I am phone posting so can’t get too deep in the weeds right now, but is seems like morally “questionable” norms could be justified as supporting social cohesion and cooperation, and deemed ethical, based on this framework.

Presumably different norms are more or less effective in supporting cooperation, within and across cultures. Thus this provides a potential framework for distinguishing better from worse cultural moral norms. That is enough to make it inconsistent with cultural relativism (depending on how you fill in the empirical claims about psychology, economics, political science, etc).

I don't think recognizing that moral norms we wouldn't today deem ethical can still promote cooperation and cohesion is the same thing as cultural relativism.

Reminds of me Non-zero by Robert Wright which uses game theory and the idea of cooperation to explain the trajectory of human societies. Another book along those lines is Lila by Robert Pirsig.

Along the same evolutionary thought, and to bring a little Myth of Rights in, we have rights because they enable us to cooperate (alternatively, resolve conflicts with nonviolent/less violent means) and that means people who believe in rights do better as a society.

You can change a few words and basically do something like this:

Democracy/capitalism > everything else (tried so far)
Belief in rights is necessary condition for Democracy
People who believe in rights and move toward democracy > people who don’t believe in rights

I've been thinking about this.

Sometimes a "scaffold", "fixture" or an "assembly jig" is absolutely necessary in order to correctly assemble a complex structure.

Some of the very best craftsman throughout history have been the ones who had the creativity and perspective necessary not only to build the final product, but indeed to invent at the same time the tools and techniques required to do it best.

In this way, is philosophy so different then carpentry?

Is the goal to invent a hammer or build a house?

In the end, which is important, the hammer or the house?

The question in hand is how equality is ensured, now that human value isn't granted as some "ultimate ontological value of life" through God or religion, if I understand it correctly.

Regarding humanistic theory, AFAIK the answer is pretty simple. Bear in mind this is specifically humanistic psychology, my knowledge of humanism as a philosophical branch is limited. The ultimate premise in humanistic psychology is that human beings are intrinsically good. Unless affected negatively, you will be good once you realize your inner self. And because every individual holds the potential to be good (and will generally, without intervention, become good) human beings in general holds value.

Humanistic psychology is called the "healthy psychology" as opposed to Freud. Freud's psychology is based on the assumption that there are built in and inevitable inner conflicts which are intangible from the human condition while the humanistic is about "becoming your inner/real you" and through that attaining happiness.

In humanism all human life is inherently good, and people who are evil are not personally responsible for being evil. Human beings are all capable of fulfilling their potentials and doing that is the key to happiness and fulfillment, and this "uncovering your true self" is central.


The first principle of humanistic psychology is this:

"Human beings, as human, supersede the sum of their parts. They cannot be reduced to components."

This is relevant wrt the discussion of equality and disability. Essentially human life holds value because it has agency and is ultimately good, and because you can't distinguish between people based on individual differences, be it advantages or shortcomings, all human life holds value and all of it is equal.

Complete equality makes little sense because some people prefer to work very hard for 60 hours a week in order to have quite a bit of fun the other 60, while others would prefer fewer hours and less stress even if that means less opportunities for costly recreation.

It wasn't quite a group level darwinian adaption. it's us individually attempting to rationally find the most satisfying solution to our human condition.

WN may think he is trying to find some absolute truth but I suspect he is wrong. I put it to him (and me and others) that if we found this absolute truth, using whatever method we somehow think might deliver it, but it turned out to be an answer that we don't like then we would reject it.

I don't think I am trying to find an absolute truth. I'm interested in how we think about things, and how our concepts collectively shape the world for us.

goodo. I stick with my answer, we're trying to balance our immediate personal needs and our concern for others.

Equality is a neat answer for those doing ok because our concern for others is largely abstract - we don't actually want to know all these people or be doing anything for them all the time, we just don't want to feel bad about their plight and we want to have a general sense that they're getting a fair shake of the stick. And where we're not doing ok the demand for equality is more direct and obvious.

Then you should definitely check out Lakoff--that is his shtick. (Amongst many others for sure)

Is it possible that you don't understand the difference between equal and identical?

The bolded part is the essence of IT to me too. Though I think WellNamed is looking for more than just this utility.

The rest of this post is nice, but how well does it stand up in a world of competing goals and limited resources?

One thing that religion/God contributes is a common set of ground rules amongst competitive groups or even enemies.

Is it possible to achieve the same w/o religion/God? I really don't know.

There's a cheap, theoretical answer to this question. Maslow suggests that 1>% of people live genuine fulfilled lives at one with their inner selves. So, in theory, almost all the competion and desire for materialistic gains is washed away if we can emancipate ourselves from the primitive desires (which happens to be the driving force between almost all human agency in the current world).

For example almost all competing/material/social goals are, according to Maslow, unhealthy goals and a consequence of people living unfulfilled lives. If people were their true selves, everyone would attain happiness just by being their true self and self-actualization, which isn't a discipline where you deplete limited resources because you're ultimately just freeing your inner potential, whether it means becoming a dancer, writer, a coach for a kid's soccer team or whatever. This true self is always good and have "healthy values" which rests on inner peace and fulfillment, not through external or material gain, whether it be financial capital or social recognition. (We do need social recognition at one of Maslow's lower levels, but for something to be true self-actualization, social accept cannot be the desired goal of the behavior)

The idea that we need God or religion to be good people is discarded by the humanists, because we are good and just at heart, so that would happen naturally, at least in the ideal world. Maslow states in his book "the discovery of being" that someone who is genuinely happy and fulfilled wouldn't harm other people, wouldn't lie, wouldn't treat other people badly but would just be a good and empathic person. So therefore there isn't the need for guidelines, because humans will treat each other nicely.

The problem is that this emancipation from materialism and consumerism and all these things in the world which "corrupts" us is virtually impossible at least on a larger scale.

The humanistic view of the individual is optimistic and also doesn't acknowledge traditional quantitative psychological research (objectifying the unique and complex aspects individual) as a valid way of investigating human life. Ultimately it's very theoretical and difficult to research, and whether or not people on a grand scale would be good if they all lived fulfilling lives is impossible to know.

And because it is ultimately optimistic, the question about what would ensure that people are good and equal in a world without God becomes superfluous, because the answer would simply be "it's human nature", and even in the cases where people are evil *******s, the answer is that "these people would be good if they were one with their true nature".

I like this analogy. I need to think about it more, but I think the idea of bits of shared culture or religion as "scaffolding" is about right. Some high-falutin academic sociologists would point you towards Bordieu's concept of habitus, I think. But I like the carpentry analogy.

It makes sense to me that a humanistic approach to fundamental human value would take into account the idea of human potential, and I like that. Although a cynic would say one is forced into such an approach because there's obviously little hope for an appeal to human actuality :P There's maybe some interesting political fallout from actually making potentiality such a central construct though. How would that impact someone's perception of abortion as a moral issue?

But I also think this concept of "good" is pretty underwhelming. Agency is just fundamentally good? I guess the closest I could get to this is some kind of existentialism: it's good that humans exist because I don't want to not exist. I'm not sure how much I can really hang on that premise, though. I'm reminded of some old Christian book that had a chapter title like "How it behooves man to be glad that he is in existence". I can't really argue with that, I suppose...

I was thumbing through some more Durkheim last night and this passage reminded me of this thread:

This conception of religion's role in maintaining social cohesion is, I suppose, tangential to the question of equality that I asked. But it seems practically equivalent, at least on the scale of an individual society? Concepts of equality or basic human worth are tied to the perception of belonging to the same collectivity?

The practical problem seems to be the same, how to get e pluribus unum, basically. Perhaps the experience of solidarity (traditionally promoted through religious belief and ritual) is more fundamentally important than a philosophical notion of equality.

I’ve seen ablism invoked when faced with the statement “take a stand” and I noted something like that as a psychological act, “taking a stand” doesn’t directly mean taking any physical act based on ability, and that a person who may not be able to understand psychologically “take a stand” can be accepted and accommodated without othering them by any condition or attribute of their mind state. This seems in the same range as blind spot being used as a reference for cognitive bias, a mental state relative to mental ability.


In an example:
“Supremacy mentality has a blind spot about equality mentality which equality mentality avoids by treating supremacy mentality as an equal. “

This seems to bring us right back to the concept of the purpose of social norms to promote social cohesion as a Darwinian adaptation at the group gene level. And abstract concept of equality is only applicable insomuch as they are adaptive at this level, and in practice doesn't extend much past your conceptual "in group" tribe.

Gay Rites are Civil Rites

More along the lines of my last post, and sort of drifting away from the OP, but I thought this SlateStarCodex blog was pretty interesting, ruminating on similar points:

Basically what I'm saying is I need something as cool as the SF gay pride parade in rural NM :P