121–130 of 173 posts
I feel certain that in the near future we will discover animals are a lot smarter and more emotionally developed than we currently realize, and future generations will look back on our treatment of them with disgust.
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Who is to say that callousness is more or less ethical?
Nature is inhuman, not in the sense that it is cruel but that it is devoid of human characteristics. Nature is neither tender nor callous, those are human traits. Nature is not unethical or ethical, ethics is for humans. It is interesting to ponder what the nature of other animals is; discover what possibilities we have in common with them. That doesn't change that humans are capable of self examination and choosing…
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You're confusing 'biological reality' with naturalism. I am not advocating naturalism, nor am I claiming that one or the other is moral. I am claiming that amorality is reality, and our 'morality' is whatever the fashionable social norms of the day consist of. For example: > We're keeping the "weak" a live, prolonging life, disturbing the natural order of things. In our society, we consider it pretty immoral to leave…
You haven't exactly defined what you mean by "biological reality". I don't really see how what you're proposing is any different from naturalism. Resignation to intentions of nature, i.e., statements like these: > I am claiming that amorality is reality Is exactly what I consider naturalism. That's what nature wants you to think. Why is that statement even significant? Morality, as I've stated earlier, is derived fro…
> Resignation to intentions of nature, i.e., statements like these: ["]I am claiming that amorality is morality["] [i]s exactly what I consider naturalism.
I think we have an is-ought problem here.
I am describing what is. Biological reality is 'what is'. I am not describing what ought to be. What I am saying is that yes, morality is subjective, and people (inclusively, taking all peoples throughout history) very strongly disagree on what is moral and immoral.
> everyone agrees on the good or the bad side of it.
That's the thing. They don't, not even close.
> "fashionable social norms" are an approximation, that doesn't mean the thing they're trying to approximate doesn't exist. Just like physics don't cease to exist because our conclusions about it are not always correct.
Are you suggesting moral realism? That is, are you saying that there are, in fact, some kind of moral truths we can discover? How? Through experiment? Archaeology? Reason? I am guessing the latter; if I can be allowed to speculate as to your thought process, you seem to hold something like the Golden Rule as an axiom of moral truths. That is, murder is wrong because, as I do not want to be murdered, it would be wrong for me to murder someone.
But what I'm saying is there is no justification for that axiom (though I personally might prefer it). It's arbitrary. We can construct an elegant system of ethics upon it, but it would be founded in the sand. And thus we discover why, again, throughout human history, there were countless cultures who would have regarded it as the most silly nonsense they'd ever heard.
> I will say there is a big difference between a civilization where the bad is OK and one where it is not. I also know which one I'd prefer to live in. Which one pretty much everyone will prefer to live in.
Most people will prefer to live in the civilization most like their own. Naturally, you and I would most prefer to live in a modern Western society where everyone agrees with us on most points of right and wrong.
> Caring for the weak and our own is a thing social animals do? To a very, very limited point...
I think you would be surprised by animal behavior. They will risk their lives for others. A good example is elephants, who have been known to do everything they can for the injured, even if it's just wait in the same place for them to die, hold 'funerals', and even seek vengeance on those who hurt their fellow.
> At some point, we need to start distinguishing what evolution intended and what we do.
Evolution does not intend anything at all.
> we didn't do that at all for quite a few members of society for a very long time.
Plenty of other cultures did for long periods of history.
I feel certain that in the near future we will discover animals are a lot smarter and more emotionally developed than we currently realize, and future generations will look back on our treatment of them with disgust.
The narcissism is real.
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I take the view that morality is herd instinct in the individual, and that it is more productive to look at it as a sociological phenomenon instead of resurrecting platonic idealism. Whatever the herd deems good is Good, whatever the herd deems evil is Evil. There is no objective morality written on stone tablets that we can consult to determine that torture is Evil or that killing animals is wrong. That's why we hav…
You gave an interesting explanation of what morality is and where it originates (in your opinion). However, that's besides the point. Even if morality was just herd instinct, what you were saying previously is that suffering for you is not immoral. And even though, many intelligent people saw absolutely nothing wrong with torture, what about you, right now? What I'm getting at is that your original statement which ba…
When someone says that something is not immoral (or evil), they can be arguing to things: either it is moral, or it is amoral (i.e. is not affected by qualifications of morality). The GP is arguing the latter: that, in the context of nature, suffering is an unavoidable consequence of competition for life. Is the lion evil for targeting the weakest wildebeest? Is toxoplasmosis evil for disrupting the fight-or-flight response of its host?
>Did we ask the animals too? Maybe the pig consensus is different Most mammals react to painful stimuli (which we can provide a baseline for by testing it on other humans, whom you luckily consider to be reliable enough) with aversion and fear. We 'ask' this question of many animals quite frequently, and have throughout history. The answers are reliable and consistent. >If most people agree they do not want to pay ta…
> The idea that we should have moral compunctions about biological reality seems absurd to me Why? We seem to have plenty of moral compunctions about lots of other biological realities. Otherwise, why do anything at all? As humans, we have so far not acted in a manner that implies we're completely OK with biological realities. We keep trying to change them. Hopefully, it will continue this way. Most people agree that…
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Many animals kill not just for survival but for play and sport. Any cat owner has observed this behavior.
To be fair, that probably evolved to train and further facilitate survival in the long term. But, yes, animals often produce suffering. In fact, they've been doing it for a while before we got here. But animals are largely doing it out of instinct, not because they've reasoned out and concluded that it was the "right" thing to do.
a) that which justifies doing as their instincts say
and
b) that which justifies acting in their interest as determined by their instincts.
Humans are animals. We happen to possess an extraordinarily tool for abstract reasoning. That tool is mostly used for rationalization and not as an oracle of truth. We are all creatures of biology. Most everything we do is about getting food, shelter, performing sexual displays, and various forms of social signalling and jockeying.
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Nature is inhuman, not in the sense that it is cruel but that it is devoid of human characteristics. Nature is neither tender nor callous, those are human traits. Nature is not unethical or ethical, ethics is for humans. It is interesting to ponder what the nature of other animals is; discover what possibilities we have in common with them. That doesn't change that humans are capable of self examination and choosing…
Callous as in "indifferent to suffering". That seems a fair description of nature.
There is no boundary between nature and other things, nature is all encompassing. There is nothing in nature that can be indifferent because nature can't be different from anything.
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> Why? We seem to have plenty of moral compunctions about lots of other biological realities. Do we, in practice? Can you go into more detail? > Most people agree that they do not want to suffer. That's what makes it evil. It's not a difficult concept. Did we ask the animals too? Maybe the pig consensus is different. If most people agree they do not want to pay taxes, do taxes become evil? There is no objective reaso…
Its pretty moronic to assume that a feeling every animal with a nervous system avoids, is somehow not proven to be a deplorable state to put sentient life into. You can play coy semantics but its quite apparent that even primitive mammals avoid pain. You can go ahead and spout off arguments about us being biological primal carnivores but that isn't very persuasive considering that the defining aspect of intellect has…