Philosophy Now Forum

I note when the Philosophy of Morality is discussed it is often conflated with enforcement of laws of the judiciary and policing from politics.

Moral Laws, i.e. objective moral laws are never to be imposed and enforced on any humans. Objective moral laws are to be used merely as guides to facilitate and improve on human behavior naturally and spontaneously.

The Philosophy of Morality must be distinctively differentiated from Philosophy of Politics with its legislature, judiciary and enforcement policing system.

There are similarities between objective moral laws and political legislature laws.
The point is objective moral laws are not imposed and enforced on the political legislature system.

The Political System is independent from the moral system of humanity.
What happened is the Political System may adopt and adapt from objective moral laws as laws for law-and-order purposes but they are political laws not moral laws.

When the political system adapt objective moral laws for legislature purpose, their resulting laws will likely be different to cater for various circumstances. For example the political laws on 'killing' allow for killing in certain circumstances and punishments are also varied to certain circumstances.

The Philosophy of Morality and Ethics involved exclusively in the intervention of the human mind to facilitate the individual[s] to the highest moral agent [MQ].
When the majority individual[s] of humanity has achieved high moral quotient [MQ] there would be minimal reliance on political laws to manage evil human behaviors.
The question is how can this be done?

A clue is the objective moral law on slavery. Note how this has naturally progress in comparison to the various ages of history of humankind to the present. Fact is all humans are "programmed" with an inherent Faculty of Morality in the brain which is unfolding slowly in our current phase of evolution.
How can this be further improved?

My point;
The Philosophy of Morality must be distinctively differentiated from Philosophy of Politics with its legislature, judiciary and enforcement policing system.

Agree?

I only 'agree' to what you mean, not to the reality. I am not religious [ie. atheist]. What does it mean to discuss morals as 'absolutes' to me is tantamount to asserting that something in Nature itself has 'moral conscience', something a religious 'god/God' might have.

That is why I mentioned Michael Shermer. He is of those atheists who happen to believe that you CAN define a similar idea of universal morality. But I believe that his own intepretation is about the EFFECTIVENESS of certain behaviors for some ASSUMED common goal. I disagree because it assumes that the goals are all shared, when they are not. To me, it is not important that each and every human conceived deserves to exist simply for existing. But the 'goal' of a management system, such as what 'government' IS, is a convention of negotiating among people to make laws that we DEFINE as 'good' by the standard of things like "majority approval", or, in the case of those who believe government should be about who is there 'first', they might believe their voice should be taken with priority. Both are neither 'right' nor 'wrong' but are negotiating factors.

To me, I think that it would be nice to have a Universe that can assure ALL lifeforms a means to live without ever suffering. But this cannot occur even in principle without looking beyond merely one Universe. It might be the case, for instance, that an infinity of universes exist that assure an equal amoung of suffering to bliss for all living things 'somewhere' in Totality already. So with respect to a greater universal class than our particular universe, every living thing may 'win' somewhere. But note that this means 50% 'good' to 50% 'bad' still exists taking all universese collectively.

Unfortunately, your hope for our own particular Universe to reach an ideal of 100% (or some approach to it) is impossible because it leads to a condition where consciousness no longer needs to exist biologically where we can get everything we want for wanting it (the ultimate ideal 'good' for EACH being's perspective of the word). Although I can explain this more, if you are a fan of a series called, "The Good Place", its last episodes of the whole seires closed on the recognition that a 'paradise' could not exist with beings to be ideally happy for ever because such beings would get absurdly bored for succeeding at everything. The recognition that eternal death of even those IN eternal paradise, was deemed to be the next best thing.

I also think that the original Adam and Eve story of the Judeau-Christian tradition was expressing how discovering the Secrets of the Gods (represented by eating of the Tree of Wisdom) cursed humanity to precisely the 'gods' own unfortunate curse: knowing that you NEED 'death' in order to provide meaning to life.

We cannot have ''good" without "evil" in a type of conservation-of-energy way. For ANYTHING to be 'good' something 'bad' is needed to contrast it to provide meaning. Therefore, your belief in some absolute 'good' is not valid for all. All we can do is to tentatively assign value as we do with the secular laws we make. THAT is 'politics'.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sun Feb 23, 2020 8:23 am I only 'agree' to what you mean, not to the reality. I am not religious [ie. atheist]. What does it mean to discuss morals as 'absolutes' to me is tantamount to asserting that something in Nature itself has 'moral conscience', something a religious 'god/God' might have.

Nope, not an inherent 'moral conscience' but rather the absolute moral law is inferred and extrapolated from empirical evidences.

Note I would regard it is morally wrong for a human not to breathe.
Therefore is morally right and an absolute moral law, all normal human OUGHT to breathe.
Is there anything wrong with this absolute moral law.

There are abnormal people or normal people who turned abnormal who do not want to breathe by sealing a plastic bag over their head.
In this case they are morally wrong in going against the objective moral that ALL normal humans OUGHT to breathe.

This is also a proof how we can inferred an 'ought' from 'is'.

That is why I mentioned Michael Shermer. He is of those atheists who happen to believe that you CAN define a similar idea of universal morality. But I believe that his own intepretation is about the EFFECTIVENESS of certain behaviors for some ASSUMED common goal. I disagree because it assumes that the goals are all shared, when they are not. To me, it is not important that each and every human conceived deserves to exist simply for existing. But the 'goal' of a management system, such as what 'government' IS, is a convention of negotiating among people to make laws that we DEFINE as 'good' by the standard of things like "majority approval", or, in the case of those who believe government should be about who is there 'first', they might believe their voice should be taken with priority. Both are neither 'right' nor 'wrong' but are negotiating factors.

I understand Michael Shermer's position [The Moral Arc] which is similar to Sam Harris' 'Moral Landscape. They are doing their best but beating around the bush without anything substantial. They have don't have a sound argument like I do.

To me, I think that it would be nice to have a Universe that can assure ALL lifeforms a means to live without ever suffering. But this cannot occur even in principle without looking beyond merely one Universe. It might be the case, for instance, that an infinity of universes exist that assure an equal amoung of suffering to bliss for all living things 'somewhere' in Totality already. So with respect to a greater universal class than our particular universe, every living thing may 'win' somewhere. But note that this means 50% 'good' to 50% 'bad' still exists taking all universese collectively.

To strive for no-suffering is an impossibility.
The potential for suffering is a critical necessity to facilitate survival of the individual.
The aim is to manage inevitable sufferings optimally in accordance to one's circumstances. This practice is advocated by Buddhism and its Four Noble Truths.

Unfortunately, your hope for our own particular Universe to reach an ideal of 100% (or some approach to it) is impossible because it leads to a condition where consciousness no longer needs to exist biologically where we can get everything we want for wanting it (the ultimate ideal 'good' for EACH being's perspective of the word). Although I can explain this more, if you are a fan of a series called, "The Good Place", its last episodes of the whole seires closed on the recognition that a 'paradise' could not exist with beings to be ideally happy for ever because such beings would get absurdly bored for succeeding at everything. The recognition that eternal death of even those IN eternal paradise, was deemed to be the next best thing.

Nope, I have NEVER hope for our own particular Universe to reach an ideal 100% favorable condition for humanity.

I kept stating the ideal and objective absolute moral law [impossible to achieve in practice] is only to be used a guide only to catalyze continual improvement from whatever is one's current status. Note 'GUIDE ONLY' and not to be enforced at all.

Btw, are you familiar with Problem Solving Techniques.
The first step is to identify the problem and define it precisely.
Next you need to plan which include establishing some sort of objective to strive for within a control feedback system.

Generally one can change the objective or target, like changing temperature setting in a themostat.

But with Morality, it is not effective to have objectives that are changeable, i.e. moving goalpost.
As such, within Morality one must start with one ultimate fixed goal post to strive for while allowing for sub-goals to change.

• Example, objective moral laws like 'slavery is morally wrong' and 'killing another human' is moral wrong must be kept as fixed goalposts to guide human behavior even in practice this is an impossible goal to achieve.

Thus it is critical we do not take out attention from these fixed goal posts [justified by reason and human nature] but in practice humanity must continually strive to be as close as possible to such ideal and impossible to achieve goals.
Such an approach will drive continuous improvements.

Moving goal posts [i.e. relative moral laws] will not have something fixed to drive continuous improvements.

I also think that the original Adam and Eve story of the Judeau-Christian tradition was expressing how discovering the Secrets of the Gods (represented by eating of the Tree of Wisdom) cursed humanity to precisely the 'gods' own unfortunate curse: knowing that you NEED 'death' in order to provide meaning to life.

We cannot have ''good" without "evil" in a type of conservation-of-energy way. For ANYTHING to be 'good' something 'bad' is needed to contrast it to provide meaning. Therefore, your belief in some absolute 'good' is not valid for all. All we can do is to tentatively assign value as we do with the secular laws we make. THAT is 'politics'.

Note my belief is 'absolute good' as justified from empirical evidence is essential and critical for an efficient problem solving technique to work, i.e. in this case morality and against evilness with humanity.

You are still not getting the point, the Philosophy of Morality is independent from the Philosophy of Politics.
The Philosophy of Morality entails the development of the Moral Faculty within the brain of all humans. This mean increasing the potential moral quotient [MQ] of the average and all human beings.
As I had mentioned, there are already hidden clues and evidence of this unfolding and increased in MQ [albeit very slowly till now] had already happened within the history and evolution of mankind.

Because this is something very new to the majority, you keep going back to the status quo.
Viewing Morality from my perspective is like opening a pandora-box with a very new and novel vista to the Philosophy of Morality and Ethics.

• Here is an analogy;
  Say you are parent to a few children.
  If you want to be an efficient parent to your children's education, it is not efficient to allow them to 'play politics' with their education competence, i.e. allowing them to choose their own goals in their exam scores.
  An efficient parent will encourage [with no obvious stress and pressure] their children to set ideal goals of achieving 100% in an objective test or even a standard of 150% in any written test.
  The children must not be forced but taught that such objective goals are merely a guide and that such ideals may not be achieved in practice.
  
  The point is children who set ideal goals as guide has the possibility of achieving the ideal or as near as possible to the idea that children who set goals according to their feelings.
  Example, a child may say, I think the best I can do is scoring 80%. In this case, even the child has achieved his ideal of 80% it is only 80/100.
  Whereas a person who set his goal at 100% has the possibility of scoring 90/100.

The above analogy can be transposed to humanity where the individuals are educated to adopt [without enforcement and stress] the highest objective moral laws as a GUIDE.
In this case, there is efficiency in ensuring the average moral compass of humanity is on the increasing trend.

Compare the adopting of ideal moral laws against one that is subject to consequential and utilitarian principles which is exposed to the individual subjective opinions.
In this case, the moral standard could be 'slavery is not morally wrong, thus acceptable' or 'killing another human being is not wrong, thus acceptable based on one's subjective views'. This flexible moral standard will definitely not promote continuous improvements.

Veritas,

I think you are confusing terms about what "absolute" means, and to the conventions of what "politics" are.

When you assert an ideal goal of ethics you think belongs to all people, for instance, THAT itself is not universally agreed to in practice and so cannot be assured is an absolute outside of a subjective interpretation. That is why I mentioned the extension of morality to all living things for your argument. If you presume something agreed to by ALL humans in some intrinsic way, you require proving that EACH person shares the goal in mind. But such value of the subjective mind to define what is or is not 'good' reduces to "what 'good' means to ME" per each person's advantage.

We actually do not HAVE an absolute shared meaning to this because biology only assigns the values in 'windows of development'. For instance, we each assign value according to an initial generic hardwired program that has an OPEN variable function that seeks the environment to fill in some 'constant' during these devolopment windows. The value actually comes from the environment arbitrarily to the whims of that environment. This is because the chemistry of the whatever evolves only evolves if it can pass on the genetics of the biological being if it can procreate successfully, not meaning that the success itself is or is not 'good' in some universal sense.

This is true of Artificial Intelligence hardware that is not designed to define some 'absolute' constant of behavior but a more GENERIC means to seek the envrionment to some 'goal' about survival for survival's sake alone. That is, for the A.I. to successfully learn, it has a hardwired design that only generically deals with OPEN variables, not fixed or CLOSED ones. The reason why normal computation methods do not effectively permit a machine to learn is because most errantly presumed that you can assign a goal by the intended FIXED constants uniquely assigned by the programmer's software to obey strictly without a choice to disobey. That lack of freedom by conventional hardware designs makes the 'rules of behavior' absolute and why it fails to develop sincere self-learning mechanisms.

Biology was NOT 'designed' by a thinking apriori being unless one thinks there is some Supreme Being at the helm. As such, biology HAS to evolve without any other goal but to 'success' regardless of HOW it can acheive this goal.

For example, many 'genetic' illnesses are due to some accidental environmental factor that takes in an assignment value that merely doesn't 'FIT' to the present environment's means to assure it can succeed. The diseases that affect one's capacity to 'feel pain', for instance are often due to this kind of problem. If the 'window devolpmental period' closes upon assigning no meaning to 'pain' of one's senses, or, as in some cases, gets assigned a 'pleasure' for something that destroys the organism, this creates diseases such as "leprocy". In itself, this is not an 'absolute disease'. It just assigns a constant to the security system of the biological mechanism that the sensation that normally becomes an alert to the brain to send white blood cells to heal some point where the alert comes from to police that neigborhood for potential problems.

This lack of an appropriately effect constant could have come from some coincidence of an environment during the 'window' phase that had no present elements of sensation linking the area of the brain that normally is connected to the sensors by most beings at that phase. As such, it gets no assignment (or counter assignment) that ignores the validity of the environmental threat.

This is an example of HOW we learn what is or is not 'good' internally. If whatever value that gets assigned during these windows of development do not get assigned or is assigned in defiance of success to the relative environment, that being risks the likelihood of being able to pass on their genes and so gets weaned out regardless of what may or may not have been absolutely beneificial of other beings in the environment. Note how the lack of success of one biological being FAVORS some other being. For the being that gets sick for having leprocy, this is just a relative advantage FOR other living things to take advantage of in THIER fitness.

Thus, there is no such thing as universal 'moral' values even scientifically because that is just a complex set of biological phenomena that has to be based on the simpler concept of SENSATIONS itself.


As to asserting that morality is distinct from politics, you need to look at what 'politics' is itself. "Politics" is just the polite means of negotiating what should or should not be agreed to in common with all members in power in order to then follow up by enforcing without respect to what is or is not 'absolute'. The effective power to set up these laws and enforce them are all that politics is about. Given these are about what 'should', or 'ought to be aimed for' as per your own belief that it is an APPROACH to some ideal, this IS what 'morality' is. There is no such thing as "absolute morals" because of the point about how we learn value subjectively from the very same primary concept of pain and pleasure that are just assigned environmental factors RELATIVE to the environment one is in during those development periods. Pain and pleasure are the initiating factors that subjectly make one interpret what is 'good' versus 'not good'.

As such, if you think that 'slavery' is primally an unwelcomed goal, then you have to respect even one's coincidental assignments of behavior that makes those with relatively 'bad' assignments rightfully assert themselves 'slaves' if they can't be accepted for their own innate sense of 'good' that goes contrary to others in its environment. For all animals, this is selfishly assigned to favor the independent being without concern for the welfare of others in any primary way. We aren't born to favor life; we EVOLVE to favor it for ourselves without choice after the fact. So to be 'universal' you need to respect the OPEN-ended type of laws that are RELATIVE for them being variable.

You are presuming a 'constitional' ideal versus a 'legislative' one with respect to ideals. Would you prefer a government that ONLY has a fixed set of constitutional laws (absolutes) that favor some SPECIAL subset of people rather than the legislative flexibility (relatives) that permit adjustment where changes or mistakes are inevitable. Constitutional laws that are more OPEN-ended, are more fair for their broader appeal. A constitutional law that dictates some 'rule about slavery' is a religious one because it has in mind some SPECIAL meaning in mind rather that a shared one. Note that for a 'slave' to exist requires a 'slave owner'. And slave owners rely most effectilvely where they get to set the constitution's definitions of 'slavery'. Being that a 'constitution' (versus legislation) IS a fixed concept, it still enslaves people by virtue of its universal application.

"Slavery" is thus a subjective perspective that cannot be ideally MEAN anything universal. What you CAN suggest is for some constitution that permits OPEN-ended rights to things like 'free speech', for instance, and leave the specific occurences of violations that VARY by perspective to the legislative part that can FIX laws in temporary increments that get addressed in time to deal with conflicts.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 2:30 pm Veritas,

I think you are confusing terms about what "absolute" means, and to the conventions of what "politics" are.

Nope.
I believe the Philosophy of Morality and Ethics and Philosophy of Politics are two very distinct function of human activities.

What is contended as secular objective absolute moral laws within the Philosophy of Morality [note Pure, theory and principles] has to be verified and justified from empirical evidence with the highest level of critical thinking. Ethics is the Applied aspect.

Re 'absolute' note there are two meanings to it, i.e.

• 1. absolutely-absolute with reference to God and
  2. relative-absolute, the ultimate that has human and empirical based elements.

When you assert an ideal goal of ethics you think belongs to all people, for instance, THAT itself is not universally agreed to in practice and so cannot be assured is an absolute outside of a subjective interpretation. That is why I mentioned the extension of morality to all living things for your argument. If you presume something agreed to by ALL humans in some intrinsic way, you require proving that EACH person shares the goal in mind. But such value of the subjective mind to define what is or is not 'good' reduces to "what 'good' means to ME" per each person's advantage.

Note in my case, Morality is the PURE aspect while Ethics is the Applied Perspective.
So whatever ideal and absolute these are with reference to Morality and not to Ethics.

As I had stated, whatever is established as a secular objective absolute moral law, it must be justified from empirical evidence to the extent it cannot be denied via the highest level of reason.
The next stage it to test the the validity of this secular objective absolute moral law by asking every normal human being on Earth.
For example, "no sane person would want to be killed"
I agree there are no such test done with every normal sane person yet.
However based on common sense, starting from yourself, extending out, the likely answer would be true, "no sane person would want to be killed."
Anyone who want be killed would be likely be certified as mentally ill by qualified psychologists and psychiatrists.
Since we have the internet and modern communication system, I am optimistic a survey can be done to 80% of humans on earth in the near future and 100% later. This is a matter of confirming the expected fact.

We actually do not HAVE an absolute shared meaning to this because biology only assigns the values in 'windows of development'. For instance, we each assign value according to an initial generic hardwired program that has an OPEN variable function that seeks the environment to fill in some 'constant' during these devolopment windows. The value actually comes from the environment arbitrarily to the whims of that environment. This is because the chemistry of the whatever evolves only evolves if it can pass on the genetics of the biological being if it can procreate successfully, not meaning that the success itself is or is not 'good' in some universal sense.

Note sure how can you dispute 'all normal person must breathe in oxygen' which is a secular absolute principle and can be converted into a moral law.
It is the same with 'no sane person would want to be killed' thus translated to the moral law 'no human shall kill another human' as a secular absolute moral law.
Since this is not an absolutely-absolute moral law from God, the secular absolute moral law can be changed if the evidence proved otherwise which is not likely.
But in the meantime, it could be used as an efficient guide to improve on human behaviors.

This is true of Artificial Intelligence hardware that is not designed to define some 'absolute' constant of behavior but a more GENERIC means to seek the envrionment to some 'goal' about survival for survival's sake alone. That is, for the A.I. to successfully learn, it has a hardwired design that only generically deals with OPEN variables, not fixed or CLOSED ones. The reason why normal computation methods do not effectively permit a machine to learn is because most errantly presumed that you can assign a goal by the intended FIXED constants uniquely assigned by the programmer's software to obey strictly without a choice to disobey. That lack of freedom by conventional hardware designs makes the 'rules of behavior' absolute and why it fails to develop sincere self-learning mechanisms.

This is irrelevant as Morality do not apply to AI.

Biology was NOT 'designed' by a thinking apriori being unless one thinks there is some Supreme Being at the helm. As such, biology HAS to evolve without any other goal but to 'success' regardless of HOW it can acheive this goal.

Point is we can gather empirical evidence from biology and inferred various principles and also secular objective absolute moral laws as GUIDES. Note the term 'GUIDE' only which is critical in this discussion.

Thus, there is no such thing as universal 'moral' values even scientifically because that is just a complex set of biological phenomena that has to be based on the simpler concept of SENSATIONS itself.

We are not conflating Morality & Ethics with Science.
We are using scientific facts and other evidence to infer and convert them to a secular objective absolute moral laws as a guide, which is better than no guide.

As to asserting that morality is distinct from politics, you need to look at what 'politics' is itself. "Politics" is just the polite means of negotiating what should or should not be agreed to in common with all members in power in order to then follow up by enforcing without respect to what is or is not 'absolute'. The effective power to set up these laws and enforce them are all that politics is about. Given these are about what 'should', or 'ought to be aimed for' as per your own belief that it is an APPROACH to some ideal, this IS what 'morality' is. There is no such thing as "absolute morals" because of the point about how we learn value subjectively from the very same primary concept of pain and pleasure that are just assigned environmental factors RELATIVE to the environment one is in during those development periods. Pain and pleasure are the initiating factors that subjectly make one interpret what is 'good' versus 'not good'.

As argued we cannot conflate Morality and Ethics with Politics.
In a way, these are represented by distinct neural functions in the brain.
As I had mentioned, Morality involves the personal development of the Moral Function in the brain. This is independent of Politics, Science, and other fields of knowledge.

As such, if you think that 'slavery' is primally an unwelcomed goal, then you have to respect even one's coincidental assignments of behavior that makes those with relatively 'bad' assignments rightfully assert themselves 'slaves' if they can't be accepted for their own innate sense of 'good' that goes contrary to others in its environment. For all animals, this is selfishly assigned to favor the independent being without concern for the welfare of others in any primary way. We aren't born to favor life; we EVOLVE to favor it for ourselves without choice after the fact. So to be 'universal' you need to respect the OPEN-ended type of laws that are RELATIVE for them being variable.

I had argued, no sane person would want to be enslaved as in chattel slavery.
Thus the inferred secular objective absolute moral law is "no human shall be enslaved by another human re chattel slavery." This is universalized and used as a guide.

Alternatively are you suggesting in a universal manner, "humans can be enslaved by another human being re chattel slavery" as a Guide Only.
If the above is your preference, it would not an efficient guide, i.e. it is imply a lackadaisical attitude to human nature and progress of humanity.

You are presuming a 'constitional' ideal versus a 'legislative' one with respect to ideals. Would you prefer a government that ONLY has a fixed set of constitutional laws (absolutes) that favor some SPECIAL subset of people rather than the legislative flexibility (relatives) that permit adjustment where changes or mistakes are inevitable. Constitutional laws that are more OPEN-ended, are more fair for their broader appeal. A constitutional law that dictates some 'rule about slavery' is a religious one because it has in mind some SPECIAL meaning in mind rather that a shared one. Note that for a 'slave' to exist requires a 'slave owner'. And slave owners rely most effectilvely where they get to set the constitution's definitions of 'slavery'. Being that a 'constitution' (versus legislation) IS a fixed concept, it still enslaves people by virtue of its universal application.

Within my proposed Framework of Morality and Ethics, the purpose is to facilitate efficiency in terms of Morality and Ethics via personal self-development till the point secular political laws will be obsolete by itself because all the individuals are persons with the highest Moral Quotient [MQ].
This is a state when no human will ever kill another humans for whatever the reason, as such laws on murder and killings will not be referred to at all.
Even passion killing would be eliminated or minimized.
This is an ideal situation, but it is a situation to strive for.

It is not a question of getting rid of political legislatures but the fact is there will be point there is no need for such political legislatures. It these political legislatures are kept, it is only because there are a minority of .01% who not have higher MQ.

"Slavery" is thus a subjective perspective that cannot be ideally MEAN anything universal.
What you CAN suggest is for some constitution that permits OPEN-ended rights to things like 'free speech', for instance, and leave the specific occurences of violations that VARY by perspective to the legislative part that can FIX laws in temporary increments that get addressed in time to deal with conflicts.

It is a matter of definition.
Thus in the Morality and Ethics Framework, the precise definitions must be established for whatever secular objective absolute moral laws that are instituted.

What you are suggesting is already happening at present in some ways.
The UN UHDR established the secular absolute moral law, whilst the various nations vary it with their legislatures. This applies to "killing" and "slavery".
What the UN has not done is to provide justifications for the absolute moral laws but rather just take them for granted.
This UN approach is a sort of band-aid approach to morality without an efficient Framework and System of Morality and Ethics in place. Nevertheless it has produced some semblance of results.

What I proposed will focus and target the self-development of Morality and Ethics within the individual brain/mind to develop the inherent Moral Function within the brain.
How? that is a long story.
The objective is to increase the Moral Quotient [MQ] of the average individual 100 folds and more from present & existing average MQ.
This will be leveraged on the secular objective absolute moral laws.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 9:22 am

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 2:30 pm Veritas,

I think you are confusing terms about what "absolute" means, and to the conventions of what "politics" are.

Nope.
I believe the Philosophy of Morality and Ethics and Philosophy of Politics are two very distinct function of human activities.

What is contended as secular objective absolute moral laws within the Philosophy of Morality [note Pure, theory and principles] has to be verified and justified from empirical evidence with the highest level of critical thinking. Ethics is the Applied aspect.

Re 'absolute' note there are two meanings to it, i.e.

• 1. absolutely-absolute with reference to God and
  2. relative-absolute, the ultimate that has human and empirical based elements.

I disagree on your belief that Ethics/Morality to be distinctly separate from Politics but understand that you believe that an absolute exists regardless of our potential to successfully determine this.

I understand you can find rational meaning in differentiating "absolute absolutes" and "relative absolutes". I happen to recognize this is useful in logic applications. But this has to do with your confidence THAT an absolute absolute is something that you can actually ever know exists. Such an absolute absolute would be so perfectly unique that it cannot be penetrated for actual discovery or knowledge or it would turn into a relative absolute for having a SHARED property which undoes its meaning for being perfectly absolute. This is like attempting to determine if God was 'good' in religious debates. If 'God' was a being that has the property of 'goodness', then it doesn't own its virtue. Rather, it is just begged that what God is, is 'good'. The word, "God" actually is a literal ASSIGNED term to beg that what is 'good' is identical to God.

Now transfer the meaning of the religious God to "Nature". Nature then could not be itself 'good' without contrasting it to whatever is 'not good'. That is, could you HAVE anything 'good' without its contrast 'evil'? In fact, it would be more rational to presume Nature (or God) as 'evil' if such an absolute existed apriori to it because it would at least permit a "relative" idea of 'good' to evolve from it in distinct defiance against that normal state.

For comparison using other binary word pairs, think how life only means something in contrast to death. But only death can be apriori just as we come from an eternity of "not being alive" (a prior etnernity of 'death' before we are born).

When you assert an ideal goal of ethics you think belongs to all people, for instance, THAT itself is not universally agreed to in practice and so cannot be assured is an absolute outside of a subjective interpretation. That is why I mentioned the extension of morality to all living things for your argument. If you presume something agreed to by ALL humans in some intrinsic way, you require proving that EACH person shares the goal in mind. But such value of the subjective mind to define what is or is not 'good' reduces to "what 'good' means to ME" per each person's advantage.

Note in my case, Morality is the PURE aspect while Ethics is the Applied Perspective.
So whatever ideal and absolute these are with reference to Morality and not to Ethics.

As I had stated, whatever is established as a secular objective absolute moral law, it must be justified from empirical evidence to the extent it cannot be denied via the highest level of reason.
The next stage it to test the the validity of this secular objective absolute moral law by asking every normal human being on Earth.
For example, "no sane person would want to be killed"
I agree there are no such test done with every normal sane* person yet.
However based on common sense, starting from yourself, extending out, the likely answer would be true, "no sane person would want to be killed."
Anyone who want be killed would be likely be certified as mentally ill by qualified psychologists and psychiatrists.
Since we have the internet and modern communication system, I am optimistic a survey can be done to 80% of humans on earth in the near future and 100% later. This is a matter of confirming the expected fact.

I find it odd that many separate the term "ethics" completely distinct from "morality" without recognizing that ethics is just the collection of morals in some system of discourse. What you believe in is a set of morals of an Absolute Ethics relative to Totality or the Universe with respect to humanity. Your distinction is only about 'relative' versus 'absolute' morals to which you only define the 'relative' means as "Ethics".

Whatever your preference of defining the distinction for your own practical purposes, you appear to be over-confident in some absolute ideals that lack the very empirical justification you seem to agree is lacking. It means you are being religiously biased to some belief in a Superior Ethic for humanity because you lack any means to justify why you think this is so without merely some blind faith that it exists regardless of proof.

I see that you are interpreting the "realism" I'm expressing as "negative" in what follows...
[* My emphasis of your word "sane" bolded and underlined at the asterisk is to give notice that another bias is creeping in. I may address this in what follows.]

We actually do not HAVE an absolute shared meaning to this because biology only assigns the values in 'windows of development'. For instance, we each assign value according to an initial generic hardwired program that has an OPEN variable function that seeks the environment to fill in some 'constant' during these devolopment windows. The value actually comes from the environment arbitrarily to the whims of that environment. This is because the chemistry of the whatever evolves only evolves if it can pass on the genetics of the biological being if it can procreate successfully, not meaning that the success itself is or is not 'good' in some universal sense.

Note sure how can you dispute 'all normal person must breathe in oxygen' which is a secular absolute principle and can be converted into a moral law.
It is the same with 'no sane person would want to be killed' thus translated to the moral law 'no human shall kill another human' as a secular absolute moral law.
Since this is not an absolutely-absolute moral law from God, the secular absolute moral law can be changed if the evidence proved otherwise which is not likely.
But in the meantime, it could be used as an efficient guide to improve on human behaviors.

I understand the apparent disconnect. But I assure you that it is only an apparent one. Remember, I'm athiest. So I don't hold any belief that out complex state of existence means anything distinct from rocks or bacteria with respect to Nature. Only those who interpret Nature as being a subset of religious form of a god, could your own belief be rationalized.

I cannot build a whole logical argument in a simple response to your thread without a digression even more in required detail and depth than your own thesis left unsaid here. What I hear you saying is that you cannot seem to connect how something relatively featureless could derive the complexity of something as detailed as a moral rule. But this assumes the rule itself is not an artifact of the complexity of biology or chemistry in a similar philosophical concern about the dualism of mind and body with respect to consciousness. Note that the moral equivalent is "conscience" that is just an intentional separated spelling of "consciousness" etymologically. What you likely believe is that some form of 'dualism' exists that relates to the origin of the term, "conscience".

[I'll separate this response in another post for fear of losing everything I wrote so far.]

This is true of Artificial Intelligence hardware that is not designed to define some 'absolute' constant of behavior but a more GENERIC means to seek the envrionment to some 'goal' about survival for survival's sake alone. That is, for the A.I. to successfully learn, it has a hardwired design that only generically deals with OPEN variables, not fixed or CLOSED ones. The reason why normal computation methods do not effectively permit a machine to learn is because most errantly presumed that you can assign a goal by the intended FIXED constants uniquely assigned by the programmer's software to obey strictly without a choice to disobey. That lack of freedom by conventional hardware designs makes the 'rules of behavior' absolute and why it fails to develop sincere self-learning mechanisms.

This is irrelevant as Morality do not apply to AI.

And this just proves to me that you are likely being religious about your thinking. If we cannot literally recreate the potential of humanity using precisely the very logic and chemistry we are made up of IN PRINCIPLE, you would be assuming a distinct duality of moral behavior and some presumed essense of morality you believe exists distinct from human judgement. This conflicts with your claim that you think we still require empirical means to determine the truth.

Am I correct in assuming that you are religious? If not, I beg you reconsider your logic. If you think that your belief is somehow superior to mine who lacks such belief in a Superior Moral essence, how do you suppose that your ideal could ever be realized other than to rid the world of those like me? ...

...remeber your use of sanity testing as some means to determine who is or is not 'normal' with respect to moral beliefs? That you think you can reduce what you guess as 80% of those already conforming to some universal ethics/moral-rules, tells me that you would simply demonize those who disagree by finding them "insane" by some standard. How can this be realized without some POLITICAL intervention? AND, ....if you cannot remove this 20% guess, however you came about this percentage by enforcement in negotiated lawmaking through LEGISLATION (versus CONSTITIONAL force), what means could you assure this "Moral Quotient" belief has any support without the force that would inevitably enslave the dissidents you assure must be insane?

Biology was NOT 'designed' by a thinking apriori being unless one thinks there is some Supreme Being at the helm. As such, biology HAS to evolve without any other goal but to 'success' regardless of HOW it can acheive this goal.

Point is we can gather empirical evidence from biology and inferred various principles and also secular objective absolute moral laws as GUIDES. Note the term 'GUIDE' only which is critical in this discussion.

Thus, there is no such thing as universal 'moral' values even scientifically because that is just a complex set of biological phenomena that has to be based on the simpler concept of SENSATIONS itself.

We are not conflating Morality & Ethics with Science.
We are using scientific facts and other evidence to infer and convert them to a secular objective absolute moral laws as a guide, which is better than no guide.

You are begging this without justification. You keep imposing upon this argument that there exists a potential "secular objective absolute moral law(s)" without justifying how you know this apriori. You are definitely transferring your own sensation of 'good' will as though it is shared universally without recognizing that your own 'sense' of this is merely a function of the biological evolution and derived by those "windows of devolopment" factors I introduced to you. We'd need a digression to express how the simple can become complex. But I'd first need to determine your belief status regarding religion or this effort would be undermined at the get-go.

[By the way, in case I forget, I see that on television today here in North America, a show called, "The Dr. Oz Show" has an episode called, "The Underground Group Fighting Sex Slavery in America". The group's leader is non-other-than Tony Robins, someone I find a fraud from his selling of how to succeed by proving how he succeeded by selling his very scheme on 'how to succeed'. There is a false flag conspiracy theory that there are "sex slaves" everywhere in America with super-villianous like conspirators kidknapping people in some crime syndicate that this group is intending to expose by playing some deceptive scheme themselves in order to expose.....a MEANS-to-ends type of thinking that I noticed you mention above and to which I'll be responding to later. This fear-mongering, which I believe is likely just another business scheme of Robins' and other right-wing extremist Evangelical-thinkers, promotes some of the threats themselves to which impose political influence but also think in terms of absolutes. So I may mention this later as I finish catching up on it as a write here.]

As to asserting that morality is distinct from politics, you need to look at what 'politics' is itself. "Politics" is just the polite means of negotiating what should or should not be agreed to in common with all members in power in order to then follow up by enforcing without respect to what is or is not 'absolute'. The effective power to set up these laws and enforce them are all that politics is about. Given these are about what 'should', or 'ought to be aimed for' as per your own belief that it is an APPROACH to some ideal, this IS what 'morality' is. There is no such thing as "absolute morals" because of the point about how we learn value subjectively from the very same primary concept of pain and pleasure that are just assigned environmental factors RELATIVE to the environment one is in during those development periods. Pain and pleasure are the initiating factors that subjectly make one interpret what is 'good' versus 'not good'.

As argued we cannot conflate Morality and Ethics with Politics.
In a way, these are represented by distinct neural functions in the brain.
As I had mentioned, Morality involves the personal development of the Moral Function in the brain. This is independent of Politics, Science, and other fields of knowledge.

Your newly created term, "Moral Function (in the brain)" is just the prior term, "conscience", as I just mentioned in my last post above. We may need a digression to see if I could possibly spell out your apparent support of a dualistic idea of mind and body that I think you hold. [And hopefully 'dispell' by my counterposition to that.]

[I had more here but lost it from being timed out again by a likely few minutes or even seconds. This is annoying and burdensome to have to rewrite what I put a lot of good effort into. I need a temporary break as my neck is too sore at the moment. I'll finish the last part of my response in one more post.]

Veritas Aequitas wrote:

As such, if you think that 'slavery' is primally an unwelcomed goal, then you have to respect even one's coincidental assignments of behavior that makes those with relatively 'bad' assignments rightfully assert themselves 'slaves' if they can't be accepted for their own innate sense of 'good' that goes contrary to others in its environment. For all animals, this is selfishly assigned to favor the independent being without concern for the welfare of others in any primary way. We aren't born to favor life; we EVOLVE to favor it for ourselves without choice after the fact. So to be 'universal' you need to respect the OPEN-ended type of laws that are RELATIVE for them being variable.

I had argued, no sane person would want to be enslaved as in chattel slavery.
Thus the inferred secular objective absolute moral law is "no human shall be enslaved by another human re chattel slavery." This is universalized and used as a guide.

Alternatively are you suggesting in a universal manner, "humans can be enslaved by another human being re chattel slavery" as a Guide Only.
If the above is your preference, it would not an efficient guide, i.e. it is imply a lackadaisical attitude to human nature and progress of humanity.

I am watching my PVR recording of that Dr Oz show in spurts where he just reflected to and of Anthony (Tony) Robins' view that, "....We have more slavery today than at any time in human history! (?)" This points out an example problem of yours here by how one can treat a "realist's" position as "pessimistic" when one counters to a "posited" view of extremes in black-or-white binary alternatives. The purpose of their declared 'fight' against sex slavery, for instance, requires presenting a strong "pessimistic" reality that they will then inevitably use to justify some "positive" reason to NOT DOUBT by an intentional misrepresetation of what is 'empirically' evident about how extreme and pervasive this supposed conspiracy of sex slavery is all around America today. They would differ to your kind of argument by flipping your 80% 'good people' into 80% 'evil people' everywhere.

You presume that I suggest an opposite negative position if I don't agree to your own that is not justified. And while you may not be in sync with Tony Robin's exploiting scheme on this program not unnoticed on this Dr Oz himself by his record of infomercial quackery tactics, it points out the risk involved when you assert such "Guides" you believe constitute something universal that you believe is shared: the exploitation of free interpretation of carelessly written universal declarations. I argued with you why it is more important that 'constitutional' documents, like the U.N. declaration, NOT to present valued goals that aren't about the means to NEGOTIATE terms alone. When an asserted declaration uses language that presumes universal absolutes, it biases that constitution to a subset of people based upon religious movitations rather than to open an avenue for free and open conventions.

All that a 'constitution' can be sure to be universal when inviting members to it is to a declaration of things like FREE SPEECH with the added elimination of biased arguments to be accepted that are religiously biased (like the separation of Church and State for the U.S. First Amendment to their Constitution.) Even THAT gets abused and in action is partly undone by how other laws that conflict with this one get pushed into their Constitution later. The means to presume some "end to slavery", for instance, if mentioned at all, PRESUMES there IS "slavery" and makes those who believe they KNOW this for being the ones setting up this Constitution, authoritarians who undermine the means to NEGOTIATE what is or is not 'moral'.

You have no reason to assume there exists a 'superior' morality without literally presuming you are 'superior' in mind to know how to distinguish this of others authoritatively. You can't excuse some presumption of 'sanity' either without begging you qualify to know this in the same way.

You are presuming a 'constitional' ideal versus a 'legislative' one with respect to ideals. Would you prefer a government that ONLY has a fixed set of constitutional laws (absolutes) that favor some SPECIAL subset of people rather than the legislative flexibility (relatives) that permit adjustment where changes or mistakes are inevitable. Constitutional laws that are more OPEN-ended, are more fair for their broader appeal. A constitutional law that dictates some 'rule about slavery' is a religious one because it has in mind some SPECIAL meaning in mind rather that a shared one. Note that for a 'slave' to exist requires a 'slave owner'. And slave owners rely most effectilvely where they get to set the constitution's definitions of 'slavery'. Being that a 'constitution' (versus legislation) IS a fixed concept, it still enslaves people by virtue of its universal application.

Within my proposed Framework of Morality and Ethics, the purpose is to facilitate efficiency in terms of Morality and Ethics via personal self-development till the point secular political laws will be obsolete by itself because all the individuals are persons with the highest Moral Quotient [MQ].
This is a state when no human will ever kill another humans for whatever the reason, as such laws on murder and killings will not be referred to at all.
Even passion killing would be eliminated or minimized.
This is an ideal situation, but it is a situation to strive for.

It is not a question of getting rid of political legislatures but the fact is there will be point there is no need for such political legislatures. It these political legislatures are kept, it is only because there are a minority of .01% who not have higher MQ.

And here is where I have to point out how history proves we have a problem with such 'anarchy' type beliefs. Two opposing Anarchy philosophy's of the last few centuries has been "Communism" at one extreme and "National Socialism" at the other. Both err on the assumption that such an ideal could even be possible.

Although my original lost response to this spoke on more detail on the problems of Communism and National Socialism to express why you cannot have a society like this, I'll let you ponder on how you can provide a voluntary reality of people biased to ONE specific ideal, be it for ALL GOOD, or ALL EVIL. That is, can you tell me how it is possible that even if you could pop into a magical realm where everyone begins 'good', how could you assure this either NOT reverting back to a world having both good AND evil.... or how meaning to what is 'good' itself could mean anything without 'evil' in perpetuity without laws set to govern the people there?

"Slavery" is thus a subjective perspective that cannot be ideally MEAN anything universal.
What you CAN suggest is for some constitution that permits OPEN-ended rights to things like 'free speech', for instance, and leave the specific occurences of violations that VARY by perspective to the legislative part that can FIX laws in temporary increments that get addressed in time to deal with conflicts.

It is a matter of definition.
Thus in the Morality and Ethics Framework, the precise definitions must be established for whatever secular objective absolute moral laws that are instituted.

What you are suggesting is already happening at present in some ways.
The UN UHDR established the secular absolute moral law, whilst the various nations vary it with their legislatures. This applies to "killing" and "slavery".
What the UN has not done is to provide justifications for the absolute moral laws but rather just take them for granted.
This UN approach is a sort of band-aid approach to morality without an efficient Framework and System of Morality and Ethics in place. Nevertheless it has produced some semblance of results.

What I proposed will focus and target the self-development of Morality and Ethics within the individual brain/mind to develop the inherent Moral Function within the brain.
How? that is a long story.
The objective is to increase the Moral Quotient [MQ] of the average individual 100 folds and more from present & existing average MQ.
This will be leveraged on the secular objective absolute moral laws.

You just redefined the traditional "conscience" as your "Moral Function" in some proprietary way. You clearly have a dualist position that needs to be addressed. How can you have a distinct "absolute morale" that is apriori existing before humanity's own existence without assuming some object of application of these morals to apply to that is 'humane'? That is, how can a humane reality be true without some prior humanity to pre-exist the rule?

Your "Moral Quotient" {MQ] is as controversial as "Intelligence Quotient" [IQ] and the relatively recent "Emotional Quotient" [EQ] concepts. These are only themselves political (not necessarily just formal governments but includes private educational or business organizations.) Note that 'government' is just a different word for "management system" but is what is owned by ALL PEOPLE versus some select subset of them, like a business, one's private home, or some non-profit entity. The idea of testing for certain aptitudes does not mean the actual meaning of Morality, Intellligence, nor Emotions, have some universal agreement that precedes negotiation.

Also, to assume genetic faults for those who fail these tests is itself biased to presume one's practical efficacy suffices to define one as more supreme or not to those classification schemes. One who is may fail a math aptitude based upon statistical averages, does not mean they cannot both be 'good' at math or 'practically useful' for society. If such aptitudes were set up apriori, those like Einstein would have certainly failed because he would have been locked up as 'insane' for presuming his ideas in his head PRIOR to experments that demonstrated his 'odd' way of thinking had been correct about reality later on.

[Whew!! Finished. I hope this argument is appreciated and I will be patient to await a likely productive response from you on this. Later.]

P.S. Here is a link to that show I referenced: Underground Group Fighting Slavery in America

It might help to look at that and ask yourself if that is or is not itself a con? I think it is and it is itself worth its own distinct thread. But given "slavery" is your example idea of a moral absolute, it is worth looking at given they are using a sample of your own understood definition of slavery. I'll leave this up to you to choose to discuss in further context. If you agree with me about the flaws in that group's approach or their misrepresentation of the threat, let's try to discern WHY you think your proposal differs from their tactics or how your intentional well-meaningful idea could be prevented from being abused this way.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 12:32 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 9:22 am

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 2:30 pm Veritas,

I think you are confusing terms about what "absolute" means, and to the conventions of what "politics" are.

Nope.
I believe the Philosophy of Morality and Ethics and Philosophy of Politics are two very distinct function of human activities.

What is contended as secular objective absolute moral laws within the Philosophy of Morality [note Pure, theory and principles] has to be verified and justified from empirical evidence with the highest level of critical thinking. Ethics is the Applied aspect.

Re 'absolute' note there are two meanings to it, i.e.

• 1. absolutely-absolute with reference to God and
  2. relative-absolute, the ultimate that has human and empirical based elements.

I disagree on your belief that Ethics/Morality to be distinctly separate from Politics but understand that you believe that an absolute exists regardless of our potential to successfully determine this.

That Morality/Ethics is distinctly separate from Politics is like Science itself is separate from the Arts, Politics, Mathematics, Engineering, IT and other fields of Pure or Applied knowledge.
Engineering and IT use theories and knowledge from Science, but they are not Science per-se.
Political legislature do involve what is good and bad human behavior but Politics itself cannot be Morality & Ethics by definition.

I understand you can find rational meaning in differentiating "absolute absolutes" and "relative absolutes". I happen to recognize this is useful in logic applications. But this has to do with your confidence THAT an absolute absolute is something that you can actually ever know exists.
Such an absolute absolute would be so perfectly unique that it cannot be penetrated for actual discovery or knowledge or it would turn into a relative absolute for having a SHARED property which undoes its meaning for being perfectly absolute. This is like attempting to determine if God was 'good' in religious debates. If 'God' was a being that has the property of 'goodness', then it doesn't own its virtue. Rather, it is just begged that what God is, is 'good'. The word, "God" actually is a literal ASSIGNED term to beg that what is 'good' is identical to God.

I am not claiming secular absolute moral laws to be absolutely-absolute. That is the claim of the theists. Thus the idea of God is not the issue.
I am claiming secular absolute moral laws are relatively absolute as justified from empirical evidence and philosophical critical thinking and rationalization.

Now transfer the meaning of the religious God to "Nature". Nature then could not be itself 'good' without contrasting it to whatever is 'not good'. That is, could you HAVE anything 'good' without its contrast 'evil'? In fact, it would be more rational to presume Nature (or God) as 'evil' if such an absolute existed apriori to it because it would at least permit a "relative" idea of 'good' to evolve from it in distinct defiance against that normal state.

As I had stated the idea of God is irrelevant in this case.
The secular absolute moral laws is imperative in itself and self-explanatory because otherwise the human species will go extinct, as in the case 'no human shall kill another human' which is most evil.

For comparison using other binary word pairs, think how life only means something in contrast to death. But only death can be apriori just as we come from an eternity of "not being alive" (a prior etnernity of 'death' before we are born).

Note no sane human want to die prematurely except till the inevitable.

Note in my case, Morality is the PURE aspect while Ethics is the Applied Perspective.
So whatever ideal and absolute these are with reference to Morality and not to Ethics.

As I had stated, whatever is established as a secular objective absolute moral law, it must be justified from empirical evidence to the extent it cannot be denied via the highest level of reason.
The next stage it to test the the validity of this secular objective absolute moral law by asking every normal human being on Earth.
For example, "no sane person would want to be killed"
I agree there are no such test done with every normal sane* person yet.
However based on common sense, starting from yourself, extending out, the likely answer would be true, "no sane person would want to be killed."
Anyone who want be killed would be likely be certified as mentally ill by qualified psychologists and psychiatrists.
Since we have the internet and modern communication system, I am optimistic a survey can be done to 80% of humans on earth in the near future and 100% later. This is a matter of confirming the expected fact.

I find it odd that many separate the term "ethics" completely distinct from "morality" without recognizing that ethics is just the collection of morals in some system of discourse. What you believe in is a set of morals of an Absolute Ethics relative to Totality or the Universe with respect to humanity. Your distinction is only about 'relative' versus 'absolute' morals to which you only define the 'relative' means as "Ethics".

Whatever your preference of defining the distinction for your own practical purposes, you appear to be over-confident in some absolute ideals that lack the very empirical justification you seem to agree is lacking. It means you are being religiously biased to some belief in a Superior Ethic for humanity because you lack any means to justify why you think this is so without merely some blind faith that it exists regardless of proof.

I see that you are interpreting the "realism" I'm expressing as "negative" in what follows...
[* My emphasis of your word "sane" bolded and underlined at the asterisk is to give notice that another bias is creeping in. I may address this in what follows.]

I presume you understand how Pure and Applied Geometry, Mathematics, work.
'Pure' in the above refers to the establishment of theories, principles, maxims, relative absolute etc., while the Applied refer to what is practiced in the practical.
For example, Pure Geometry defines what is a perfect and absolute circle, while the Applied relied on the Pure absolute circle as a guide to construct circles.

As with the above, I am proposing my approach as Morality [Pure] and Ethics [Applied] in terms of the good and evil behavior of humans.

In this case, 'ethics' is not a collection of morals.
Pure Morality establish the secular absolute objective moral laws [principles] while the Applied Ethics relied on the Pure Moral Laws as guide for the practical.
How can this be problematic?

We actually do not HAVE an absolute shared meaning to this because biology only assigns the values in 'windows of development'. For instance, we each assign value according to an initial generic hardwired program that has an OPEN variable function that seeks the environment to fill in some 'constant' during these devolopment windows. The value actually comes from the environment arbitrarily to the whims of that environment. This is because the chemistry of the whatever evolves only evolves if it can pass on the genetics of the biological being if it can procreate successfully, not meaning that the success itself is or is not 'good' in some universal sense.

Note sure how can you dispute 'all normal person must breathe in oxygen' which is a secular absolute principle and can be converted into a moral law.
It is the same with 'no sane person would want to be killed' thus translated to the moral law 'no human shall kill another human' as a secular absolute moral law.
Since this is not an absolutely-absolute moral law from God, the secular absolute moral law can be changed if the evidence proved otherwise which is not likely.
But in the meantime, it could be used as an efficient guide to improve on human behaviors.

I understand the apparent disconnect. But I assure you that it is only an apparent one. Remember, I'm athiest. So I don't hold any belief that out complex state of existence means anything distinct from rocks or bacteria with respect to Nature. Only those who interpret Nature as being a subset of religious form of a god, could your own belief be rationalized.

I cannot build a whole logical argument in a simple response to your thread without a digression even more in required detail and depth than your own thesis left unsaid here. What I hear you saying is that you cannot seem to connect how something relatively featureless could derive the complexity of something as detailed as a moral rule. But this assumes the rule itself is not an artifact of the complexity of biology or chemistry in a similar philosophical concern about the dualism of mind and body with respect to consciousness. Note that the moral equivalent is "conscience" that is just an intentional separated spelling of "consciousness" etymologically. What you likely believe is that some form of 'dualism' exists that relates to the origin of the term, "conscience".

[I'll separate this response in another post for fear of losing everything I wrote so far.]

I don't understand your response to my point.
My point is we need a secular objective absolute moral law [of Good] as a guide to improve on human behavior towards good.
As such I have demonstrated how we can derive such a secular objective moral law as justified from empirical evidences and polished with philosophical critical thinking.
To implement this we need an efficient Framework and System of Morality and Ethics [FSME] - I have not gone into details on this.

Note sure of your point re Consciousness and Conscience.
However, my proposed efficient FSME will involving the development of the highest optimal 'conscience' for the individuals, i.e. the higher Moral Quotient where the person is spontaneously moral and good without the need for enforcement.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 2:39 am

This is true of Artificial Intelligence hardware that is not designed to define some 'absolute' constant of behavior but a more GENERIC means to seek the envrionment to some 'goal' about survival for survival's sake alone. That is, for the A.I. to successfully learn, it has a hardwired design that only generically deals with OPEN variables, not fixed or CLOSED ones. The reason why normal computation methods do not effectively permit a machine to learn is because most errantly presumed that you can assign a goal by the intended FIXED constants uniquely assigned by the programmer's software to obey strictly without a choice to disobey. That lack of freedom by conventional hardware designs makes the 'rules of behavior' absolute and why it fails to develop sincere self-learning mechanisms.

This is irrelevant as Morality do not apply to AI.

And this just proves to me that you are likely being religious about your thinking. If we cannot literally recreate the potential of humanity using precisely the very logic and chemistry we are made up of IN PRINCIPLE, you would be assuming a distinct duality of moral behavior and some presumed essense of morality you believe exists distinct from human judgement. This conflicts with your claim that you think we still require empirical means to determine the truth.

Am I correct in assuming that you are religious? If not, I beg you reconsider your logic. If you think that your belief is somehow superior to mine who lacks such belief in a Superior Moral essence, how do you suppose that your ideal could ever be realized other than to rid the world of those like me? ...

...remeber your use of sanity testing as some means to determine who is or is not 'normal' with respect to moral beliefs? That you think you can reduce what you guess as 80% of those already conforming to some universal ethics/moral-rules, tells me that you would simply demonize those who disagree by finding them "insane" by some standard. How can this be realized without some POLITICAL intervention? AND, ....if you cannot remove this 20% guess, however you came about this percentage by enforcement in negotiated lawmaking through LEGISLATION (versus CONSTITIONAL force), what means could you assure this "Moral Quotient" belief has any support without the force that would inevitably enslave the dissidents you assure must be insane?

I am non-theistic and non-religious.

Re AI, what I meant we cannot expect AI or robots to deal with Morality and Ethics. The only involvement would be the human programmer responsibility to ensure the robots do not kill humans arbitrary.

You are begging this without justification. You keep imposing upon this argument that there exists a potential "secular objective absolute moral law(s)" without justifying how you know this apriori. You are definitely transferring your own sensation of 'good' will as though it is shared universally without recognizing that your own 'sense' of this is merely a function of the biological evolution and derived by those "windows of devolopment" factors I introduced to you. We'd need a digression to express how the simple can become complex. But I'd first need to determine your belief status regarding religion or this effort would be undermined at the get-go.

I have been providing justifications all along to support "secular objective absolute moral law(s)" do exists a priori [via survival and preservation of the species].
Note the "secular objective absolute moral law(s)" on 'no human shall kill another human' is derived from 'no sane human will want to be killed' which can be first verified by your own self and other human beings.

[By the way, in case I forget, I see that on television today here in North America, a show called, "The Dr. Oz Show" has an episode called, "The Underground Group Fighting Sex Slavery in America". The group's leader is non-other-than Tony Robins, someone I find a fraud from his selling of how to succeed by proving how he succeeded by selling his very scheme on 'how to succeed'. There is a false flag conspiracy theory that there are "sex slaves" everywhere in America with super-villianous like conspirators kidknapping people in some crime syndicate that this group is intending to expose by playing some deceptive scheme themselves in order to expose.....a MEANS-to-ends type of thinking that I noticed you mention above and to which I'll be responding to later. This fear-mongering, which I believe is likely just another business scheme of Robins' and other right-wing extremist Evangelical-thinkers, promotes some of the threats themselves to which impose political influence but also think in terms of absolutes. So I may mention this later as I finish catching up on it as a write here.]

If it can be proven there are real Sex Slavery, then fighting it would be a good thing even though the above is not within my proposed Framework and System of Morality and Ethics.
If it is a false alarm, then it is fake news and should be condemned as such.

Your newly created term, "Moral Function (in the brain)" is just the prior term, "conscience", as I just mentioned in my last post above. We may need a digression to see if I could possibly spell out your apparent support of a dualistic idea of mind and body that I think you hold. [And hopefully 'dispell' by my counterposition to that.]

[I had more here but lost it from being timed out again by a likely few minutes or even seconds. This is annoying and burdensome to have to rewrite what I put a lot of good effort into. I need a temporary break as my neck is too sore at the moment. I'll finish the last part of my response in one more post.]

I have referred to "Moral Function" many times, if not here, elsewhere in the forum.
It is related to the development of the "conscience" or "moral compass" or Moral Quotient of the person.
The 'Moral Function" is no different from other functions like, intelligence, sense, reason, emotions, etc. in the brain.
Do you have any idea how the Moral Function is represented by what neurons and related neurons in the brain and its potential can be increased in time via the right approach.

It is tiresome for you [and me to respond] because you are deflecting away from the main point of Morality and Ethics.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 4:07 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote:

As such, if you think that 'slavery' is primally an unwelcomed goal, then you have to respect even one's coincidental assignments of behavior that makes those with relatively 'bad' assignments rightfully assert themselves 'slaves' if they can't be accepted for their own innate sense of 'good' that goes contrary to others in its environment. For all animals, this is selfishly assigned to favor the independent being without concern for the welfare of others in any primary way. We aren't born to favor life; we EVOLVE to favor it for ourselves without choice after the fact. So to be 'universal' you need to respect the OPEN-ended type of laws that are RELATIVE for them being variable.

I had argued, no sane person would want to be enslaved as in chattel slavery.
Thus the inferred secular objective absolute moral law is "no human shall be enslaved by another human re chattel slavery." This is universalized and used as a guide.

Alternatively are you suggesting in a universal manner, "humans can be enslaved by another human being re chattel slavery" as a Guide Only.
If the above is your preference, it would not an efficient guide, i.e. it is imply a lackadaisical attitude to human nature and progress of humanity.

I am watching my PVR recording of that Dr Oz show in spurts where he just reflected to and of Anthony (Tony) Robins' view that, "....We have more slavery today than at any time in human history! (?)" This points out an example problem of yours here by how one can treat a "realist's" position as "pessimistic" when one counters to a "posited" view of extremes in black-or-white binary alternatives. The purpose of their declared 'fight' against sex slavery, for instance, requires presenting a strong "pessimistic" reality that they will then inevitably use to justify some "positive" reason to NOT DOUBT by an intentional misrepresetation of what is 'empirically' evident about how extreme and pervasive this supposed conspiracy of sex slavery is all around America today. They would differ to your kind of argument by flipping your 80% 'good people' into 80% 'evil people' everywhere.

You presume that I suggest an opposite negative position if I don't agree to your own that is not justified. And while you may not be in sync with Tony Robin's exploiting scheme on this program not unnoticed on this Dr Oz himself by his record of infomercial quackery tactics, it points out the risk involved when you assert such "Guides" you believe constitute something universal that you believe is shared: the exploitation of free interpretation of carelessly written universal declarations. I argued with you why it is more important that 'constitutional' documents, like the U.N. declaration, NOT to present valued goals that aren't about the means to NEGOTIATE terms alone. When an asserted declaration uses language that presumes universal absolutes, it biases that constitution to a subset of people based upon religious movitations rather than to open an avenue for free and open conventions.

All that a 'constitution' can be sure to be universal when inviting members to it is to a declaration of things like FREE SPEECH with the added elimination of biased arguments to be accepted that are religiously biased (like the separation of Church and State for the U.S. First Amendment to their Constitution.) Even THAT gets abused and in action is partly undone by how other laws that conflict with this one get pushed into their Constitution later. The means to presume some "end to slavery", for instance, if mentioned at all, PRESUMES there IS "slavery" and makes those who believe they KNOW this for being the ones setting up this Constitution, authoritarians who undermine the means to NEGOTIATE what is or is not 'moral'.

You have no reason to assume there exists a 'superior' morality without literally presuming you are 'superior' in mind to know how to distinguish this of others authoritatively. You can't excuse some presumption of 'sanity' either without begging you qualify to know this in the same way.

My point is focus on 'chattel slavery' at present.
There is no need to for a superior morality or superior mind to justify 'chattel' slavery is evil. The justification is very basic.
I have argued, which sane person would volunteer to be enslaved as a chattel slave by another human and followed by other justifications. The result is a secular objective absolute moral law on chattel slaver, i.e. no human shall be enslaved as a chattel slave by another.

Re Tony Robbin's case, what he has done is not in accordance to my proposed approach. What he is doing could be good if there are real 'sex slave' and he had really saved them. If it is proven to be a 'cry wolf' case then he should be condemned.

And here is where I have to point out how history proves we have a problem with such 'anarchy' type beliefs. Two opposing Anarchy philosophy's of the last few centuries has been "Communism" at one extreme and "National Socialism" at the other. Both err on the assumption that such an ideal could even be possible.

Although my original lost response to this spoke on more detail on the problems of Communism and National Socialism to express why you cannot have a society like this, I'll let you ponder on how you can provide a voluntary reality of people biased to ONE specific ideal, be it for ALL GOOD, or ALL EVIL. That is, can you tell me how it is possible that even if you could pop into a magical realm where everyone begins 'good', how could you assure this either NOT reverting back to a world having both good AND evil.... or how meaning to what is 'good' itself could mean anything without 'evil' in perpetuity without laws set to govern the people there?

You missed my point in this case. Your is the typical response to any suggestion of ideals.
In the case of Communism and National Socialism their ideals are not justified with empirical evidences but merely relied on the subjective feelings of the dictators or the elites.
Show me where their ideals are solidly justified?
In my case, what I proposed is soundly justified.
In any case, I have not gone into the details how we can strive to achieve as near as possible to the ideals.
My optimism is based on the existing trend of the exponential expansion of knowledge and technology and whatever the recommendations they must be FOOLPROOF.

You just redefined the traditional "conscience" as your "Moral Function" in some proprietary way. You clearly have a dualist position that needs to be addressed. How can you have a distinct "absolute morale" that is apriori existing before humanity's own existence without assuming some object of application of these morals to apply to that is 'humane'? That is, how can a humane reality be true without some prior humanity to pre-exist the rule?

Your "Moral Quotient" {MQ] is as controversial as "Intelligence Quotient" [IQ] and the relatively recent "Emotional Quotient" [EQ] concepts. These are only themselves political (not necessarily just formal governments but includes private educational or business organizations.) Note that 'government' is just a different word for "management system" but is what is owned by ALL PEOPLE versus some select subset of them, like a business, one's private home, or some non-profit entity. The idea of testing for certain aptitudes does not mean the actual meaning of Morality, Intellligence, nor Emotions, have some universal agreement that precedes negotiation.

Also, to assume genetic faults for those who fail these tests is itself biased to presume one's practical efficacy suffices to define one as more supreme or not to those classification schemes. One who is may fail a math aptitude based upon statistical averages, does not mean they cannot both be 'good' at math or 'practically useful' for society. If such aptitudes were set up apriori, those like Einstein would have certainly failed because he would have been locked up as 'insane' for presuming his ideas in his head PRIOR to experments that demonstrated his 'odd' way of thinking had been correct about reality later on.

[Whew!! Finished. I hope this argument is appreciated and I will be patient to await a likely productive response from you on this. Later.]

Nope, mine is not a dualist position.
I argued against this in this thread;
The duty of the brain is to provide inputs to the mind
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=28473

You cannot associate my 'Moral Quotient' [MQ] with the current IQ and EQ without understanding what the detail entails.
The current IQ and EQ has issues but they do have some use.

As I had stated, my proposed MQ will involve digging into the deeper realms of the brain/mind.
It will not be touted until it is proven to be foolproof and this will take time.
I am optimistic based on research in this two fields, i.e.
http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/
https://www.genome.gov/human-genome-project

Are you familiar with the above potentials?

Noted you have the tendency for long drawn responses.
Btw, pls keep yr response as short as possible, I am finding it too tiresome to respond to them.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 4:19 am P.S. Here is a link to that show I referenced: Underground Group Fighting Slavery in America

It might help to look at that and ask yourself if that is or is not itself a con? I think it is and it is itself worth its own distinct thread. But given "slavery" is your example idea of a moral absolute, it is worth looking at given they are using a sample of your own understood definition of slavery. I'll leave this up to you to choose to discuss in further context. If you agree with me about the flaws in that group's approach or their misrepresentation of the threat, let's try to discern WHY you think your proposal differs from their tactics or how your intentional well-meaningful idea could be prevented from being abused this way.

As I had stated, my proposals will not involved enforcement at all.

My proposed system will work as follows;

• 1. The secular objective absolute moral law will be established for 'slavery' i.e.
  "no human shall be enslaved another" as soundly justified.
  The term slavery will be defined with precision.
  
  2. The above is translated to the ideal of ZERO slavery case. This is not to be enforced by merely to act a guide and ideal standard to seek improvements.
  
  3. Statistics will be collected from various governments and channels on the number of slaves by various types of slavery as per 1.
  
  4. Say, there are 1 million cases of sex-slavery [accepted as within definition in 1] recorded during a year.
  
  5. In the case the difference between 2 [ideal] and 4[actual] is a variance 1 million. Note variance is triggered because there is the absolute ideal to compare with, if not, then no such figure is produced.
  
  6. In this case, the purpose of my Framework of Morality and Ethics will be to reduce the variance in the future years from 1 million cases to where possible ZERO or in practice as near as possible to ZERO.
  
  7. The strategies to be used will be foolproof and do not entail force and pressure but the focus will be on those who enslave [the slave master] and those who are prone to be enslaved. This will involve raising the conscience, moral compass and moral quotient in relation to the urge to enslave or be vulnerable to be enslaved.
  
  8. The starting point will be to find the root causes and as expected there will be a large and complex set of variables. The quest will be to find the critical 20/80 or 5/95 pareto variable to be dealt with.
  
  9. The strategies involved will also be complex, but the gist is to ensure the brain and mind of those who want to enslave others are rewired [foolproof] the brain and moral function towards higher conscience, moral compass and moral quotient. AHA.. Don't be alarmed by the term 'rewired' as any improvement in skill is always accompanied by some kind of rewiring of the brain.
  Obviously I had ideas of how we can go about this, but I don't want to go into the details.
  
  10. I am not suggesting we will implement 9 immediately but with preparation and unfoldment of the potentials it is possible in the near future [next 50, 100 or more years].
  
  11. When the above is implemented there will be progress towards ZERO or near ZERO cases of sex-slavery.

The above is a rough presentation and there are many other missing details.

You will note the above model will not be efficient without establishing a justified secular objective absolute moral law, i.e. ZERO slavery as a GUIDE [not enforceable]. This is the PURE aspect of Morality.

Without setting ZERO slavery from the absolute as the standard, the setting various arbitrary numbers could be set and the whole system will turn lackadaisical and ignored.
Some authorities may accept 100,000 sex-slavery could be acceptable, or for some, 200,000, 500,000, etc. since they accept it is difficult to modulate human nature.

With a standard of ZERO slavery, humanity will strive to look at every possible angles [i.e. deep into human nature - the brain] to reduce the actual cases to as near to ZERO as possible - the APPLIED aspects, i.e. Ethics.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 7:31 am

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 12:32 am I disagree on your belief that Ethics/Morality to be distinctly separate from Politics but understand that you believe that an absolute exists regardless of our potential to successfully determine this.

That Morality/Ethics is distinctly separate from Politics is like Science itself is separate from the Arts, Politics, Mathematics, Engineering, IT and other fields of Pure or Applied knowledge.
Engineering and IT use theories and knowledge from Science, but they are not Science per-se.
Political legislature do involve what is good and bad human behavior but Politics itself cannot be Morality & Ethics by definition.

Bad example. Technology from engineering is DEPENDENT upon Science. Morality is illusive and thus only 'art'(ificial) and ONLY relevant to human convention. That 'convention is "Politcs", the area of negotiating which morals get priority in practice.

How you presume we could VOLUNTEER ideal behavior IN PRINCIPLE is dependent upon the actual means of how people are treated in their environment. That is, those windows of development I mentioned extends the assigning of value by how WELL one is treated in the environment. "Good" outward expression towards others depends upon how WELL you are treated by OTHERS in the environment, not something from within in any relative absolute way let alone an absolute absolute way. And this comes about from ECONOMIC stability as one definite minimum prerequisite. You require either ALL people to have identical economy regardless of where you are or what you do. This is a Communistic ideal that presents problems of requiring setting a goal for everyone to expect a simple life without contrast from person to person. To many, this can only come about by force. And given Marx recognized this and why his proposed "Dictator" is required which goes against your hope of defeating 'slavery' since it would make us all have to think of life as just 'good' for just being alive without concern for other values.

You can't acheive this without destroying those who find themselves the most happiest for having the contrast of greater fortune and power over others. The reason you find the happiest people thinking shallowly and appreciative of "God" as their most credited justification is due to the fact that the environment FAVORS these people beyond the averages such that they would not permit being downgraded to some LESS happier state they are in to match the least successful in the environment.

I think you are deluded in your hope for some ideal that isn't even possible in principle. The alternative means to even hopefully make people on par with each other is to make everyone Kings and Queens....Gods...where no one requires the least suffering possible. Because this is impossible, AND you need some convention via some political governing system to set up. The only kinds of 'voluntary' non-governmental means to impose 'goodness' is universal by however you define it is RELIGION. And this is already proven to assure perpetual conflict.

Your claim of attempting any rationalized process to determine something 'relatively absolute' without politics and enforcement is a pipe dream. I keep arguing how your belief that there IS a real shareable morale is flawed yet you insist it is true apriori without the very science or logic you LACK before the fact. You need to derive the science and logic to prove first that there IS a shareable morality at all without concern to ones actual conditions.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 7:31 am

Scott Mayers wrote:

Veritas Aequitas wrote:
Note sure how can you dispute 'all normal person must breathe in oxygen' which is a secular absolute principle and can be converted into a moral law.
It is the same with 'no sane person would want to be killed' thus translated to the moral law 'no human shall kill another human' as a secular absolute moral law.
Since this is not an absolutely-absolute moral law from God, the secular absolute moral law can be changed if the evidence proved otherwise which is not likely.
But in the meantime, it could be used as an efficient guide to improve on human behaviors.

I understand the apparent disconnect. But I assure you that it is only an apparent one. Remember, I'm athiest. So I don't hold any belief that out complex state of existence means anything distinct from rocks or bacteria with respect to Nature. Only those who interpret Nature as being a subset of religious form of a god, could your own belief be rationalized.

I cannot build a whole logical argument in a simple response to your thread without a digression even more in required detail and depth than your own thesis left unsaid here. What I hear you saying is that you cannot seem to connect how something relatively featureless could derive the complexity of something as detailed as a moral rule. But this assumes the rule itself is not an artifact of the complexity of biology or chemistry in a similar philosophical concern about the dualism of mind and body with respect to consciousness. Note that the moral equivalent is "conscience" that is just an intentional separated spelling of "consciousness" etymologically. What you likely believe is that some form of 'dualism' exists that relates to the origin of the term, "conscience".

[I'll separate this response in another post for fear of losing everything I wrote so far.]

I don't understand your response to my point.
My point is we need a secular objective absolute moral law [of Good] as a guide to improve on human behavior towards good.
As such I have demonstrated how we can derive such a secular objective moral law as justified from empirical evidences and polished with philosophical critical thinking.
To implement this we need an efficient Framework and System of Morality and Ethics [FSME] - I have not gone into details on this.

Note sure of your point re Consciousness and Conscience.
However, my proposed efficient FSME will involving the development of the highest optimal 'conscience' for the individuals, i.e. the higher Moral Quotient where the person is spontaneously moral and good without the need for enforcement.

If we "need a secular objective absolute moral law [of Good] as a guide to improve on human behavior towards good.", you just gave the major justification for those arguing for religion to be NECESSARY as the means to assure this. They too also believe this cannot be done through formal govenments directly other than to use politics to empower their particular religions by proxy. They would thus argue like you for a presumption that there should be some scientific proof of this given it is certainly REAL of their relative absolute exists apriori.

I noticed that you keep mentioning that "no sane person would kill themselves" as well as some presumption about killing others. Why do you beg these as 'insane' other than to just dictate this is so? You would have to argue then that it is at least better that one suffers in slavery alive rather than be dead and free from the worst of the worst.

Look, I don't like busting your bubble and I would LOVE for you to be correct. But I've come full circle on my own original 'hope' that there were some non-religious way of creating a better world. The fact, given there is no actual gods to assure this, the only 'hope' we have is to optimize our circumstances and utilize political institutions to DEFINE morality. Morals are artificial, just as 'beauty' is to the beholder's eye. While we can create these ideals, like beauty, as from things we might base upon as from something 'healthy', this cannot succeed universally without eliminating those that are deemed 'ugly' in the same artificial way.