In Defense of a Non-Natural Moral Order

[John 6IX Breezy]

Of what use is a moral stricture that people don't recognize as such?

Boru

I'm not sure I understand your question. You mean of what use is a moral umbrella if people don't agree on the details?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Of what use is a moral stricture that people don't recognize as such?

Boru

I'm not sure I understand your question. You mean of what use is a moral umbrella if people don't agree on the details?

Pretty much.  Suppose for the moment that such a moral umbrella exists.  Further suppose that it covers 1000 actions which may be moral or immoral.  If entire cultures disagree on which acts fall where, isn't your umbrella more of a sieve?

Boru

[LastPoet]

I'm not sure I understand your question. You mean of what use is a moral umbrella if people don't agree on the details?

Pretty much.  Suppose for the moment that such a moral umbrella exists.  Further suppose that it covers 1000 actions which may be moral or immoral.  If entire cultures disagree on which acts fall where, isn't your umbrella more of a sieve?

Boru

I suppose if you turn an umbrella upside down, you could make a sieve.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Pretty much.  Suppose for the moment that such a moral umbrella exists.  Further suppose that it covers 1000 actions which may be moral or immoral.  If entire cultures disagree on which acts fall where, isn't your umbrella more of a sieve?

Boru

I suppose if you turn an umbrella upside down, you could make a sieve.

lol, fair point.

Boru

[John 6IX Breezy]

I'm not sure I understand your question. You mean of what use is a moral umbrella if people don't agree on the details?

Pretty much.  Suppose for the moment that such a moral umbrella exists.  Further suppose that it covers 1000 actions which may be moral or immoral.  If entire cultures disagree on which acts fall where, isn't your umbrella more of a sieve?

Boru

I think a distinction needs to be made between the question of do we have a moral umbrella and how useful is it. One observation that leads me to believe we do share an umbrella is to look at instances where people believe we've made moral progress, for example, that we are more moral in the present day than previous generations that committed immoral acts such as slavery. However, although the idea of slavery did evolve, the concept of freedom or liberty didn't; it merely expanded to include or exclude different instances. Or take the concept of killing; most people, I would assume, agree that killing is wrong. However, everyone differs on when and where and how and why killing is wrong.

Examples such as these lead me to believe that we have moral umbrellas that are generally fixed across time and cultures; the biggest overarching umbrella is morality itself, the sense that there is right and wrong. We are a moral species, and one could easily imagine an alternative scenario where we don't share such a notion. 

As to the usefulness, it may not have any. Although, if such umbrellas are real then I'm sure theres an evolutionist out there ready to give it a use in survival or reproduction.

[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.

[John 6IX Breezy]

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

Sure, its all the same thing—speculation without verification.

[Acrobat]

To what extent are you comfortable blurring the lines of objectivity and subjectivity? I tend to view objectivity as an abstraction, deduced or assumed, from our subjective experience. We don't have direct access to it in the first place, because it is all filtered through our senses. In other words, we only have access to our direct conscious subjective experience.

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.

It's objective that people see the holocaust as immortal, and in that sense it is perhaps reducible to the natural biology of brains.

People don’t just see the holocaust as immoral, they also see the holocaust as objectively immoral, a matter of truth, rather than taste, opinions, or preference. It’s the difference between it being objectively true that I find my friends wife subjectively ugly, and believing she’s objectively ugly.

[John 6IX Breezy]

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.

[Amarok]

evolutionist

No such thing evolution is a science not an ideology