Meaning of Right and Wrong... Finally Answered!

[pacian]

I would like to apologize about my punctuation and grammar before I start. The following is from my blog:

No problem, now that it looks a bit nicer i might chime in

Okay, what is the meaning of right or wrong? From what I saw of Sam Harris it looks like he is close to getting it right, but I wasn't able to know if he understands it completely just based on the interview, and also on the fact I haven't read his book. I believe he describes it as human flourishing, where as I describe it as survivability. But its okay, its basically the same thing. What I mean is, and I think he does too, is that morality, the meaning of right and wrong, is based on whats good for humans.
Now, since we were young we were told what was right or wrong, by parents and religion, but I have always wanted a better definition. What is right and what is wrong? The only answers seemed to me to come from just knowing based on what I was taught. But it occurred to me, after, I figured out the meaning of life, that what it is ,in reality based on is survivability.

So you define (moral?) right and wrong as 'maximizing survivability'? In other words what ever best aids in survival is what is morally right?

Um, yes and no. Though this is what i feel nature tends to point too, I know morality isn't real its just created in our mind.

As, I will later articulate in future blogs, us humans evolved with randomness. This randomness pointed our perceived characters and morality towards the most logical conclusion.

Yeah, you're going to have to explain this one, because as it stands you appear to have made one of the biggest newbie mistakes regarding the theory of evolution...

Sorry dude, but randomness is the theory of evolution, or it should be written that way. Every thing happened out of randomness, molecules meshing together in a watery soup. Let say i make robots with the ability to reproduce... but also vary, much like our dna does with bacteria and every other living creature. Okay out of randomness some of these robots will kill their offspring, some will do nothing with their offspring, and others will provide for their offspring out of sheer randomness. Who is going to survive better? Evolution will make more of the robots that don't kill their offspring and probably even more of the robots that don't kill their offspring and provide for their offspring. Yes their will be more robots that take care of their offspring but because nature is random and these robots vary, just like our dna, there will be every now and then a robot born that kills his own offspring, due to randomness even though the majority of robots care for their offspring.

That conclusion is to make more of our selfs, to stay alive, reproduce, and continue being more.

That's not true, many out there are generally lazy and don't give a shit about self improvement, not enough to take action anyway.

Randomness, all they are is randomness, they can still survive, reproduce, but they might not have all the awesome traits that would make them super awesome. Its hard getting all the right traits!

In randomness we evolved to want to reproduce and stay alive, because if we hadn't we would not exist.

*sigh*

That seems to be the same mistake as earlier rising again.

I explained earlier.

We would kill ourselves, jump off cliffs without thinking and fail to provide to our offspring to continue to survive. Randomness thus slowly removes the people with less traits to survive, and replaces them with the people who survive better and reproduce more often.

Err, we don't top ourselves under natural selection, we are under pressure from the environment (including predators) around us. Those with the random features that make them more effective at surviving the pressures of the environment go on to reproduce and spread the beneficial gene. This process goes on for hundreds of trillions of different generations of different lineages, and almost everything that ever existed becomes extinct.

True randomness is a slow process and if you see the history of the earth, earth's quick changes to the environment is way faster then evolution at times. So species naturally become extinct sometimes.

It is then no wonder why our mind has evolved to include morality in the picture, morality increases our survivability. Think about it. What is considered right increases our survivability. What is considered wrong decreases our survivability.

Agreed, to an extent, though many many many many (i could add a few more 'man'y...) moral decision that we make have nothing at all to do with survival. I agree with you to the point that we evolved a capacity to make certain educated decisions about our environment, and were able to determine the actions that would help in surviving or hinder survival, but morality is much more than knowing what will and will not kill us.

For instance, in all likelihood the practice of keeping slaves is likely to increase the survivability of the community that keeps them. They build wealth more easily which makes them a fortune that can put many successive generations into a better position for surviving.

If survivability of ones lineage was the basis for morality it would be impossible call the act of keeping slaves morally wrong. Morality needs to be a far more comprehensive that stopping at survivability.

I feel that keeping slaves might help a family like you said, but those slaves are being limited of their full potential. The survival of the species increases if people are allowed to maximize their potential. Hell one of the slaves could be a genius and find a cure to something, who knows?, but because he was born to slavery and the species potential to find that cure faster has now decreased, decreasing survivability.

Let's say I steal from some one. Stealing decreases the victims value, their ability to survive because what I stole could be sold or used for food, or shelter or something else that could be essential to survivability. Stealing is considered wrong.

But what if you stole something that had no impact on their survivability? Since it doesn't relate to the criteria you set out it can't be deemed to be morally wrong.

Correct. You steal crap someone doesn't want, its not morally wrong. Lets say a person throws away stuff in a garbage can, the person himself throws it away because the object does not have value or significantly enough value to him. If a homeless man comes and steals it from his trash, does it matter? As long as the homeless guy ain't stealing credit card numbers, the survivability of the first guy goes unchanged.

But what if I give charity to a desperate homeless guy. I have increased his survivability and therefore have done something that is considered right. Same could be said if I kill someone, or save someones life.

Sure all these bits fit, but your moral theory doesn't work if something doesn't fit.

My theory fits buddy ?

How about studying, going to school, making more money, as opposed to not studying, not going to school, and thus making less money.

That's what many many people have done. Does this make them morally wrong?

It is considered wrong to be lazy and not become educated, yes, personally I don't give a shit, but thats what we humans in general consider and what nature points morality too. Come on your parents never put a guilt trip on you, to go to school, get good grades, as oppose to ditch school, smoke weed...lol

It seems right and wrong have evolved to be dependent on the perception of increasing or decreasing societies survivability.

I disagree that (moral) right and wrong arose from biological evolution. They are certainly memes that have their origin in some biologically derived sense of 'good' and 'bad' (in terms of survivability, pain, pleasure, reward etc) but they certainly go far beyond any notion of survival.

I respectfully disagree with you. moral right and wrong seem to have completely arisen from evolution, randomness.

For example if you steal from some one it is considered wrong, but what if you steal bread to survive. I remember my mother always telling me that God said that, that is okay. This is where you can argue for or against it. It is the gray area.

Stealing bread if you are absolutely dependent upon it to live is not morally wrong, i would say not because it is intrinsically based on survival, but because the desire to live is a stronger desire than the desire not to be stolen from, and this applies to essentially everyone, therefore it is more moral to be stolen from than it is to thwart the desire of the homeless man to live, because we all have more and stronger desires to live than to not be stolen from.

A moral person would make the action that promotes more and stronger desires than it thwarts, in this case because there are only two desires, your desire not to be stolen from and my desire not to die, my desire is a stronger desire that thwarts less desires (all my desires for life) than your desire not to be stolen from. Therefore the moral person would be permitted to steal the bread, and thus it is not immoral to steal to survive if you absolutely need to.

Though I find you equating desire with morality, I would have to disagree. My desire to rape you is equal to your desire not to get rape... so i'm morally right? Though your theory makes since in that situation you would have to elaborate on all situations

That is of course unless your theft causes someone else to die, and then you have thwarted all their desires in life as well as their desire not to be stolen from, and thus your decision to steal becomes the immoral one.

Hypothetically lets say my desire to kill you is equal to your desire not to die, so there is nothing wrong with killing you? You would have to elaborate cause I would have to disagree if its based on desire. We all have different desires.

You can argue weather it is wrong or right and weather it increases or decreases societies survivability. If the man lives and does not die because he choose to steals food, then his survivability increases and also that of society. But if he steals because of wants and not necessity then he decreases societies survivability, because even if he didn't steal he would still be able to survive.

I must point out that theft does not necessarily decrease survivability. If i steal all the pies from a fat man's kitchen and he has to run around searching for them for hours then i have increased his survivability

Lol it is still considered immoral to steal, even if he is fat lol. Due to stealing in general is stealing something that increases survivability or can be sold in increase survivability. Your right he probably don't need that pie and his survivability might increase if he lays off all that pie, but due to the negative connotation involved with it such as assault, injury, and death that occur when stealing from people. It as seen as something that decreases survivability in general, I mean your still going to jail for stealing, even if he's fat. And don't need it.

Your moral theory has serious problems.

My theory is awesome, I hope you will be able to understand it one day in all its glory.

In, reality there is no wrong or right answer

Then you haven't figured out what is right and wrong at all, you have become a moral subjectivist.

You know now that i think about it, morality is just another feeling of evolution to help us adapt, like depression, its just a series of chemical reactions in our brains, Its as real as any other feeling, happyness, love, sadness, anger all these feelings made to help us interact motivate us and do stuff to help us prosper in the world

as I describe later about the meaning of life, but in the world of morality in our minds you can argue for or against it based on the decrease or increase of survivability. Since it is hard to prove as a fact that societies total survivability value increased or decreased without stats to prove it, morality question like this become gray for people.

I'm sorry but i think you're well and truly dead in the water here. no amount of paddling now can get you to shore.

But the island you stand on is burning, you must see why the water is the most logical path, or not. I know my theory is good. Thanks for posting, I appreciate your input very much.

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[quote='Dotard' pid='97745' dateline='1286326794']
[quote='pacian' pid='97704' dateline='1286316728']
Okay, first, your first question? "A woman has a child with a father whom she did not choose. How does that decrease the survivability of the child? " A woman in general is programmed to be attracted to male’s that increases her child‘s survivability in the long run. Women choose the men who have the best traits to do this because their children are more likely to have the same traits and thus there kids are more likely to be more attractive to reproduce. If a man rapes a woman, the woman did not filter him to sleep with him. The man on his own, might have attractive qualities, but the fact that the woman didn’t choose him means he could also have bad qualities that would make their kids less likely to survive, maybe he’s ugly, maybe he has no social smarts, or no logical intelligence, maybe he has no charisma and can’t get laid from females. Those are traits their children could express and thus make the children less likely to survive, decreasing survivability.

I think you're putting too much faith in the behaviour of drunken whores on the dancefloor hahahah the consequence of you telling women this is that you may increase your chances or getting laid because you're creditting them with intelligence... but otherwise your conclusions are meritless.

Women do not filter out partners based on survival traits such as intelligence, strength or the ability to pick apples from a tree, they pick their partner based on physicial cuteness, money (which you could argue was security, and that'd be fairly accurate, but it borders on vanity also) and the idiocy of the man to let himself be controlled. And that is true for the most part.

Lol drunken whores are chemically impaired but yes woman do pick guys who are cuter, athletic, because it represents health. Wealth, like you said, but also charisma, the ability to make friends, to be socially smart in human interactions, leadership qualities, and other positive personality traits. Also, their is Pre-selection, woman like men who other woman like. Status too, are you the carpenter, or are you the king?I'm sure im forgetting stuff, but a good book on female physcology will help better answer questions i'm trying to recall from memory. The more of these positive traits you have, the more attractive you are, the more females you can get, the better your chances of getting a equally desirable female.