MikeNovack wrote: ↑Tue Nov 11, 2025 5:37 pm
Essentially I am going to suggest that "morality" is the collection of rules. meta rules, not specific to any one of these "games" but generally applicable to many of them.
OK, show us how that works please.
MikeNovack wrote: ↑Tue Nov 11, 2025 5:37 pm
In the ultimatum game, one player proposes a division of some reward and the other either accepts the ultimatum (each gets their proposed share) or rejects that division (neither gets anything). In repeated play (multiple round) note that ONE strategy leading to Nash equilibrium is fair division. The proposer offers a 50:50 division which is accepted << so in each round each gets half the reward and no part of any reward is wasted >> Thus a meta rule "be fair" will reach a solution. In THIS game but also in many others, so it would become a "moral rule" for humans.
I can't remember which, but there is a Martin Amis book in which a babysitter plays the pinching game with her tiny charge. The game works by each participant pinching the other exactly as hard as they wish to. So the little child does the most delicate little pinch. and then the babysitter pinches the absolute fuck out the little nipper's arm and establishes total shocking dominance. Is this game one of the morality games?
MikeNovack wrote: ↑Tue Nov 11, 2025 5:37 pm
Please note, I am NOT saying following the rule is key but KNOWING the rule is (and presuming the other knows this also). Social interaction involves knowing how the other is likely to respond to your choices.
Is this predictability an ingredient of the cake, or the entire point of baking the damn cake at all?
OK, now consider when the proposer in The Ultimatum Game does NOT offer a fair division. Say offers to divide 70-30. RATIONALLY in any single round the decider should accept as they are better off than if they reject. But a human player is likely to say "no".
Notice in repeated rounds with the same player, switching roles each round. If the person makes the same unfair offer, and this is accepted, each doing this in turn, the players get the same result as if they played fair << I told you THIS game had more than one solution for Nask equilibrium. we will return to that "tit for tat" later because that meta rule works in many games (often there is no better solution).
Now consider a room full of players, so net round will be interacting with somebody else. Consider most of the players follow the moral rule "play fair" AND the moral rule "do not reward somebody not following the rule. These players always make a fair offer and reject an unfair one. Now insert a "cheater", a person trying to better their outcome by making unfair offers. These are rejected. So half the time (when choosing) gets the fair result of 50. And the other half of the time nada. The fair players get 50 each time EXCEPT when playing with this stray cheater. So they do slightly worse than if they accepted the unfair offer.
But the cheater knows the rule (even when not following). Can see that his/her cheating is costing half the time. So this person will.....
In other words, I am suggesting that morality will include rules to reinforce other moral rules.
That use of "fair" would be less freighted with normative prejudice akin to smuggling if you used a less loaded term such as equitable. Whether it matters or not really depends on which questions of moral philosophy this is an attempt to answer.
MikeNovack wrote: ↑Tue Nov 04, 2025 6:12 pm
It is usual, when discussing morality, to begin proposing that morality is the source of the "ought" relation, that it is morality and only morality that makes choices of action right or wrong. I propose we take a step back and consider that "ought" might be more basic, more fundamental, and a direct consequence of our being human. In other words, a consequence of us humans being social animals. While I also believe that we humans are not the only social animals on the planet and others of us, say IC, are "human exceptionalists" (believe we are fundamentally different from other animals) we can ignore that difference of belief as long as we only consider humans.
So lets see if we agree on this starting point. We humans are social animals, can only survive in groups of humans, and this has been true longer than we properly could be thought of as human. I want us to begin HERE and have us explore what that means. So lets see if we are all in agreement so far. Everyone on board with that? Any dissent? << please, at this point JUST about this starting point >>
That is complete bull shit from the start.
So, it is morality, which by some magic trick, makes 2 + 2 = 4 right and 2 + 2 + 56 wrong?
Oh, I forgot, the seasoning ought. 2 ought = 2 ought = 4 ought.
I got it clinically brain dead apparently ought to rule behavior.
A mind is an information processor. It ought to do its job, but if not grab a goddamned grammar book and hug it like there ain't no tomorrow.
