RE: Why do we need morals?
May 13, 2013 at 3:16 pm
(This post was last modified: May 13, 2013 at 3:18 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(May 13, 2013 at 3:09 pm)Darkstar Wrote: Well, I suppose that biological imperatives don't have any objective value in and of themselves, only towards serving the ultimate goals of the organism (i.e. living).When conflict arises between two organisms, the one of which depending upon the others death for it's own survival...what do we do? Biology dealt us a shitty hand in solving this one, frankly.
Quote:I think one can act in a way that isn't affected by self interest, but that may be evolved (or socially evolved). If one sacrifices him/herself to save ten, that confers a survival advantage on the species, even though is wasn't so fortunate for the selfless person.We could playtest this notion all day long - the example you offered, for example. The guy didn't want to be the hero? Being the descendants or relatives of the hero doesn't confer an advantage? That's ignoring that even though you may think of yourself as a discrete and complete being, your dna - if it could conceive of anything, would call you a survival suit. It doesn't care if you die, so long as it survives- and if sacrificing one suit saves ten suits, that's a unilaterally self interested motivation.
Quote:Well, I suppose it would then depend on what constitutes a "good" reason. If the subject decides that the fact he doesn't feel that murder is wrong makes it right, there is obviously a serious problem, even though he may technically have a reason (but not one most people would consider valid).
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Quote:You bring up a valid point, but this returns to what I said before: how do we know that our subjective goal is a good one, and what would such a goal be? Could it be, perhaps, to reduce human suffering, promote fairness, and protect life? (Given that all life deems suffering as bad...unless they are heartless of sadistic, that people have an innate sense of fairness*, and that all organisms strive to live)
That's the beauty of it, we don't have to uniformly decide whether or not it's a "good" goal, whether or not it has objective value - we only have to agree to strive for it (and we can state definitively that it's open to revision). What would such a goal be for you, we could tally up those goals between us and start working on the ones we share firstly. I doesn't sound so difficult, does it?
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