Well, but they advocate for population control. This seems to be in an effort to help the species survive, no?

I should have been more specific. Some anti-natalists, like Benatar, are making the claim that for any human being, it is better never to have been born because human life is a net bad. They are motivated by a pessimistic philosophy of life rather than a desire to control population growth.

I think it is going to be close to axiomatic (and I think it's a mistake to include any retributive element beyond some deterrence effect).

My puzzlement is in imagining any consistent subjectivist account - I cant imagine someone holding any view other than "people should try and do the most good they can" and if the criminal does that, but it's different from the judge's. On what grounds is there reason for retributive justice other than a privileged treatment of one's own, self-confessed subjective viewpoint?

Sounds like a charming dinner guest.

Any moral philosophy that argues that slavery is bad because it holds back technology and not because it's bad to treat other people that way is not a moral philosophy I would want to base my decisions on.

Just playing devil's advocate here, but what if that is actually correct? Our emotional reaction doesn't change, but our reasoning should comply.

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. Could you be more explicit? My ability to comprehend what I'm reading goes way down the more tired I get, and I'm about to go to bed.

The facts are not reversed. There was more slavery in Ancient Egypt. It only becomes reversed when you narrow your definition of 'slave'.

Slavery was common practice ancient Greece throughout its rich history yes. It is estimated that in Athens, the majority of citizens owned at least one slave. However in Ancient Egypt those who were not free not only included the people we would now define as 'slaves', but also those with various degrees of encumbered liberty. For example, could an artisan who worked on tombs who lived in the Deir el-Medina worker's village on the West Bank at Thebes simply walk off his job? In effect, almost anyone under the authority of an absolute ruler such as a pharaoh might in some degree be considered a slave. In Ancient Greece there were actually free citizens, who could indeed walk off their job if they wanted to. This degree of freedom (among other things) facilitated the cultivation of intellectual pursuits, unlike anything that came out of Ancient Egypt. And this degree of freedom is also what I am referring to, when I argue against 'slavery'. Despite of how you define 'slave' for yourself, this is the point that I have been trying to convey.
This is not my argument in the first place. You've made the same erroneous misinterpretation as Ping Clown has. I never argued that the main or primary or only cause of societal/technological advancement is the abolishment of slavery - as you seem to have interpreted above - but simply that the abolishment of slavery contributes to societal/technological advancement and thus the long-term chances of the collective surviving.
I feel dumb struck that you appear oblivious to the very function of morality - within all species of life on earth. Once you truly understand its function, can you only then, begin to understand its manifestations.

No I understood your argument. You said we were able to declare slavery immoral now (and that we didnt used to) because we could now look back and observe that "... a society with less slavery advances much quicker (e.g. Ancient Greece compared to Ancient Egypt)." I understand that you are not claiming that it was the sole cause, but that it is one of the contributors.

The counterargument still stands - if it were the case that societies with slaves contributed to a more rapid societal/technological advancement then the morality calculation you claim to have performed would be reversed and slavery would be moral (all else being equal).

That isnt my understanding (limited as it is) at all. The number of free citizens in ancient greece was miniscule. Could an artisan in ancient Athens 'chuck it in' any easier than one in Thebes? Can an unskilled labourer today, for that matter? Is someone on the minimum wage today a 'slave' in your view?

Irrespective, here you have amended your initial claim. It's no longer about volume of slavery but about the degree of freedom. Which society is more moral - one where everyone is relatively constrained, with moderate freedoms but also obligations, or one where three quarters of the population are literal slaves and the other quarter are totally free to do whatever they wish?

Once you understand morality from a functional perspective, you see that there's a reason behind every empathetic emotion, thought or feeling you ever have, and more importantly, that this reason relates more strongly to the function, than it does to some 'higher power' or 'philosophical axiom'.

What is the relation between the "function of morality" and the semantics of moral statements?

The inference from "moral cognition is an adaptation that increases fitness" to "increasing fitness is good" is dubious at best.

Yes, but only if the resources in the environment were so constrained so as to make slavery the best possible option for ensuring the survival of the collective. If that was the case then that is indeed what our moral predispositions would begin to sway toward. However, this moral change would not occur over a single generation, and would most likely require a few generations before our moral predispositions toward slavery were altered.
I haven't amended my initial claim, I have simply clarified it - for initially I thought that there would be no reason to go into such specifics as - degrees of freedom and the narrowing definitions of slavery - but now I do have a reason to go into these specifics.

P.S. your question is oversimplified and inaccurate at describing the Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece comparison, so I see no reason to entertain it.

How about the inference to "increasing fitness is good for our survival"?

Do you find it best to eat meal every day? Why don't you stop eating food for a month?

Increasing fitness is good, because survival is our primary function, and if our species is to survive into the future (as has been our goal since the very beginning) we must be aware that our moral cognitions have so far been nothing more than tools for achieving this.

I'm not positive this can simply be stated as fact without support.

Come on. I asked if slavery was moral and you said no. Then two pages later say "Well, of course I dont mean the narrow, usual definition of slavery I mean a broader 'degrees of freedom' definition..." If you're going to answer "Slavery is wrong" without meaning to refer to what most people today mean by slavery, you can expect misunderstanding. How was I to know that the category of 'slave' to you includes some people who are not actual slaves?

It's entirely your right to use words however you like. But you should at least declare if it's not standard. (How many of your esteemed readers do you think realised you didnt necessarily mean to refer actual slaves when you said 'slavery is immoral'?)
Which one - this?
That's not about Athens or Greece. I just wonder how you would decide the answer. Apparently evolution will provide a clear, consistent and unambiguous answer to moral questions. My view is that evolutionary accounts of morality dont actually do any such thing - people form views and then justify them by reference to evolutionary theory in an unscientific, post hoc fashion.

Your concession that, were slavery to be found to be a net motivator of societal growth and development, it would then be moral is the first time I can remember someone actually sticking to their guns. (Presumably you would consider the Soviet Union citizens of the early twentieth century to be 'slaves'? As such, was their society's approach to personal freedom moral given their rapid rise from agrarian backwater to superpower in the fifty/sixty years post revolution? They did much better than countries in similar conditions at the start of the twentieth century who weren't run by ruthless dictators.)

This is more like a second premise in argument that concludes with "moral cognition is good for our survival." But that premise is itself dubious since our survival is threatened by overpopulation. And the conclusion gets us no closer to understanding what moral statements mean and/or how to determine their truth values.

Are you saying that this is a moral question? I would be morally remiss to do this?

This is predictably circular. What do you mean "survival is our primary function?" Which part of evolutionary theory talks about the functions of species? And most importantly, why is survival in itself good?

Evolution does not have goals.

Yeah - that was the point of 'hitman vs aidworker'. Given that my chosen career choice isnt about values other than personal preference though (Should I work in retail or tourism?) it still seems to be "practical behavior that supports personal or collectively held values in situations where there may be critical consequences (at least more critical than flavor choice)."
I dont think there is any 'valueless meaning'. I think an objectivist will also claim there is a privileged, mind independent, set of values (even if it isnt a set of values held by any actual individual).
Do you think there's any such property as 'circular'? (Given that there are no actual circles anywhere in the universe?)
You may have conceded too much here.

If I can say objectively true for humans, why can't I extend this to 'objectively true for all moral agents'? (that extension would presumably be a subset of the first category).
I dont see why it cant - if you can identify one extreme as 'clearly wrong' and another as 'clearly right', why is there a problem with believing there is some objective sliding scale?

I dont think we're ever going to be in a position to know exactly where that line is and again I concede the epistemological challenge. I just dont see how "It's really hard to work out the answer" is an argument for there actually being no answer.

just passes the buck for me. i see values definitionally as the product of minds. i can't picture what value means without a mind-dependant context. probably no point further rehashing this. guess i'm not mentally capable of getting it

objectively? as a matter of subjective philosophical description sure.

i don't think the subject of abstract math concepts existing objectively parallels morality though. for example to me circular seems way, way more descriptive than "wrong".

i think such extreme questions can have answers that are effectively (not actually) objective for us because humans have evolved to share similar values relevant to those questions. but the evolutionary path and values of another sentient species might be very different (intelligent ants!)

i don't think you're just proposing objective axioms here. there's a little more information required than freezing point on a temp scale. for a sliding scale of morality to be objective all the situational permutations and complexities of humans or any other possible sentient beings and their behavior and possible motives have to exist as objective knowledge, even if no life exists. it's more like a sliding graph with virtually infinite dimensions. what reason is there to suspect that the universe cares about the behavior of sentient beings that much?

I'm confused about the point that you are trying to make here. Both ancient Egypt and ancient Greece made significant technological and cultural advances. Both societies had large slave populations. Whether or not one or the other had a higher percentage of slaves than the other seems irrelevant to whether or not they constitute counter-examples to your claim that slavery ******s technological or cultural advancement.

I see--you mean to use ancient Egypt as an example of a society that did not make intellectual or cultural advancements. I am no expert here, but that seems like an incorrect historical claim. Turn Prophet?

Do you think that when thinking about how I should live my life--what goals to have, what kind of person I want to be, and so on, I should have as my primary or sole goal the collective survival of the human species? Also, do you think that when I am faced with a moral dilemma that I should make my decision based on what which choice will best facilitate the collective survival of the human species?

Also--and this is just honest confusion--you seem to trying to place morality within an evolutionary framework, which is fine, but why do you have such a narrow view of the possible evolutionary basis for our moral views? Evolutionary theorists have proposed many overlapping explanations for altruism (kin selection, reciprocal altruism, etc.), but you seem to be ignoring these other alternatives in favor of a fairly specific version of group selection as the evolutionary explanation. Why?

This is related to the issue I brought up in our earlier discussion. If you want to explain why people act on the basis of what we generally consider moral motivations (such as altruism, loyalty, etc.), your claim doesn't seem very helpful. All you are really doing is just restating the basic idea of natural selection and saying that whatever the actual explanation is, it will be congruent with natural selection (I also think there are some more specific issues with how you conceptualize natural selection here as being about species rather than genes, but whatever). If you want to provide a real explanation, you'll have to show how these motivations are congruent with natural selection.

Alternatively, you might just want deny that people are actually acting on the basis of these moral motivations and claim that the real motive force to their actions is some kind of survival instinct. But then your claim seems very strange as you are not arguing for global selfishness, but rather some form of global altruism. I am just extremely skeptical of the claim that all our actions are actually motivated by the desire to promote the collective survival of the human species.

Finally, you might be attempting to provide a substantive moral theory rather than just be explaining the existence of morality (I suspect this is actually closest to what you are doing). Here I understand you as arguing that the right action to take is the action that best contributes to the collective survival of the human species. Your justification for this claim would be basically Aristotelian in nature--individual humans functional purpose is the collective survival of the species (as shown by evolution) and since we should fulfill our function as humans, we should act so as to contribute to the collective survival of the human species.

But then I am going to want you to tell me why I should view the evolutionary function of humans morally binding. For example, imagine two future evolutionary paths for humans. In one path, humanity never develops intellectually, scientifically, technologically, etc beyond where it is now. However, due to some quirks of our current state of development, this ends up being a very level of advancement that is very good for the promoting the long-term survival of the human species and so the human race continues to exist for a very long-time.

In the second path, humanity continues to develop intellectually, scientifically, technologically, and so on beyond where we are now. However, because of the instability that is continually being introduced into human society due to these advancements, this continuing development significantly decreases the odds for the long-term survival of the human species.

Now, I prefer the second path. Am I wrong for doing so?

I wouldnt make that concession - people smarter than both of us have declared my position nonsensical. It's entirely possible that what I'm saying just doesnt make any sense.
I don't really understand the first comment. As to the second - what's it describing? The point is there are no real circles. 'Circularity' is a property of an entirely abstract object ("a set of points equidistant from some specific point, given some specified distance function" or something like that). If we can ascribe properties to abstract objects like sets - why can't properties like 'immoral' attach to generic concepts like 'torture'?
Won't there necessarily be some common elements though? Any evolving species faces resource scarcity and natural selection. They will presumably impact on the resultant species' views in some sense.
Sure, it's complicated. We can't really predict exactly when it will rain either - there are too many variables from pressure, temperature, geographical features, humidity, etcetera. However, the fact that we are incapable of calculating how all those complicated factors (or 'virtually infinite dimensions') interact - reality still manages. It either rains or it doesnt - whatever happens 'just is' with no mental effort required. I think the moral situation is exactly analogous - there are many conflicting and variously important factors weighing on the correct course of action and we can't possibly sift through everything. Yet the reality of the situation 'just is' - it's moral or it isn't, independent of our ability to puzzle it out.

The fact we dont know at what precise moment it will begin raining or how heavy the rainfall will be doesnt imply that meteorology is worthless. We can get a pretty good idea.

I don't know much about the history of the soviet union so I'm not really qualified to evaluate the validity of your claims, or comment on them.

With regard to your previous question however, I think that both of the societies you listed are equally immoral under an 'all else being equal' condition. I would need to know the 'all else' specific factors (such as the level of technological maturity, resource constraints, socio-economic conditions etc.) related to each of those scenarios, and how they differ between the scenarios in order to be able to make any real judgments as to the morality of such societies.

Also, by posing that question - are you implying that using some other type of reasoning you're able to derive an answer to which of those societies is more moral under an 'all else being equal' condition?
You're arguing against my definition of morality are you not? According to my definition - whether you eat or not - falls under the category of "behaviour which contributes to the survival of the species/all life in general - making it a moral question.
I don't know why survival in itself is good. If you know anyone that can conclusively answer this question, please point me to them. I do however know that survival is our primary function. If you agree that the primary function of DNA or RNA is to survive until it replicates itself and that the primary function of all life is to survive long enough for it to reproduce/replicate... then the entire chain of evolution following from that adhers to the one fundamental function of - survival; which comes prior to the secondary function of - reproduction/replication.
No it does not have goals, but it has a function and resulting outcomes. All of these outcomes stem from the function (pursuit) of survival, including your attraction to females, your love for your children, your love for your partner, and everything that you may consider as possessing 'meaning'. What you may be blind to however, is that every reason or meaning that you attribute for wanting to stay alive, is a reason/meaning that you're already predisposed to - due to your evolutionary history (except for cases of mental illness or other rare mutations).
I'm not saying that you should use it to answer all of your personal questions, but simply that you're aware of the fact that whatever decisions you arrive at can all be traced back to and explained by the pursuit of collective survival (except suicide - in cases of mental illness or intense environmental strain).
I am not ignoring anything. I have seen these concepts and all I am doing is simplifying and unifying them all under a single umbrella of 'collective survival'. You do realize that kin selection, reciprocal altruism and so on are all evolutionary strategies for species survival? These overlapping explanations provide more in-depth understanding but ultimately they all operate under the single and most fundamental driver of - survival.
Altruism and loyalty are congruent with natural selection because the reproduction (and ultimately survival) of life under environmental conditions where there are fewer resource constraints, is facilitated more strongly by altruism/loyalty (transactions between agents), than it is by greed and competition. Under higher resource constraints however, the reproduction (and ultimately survival) of life is facilitated more strongly by greed and competition, than it is by atruism/loyalty.
Your skepticism is welcomed, and I hope that I am able to alleviate some of it.
The second path should be preferred. You're not doing it wrong. Although the second path consists of greater instability and uncertainty, it also has far greater potential. In the first path, what chance would we have at stopping an asteroid from killing us, the same way it did to the dinosaurs? What chance would we have at getting off this rock when our sun burns out? What chance would we have at sustaining our survival - in the long term, within an impersonal and highly dynamic/dangerous universe if we aren't able to use and transoform the resources around us in an adaptive manner?

DANGER Will Robinson! You can't just throw this out there. You need to show how.

Also, moral statements do not necessarily have to have a 1:1 correspondence to a truth value. A moral statement can serve as a survival function without having an ontological truth behind it.