There is no elephant in the room.

The why treat others as I would want to be treated is self explanatory.

There is no standard needed in that.

I see morality as a set of behavioral relationships expressed between sentient beings. This ability has evolved out of the need to interact toward the goal of building a group that is stronger then before. *

The relationships ARE universal in the sense that a group of sentient beings (any beings) evolving in an environment (any environment) must engage in the process of reinforcing the behaviors that move the group toward the goal of group strength while eliminating the behaviors that move the group away from this idealized goal or the group will simply cease to exist. **

I see these relationships the same way I see the relationships between mathematical principles, and the way reality unfolds.

Mathematics CAN model reality very closely, so we use it to engage with reality to reveal a closer accounting of true knowledge, however mathematics is not reality. Essentially our understanding of reality which includes these behavioral relationships is asymptotic.

Reason and ethics are like mathematical principles in the sense that they are tools that can be used to come as close as possible to truth in regards to the proper mix of behaviors to achieve said goal. The flaw is that what we know is limited.

In a world of personal individual perfect knowledge we could auto correct our behavior because we could map every set of relationships perfectly at each state change of the system as it meets the idealized goal.

We sadly can only come so close becuase we are dealing with what we know about our environment, what we know about human behaviors, what we know about the average of our collective human goals.

If an adding machine of perfect morality could spit out a perfect answer for any moral conundrum we would not need to understand the relationships so well. If such a universal perfectly moral adding machine existed it would have to account for a shifting environment perfectly, for changing idealized goals, for evolving consciousness of the beings in question, truly it would have to account for everything and anything that could effect how groups of sentient beings interacted.

We are... trust and truth are of moral import.



I have no idea how you've arrived at this. It certainly does not follow from my words.



It does not follow from the fact that I have not answered that I cannot or will not. The question is irrelevent to my view. I think you're conflating morality with moral belief.



What do you think can be inferred from an answer to such a question? How is it relevent to the origin of morals or morality?



When a meaningful rejoinder follows from a well placed point, it engages me further. You've yet to address any of the points being made. Method is everything when examining morality.

Nice addition Billy...

Spoken like a realist!

*What essential fundamental characteristics make a group of sentient beings?

First and foremost a group of sentient beings must have more than 1 member. That seems obvious and should, but its a good point to start becuase it IS the most simple characteristic intrinsic to this thing: groups.


**What essential fundamental characteristics (intrinsic) make a group strong?

Here it gets more challenging. Its becuase you must account for the environment and that is no easy thing in any realistic environment.

I would argue that a strong group in any environment is one that can adapt quickly to change.

Its a group that has a good mixture of skills.

Its a group that can solve grievance without loosing capabilities, nor causing lasting strife.

For me its this kind of high level relationship matrix that is at the core of morality. Its higher than humanity, its fundamental to the nature of reasoning personal perspective driven consciousness.

But each individual part of that has to have a sense also of what others feel in order to be able to relate with others.

Empathy is paramount in the determining of individual morality. A person doesn't like to see others in pain be it emotional, etc...

Yes, there is no way to strengthen as a group without shared communication . . . . . . . . . and shared interests.


I think in these kinds of conversations its a good idea to ask yourself what would a perfectly moral group look like . . . ie what are the perfect actions to take to maximize group strength/cohesion or any other word you could use that would be universally agreed upon to mean good. No one thinks cohesion or strength are bad characteristics for a group do they?

Its easier to envision a very simple consciousness, and a very simple group, that way a perfect morality of the kind I describe becomes easy to manage conceptually.

Conversely what would be the most imperfect moral group. (ie what are the worst possible actions a group could take)

Again keep it simple, a group of bees, or a group of ants, or a group of lions, a hypothetical group of pre-technology human like creatures . . . whatever.

Its my opinion that any social group can act as a guide for these considerations, as simple or complex as you want to get.

Of course ant morality is not human morality, that is not to say that there is not a perfect set of actions for each group (objective morality). Its also not to say that these actions do not follow the same general guidelines. Its only to say that more variables are entered into the equation of the environment for humans than ants. Humans clearly have far more considerations in daily life than do ants.

When I say environment I mean to include every action ever taken by any member of the group that had any impact on the resources the group has at its disposal.

What you've called 'playing with semantics' was intended to ensure that I understood what you meant by "morals". That indicates my interest in conversing with you, which is beginning to wane. The goal of my doing so was to increase the liklihood of successful communication.



Show me.



That is not what a strawman is. The context is the origin of morality and morals, so the claim was not taken out of context. You claimed that "there is no universality outside of as someone stated". That is a very broad statement in this context, one of which that is false. I simply showed how it was in error. Universality is not contingent upon language. Our understanding it is. I'm not trying to be difficult here. Rather, I am trying to make sure we understand each other, and perhaps attempting to also offer the tools that are required to understand my view, which is not all that common.



Again, if morals are the conventional understanding of a society/group regarding acceptable and unacceptable behavior, then I agree that they have indeed changed throughout human history. Namely, they've grown farther from a concept of God as the authority figure, at least in Western philosophy/culture. However, it does not necessarily follow from that that there are no universal morals or morality. It would be more accurate to say that there are none you know of.

In the same way that Epistemology is the study of knowledge not knowledge itself Morality should be the study of a universal ordering required for groups to exist . . not any kind of given ordering at any point in space and time as it meets the environment the group finds itself in.

Knowledge transcends fact
Morality transcends morals.

Does that jive with you creative, or have I read you wrong?

Its interesting I do not think I have ever fully considered this line of thought until just now. This would allow relative morals to naturally flow down from objective morality in the same way that the phenomena of nature flow down from the principles of physical reality.

The small light weight rocks move further up the beach, the larger heavier rocks sink in the surf sooner. Round pegs fit through round holes. This flows down from the relationships of the physical constants of reality. It requires a meta-physics, or meta-ethics to properly analyze morality but that does not mar its ontology no less than quantum indeterminacy mars the ontology of determinism only that it makes it impossible to know perfectly.

Is strong always good billy? Perhaps it be better put... In waht ways can strong be good?



I think I understand the sentiment here, just from having discussed so many things with you. However, I am personally a little reluctant to call morality 'higher' than humanity. I think you mean higher as in it takes an extremely accurate and rather complex understanding to fully grasp it? Does that sound about right?

I certainly think that the foundation is not manmade, in fact I can almost prove it, depending upon what constitutes being proof. If that agrees with your meaning, than we agree more than I currently realize. I mean, it may not make a difference to many, but to me, morality is much more basically fundamental. Although this is a hard 'sell', perhaps even nearly unrecongizable due to the overwhelming popularity of moral relativism, or some spinoff.

Yes I am struggling for the right words here in many of my paragraphs hence the edits.

By higher I mean without regard to the specificity that is humans.
ie any other being that is social and forms groups would work.
At a higher level looking down of scrutiny. ie dont drill down to humans, it dont need to get that specific. I mean that the properties of social groups in and of themselves without regard to the being itself.


AAAHHHH language failing me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I vomit out various things like a dictionary and expect my audience to average my meaning out of it!

Makes sense to me . .. I think.

The bolded portion holds good on my view. However, due to the metaphysical baggage that comes along with transcendent claims, I do not make them. I would not call morality the study of something/anything. Metaethics covers the study of right/wrong and good/bad behavior throughout human history. Much of my view is a metaethical one.

Morality, I think, is universally shared behavioral expectation. It is how that has been arrived at that that holds quite strong.

Yes.

I would call myself a moral realist, but many moral realists that I encountered do not like it when I do, for many if not most hold to what is called "robust" moral realism. I find flaws in the robust view. The basic principle however, is that there are moral facts which reflect moral truth(s). In that I agree.

The interesting thing to me is that acting morally has nothing to do with being based upon one's desires. Colin McGinn shows this rather well I think. This is an excerpt from an article he wrote back in '96.

Well then we do agree, perhaps I am using poor choice of words in some places or not enough explanations of meanings.

In this case when I say metaphysical, I mean in the same way that the Copenhagen interpretation of QM is essentially metaphysical, its tries to explain the why from the what despite the uncertainty. A wave function may not be real but it is a handy way to get real data.

If we keep things simple we need not resort to explaining complex things with metaphysical explanations, we can just use mechanics, which when I read your edit is what I see from the complexity of the example offered.

Giving to Charity is good because it benefits the group. No moral conundrum there, just a simple fact, no meta- anything needed.

I could also see a good fuzzy logic style of explanation that would also satisfy my love of the distinction between ontic and epistemic.

Rarely have I thought so much on this topic, much of this thread is going into my grist bin for massaging.

Anywho Im runing out of mental juice for the nite, cya guys later!

Most likely, it also has to do with me and my philosophical interests/pursuits. Engaging with amatuers and professionals alike, and knowing how those kinds of thinkers pick and choose their language very carefully, if for no other reason than to be able to justify it when necessary, tends to influence one's thinking. I'm sure you understand what I mean here.

Morality is no easy concept to manage. Afterall, some of the greatest philosophical minds in human history dabbled in folly for centuries. The God of Abraham was in the way. Hume drove a deep wedge which remains to this day as well. Then we have the logical positivists and the moral emotivists, all of which got in wrong in very important ways on my view. All in all, we are still newborns in a secular sense regarding morality.

What is funny is that you don't see the major flaw in everything you have posted so far and I keep pointing it out to you and the people in the thread on the Philosophy Forums have pointed it out to you.

Moral Realism requires that there is a moral standard that is independent of humanity. If a moral standard exists, WHERE DID IT COME FROM? WHY DOES IT EXIST? You dodge these questions like Neo dodging bullets.

You can just say that some moral propositions are true and not even admit that their existence leads to the more challenging and interesting question of "WHY" and "HOW" they exist.

You use the word "morality" to mean "Natural Law" and you made up the term "moral belief" to mean "morality". It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

it does not ensure anything ... its only you .... playing with semantics ...
Its not what ... I meant as morals .... its what the dictionary defines morals as. that matters .... not your silly twisting of the definitions.
[easy ... look up morals ... in websters ... then use that as the definition]


again ... you go out of context in the quote .... ... if you want to remain in context ... quote the whole paragraph.
universal truths have nothing to do with the discussion.... strawman. ... i was talking of there being no universal morality and anyone not trying to build a strawman would know that.

yes the context of the statement is morals and morality and you took it to mean anything ... that is out of context ... and that does make a strawman argument... .
even you posting it again without the complete paragraph is taking it out of context . Please look up context in the dictionary after you look up morals.

and none you can show us.
God has nothing to do with this discussion. unless that is your futile argument for a universal morality.
and that makes your argument fall apart very quickly.

not sure if I got all the quotes in quotes right ... but hey ... this all seems to be quite the waste of time.

If you can come up with some universal morals ...
tell us where we can find any proof of them ... something that doesn't look like animal instinct of survival and the logical deductions of how we best attain that survival.

Why? Because mankind exists.
How? Because mankind gathers into communities and that also answers why... Communities need convention to survive.
Really appears that you are trying to introduce us to your elephant... Or get us to 'see' the same 'elephant' you see in your room.

So the people posting here are not doging your questions...

They are 'doging' the elephant you are attempting to introduce out of your own opinion.

Are social codes different than morality? They are sometime in line, but other times are way off. Morally, stealing is wrong. It's hard to argue the "rightness" of theft. Yet people are pirating on-line in droves and telling each other about it. It's becoming socially acceptable to pirate even though it doesn't stand up well morally.

How to tell what's right and wrong?

Method #1 - Is anyone going to be harmed by your action? Who are they? And how much will it hurt compared to how much it will help us or stop our own pain? Should we stop shopping at WalMart because it's killing independent stores? Well, it would harm WalMart, so to determine which is the more ethical choice, we have to decide who is harmed less, or who we care about more.

Method #2 - If everyone did it, would it benefit the world? If everyone stole just one grape when shopping, then the store would go under. This one's good if you're contemplating doing something tiny but immoral. Stealing a penny is still stealing.

Method #3 - Does it make you feel like crap to do it? Or, as my mom would say, would you want it on the front page of the paper? Here's something dishonest I do regularly - I borrow one of 10 papers from the lunchroom to read at my desk, then I bring it back. I hide the paper under my books when I walk down the hall with it, so that tells me I'm doing something wrong. BUT maybe it just tells me I don't want to get told off for doing something that causes nobody any harm. Tricky one. Also, I really believe we get this feeling in part innately. Sure, partly it's from getting told off when we do wrong, but partly it's from our own in-born conscience. And I believe everyone's born with a different level of compassion. Serial killers have close to zero. Mother Theresa had a lot. So, if we use this as the primary basis of morality it falls short for those who aren't at all bothered by harming others (regardless how often their dads hit them when they were being jerks as kids).

Method #4 - Does the decision, honestly, come from a place of love or fear? Are you doing it to further the world, to help others, to be a good person, OR are you doing it because you're afraid of not being most liked, or afraid of being overlooked, or afraid of losing someone, etc.

Just my personal analysis of the question.