What would be the harm?

[Angrboda]

You say that like it's a bad thing!

What's the alternative?  And if there is no alternative, is it objective on its own terms?

As I mentioned on my entrance into the previous thread about morality, we could view instinct as a highly variable but nevertheless objective reality.  I'd argue that is because those instincts to some degree make our moral agency illusory.  Sure, I could theoretically arrive at the idea that since all is just QM particles, it's okay if my daughter gets raped-- but I don't really have the choice of arriving at that idea, because my primate instincts are an expression of perhaps a million years of trial and error, and exercising control over my genetic descendency is part of that program for sure.  What's more likely is that I'll rage about it, that other adult males will sympathise and also rage about it, and that we'll arrive at the idea that this behavior must not be tolerated.  I'd say I had my first daughter for about an hour before I realized that I'd be able to kill for her if I had to; it wouldn't even be a hard decision to make.  I literally looked at that little baby and thought that: "I will protect you until I die, and I pity the fool who thinks that there's a law strong enough, or an army big enough, to save him from me if he harms you."

Ultimately, the sense of harm must be instinctual, since all feelings are instinctual.  Yes, we can develop complex layers of ideology or religion over that, but ultimately, they all derive from instincts about survival, about reproduction, and about genetic fitness-- or they serve as a response to knowledge about those instincts.

Is that a yes?

[bennyboy]

It depends how you choose to view it. We don't normally take an evolutionary/deterministic view when we are talking about mental agency, but there's no particular reason not to except linguistic convention.

If we are to view morality through an understanding of subjective agency, including some version of the idea of free will and therefore culpability, then feelings and ideas rule the roost, and I'd call that subjective. If we are to look at it as a black-box experiment (data in, processing, behavior out), with the sense that processing is deterministic, then I'd say that even without knowing exactly what leads to a behavior, we can assume it to be objective in nature-- after all, what does subjectivism really mean in a material monism?

[The Grand Nudger]

Same thing it would mean in a dualist or idealists world.  Evolved or instinctual behaviors or biases in the periphery of moral propositions present themselves as instrumental goods.  To "be good" is not the goal, the goal (and I'm calling it this for convenience sake rather than as a statement of natural teleology) is fitness.  Juxtaposed against that are morals (allegedly) derived from principle.   Intrinsic good.  In both cases these goods purport a meaningful objectivity.  The behavior or bias does produce fitness, or the behavior or bias does reflect some principled metric.  Both are quantifiable, regardless of what kind of world we live in.

What jorm is circling around, is the observation that when we remove those quantifiable groundings..it's often the case that we still perceive the things to be wrong. That this remaining arbitrarity or subjectivity needs to be accounted for. I think it is, personally, and right within the issue of evolved or instinctual behaviors. We can know all sorts of things that are true and based in rational principles. We can know, for example..that spiders are not a pressing concern for human beings and that their presence actually reduces other pests that are - but it we walked into a house and found that it was full of spiders we would think that there was something off or wrong about the person living there. That person could remove our objections. We would still think that they were a weirdo who should reach for a can of poison. Our instinctual behaviors are very firmly put in place and resilient in the face of contravening facts.

One way that we leave room for human error, in moral (and other) systems, is permissiveness and resistance to desert. We say things like "under some circumstances this thing might not be bad, or might not be as bad as it usually is, or maybe I'm wrong about why it's bad..even....so I'm going to withhold my judgment of the person though I cannot conceal my distaste for the act". Institutionally/societaly we propose that a person has no duty to the good, only a duty to avoid the bad. In that way...what a person is doing may not be broadly good or specifically good..but so long as it's not actively harming anyone - it's tolerable. Essentially, the difference between duty and praise. Between focusing on what a person must not do over what a person should do - and particularly when those actions have consequences or we seek to impose consequence for the act.

In all of this, I think that the arbitrarity or subjectivity jorm is referring to is thoroughly accounted for, both in that we have some understanding of why it persists within us, and..noting that it does, a way of handling it's existence within the context of principled rather than evolved systems derived from the intrinsic rather than instrumental good.

[bennyboy]

"What's wrong with this picture?" eh?

[bennyboy]

If we want to look to evolution, I'd go a step further, and say that the sense of individual agency is an illusion, and that we ourselves are each a kind of community which arrives at rules by a process of negotiation.

"That fucking bitch wouldn't put out even after I paid for that expensive dinner" is an expression of the perfectly natural subjection of rationale to the libido.
"What am I even saying? Jesus, man, I'm better than that!" is an expression of the equally natural social instincts for acceptance.
"Given the state of modern contraceptive techniques, my best chances of reproduction depend on going to school and getting a paying profession" is an expression of the rational mind, if it's aware enough of what the rest of the community has made as its goal.

It seems to me that each of us is a set of archetypal homunculi struggling for control over the same dummy.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, that's just the thing, we -don't- want to look to evolution if we're hoping to establish intrinsic good (or evil).  We do, however, have to contend with the fact that our agency evolved as an artifact of other-than.   

To use the context of that archetypal homunculii..the business of moral objectivity is in identifying and deprioritizing those behaviours or biases (or humoculii advocating them) that are an artifact of instrumental goods, of survival.  We do this because we understand that what is natural..and in this case that which may produce an edge in the game of not becoming extinct, is not necessarily right.  Nor, for that matter, is the conceptually unnatural wrong.  

To use harm as the example..it is natural to harm, in fact..some amount of harm is naturally unavoidable and another amount is unknown.   The question jorm proposed was, in the event that we removed those things considered harmful, why do we then continue in our insistence that some x is wrong.  Does this demonstrate that our moral schema is built on a foundation of sand?  In a sense, yes, it does..but since the business of objective morality, as above, is to identify those instances and eliminate that problem...it's an issue for other-than schemas, not moral objectivity.

So, for example...when we read about julie and mark and invest ourselves in a cogent and thorough assessment of that situation, the objective answer is, "No, in that case it would not be morally wrong". If the question of morality is "where is the harm" (and that's certainly one of the questions, at least, lol) and there is no harm, only one conclusion can rationally follow. We can make observations regarding some other situation..or the general case, but that would be an answer to some other question.

[Angrboda]

If we want to look to evolution, I'd go a step further, and say that the sense of individual agency is an illusion, and that we ourselves are each a kind of community which arrives at rules by a process of negotiation.

"That fucking bitch wouldn't put out even after I paid for that expensive dinner" is an expression of the perfectly natural subjection of rationale to the libido.
"What am I even saying?  Jesus, man, I'm better than that!" is an expression of the equally natural social instincts for acceptance.
"Given the state of modern contraceptive techniques, my best chances of reproduction depend on going to school and getting a paying profession" is an expression of the rational mind, if it's aware enough of what the rest of the community has made as its goal.

It seems to me that each of us is a set of archetypal homunculi struggling for control over the same dummy.

This raises a side of the issue that I tangentially explored with my questions about empathy. If our morals are a product of evolutionary processes yielding determinative conclusions about the right or wrong of a thing based upon our contingent history as biological beings, what do we do once we realize this and can hypothesize answers that lie beyond the dictates of our biology, and on what basis do we make conclusions then, released from their mooring in our evolutionary history? Can we out think our biology, and if so, how?

[The Grand Nudger]

That we can express the sentiment that what is natural is not necessarily right is an example of out thinking our biology, isn't it?  Unless you mean that in some other sense. Our agency, itself, can never be unmoored from it's evolutionary history, but..just because it evolved to that end (convenience sake, again) doesn't mean that we have to keep using it for the same. A great deal of our moral propositions are directly in contradiction to what would provide the individual (or group) with the survival advantages all-important in some near or distant past.

[Angrboda]

A great deal of our moral propositions are directly in contradiction to what would provide the individual (or group) with the survival advantages all-important in some near or distant past.

Name one and show that it is so.

[The Grand Nudger]

Burning my neighbors out of their trailer.