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They refer to whether morality could be eternal/immutable.FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2026 3:46 pm What do those comments relate to? Certainly nothing I wrote.
They don't. They apply to a strawman you have created that nobody cares about. You have no idea what arguments are used by the people who believe moral properties supervene onto natural ones, and you have nothing to offer against them.MikeNovack wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2026 11:11 pmThey refer to whether morality could be eternal/immutable.FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2026 3:46 pm What do those comments relate to? Certainly nothing I wrote.
In the case of morality, are you suggesting that, if things had been different, human beings could have evolved to have a different morality than we currently do?MikeNovack wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 8:58 pmDo you believe that we humans are/have been immutable over time? Especially our culture(s) which change/mutate far faster than we do biologically?FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 6:02 pm Two swings, two misses. Still you have not bothered to even learn the slightest thing about what you fool yourself you are arguing against. All so you can try to railroad me over something I wrote that wasn't even remotely about you.
Except not "if" but "when" (when we were the LCA species).Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 12:34 am
In the case of morality, are you suggesting that, if things had been different, human beings could have evolved to have a different morality than we currently do?
So, for example, had we turned out like Chimpanzees, we could have incorporated rape as an approved behavior, and it would seem "moral" to us? Would that be along the lines of what you mean by morality possibly being mutable (if I'm understanding correctly)?
You see, Mike, this is where the thesis from which you're working becomes severely problematic for any moral justification.MikeNovack wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 2:25 pm We, the chimps, and the bonobos, are all approximately the same distance apart
Can't you? I am saying that it is the knowledge (and other non-moral factors will weigh in on what action you end up taking)Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 4:17 pm
If I believed that this is really the world in which I have found myself -- and I mean really believed it, not just said it -- if I believed it with all my heart, and with all the confidence with which anybody ever believes anything. If I felt certain that my wisest choice was to invest my belief in this particular origin story, and decided to live out my life as if this is the whole truth of my origins, then what?
I tell you the truth: I would see the logic of that immediately. The logic would be that there is simply no legitimate thing such as a moral requirement. Maybe the group of late chimps in which I happen to troop would impose one on me, and put rules on me to serve their purposes. But I would see that that was all it was. And in honesty, in sticking to the truth as I believed it to be, I would have to see that it served my own turn to be selective in my adherence to such rules: to obey them only when others were watching, but to find as many ways as I could to subvert or avoid them whenever something in my interest popped up.
You can now see the problem, can't you?
Are you saying that a society couldn't decide on rational rules to govern the behavior of its members for the benefit of all if there is no God? Are you saying that a society entirely comprised of atheists couldn't possibly come up with any codes of social conduct that would be rational and beneficial to all if they were followed by all as a matter of social agreement?Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 4:17 pmYou see, Mike, this is where the thesis from which you're working becomes severely problematic for any moral justification.MikeNovack wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 2:25 pm We, the chimps, and the bonobos, are all approximately the same distance apart
Let's say I agree with you: human beings are sophisticated bonobos. Or chimps. Or neither, but all derived from a common ancestor...an uberchimp, or even earlier, a common paramecium-like cell in the primordial soup. It won't matter for the deduction that naturally follows.
Whichever it is, all of us are mere products of chance. Our world exploded into existence billions of years ago, purely by some natural phenomenon of which, while admittedly we have no detailed understanding, we are confident had no intelligence, no plan, no purposes, and no intention behind it. Chimps, bonobos and Mikes all came into being through the same accidental route. Between that accident and today, the operative forces have simply been time and non-directed, non-teleological evolution. Time plus mutation. That's it. What we are today is as accidental as the origin of the universe, ultimately.
If I believed that this is really the world in which I have found myself -- and I mean really believed it, not just said it -- if I believed it with all my heart, and with all the confidence with which anybody ever believes anything. If I felt certain that my wisest choice was to invest my belief in this particular origin story, and decided to live out my life as if this is the whole truth of my origins, then what?
I tell you the truth: I would see the logic of that immediately. The logic would be that there is simply no legitimate thing such as a moral requirement. Maybe the group of late chimps in which I happen to troop would impose one on me, and put rules on me to serve their purposes. But I would see that that was all it was. And in honesty, in sticking to the truth as I believed it to be, I would have to see that it served my own turn to be selective in my adherence to such rules: to obey them only when others were watching, but to find as many ways as I could to subvert or avoid them whenever something in my interest popped up. I might even be able to use them to limit others' advantages relative to me, or to give me a survival and prosperity edge...pretending to believe in them so others had to fall in line with my wishes, but personally feeling no duty whatsoever to stay true to them myself, when I found it useful to do otherwise.
I would realize that it was in a battle for survival and for privileges. There would be no ultimate reason why I shouldn't play the moral game in front of others, but completely abandon it in my own interests. In fact, that would be the perfect logic I would have to derive from my starting point: I'm in an accidental world, with no rules, with no obligations, and no price to pay for subverting the moral game. I would have everything to win by being adaptable, cunning and amoral, and zero to lose. Who could possibly fail to see that logic?
Would that make me a bad person? No, in the first place, because "bad" would never be a real thing. But if I failed to see that logic, I would be a stupid and disadvantaged person, for sure...I would miss my own opportunities, out of some false sense of duty to a non-thing, to morality, when I could be getting ahead. And in the second place, it would actually make me, in a perverse sense, "good." Why? Because, ultimately, it's even better for the human race if I do get ahead, if I am truly one of the few who has managed to be a total realists about things, like this: for the human race, I would believe, progresses by guys like me, guys with the cunning, strategy and amorality to get ahead, to procreate, to seize more power for themselves, to enjoy more privileges and increase survival potential -- and to raise children who thought exactly the way I did, and were just as beyond morality in their realism as I was. Thus would the race evolve, I would conclude.
Now, do you think that's how I should reason? But if you don't, how would you say I ought to reason? Should I abandon my original belief in an accidental, Materialist kind of universe? But why, if I truly believe it? Should I know that there's no such real thing as morality, and still play patsy to the moral demands of others, and even of lesser men? How would that serve me, or the human race, if I did it? Where would doing that be to my advantage?
So tell me, Mike...why should I, as a believer in accidental origins and evolutionary bonobos, take any moral imperative seriously at all? Why would you have me abandon my brain, deny my essential beliefs, lose my advantages and impair the human race?
You can now see the problem, can't you?
So can you elaborate more on what you mean by saying morality is "mutable"?MikeNovack wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 2:25 pmExcept not "if" but "when" (when we were the LCA species).Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 12:34 am
In the case of morality, are you suggesting that, if things had been different, human beings could have evolved to have a different morality than we currently do?
So, for example, had we turned out like Chimpanzees, we could have incorporated rape as an approved behavior, and it would seem "moral" to us? Would that be along the lines of what you mean by morality possibly being mutable (if I'm understanding correctly)?
Please do note, when you speak of chimp morality you should also be talking about bonobo morality. Bonobos might look like chimps but behave very differently (*). We, the chimps, and the bonobos, are all approximately the same distance apart
"So, for example, had we turned out like Chimpanzees, we could have incorporated rape as an approved behavior, and it would seem "moral" to us?"
This shows you haven't looked at studies of chimp behavior. MUCH more complicated than that. Chimp morality with regard to who can rape AND in regard to who can have sex with a willing female would depend on position in the male hierarchy.
(*) bonobo society is not human society BUT just as bonobo appearance resembles chimp appearance bonobo society resembles human society.
Who are you referring to, me, Mike, or both of us?
Mike. You laid the trap.
I am using "mutable" to express that we (as a species) are mutable.Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 10:09 pm
So can you elaborate more on what you mean by saying morality is "mutable"?
A) Do you mean that morality can be shaped by circumstances of our given reality? For example, if we lived in a world where women actually universally enjoyed being raped, then rape would be permissible; however, since we live in a world where women are typically harmed both emotionally and physically by rape, rape cannot be made "moral" under these circumstances. Is that what you mean by "mutable"?
I can see a sense in which one might call morality "mutable" in that sense because morality depends highly upon human physiological and psychological attributes, as evidenced by slightly different takes on morality by different societies that practice different customs. But every society nevertheless has a sense of things like wrongful killing and theft. In a sense, no human society is without a concept of wrongful killing and theft. s?
I don't think of our societies as "systems" and humans as "components". Our society has specific rules and customs that apply to "components," for example, that differ from the way we think of our fellow society members. Maybe I'm wrong, but it kind of sounds like you're conflating two different professions and trying to equate the terminology of one "components" with the terminology of the other "humans", which lends itself to different (though maybe subtle) implications in their usage. It's like a software engineer or a corporate human resource manager trying to apply for a sociology professorship and bringing along the professional terminology of his or her prior profession into the new one. It has its limits in academia.MikeNovack wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 11:11 pmI am using "mutable" to express that we (as a species) are mutable.Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 10:09 pm
So can you elaborate more on what you mean by saying morality is "mutable"?
A) Do you mean that morality can be shaped by circumstances of our given reality? For example, if we lived in a world where women actually universally enjoyed being raped, then rape would be permissible; however, since we live in a world where women are typically harmed both emotionally and physically by rape, rape cannot be made "moral" under these circumstances. Is that what you mean by "mutable"?
I can see a sense in which one might call morality "mutable" in that sense because morality depends highly upon human physiological and psychological attributes, as evidenced by slightly different takes on morality by different societies that practice different customs. But every society nevertheless has a sense of things like wrongful killing and theft. In a sense, no human society is without a concept of wrongful killing and theft. s?
A species can go extinct (have no descendants) but any species that exists has ancestors. It has been about seven million years since the last common ancestor between us, chimps, and bonobos. So we can think of the line leading to us today goes back seven million years. Do you think the critter we are now lives as the one that did six million years ago, five million years ago, four million years ago, three million years ago, two million years ago, a million years ago (fire), 200,000 years ago (LCA of all humans alive today), etc.
Our societies are something else again. They can best be thought of as "systems" running on a band of humans as components. So while "low level morality (fundamental, species level, perhaps with evolved "quick evaluators") the DETAILS of how morality plays out modified by society. Thus there might be a low level "share meat with the band" we could expect to be widespread/universal bu details would not be << example "if a hunter kills a small animal, rabbit, it can be his to eat. But a large animal, deer, must be shared in the following way. If hungry, he can eat the liver now, otherwise brought back to camp. The person who made the arrow/atl dart used to kill the deer gets the left shoulder/leg. The band shaman gets the right shouldre/leg, the band chief gets the head and neck, his wife's family gets the left rear leg, his family gets the right rear leg, the rest goes to other band members except he gets to keep the hide. THAT'S CULTURE defining the nitty gritty of what "share the meat" means in that society. Do not expect the rules to be the samefor the band in the next valley. AND -- do not expect me to try to justify the morality of this particular method of "share the meat". Compared to our biological evolution, our cultures evolve orders of magnitude faster IN MOST CASES.
The exception to that is "children's games" which MAY be important in how we learn about morality (that there is a right way and a wring way to do tings). Since children learn games from ones about three years older there have been many "transmission generations" since Pompeii was buried, but a child of today would recognize the "hopscotch" array. STOP -- I am not saying the (specific) rules of these games are "moral" but the LESSON learning them is moral (there is a right way and a wrong way).
You got sort of two issues going on there entirely separate from the religion v irreligion thing.Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 9:39 pmAre you saying that a society couldn't decide on rational rules to govern the behavior of its members for the benefit of all if there is no God? Are you saying that a society entirely comprised of atheists couldn't possibly come up with any codes of social conduct that would be rational and beneficial to all if they were followed by all as a matter of social agreement?Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 4:17 pmYou see, Mike, this is where the thesis from which you're working becomes severely problematic for any moral justification.MikeNovack wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 2:25 pm We, the chimps, and the bonobos, are all approximately the same distance apart
Let's say I agree with you: human beings are sophisticated bonobos. Or chimps. Or neither, but all derived from a common ancestor...an uberchimp, or even earlier, a common paramecium-like cell in the primordial soup. It won't matter for the deduction that naturally follows.
Whichever it is, all of us are mere products of chance. Our world exploded into existence billions of years ago, purely by some natural phenomenon of which, while admittedly we have no detailed understanding, we are confident had no intelligence, no plan, no purposes, and no intention behind it. Chimps, bonobos and Mikes all came into being through the same accidental route. Between that accident and today, the operative forces have simply been time and non-directed, non-teleological evolution. Time plus mutation. That's it. What we are today is as accidental as the origin of the universe, ultimately.
If I believed that this is really the world in which I have found myself -- and I mean really believed it, not just said it -- if I believed it with all my heart, and with all the confidence with which anybody ever believes anything. If I felt certain that my wisest choice was to invest my belief in this particular origin story, and decided to live out my life as if this is the whole truth of my origins, then what?
I tell you the truth: I would see the logic of that immediately. The logic would be that there is simply no legitimate thing such as a moral requirement. Maybe the group of late chimps in which I happen to troop would impose one on me, and put rules on me to serve their purposes. But I would see that that was all it was. And in honesty, in sticking to the truth as I believed it to be, I would have to see that it served my own turn to be selective in my adherence to such rules: to obey them only when others were watching, but to find as many ways as I could to subvert or avoid them whenever something in my interest popped up. I might even be able to use them to limit others' advantages relative to me, or to give me a survival and prosperity edge...pretending to believe in them so others had to fall in line with my wishes, but personally feeling no duty whatsoever to stay true to them myself, when I found it useful to do otherwise.
I would realize that it was in a battle for survival and for privileges. There would be no ultimate reason why I shouldn't play the moral game in front of others, but completely abandon it in my own interests. In fact, that would be the perfect logic I would have to derive from my starting point: I'm in an accidental world, with no rules, with no obligations, and no price to pay for subverting the moral game. I would have everything to win by being adaptable, cunning and amoral, and zero to lose. Who could possibly fail to see that logic?
Would that make me a bad person? No, in the first place, because "bad" would never be a real thing. But if I failed to see that logic, I would be a stupid and disadvantaged person, for sure...I would miss my own opportunities, out of some false sense of duty to a non-thing, to morality, when I could be getting ahead. And in the second place, it would actually make me, in a perverse sense, "good." Why? Because, ultimately, it's even better for the human race if I do get ahead, if I am truly one of the few who has managed to be a total realists about things, like this: for the human race, I would believe, progresses by guys like me, guys with the cunning, strategy and amorality to get ahead, to procreate, to seize more power for themselves, to enjoy more privileges and increase survival potential -- and to raise children who thought exactly the way I did, and were just as beyond morality in their realism as I was. Thus would the race evolve, I would conclude.
Now, do you think that's how I should reason? But if you don't, how would you say I ought to reason? Should I abandon my original belief in an accidental, Materialist kind of universe? But why, if I truly believe it? Should I know that there's no such real thing as morality, and still play patsy to the moral demands of others, and even of lesser men? How would that serve me, or the human race, if I did it? Where would doing that be to my advantage?
So tell me, Mike...why should I, as a believer in accidental origins and evolutionary bonobos, take any moral imperative seriously at all? Why would you have me abandon my brain, deny my essential beliefs, lose my advantages and impair the human race?
You can now see the problem, can't you?
Or are you saying that atheists could come up with rational rules, but cheating is always the best rational option for any member of a society?
So, for example, everyone would always play the prisoner's dilemma, thinking only of themselves and choosing to screw over others for their own personal gain at the expense of others instead of cooperating with others so that there is a better guarantee of peace and resulting prosperity among all? We're all a bunch of narcissists who can't see beyond our own immediate satisfaction, is that correct?
If you didn't know what I meant when I spoke of immutable morality why didn't you just ask instead of making up your own buillshit vocabulary and arguing against random strawmen?MikeNovack wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2026 11:11 pm I am using "mutable" to express that we (as a species) are mutable.