Euthyphro dilemma asked for evolution.

[genkaus]

-I'm just running with your earlier requirements for what morality would be (who it would apply to and why), you made provisions for the slitznarpians/human scenario, and so that would excuse the lions as well. Doesn't have much to do with anything that I understand, only what you have stated.

And the moral of that story was that human morality would be different from other kinds of morality.

-It's not irrelevant, stop claiming that any possibility other than the one you have presented in support of your notions of objective morality are irrelevant. You keep repeating that argument that we are no longer engaging in heuristics because we can communicate but this is not the case, and I've explained why. I'll try again. A heuristic program is developed that solves the equation 1+1= ? for a desktop pc. We save that heuristic and transfer it to another pc. It remains a heuristic. To take this further, we keep creating heuristics programs that solve 1+1=? and transferring them from one pc to another. They all remain heuristics, they all solve the problem, and we have a bunch to choose from. It's not difficult to see the similarities between this process and our notions of morality. I'm not claiming that this is definitely how it's done, but I am presenting the possibility, and it isn't just theorycraft.

Yes, I get that you are presenting a possibility. But the fact that we discuss morality, that we figure out which concepts are applicable and which are not, that we reason why those concepts are applicable, means we have moved beyond trial and error in this case. The fact that we not only know what works, we also know why it works and when it wouldn't work means we are no longer determining morality using heuristic processes.

This would have severe implications for your claims of what morality -is- to say the least, but it would be even more destructive to the idea of humans as moral agents (as you have defined it). You have insisted that this morality would be grounded in facts about the nature of a moral agent, and when presented with two potential moral agents you made provisions for morality based upon the particular circumstances of that agent. Well....heuristics do seem to be in our nature, they do seem to be at play in morality. Hence the "should" i'm arguing for as opposed to all of the "is's" I see.

Heuristics is a tool we use - not a necessary part of our nature. If your argument was correct the yes, human morality would not be what we know it to be. But since it is what we know it to be, those implications are irrelevant.

-I'll try to find you a working link. The asian disease problem was an experiment that was run (and most definitely does have to do with morality, as it was an explicitly moral question) and the results that the researchers got implied that a heuristic was being used to make moral decisions at least in that case. This was a tiny fraction of their overall focus, of course, the larger bits having to do with the massive amount of heuristics we seem to employ under the guise of "reasoning". So we do work that way Genk, a hell of alot of the time, if these folks are correct, and even in the arena of "morality".

Actually, that experiment is not a moral question. The moral concept in play is same in both cases - save as many lives as you can. The subject in question is not being asked which option is morally correct, he is being asked which one is economically correct. Heuristics being used to make a moral decision - a decision where outcome is unclear - is not that same as heuristics determining what is morally correct or not.

If morality is not the thing you claim it to be, that would be relevant. If you are going to claim that morality -is- this or that you would have to eliminate other possibilities, I'm not asking you to eliminate every possibility, just this one, that is grounded in an experiment. You don't feel that this is a reasonable request, and you also don't feel that the qualifier "should be" is applicable, I'm asking you why.

Except, morality is what I claim it to be because that is how it is defined. I don't need to disprove any other definition which may or may not be applicable as long as mine is.

If our nature is not that of a moral agent (as you have defined it) and if morality must be based on facts about a moral agent (and specific to the agent in question, which your letting the slitznarpians off the hook on our morality would seem to imply) then that would be relevant. If I'm mistaken here in some particular I'd love to know why.

It would be relevant, but it is not because our nature is (usually) that of a moral agent.

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As an interesting side conversation on the subject-

What do you think are the major stumbling blocks with regards to finding or creating this objective morality. For example, just those statements you've made on these boards would suggest to me that it wouldn't be too hard to create it, since we have that exacting a definition and a suggestion as to where to look. What are the problems with objective morality that you have found? How did you find yourself in the "it might exist/we could create it" camp whilst being simultaneously unable to offer objective morality up to us? Say we created/found objective morality, are there any obstructions on the way to universal application that jump out at you?

A universal goal.

Morality is a guide that should lead us to something. For example, the aim of religious morality is heaven or happier afterlife. Utilitarian morality aims at maximizing happiness and so on. Therefore, we need to find an objective goal that would not be based simply on the philosopher's choice. Something that would be an inherent part of the human nature. Something that we may point out as not only so what all humans should work towards, but we all do work for.

Common sense suggests that a "happy and fulfilling life" would fill that criteria. But that cannot be established as a fact. And there are simply too many irrational and illogical ideas out there about what constitutes a happy and fulfilling life.