Morality as subjectivity is only the indeterminate ruleset of the puppeteer.

For the hell of it, Lieserl.

Only man divides the universe into subjects and objects. Before man there was only the universe. After man there is only the universe. The universe is made of morality.

"Good is a noun. That was it. That was what Phaedrus had been looking for. That was the homer, over the fence, that ended the ball game. Good as a noun rather than as an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about. Of course, the ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an adjective or anything else definable, but if you had to reduce the whole Metaphysics of Quality to a single sentence, that would be it."-Lila, Robert Pirsig

Ruth calling his shot. Shoeless Joe Jackson drifting into obscurity only to accumulate his legend in contrast. The ecstasy and agony of being Gehrig. The disdain for Maris.

Gwynn and Griffey's consistency, careers that were pure individual talent but also a surety of loyalty.

Hmm.

On Zumby's recommendation, I've read (and reread) 'The Elements of Moral Philosophy' (Rachels) so I have a basic understanding of the context here.

I'm not proposing a moral system, quite the opposite, I'm suggesting that instead of a list of always right/always wrong morals (i.e. some system of Objective morality) or the idea that morals change and are sometimes right and sometimes wrong (i.e. Moral Relativism) that there's a completely different paradigm from which to approach this. That the way we behave is neither right nor wrong, it's simply whatever that in that particular circumstance, is best for our survival. That we have evolved to behave in whatever way best achieves that species imperative.

So there would be no 'right' or 'wrong' or a perspective of taking each type of behaviour and trying to permanently classifying it or decide whether or not you can even do that (why did we start trying to do that?), there is only what is right and wrong in terms of our survival. For example, currently rape and looting is generally regarded as a bad thing but once it was a fitting reward for your soldiers, because that encouraged them to fight and that helped your 'tribe' survive.

Like I said, I'm just sounding out here. I suppose that I'm expecting at any point to be told why this is a stupid idea, or has been discounted already by someone in a book that I should have read before even speaking about the subject. Do we still need to agree terms? (subjective/objective)

Rather than respond point to point I'm going to try and clarify a couple of terms and explain my objection to your central thesis. I've not read Rachels but I'll assume that he explains the distinction between theories of the right and the good. Simply put an ethical theory consists of what we should value, (a theory of the good) and what we should do with regard to the good (a theory of the right).

If we consider the phrase "there is only what is right and wrong in terms of our survival" then you are effectively positing survival as a theory of the good. However survival as a theory of the good requires a teleological theory of the right some consequentialist theory of the right. Acts which promote survival are good acts which harm survival are bad. But this is an ethical theory of sorts, it's not a different paradigm it is merely stating that survival is the sole good and we should act to promote it.

With regard to the distinction between objective and subjective. Objective in this sense merely means what is actually best for survival. Subjective on this account is what a rational actor considers the best for survival. To borrow an example consider a doctor is faced with a patient who requires treatment to survive. The goal is the survival of the patient. Objectively the best treatment is the one that actually works, subjectively the best treatment is the one that the doctor considers most likely to work based on the available evidence. It does not hold that some act is always good, it will depend upon the circumstances and the outcome.

My objection is that we want more from a moral theory, there are morally relevant acts that do not correspond to survival or reproduction and your thesis lacks any account of these. You can deny either that moral statements refer or that they do refer but are systematically false. Moral nihilism is available to you but if you are a moral nihilist you lose your account of the good as survival.

Do you think you are making a descriptive claim: people act in ways that benefit their survival?
Do you think you are making a commandment: people ought to act in ways that benefit their survival?
Do you think you have a true property of the universe: it is true that people ought to act in ways that benefit their survival?
Do you think what you say applies universally: everyone should act in ways that benefit their survival...even if they disagree with me I am right and they are not?
Do you think you are describing an ethical system?
Do you think you are describing a meta ethical system?

I think you really ought to define some terms because I'm not sure what you think you mean by them. But there is a host of key questions unanswered by your description.

for the record, this faux humility is annoying. Rest assured, if I think your idea is stupid, it isn't because I think you should have read some book before you posted.

I'd be most interested in your responses to these questions MB. What you seem to be doing is suggesting that's maximising survival is what we've evolved to do and hence making a descriptive claim, but then are deriving a normative claim from it in that we should, or it is right to, do this. The reason this fails is because you can't derive that ought from that is.

It's not 'faux', and it's not 'humility', I'm simply making clear both my level of knowledge and certainty on this topic. Now, to avoid cluttering the thread with this type of personal stuff, if you have any other observations about me that aren't relevant to the OP topic, can you please do it by PM?

MB that post uke_master quoted is kinda passive aggressive, like you are preempting people telling you you're uninformed or it's a stupid idea. There's no need for it.

That's exactly what I'm doing but it's not passive aggressive, I'm just trying to avoid it happening because it's unnecessary and perhaps if you'd had the relentless barrage of that that I've had on this forum you might understand. I want to distinguish between when I feel that I've got a point and I'm right about something, from when I'm just talking about it for fun.

I'm also serious about not getting into this type of exchange 'in public' so if you want to talk about it further, we can swap PMs.

For now, I'm mulling over the points you've made about what I've been saying.

Cool I'll wait for your thoughts on the topic.

Lol. So you completely ignore my substantive post, endorsed by deregs, but DO respond - twice - to the faux humility post. In both posts you take the time to explain yourself but then demand we take it into PMs? If you didn't want it in the thread why did you twice respond in the thread, why did you not send a pm, and why did you respond with explanations not just a "please see incoming pm"? You can't dictate behaviour to others you immediately break yourself and expect anyone to follow.

Since you took the liberty to twice explain yourself ITT so shall I, and this is a very general point: "a book I should have read before posting" is a horrible standard. Nobody who criticizes your post could reasonably think the problem is you should have read an entire book before being allowed to post. I don't object to humility - informing us you are not well versed on this subject - but when it is that you haven't met an unreasonable standard it comes off very false. Although passive aggressive might be the better phrase.

This isn't a moral theory, so it's unreasonable to place on it demands that you would place on a system designed to tell you 'good from bad'. From this viewpoint, trying to determine morality has become an irrelevancy. Trying to judge what is good and bad is simply pointless. There are only behaviours that enable you to still be around to discuss them later, or behaviours that don't. And those behaviours change over time, which could be why we still argue about moral relativism. Morals might seem relative or objective, but in fact there are no morals. (I keep hearing Morpheus in my head...)

Perhaps what you are doing is similar to the Fine Tuning argument. You're saying that because we're asking the question 'what is good and what is bad' that there is a good and bad to define. I'm saying that only in a universe where we have behaved in ways that enabled our survival would be here to have that perception, but that it's not necessarily true. In fact we might have evolved to see things in incorrect ways because they enable survival, including this perception that you can actually define good and bad.

No, none of those. I'm not using 'should' or 'ought', I'm not trying to describe a 'system'. I'm asking 'what if what we think are the reasons for why we think about right and wrong the way we do are not the real reasons and there isn't even right and wrong?'

Great, let's see where they take us. As for defining terms, I'm really not sure at this point whether or not that's even useful and by that I mean that the terms we're trying to define may not be relevant. What use in defining 'objective' and 'subjective' morality if my view precludes there being morals? That's like trying to define the behaviours of the gods who control the wind, so we can talk about the recent hurricane, when the reason for the hurricane was actually something else entirely.

How do you explain when motivation to survive clashes with natural selection? Those would seem to make your basis for claiming amorality crumble fairly quickly.

Also arguments that "morality does not exist" are contrived by their very nature. Obviously even as only symbolic indicators, moral terminology describes 'something'. You should rather state what you think morality is (or is not), rather than make such grandiose and sweeping arguments.

Okay but recall you posted this

I think you should drop the terms right and wrong. Right and wrong are normative, we should or should not act in a particular way and they do not have a role in your moral nihilism. Moral nihilism is certainly available to you, I think it is wrong but there are plausible arguments for it.

Also the idea we can define good and bad is not a perceptual belief, perception is that information presented by the 5 senses. It is intuitive and this is why I don't think the article you posted has the relevance you seem to.

Hmm yes, apologies for the confusion that would naturally cause. My view is evolving from my starting point, as a result of the questions and objections it's stimulated, and I wouldn't articulate it that way now.

I agree about not using 'right' and 'wrong' and have reached that point.

Moral nihilism is a great example of something that I didn't know that I didn't know (hence my 'haven't read a book' comment from earlier) and I need to look at that in more detail. It may be exactly what I'm trying to describe but I don't know at this point. Thanks for that.

Not sure I agree. If we 'perceive' that there can be things that are right and things that are wrong, we're naturally going to try to figure out which are which, isn't that an act of perception? But the idea that our perception has evolved not to favour what is actually true, but only to facilitate our survival suggests that we could perceive that there is right and wrong and but that not actually be true. We're simply trying to fit what we observe into a framework that makes sense to us but actually doesn't exist.

For example?

I think that I have stated what morality is, it could simply be us trying to make sense of what we perceive, tying to categorize and label it. But, since that perception itself could be faulty (is likely to be faulty), it doesn't necessarily support that morality is something other than a human construct. Just because we evolved to think like this doesn't mean that it's a correct way of thinking.

Basically when individual survival would mean reduced chance of surviving offspring.

Well, I think that is far better than stating that there is no morality. I think it is wrong to see morality as a "human construct" however. Humans exist in a world, and this world seems to follow certain principles. Stating morality is a human construct sounds a bit like saying the flavor of potatoes in soup depends only on the potatoes.

Presumably this can't happen where it could have a species level impact on humans (i.e. total extinction), or we wouldn't be here discussing it? Or maybe it just hasn't happened yet. I'm certain that this has happened on smaller scales in the past. My 'model', if you want to call it that, doesn't rule out this behaviour. In fact, it's a great example.

I think it's more like my 'tornado gods' analogy. What's the point of discussing how to classify the different types and behaviour of tornado gods, in order to understand the nature of tornadoes better, when we know tornadoes are in fact caused by something else entirely. During our efforts, we learn how to survive tornadoes but for entirely the wrong reasons.

We're trying to slot our behaviour into boxes labelled 'right' and 'wrong' and maybe there are no boxes. Maybe our perception that there are boxes has a survival benefit completely independent of the truth of whether or not there are boxes.

So, after further reading up on Moral Nihilism, I'm starting to think that what I'm thinking is a potential explanation for a Presupposition Failure form of Moral Nihilism. That we have evolved to make this type of error (a Type 1 error), that there is in fact no morality, it's just that as a result of thinking about it and in these terms, we have survived, and that has propagated a tendency to think in those terms, but they could be complete fiction.

It directly contradicts your point on morality only being tied to survival. Survival isn't natural selection, natural selection is passing on your genes. Survival often ties in to that, but not always. Sometimes it is in conflict with it.

This principle is abundant in both human society and in animals (some animals even evolve to die as part of passing on their genes!), your argument here makes no sense to me.

That's underestimating those who disagree with you to the level of being insulting. To use your analogy, it is clear the discussion is about tornados - not tornado gods.

My point is that there is no morality, it's just a concept we invented because we have this perception that there can be right and wrong. The article I linked was to support that perceptions can be mistaken, that we have evolved to do and think what helps us survive, not what is necessarily 'true'. So in that context, the statement 'morality only being tied to survival' means nothing.

Morality may be a Type 1 error, a mistaken belief that affords a survival benefit. So, we don't survive because we have morals, we have a belief about morality because we survive and survival is what drives the decisions we make about how to behave, even as we continually and mistakenly strive to classify what is 'right' and 'wrong'. That we are here thinking about right and wrong, does not mean that there is right and wrong, in exactly the same way that the appearance of a fine tuned universe, which is the only universe in which we could exist, does not mean the existence of a tuner.

I'll come back to the rest and apologies for posting a link I think you may want to read but it will clarify what we can attribute to perception.

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