CH 2: The moral iceberg that sinks all ships
Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2023 4:49 pm
Part 1: More rambling preambling (Skip this if you don't like long posts)
In part one of our exciting adventure to create a more proper FSK than the morality-proper-FSK, we began our journey with source of moral motivation, namely the BDM model in which motivation automatically accords with our beliefs and desires.
This means that we have a straight forward answer to the question “why does Bertie choose to tell the truth?” In some situation, a desire that Bertie has; such as a desire to have the respect of his peers, if allied with a belief relevant to his desire, such as that his peers don’t approve of lying, is sufficient to explain the motivation he apparently has to tell the truth in some specific instance. But in some other instance, if Bertie believes nobody will catch him perhaps, Bertie might choose to tell a little fib.
We have established therein the basic building blocks of an extremely limited set of moral reasoning, a lowest common denominator perhaps. Courtesy of little else besides desires we have, and beliefs we hold, we are able to perform simple reasoning about our goals and the means by which we can attain them. What we don’t have is any good reason to believe anything yet.
Part 2: So what comes next as we manufacture our systematic, morally neutral FSK thing? (some descriptive/prescriptive stuff)
Practical reason is of course about what to do, and is therefore by its nature prescriptive. But, I propose we continue in a descriptive fashion for so far as that might take us before we drift into making recommendations... If indeed a truly useful and correct proper-morality-proper-FSK would even do so, which as yet is unknowable within the realm of the nascent properly-emproperfied-proper-morality-proper-FSK.
We know that human animals are motivated by wants and desires, shaped by beliefs to take action in order to attain goals. Is there more that we can know of this before we move on? Can we speak to the content of the desires yet, might we be in a position to establish some cause for those before we address questions of good and bad desires?
As of today, we cannot yet speak of whether we are in search of a supernatural moral entity to justify our FSK thing, or any moral design for the universe. But mister Can seems to be challenging mister Harbal to demonstrate that we could do without such things at all. Apparently it is absurd to suppose that the universe does not follow the moral plan of a God.
So without resorting to a Global Debunking Argument (our unfinished FSK might never support those) I propose we look today for what we would add to our BDM based moral inquiry that might or could explain the desires and perhaps even beliefs with or without the need for some true north to direct those at.
Part 3: Thought Experiments for the hard of thinking
It seems that nearly everyone agrees there is a credible evolutionary tale to be told of a gradual development of an ape species called Homo Sapien which widened an ecological niche by exploiting unusual intelligence to access resources using tools and other manipulations of the environment rather than by evolving specific shaped limbs to access specific foodstuffs in the usual manner.
Similar evolutionary tales about the evolution of many species also cover the evolution of social habits among them. Consider the many different species that have social rituals involving grooming each other which serve to deepen bonds among the group or establish hierarchies. We can, and indeed it is normal to use evolution to explain the existence of these habits. And thus we have a question about whether it is plausible that evolution fashioned us as a species with any certain moral desires or beliefs? If undirected evolution did that, then the resultant set of beliefs would be of a form that was somehow useful for survival of the species rather than being directed at truth. That risks contingency… or promises it, let’s see where we end up.
One of the aspects of evolution as an explanation for the arrival of any form is that it can happen any number of times. After all, if evolution made a special effort to create a special little you, that wouldn’t be a very scientific theory. Instead we find that apparently the crab body type has evolved at least five times. So chaos can do the same thing over and over if circumstance recommends it to.
So let us consider what happens if the human phenotype evolves multiple times. Let us imagine there is a lost continent somewhere in the South Pacific, evolutionarily even more remote than Australia, where the various niches got filled up by very different plants and animals. In this Antipodean place evolved the Antipodeans, similar to you and I in many respects: two arms, two legs, opposable thumbs and a big brain. But the difference is that there was never any ape species in these Antipodes, nor mammals. Antipodean man is instead descended from a type of shark that evolved to walk on land millions of years ago.
In this hypothetical scenario, the land sharks form a society more like that of cats or bears than monkeys and wildebeest. As the intelligent development of solitary predators, Antipodean moral concern is heavily skewed towards matters such as strength, stealth, privacy and territorial integrity. During the mating season, the males often fight admirably to the death over possession of those females with cloaca fat enough to spurt out the millions of offspring needed to hold a statistical probability of genetic survival. The rest of the year it is honourable to hunt and feast on your rival’s spawn if they aren’t fast enough to get away. This hunt is beyond virtuous, almost sacred, revered as a means of maintaining the vigour of the species.
Eventually Christian missionaries arrive in the Antipodes, and are of course eaten as a sign of respect to this Jesus guy who was kind enough to send dinner all that way. The Antipodeans value piety above all things other than strength, stealth, privacy and dinner. For them it is morally wrong to spare the weak, to experience pity for your dinner is shameful. Rape is not really a thing for them as they don’t exactly do sex stuff the way we do. But to wank over another man’s egg pile is ok if you can get away with it, for his lack of diligence is your opportunity, and to squander opportunity is weak, which is usually the same as bad.
Shark men living in some Mega-Australia would therefore I think be expected to wear a very different set of basic moral undergarments than we do, before their society goes so far as to develop a profound set of moral discourses. Eventually though, they begin to form complex societies in order to get similar benefits to those our ancestors (protection from roving vagabonds, slavers and cannibals being chief among them I expect) and then we might very well see some degree of convergence towards a set of moral criteria that naturally would assert itself in any city environment? We should put a pin in that one, it could come in handy later.
In part one of our exciting adventure to create a more proper FSK than the morality-proper-FSK, we began our journey with source of moral motivation, namely the BDM model in which motivation automatically accords with our beliefs and desires.
This means that we have a straight forward answer to the question “why does Bertie choose to tell the truth?” In some situation, a desire that Bertie has; such as a desire to have the respect of his peers, if allied with a belief relevant to his desire, such as that his peers don’t approve of lying, is sufficient to explain the motivation he apparently has to tell the truth in some specific instance. But in some other instance, if Bertie believes nobody will catch him perhaps, Bertie might choose to tell a little fib.
We have established therein the basic building blocks of an extremely limited set of moral reasoning, a lowest common denominator perhaps. Courtesy of little else besides desires we have, and beliefs we hold, we are able to perform simple reasoning about our goals and the means by which we can attain them. What we don’t have is any good reason to believe anything yet.
Part 2: So what comes next as we manufacture our systematic, morally neutral FSK thing? (some descriptive/prescriptive stuff)
Practical reason is of course about what to do, and is therefore by its nature prescriptive. But, I propose we continue in a descriptive fashion for so far as that might take us before we drift into making recommendations... If indeed a truly useful and correct proper-morality-proper-FSK would even do so, which as yet is unknowable within the realm of the nascent properly-emproperfied-proper-morality-proper-FSK.
We know that human animals are motivated by wants and desires, shaped by beliefs to take action in order to attain goals. Is there more that we can know of this before we move on? Can we speak to the content of the desires yet, might we be in a position to establish some cause for those before we address questions of good and bad desires?
As of today, we cannot yet speak of whether we are in search of a supernatural moral entity to justify our FSK thing, or any moral design for the universe. But mister Can seems to be challenging mister Harbal to demonstrate that we could do without such things at all. Apparently it is absurd to suppose that the universe does not follow the moral plan of a God.
So without resorting to a Global Debunking Argument (our unfinished FSK might never support those) I propose we look today for what we would add to our BDM based moral inquiry that might or could explain the desires and perhaps even beliefs with or without the need for some true north to direct those at.
Part 3: Thought Experiments for the hard of thinking
It seems that nearly everyone agrees there is a credible evolutionary tale to be told of a gradual development of an ape species called Homo Sapien which widened an ecological niche by exploiting unusual intelligence to access resources using tools and other manipulations of the environment rather than by evolving specific shaped limbs to access specific foodstuffs in the usual manner.
Similar evolutionary tales about the evolution of many species also cover the evolution of social habits among them. Consider the many different species that have social rituals involving grooming each other which serve to deepen bonds among the group or establish hierarchies. We can, and indeed it is normal to use evolution to explain the existence of these habits. And thus we have a question about whether it is plausible that evolution fashioned us as a species with any certain moral desires or beliefs? If undirected evolution did that, then the resultant set of beliefs would be of a form that was somehow useful for survival of the species rather than being directed at truth. That risks contingency… or promises it, let’s see where we end up.
One of the aspects of evolution as an explanation for the arrival of any form is that it can happen any number of times. After all, if evolution made a special effort to create a special little you, that wouldn’t be a very scientific theory. Instead we find that apparently the crab body type has evolved at least five times. So chaos can do the same thing over and over if circumstance recommends it to.
So let us consider what happens if the human phenotype evolves multiple times. Let us imagine there is a lost continent somewhere in the South Pacific, evolutionarily even more remote than Australia, where the various niches got filled up by very different plants and animals. In this Antipodean place evolved the Antipodeans, similar to you and I in many respects: two arms, two legs, opposable thumbs and a big brain. But the difference is that there was never any ape species in these Antipodes, nor mammals. Antipodean man is instead descended from a type of shark that evolved to walk on land millions of years ago.
In this hypothetical scenario, the land sharks form a society more like that of cats or bears than monkeys and wildebeest. As the intelligent development of solitary predators, Antipodean moral concern is heavily skewed towards matters such as strength, stealth, privacy and territorial integrity. During the mating season, the males often fight admirably to the death over possession of those females with cloaca fat enough to spurt out the millions of offspring needed to hold a statistical probability of genetic survival. The rest of the year it is honourable to hunt and feast on your rival’s spawn if they aren’t fast enough to get away. This hunt is beyond virtuous, almost sacred, revered as a means of maintaining the vigour of the species.
Eventually Christian missionaries arrive in the Antipodes, and are of course eaten as a sign of respect to this Jesus guy who was kind enough to send dinner all that way. The Antipodeans value piety above all things other than strength, stealth, privacy and dinner. For them it is morally wrong to spare the weak, to experience pity for your dinner is shameful. Rape is not really a thing for them as they don’t exactly do sex stuff the way we do. But to wank over another man’s egg pile is ok if you can get away with it, for his lack of diligence is your opportunity, and to squander opportunity is weak, which is usually the same as bad.
Shark men living in some Mega-Australia would therefore I think be expected to wear a very different set of basic moral undergarments than we do, before their society goes so far as to develop a profound set of moral discourses. Eventually though, they begin to form complex societies in order to get similar benefits to those our ancestors (protection from roving vagabonds, slavers and cannibals being chief among them I expect) and then we might very well see some degree of convergence towards a set of moral criteria that naturally would assert itself in any city environment? We should put a pin in that one, it could come in handy later.
