's basically what we're structured to move towards.

Now in the case of humans, a human desiring something like infanticide does not make it ontologically good, because ontologically we're not structured to pursue it. Ontologically, we move towards the preservation of our young, evidenced by parental love, breast milk etc.

The fact humans can pursue what they're not supposed to is what distinguishes them as rational agents, and what makes an ontological wrong a moral wrong as well.

Sorry I couldn't see your natural=being objection. I'll answer it if you restate it.

 

[ciaza]

Surely there is some grey areas in that though? I understand that I am structured to pursue food to keep me alive. If I have no money, is it morally wrong for me to steal food? I'm not doing anything ontologically wrong - I'm just pursuing what I have been structured to need.

I could be completely missing the point however.

 

[Reaver197]

It is true that, for the most part, animals (particularly mammals) will work to preserve, protect, and raise our young. But there are certain cases where that doesn't happen, and has historically happened in human societies. When a parent has a child that is too sickly, and / or too costly to raise (either to the parent or to other offspring), the parent may often kill the child outright or abandon it to die. In some animals' cases, like with lionesses, they may even eat the young to regain some of the nutrients lost to then either feed or produce healthier or timelier offspring.

 

[Theftz22]

Doggs- Ontological right and wrong is determined by what the being is structured to move towards. Food, sex etc. Specific animals have more exclusive goods eg. fish living in water etc. So it's basically what we're structured to move towards.

Well at this point I'm satisfied that your descriptive ethics is purely definitional, as all descriptive ethics is. However I just want to note here that under this definition your argument for why being is good falls apart. Being as a whole couldn't be ontologically good because your definition is restricted to the domain of being within being. And remember your argument for why being is good, because destroying being is bad. And why is destroying being bad, you said its because if destroying being was not bad being would not exist in the first place. Well you can clearly see why this argument makes no sense on your definition of ontologically good and evil.

Sorry I couldn't see your natural=being objection. I'll answer it if you restate it.

I think that you should specify that you are talking about sentient beings here. Now sure, most sentient beings naturally attempt to maintain themselves in being, but how does that imply the identity claim that literally being = natural. That seems to me to simply be a non-sequitur. When we say that being is natural, or that the grass is green, we mean that being has the property of being natural, or that the grass has the property of being green. We do not mean to say that being is the same thing as natural, or that grass is the same thing as green, that would just be an equivocation on the word is. These things cannot be identical for one is an adjective and the other is a noun.

 

[rvkevin]

Ontological right and wrong is determined by what the being is structured to move towards. Food, sex etc. Specific animals have more exclusive goods eg. fish living in water etc. So it's basically what we're structured to move towards.

What do you mean by "structured"? Every human's genome and physical traits are unique so we don't share the same structure. Humans, as a whole, are not structured to move towards anything in particular. There is no single human structure. Humans, individually, are. There are similarities among the individuals, some that make up a majority, that can be found among them. It appears that you are referring to the human construct, which doesn't exist. Also, by doing this, you lose the prescriptive component. By narrowing the scope to the individual, you (might) keep the prescriptive component (in some cases), but you lose the moral component (or what you think the moral component is supposed to be like) since this line of reasoning would have drastically different applied ethics than you argued for in the past.

Also, even if we were to concede that X is structured for something, it does not follow that they should fulfill that state of affairs. A simple example would be the "structuring" towards sweet foods. It is a great way to achieve calories when food is scarce, but when food is plentiful, it would be preferable to have our tastes arranged differently. We are structured one way (to eat sweets), when we ought to act in another way (eat more vegetables). As far as I can tell, this notion of "structure" lacks all recognition of ethics.

 

[Dre89]

When I say structured I mean designed, but then people think I'm implying design by some intellect.

If we didn't have an ontological nature, then apart from the fact we could have no physical features, either we'd desire and value nothing, or desire and value everything equally.

The fact there is imbalance in our desires tells us what is ontologically good for us. It's no coincidence that some of our strongest desires are for things such as food and sex.

And there is no prescriptive element at all. All I've said is what is good, I never said why you need to do it. However, humans naturally value morality, so we're structured to uphold it.

The sweets example doesn't work because it's an artificial object.

 

[rvkevin]

In what sense are we designed?

Is it the process of natural selection? Or is it the implications of our individual genomes? If a species typically "moves towards" X and a mutation occurs in an individual that makes that individual no longer prefer X, are they "designed" to "move towards" X or not? Does it matter if this individual will be selected against by natural selection despite its genome "designing" its features? You seem to be implying that this individual would be designed to "move towards" X, which would lead to the opposite conclusions in some of the ethical scenarios that you have argued for in the past.

I don't see the relevance of calling sugar an artificial object when it comes in natural forms as well and the argument equally applies to those situations as well. If we were to plant groves of sugar cane, it would equally beg the question of whether we ought to do so.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Dre:

While you may talk of fulfilling our "design", what is to say that is necessarily good? I mean, what if say... we were "designed" to be mass murderers and kill every non-human living thing in our sight? Is that good?

I find the mention of sex as a good desire rather funny, especially considering that you object to sex before marriage. Well, if our desires are supposed to tell us what is good and what is evil, why is it that we desire to commit evil?

You may answer with the notion that we are rational beings and are capable of choosing and presumably desiring to commit evil, then what separates a good desire from a bad one? And what exactly defines our nature? If I go against my supposed nature repeatedly, maybe that's just my nature.

It seems as if this idea of morality from observation of our nature implies that our nature is intrinsically good. I know for a fact that humans are capable of great evil and desire to commit evil acts (we wouldn't do it otherwise). eg. Murder, war, torture, **** etc. It seems as if the temptation to evil is within our nature. If so, why is it ontologically wrong? And if it is part of human nature why is it morally wrong? Or is it just okay, so long as it's part of our nature?

 

[Dre89]

Bob- If mass murder was good, our ontology would suggest it. All humans would instinctively desire it, but we don't. Nothing ontologically points to murder as a good.

And if it was good, we wouldn't have intrinsic disgust for it. Ironically, the fact you bring up murder as an example shows how conflicting it is with our ontology.

As for sex, the reason why I say only in marriage (or someone you will commit to for the rest of your life) is because the act (without artificial tampering) is designed to be had with someone you're willing to have kids. Women even release the same chemicals with their first partner that they do with their newborns to create emotional attachment.

 

[Theftz22]

Dre, Bob Jane asked if murder was natural then would it be good, so saying that we are not structured towards murder doesn't address the point. It's logically possible for instance that ****** and torturing little babies for fun be natural to some sentient being, if what is natural is good then in that possible world ****** and torturing little babies for fun would be good. If you suppose, as most moral realists like you would, that actions like ****** and torturing little babies for fun are necessarily wrong in all possible worlds, then that shows that natural cannot be identical to good.

Of course I wouldn't think that that argument is sound because I'm not a moral realist, but it is worth noting that the argument has considered plausibility to most people.

 

[AltF4]

I actually don't think Dre's vision of morality is all that silly, as long as you take it descriptively, not prescriptively.

I mean, morality can essentially be thought of as the moving average of whatever people think is the right thing at the time. There was a time when racism and slavery were not only moral, but perfectly normal. This is not true today.

On top of this, there is a relatively static core set of morality which is built into the human race from an evolutionary standpoint. We wouldn't have gotten very far as a species if we thought murder was morally good. Indeed, morality itself can be seen as an evolutionary mechanism to psychologically induce behavior which is beneficial to the species.

I would not, however, try to reverse this process. IE: Assume we have all been designed top down by some sentient being. Then assume that since humans have general basic moral tendencies, these must represent the will of the designer. Which therefore represent a vision into an objective morality. No, not that at all.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Bob- If mass murder was good, our ontology would suggest it. All humans would instinctively desire it, but we don't. Nothing ontologically points to murder as a good.

And if it was good, we wouldn't have intrinsic disgust for it. Ironically, the fact you bring up murder as an example shows how conflicting it is with our ontology.

It's a hypothetical. I'm sure we deal with this sort of stuff in moral philosophy all the time. That doesn't change anything. Furthermore, you haven't pointed out why our nature is intrinsically good addressed any of my claims as to why human nature could be considered evil, or dealt with the idea that one's nature is extremely hard to define and really is defined by what one does.

As for sex, the reason why I say only in marriage (or someone you will commit to for the rest of your life) is because the act (without artificial tampering) is designed to be had with someone you're willing to have kids. Women even release the same chemicals with their first partner that they do with their newborns to create emotional attachment.

But why is it then desirable to have sex with someone you don't intend to have kids with?

 

[Sucumbio]

On top of this, there is a relatively static core set of morality which is built into the human race from an evolutionary standpoint. We wouldn't have gotten very far as a species if we thought murder was morally good. Indeed, morality itself can be seen as an evolutionary mechanism to psychologically induce behavior which is beneficial to the species.

Hm.... I agree that over humanity's ... 3 some odd million years on Earth, that we have evolved, and along with it our sense of morality. But I believe that morality itself has been an entirely intellectual evolution, brought on exclusively by sociology, and in only the last 10,000 years or so (or approximate to the founding of Mesopotamia.) I say this because even the concept of Murder is relatively new, and requires social constructs to even take place. Before civilization, killing was simply a means of survival, and I doubt there is any evidence that man killed man out of perversity, but simply out of territory. It was by introducing the more complex concepts that go along with living in a society that perversion of the soul was able to take place, leading to murderous impulse. Granted I have no proof of this conjecture, but it just seems to fit better with what we know of the criminal mind. As such I hesitate to say that humans have enjoyed a Core code of conduct or morality except in very recent history. This of course still agrees with your assessment that there is no moral objectivity, but the reason is different, in that I find morality itself to be an invention of logic.

 

[rvkevin]

Hm.... I agree that over humanity's ... 3 some odd million years on Earth, that we have evolved, and along with it our sense of morality. But I believe that morality itself has been an entirely intellectual evolution, brought on exclusively by sociology, and in only the last 10,000 years or so (or approximate to the founding of Mesopotamia.)

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Sucumbio]

mine? it's kinda what follows from where your quote ends, but to elaborate, I find that the larger a population, the greater the chances that social interactions will take place, and therefore the greater the importance of morality will be.

I think of it like this: in a world where there's scattered tribes of 3-15 people each, and maybe 100 or so tribes in a given 100,000 square mile area, there's little to no chance each tribe will run into the other often. Once they do, however, a choice will be made to either work together and combine strengths (biologically and sociologically), or to go to war. As each cluster enlarges due to these happenstance meetings, the populations of each cluster surely grows from a few dozen to a few hundred, and eventually to a few thousand. At various stages of population growth one can ascertain several things about the population as a whole. Before tribe X and Y joined, tribe X had the habit of ingesting fallen members killed during the hunt. This was a superstitious belief held by Tribe X, and initiated by Tribe X's shaman, who felt it necessary to do so in order to bring the spirit of the dead back to where they came from. Tribe Y felt this to be a repulsive practice, mainly because they'd enjoyed superior hunting techniques, and fewer deaths, larger kills on the hunting fields, and so didn't -need- to resort to cannibalism, nor did they find it particularly enjoyable. When these two tribes met, tribe Y easily conquered tribe X, and eliminated anyone that partook in the old ritual of eating fallen tribe members.

In essence the practices of one tribe (Y) has influenced or overwritten another's (X). The moral implication here, is that cannibalism is wrong. Though you or I may think this is true (in most circumstances, but maybe even in all) and we don't need to experience it first hand to know it's not right for you or I, these people were the originators of this decision. So at some point in history, a group of people decided that eating other people is "bad" and it became... taboo., This would later translate into a moral decision, that people would inherit, or in other words, would be truth for people, by default, without having to make the decision themselves because it's already been made for them. THIS can be construed as subconscious morality, or ingrained morality, or a core value, etc. But is it really? Or is it simply a decision that's successfully been passed on for hundreds of thousands of years?

I ask this because I do not know of the science that could prove that such a decision could find its way into the gene-fabric of our species. I think it's far more likely that this is an example of knowledge being passed from person to person. Now it's true that we may have a genetic predisposition to not want to eat each other, and the shaman of that particular tribe X was just... bat **** insane, and persuasive (which is why he was shaman to begin with). But I think it's more likely that as humans evolved, this and other such questions were raised, rooted out, conquered, transformed, transfigured, morphed, etc., to form the basis for our current day moral code that AltF4 quite accurately depicts as the average agreement of all peoples.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

My issue with this idea of morality being merely the current social trends in society is that it merely reflects the status quo. While the status quo seems to be becoming better as the zeitgeist steadily marches forward due to our greater understanding of the universe and consequently becomes more informed, I don't really see how you can look at the practices of primitive humans (slavery, torture, human sacrifice etc.) and definitively say that they are barbaric and immoral unless there is some kind of objective method of determining whether an action is morally correct or wrong.

This seems to be the problem with morality based on ontology. It is based upon the nature of the subject that we are dealing with. Lets pretend for a moment that we run into a group of aliens that have evolved to assimilate or destroy all life forms that aren't them (like Tyranids from Warhammer 40K, or The Flood from Halo). Now is there anything morally wrong with their actions from an ontological point of view? No. Even though they are lead by a conscious mind? No. Is our moral code of at least not attempting to assimilate everything we see any better than theirs? No.

For this reason, I think there must be a better method through which one can evaluate the morality of an action. From my mind, the a good method appears to be consequentialism, although this raises a number of its own problems, so a subset of that is probably better, rule utilitarianism as it addresses some of these issues. I mean at least rule utilitarianism provides an objective method based upon reason, (unlike deontology), with which one can judge the morality of various actions.

Note that rule utilitarianism is completely secular, and that an objective standard for morality, in this case rule utilitarianism is able to exist without the notion of god as the objective moral-law giver.

 

[Theftz22]

Descriptive ethics is dumb.

I subscribe to burritoism because I define good actions as actions contributing to either the making or consuming of burritos and I define evil actions as actions conflicting with the making or consuming of burritos. Any action that neither contributes to or conflicts with the making or consuming of burritos is therefore amoral.

Behold, my objective descriptive ethics!

 

[Sucumbio]

Sorry, rvkevin, I just realized your post was a link ><

What are your thoughts on this?

I remember reading about that study years ago when someone correlated it to the scene in Ghostbusters at the beginning when he's shocking the dude so he get the girl alone, lol.

My initial issue with the study is that there's no telling why the animals made that choice. It's possible the sounds of discomfort made by shocked animals tipped them off as a warning not to trust the food that was being given to them as a "reward" for injuring their fellows. I'm hesitant to assume that it really means they were willing to die instead of harming one another.

As for the human version of the experiment, it's interesting to note just how greedy people can be, and selfish. I think it's important to accept that humans did in fact claw their way to the top of the evolutionary food chain, and I'm sure we didn't get that way by being nice. I'd also be interested to know how people would perform in this experiment 100 years ago, or 1000, 10,000 or 1 million.

 

[blazedaces]

Evolution isn't morally wrong, because it would change the ontology of the being. Besides, it could never be morally wrong because it's not a rational agent.

Look Dre, this is becoming more and more silly every time I hear it.

I was specifically talking about human evolution, as humans/any intelligent being (since dolphins for one could be argued to be intelligent) can also evolve.

If the ontology of a being changes literally from individual to individual then you could easily argue that no action taken is ever morally wrong, so long as its what that particular individual tends to do...

Either the ontology of humanity as whole (the moving average as AltF4 put it) is being used to define morality, or each individuals own ontology is used.

And if each individual's ontology is being used then every time you have ever argued that being homosexual is wrong, for example, then you weren't correctly applying your own very poorly thought out ethical system. In fact, such a system is literally impossible to implement, because you are not an expert on every individual's ontology. You have no way of knowing the ontology of every individual on the planet.

-blazed

Edited to replace a word I felt was immature to use.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Descriptive ethics is dumb.

I subscribe to burritoism because I define good actions as actions contributing to either the making or consuming of burritos and I define evil actions as actions conflicting with the making or consuming of burritos. Any action that neither contributes to or conflicts with the making or consuming of burritos is therefore amoral.

Behold, my objective descriptive ethics!

Yeah, sure you're burritoism is objective, but Rule utilitarianism is not only objective, it also the most reasonable objective standard of morality. Most of the others I've found appear either subjective or arbitrary. Deontology is arbitrary while virtue ethics is highly subjective. Rule utilitarianism seems like the best way to go, because it is not only objective, it actually has a point, and provides a reason for following the rules it lays out - producing the best outcome possible for everyone.

 

[AltF4]

Bob Jane T-Mart:

I started reading your post, then glanced down and saw "Tyranids and Warhammer 40k" and thought "... now how on Earth could he possibly go from talking about morality and biology to 'Nids in like 1 paragraph." And was pleasantly surprised.

Spoiler

I used to work for GW a while back, actually. I still have like 6 full armies between all their games.

I agree with underdogs that descriptive morality is essentially pointless. When you're done, all you've accomplished is making a definition. You haven't really learned anything new. And prescriptive morality is even worse. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really think that there's much to "study" in the study of morality.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Bob Jane T-Mart:

I started reading your post, then glanced down and saw "Tyranids and Warhammer 40k" and thought "... now how on Earth could he possibly go from talking about morality and biology to 'Nids in like 1 paragraph." And was pleasantly surprised.

Spoiler

I used to work for GW a while back, actually. I still have like 6 full armies between all their games.

Thanks mate. Yeah, to be honest, I don't really do much in terms of Warhammer, although, I did at one point have a copy of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade which provided a lot of entertainment.

I agree with underdogs that descriptive morality is essentially pointless. When you're done, all you've accomplished is making a definition. You haven't really learned anything new. And prescriptive morality is even worse. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really think that there's much to "study" in the study of morality.

I'm pretty sure that descriptive ethics is just basically asking people to fill out a survey on how they feel morally about certain matters. I would imagine it has uses in things like psychology and neuroscience.

I think prescriptive morality is actually okay, considering it's mostly what our debates are about. It basically deals with whether an action is right or wrong, or how one ought to act in a situation. I think it's very important.