Morality from the ground up

[Astonished]

For fuck's sake, dude, you're making gargantuan leaps here without taking a second to realize there is a tremendous fundamental difference between us and lower animals. Let's say an animal kills a human-is the animal aware of the nature of their action? Is it capable of participating in a moral discussion in which it can evaluate these things to the level which we can? Is it logical to hold a criminal trial, assess the animal's culpability, maybe find it not guilty by reason of insanity or mental incapability? You are fucking insane if you are putting them on the same level as us. Or should every veterinarian who's ever put someone's pet to sleep be charged with murder, what with all the Dr. Kevorkian controversy?

I get you're trying to make a point but you're using completely incompatible factors to draw a line somewhere, it's really not working.

I don't think I'm making any assumptions at all.  I'm trying to address axioms as they are presented.  One is the capacity for suffering-- people have greater capacity to suffer, so their suffering matters more.  I'm saying this can be discounted by controlling the environment in which moral/immoral acts take place.

You are now looking from the perspective of the moral agent-- someone with the capacity to understand and engage in right action.  However, it seems to me that very much of our justice system involves those who consider themselves higher condemning those who are "lower" for their behaviors.  For example, if a particularly stupid and easily angered man hurts someone, we will talk about mens rea, and if he can verbalize ANY understanding of right and wrong, we'll hang him for it.  But it's obvious that some people are no more capable of controlling their impulses than chimps.  It seems to me it's this condescending view of ourselves as better than others that leads to a very real dysfunction in applying moral ideas in real life.  We have to identify WITH animals, as we are animals, if we are to arrive at a fair understanding of the moral impulse and the behaviors it leads to, I think.  I think Jorg is saying something along those lines in the above post, but I'll answer that one a little later.

I don't give a flying fuck about what our justice system does, that does not by rote make what they do automatically moral. Law does not equate with morality by default. Yet another bad comparison.

Of course as beings with empathy we can identify with animals, it's why we recognize that being needlessly cruel is a sign of sociopathic behavior. But if we benefit from a natural biological process (consumption being the most basic example), and it's proven that based on blood type, some people's bodies simply do not thrive on vegetarian/vegan diets, or we benefit from our discovery of new forms of medical procedures, medicines or donor blood and organ availability via animal experimentation, it's hardly for no good reason. Since animals can't give positive or negative consent, or comprehend what's happening or what's at stake, it doesn't seem like they have the capacity to really CARE in the long run what ultimately happens to them. Odds are their genes are still being passed on via their siblings who escape that fate long enough to be bred or cloned or whatever.

Bill Maher got chewed out on his show for comparing someone with severe mental disabilities to a pet, so it's not remotely a stretch for people to see something intrinsically wrong with using a lack of or diminished capacity for joy and suffering as the sole criteria for one's being subject to what we routinely do to animals. No animal's family (if they even have one, or even possess the capacity for it; sharks, for instance) is going to have the same capacity to suffer as a human family's losing one of their members. That lack of capacity is not a biological fact in humans, it's a rare anomaly, while in lower animals, it's a pretty set biological limit until some shift in evolution seems to counteract it. There's no expectation that it could improve, and let's face it, with the right medical research, we could probably someday end that rare condition in humans altogether. Then that little analogy between them and animals would fall flat on its face.

There's a reason running over an animal is not considered a vehicular-manslaughter-esque crime in the way it would were it a person. There's a reason, accident or not, our fault or not, if we do happen to hit a fellow human, we feel far more sick and guilty. There's an internal understanding that we are that different from even our closest evolutionary kin even if we don't actively comprehend just how much or why. Unless we're willing to completely overwrite everything, give them all the exact same rights we enjoy, I don't see exactly how one could justify not treating them differently. And if we decided to discriminate against some animals more than others, that would be hypocrisy.

[Court Jester]

Is it possible to make a moral system without reference to instinct or to superstition, but rooted in rational principles?  How might we go about doing that?

I would say no.

Rational principles vary from person to person, from region to region, and (sadly) from religion to religion.

[The Grand Nudger]

Let's see if it sticks.  What if you killed a cow in such a way as it didn't suffer, Benny?  Then it's okay and moral, yes?  I mean..if you think that it;s okay and rationally moral in the case of a human being, gonna be the same for Bessie, surely?  

Now, let's ask ourselves a question.....is a society in which a cow can be killed humanely and ethically likely to lead to nazis?

If it's okay to kill an animal without causing suffering, then I'd say that Bessie, immigrants, and my Mom would all fall under that umbrella.  If there is something special about people which makes killing them extra wrong, then Bessie might be killed, but immigrants and my Mom should not be.  I don't think the capacity for suffering matters, though, because it's possible to bypass that capacity in humans (like foreknowledge of their impending death or whatever) simply by drugging them.

I'm not asking you if it's okay to kill animals, I'm asking you whether or not the example you offered, being rational..in your estimation, made it okay to kill Bessie, and wondering whether..since it doesn't lead to nazis as it does in the case of people, you're willing to stick with it and declare the killing of animals a-okay.

I know you aren't, and so the question is more to do with what you thought was rational and whether or not, if it were, you'd be consistent with it. Or at least consistently rational, and maybe decide that your example wasn't really that compelling of a counterargument to why being able to drug and kill a person isn't moral. Similarly, can we entertain the absurd claim that by drugging someone you've somehow bypassed all suffering that must be taken into account? We don;t even make such an absurd claim with regards to our livestock. Yes, we kill them as humanely as possible, but an ethical model also seeks to provide them with a healthy environment in life. Failure to do so would render any claim as regards a humane model moot. It doesn't matter whether or not you kill your victims humanely, if you provide for a torturous and terrifying existence on account of it. Further, in the case of livestock, we have a compelling reason to even engage in any of this, but forgive me for suggesting that a persons racist and nationalist tendencies don't exactly rise to the level of agricultural necessity....?

In the example you offered, it wasn't that there was anything particularly special about people, simply that killing them causes immense suffering in ways that killing cattle does not - in both the best and worst of cases.

It seems, in this, like you're digging in your heels on a plainly silly point rather than having a rational discussion. I understand that you want to find some obvious issue with such a moral system, but this isn't one of them. It's consistent and straightforward in the area in which you've attempted to manufacture ambiguity and special pleading.

Further, if the capacity for suffering doesn;t matter...why, again, did killing the caribou bother you? Why does eating meat bother you? Why does kicking a dog bother you? Why would hurting someone -wthout- drugging them bother you?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Rational principles vary from person to person, from region to region, and (sadly) from religion to religion.

[Angrboda]

@Jorg

Obviously a full appraisal of the entirety of the moral field (and particularly it;s origins and how we accomplish whatever moral calculations we intuitively make at the process level) will contain many things..but I have to ask, why do you think that we, a predatory animal, would have a stronger natural inclination against killing animals that suffer?  I can't imagine that, over the years, those who had a much -more- well developed sense of guilt over the deaths of animals would have been all that successful - particularly in comparison to the rest of us.  Personally, I find -any- natural inclination against killing animals that suffer...which we possess in spades, a bit of an outlier.

There aren't many remorseful mouths in the world.

It's less than obvious that we wouldn't have a natural inclination against harming animals if harm is the only basis of our morality.

[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.

[Angrboda]

So I think a rational basis for morality can be found in our moral intuitions having evolved to further our flourishing as a social species.  It isn't just one value, such as harm/empathy, but a cluster of values which benefited the animal that lived in groups because the group was stronger and fitter as a whole than any individual could be.

Does identifying this on a cognitive level immediately cause its dissipation?  As soon as we see morality in this way, it seems the very next question is-- should we serve genetic fitness, or put our minds to the task of freeing ourselves from it?

No, it doesn't. We exist in a bath of emotions which are beyond our control. "Understanding" the source of those emotions does nothing to dispel them. Also, we have the fact that flourishing as a social animal is a concrete and objective inclination created by the selection effect of natural selection. These reactions are in our DNA. No mere cerebration about this will dispel them.

---

I certainly see no need to refer to biological fitness in my morality, regardless of whether or not that was it's origin.  Ultimately, we're trying to determine what is or is not right, and why - not what is or is not natural.

Indeed, you seem to be lacking any rationale for why we care about harm at all.

[The Grand Nudger]

Do I require a rationale for why we care about harm?  We're incapable of not caring about it.  Our avoidance of harm is a brute fact.  In a sense, the object of a rational morality is to consistently apply that aversion to the betterment of ourselves and our societies.

-If- we care about harm, and we do...then we should do x and avoid y. If someone else doesn't care about harm, and that happens, that does not nullify the concerns of the rest of us.

Similarly a rational morality can suggest that we -endure- the harm we seek to avoid precisely to prevent some other harm - and that;s where it breaks (but, more accurately, where -we- commonly break), and where what is natural may not be right, and what is right may not be natural.

(I did, btw, provide a comment as to why we care about harm....it's referred to as rational self interest, and our evolutionary baggage gets in the way of that all the time.)

[bennyboy]

I don't give a flying fuck about what our justice system does, that does not by rote make what they do automatically moral. Law does not equate with morality by default. Yet another bad comparison.

It doesn't equate, but they are obviously related. I gotta make an aside here, though, and say that the potty mouth isn't working for me. There's no major battle here, and nothing so exciting happening that this kind of rhetoric is needed. I have enough stress in RL; I don't really want my forum experience to feel like a flame war.

Of course as beings with empathy we can identify with animals, it's why we recognize that being needlessly cruel is a sign of sociopathic behavior. But if we benefit from a natural biological process (consumption being the most basic example), and it's proven that based on blood type, some people's bodies simply do not thrive on vegetarian/vegan diets

Implied in this is that necessity is one of the variables worth considering in forming moral ideas. That's worth talking about.

There's a reason running over an animal is not considered a vehicular-manslaughter-esque crime in the way it would were it a person. There's a reason, accident or not, our fault or not, if we do happen to hit a fellow human, we feel far more sick and guilty. There's an internal understanding that we are that different from even our closest evolutionary kin even if we don't actively comprehend just how much or why. Unless we're willing to completely overwrite everything, give them all the exact same rights we enjoy, I don't see exactly how one could justify not treating them differently. And if we decided to discriminate against some animals more than others, that would be hypocrisy.

There IS this instinctive separation for sure. That's probably why we demonize or animalize our enemies-- because if they aren't as fully human as we are, then they don't fall under the umbrella of moral consideration.

---

I'm not asking you if it's okay to kill animals, I'm asking you whether or not the example you offered, being rational..in your estimation, made it okay to kill Bessie, and wondering whether..since it doesn't lead to nazis as it does in the case of people, you're willing to stick with it and declare the killing of animals a-okay.

I don't think killing either Bessie or the immigrant is okay. However, if there is a moral issue with killing animals, it's probably more sourced in their being caused to exist at all than in what you do to them after they have been brought into existence.

I know you aren't, and so the question is more to do with what you thought was rational and whether or not, if it were, you'd be consistent with it.  Or at least consistently rational, and maybe decide that your example wasn't really that compelling of a counterargument to why being able to drug and kill a person isn't moral.  Similarly, can we entertain the absurd claim that by drugging someone you've somehow bypassed all suffering that must be taken into account?  We don;t even make such an absurd claim with regards to our livestock.  Yes, we kill them as humanely as possible, but an ethical model also seeks to provide them with a healthy environment in life.  Failure to do so would render any claim as regards a humane model moot.  It doesn't matter whether or not you kill your victims humanely, if you provide for a torturous and terrifying existence on account of it.  Further, in the case of livestock, we have a compelling reason to even engage in any of this, but forgive me for suggesting that a persons racist and nationalist tendencies don't exactly rise to the level of agricultural necessity....?

Let me clarify the point of using the racist example. I think the main reason that animals aren't much considered in the moral metric is that they are other, and lower, and that we reserve our full moral consideration for those capable of entering into a social contract with us.

But slavery, jew-killing, etc. follow this same principle, and our social mentality is turned against us: black people are animalistic savages, and so by right of our superiority, we don't treat them as we'd treat each other. Jews are tricky little buggers who will wave a contract in front of your face while stabbing you in the back, so we don't need to treat them as we'd treat each other. We view them as humanoid animals, and surprisingly easy adapt to doing them harm without the sense of moral conflict that we probably SHOULD have.

In the example you offered, it wasn't that there was anything particularly special about people, simply that killing them causes immense suffering in ways that killing cattle does not - in both the best and worst of cases.  

It seems, in this, like you're digging in your heels on a plainly silly point rather than having a rational discussion.  I understand that you want to find some obvious issue with such a moral system, but this isn't one of them.  It's consistent and straightforward in the area in which you've attempted to manufacture ambiguity and special pleading.

Further, if the capacity for suffering doesn;t matter...why, again, did killing the caribou bother you?  Why does eating meat bother you?  Why does kicking a dog bother you?  Why would hurting someone -wthout- drugging them bother you?

Killing the caribou bothered me because it was avoidable and served no benefit. Eating meat doesn't bother me because I don't do it. I stopped because I had developed a sense of intrinsic beauty and value in animals, and my desire to eat a Big Mac was less important to me than appreciating that value, even indirectly. I don't want to participate in the killing of an animal that has feelings much like my own.

Hurting someone with or without drugging them bothers me because I've been hurt, didn't like it, and see no rational reason why I'm more important or more worthy of protection than anyone else. (or, in my case, anything else) Except mosquitoes-- fuck mosquitoes, they must die.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think killing either Bessie or the immigrant is okay.  However, if there is a moral issue with killing animals, it's probably more sourced in their being caused to exist at all than in what you do to them after they have been brought into existence.

Maybe, hard to say not knowing why that would be, but obviously not from the system of harm or suffering, as no harm or suffering need be caused there.  Though, again, if there were some shitty moral component to food production..and in practice there usually is something, we'd still be choosing the least egregious among a field of sub-optimals.  That's -generally- not seen as grounds for moral condemnation even when the act in a vacuum might be considered immoral.  

Let me clarify the point of using the racist example.  I think the main reason that animals aren't much considered in the moral metric is that they are other, and lower, and that we reserve our full moral consideration for those capable of entering into a social contract with us.

They -are- considered, and very much.... in the moral metrics, Benny.  People who kick dogs are broken, and we know that they're broken.  Even from the grounds of the social contract..how other people treat animals is a part of that contract with other people.  IE, a society of dog kickers is not a good society, I want to live in a better society than that.

But slavery, jew-killing, etc. follow this same principle, and our social mentality is turned against us: black people are animalistic savages, and so by right of our superiority, we don't treat them as we'd treat each other.  Jews are tricky little buggers who will wave a contract in front of your face while stabbing you in the back, so we don't need to treat them as we'd treat each other.  We view them as humanoid animals, and surprisingly easy adapt to doing them harm without the sense of moral conflict that we probably SHOULD have.

-that's lazy.  Yes, they're dehumanized, but it goes deeper than that..the nazis weren't gassing german shepherds.  They treated them as -less- than animals.  They extended their notions of morality and noty being cruel, for example...to dogs, but not to those jews.  

Killing the caribou bothered me because it was avoidable and served no benefit.  Eating meat doesn't bother me because I don't do it.  I stopped because I had developed a sense of intrinsic beauty and value in animals, and my desire to eat a Big Mac was less important to me than appreciating that value, even indirectly.  I don't want to participate in the killing of an animal that has feelings much like my own.

Hurting someone with or without drugging them bothers me because I've been hurt, didn't like it, and see no rational reason why I'm more important or more worthy of protection than anyone else.  (or, in my case, anything else)  Except mosquitoes-- fuck mosquitoes, they must die.

So harm matters.  What was the point, then, in saying that it didn't?  It was useless diversion and waste of time.  Maybe you -aren't- more worthy of protection than anyone else.  That's certainly not the american ideal - of equalilty under law.  I would protect you, though...and not just for your own benefit.  Just like I think that trophy hunting probably shouldn't be a thing. Unfortunately, we have to make compromises, because protecting some other person might actually ential letting them arrange trophy hunts - hell..protecting an entire species might entail that. It might entail, in the same vein, an acknowledgement that livestock are a necessity. Protecting everyone, and even protecting whatever animals we may be currently protecting..might entail the compromise of protecting -you-....even if you were a positively horrid creature that no one gave a shit about, like a mosquito.

I want to point out here, that in all of the above, you refused to continue the discussion of the rationalization you argued to -be- rational. You refused to consistently apply it, you refused to entertain the logical consequences of it when it determined that killing bessie was -not- immoral even though killing the immigrant was..and not because one was human and one was a cow - and now, you're just trying to start that again, up above.

Benny, there is no necessary anthropocentric bias or human favoring inconsistency in a harm based morality. You can certainly find people who do not apply it consistently, and many of us have such biases (and more) but that doesn't make the system, itself, inconsistent. We could only be discussing moral failure, for whatever reason..at that point, and human beings don;t even -need- a reason to fail to consistently live up to their moral ideals.

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-here's something fun to point out, rather than go full balls to wall crazy with "harm doesn't matter", you could have asked whether or not a society in which livestock production is okay is a society that creates suffering - for the animals.  After all, just because the law says we have to do x, doesn't mean we will, or that everyone does x.