Does Morality Do Us Any Good?

[Daylight63]

An animal mother self sacrificing for their offspring is not comparable to Oscar Schindler, and it's not even about morality. It's about preservation and propagation of one's own genetic information.

That was not the only example you were supplied with.

I don't consider actions based on self interest, based on protecting one's own genetic information, based on mutually beneficial cooperation to be examples of morality.

Why not?

 

[Daylight63]

There are no laws of evolution, biology, or chemistry that dictate an animal is programmed to protect the species as a whole - to ensure every member of the species is defended and nurtured.

You keep saying this like it is a fact.

I'm the only one so far who has backed up my points with actual objective facts and they would seem to indicate your ex cathedra statement is incorrect.

Biological evolution is about the survival and propagation of one's own genetic information, even at the expense of weaker members of the species.

100% Wrong. Social animals like humans, ants, dogs, wolves, etc. all GAIN advantage from mutual protection of the social network.

Honestly you'd have to be completely ignorant of biology and evolution to not know this.

If you're going to pick a word to describe biological evolutionary instinct, it is selfishness. Not morality.

Wrong again.

For isolated predators or those animals which live completely alone it IS true. BUT NOT FOR SOCIAL ANIMALS.

Social animals gain a survival advantage from the social network.

Good lord, I thought EVERYONE who ever had even a basic intro class on biology knew this

 

[Daylight63]

The Origins of Human Morality

How we learned to put our fate in one another’s hands

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[Cypress]

That was not the only example you were supplied with.



Why not?

I am not going to indulge or give credibility to a debate about whether kangaroos have a moral society, or whether spider monkeys basically have the same morality as human conscience.

This Doctor Doolittle framework about animals is preposterous. Animals are driven by instinct and evolution by natural selection. So are humans - but there is no Kangaroo equivalent to human conscience as illustrated by Georgio Perlasca or Dietrich Boenhoffer.

 

[Daylight63]

I am not going to indulge or give credibility to a debate about whether kangaroos have a moral society, or whether spider monkeys basically have the same morality as human conscience.

You are free to ignore all the science you like. It is completely understandable. A lot of people have a similar dislike of when science appears to steal some degree of "wonder" from the conversation. It actually does not but if one dislikes that approach to begin with it makes sense that you would like to ignore that stuff.

This Doctor Doolittle

Is there a reason for the pejorative language? I understand you don't like the science in this area but to denigrate it thusly is somewhat of a mystery to me.

framework about animals is preposterous.

Then you need to take it up with all the BIOLOGISTS that have been cited so far. If you wish to call countless professional biologists and evolutionary scientists and their research "preposterous" then I'm afraid I don't know where you can look for information on this topic. Certainly makes it easier to simply dismiss all the information that doesn't confirm the bias if one simply decrees all the science "preposterous".

Animals are driven by instinct and evolution by natural selection. So are humans - but there is no Kangaroo equivalent to human conscience as illustrated by Georgio Perlasca or Dietrich Boenhoffer.

Your repeated statement of this without evidence is still not moving the needle for me. Just ex cathedra claims seldom do that for me. I tend to prefer actual support for claims.

 

[Cypress]

Social animals gain a survival advantage from the social network.

Mutually advantageous cooperation and altruism within a small related family group, or a small social herd is about self-preservation and propagation of one's own genetic information.

You think self-interest and self-preservation defines morality.

I don't.
Self-interest and natural instinct does not define morality. And this would make complete sense to you if you were familiar with the basic tenets of world religion and philosophy, i.e. Plato, Epicteus, Confucius, Jesus, Kant.

 

[Daylight63]

Mutually advantageous cooperation and altruism within a small related family group, or a small social herd is about self-preservation and propagation of one's own genetic information.

You think self-interest and self-preservation defines morality.

I don't.
Self-interest and natural instinct does not define morality. And this would make complete sense to you if you were familiar with the basic tenets of world religion and philosophy, i.e. Plato, Epicteus, Confucius, Jesus, Kant.

So who among them was the one that defined that, for instance, murder was wrong? And what was the reasoning? Why is murder wrong?

 

[Cypress]

You are free to ignore all the science you like. It is completely understandable. A lot of people have a similar dislike of when science appears to steal some degree of "wonder" from the conversation. It actually does not but if one dislikes that approach to begin with it makes sense that you would like to ignore that stuff.



Is there a reason for the pejorative language? I understand you don't like the science in this area but to denigrate it thusly is somewhat of a mystery to me.



Then you need to take it up with all the BIOLOGISTS that have been cited so far. If you wish to call countless professional biologists and evolutionary scientists and their research "preposterous" then I'm afraid I don't know where you can look for information on this topic. Certainly makes it easier to simply dismiss all the information that doesn't confirm the bias if one simply decrees all the science "preposterous".



Your repeated statement of this without evidence is still not moving the needle for me. Just ex cathedra claims seldom do that for me. I tend to prefer actual support for claims.

You yourself instinctively know that animals do not have the same advanced moral conscience as humans are capable of.

When you heard about male lions and bears killing the cubs of their rivals, you never called it murder.

When a lion pride failed to bring food to a rival lion pride that was starving, you didn't call it an immoral act.

When eagles failed to hunt food for their osprey neighbors, you never called it selfish

 

[Daylight63]

You yourself instinctively know that animals do not have the same advanced moral conscience as humans are capable of.

When you heard about male lions and bears killing the cubs of their rivals, you never called it murder.

When a lion pride failed to bring food to a rival lion pride that was starving, you didn't call it an immoral act.

When eagles failed to hunt food for their osprey neighbors, you never called it selfish

I don't think ANYONE would call a lion killing a cub "murder". That's how we know there is no "universal moral rule against murder". There is a rule among humans and some other social animals, but that's to ensure their survival.

I'm still waiting for you to tell me who first figured out murder was wrong. And what was the reason they gave for why murder was wrong?

 

[Cypress]

I don't think ANYONE would call a lion killing a cub "murder". That's how we know there is no "universal moral rule against murder". There is a rule among humans and some other social animals, but that's to ensure their survival.

We will have to agree to disagree.

You and the New Atheists seem to think the self-interest and self-preservation of mutually advantageous cooperation defines morality.

The traditional morality of religion and ancient philosophy is that people are obligated to try to live lives of utterly self-denying disinterested benevolence towards others, including strangers and even rivals. It's not about utility, self-preservation through cooperation, or the expectation of reciprocity.

I'm still waiting for you to tell me who first figured out murder was wrong. And what was the reason they gave for why murder was wrong?

Religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Gnostics teach that humans are made in the image of God, and therefore have an innate value and dignity, and we are made for a purpose - which is to love and respect each other.

We are not just biochemical collections of matter and energy.

Therefore, murder is a diabolical violation of humanity and human purpose in these worldviews.

Murder was certainly widely practiced in Bronze Age civilization, for example ritual human sacrifice, abandoning female babies, Exposing weak babies

 

[Litmus]

I am not going to indulge or give credibility to a debate about whether kangaroos have a moral society, or whether spider monkeys basically have the same morality as human conscience.

This Doctor Doolittle framework about animals is preposterous. Animals are driven by instinct and evolution by natural selection. So are humans - but there is no Kangaroo equivalent to human conscience as illustrated by Georgio Perlasca or Dietrich Boenhoffer.

you hate that morality is actually cooperation and not killing people in the name of your religion.

you're a masonic war machine shill.

all of you have the same fucked up mind.

 

[Cypress]

you hate that morality is actually cooperation and not killing people

Mutually advantageous cooperation is not morality.

Mutually advantageous cooperation is based on self-interest and self-preservation, and it is fully explained by the scientific tenets of Darwinian evolution.

Morality is the obligation to try to live lives of utterly self-denying disinterested benevolence towards others, including strangers and even rivals. It's not about utility, self-preservation through cooperation, or the expectation of reciprocity.

 

[Litmus]

Mutually advantageous cooperation is not morality.

Mutually advantageous cooperation is based on self-interest and self-preservation, and it is fully explained by the scientific tenets of Darwinian evolution.

Morality is the obligation to try to live lives of utterly self-denying disinterested benevolence towards others, including strangers and even rivals. It's not about utility, self-preservation through cooperation, or the expectation of reciprocity.

so morality is rational.

why does that bother you?

you're disturbed.

 

[Cypress]

so morality is rational.

why does that bother you?

you're disturbed.

If you were calculating the best decision based on the established rational principles of game theory, you would never choose to do what Georgio Perlasca or Oskar Schindler did.

Strictly rational decisions are based on utility and risk, not on morality.

 

[Daylight63]

Religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Gnostics teach that humans are made in the image of God, and therefore have an innate value and dignity, and we are made for a purpose - which is to love and respect each other.

So those religions which lack a "personal god" type concept don't understand why murder is wrong?

We are not just biochemical collections of matter and energy.

I am aware of nothing else but certainly if someone can find it that would be interesting to detect.

Therefore, murder is a diabolical violation of humanity and human purpose in these worldviews.

Murder was certainly widely practiced in Bronze Age civilization, for example ritual human sacrifice, abandoning female babies, Exposing weak babies

So murder was not morally wrong until after the Bronze Age? Who was it that finally figured out that murder was wrong? And why did it take until after the Bronze Age for humans to figure that out?

 

[Daylight63]

If you were calculating the best decision based on the established rational principles of game theory, you would never choose to do what Georgio Perlasca or Oskar Schindler did.

Disagree.

When an ant sacrifices itself for the good of the colony you dismiss it as just what animals do. When a human puts themselves in danger for the good of the larger society you call it morality.

Both things are the same thing. But if someone dislikes the idea that humans are nothing more than animals it might feel tempting to somehow imbue OUR actions with mystical value and greatness.

Humans strangely always hold themselves somehow above the other animals. As if that which drives the BEASTS must SURELY not drive us.

 

[Daylight63]

Just stumbled across this and it appears to be behind a paywall, but here's the abstract:

Morality: An Evolutionary Account (Krebs)​

Refinements in Darwin's theory of the origin of a moral sense create a framework equipped to organize and integrate contemporary theory and research on morality. Morality originated in deferential, cooperative, and altruistic “social instincts,” or decision-making strategies, that enabled early humans to maximize their gains from social living and resolve their conflicts of interest in adaptive ways. Moral judgments, moral norms, and conscience originated from strategic interactions among members of groups who experienced confluences and conflicts of interest. Moral argumentation buttressed by moral reasoning is equipped to generate universal and impartial moral standards. Moral beliefs and standards are products of automatic and controlled information-processing and decision-making mechanisms. To understand how people make moral decisions, we must understand how early evolved mechanisms in the old brain and recently evolved mechanisms in the new brain are activated and how they interact. Understanding what a sense of morality is for helps us understand what it is.​

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00072.x

Seems to support some of the points I've been making all along: morality springs from social living as a means of maximizing benefit to the individual and that "moral argumentation" is apparently there to codify the standards which appear to be inbuilt already in the animal.

As I've said COUNTLESS times on here there is a special role for the human level of intellect. We are capable of envisioning an alternative future that follows from our actions in the present. And that is where our "review" of our natural moral inclinations come from, but that "reason" does not make morality, it only provides a post-hoc explanation of why we did or did not choose to take a given action.

 

[Daylight63]

Krebs is actually turning out to have some really interesting stuff on the Evolutionary Development of Morality.

I just found his book on the subject (BOOK HERE)

I especially liked this summary near the start of the book:

 

[Cypress]

Disagree.

When an ant sacrifices itself for the good of the colony you dismiss it as just what animals do.

The queen ant propagates the colony's genetic information. Worker ants dying to defend the colony and their queen makes perfect sense in a Darwinian evolutionary framework.

Ants will not help or die for other colonies or rivals, which is a human moral characteristic.

I am not going to be drawn into a preposterous debate that ant morality is basically the same as human moral conscience.

 

[Daylight63]

The queen ant propagates the colony's genetic information. Worker ants dying to defend the colony and their queen makes perfect sense in a Darwinian evolutionary framework.

Ants will not help or die for other colonies or rivals, which is a human moral characteristic.

I am not going to be drawn into a preposterous debate that ant morality is basically the same as human moral conscience.

Why do you call the work of many biologists and scientists "preposterous"?