Objective morals are authoritarian

[Burgold]

agreed and it's not just humans and primates. You see it throughout the animal kingdom. For example, when animals adopt strays or when your dog senses your distress and moves to comfort you. Not to mention the other nurturing and rescuing instincts.

[PeterMP]

de Waal is a fantastic speaker and brilliant. He's been to the U of W and Chapman a few times (he's active in psych dep't in ATL). While always a primate guy, he's joining most in the behavioral field in making neuroscience a major focus.

(to the best of my knowing, he'd call himself an atheist or a skeptical agnostic)

---------- Post added September-21st-2012 at 05:39 PM ----------

Intro from one of de Waal's books if you want to read more on such matters (he has a lot of intelligent <and well-mannered> company):

Are we going to declare things that are almost certainly equally evolutionary encoded, like tendancies for out group violence, are also moral too?

Are we going to say some subset of evolutionary behaviors are moral?

If so, which ones and by what mechanism?

[Burgold]

Are we going to declare things that are almost certainly equally evolutionary encoded, like tendancies for out group violence, are also moral too?

Are we going to say some subset of evolutionary behaviors are moral?

If so, which ones and by what mechanism?

Hey, if it was simple we'd have figured it out long ago..

Very few things only work in one direction.

[PeterMP]

Hey, if it was simple we'd have figured it out long ago..

Very few things only work in one direction.

I agree.

But in a lot of these discussion these days you see talk about evolution and morality. While people like de Waal see both and reconize both in casual conversations and amongst certain groups that tends be lost:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/bonobo-all-us.html

" Yet chimps are not all bad and bonobos all good, of course. You've said that chimpanzees are from Mars and bonobos are from Venus, but it's not that clear-cut, is it?

Yeah, sometimes I say that, and that's, of course, a big stereotyping of the two species. It is true that the chimpanzee is dominance-oriented, violent, territorial. But it's also cooperative in many ways, and so that side is sometimes forgotten. The bonobo is sensual, sensitive, sexual, a peacemaker, but also can have a nasty side, and that's sometimes forgotten. So both species are sort of the ends of the spectrum, and we fall somewhere in between. Clearly, we have both of these sides in us, and that's why I sometimes call us "the bipolar apes."

So do you think we're more bonobo or more chimp?

Uh, I usually say that we're both. Is that a good answer? No, you want a choice!

Well, if you had to make a choice.

I would say there are people in this world who like hierarchies, they like to keep people in their place, they like law enforcement, and they probably have a lot in common, let's say, with the chimpanzee. And then you have other people in this world who root for the underdog, they give to the poor, they feel the need to be good, and they maybe have more of this kinder bonobo side to them. Our societies are constructed around the interface between those two, so we need both actually."

I added the bold underline.

At some level, all of our behaviors are evolutionary. If we're going to define morality based on evolution, I think that's a mistake. Though, since we are evolutionary systems, I'm not sure how we escape it.

Evolved systems are going to see their behavior as "good" for the most part. Chimps certainly don't see anything wrong with killing chimps from outside groups. Violence, at some level, is almost certainly part of our evolutionary heritage (not necessarily at the level of chimps).

If we are going to say this is good because it is evolved, I think that's not a good idea.

Though, as in many of these threads, I don't have a real solution.

[Jumbo]

Not really sure why you quoted the post (no sweat). It seems you're asking these questions as a reaction to what whoever wrote that intro to the book stated. So I'm not sure if you're asking my thoughts on your questions anyway, though my post didn't comment on such, or if you're seeking my presentation of de Waals thoughts. So I'll give you some brief thoughts of mine (not de Waal's) in answer In red below. But as this is already beyond the one long post I added to the effort with an intention of that being "it", my plan (get ready for the "fail" button on this claim, TB ) is to make this my last (at least "serious") post. I also have company tonight and am trying to do this between socializing and avoiding a very uninteresting movie.

Are we going to declare things that are almost certainly equally evolutionary encoded, like tendancies for out group violence, are also moral too?

I don't know if you have a mouse in your pocket :pfft: ("we"--old bad joke ), but I can see them as among the evolutionary encoded "things" or "tendencies" (or "common behavioral options") we have acquired biologically, and which then are influenced and shaped (even "competing" behaviors), in reciprocity, through individual and group interaction and feedback (evaluating experiences and results of choices and making judgments on efficacy--all of which can also vary with context as to which is best done when) over many, many generations.

Then, and as out linguistics (as our sophistication in putting language to our feelings, sensations, ideas, and the sharing of them increase, so does the complexity of our perception of experience) also evolve and shape these processes in turn, those evaluations, including the related circumstances, make the basis for our calls of "moral" or "immoral" and other forms of "value" judgments.

The variance in number and nature of these behavioral options and everything else mentioned is just as the dynamics of cooperation and competition---both are evolutionarily linked to survival in strong fashion, yet are quite different in form.

Not necessarily related, but it's interesting to me to consider that we are also increasingly affected by how our changing technology and society has extended life and survivability to where the leeway for successful reproduction even with making less than optimal choices would seem (logically) to be much more generous. People can make all sorts of "poor" judgments and still survive. This can be relevant in that all sorts of behavioral traits might be more common and "passed along" socially, whereas a notably more narrow latitude might have been the case hundreds of thousands of years ago (see "Darwin Awards" :pfft:).

Are we going to say some subset of evolutionary behaviors are moral?

Think it's covered in the above statement.

If so, which ones and by what mechanism?

Above (for now anyway).

But to paraphrase Burg, and multirepeat myself, these matters have been ground to dust in philosophy for centuries by brilliant minds and there's still no potently convincing consensus. And I have served my time in these matters many many times in many places over the decades, including here.

Tangential, but I do find the only really new and meaningful material (new in actual emergence, not "new to me") for discussion in a few centuries on such matters seem to be coming from science and not so much new religious or philosophical creations. And putting important new data and theory with far-reaching implications through existent religious and philosophical lenses is expected, and to me, often a productive and helpful exercise. You guys have a great evening and weekend.

[JMS]

The proper term appears to be "Moral relativism", and there are TONS of different schools of thought and different terminologies.

Moral Relativis is a hot button. It's a phrase coined by religious conservative whackadoodles rageing against what they believe is decay of modern morality.

It's a bannor they raise for those who they condemn. They tell themselves that morals are universal and don't change and thus advocating for change is proof of decay and bad morals. These folks are faith based thinkers cause they don't take into account the fact that the morality of ancient romans, Revolutionary founding fathers, civil war protagonists, were all dated and unrelated to what they call today their universal morals. Even the bible dated morality compared not just to "moral relativists" but also to the conservative whackadoodles themselves.

[Burgold]

Moral Relativis is a hot button. It's a phrase coined by religious conservative whackadoodles rageing against what they believe is decay of modern morality..

It may have been co-opted or attempted to have been, but the roots run much deeper than that.

In the classical Greek world, both the historian Herodotus and the sophist Protagoras appeared to endorse some form of relativism (the latter attracted the attention of Plato in the Theaetetus). It should also be noted that the ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi (formerly spelled Chuang-Tzu) put forward a nonobjectivist view that is sometimes interpreted as a kind of relativism.

In 1947, on the occasion of the United Nations debate about universal human rights, the American Anthropological Association issued a statement declaring that moral values are relative to cultures and that there is no way of showing that the values of one culture are better than those of another. Anthropologists have never been unanimous in asserting this, and more recently human rights advocacy on the part of some anthropologists has mitigated the relativist orientation of the discipline.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/

[alexey]

...

Look, Alexey, there either are objective morals, or there are not. They don't need to be derived from a religion, necessarily, to be objective; although it would probably be really difficult (if not impossible?) to "know" that they are objective without some kind of a "higher power" involved (God, the Universe, whatever). If objective morality exists, it's not authoritarian, it's just reality. It's just the way things are and should be.

...

Yes, and attempts to advance these objective morals as objective morals would be authoritarian in nature. I covered this in the OP, and you ought to address it before moving on.

If emperor is indeed GOD, then him ruling over you is not authoritaritan, it is just reality... right?

[alexey]

...

alexy, how do you think we do arrive at our codes (social and legal) now? Do you see some God descend and give them to us authoritatively?

Now if your real point here is that you wish people would not use a belief in God and all that their particular religion entails as THE platform from which they construct their thoughts on morality, and you prefer if it wasn't so, fine. Just come right out and say it, is my suggestion.

They're (religious believers) not going away anytime soon (thankfully IMO, for more than one reason), any more than are people of differing faiths and agnostics and atheists.

If you'd rather argue the reality (as some see it) and pragmatic effectiveness of a secular, and ultimately subjective (not a term to fear in the topic, though so many do) morality with its roots in evolutionary biology, psychology (connected of course), and arguable socially useful benefits (to the survival of the species-- happiness/contentment/comfort/peace of mind/security can all be tied to facilitating survival) as widely recognized over history as your base platform, why not do it?

...

Thanks for helping me think through the purpose of bringing this up

To answer your first question - indeed the process by which we arrive at our social and legal codes has been increasingly democratic and deliberative throughout history. We have seen approaches based on pure force, approaches based on various combinations of force and divine authority and, relatively recently, approaches based on democratic principles.

Now a funny thing appears to happen in the realm of morality. People assume that there must be some kind of objective morals (otherwise it's chaos, I tells ya!), and they assume our progress getting us closer and closer to these objective morals. I want to flip that notion on it's head. Objective morals are fundamentally authoritarian, and progress that we have made happened because we moved farther and farther away from them.

Come to think of it, maybe I should change the thread title if I can.

[techboy]

Yes, and attempts to advance these objective morals as objective morals would be authoritarian in nature.

You have never established this, apart from simply assuming it to be true (and that democracy is "better").

You often want to focus on the practical, so let's look at a real life example:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That is an explicit statement of the existence of objective (self-evident, unalienable) morals and duties.

Would you call that document, the government it flowed into, the concepts that underlie it (natural law) authoritarian?

There is nothing inherently "authoritarian" about objective moral values and duties any more than the laws of mathematics are "authoritarian". Being a moral realist simply means that there are objectively correct answers, just as in mathematics, to what is right and wrong. From Moral Realism at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports. Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common (and more or less defining) ground of moral realism.

Do you consider math teachers authoritarian (beyond the trivial joke sense)?

The authoritarian nature of morality (or lack thereof) arrives in how a person advances his personal moral code.

The United States is a democracy founded on Natural Law.

On the other hand, if you led an uprising of atheists and overthrew the government, then implemented a law that all moral realists were to be executed, you would be authoritarian.

[alexey]

You have never established this, apart from simply assuming it to be true (and that democracy is "better").

You often want to focus on the practical, so let's look at a real life example:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That is an explicit statement of the existence of objective (self-evident, unalienable) morals and duties.

Would you call that document, the government it flowed into, the concepts that underlie it (natural law) authoritarian?

I do not need to establish self-evident truths

Yes that document is a little bit authoritarian. It says that we the people want to have things according to certain principles. People who wanted to live according to different principles found themselves subjected.

There is nothing inherently "authoritarian" about objective moral values and duties any more than the laws of mathematics are "authoritarian". Being a moral realist simply means that there are objectively correct answers, just as in mathematics, to what is right and wrong.

...

Do you consider math teachers authoritarian (beyond the trivial joke sense)?

The authoritarian nature of morality (or lack thereof) arrives in how a person advances his personal moral code.

The United States is a democracy founded on Natural Law.

On the other hand, if you led an uprising of atheists and overthrew the government, then implemented a law that all moral realists were to be executed, you would be authoritarian.

There are a lot of things that you can present as authoritarian. You can argue that Democrats are being authoritarian to Republicans when they are in power and vice versa, for example. You would be correct, in a way. However, by advancing that position, I think you would be misleading people and subverting the principles of our democracy.

I see a similar situation in the realm of morality. Your technically/theoretically/philosophically correct position about objective morality has a real world consequence of opening the door for moral arguments from authority.

[Koolblue13]

I'd vote for this guy for emperor, presidente or mayor king.

[techboy]

Now a funny thing appears to happen in the realm of morality. People assume that there must be some kind of objective morals (otherwise it's chaos, I tells ya!), and they assume our progress getting us closer and closer to these objective morals. I want to flip that notion on it's head. Objective morals are fundamentally authoritarian, and progress that we have made happened because we moved farther and farther away from them.

1. You still haven't established that objective morals are authoritarian. More on that in a bit.

2. Progress towards what? How can we measure "progress" without a goal? Is it just your opinion? Your personal preference?

3. The 20th century is widely considered to be the most horrific yet in terms of wars, genocide, exploitation, terrorism, etc. Many of the worst offenders are leaders that eschewed traditional objective morality, such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.

See also the point about slavery.

How is this consistent with your claim?

Yes that document is a little bit authoritarian. It says that we the people want to have things according to certain principles. People who wanted to live according to different principles found themselves subjected.

That's the nature of democracy. After the decision is made, those that disagree are "subjected". You just undercut your own argument.

For what it's worth, though, those nasty "authoritarian" objective morals and duties can help mitigate this. That "authoritarian" document, and the Constitution that followed, establish a certain set of basic rights that cannot be taken away from the minority, even if the majority wants to.

There are a lot of things that you can present as authoritarian.

Like the Declaration of Independence?

I think you would be misleading people and subverting the principles of our democracy.

You say misleading like it's bad (ironic, huh?), and yet...

I see a similar situation in the realm of morality. Your technically/theoretically/philosophically correct position about objective morality has a real world consequence of opening the door for moral arguments from authority.

Emphasis mine. You want to eschew truth because you don't like the "consequences".

You are really fond of argumentum ad consequentiam, though, huh? You even used the wording of the fallacy as you commited it!

[brandymac27]

I'd vote for this guy for emperor, presidente or mayor king.

I like that!

[alexey]

1. You still haven't established that objective morals are authoritarian. More on that in a bit.

2. Progress towards what? How can we measure "progress" without a goal? Is it just your opinion? Your personal preference?

3. The 20th century is widely considered to be the most horrific yet in terms of wars, genocide, exploitation, terrorism, etc. Many of the worst offenders are leaders that eschewed traditional objective morality, such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.

See also the point about slavery.

How is this consistent with your claim?

I happen to think that dictators you mentioned had their respective visions of objective morality and advanced them by force... but I do not see how they are relevant here.

I'm sure we can agree that genocide, silencing political speech by force, killing people, etc, is not a good thing. I hold this position as a moral agent, and I derive it based on reasons. You may hold a similar position as objective morality. I do not think that is a good reason because that reason is only as good as a person who holds it. However, I do appreciate us agreeing on the conclusion.

Emphasis mine. You want to eschew truth because you don't like the "consequences".

A technically correct statement that conveys a false impression is still a lie:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie

2.

something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture:

[AsburySkinsFan]

You say authoritarian as if it were necessarily a bad thing.

[PeterMP]

I'm sure we can agree that genocide, silencing political speech by force, killing people, etc, is not a good thing. I hold this position as a moral agent, and I derive it based on reasons.

What non-authoritian arguments based on reason (or otherwise) can you put forward that those things are immoral?

Why shouldn't sociopaths be allowed to kill people?

Based on a non-authortarian argument.

**EDIT**

And last time we had this conversation, you told me the gold rule, and when I told you that I knew of reasons why the golden rule should be used, but that those weren't reasons you'd support, you gave me a link to a rather long wikipedia page.

I am hoping this time YOU will actually make an argument. If you want to support your argument with information from wiki, I'll look at it. BUT rather than send to a whole lengthy page, it might be useful if you'd actually quote the relevant information.

[alexey]

What non-authoritian arguments based on reason (or otherwise) can you put forward that those things are immoral?

Why shouldn't sociopaths be allowed to kill people?

Based on a non-authortarian argument..

There are many ways to argue for this, but I am not going to waste my time. You either think that a non-authoritarian argument against murder is impossible, which is silly, or you think that people can refuse any argument if they want, which is obvious. Let us move onto a larger point, if you have one to state.

[AsburySkinsFan]

I think it's funny how folks are afraid to argue on behalf of authoritarianism, democratic rule is no more right than organized mob rule.

[LadySkinsFan]

Wait a minute here... How can we do better? We voted, the gays lost. Majority rules, right? "Democratic" morality for the win!

Gee, what do you consider a "right" like heterosexual marriage and then we'll all vote it away! Majority rules, right?

Interracial marriage used to be outlawed in 16 states prior to Loving v. Virginia decision. The USSC struck those laws down because "These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0388_0001_ZO.html

The majority cannot legislate rights away, and the states that have done so with respect to same sex marriage have passed unConstitutional laws and state constitution amendments.

[AsburySkinsFan]

Gee, what do you consider a "right" like heterosexual marriage and then we'll all vote it away! Majority rules, right?

Interracial marriage used to be outlawed in 16 states prior to Loving v. Virginia decision. The USSC struck those laws down because "These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0388_0001_ZO.html

The majority cannot legislate rights away, and the states that have done so with respect to same sex marriage have passed unConstitutional laws and state constitution amendments.

I believe you missed his point.

[PeterMP]

There are many ways to argue for this, but I am not going to waste my time. You either think that a non-authoritarian argument against murder is impossible, which is silly, or you think that people can refuse any argument if they want, which is obvious. Let us move onto a larger point, if you have one to state.

I think you can't put forward a non-authortarian argument by which sociopaths shouldn't be allowed to roam the streets and do what they want.

I think you like to talk about how we should worry about things in practice, but when it comes to very straight forward quesitons like the above you have no answers that make sense in the context of much of anything else you say. And I think that something that most people think are very practical issues you have no real answers for.

I think you essentially want an objective morality, where the objectivness coincides with your ideas of what should be moral.

But you don't want to have to worry about where you are getting those things from or what that means in terms of other people, especially people that might disagree with you.

And I think you know all of that because we've been through it multiple times.

And YOU either don't want to think about it too much, OR you want to influence other people without them thinking about it.

I don't think your really that much different than ThinSkin

http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?368878-2016-Obama-s-America&p=9160650&viewfull=1#post9160650

http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?368878-2016-Obama-s-America&p=9160707&viewfull=1#post9160707

You just have other issues.

[AsburySkinsFan]

I think you essentially want an objective morality, where the objectivness coincides with your ideas of what should be moral.

This 100000000 times.....this!

[techboy]

A technically correct statement that conveys a false impression is still a lie

Whoa now. Your initial comment was this:

Your technically/theoretically/philosophically correct position about objective morality has a real world consequence of opening the door for moral arguments from authority.

How is "opening the door" to the possibility of an argument from authority "conveying a false impression"? As far as I can tell, the only advocate of avoiding truth here would be you, when you suggest that we do so because it might have unpleasant consequences.

Gee, what do you consider a "right" like heterosexual marriage and then we'll all vote it away! Majority rules, right?

If you peruse the context of the discussion in which I made that comment, I believe you will find that I was making the same point you are here, with the same (perhaps misleading) lack of smileys.

The majority cannot legislate rights away

I agree, and this is indeed a strength of a system grounded in the objective moral values and duties of Natural Law.

I nelieve you missed his point.

Indeed.

[AsburySkinsFan]

Danggit I hate when my typos are quoted!