In Defense of a Non-Natural Moral Order

[Acrobat]

I’m fine with this, as long as we’re not about to defend solipsism. It’s through our senses, perceptions that we deduce things out there, outside of our mind, and things which are in here, as a state of mind, our feelings, etc. Such as we can deduce that goodness of last nights dinner, is state of mind, the pleasant taste of it, and that moral goodness isn’t like this, but more like yellow, out there instead. 

I don't know to what extent we can treat morality as something out there; its mostly happening in here. Much like yellow, ironically enough. I think most of our moral intuitions, whether or not they align with something objective out there, share a lot of commonalities with the way we experience things such as taste. We have a "sense" of right and wrong a "feeling." We apply the concept of good and bad not just to behaviors but to everything else including food.

I think morality can be treated as objective by treating the contents of the mind as tangible as any other object. But that means placing morality in here, not out there.

Good and bad when it comes to morality are perceived and applied similarly to how we apply true and false, and not how we apply good and bad when speaking of food.

If this isn’t evident, we can all acknowledge when we talk about good or bad when it comes to food we’re ultimately expressing ours likes and dislikes, where hardly anyone here would agree that good and bad when it comes to morality are saying things reducible to their likes and dislikes.

Most people here would likely agree that when they express that the holocaust is wrong, they’re expressing something objectively true, like the earth isn’t flat, or 1+1=5, is wrong. Rather than an expression of the subjective taste or opinions, like x was a good movie.

In fact, even outside of their beliefs, morality operates similarly to objective truth as well, such as the Nazis had to delude and lie to themselves to view the holocaust as the right thing, the way in which people delude themselves into believing Sandyhook conspiracies. Something you couldnt say of someone who  had a different taste in food or movies than you or I.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

evolutionist

No such thing evolution is a science not an ideology

I'm pretty sure the correct term for 'evolutionist' is actually 'biologist'.

Boru

[Acrobat]

...
Evolution accounts for all the biological sensory components that recognize objective things, like my ability to see the table, feel its weight, etc.. are all a product of evolution, but the table, the object being perceived,  nor the good, are the product of evolution.
...

Calling them "objective things" is question begging. Why not just call them 'objects'?

Was there a 'not' missing near the end there? If not and I take you literally, then we agree... 'good' is a product (an artefact) of evolution.

Good is no more a product or an artifact of evolution, than a table, the sun, or the mountains.

Only the biological elements that allow us to sense and perceive these things are. But they exist independent of our perceptions.

[DLJ]

Calling them "objective things" is question begging.  Why not just call them 'objects'?

Was there a 'not' missing near the end there?  If not and I take you literally, then we agree... 'good' is a product (an artefact) of evolution.

Good is no more a product or an artifact of evolution, than a table, the sun, or the mountains.

Only the biological elements that allow us to sense and perceive  these things are. But they exist independent of our perceptions.

Would you agree that survival strategies such as 'safety in numbers' and specialisation of genes and similarly specialisation of roles within a social structure are products of evolution?

Would you also agree that organisms evolved these strategies based on concepts such agility vs. stability (and the trade-offs between the two) 'comfort zones' / the ability to create controlled environments? ... applicable whether one is referring to cells or to tribal, city or national boundaries.

'Good' and 'bad' relate to ease / dis-ease (physical and cognitive).

Nietzsche considered 'good' to be whatever the aristocracy says is 'good'. He was partially correct but this is in reference to 'organisational ethics'. The other part of the equation is 'individual ethics'; Nietzsche referred to this as 'resentement' but did not denote this as 'good' because he was looking at "the herd" - collections of non-aristocratic individuals - and not individuals with individual-ethics shaped by capability/maturity and being members of multiple organisational units.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Good and bad when it comes to morality are perceived and applied similarly to how we apply true and false, and not how we apply good and bad when speaking of food.

If this isn’t evident, we can all acknowledge when we talk about good or bad when it comes to food we’re ultimately expressing ours likes and dislikes, where hardly anyone here would agree that good and bad when it comes to morality are saying things reducible to their likes and dislikes.

Most people here would likely agree that when they express that the holocaust is wrong, they’re expressing something objectively true, like the earth isn’t flat, or 1+1=5, is wrong. Rather than an expression of the subjective taste or opinions, like x was a good movie.

In fact, even outside of their beliefs, morality operates similarly to objective truth as well, such as the Nazis had to delude and lie to themselves to view the holocaust as the right thing, the way in which people delude themselves into believing Sandyhook conspiracies. Something you couldnt say of someone who  had a different taste in food or movies than you or I.

It seems to me that when most people express that the holocaust is wrong, they're expressing something they believe is objectively true. When questioned about the reasons for such a view, individuals tend to resort to emotion and intuition rather than observation and reasoning; in a way that is perhaps similar to someone being asked why they like or don't like broccoli. They are described as being morally dumbfounded (Haidt et al., 2000).

Reference: Haidt, J., Bjorklund, F., & Murphy, S. (2000). Moral dumbfounding: When intuition finds no reason. Unpublished manuscript, University of Virginia.

[Acrobat]

Good and bad when it comes to morality are perceived and applied similarly to how we apply true and false, and not how we apply good and bad when speaking of food.

If this isn’t evident, we can all acknowledge when we talk about good or bad when it comes to food we’re ultimately expressing ours likes and dislikes, where hardly anyone here would agree that good and bad when it comes to morality are saying things reducible to their likes and dislikes.

Most people here would likely agree that when they express that the holocaust is wrong, they’re expressing something objectively true, like the earth isn’t flat, or 1+1=5, is wrong. Rather than an expression of the subjective taste or opinions, like x was a good movie.

In fact, even outside of their beliefs, morality operates similarly to objective truth as well, such as the Nazis had to delude and lie to themselves to view the holocaust as the right thing, the way in which people delude themselves into believing Sandyhook conspiracies. Something you couldnt say of someone who  had a different taste in food or movies than you or I.

It seems to me that when most people express that the holocaust is wrong, they're expressing something they believe is objectively true. When questioned about the reasons why, individuals tend to resort to emotion and intuition rather than observation and reasoning; in a way that is perhaps similar to someone being asked why they like or don't like broccoli. They are describe as being morally dumbfounded (Haidt et al., 2000).

Reference: Haidt, J., Bjorklund, F., & Murphy, S. (2000). Moral dumbfounding: When intuition finds no reason. Unpublished manuscript, University of Virginia.

I think this is slightly amiss. 

The objectiveness of morality is more a matter of seeing than believing. We recognizing the wrongness of the holocaust, without putting it through some moral formula to deduce it. Recognizing that the holocaust was wrong, or that lynching tree was wrong, is more a matter of peeling off a blindfold, than any sort of logical or rational argument. So I agree with the idea of moral dumbfounding, that the sort of rational explanation given for it, are post hoc rationalizations. 

People perceive rightness and wrongness as objective, regardless of whatever reasons they think are the basis for why that is, regardless of whether they lack a particular moral philosophy etc... 

Now perhaps this perception is false, and it's not objective at all, but really it's just a matter of things we strongly like or dislike, that our brains trick us into believing is objective, an illusion of objectivity, but you'd have to be clear as to whether this is what you're trying to argue? 

But this is element alone distinguishes it from our likes or dislike of broccoli, were all of us are aware that its subjective, based on our personal taste, and not objectively good of bad. 

I mean, when you tell me the holocausts is wrong? Should i take it that, all you're really saying here, is that you don't like it? Sort of like if you were to tell me this dish tasted bad?

[DLJ]

Do you want the long answer or the short answer?

The short version is the definition of morality:

An evolved, human governance / continuity management system.
This system is an evolved extension (in the cognitive domain) of the pre-human immune system, endocrine and limbic system architecture and requires an ethical baseline (requiring memory), emotion-based thresholds, event-detection (e.g. deception detectors; a conscience) and reasoning (hence consciousness). It is enabled / influenced by chemical inhibitors and inducers and social constraints and drivers.

A longer answer would include the interaction of the individual and the environment.  It's the latter that gives the illusion of 'objective'.

If you want a complete answer, it would involve algorithms (how we get from sense data to ethics) and a tentative map of the above mentioned 'ethical baseline', which hints at an explanation for transcendence, holocausts etc.  Lemme know if you're up for that level of detail.

I don't know if Acrobat is interested in hearing the long answer, but I am. I would like clarification because it isn't very clear to me what you're trying to describe. You seem to be describing a basic human brain structure (with the addition of the immune system which I'm curious to know the role it plays). But everything else, cognition, emotion, consciousness, memory, is not exclusive to morality.

I personally would like you to expound on your statement a little more.

I'd be happy to.  There are a number of components to this so to know where to start, can I ask how much you already know about information theory / information governance best practices?

If you already know some of that I can take some short cuts; if not, this diagram might be a good starting point as an explanation:



This is an expansion of best practice definitions (incorporating 'event' management theory):

From COBIT5 (2012), Culture is:
"Organisational Ethics determine the values by which the society (or enterprise) want to live (its code).
Individual Ethics are determined by each person’s personal values and are dependent to some extent on external factors not always under the society's control.
Individual Behaviours which collectively determine the culture of the group/society are dependent upon both organisational and individual ethics."

Thus, culture acts as both an enabler and/or a constraint on both the developing and developed (maturing and mature) individual depending on how you look at it.

The parts that relates to the immune system are the green arrows - events and alerts.  The idea being that individuals develop a baseline of 'how things should be' and when certain events happen a set of processes are triggered that generate alerts.  Some of these alerts such as 'hunger' (a capacity-related event) or 'virus attack' (a security-related event) may not register consciously and are dealt with automatically via the immune system  (event>incident>workaround>known error>standard change) and some require cognition (event>incident>workaround>new problem>new change).

A subset of these events/alerts are categorised by humans as 'moral events'.  Thus we differentiate between a preference, a social faux pas and a breach of an ethical standard.  

The latter would have grown from the fact that we are a social species where alienation from the group could mean death.  Notably, this implies that there would be no morality without mortality.

Perhaps it could be argued, therefore, that morality is the 'social immune system' at work.

Thus we can safely claim that even though existential nihilism is supported by physics, chemistry and biology, moral nihilism is not... there is an evolved difference between the preference / choice between chocolate or vanilla ice-cream and the preference / choice to kill someone or not. It's not "just your opinion, man."

Or, putting it another way, if female genital mutilation / circumcision or slavery are accepted as cultural norms there won't be a corresponding event that would trigger a moral-alert.

I can go deeper into the processes involved if that would help (the Event process, the Incident process, the Problem process and the Change process) but I find that I often lose people if I do that.

[Acrobat]

Good is no more a product or an artifact of evolution, than a table, the sun, or the mountains.

Only the biological elements that allow us to sense and perceive  these things are. But they exist independent of our perceptions.

Would you agree that survival strategies such as 'safety in numbers' and specialisation of genes and similarly specialisation of roles within a social structure are products of evolution?

Would you also agree that organisms evolved these strategies based on concepts such agility vs. stability (and the trade-offs between the two) 'comfort zones' / the ability to create controlled environments? ... applicable whether one is referring to cells or to tribal, city or national boundaries.

'Good' and 'bad' relate to ease / dis-ease (physical and cognitive).

Nietzsche considered 'good' to be whatever the aristocracy says is 'good'.  He was partially correct but this is in reference to 'organisational ethics'.  The other part of the equation is 'individual ethics'; Nietzsche referred to this as 'resentement' but did not denote this as 'good' because he was looking at "the herd" - collections of non-aristocratic individuals - and not individuals with individual-ethics shaped by capability/maturity and being members of multiple organisational units.

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with you, since its not clear to me what you mean. Since you're talking about my biological nature and habit, perhaps you can try and find away to speak of personalizing this? Like what biological aspects of myself, or us are you referring too? I'd like to be able to pin point what aspect or trait of mine, you're referring to here, before I concede they're a product of my evolutionary history.

[DLJ]

...
I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with you, since its not clear to me what you mean. Since you're talking about my biological nature and habit, perhaps you can try and find away to speak of personalizing this? Like what biological aspects of myself, or us are you referring too? I'd like to be able to pin point what aspect or trait of mine, you're referring to here, before I concede they're a product of my evolutionary history.

Looks like we were typing at the same time. Does my reply to Mr Breezy answer your question?

[chimp3]

(Just to be clear, this isn't an argument for God, or some sky wizard, but just for a transcendent moral order, a belief in which doesn't require you to believe in God. Attempts to make it about a God would likely to be dismissed or ignored)

If the argument is for a transcendent source but not a god, what would it be?