RE: Morality from the ground up
August 3, 2017 at 3:29 pm
(This post was last modified: August 3, 2017 at 3:55 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
I think that harm is the fundamental axiom of our morality, but I don't see any reason why it would be extended to animals on account of that in and of itself...and we obviously fail to extend it even to other human beings. I'm speaking, in this regard, of whatever "natural morality" we possess. Rationally, we can extend the umbrella fairly easy. It's important to separate the two. There are constraints on the one that do not apply to the other.
A remorseful predator would have been, shall we say..disadvantaged? Such isn't true anymore, obviously. Bennys proclivities, for example....aren't going to cause him to miss any meals. Similarly, a group that extended it's moral sympathies beyond it's means (to other groups) would have found themselves disadvantaged.
Running along with this is still the manner in which we treat our own ingroup, which is a better judge of why we do what we do or why we align morality how we do, than what we do or don;t do to the "other". We're obviously more interested in those interactions than in others, and as I've already commented upon..while one tribe may have thought nothing of raping each others wives and daughters...they seem to have decided not to rape their own concurrently and independently. It;s the same with animals, really. We don't kick our dogs as often as we kill rats. Unless rats are pets and dogs are pests.
If harm is the basis of our morality, in this case as the way in which we assess moral value, as an evolved trait..we'd act a whole hell of alot like we act. We do have a natural inclination against hurting animals..just not all animals, all of the time, or the same animals - with the caveat that this natural inclination could not have been (and is not) so great that it caused us to routinely miss meals - no more so than this natural inclination could have been (or is) so compelling and absolute that we exercise it at our own ingroups expense.
In short, imo, you're expecting something that's a complete non-sequitur and then suggesting, that, on the basis of it's absence (in so much as it is absent?) that the idea of harm as a fundamental point of data (for natural morality or rational morality?) is incorrect. It may be, ofc, that we're just talking about two contextually different things here....I'd easily agree that plenty of other shit is involved in our natural moralities..much of it having nothing to do with a rational morality. Thankfully, we don't need to refer to any of that in coming up with a rational morality, from the ground up.
The great thing about axioms is that you can use whatever you want-ish. I use harm. I think that it correlates to our evolutionary history, but that;s not why I use it. I use it because our moral values seem to implicitly refer to harm even if we don;t always accurately assess harm, or consistently express or extend that concept where it's applicable. Now, we're free to add all sorts of other things to it, and to qualify harm in any number of ways (well being is popular). Though I do think that alot of the things we might qualify and add will probably reduce to harm themselves. Particularly when we consider virtue ethics.
A remorseful predator would have been, shall we say..disadvantaged? Such isn't true anymore, obviously. Bennys proclivities, for example....aren't going to cause him to miss any meals. Similarly, a group that extended it's moral sympathies beyond it's means (to other groups) would have found themselves disadvantaged.
Running along with this is still the manner in which we treat our own ingroup, which is a better judge of why we do what we do or why we align morality how we do, than what we do or don;t do to the "other". We're obviously more interested in those interactions than in others, and as I've already commented upon..while one tribe may have thought nothing of raping each others wives and daughters...they seem to have decided not to rape their own concurrently and independently. It;s the same with animals, really. We don't kick our dogs as often as we kill rats. Unless rats are pets and dogs are pests.
If harm is the basis of our morality, in this case as the way in which we assess moral value, as an evolved trait..we'd act a whole hell of alot like we act. We do have a natural inclination against hurting animals..just not all animals, all of the time, or the same animals - with the caveat that this natural inclination could not have been (and is not) so great that it caused us to routinely miss meals - no more so than this natural inclination could have been (or is) so compelling and absolute that we exercise it at our own ingroups expense.
In short, imo, you're expecting something that's a complete non-sequitur and then suggesting, that, on the basis of it's absence (in so much as it is absent?) that the idea of harm as a fundamental point of data (for natural morality or rational morality?) is incorrect. It may be, ofc, that we're just talking about two contextually different things here....I'd easily agree that plenty of other shit is involved in our natural moralities..much of it having nothing to do with a rational morality. Thankfully, we don't need to refer to any of that in coming up with a rational morality, from the ground up.
The great thing about axioms is that you can use whatever you want-ish. I use harm. I think that it correlates to our evolutionary history, but that;s not why I use it. I use it because our moral values seem to implicitly refer to harm even if we don;t always accurately assess harm, or consistently express or extend that concept where it's applicable. Now, we're free to add all sorts of other things to it, and to qualify harm in any number of ways (well being is popular). Though I do think that alot of the things we might qualify and add will probably reduce to harm themselves. Particularly when we consider virtue ethics.
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