What is morality?

[promethean75]

In fact, those short, brutish, and nasty Hobbesean days were when man was the most free from the binding social contract that pervades throughout today.

You're just conflating 'free' with 'not being killed' and 'protected by the POleece.' You're trivializing the meaning of the word 'free' and making it mean 'happy' and 'secure'.

[Immanuel Can]

In fact, those short, brutish, and nasty Hobbesean days were when man was the most free from the binding social contract that pervades throughout today.

There is no such thing as "the social contract." Just as you have never been asked to sign one, neither has anybody, at any time, any place.

You're just conflating 'free' with 'not being killed'

No, I'm making it to be the same as "unfettered," or "unrestricted." And I'm pointing out that the opposite side of freedom is always responsibility, as well. You have the freedom to make as much money as you want, and to do whatever is short of harmful to others; but you have the responsibility to live with the consequences of your bad choices, too. That's life.

Realizing that is what's called "growing up," too.

[MikeNovack]

...,is it because of a fundamental, lower level moral imperative to "enforce social cooperation"

Well, you can't "enforce" social cooperation. You can "force" people to obey, but you can't change their hearts that way. Socialists have tried -- they call it "re-education." But all it ever produces is resentful, vicious, propagandized drones for "the Cause." You can "force" people to go along, but changing their hearts is something nobody can do.

I am stripping out all the BS about socialism/states because not relevant.

Look IC, I know you believe morality comes from the Christian God but do you really suppose we humans have not been moral animals for most of our existence? In trying to uncover what morality might be in common among human societies we need to be looking back at how we humans lived 500,000 - 50,000 thousand years ago. NO STATES IN EXISTENCE. We have no need to think about how humans should live in groups of a million, hundred thousand, a thousand. Anything fundamental (expect to be shared by human societies) would be applicable when we lived in groups no larger than a hundred.

So yes, CAN "enforce" social cooperation. Can have interactions such that non-cooperation does not pay. Consider that "game" seriously. What happens if in a room played repeatedly? Even switching the players around. Won't the "dictators" learn "unfairness does not pay". Won't the "dictators" learn "I get more by playing fair (reasonably fair) than by remaining greedy"? I am suggesting that this game uncovers one of those fundamental level moral rules --- right is being willing to pay a small price to "enforce" social cooperation. Something I expect to find across societies.

No FORCE in this enforcing. Dictators who refuse to learn are getting nothing, will do worse than fair dictators.

Remember, up to (relatively) recently we humans lived in groups where we knew all the others. Knew who would "play fair" and who was greedy. So ... social cooperation "enforced" by excluding those who did not co-operate from receiving the benefits of co-operation.

So far ......
A) Follow rules for bodily elimination (details determined by the society)
B) Wear clothes (details determined by the society)
C) Reward co-operation and "punish" non-co-operation (degree of fairness required determined by society*)



* NOTE, possibly surprising. When this experiment was conducted cross culturally it was discovered that "how fair is fair" was cultural. There are societies so oriented toward generosity that a strictly fair division perceived as "unfair". Likewise some the other way around.

[promethean75]

"There is no such thing as "the social contract"

"You have the freedom to make as much money as you want"

"Even if you decided all you want to do is live on the street and smoke crack, nobody's going to put you in jail"

How could one even talk to someone who says stuff like this? In a philosophy forum, no less!

I hate to do this but I'm docking you a grade, IC.

p.s. the first one is actually right but in a Stirner sense not in the way you'd ever mean it. There IS a social contract but it's a spook. So yes and no.

[Immanuel Can]

Look IC, I know you believe morality comes from the Christian God but do you really suppose we humans have not been moral animals for most of our existence?

What does it mean when you say we are "moral animals"? Animals are not "moral." Instinctual, maybe...but they have no code, theory or concept of morality, so far as anybody can say. So what is this "morality" thing, according to whatever lights Naturalism, Physicalism or Materialism can tell us?

In trying to uncover what morality might be in common among human societies we need to be looking back at how we humans lived 500,000 - 50,000 thousand years ago.

Here's your problem with that: no data. You and I have not the foggiest idea what obtained that long ago.

So yes, CAN "enforce" social cooperation.

No, only compliance. You can make people "go along." But psychologists are well aware of the difference between compelling somebody's limbs to comply, versus eliciting somebody's willingness and belief. They are not the same thing.

Sometimes you can even make bad people do the right thing, if the threats are sufficient. But the deeper question is what it means that we human beings are inclined to do the wrong thing, and why any of us should feel obliged to behave in socially-approved ways, when so many opportunities exist for us to cheat on that, and when we thing the rewards for doing so exceed the chances of being caught and punished.

Won't the "dictators" learn "unfairness does not pay".

There are plenty of dictators in the world today. And there have been plenty in the past. Ask them whether they think it "pays". If it doesn't, then why do they do it? And why do people let them do it?

[Immanuel Can]

"There is no such thing as "the social contract"
"You have the freedom to make as much money as you want"
"Even if you decided all you want to do is live on the street and smoke crack, nobody's going to put you in jail"

How could one even talk to someone who says stuff like this? In a philosophy forum, no less!

Easy. Because every one of them is obviously and verifiably true.

When did you sign your "social contract," Prom?
Who is constraining your freedom to make as much money as you have ingenuity to make?
And when were you arrested for living on the street and smoking crack?

QED.

[promethean75]

The social contract, in all its complexity, exists and rests on a single essential agreement between the State and the citizen. The citizen's agreement to pay taxes to the State in exchange for the State protecting him and his property from a neighbor. In its first most basic form, the State is a giant army of cops protecting citizens from each other and foreigners.

This contract is forced if there is such a law as tax evasion. There is, so this contract is forced. A citizen is born with the expectation to become gainfully employed and can risk incarceration if he isn't... not from the unemployment itself but from the consequences of the unemployment (criminal activity, vagrancy, trespassing, loitering). Once employed, he is forced by threat of imprisonment or penalty to give a portion of his earned wages to the State. He never aksed for the State's protection and neither does he want it... yet he is forced to comply as a willing citizen to these terms.

You are right. Nothing is signed because you can never opt out or challenge a contract you are forced into accepting.

[Immanuel Can]

The social contract, in all its complexity, exists and rests on a single essential agreement between the State and the citizen.

No such thing ever existed.

You were born in the USA (strains of The Boss). Nobody made you, your parents, or anybody else sign a contract. Your agreement was never solicited. No terms were ever specified. Nothing was ever agreed to.

You are right. Nothing is signed because you can never opt out or challenge a contract you are forced into accepting.

There is no contract. You're imagining things. You weren't "forced into" anything. There's nothing for you to challenge.

Meanwhile, here's Nietzsche on Socialism. It's very short, but it raises a very important point.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ySYmDoykwWc

[MikeNovack]

Won't the "dictators" learn "unfairness does not pay".

There are plenty of dictators in the world today. And there have been plenty in the past. Ask them whether they think it "pays". If it doesn't, then why do they do it? And why do people let them do it?

I will repeat, you are being ridiculous. The term "dictator" in the context of "the ultimatum game" has NOTHING to do with the term used in it's political sense. I have been perfectly clear about that. Do you really not understand?

My purpose in introducing "the ultimatum game" is that we were talking about what morality might exist cross culturally and the experimental results seem to indicate that this is an example.

Are you suggesting that "dictators" (role in the ultimatum game) with multiple repetitions will not learn greed/non-cooperation does not pay?

[Immanuel Can]

Won't the "dictators" learn "unfairness does not pay".

There are plenty of dictators in the world today. And there have been plenty in the past. Ask them whether they think it "pays". If it doesn't, then why do they do it? And why do people let them do it?

I will repeat, you are being ridiculous. The term "dictator" in the context of "the ultimatum game" has NOTHING to do with the term used in it's political sense. I have been perfectly clear about that. Do you really not understand?

Maybe you should give up "games," and come to how you expect to apply it to real life.

My purpose in introducing "the ultimatum game" is that we were talking about what morality might exist cross culturally and the experimental results seem to indicate that this is an example.

But my point is precisely that it DOESN'T seem to cross into real life.

A game is just a game. It's applicability to life has to be shown, or it remains just a game.

[promethean75]

"There is no contract"

Why all the fuss then if i rob the Sam's Club or something? Why would anyone expect me not to do such a thing unless there was an implicit agreement of some sort stopping me? Not only is the contract forced by threat of violence (arrest), but its origins are even intuitive. How absurd would this sound:

"You're not obligated to do anything, but i object to your exercise of that right whenever it is to my own disadvantage."

That attitude isn't logically consistent. Or it is, and everyone having it is a moral relativist.

How ironic! I'm playing the same card you play against moral relativists and nihilists against you.

If there is no contract, not only would you be prepared to shoot it out in the street with me, but you would also encourage it! But you wouldn't want that because you intuit a contract between us.

[promethean75]

Btw, N doesn't get to pass judgment on the proletariat's business because the only time he worked was briefly in the military. The rest of his life, he was a petite-bourgeois desk jockey who emulated high culture. It would be impossible for him to understand a Spartacus and we'd not want him to try.

[promethean75]

Wanna read something good read Trotsky on Nietzsche.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsk ... tzsche.htm

[Immanuel Can]

Btw, N doesn't get to pass judgment on the proletariat's business because the only time he worked was briefly in the military. The rest of his life, he was a petite-bourgeois desk jockey who emulated high culture. It would be impossible for him to understand a Spartacus and we'd not want him to try.

Okay, but then, what about Marx? He bourgeois, and a sponge, to boot. He knew only one proletarian personally, that we know of, and he molested her, and then disowned his own child created thereby. There's no evidence in his bio's that he had any engagement or experience with the life of the proles he claimed to speak for. So if we dismiss Nietzsche ad hominem, as you invite us to do, then out goes Marx, too.

But what's more interesting is the commentators point: that the longing for comfort, effortlessness and "big-daddy" government, is antithetical to the life of heroism and meaning? That's the idea we need to engage.

[Immanuel Can]

"There is no contract"

Why all the fuss then if i rob the Sam's Club or something?

Well, you'd have to suppose that was merely a matter of force, since you don't believe in objective morality. The Sam's Club has more clout than you do...but where is the "contract"?

If there is no contract, not only would you be prepared to shoot it out in the street with me, but you would also encourage it!

Well, that statement makes it clear you have no idea what I would be "prepared to do." I don't have any contract with Sam's Club or your society, either.