In Defense of a Non-Natural Moral Order

[The Grand Nudger]

Meh, not really.  Our moral umbrellas will probably get most of us killed.  We have them because another organ evolved to find dinner.

I was thinking about your statement again. I'm wondering how it accounts for people having reasoning capacities that seem specific to norms?

There’s nothing specific about our capacity for reason.

As far as it being secondhand, there are two reasons for this. First, morality does not, strictly speaking, confer survival benefits. It often has a cost, instead. On top of that, full anatomical modernity preceded behavioral modernity by at least 100k years.

We were living as anatomically modern human beings for many, many generations before we started behaving in a recognizably human way. We were still working out the terms and staking properly basic positions as an area of then-current research as late as classical empire.

We don’t know what social mores early Homo sapiens had, if any, but we expect them to be very similar to other species with similar needs and living arrangements.

The referenced piece doesn’t have anything to say in support of moral reasoning being or having been a primary function, selected for in the development of the organ that achieves it. Its highly unlikely to have been the case, and all evidence points to the contrary.

That said, it does highlight something about modern populations, that you might see expressed in dissatisfaction with moral schemas here on the boards. We either naturally, or have been conditioned, to prefer simple deontology. Reasoning from a set rule, like the corner piece of a puzzle. Tell a person that moral realism doesn’t (and can’t) provide a simple itemized list of does and dont’s, and they throw their arms up. “What good is it, then?”.

It’s kind of fun to keep that in mind when we discuss our moral agency. It’s a patch. It uses systems designed for other things and prefers strait forward problem solving to the sort of introspection required for deep dives. When some nutbar shouts out to his god before pressing the doomsday button, he’s going to feel a deep sense of moral satisfaction in having discharged his sacred duty to do the right thing.

So, it may seem strange, to us, but what doesn’t seem strange about morality?