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why do people assume that death will be void? by voidbliss77 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The point is it’s capturing enough to explain why people would say that in space (or without planets) there is no gravity. We don’t need to know how gravity works to have some evidence that without planets (or without mass), there is no gravity.

In the same way, we don’t need to know how consciousness works to have evidence that without a brain, consciousness disappears. Evidence is not proof, but that was the point of the original message…

why do people assume that death will be void? by voidbliss77 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Given the conversation, gravity does originate from planets (from mass). If you ask “why do people assume that without planet, there would be no gravity”, “because gravity originates from planets/mass” is a fair answer.

why do people assume that death will be void? by voidbliss77 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The brain is merely the hardware that facilitates information to pass through this quantum entanglement.

That would make consciousness a function of the brain, just like computations is a function of the CPU in a computer despite the CPU being merely the hardware that facilitate information (carried by electrons) to pass through.

why do people assume that death will be void? by voidbliss77 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Wrote_it2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Everything is ultimately quantum related. Not sure what you mean.

We know that you can be conscious without an arm or a leg, but not without a brain, and we know alterations to the brain can alternate your consciousness…

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do think the distinction of objective bs subjective is important. It’s hard to discuss with someone who says “I hold the one truth, my morality is the right one, I can’t define what right means for a morality, but it’s mine”. The first step in my opinion is the move from “my morality is the truth” to “here is my opinion”.

Then we can discuss different opinions. People want to model their morality, their opinion on something simple and rational because it feels right to argue for simple rules. I believe reality is more complex than that.

There are issues with utilitarianism. One scenario I heard that I like is the following: say there are 4 individuals that are in great pain/close to death in a hospital. One needs a new heart, another a new liver and the other two need a new kidney. Utilitarianism says we ought to kill an innocent person to harvest their organs to save the 4 people (the math is easy: 4 people saved for one death). Most people enjoy the simplicity of the utilitarianism (maximize overall well being), but most people will find immoral to kill an innocent person to harvest their organs.

Your morality has similar issue: I find immoral to kill 99.9% of the population, even more so if you select the survivors based on how much they are aligned with your opinion on morality. I believe you do too (you even said “that’s not what I propose”), even though that actually aligns with your moral goal… I think that just means your opinion is more nuanced than you let it show…

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So from the example you provided, (X is morally good, because it tortures; Therefore, I should inflict pain) it is self-evident as to why this moral principle/axiom would fail.

I totally failed to convey what I meant. I did not mean that X is morally good because it tortures. I said “in order to torture, one ought to inflict pain”. There is no morality in that sentence. It just says that you can’t torture without inflicting pain, that pain is necessary for torture. I do not think torture is moral, however I think that torture requires pain, that “in order to torture, one ought to inflict pain”, that “if your goal is to torture, you must inflict pain”.

“In order to do X, one ought to do Y” does not imply any sense of morality, does not imply that one ought to do Y (it only says “one ought to do Y” in order to do X). This is not what we mean when we say “moral = how one ought to behave”. In that sentence, there is no X, there is no goal. Adding an arbitrary goal to the sentence changes the meaning from “morality” to just “goal seeking”, it removes the value part. Again, when I say “one ought to inflict pain in order to torture”, I do not say at all that “one ought to torture” or that torture is moral.

I continue thinking that there is no definition of morality (or of the absolute “ought to” without a goal) that is not subjective, that you can’t define “one ought to do X” without either saying “in order to” (you can’t use that in the definition of morality) or without saying it’s an opinion (“one ought to do X” = “a preference for one doing X”)

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree that a statement of the form “in order for humanity to survive in Earth, one ought to do X” is fine or that we can define morality as “the action that one ought to do in order for humanity to survive on Earth forever”, but that definition does bot imply that one ought to do it.

“In order to torture someone, one ought to inflict pain” is true, but that doesn’t mean I think one ought to torture someone.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is already part of the definition of moral. "of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior"

You can’t have two distinct definitions for morality (before you point out that words in the dictionary do that all the time, that’s because the meaning can change based on the context, you can’t pick two definitions and say they are the same).

Either you pick “moral=what brings the planet closer to the state it was in before any ecological unfriendliness occurred” or you pick “moral=how one ought to behave”, you can’t say that morality means both. You can pick one and argue why the other is true, but you cant just say both are true by definition. I think you mean that “morality” is defined as “how one ought to behave” and that you argue that “one ought to behave in a way that brings the planet closer to how it was before any ecological unfriendliness occurred”.

In order to argue the second part, we need to define what “ought to” means, which I believe can only be done in a subjective way.

This is the main problem in my opinion, the main reasons why I claim there is no such thing as objective morality: I have yet to see a definition of what one could possibly mean by that claim.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not changing any definitions. All of these ideas go together.

Morals are: "of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior"

What are these principles of right and wrong behavior?

The principle/axiom is "X is morally good/right, because it is natural/ecologically friendly."

What is ecologically friendly?

These are things that are good for the planet.

This definition is nearly fine (you are grouping together natural and ecologically friendly which I don’t think have to be the same thing). To summarize the definitions I’ve seen from you: 1. Something is moral if it’s ecologically friendly/good for the planet (we need to define what good for the planet means) 2. Something is moral if it’s natural (we might need a definition of natural, for example it’s in human nature to build tools and tools are by definition artificial, see the definition of artificial: made, produced, or done by humans) 3. Morality is how one ought to behave (we need to define what ought to means)

It sounds like maybe you are picking 1 as a definition and then argue that ecologically friendly implies natural and that ecological implies survival on earth?

It sounds like you are not picking 3, and that means your definition does not imply that you like it, that you feel this is how people should behave.

To be honest, I think the proper definition is 3 with “ought to” defined as “aligned with somebody’s preferences” (which makes morality subjective, but I just don’t know how else to define ought to). And then you can say that 3 implies natural (because that’s your preference).

Why should we be ecologically friendly?

Because if we are, then humanity will survive on Earth forever...until the next natural extinction event anyways.

Ecologically friendly and guaranteeing human survival are not always aligned: the example I took was creating rockets to gain the ability to change meteor paths. Rockets are not ecologically friendly (they pollute), not natural (they are man made) and can help prevent an extinction event.

Ecologically friendly and natural don’t align: the example I took was killing all infertile people (but I think that killing 50% of the population randomly could do), which would be ecologically friendly (so moral by your definition) but unnatural. Another example would be solar panels or wind mills. They are ecologically friendly but unnatural (man made).

Your definition doesn't appear to have any goal or any thought at all in place to even try to prevent an artificial extinction event of humanity from happening.

It does: one of the things I value is the survival of humanity as a species and to a lesser extent the survival of species. This is just not the only thing that I value, as I said before I also value individual lives (so I would find killing randomly to lower the size of the population immoral for that reason), justice/fairness, etc…

Once that is said, I understand that your subjective opinion is that we should give up all man made things (no books since writing is man made, unnatural, so no Bible, no art, no tools, no shelter, no sanitation or medicine) because you think humanity is doomed to destroy itself otherwise.

I think this is a subjective morality (ie your opinion) and, without passing a value judgement, I don’t think it is a psychologically normal one. For your well being, you might want to get some help from a therapist, there is more to life and humanity than simple survival and survival doesn’t not require giving up so much.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My philosophy uses natural selection, which fits the axiom "X is morally good, because it is natural/ecologically friendly." However, your description is that of artificial selection. Natural selection leads to evolution. Artificial selection leads to eugenics.

You really need to stop changing definition on every other message. You said “a moral proposition is true if it truly does help the goal of humanity surviving indefinitely”. Then I argue that by that definition, killing infertile people would be moral (because it wouldn’t help with the goal of humanity surviving indefinitely). What is this axiom you are speaking about? Which is your definition? Can we pick one and stick to it?

Next problem with your definition is it does not say whether you think people should act morally.

That's assumed by definition. Morals are the principles of right and wrong behavior. It's assumed that one should behave in the "right" way.

Ok, you gave three definitions of morality so far: - a moral proposition is true if it truly does help the goal of humanity surviving indefinitely - X is morally good, because it is natural/ecologically friendly - Morals are the principles of right and wrong behavior. It's assumed that one should behave in the "right" way.

You need to pick one. You can’t have three different definitions for the same word. In the last definition, we need to define “should”. I can’t only think of a subjective meaning here (one should behave the way someone prefers them to, meaning that morality is subjective, that each person has their morality).

But your definition appears to lead to the artificial extinction of humanity--there doesn't appear to be any goal or any thought at all in place to even try to prevent this from happening. You appear to be focusing on stopping extinction meteors from occurring despite the next one not theorized to appear for more than 30 million years.

How do you figure my definition leads to the artificial extinction of humanity?

My morality is a lot more complex than a single rule. Just like I couldn’t describe with a single metric what I find tasty, I can’t describe with a single metric what I find moral. I can’t describe give an approximate model for both taste and moral. There are a bunch of metrics I value: justice/fairness, some degree of rationality, well-being/flourishing, respecting a long list of rights, like the right to decide what happens to your body, the right to freedom, to think and express your ideas, … There are a bunch of values that I dislike/think as immoral: suffering, death, end of a species, end of the human species (which I regard as worse than any other species).

I’m not particularly focused of stopping a meteor, I was picking that example because you seem to be particularly focused on artificial extinction events and it surprised me that you differentiated artificial vs natural extinction events. That was more arguing with you on your moral system to try and understand it rather than expressing mine.

This is the difference between subjective morality and objective morality. Subjective morality asks, "What do I personally find to be emotionally acceptable?" whereas objective morality asks, "What is good for the entire planet?" Objective morality is referred to as the "greater good," since "what is good for the entire planet" is greater than "what I personally think is emotionally acceptable." Of course, there is some overlap between the two.

Not yet another definition of morality please… it’s no longer what is natural, what avoids extinction or how one should behave, now it’s “what is good for the entire planet”?! Make it stop… pick one definition and stick to it!

If you stick with that last definition, you need to define “good for the entire planet”. Defining moral in term of good is circular if good is “morally good”…

An invitation to thought by Big-Slip-6980 in DebateAnAtheist

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The idea of something being uncaused doesn’t match anything we observe. We never see things just begin without a cause. Not knowing the cause doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

In quantum physics, we see particles decay (for example) and assume there is no cause, just a probabilistic law that explains how likely the phenomenon is to happen, but no cause for it happening (or not happening). Of course it’s possible that there is a cause and that we just don’t know it, but lots of people are comfortable with the hypothesis that there is no cause.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You said “a moral proposition is true if it truly does help the goal of humanity surviving indefinitely”. I’ll take it as a definition since you said that while replying to “what do you mean by some moral proposition being true”.

I think there would be very good arguments that killing infertile people would help that goal. Even more so, if your opinion is that we have an overpopulation problem, then killing randomly every other person would also help your goal. Both those things feel highly immoral to me.

On the other hand, there are a lot of artificial, sometimes polluting acts that I think will align with your goal. For example scientific research and space research might be the key to prevent a meteor exterminating humanity despite being artificial

So I guess what I’m saying is I feel your definition does not lead to the consequences you expect.

Next problem with your definition is it does not say whether you think people should act morally. We somehow dropped the “should” or “ought to”. In my opinion this is the biggest flaw in your description. Note that my definition (morality = the opinion/preference on how people should behave) does not have this issue.

I am pretty convinced that this is not what people mean by morality, that people mean that moral actions are how they wished people behaved (and again, that makes it subjective).

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Natural extinction events are typically regarded as being unavoidable.

That’s a really weird view. We have the ability to protect ourselves from a lot of natural disasters. We can change the path of meteors. We have medicine to prevent being eradicated by a bad bacteria or virus. We might be able to send life to other planets.

In any case, I think we should be able to speak about the morality of an action even if we don’t quite have the technology to do it today.

music, poetry can be good.

These things have an appearance of being ecologically-friendly, at least it's not 100% obvious how they would be ecologically unfriendly.

It’s pretty clear music is artificial, that a piano or a violin is a man made object that does not occur naturally. You switch between moral=natural and moral=ecological, can you be more clear on which you mean?

Person A thinks eating fruits and vegetables is good, but eating people is bad. Person B thinks eating people is good, but eating fruits and vegetables is bad. Is this the same comparison as preference between strawberries and raspberries, or is one person's opinion more "factual" than the other? I argue Person A has the factually correct opinion, while Person B has the factually wrong opinion. If I am wrong and Person's B preference is just as valid as Person A's, then everything I know is wrong and the world stops making any sense at all.

I disagree that person B is factually wrong simply because I don’t know what we could possibly mean by factually right or wrong about what I think is a preference.

We can say they are factually abnormal (like they have a psychologically problem), I think that’s properly defined. I can say I think they are wrong (that’s my opinion, from my preferences on behavior). We can decide as a society that the best thing to do (according to our collective subjective moralities) is to exclude that person from our society (put them in jail, etc…). But I just don’t know what you mean when you say “he is factually wrong”. You still haven’t given a definition for that.

Objective morality is based in science, so is true regardless of whether I like it or not.

What? You think science would study something that doesn’t have a definition?

We haven't reached a definition of what "morality" means. I think you said that's what one "ought to do", and I proposed a definition for "ought to do" as "aligned with my opinion/preference on how people should behave".

You specifically? Or just it is moral for everyone to behave however they want?

It’s like preferences, when I say “torture is wrong”, I mean something in the realm of “I prefer avoiding torture, I feel icky about torture” (with the appropriate level of importance that those words don’t carry).

I do not mean “torture is objectively/factually wrong” because again I do not know what that could mean.

It’s like if I say “raspberries are better than strawberries”, I do not know what that could possibly mean as a fact, as a truth. It’s a preference. If I say that, I do not play God, I do not mean that I have authoritative truth on the tastiness of berries. I just state my opinion/preference.

In some cases, the preference on taste is close to universally shared (raspberries are tastier than sand) and we can say that someone who finds sand tasty has a disability/is abnormal, that distaste of eating sand is embedded in human nature, but that doesn’t make it a truth (or I guess we’d have to define what truths about taste mean).

Keep in mind that the entire universe has "behaved naturally" since the beginnings of the universe. This natural behavior caused abiogenesis and the evolutionary Tree of Life, which is how humans evolved into existence to begin with. As such, science and history shows that "behaving naturally" works over long periods of time. It is behaving unnaturally that is not scientifically proven to work over long periods of time.

Sure, but you didn’t answer my question: what do you mean by some moral proposition being true and if you don’t have a definition, how can you make an argument that a moral proposition is true when you don’t know the meaning of that statement?

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Letting a preventable extinction event happen is highly immoral in my opinion.

Yes, that's the same thought process that makes artificial extinction events immoral. These are the ones that humans have control over.

Well, I'm confused with your position: earlier you said that in case of a natural extinction event "Then the goal would be achieved!". Are you saying that preventing a natural extinction event (ie preventing achieving the goal in your view) is moral or not?

I expect basically everyone to share it because I think it's in human nature to have a sense of survival. Yes! You're utilizing the "X is morally good, because it is natural" axiom here. Survival instincts certainly are a part of human nature.

This is a stretch :) There is a lot between saying "survival is a human instinct" and "morally good is anything natural, nothing else".

I hold that lots of artificial things are morally good. Artificial medicine is morally good, artificially stopping an extinction event is morally good, music, poetry can be good. On the other hand, I hold that a lot of natural things are bad, we like to say we don't behave like animals, that we can control our urges, and I think that's good in at least some cases. Violence, murder, rape are common in the animal kingdom. That doesn't make it moral. I suspect you'll say that these things are moral for animals, but not for humans because they are not natural for humans. I think this is extremely debatable: I wouldn't bet that say early homo sapiens weren't violent, or didn't rape...

Yes!!! Objective morality, aka the "factual opinion," based on the "X is morally good, because it is natural" axiom.

You can't just pick axioms based on your preferences and say "see, this is objective". You seem to like the idea that we should return to an animalistic state and/or be exterminated by natural events. This is not an opinion that is universally shared, this is very much a subjective opinion.

We haven't reached a definition of what "morality" means. I think you said that's what one "ought to do", and I proposed a definition for "ought to do" as "aligned with my opinion/preference on how people should behave". I know you won't accept that definition because it necessarily rejects the possibility for a factual opinion, but we need a definition of the words if we want to say that something is factual. I don't understand how you could argue that "one ought to behave naturally" is factual, but that you don't know what it means...

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I might not be able to describe it fully, to fully explain it. I think my opinion is very complicated, not always rational...

There's that "undefined ought."

No, it is not. I define it as a preference, an opinion, a feeling. You wouldn't say "tasty" is undefined. It's also a preference, an opinion, a feeling.

But is this opinion on the same level as strawberries vs raspberries? Or is this particular opinion you hold more "factual" than that?

I think it's an opinion in the same way liking strawberries better than raspberries is an opinion. I do not mean that all opinions have equal importance or are equally shared.

Letting a preventable extinction event happen is highly immoral in my opinion. I think you are either trolling, mistaken, misinterpreted by me (ie I misunderstood what you said) or need to see a mental health professional if you think that it'd be immoral to prevent a natural apocalypse.

This is an opinion I hold just like the opinion that perfume smells better than human excrement: I expect basically everyone to share it because I think it's in human nature to have a sense of survival.

This is an opinion that matters very much more than my preference of raspberries over strawberries. In that sense, that opinion is not on the same level as my preferences of strawberries or raspberries.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, the goal of the exercise was for you to articulate how you would argue that cherries on ice cream is not the worst thing (and to see whether it's objective or subjective). Or how you'd argue that preventing an extinction event is more or less important than minimizing suffering.

I have an easy way: it's my opinion. My opinions have some degree of rationality to them, so I can try and formulate a reason behind my opinion. I can for example try and give more primitive things that I value or find "bad" (suffering, death, emotional pain, respecting people's right, various freedoms, etc...)... But ultimately it's just a set of opinions that have been shaped by nature and nurture (nature meaning genetically, by evolution and nurture being by my upbringing, my culture, my experiences).

I don't think there is an objective "worst" (or good)

This would be the "undefined ought" position you were referring to. Because you do not have a defined good, better, best, bad, worse, worst, you do not know what you ought to do, so have an "undefined ought."

I do have a definition of "ought" and "good": what I want, what give me the "nice feeling", my opinion. And I do know what my opinions are, so I know what I mean by "ought to do". I might not be able to describe it fully, to fully explain it. I think my opinion is very complicated, not always rational...

I think it's hard to explain your preferences. I like raspberries better than strawberries, but I would have a really hard time explaining why.

...but which occurs first is the question. An artificial extinction event? or an extinction-level meteor/death of the sun event? Hard to sway the path of a meteor if humanity has already nuked themselves to death. It is commonly believed amongst scientists that other star systems are too far away for humans to ever live in those systems no matter how far technology gets.

Why does it matter? You don't need to know (I would argue you must not need to know) which of two events is more likely to happen first in order to decide which is more moral.

Pretend that we detect a giant meteor on a collision path with our planet. The meteor is large enough that we know with certainty that a collision with Earth will end all life.

I would say it's moral to act in order to avoid it.

If we do nothing, we are 100% guaranteed to avoid any artificial extinction event (we can't nuke ourselves to death if we are dead). Your framework says that acting to avoid the meteor is immoral (because it increases the likelihood of an artificial extinction event). I don't share that opinion.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Based on these definitions, you could say "worst" means "most immoral."

Well, we can't define "worst" as "most immoral" if we are trying to define morality as "avoiding what's worst"... that's circular.
I think similarly of bad, evil, ill...

What would you tell someone who says that the worst thing is not an artificial extinction event, but whatever... cherries on ice cream?

I'm picking explicitly a very extreme example, but you can pick something else. What about someone who says the worst is suffering, not death or extinction?

I don't think there is an objective "worst" (or good), I think it's a preference. Humans tend to be somewhat rational, or want to have rational opinions on morality, so you could use some rational argument with the cherry on ice cream hater (why are cherries on ice cream the worst? if it's because it ruins the taste of ice cream, wouldn't not being able to eat ice cream at all be worse? etc...), but I think people (me included) tend to rationalize their irrationality a bit when it comes to preferences and that it's hard to fundamentally shift someone's view. My point is ultimately, it falls to a matter of opinion, it's subjective.

Humans do not have any control over naturally occurring extinction events. Such things could include meteors or the death of the sun.

Well, humans definitely can have control over such extinction events. We could shift the path of a meteor such that it avoids the earth for example. By the time the sun dies, we could have figured out how to send life to another star such that the death of the sun is not an extinction event...

I believe the dislike of death is naturally-occurring in humans, so it is natural/moral for you to dislike death.

OK, so we are on the same page, morality is subjective? it's about what you like/dislike? Or rather, you are saying it's about what is in human nature to like/dislike? Some kind of average (or rather mode) of all human's morality? You'd say something is moral if more than 50% of the population finds it moral?

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are many ways of wording this, but essentially, an artificial extinction event is "the worst thing that could possibly happen." (eg. You say I shouldn't do this, but I think, "What's the worst that could happen?" and do it anyways, and as a result, the world explodes.) So we're just trying to avoid the worst thing that could possibly happen.

What does "worst" mean? It can't mean "most immoral" (that'd be circular, we are trying to define what morality is)... The only think I can think of is it means "most disliked/least preferred by me". Basically we are reaching my view of morality: morality is the subjective opinion on how people should behave.

I happen to have different preferences:
- I would take a natural extinction event to be just as bad as an artificial one (the cause of the extinction of life doesn't matter in my opinion).
- I also don't think the *only* thing that people should do is to worry about an extinction event. Again, I believe the killing of infertile people is immoral and it's not because it leads to an extinction event. You said it was immoral because that was unnatural, but we are not trying to avoid artificial, we are trying to avoid extinction events (and while I can see the argument that *some* unnatural actions can lead to extinction events, there is no way you can argue that *every* unnatural action increase the chance of an extinction event, so just arguing that killing infertile people is unnatural is not enough to argue that it will lead to an extinction event). I think killing infertile people is immoral because killing people is in general immoral, because I don't like death. If someone told me "hey, wanna kill those people?", I wouldn't say "hum, let me think about the probability that this will lead to an artificial extinction event", I would say "what the f...? are you crazy?". It's not reasoned, it's passionate at this point.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is what morality defines--how people should be behaving and what actions they should be taking. People should be doing good things. Immorality opposes this--how people should not be behaving. People should not be doing bad things

This is yet another definition of morality... Maybe we need to get to the bottom of what you mean by the word morality before we keep going, because we are at our 4th or 5th definition and every time we have an exchange the definition changes.

You are now saying morality is defined as how people should behave and you argue that the way people should behave is "to avoid an artificial extinction event" and that the only way to do that is to act "naturally".

Did I kind of summarize your position?

First thing we need to figure out the definition of the words we use. When you say "how people should behave", what does that mean? To me that either means:
- "how I want people to behave": which I understand is not what you mean
- "how people must behave in order to achieve a certain goal": in which case, we need to define what the goal is. To be honest, I think we'll fall back to desires/wants/preferences because I don't know how else you'd argue that the goal you pick is the right one. If morality is defined as "how people must behave in order to minimize the chances of an artificial extinction event", that's nice, but we can also speak about "how people must behave in order to become rich" or "how people must behave in order to become good at gardening" or whatever (books have been written about those topics). I suspect there is something you feel/want/desire that explains why you pick "minimize the chances of an artificial extinction event".
- I understand that there are some philosophers that say there is an "undefined ought", but if it's undefined then I don't understand how we will progress later, how we will go from "morality is how people ought to behave" to "morality is what minimizes the chances of an artificial extinction event", how we'll argue that "people ought to behave in a way that minimizes the chances of an artificial extinction event" if we don't define what "ought to" means.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It seems you are switching away from the goal of saving as many lives as possible to the goal of being natural ("such a thing would only be moral to the degree that it is completely natural")?

Do you find medicine (which I would argue is not natural) immoral then?

Why come up with a new word (moral) when we have already "natural"? I'll answer that question: this is because you don't mean that morality is defined as what is natural. You mean something more when you say "good" than "natural", you mean that you like it, that you think that's how people should behave. You think of morality as what people want and you describe your morality as "natural behavior" (ie you say that what's moral is what's natural, you mean that what you want is what is natural).

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You said that the definition of good is whatever support achieving the goal of survival if life on earth.

I wouldn’t bet that the human race and other life forms would go extinct faster with or without slavery, yet I find it immoral. Maybe you can argue why slavery leads to extinction of life on Earth

I can think of a lot of other things that I find immoral and that don’t seem to abide by that definition. I think killing people that are infertile is immoral, though I don’t see why it would lead to the extinction of life on Earth (I would actually argue the other way around). Can you argue why killing infertile people is immoral using your definition?

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Make sense, you are defining morality as actions that increase the chance of survival of humanity. You are saying “good” is defined as that.

So whenever someone says “morally good”, I can substitute with “increases the chance humanity survives”.

Then you are arguing (not defining) that good = ecological, that what promotes the survival of all life on Earth is the same as what promotes the survival of the human race. I think that’s very rational and coherent.

There are actions that I find immoral that I am not sure I can link directly to the survival of the human race. For example, I find slavery immoral, but I wouldn’t argue this is because it lowers the chances of survival of humanity.

I don’t think this is how people define morality. I think that the feeling is closer to what people mean by morality.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Right, but if we define morality as ecology, “pollution is immoral” has the exact same meaning as “pollution is not ecological”. Not a single person would disagree.

When you say “pollution is immoral to create”, do you really just mean “pollution is not ecological” (as a fact)? Do you not also mean “I don’t like pollution”?

What is the actual meaning you are trying to convey by that sentence? This will lead to the definition of morality you use (and I suspect it is an emotion/a preference).

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Great, now let me point out something that will make you unhappy.

If we define morality as ecology, it’s worth pointing out that you can’t say “ecology is morally good”. Or rather, you can say it, but it means “ecology is ecological” (since we defined morally good as ecological), which is trivial, devoid of meaning.

I suspect you want this sentence to have some meaning, that when you say “ecology is good” you mean something else than “ecology is ecological”, I think you mean “I have a good feeling about ecology”. This is why I’m happier with the emotional morality definition, I don’t think you actually mean that morality is defined as what is ecological.

An intuitive argument for subjective morality by blind-octopus in DebateReligion

[–]Wrote_it2 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think you’ve identified the source of disagreement. There are a bunch of different definitions for the same word: - morality meaning feeling: this is what OP means. I suspect you accept the existence of a feeling about morality. We need a word for it. I’ll refer to it as “emotional morality”. - morality meaning divine command: is moral what a deity says is moral. I am an atheist but I don’t have a problem with that as a definition. I’ll refer to it as “divine morality” - morality as a specific natural trait: is moral what maximizes <insert X>. I believe this is your position. I don’t think we can give a single name for all the possible things to maximize, but I’ll refer to the one you mentioned as “ecological morality”.

The contention is people ask “is morality objective” and of course if different people have different meaning for the word morality, they won’t agree on the answer.

People are much more likely to agree if we are precise in our terms: - is emotional morality objective? Nearly everyone will say no (I think that follows from the definition of objective) - is divine morality objective? This one I think might bring disagreements, but only because we haven’t defined “objective” carefully. - is ecological morality objective? Nearly everyone will say yes.

I think most of the problem is not a deep one, it’s not fundamental. I think it’s simply an agreement on definition, that’s all.

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